Meeting at the Patriarch's Ponds

The Meeting at the Patriarch's Ponds is the inaugural event of The Master and Margarita, the moment when the ordinary world of Soviet Moscow is breached by the extraordinary. At the hour of a hot spring sunset, two writers—Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, the editor of a fat literary journal and chairman of the Massolit board, and the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, who writes under the pseudonym Homeless—sit on a bench by the pond. Their conversation about Jesus Christ, which Berlioz insists never existed as a person, is interrupted by a stranger who will prove to be Woland, Satan himself. This encounter does not merely begin the plot; it establishes the novel's central conflict between a materialist, atheist worldview and a reality that includes the supernatural, the divine, and the demonic. It is the first of several "chance encounters" that have eternal consequences, and it sets the pattern for how the novel's Moscow story and its Yershalaim story are interwoven: Woland's eyewitness account of Pontius Pilate and Yeshua Ha-Nozri becomes the second chapter, "Pontius Pilate," which is the first extended telling of the ancient narrative.

The Setting and the Dispute

The Patriarch's Ponds are described as eerily empty at an hour when the heat should have driven people to seek shade. The first oddity of the dreadful May evening is that not a single person is seen by the beer stand or along the walk. Berlioz, a short, plump, bald man in a grey summer suit and supernatural-sized black horn-rimmed glasses, and Homeless, a broad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair in a cowboy shirt and black sneakers, drink apricot soda that produces yellow foam and smells of a barber-shop. Their conversation, interrupted by hiccups, is about Jesus Christ. Berlioz has commissioned from Homeless a long anti-religious poem for his journal, but the editor is dissatisfied because Homeless has portrayed Jesus as "completely alive, the once-existing Jesus." Berlioz insists that the main point is not how Jesus was, good or bad, but that Jesus as a person never existed—all the stories about him are mere mythology. He cites ancient historians like Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus, who never mention Jesus, and claims that the passage in Tacitus's Annals about the execution of Jesus is a later spurious interpolation. He lectures Homeless on how every Eastern religion has an immaculate virgin giving birth to a god, and that the Christians created their Jesus in the same way, without inventing anything new. The poet listens, fixing his pert green eyes on Berlioz, learning about Osiris, Tammuz, Marduk, and the terrible god Vitzliputzli of the Aztecs.

The Arrival of the Stranger

Just as Berlioz is telling the poet how the Aztecs fashioned figurines of Vitzliputzli out of dough, the first man appears in the walk. The stranger is described in detail that contradicts the later, useless official reports: he is simply tall, not short or enormous; he has platinum crowns on the left side of his mouth and gold on the right; he wears an expensive grey suit, imported shoes of a matching colour, and a grey beret cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm he carries a stick with a black knob shaped like a poodle's head. He looks a little over forty, is clean-shaven, dark-haired, and has one black eye and one green eye, with dark eyebrows, one higher than the other. In short, a foreigner. He sits down on the next bench, two steps away, and listens to their conversation. When Berlioz mentions the birth of Jesus, the stranger approaches, politely takes off his beret, and asks to join them because the subject is so interesting. He makes a repellent impression on the poet, but Berlioz is interested. The stranger asks if they are atheists, and when Berlioz confirms it, he thanks him with all his heart for the important information. He then asks about the proofs of God's existence, and when Berlioz dismisses them, the stranger brings up Kant's proof, which leads Homeless to suggest sending Kant to Solovki for three years. The stranger reveals that he had breakfast with Kant, who has been dead for over a hundred years, and then poses the question: if there is no God, who governs human life and the whole order of things on earth? When Homeless answers that man governs himself, the stranger argues that man cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow, and gives the example of a man who suddenly gets lung cancer or slips and falls under a tram-car. He tells Berlioz that his head will be cut off by a Russian woman, a Komsomol girl, and that Annushka has already bought and spilled the sunflower oil, so the meeting at Massolit will not take place. He produces a visiting card, a passport, and an invitation to come to Moscow for a consultation, identifying himself as a specialist in black magic and a historian. He then whispers that Jesus did exist, and begins the story of Pontius Pilate: "In a white cloak with blood-red lining, with the shuffling gait of a cavalryman, early in the morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan..."

The Prophecy and the Death

After the stranger finishes his story, it is evening at the Patriarch's Ponds. The water in the pond has turned black, the full moon is visible high above, and the public has appeared on the other benches. Homeless is amazed that he did not notice the professor spinning a whole story. Berlioz, studying the foreigner's face attentively, says the story does not coincide with the Gospel stories. The professor responds that precisely nothing of what is written in the Gospels ever took place, which is exactly what Berlioz had been saying to Homeless. When Berlioz asks who can confirm the story, the professor says he was personally present at it all—on Pontius Pilate's balcony, in the garden when he talked with Kaifa, and on the platform, but secretly, incognito. Berlioz, now convinced the professor is a mad German, decides to run to the nearest public telephone to inform the foreigners' bureau. As he leaves, the professor calls after him, asking if he would like a telegram sent to his uncle in Kiev. At the exit to Bronnaya, Berlioz meets the same checkered citizen who had earlier formed himself out of the thick swelter, now fleshly, with a little moustache like chicken feathers, tiny eyes, and checkered trousers pulled up so high that his dirty white socks show. The checkered type directs him to the turnstile. Berlioz runs up to it, takes hold of it, and is just about to step across the rails when a tram-car comes racing along. He decides to retreat behind the stile, but his hand slips, his foot goes down the cobbled slope, and he is thrown on to the rails. The tram-car goes over him, and his severed head is thrown up the cobbled slope, bouncing along the cobblestones of the street. The meeting at Massolit does not take place.

Consequences and Significance

The Meeting at the Patriarch's Ponds is the catalyst for the entire Moscow plot. It establishes Woland as a figure of supernatural knowledge and power, who can predict the future and whose words are literally true. It also introduces the theme of the "unexpectedly mortal" nature of man, which is a direct challenge to the Soviet ideology of man as the master of his own destiny. The event is the first of the "chance encounters" that have eternal consequences, as described in the novel's introduction: Berlioz's meeting with Woland is a variation of the sense of dread that precedes a moment of parable cutting through the normality of this world. The meeting also marks the beginning of Ivan Homeless's transformation. He witnesses Berlioz's death, hears the word "Annushka" that confirms the professor's prophecy, and realizes that the mysterious consultant knew beforehand the exact picture of the terrible death. This realization drives him to chase Woland, leading to his own arrest and confinement in Stravinsky's psychiatric clinic, where he will meet the master and become his disciple. The meeting thus sets in motion the novel's central narrative arc: the collision of the mundane, atheistic Soviet world with the supernatural, and the journey of Ivan Homeless from a state poet to a man who, each year with the coming of the spring full moon, returns to the parable which for this world looks like folly.