Interesting passages and hidden meanings

The chapter introduces apartment No. 50 in Building No. 302-bis on Sadovaya Street, “the bad apartment.” Tenants have already vanished from it without a trace, and rumors are going around. Why this matters. Behind the mystery lies a real fear of the era: in the 1930s people really did vanish at night; they were arrested. The phrase about a man who went away and never came back while his belongings disappeared is a coded hint at arrests by the NKVD (the secret police). Woland merely takes over a place where evil was already at home in human form. Building No. 302-bis is a recognizable address: its prototype is thought to be the building at 10 Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, where Bulgakov himself lived. So the author writes fantasy into Moscow's real topography.

Stepa Likhodeyev, director of the Variety Theater, wakes with a terrible hangover and finds Woland in his apartment, presenting a contract for performances. Stepa remembers nothing. Notice: — Stepa is the image of a worthless time-server: he drinks, idles, and holds a post he does not deserve. His punishment is an instant “transfer” to Yalta by the power of Woland's retinue. — Azazello appears, red-haired, fanged, with a wall-eye: the demon enforcer who throws Stepa out of Moscow. — Woland presents himself as a performer, a “professor of black magic” come to give a show at the Variety. This sets up the central scene of the show (the next chapters). Why this matters. Woland's retinue does not punish everyone indiscriminately, but precisely the vulgar, the liars, and the time-servers. Likhodeyev is the first of Moscow's ordinary philistines to get what he deserves.

The whole retinue gathers in “the bad apartment”: beside Woland are Koroviev (Fagott), Azazello, and Behemoth the cat. They act like the owners, calmly making themselves at home in someone else's place. Notice the details: — The motif of the contract. Woland insistently refers to a signed contract for a tour. This is the Faustian motif of a deal, but turned inside out: here the contract is a pretext to enter the city legally and stage exposures. — Each member of the retinue is recognizable by his telltale features: Koroviev is the man in checks with a pince-nez, Azazello the short, red-haired, fanged one, Behemoth the enormous cat. Why this matters. The chapter assembles the full “team” of the forces of evil and moves the action toward Woland's public performance. From the mystery at Patriarch's Ponds we move to the devil's open invasion of Moscow's public life.