Woland and Styopa Likhodeev

The encounter between Woland and Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev, the director of the Variety Theatre, begins as a grotesque inversion of a business appointment and ends with Styopa's instantaneous, involuntary relocation from Moscow to Yalta. It is the first direct collision between Satan's retinue and the Soviet cultural bureaucracy, and it establishes the pattern by which Woland removes the corrupt and incompetent from their positions without legal process or public scandal.

Identity and Background of the Two Men

Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeev, known as Styopa, is the director of the Variety Theatre, a post he holds despite being, in the judgment of Woland's own retinue, a man who has been "up to some terrible swinishness lately — drinking, using their position to have liaisons with women, don't do devil a thing, and can't do anything, because they don't know anything of what they're supposed to do." He shares the notorious Apartment No. 50 on Sadovaya Street with the recently deceased Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, the editor of a fat literary journal and chairman of the Massolit board. The apartment has a strange reputation: under its previous owner, the jeweller's widow Anna Frantsevna de Fougeray, lodgers and even a policeman had vanished without a trace, and after Berlioz and Styopa moved in, both their wives also disappeared. Styopa wakes on the morning after Berlioz's death with a crushing hangover, unable to open his eyes without seeing "brown spots rimmed with fiery green" and hearing a "heavy bell" booming in his head. He is lying in his own bed, in his socks, wearing a dirty shirt, collar, and necktie, with a bloated face covered in black stubble. Woland, by contrast, is described as a tall, dark-haired, clean-shaven man of a little over forty, with a twisted mouth, one black eye and one green eye, dark eyebrows set at different heights, platinum crowns on the left side of his teeth and gold on the right, wearing an expensive grey suit, imported shoes of a matching colour, and a grey beret cocked rakishly over one ear, carrying a stick with a black knob shaped like a poodle's head. He speaks with a foreign accent but without distorting the words, and he introduces himself as a specialist in black magic who has been invited to Moscow to consult on original manuscripts of the tenth-century necromancer Gerbert of Aurillac found in a state library.

The Confrontation in the Bedroom

When Styopa finally manages to open his eyes, he sees himself reflected in the pier-glass and, next to the mirror, an unknown man dressed in black and wearing a black beret. The stranger addresses him in a low, heavy voice with a foreign accent: "Good morning, my most sympathetic Stepan Bogdanovich!" Styopa, barely able to speak, asks what he can do for him, and the stranger reveals that he has been waiting for exactly an hour, since Styopa had made an appointment for him to come at ten o'clock. Styopa has no memory of this appointment. The stranger, seeing Styopa's condition, offers a practical remedy: "no aspirin will help you. Follow the wise old rule — cure like with like. The only thing that will bring you back to life is two glasses of vodka with something pickled and hot to go with it." He has already prepared a tray with sliced white bread, pressed caviar in a little bowl, pickled mushrooms on a dish, frankfurters in tomato sauce, and a decanter of vodka sitting in a bowl packed with ice. Styopa, though mortified, accepts the drink, and the stranger joins him, swallowing his glass at one gulp and declining a snack with the words "I never snack." As the vodka takes effect, Styopa's memory begins to return, but only of the previous day's drinking at the dacha of the sketch-writer Khustov in Skhodnya, not of any meeting with this stranger. The stranger then introduces himself formally: "Professor of black magic Woland." He recounts that yesterday afternoon he arrived in Moscow from abroad, went immediately to Styopa, and offered his show to the Variety. Styopa, he claims, telephoned the Moscow Regional Entertainment Commission, had the question approved, signed a contract for seven performances at a total of thirty-five thousand roubles, with an advance of ten thousand already paid, and arranged for Woland to come the next morning at ten to work out the details. When Styopa asks to see the contract, Woland produces it, and Styopa sees his own dashing signature, a note in the hand of the findirector Grigory Danilovich Rimsky authorizing the payment, and Woland's signature attesting to receipt of the ten thousand. Styopa is horrified: he remembers nothing of this, yet the document is undeniable.

The Retinue and the Expulsion

While Styopa is in the front hall trying to telephone Rimsky to confirm the arrangement, he catches a glimpse in the mirror of a strange, long specimen in a pince-nez, and then a stalwart black cat passing by. When he returns to the bedroom, he finds that Woland is no longer alone. In the second armchair sits the long, checkered man with the feathery moustache and cracked pince-nez — Koroviev. On the jeweller's wife's ottoman, in a casual pose, sprawls a black cat of uncanny size, holding a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork with a pickled mushroom in the other. Woland explains: "This is my retinue. And this retinue requires room, so there's just one too many of us in the apartment. And it seems to us that this one too many is precisely you." Koroviev then lists Styopa's failings in a goat's voice: drinking, using his position to have liaisons with women, doing nothing, knowing nothing of what he is supposed to do, pulling the wool over his superiors' eyes. The cat adds: "Availing hisself of a government car!" Then, from the pier-glass, steps a fourth figure: a short but extraordinarily broad-shouldered man with a bowler hat on his head, a fang sticking out of his mouth, and flaming red hair — Azazello. He declares that he does not understand how Styopa got to be a director, saying "he's as much a director as I'm a bishop." The cat observes that Azazello does not look like a bishop, and Azazello, turning to Woland, asks deferentially: "Allow me, Messire, to chuck him the devil out of Moscow?" The cat barks "Scat!" and bristles his fur. The bedroom starts spinning around Styopa, he hits his head against the doorpost, loses consciousness, and thinks "I'm dying." When he opens his eyes, he is sitting on a stone jetty, with the sea rocking at his feet, a brilliant blue sky overhead, and a white city on the mountains behind him. He asks a passing smoker what city this is and is told "Yalta." He gasps quietly and sinks down on his side, his head striking the warm stone, and consciousness leaves him.

Consequences and Significance

The expulsion of Styopa Likhodeev from Moscow to Yalta is the first in a series of disappearances that cripple the Variety Theatre's administration. Later that same day, the administrator Ivan Savelyevich Varenukha is ambushed, beaten, and turned into a vampire, and the findirector Grigory Danilovich Rimsky flees the city in terror after a supernatural attack. The theatre is left without its top three managers, and the investigation into the black magic seance is unable to find any trace of the contract or the magician. Styopa's sudden materialization in Yalta, confirmed by telegrams to the criminal investigation department, creates an insoluble puzzle for the authorities: how could a man who spoke on the telephone in Moscow at half past eleven be in Yalta at the same hour? The relationship between Woland and Styopa is thus not a partnership or a negotiation but a summary judgment and execution — not of the body, but of the social position. Woland, acting through his retinue, removes a corrupt and useless functionary with the same casual efficiency with which he later removes the head of the master of ceremonies Georges Bengalsky or transforms the chairman of the Acoustics Commission Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov into a public laughingstock. The encounter establishes that Woland's power in Moscow is absolute, that he operates outside all legal and bureaucratic norms, and that his judgment of the Soviet elite is merciless.