Meeting at the Patriarch's Ponds

Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz and Ivan Homeless discuss Berlioz's commissioned anti-religious poem at the Patriarch's Ponds. Berlioz argues that Jesus never existed, citing ancient historians. A mysterious foreigner, later identified as Woland, joins them and contradicts their atheism, claiming Jesus did exist. Woland predicts Berlioz's death by decapitation at the hands of a Russian woman, Annushka, and mentions that Annushka has already spilled sunflower oil, which will cause the meeting not to take place. This encounter sets the stage for the novel's supernatural and philosophical conflicts.