GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. XLVII.

Demonic Transformations.

“By cock and pie!”

An ancient oath.

“The peacock was anciently in great demand for stately entertainments. Sometimes it was made into a pie, at one end of which the head appeared above the crust in all its plumage, with the beak richly gilt; at the other end the tail was displayed. Such pies were served up at the solemn banquets of chivalry, when knights-errant pledged themselves to undertake any perilous enterprise; whence came the ancient oath, used by Justice Shallow, ‘by cock and pie.’”

Washington Irving. Old Christmas.

 

In the chapter on Cannibalism we got acquainted with the numerous shenanigans of Azazello, who, as the killer-demon, was responsible for supplying meat of “first freshness” to the demonic table, hence the knife tucked under his belt.

The physical appearance given to Azazello by the author [about which in detail we will be talking in my chapter on Ivanushka] is rather eye-catching, to suit a professional killer. He is red-haired, wall-eyed, and sporting a single fang protruding from his mouth. Therefore, in order to indulge in his hobby and get away with it over the course of two years, Azazello must necessarily have kept changing his appearance, transforming himself into different unremarkable people. Unfortunately, in order to give the reader a hard time guessing, Bulgakov prefers not to describe the appearances of these people, including even the “policeman” taking away the nameless tenant of Apartment #50, which may have been Azazello’s very first outing in the novel.

Indeed, Bulgakov must have “kept a fig in his pocket,” as the Russians say, writing this. In other words, he drew immense enjoyment not only from hiding inside Master and Margarita the best spy novel ever written, but also the best “perfect crime” in any detective story, one that the reader hasn’t got an inkling about.

In this chapter, distinguished “by cock and pie,” I am serving the reader a peacock pie, where the two crusts are as delicious as the filling. The cock perched on the top crust is the one and only master: Squire Voland, whose heavily disguised adventure in Moscow, as well as incognito appearances at his own ball are also well hidden. (So, you really thought that the devil was missing most of the action at his only once-a-year ball?..)

The filling in the pie is the tender meat of birds and cats, whereas the bottom crust is provided by Azazello, and so, with this bottom crust we begin to build up our peacock pie.

Sparrow/Azazello.

And so we begin with Azazello, because he is the only character whose transformation into a bird is sold to us lock, stock, and barrel. Bulgakov’s Azazello is a sparrow,--- by no means a large bird, yet a most important one, as all other birds in Master and Margarita, with the exception of the owl and the parrots, belong to the same order of Passeriformes, that is, Sparrow-forms.

Although Azazello first appears as a sparrow in the very first chapter of Master and Margarita, he is best to be revealed in all his “splendor” at the end of Part I of the novel. In the office of Dr. Kuzmin, he breaks all records, changing his appearance three times in a row. We start with his last transformation into a female nurse, delivering to Dr. Kuzmin the leeches which he had just ordered by phone.---

“”Just as the professor put down the receiver, [he] immediately let out a scream. Sitting [in his office], and wearing the special nurse’s headwear, was a woman with a handbag with the inscription Leeches on it. The scream let out by the professor was caused by his closer look at the woman’s mouth. It was a man’s mouth, skewed to the ears, and with a single fang [protruding from it] The nurse’s eyes were dead.

“The money I will tidy up, said the nurse in a man’s basso voice. No reason for these to lie around here. She raked the labels in with her bird’s claw, and started melting in the air.”

I’ve chosen this example to begin with, because there cannot be even the slightest trace of doubt that this nurse was Azazello, with his famous single fang. Another Bulgakovian hint that the sparrow dancing the foxtrot Halleluiah is Azazello, is the nurse’s bird’s claw. How can a woman have a bird’s claw?---

“In the room of the professor’s daughter a gramophone started playing, and at the same moment a sparrow’s chirping could be heard… On the desk in front of him [the professor] saw a large jumping sparrow. Taking a closer look at it, the professor immediately realized that it wasn’t an ordinary sparrow. The mischievous sparrow was limping on the left leg, it was definitely playing a clown, dragging the handicapped leg, working in a syncopated manner, in one word, dancing a foxtrot to the sound of the gramophone, like a drunk at the bar counter. It was making a nuisance of itself any which way it could, throwing impudent glances at the professor… Meantime, the sparrow took a seat on the gifted inkstand and took a dump in it. (I am not joking!) …”

Azazello had also been that kitten who badly scratched the head of Andrei Fokich, who then took off to see the doctor with Azazello in pursuit, first turning himself into the kitten in Dr. Kuzmin’s office, but this will be my subject of discussion in connection with all other cats in the novel Master and Margarita…

Meanwhile, since with the help of the fang we have established that Azazello did transform himself into a sparrow, let us take a closer look at this important bird. So far, we have learned that the sparrow heads the order of the sparrow-like, Passeriformes, giving its name to the whole order of the otherwise very dissimilar birds. Its Russian name vorobei is definitively derived from the two Russian words: “vora bei!”, which mean “beat up the thief.” There is no doubt about it that Azazello is the all thieves’ thief. Koroviev says that Azazello can penetrate any closed object without exception. Russian folklore associates sparrow with fire. Princess Olga (X century) avenged the killing of her husband by the Drevlyane by burning down the whole city of theirs in the following curious manner. She called on the city to pay an unusual tribute to her by making her the gift of a large number of sparrows from the city. Upon receiving this tribute, she next tied clumps of tarred fiber  to each bird by a string, set the oakum on fire, and let the birds out to fly back home. Soon thereafter, the city lay in ashes.

Fire is another favorite of Azazello. For him, everything started with fire, and everything will end in fire. In the Christian tradition, Azazello [Azazel] will be thrown into the everlasting fire at the Last Judgment.

On a lighter note, in a poetic fragment from Sappho, sparrows are the birds harnessed to Aphrodite’s carriage. And as we know, Azazello is distinguished in Aphrodite’s business of love as well. Bulgakov characteristically shows him “goat-legged” at the Bacchanalia, and as we know, The Satyr Pan is a goat-god.

Having established that the sparrow in Master and Margarita is actually none other than Azazello, we now return to the very beginning of the novel, namely to Chapter 3, where Azazello makes his first appearance in the guise of a sparrow:

“…Here the madman [Woland] burst into such a violent laughter that out of the linden tree over the seated company flew a sparrow…”

In this case the sparrow is a harbinger and observer of the impending death of Berlioz to whom Woland has just made a prediction that a young Russian woman, a Komsomol member (apparently in good standing), is presently going to cut off his head. In all matters of death, Azazello is the frontline representative, and very frequently the executor, of Woland’s “predictions.” So, here he is, to make sure that all is done “comme il faut.” To understand his role on the Patriarch Ponds, we may now fast-forward to the scene of the poisoning of Master and Margarita near the end of the novel:

“When the poisoned became still, Azazello went into action…”

(The reader remembers, of course, that “Woland summoned Azazello, and ordered him to ‘fly and arrange everything…’ Always precise and meticulous, Azazello wanted to check whether everything was executed the way it ought to be… Azazello saw how a gloomy woman… came out of her bedroom, suddenly became pale, clutched at her heart, and… fell to the floor…”

Just as in this scene at Margarita’s mansion, Azazello’s mission on the Patriarch Ponds was to be personally present during the death, or rather the execution of Berlioz, so that “everything would be done the way it ought to be,” or, as the Russians say “like it’s been oiled.”

Notice that during the execution of Berlioz, Woland remains seated on the bench. That’s what he needs his retinue for: to delegate. On his own, Woland does practically nothing of the nitty-gritty throughout the novel, but of course he likes to talk.

Bulgakov uses the example of Pontius Pilate to elucidate what happens in such situations. In a grotesquely roundabout way, Pilate “orders” his chief of secret service to kill Judas. After the two assassins have murdered Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane, here is what happens next:

“…Then a third figure appeared on the road. This third one was wearing a hooded cloak… The killers ran off the road to the sides [as ordered]… The third one squatted by the dead body and looked into its face… A few seconds later no one alive was left on the road.”

The man was Aphranias, the chief of secret service to the Procurator Pontius Pilate. As we find it in Bulgakov, someone always has to be on the scene of the murder, especially if that is an important event ordered by the higher-ups, and one cannot allow anything going not according to the plan of how it is supposed to be. Woland has this function performed by Azazello.