It's time! It's time!

Chapter summary

The Master and Margarita wake at sunset on Saturday in the basement on Arbat, he still incredulous, she convinced they had been with Woland. The Master, who calls himself a sick and wretched man, asks whether she is really convinced they were with Satan and asks her to go home. Margarita, weeping, says she will go, but calls him cruel, and he withdraws the request and says that, if it is all a mental illness, they will live it together. A neighbor in square-toed boots appears at the window looking for Aloisy, and Margarita replies that he was arrested the day before. Azazello arrives through the window, drinks cognac with them, conveys Woland's invitation to a ride, and hands over a Falernian wine, which he says is the wine the procurator of Judea drank. The three toast Woland, and the Master, feeling his breath stop, can only say "Poisoner..." before falling. Margarita collapses too.

Azazello revives them at once. To the Master's "we are dead," he replies that whoever reasons is not dead, and that living does not require staying in that basement in hospital pajamas. Margarita asks him to take the novel, and the Master replies that he knows it by heart. Azazello sets fire to the basement, the Master lights a book on the burning tablecloth ("Burn, burn, past life!"), and the three mount the black horses in the courtyard, while the builder's cook shouts "Fire!". They fly over Moscow and stop at Stravinsky's clinic, where the Master says farewell to Ivan, Ivanushka of the clinic, in room 117, and tells him he will no longer write about the novel's hero, because he will be busy with other things. Margarita emerges from the wall and kisses the forehead of Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny. The Master says "Farewell, my disciple" and vanishes, and the nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna confesses to Ivan that the neighbor in room 118 died at that very moment.