Lesson 1. Interesting passages and hidden meanings

At night in the deserted Variety, the financial director Rimsky, shaken by the events of the show, is getting ready to leave. By chance he sees from the window that the ladies standing below are suddenly undressed: the spell has lifted. And then the missing Varenukha appears in his office. But Varenukha is now a vampire, a dead man serving as a scout: he casts no shadow, and after him the naked red-haired girl Hella, also a vampire, with deathly spots on her skin, floats in through the window. They close in on Rimsky to destroy him. This is a scene of true Gothic horror, built on the rules of folk tales about evil spirits: the dead come alive at night and hunt the living.

Rimsky is saved by a rooster's crow. Just as the undead are ready to pounce on him, far away the first morning rooster crows, and the vampires, writhing, are forced to fly out the window and vanish. Bulgakov draws on an ancient folk belief: at the first cockcrow evil spirits lose their power and must vanish before dawn. The rooster heralds the dawn, the light, the end of night's reign; hence the title “Glory to the rooster!” The motif echoes the novel's boundary between day and night: evil rules the night, and dawn sets its limit. Woland and his higher retinue do not fear the rooster (they are no common undead); its power reaches only lesser creatures such as vampires.

The horror he lived through takes its toll: in one night Rimsky goes gray, trembles, and flees in panic; he rushes to the station and leaves Moscow, beside himself with fear. Nothing remains of the once energetic financial director. Hair turning gray overnight is a traditional image of a shock that ages a person in an instant. Structurally, Rimsky is one more victim from “administrative” Moscow, punished not for a specific sin but tested by horror. The theme of fear echoes the novel about Pilate, where cowardice is called the worst of vices. Rimsky's flight grounds the lofty theme in everyday life: brushing against the otherworldly, an ordinary Soviet employee simply breaks.