New Characters
Ivan: A poet writing under the pseudonym “Homeless.”

Berlioz: The chairman of the Massolit literary association and the editor of a literary journal.

Professor (also known as “Consultant,” and “Woland”): A foreigner recently arrived in Moscow later to be revealed as the devil.

Annushka: The woman who spills sunflower oil and causes Berlioz’s death.

Citizen with Checkered Jacket (also known as “Koroviev,” “the choirmaster,” and “Fagott”): Initially a phantasm seen by Berlioz, he is later to be revealed as Woland’s accomplice.

Summary
Berlioz and Ivan appear at Moscow’s Patriarch’s Ponds as the spring sun sets and sit down at a food stand along the oddly desolate walk running parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street. After they drink apricot soda, Berlioz feels a spasm in his heart and perceives “a blunt needle lodged in it,” and is gripped with a worrisome fear. A tall, transparent citizen dressed in a short checkered jacket appears briefly, striking further terror in him. But Berlioz calms down to talk with Ivan about the poem about Jesus that Ivan has written for the next issue of a journal edited by Berlioz. Berlioz points out that Ivan, who has adopted the literary pseudonym “Homeless,” has concentrated on portraying Jesus as a bad person, whereas he should have focused on portraying the fabricated existence of Jesus as a myth.

As Berlioz starts telling Ivan about other mythological gods with the same characteristics as Jesus, a man who is about 40 years old, of foreign appearance and wearing grey shoes and a matching grey suit, appears on the walk. He is carrying a stick with a black knob shaped like a poodle’s head, and his teeth are covered by “platinum crowns on the left side and gold on the right.” He joins Ivan and Berlioz’s conversation, speaking Russian with a clean foreign accent. As he queries them about religion, both men confirm they are atheists. The foreign man asks more questions, mentioning the inability of man to predict the future and, as examples of this inability, points out to Berlioz that sometimes men get cancer or slip under tram-cars.

Berlioz becomes suspicious of the foreigner, who predicts that Berlioz will be decapitated. He also predicts that Berlioz will not make the evening meeting at Massolit, a Soviet literary association, because Annushka has already bought and spilled the sunflower oil. Berlioz, who is the chairman of Massolit, asks the man, who has a card identifying himself as a professor, who he is. The professor says he is a German and is in Moscow to serve as a consultant. He claims to be using his skills as a polyglot who specializes in black magic to sort through some manuscripts of Gerbert of Aurillace, a tenth-century necromancer. This professor insists that Jesus did exist, and he begins telling a story about Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

Analysis
The epigram from Goethe’s play, Faust, that opens Master and Margarita suggests that Goethe provided at least some of Bulgakov’s inspiration, and indeed, some parallels with that play will appear in this novel. Bulgakov’s novel was written in the 1930s, a time of great repression and hardship in the Soviet Union under Stalin. The repressive and controlling atmosphere of that Communist state, with its extensive use of secret police, informers, spies, public denunciations, and threats to subdue citizens and coerce them into obeying the government, is evident throughout much of the novel. The novel itself, opening with the two odd and somewhat surreal elements of the vacant walkway and the stand selling only apricot soda, begins on a skewed note. Berlioz’s pang of fear and...