Chapter summary
Maximilian Andreyevich Poplavsky, uncle of Berlioz and a resident of Kiev, travels to Moscow after receiving a confused telegram, signed by Berlioz: "I was run over by the tram at Patriarch's. The funeral is Friday at three o'clock. Come." He concludes that there has been a transmission error and that his nephew has died. The narrator leaves no doubt about the real reason for the trip: the uncle wants to inherit Berlioz's apartment in Moscow, because he never managed to exchange his own in Kiev for a smaller one in the capital. At the building administration, a frightened member of the staff says that the chairman is out and that the secretary is ill, and Poplavsky heads to Apartment 50. There he is received by Korovyov, who stages a theatrical weeping for Berlioz's death, and then by a huge cat who says he sent the telegram, demands the uncle's passport, declares that his presence at the funeral is suspended and calls Azazello. Azazello orders him to return to Kiev at once, to play dead and not to dream of an apartment in Moscow. He throws the uncle's suitcase and belongings down the stairs and beats him with the roast chicken he was carrying in his bag. Poplavsky flees without even considering going to the police, aware of how his own complaint would sound.
Shortly afterward, Andrei Fokich Sokov, manager of the theater's snack bar, goes to the same apartment to complain about the money that, after the magic session, had turned into shredded paper in the till. The door is opened by a naked young woman in a lace apron, whom Korovyov calls Hella, and the manager is received by Woland, lying on a sofa. Woland returns the subject with a question: "How much do you have in savings?" Before Sokov can answer, a voice from the next room states the exact sum he keeps in savings accounts and under the floorboards of his house, and the same voice announces that he will die in nine months, in February of the following year, of liver cancer. Woland proposes that he spend the money on a party before dying. Sokov leaves with the money returned, but pursued by one last humiliation: his hat turns into a little black kitten clinging to his bald head. Already outside the building, terrified by the prediction, he runs to a doctor, Dr. Kuzmin, who finds no trace of cancer and tells him to take care of his nerves.
Analysis
Poplavsky and Sokov go to Apartment 50 for interests that the narrator makes clear: the uncle wants the apartment, the manager wants the money that turned into paper. Each one arrives with a request and leaves with what the request itself reveals. The troupe does not ask what they want; it responds to what each one holds most dear, the house and the savings, and that is where the action falls.
The motive was one thing only, the apartment. The apartment in Moscow!
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