Nikolaevna! ... He propositioned me,’ Natasha began jabbing her finger into the neck of the abashedly huffing hog, ‘propositioned me! What was it you called me, eh?’ she shouted, leaning towards the hog’s ear.
‘Goddess!’ howled the hog, ‘I can’t fly so fast! I may lose important papers, Natalya Prokofyevna, I protest!’
‘Ah, devil take you and your papers!’ Natasha shouted with a brazen guffaw.
‘Please, Natalya Prokofyevna, someone may hear us!’ the hog yelled imploringly.
Flying beside Margarita, Natasha laughingly told her what happened in the house after Margarita Nikolaevna flew off over the gates.
Natasha confessed that, without ever touching any of the things she had been given, she threw off her clothes, rushed to the cream, and immediately smeared herself with it. The same thing happened with her as with her mistress. Just as Natasha, laughing with joy, was revelling in her own magical beauty before the mirror, the door opened and Nikolai Ivanovich appeared before her. He was agitated; in his hands he was holding Margarita Nikolaevna’s shift and his own hat and briefcase. Seeing Natasha, Nikolai Ivanovich was dumbfounded. Getting some control of himself, all red as a lobster, he announced that he felt it was his duty to pick up the little shift and bring it personally ...
‘The things he said, the blackguard!’ Natasha shrieked and laughed. ‘The things he said, the things he tempted me to do! The money he promised! He said Klavdia Petrovna would never learn of it. Well, speak, am I lying?’ Natasha shouted to the hog, who only turned his muzzle away abashedly.
In the bedroom, carried away with her own mischief, Natasha dabbed some cream on Nikolai Ivanovich and was herself struck dumb with astonishment. The respectable ground-floor tenant’s face shrank to a pig’s snout, and his hands and feet acquired little hoofs. Looking at himself in the mirror, Nikolai Ivanovich let out a wild and desperate howl, but it was already too late. A few seconds later, saddled up, he was flying out of Moscow to devil knows where, sobbing with grief.
‘I demand that my normal appearance be restored to me!’ the hog suddenly grunted hoarsely, somewhere between frenzy and supplication. ‘I’m not going to fly to any illegal gathering! Margarita Nikolaevna, it’s your duty to call your housekeeper to order!’
‘Ah, so now I’m a housekeeper? A housekeeper?’ Natasha cried, pinching the hog’s ear. ‘And I used to be a goddess? What was it you called me?’
‘Venus!’ the hog replied tearfully, as he flew over a brook bubbling between stones, his little hoofs brushing the hazel bushes.
‘Venus! Venus!’ Natasha cried triumphantly, one hand on her hip, the other stretched out towards the moon. ‘Margarita! Queen! Intercede for me so that I can stay a witch! They’ll do anything for you, you have been granted power!’
And Margarita responded:
‘All right, I promise.’
‘Thank you!’ exclaimed Natasha, and suddenly she cried out sharply and somehow longingly: ‘Hey! Hey! Faster! Faster! Come on, speed it up!’
She dug her heels into the hog’s sides, which had grown thinner during this insane ride, and he tore on, so that the air ripped open again, and a moment later Natasha could be seen only as a black speck in the distance, then vanished completely, and the noise of her flight melted away.
Margarita flew as slowly as before through the deserted and unfamiliar place, over hills strewn with occasional boulders among huge, widely spaced pines. Margarita now flew not over the tops of the pines but between their trunks, silvered on one side by the moon. The light shadow of the flying woman glided over the ground ahead, the moon shining now on Margarita’s back.
Margarita sensed the proximity of water, and guessed that her goal was near. The pines parted and Margarita rode slowly through the air up to a chalk cliff. Beyond this cliff, down in the shadows, lay a river. Mist hung clinging to the bushes on the cliff, but the opposite bank was flat and low. On it, under a solitary group of spreading trees, the light of a bonfire flickered and some small figures could be seen moving about. It seemed to Margarita that some nagging, merry little tune was coming from there. Further off, as far as the eye could see, there was no sign of habitation or people on the silvered plain.
Margarita leaped off the cliff and quickly descended to the water. The water enticed her after her airy race. Casting the broom aside, she ran and threw herself head first into the water. Her light body pierced the water’s surface like an arrow, and the column of water thrown up almost reached the moon. The water turned out to be warm as in a bathhouse, and, emerging from the depths, Margarita swam her fill in the total solitude of night in this river.
There was no one near Margarita, but a little further away, behind the bushes, splashing and grunting could be heard — someone was also having a swim there.
Margarita ran out on to the bank. Her body was on fire after the swim. She felt no fatigue, and was joyfully capering about on the moist grass.
Suddenly she stopped dancing and pricked up her ears. The grunting came closer, and from behind the willow bushes some naked fat man emerged, with a black silk top hat pushed back on his head. His feet were covered with slimy mud, which made it seem that the swimmer was wearing black shoes. Judging by his huffing and hiccuping, he was properly drunk, as was confirmed, incidentally, by the fact that the river suddenly began to smell of cognac.
Seeing Margarita, the fat man peered at her and then shouted joyfully:
‘What’s this? Who is it I see? Claudine, it’s you, the ungrieving widow! You’re here, too?’ and he came at her with his greetings.
Margarita stepped back and replied with dignity:
‘Go to the devil! What sort of Claudine am I to you? Watch out who you’re talking to,’ and, after a moment’s reflection, she added to her words a long, unprintable oath. All this had a sobering effect on the light-minded fat man.
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed softly and gave a start, ‘magnanimously forgive me, bright Queen Margot! I mistook you for someone else. The cognac’s to blame, curse it!’ The fat man lowered himself to one knee, holding the top hat far
