Chapter summary
Near midnight, Margarita is bathed in blood and then in rose oil by Hella and Natasha, and receives a queen's crown with diamonds. Guided by Korovyov, she passes through halls with orchestras and jazz to a monumental staircase, where she will stand at the top, on her feet, to receive the guests of Satan's ball for three hours: hanged men, poisoners, murderers and traitors of European history, all dead, who climb in a line up an endless staircase from the fireplace in the hall. Each one kisses her knee; she keeps her right leg resting on a cushion and has beside her a low amethyst column on which to rest her hand when the pain tightens, and she greets them all, which costs her pain in her hand and leg. Among them are the forger Jacques and Signora Tofana, who sold poison to women tired of their husbands. Also present is Frida, condemned for thirty years to find every night, on her own bedside table, the handkerchief (see Frida's handkerchief) with which she smothered her newborn son, and which, however much she burns or drowns it, comes back; she only repeats her own name, like someone asking for help. Margarita tells her to drink until she is drunk and not to think of anything.
When the line of guests ends, Margarita flies over the halls, where monkeys play jazz and Behemoth fills a swimming pool with cognac, and she is taken to the main hall. There Woland receives Berlioz's head on a plate, wakes it for a moment, and reminds it that everything he had foretold at Patriarch's came true and that, although the guests here profess another theory, there is the one in which each receives according to his belief: Berlioz, who said death is the end of everything, goes to nonexistence. The head turns into a skull and then into a goblet. A new guest then arrives, Baron Meigel, who served on the Events Commission as the presenter of the city's wonders to foreigners, and of whom, according to Woland, there is a rumor that he is a spy. A moment before the shot, Abaddon takes off his glasses for a second in front of the baron, and Azazello kills him on the spot. The blood fills the goblet that Woland offers Margarita, and the ball ends.
Analysis
Margarita plays the role of hostess for three hours, receiving the dead who climb the staircase. The text singles out one gesture of hers among the guests: with Frida, instead of merely greeting her, she answers with a piece of advice, and it is this sentence that she later invokes before Woland. At the close, Meigel, whom Woland presents as a spy, is killed by Azazello, and his blood fills the goblet she receives.
Before she reaches the top of the staircase, Korovyov tells Margarita the story: the housekeeper who for thirty years has put the handkerchief on her bedside table, and the handkerchief that nothing makes vanish.
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