Chapter summary
Stepan Likhodeyev, director of the Variety Theater, wakes with a deep hangover in Apartment 50, which he shares with Berlioz and which already had a reputation for being sinister: two years earlier the owner and the tenants who lived there had disappeared one by one, leaving no trace. Stepan barely remembers the previous evening and sees sitting beside the bed a stranger in a black beret with a foreign accent, who pours him vodka and snacks and claims to have arranged to meet him at ten in the morning. The visitor introduces himself as Woland, a master of black magic, and says that he and Stepan signed a contract the day before for seven performances at the Variety Theater. The contract bears Stepan's signature and the authorization of the financial director, Rimsky, to advance ten thousand rubles. Stepan still remembers nothing, but he hides the lapse, discovers a wax seal on the door of Berlioz's office that he cannot explain, and telephones Rimsky, who confirms that the magician's posters are about to be ready.
When he returns to the room, Stepan sees that Woland is no longer alone: with him are a tall man in checked clothing and a cracked pince-nez, and a huge black cat, which drinks vodka and spears a mushroom with a fork. From the sideboard mirror there also emerges a redhead with protruding canines and a bowler hat, Azazello. The three accuse Stepan of drinking, of having affairs with women and of using the official car for private matters, and Woland says the retinue needs room and that Stepan is superfluous in the apartment. Azazello asks permission to expel him from Moscow. Stepan faints and wakes sitting at the end of a jetty, beside the sea; to a man smoking there he asks, kneeling, what city this is, and hears in reply: "Yalta, come now..."
Analysis
Stepan tries to explain everything by the hangover, the only explanation his Moscow life offers him, and at every step the room contradicts him: the contract signed in his own hand, the money already released, the mirror with the pince-nez and the cat. The retinue accuses him, decrees that he is superfluous in the apartment, and Azazello asks permission to expel him from Moscow. The faint closes the scene, and Stepan wakes in Yalta, more than a thousand kilometers from Moscow, a place the hangover cannot explain.
Master of black magic, Woland
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