A story of two naughties: deep in the Coda, and near to the end of the Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece (1928-1940) The Master and Margarita, the two vagabonds Kiroviev and Behemoth, the former also being known as the Faggot, and the latter who is a dialectally hyper-active walking and talking large black cat, turn up at the ‘house of Grobodoev’s aunt’ in the city of Moscow. The elegant town house is home to all the leading literary and publishing stars of the Russian cultural firmament, who come to dine there at the exclusive restaurant located on the house’s veranda. The special and exclusive restaurant provides valuta, what passes in the Russia of the time for ‘real value’ (“valuta shops, valuta restaurants, valuta arrests, valuta tortures, valuta whores: just a few dimensions of that inexhaustable word” Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, 1937 – as quoted in John Gray’s, The Silence of Animals: on Progress and Other Myths, 2013).
Kiroviev and Behemoth (both alike ‘impish figures who always loved verbal swordthrusts’) attempt to enter the valuta restaurant, but a woman ‘citizeness’ who is in charge of the seating bars their way (‘a pale and bored citizeness in white socks and a white beret with a rib sat on a Viennes chair at the corner entrance to the veranda’):
‘You’re writers?’ the citizeness asked.
‘Unquestionably’, Kiroviev answered with dignity.
‘Your identification cards?’ the citizeness asked in turn.
‘My sweetie…’ Kiroviev began tenderly.
‘I’m no sweetie”, interrupted the citizeness.
‘More’s the pity’, Kiroviev said disappointedly.
However, with their unquenchable comic powers that constantly flourish in the shadows (‘shadows are cast by objects and people’, their commander Messire Woland later observes) the two naughties achieve easy access and sit themselves at a table. Only the restaurant manager, Archibald Archibaldov, an intense eyed pirate/saddhu type, spots the real demonic identities of Kiroviev and Behemoth (their chief Messire Wolland is in fact Satan) and hurries to bring them the best fare the restaurant has to offer recognising that the arrival of retribution upon this valuta restaurant is imminent. But to no avail the veranda is soon torched by the two naughties, only Archibalovich making his escape in time before the house and all its literary occupants are reduced to ash.
Ah, like Kiroviev and Behemoth, are we not also a tale of two naughties? And if only we could tell the difference between the powers of good and evil as clearly as Archibaldovich! But we are profoundly confused by our western ideas of progress and purpose (this is the main thrust of John Gray’s argument at any rate… whether he also quotes from Bulgakov I don’t know yet as I’ve only reached page 50). ‘Burn Suffering’ Messire Woland says after this incident at the house of Grobodiev’s aunt, expressing a wisdom in the spirit of evil whose presence is not to indifferently afflict humanity, or fight against good, but, when and wherever it arises, simply to consume itself.