Diaboliada
Continues.
“—And
I really look like a hallucination. Pay attention to my profile in
moonlight.---
The cat pushed himself into the lunar pillar…”
M. A. Bulgakov. Master and Margarita.
If Korotkov’s first chase of the “shaven Kalsoner” can
be called a mind game (it is the only way to explain the fact that “the motorcycle was for some reason delayed”),
and the second chase a hallucination (the “bearded Kalsoner” is transformed in
front of Korotkov’s eyes into a “black
cat with phosphorous eyes”), then what follows next cannot be characterized
other than psychological warfare.
But let us first dwell on mind games and
hallucinations. This is too delicious to pass on. Incidentally, Korotkov is
only afraid of the “shaven Kalsoner” with his “cast iron,” “copper” voice,
whereas he is not afraid of the “bearded Kalsoner” with his “tenor voice.” The
only way I can explain it is by the evolution of Kalsoner himself, after the
Revolution. Bulgakov provides the explanation using the biography of A. S. Rokk
(see my Rokk subchapter of the Nature chapter, posted as
##LXXVIII-LXXIX) in the next novella Fateful
Eggs, where to, the image of Kalsoner travels under a different name.
Bulgakov
gives out a few clues:
1.
The egg-shaped
head of Kalsoner.
2.
While giving a
detailed description of Kalsoner’s appearance, Bulgakov gives little information
about the appearance of A. S. Rokk in Fateful
Eggs, except to note his “little eyes,” “short legs with flat feet,”
compensating such paucity by a detailed biography. According to that biography,
we are dealing with a mere snitch of the Tsarist Okhrana being transformed into
a powerful commissar, packing a Mauser which he never parts with even in 1928.
This can be the only explanation of Korotkov’s fear of the “shaven Kalsoner”
only, and not of his “bearded” twin.
In
what concerns the transformation of “the bearded Kalsoner” into a “black cat
with phosphorous eyes,” Bulgakov treats it very interestingly, by first showing
the reader Korotkov’s odd cat-like behavior.---
“[Korotkov] threw himself at the door. It shut hard behind him, and
Korotkov found himself in a closed semi-dark space with no way out. Throwing
himself at the walls and scratching [sic!], like one buried under the rubble
in a mine…”
Using
the words “like one buried under the
rubble in a mine” only as a distraction ploy, Bulgakov first describes
Korotkov’s cat-like behavior, and only thereafter he gives us Kalsoner’s
transformation into a cat. The escape of the black cat in Diaboliada (“turning into a black cat, he
flew back, squeezed himself into a ball, and having jumped up onto the
windowsill, he disappeared in the broken glass and cobwebs…”) travels to
Master and Margarita, where Begemot,
after his duel with the law enforcement, behaves in essentially the same
manner:
“The cat turned himself into a tight spring, meowed, jumped from
the mirror to the windowsill, and disappeared through the window which he
broke.”
Observe
the “frames in broken windows,” and compare them with the “broken glass and cobwebs”
in the previous passage. And also, Kot Begemot in Master and Margarita transforms several times into a man, whereas
in Diaboliada a man turns into a cat.
(More on cats will be found in my chapter on Bulgakov.)
The
“semi-dark space” in which Korotkov finds himself also travels into Master and Margarita:
“Korotkov threw himself at the door. It shut hard behind him, and
Korotkov found himself in a closed semi-dark space with no way out… Eventually
he fell upon a white spot which let him out onto some stairway… He heard steps
approaching his way from below… another moment --- and a glistening cap showed
up… and a long beard…”
Now,
in Master and Margarita this is what
Bulgakov writes:
“The first thing that struck Margarita was the darkness of the
place where she got to. It was dark like in a dungeon, so that she grasped at
Azazello’s cloak… But then far and above a little light started flickering.
They began their ascent up some steps… Margarita saw the face of a man… It was
Koroviev, alias Fagot…”
We
cannot fail to notice certain similarities in both these scenes. And if at the
sound of steps “gloomy anxiety squeezed Korotkov’s
heart,” and it became clear right away that nothing good was waiting for
him on that stairway, then concerning the man descending toward Margarita Bulgakov
writes unequivocally: “Those who already had the misfortune
these days to get in his way, would obviously recognize him. It was Koroviev,
alias Fagot.”
Both
Korotkov and Margarita find themselves in the dark (in Korotkov’s case it is a mine, whereas in Margarita’s case it is
a dungeon), and while Korotkov is
being helped by a “white spot,” Margarita is met by a flickering “little
light.”
Note
how everything is changing and moving around. The description of Kalsoner as “this stranger was short in height, [but this] disadvantage
was compensated by the extreme broadness of his shoulders; the square body was
sitting on crooked legs,” reminds us of the first appearance of Azazello
in Master and Margarita: “right out of the mirror of the console [sic!] came a short
but exceptionally broad-shouldered [man]…” I was writing about
Bulgakov’s fascination with mirrors in my chapter on Nature. (See my posted segments LXXII and LXXIII.) As for my own fascination
with Bulgakov being the only writer who never parts with his characters but
allows them to travel from work to work (omnia
mea mecum porto), growing around him a veritable crowd of old acquaintances,
I have written already on many occasions.
The
realization that he is dealing with cats (“Now it’s
all clear… aha, I get it. That’s what it is! Cats! I understand it. Cats…” He
started laughing louder and louder...) for some reason, instead of alarming
Korotkov, which should have been a normal human reaction, seems to produce a
calming effect on him. No, he is not losing his mind. The reason for his
strange behavior will be explained later in this chapter. Anyway, he starts
reasoning quite rationally and decides not to pursue the two Kalsoners anymore,
but to get his stolen documents replaced, and then to get himself another job.
Here yet again we see vintage Bulgakov. The point is that Korotkov becomes
rational having drunk three bottles of church wine left to him by his neighbor,
who received forty-eight bottles of this wine instead of her salary at her
place of work.
Bulgakov
shows the effect of the church wine on Korotkov exceptionally interestingly. If
the first time when he first understood that Kalsoner was “double” he was
overwhelmed by fear, and all in tears, he drank half a tea-glass of the church
wine in one gulp, after which “the sweet liquid had
its effect in five minutes,--- his left temple suffered an excruciating pain…”
Well,
“having drunk three bottles of wine, in order
to forget everything and relax, his whole head was now aching: the right and
the left temples, the back of his head, and even his eyelids. A slight
dizziness was rising from the bottom of his stomach and going inside him in
waves, so that Comrade Korotkov vomited twice into a pan.” So, how can a
man think rationally in such a condition? Very simple. The wine drunk in such a
quantity “cleansed” our hero of “sulphur.” His headache notwithstanding, his
mental symptom was alleviated by passing into a physical symptom.
Even
the great Dr. Hahnemann, MD, father of homoeopathy, wrote that the dosage of a
remedy must correspond to the person’s constitution. A certain robust
washerwoman got so sick that she could not work anymore. Instead of giving her
a homoeopathic dose of the remedy in attenuations, Dr. Hahnemann “gave her one of the strongest homoeopathic doses, a full
drop of the undiluted juice of the ***root, to be taken immediately, and bade
her come again in forty-eight hours… Within that time the woman would assuredly
be cured.” But she did not come back, thus later explaining her failure
to show up: “The very next day I was quite well… For
three weeks my illness had prevented me from earning anything. The likes of us
have no time to leave our work.”
The
celebrated English homoeopath J. H. Clarke, MD, has another story about the
great British orientalist Edward Henry Palmer, who was told by doctors, when he
was seized with pulmonary disease, that he had only a few months to live. On
advice of a herbalist, he took a single large dose of a certain tincture
and… was proclaimed dead by the doctor who was sent for, since the patient
seemed to have no pulse. This is what Palmer actually experienced (“I felt myself dying”):
1)
“A
violent attack of vomiting”;
2)
“A
cold chill mounting up from feet to hands, which he could no longer move, to
heart, which ceased to beat, to throat, which ceased to breathe…
He recovered suddenly. New strength came to him. The
consumption was arrested and was no trouble for the rest of his life.”
It
is necessary to take some drugs in doses sufficient to cause pathogenic
symptoms to rouse the defenses of the organism.
And
so, with his unique sense of humor, Bulgakov shows how “church wine” cleanses
the poor hero from the effects of the “devil’s” sulphur. The aggravation of
Korotkov’s physical symptoms improves his mental state. A case would be
declared incurable if that happens the other way round (that is, when the
physical symptoms subside, to the detriment of the mental state of the
patient).
Korotkov’s
first experiment with church wine evokes a parallel situation in Master and Margarita:
In
Diaboliada:
“In one gulp, he [Korotkov] drank half a tea-glass of the church
wine… The sweet liquid had its effect in five minutes,--- his left temple
suffered an excruciating pain…”
Now,
in Master and Margarita:
“Then suddenly, as if a needle were pulled out of [Margarita’s]
brain, the pain in the temple subsided, that bothered her all evening since
that meeting [with Azazello] in the Alexandrovsky Garden.”
And
another from Master and Margarita:
“…And only one thing was giving an indication of yesterday’s
adventures: both of them [Margarita and Master] had a slight dull pain in the
left temple…”
That
is, Bulgakov associates the pain in the left temple with the effect of
communicating with the demonic force.
To
be continued tomorrow…
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