Voice.
“And then as if she
hears
A magic voice sound over
her...
…And this voice, wondrous and
new,
She imagined still sounding.”
M. Yu. Lermontov. Demon.
And so, right there on an
ordinary Moscow street a devilish theater is being played out. The ticket price
is a human soul, in this case the soul of the baker Vasili Rogov. A new
dramatis persona is about to enter the stage, namely, Voice. A strange name, indeed, as in Russian common parlance the
word “voice” is directly linked with Vox Populi, voice of the people, voice of
the nation. Bulgakov writes:
“…And Cockroach
now heard an extraordinary voice. The Voice
sounded like kin, and it made
Cockroach feel at home. The Voice
was not just a common voice. It spoke in rhyme.---
I have a ton of money in my van:
My uncle brought it from Japan.
Myself, I ain’t fooling, though,
I’m just spreading ‘round the dough.
Voice was inviting
passersby to a game of numbers, using his rather primitive contraption: a round
wooden eight-faceted top on a board, and that board placed on an ordinary
crate, and that board had eight numbers on it. The players could bet on any of
these numbers.
Anyone can win without a bicker
To buy your wife fine silk,
To buy your children milk,
To buy yourself some liquor.
Cockroach was
already by the crate. A sweaty young person in a cap [Kepka, that is, our old acquaintance
Cap!] kept betting three kopecks each time on number 8, and was winning --- what a miracle --- each time! But Voice did
not seem to care, never even twitched --- he just kept paying out…
But of course one
cannot win all the time, can he?. Having finally lost his last bet, Cap shipped
out, leaving his space to the peppy from beer, small and brown Cockroach to
fill. After playing this game for a quarter of an hour, Cockroach could no
longer see anything around him, only some dough patties without eyes, instead
of faces…”
Here is an awfully
interesting place. I trust the reader remembers a similar one from Master and Margarita. How can anyone
ever forget it?---
“Neither Gaius
Caesar Caligula, nor Messalina got Margarita interested anymore, just as none
of the kings [even the French kings?!], dukes, chevaliers… the faces got glued
together into one huge patty of dough, and only one face got painfully stuck in
her memory, framed by a truly fiery beard,--- the face of Malyuta Skuratov.”
(This is how Bulgakov depicts
Margarita’s impression of Satan’s Ball.)
And so, Cockroach could see
nothing around him, “but the face of Voice he could
discern very well. That face, as if smeared with sunflower oil, shaven, with a
pimple on the jaw,--- had agate freezing-cold eyes. Voice was cool, like ice.”
The reader may notice that
there is really no description of Voice’s face, just like there is no description
of Margarita’s face, the same going for other characters.
***
Like with many other things, Bulgakov
makes dual use of sunflower oil in his works. There is a Russian expression “like it’s been oiled.”
And indeed, everything goes
on like it’s been oiled in the
devilish theater playing for a human soul.
We may remember Woland in the
scene with Berlioz, in Master and
Margarita:
“…Annushka has already bought the sunflower
oil, and not just bought it, but spilled it as well…”
In this line, Bulgakov
attaches a macabre meaning to sunflower oil. It signifies death. From this we
can go on to conclude that once we are told that the faces of Voice and Cap
[observe that Bulgakov denies them human names!] have been smeared with
sunflower oil, these must be “dead souls,”
working for the devil, that is, for the “man” who grew from under the ground.
Bulgakov exposes Voice as a supernatural being even to a greater extent than he does it with Cap. He compares the latter to a cat:
“Hey, get away from me, pest!” suddenly
sniffed [Cap] in a cat’s voice, and,
just like a cat, he was walking away ever so lightly, lightly.
But in Voice’s case Bulgakov
goes farther.----
“Then Cockroach
slapped down a five-note, and everything started swimming along Novinsky
Boulevard, when Voice’s claw, looking like a raven’s claw, swept the fiver off
the board…”
Indeed, both the cat and the
raven’s claw here underscore the supernatural essence of these two characters.
Here is another
characteristic of Voice:
“…Voice informing
everybody, loudly and distinctly, ‘The
farther into the game, the merrier it becomes.’”
This phrase reminds me of the
following passage in Master and
Margarita:
“Messire, you just need to order it!, Koroviev
responded from someplace, but not in his customary rattling voice, but very
clearly and sonorously.”
…Thus, we have loudly and distinctly in Cockroach, and clearly and sonorously
in Master and Margarita. Even the
nickname itself, Voice, gives us an indication that this character is Pushkin.
Pushkin’s voice is a kindred voice to
all Russians, because he is the creator of the great Russian language. The
works of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin make every Russian feel at home… And also “agate eyes” instantly
remind us of Pushkin…
Here once again Bulgakov
forks out, on the one hand, giving us a hint, with the “agate eyes,” that this
is Pushkin, and on the other hand, pointing to Pushkin’s remarkable version of
the Don Juan legend, his short play The
Stone Guest.
Bulgakov’s attachment to
splitting will be discussed in my Bulgakov
chapter, segments Triangle and Two Bears. This opens a sea of
opportunity to the researcher and I am offering a few currents from that sea to
the reader in my next segment, to be posted tomorrow. But meanwhile, the reader
may muse over the following intriguing questions:
1. Why is Bulgakov giving “agate eyes” to Voice?
2. How do these “agate eyes” relate to Pushkin?
3.
Where is the
connection between the “agate eyes” and Pushkin’s play The Stone Guest?
4.
How does The Stone Guest itself correlate with
Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita?
5.
How does Berlioz
fit into this picture, and also, where is Berlioz’s connection with the
sub-novel Pontius Pilate in Master and Margarita?
6.
Which is Bulgakov’s
very first work which uses Pushkin’s The
Stone Guest?
7.
And finally, and
most pertinently to the subject of this chapter, what is the connection to
Bulgakov’s Cockroach?
To
be continued tomorrow…
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