Chapter summary
Already in Woland's bedroom, Margarita dines with the retinue after the ball and drinks pure alcohol, which the cat Behemoth serves her. She asks Azazello whether he was the one who killed the baron and from what distance he shoots, and Azazello answers that it is one thing to break the window of the critic Latunsky and another to hit his heart. Woland, who did not know about Latunsky, hears from Margarita that she destroyed his apartment because he ruined the career of a master. Behemoth and Azazello offer to deal with the critic, and Margarita refuses: "There's no need for that, I beg you." To show his aim, Azazello shoots over his shoulder, backward, at a card marked by her and hidden under the pillow.
Margarita, who feels cheated because no one has offered her anything, gets up to leave, and Woland makes her sit down again and puts her to the test: the rule is never to ask for anything, especially from the powerful, who offer on their own initiative. Only then does he tell her to ask for something. She almost asks for the Master, but remembers Frida and asks instead that they stop handing Frida the handkerchief with which she smothered the baby, because it gave her hope at the ball. Woland says he does not do what falls to another department, but lets her do it herself, and Margarita calls Frida and tells her she is forgiven. Woland declares that this does not count, because he did nothing, and asks what she wishes for herself. Then Margarita asks for the Master, and he appears at the window, in a dressing gown and cap, frightened and very ill. On learning that his novel is about Pontius Pilate, Woland asks to see the manuscript, and the Master says he burned it. Woland replies that he cannot believe it, because manuscripts do not burn, and Behemoth pulls the novel, intact, from under his own body.
Azazello makes Aloisy Mogarych fall from the ceiling, the neighbor who denounced the Master to the police in order to get his apartment after reading Latunsky's article; Margarita scratches him, and Azazello throws him out the window. Korovyov burns the Master's hospital record and erases Mogarych's name from the building's register, repeating that whoever has no papers does not exist, and he gives the Master back his papers and gives Margarita the scorched notebook (see the manuscript), the dried rose, the photograph and the savings passbook with the ten thousand rubles she had deposited. Natasha asks to remain a witch and Margarita succeeds in getting it for her. The neighbor Nikolai Ivanovich demands a statement of where he spent the night, for the police and for his wife, and Hella types it up under the dictation of the cat, who writes "pig" in parentheses and signs "Behemoth." Varenukha, who has become a vampire, begs to be released and is sent home. Woland gives Margarita, as a keepsake, a gold horseshoe set with diamonds, which she loses on the stairs; the neighbor Annushka, the same one who spilled the sunflower oil, finds it and hides it, until Azazello recovers it and pays her two hundred rubles. Margarita and the Master then return by car to the basement on the Arbat where he had written the novel.
Analysis
Margarita asks first for Frida and only then for the Master, because the hope she gave Frida at the ball weighs on her, and she fulfills it before thinking of herself. Before that, she refuses to let Behemoth and Azazello go after Latunsky, when Azazello gets up to smash his face. When Woland asks what she wants for herself, she asks for the Master, and he appears, brought from the asylum, and Woland makes reappear the manuscript he claimed to have burned and promises to try to return the basement on the Arbat as well.
The mark Margarita had made had been pierced by the bullet.
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