Master and Ivan Homeless

The relationship between the master and Ivan Homeless is one of the novel's most consequential bonds, transforming a bewildered poet into a devoted disciple and the sole guardian of a forbidden manuscript. Their encounter in Stravinsky's psychiatric clinic, where both are confined on account of Pontius Pilate, creates a spiritual and intellectual kinship that reorients Ivan's life and ensures the survival of the master's work after its author vanishes from the world.

First Encounter and Mutual Recognition

The master first appears to Ivan as a mysterious figure on the moonlit balcony of room 117, shaking his finger and whispering "Shhh!" . He has stolen a bunch of keys from the absent-minded nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna and gained access to the common balcony that runs around the entire floor, allowing him to call on neighbours . When Ivan asks if he can escape, the master replies firmly that he cannot, not because it is high up, but because he has nowhere to escape to . Before sitting down, he asks Ivan directly whether he is violent, confessing that he cannot stand noise, turmoil, force, or people's cries of rage or suffering . Ivan courageously admits that the previous day he socked a man in the mug at a restaurant, and the master sternly denounces this as outrageous, lecturing him on the difference between a mug and a face and urging him to give up using his fists for good . When Ivan reluctantly confesses that he is a poet, the master exclaims "Ah, just my luck!" and winces upon learning Ivan's pseudonym, Homeless . Asked whether he has read any of Ivan's poetry, the master says he has never read any but dislikes it terribly, and when Ivan presses him, he asks Ivan himself whether his poetry is good; Ivan boldly and frankly replies "Monstrous!" . The master then beseeches him to write no more, and Ivan solemnly promises and swears, sealing the oath with a handshake .

Shared Subject: Pontius Pilate

The bond deepens when Ivan explains why he wound up in the clinic: "On account of Pontius Pilate" . The master cries out "What?!" and claps his hand over his own mouth, calling it a staggering coincidence . As Ivan tells the story of the previous day at the Patriarch's Ponds, the master proves a grateful listener who does not take him for a madman, showing great interest and becoming ecstatic, repeatedly interrupting with pleas to leave nothing out . When Ivan reaches the moment when Pontius Pilate, in a white mantle with blood-red lining, came out to the balcony, the master puts his hands together prayerfully and whispers "Oh, how I guessed! How I guessed it all!" . He accompanies the description of Berlioz's death with an enigmatic remark, his eyes flashing with spite: "I only regret that it wasn't the critic Latunsky or the writer Mstislav Lavrovich instead of this Berlioz!" . The story of the cat handing money to the woman conductor amuses the master exceedingly, and he chokes with quiet laughter as Ivan, excited by the success of his narration, hops on bent legs portraying the cat holding the coin up next to his whiskers .

Revelation of Satan and the Master's Identity

When Ivan asks who the mysterious consultant really is, the master peers at him and asks whether he will get upset, warning that they are all unreliable there and there will be no calling for the doctor or injections . Ivan promises, and the master says weightily and distinctly: "Yesterday at the Patriarch's Ponds you met Satan" . Ivan protests that it cannot be, that Satan does not exist, but the master retorts that anyone else might say that but not Ivan, who was apparently one of his first victims and is sitting in a psychiatric clinic yet still says he does not exist . He explains that as soon as Ivan began describing the stranger, he realized who it was, and that the very first things the professor said dispelled all his doubts . He calls Ivan an ignorant man, and Ivan indisputably agrees . The master then reveals that he is sitting in the clinic for the same reason as Ivan: a year ago he wrote a novel about Pilate . When Ivan asks if he is a writer, the master's face darkens, he threatens Ivan with his fist, and then says: "I am a master" . He takes from the pocket of his dressing-gown a completely greasy black cap with the letter 'M' embroidered on it in yellow silk, puts it on, and shows himself to Ivan both in profile and full face to prove that he is a master, adding that she sewed it for him with her own hands . When Ivan asks his name, the master answers with gloomy disdain that he no longer has a name, having renounced it as he did everything in life .

The Master's Story and Ivan's Transformation

The master tells Ivan his entire history: that he is a historian by education who worked at a Moscow museum and knew five languages besides his own; that he won a hundred thousand roubles on a state bond, gave up his room on Myasnitskaya, and rented two rooms in the basement of a little house in a lane near the Arbat; that he left his work at the museum and began writing a novel about Pontius Pilate . He describes the golden age of that basement refuge, with its little windows level with the paved walk, the lilacs, the linden and the maple, the eternally blazing stove, and the extraordinary smell of the lilacs . He tells of meeting his secret wife, who carried repulsive, alarming yellow flowers in her hand, and of how love leaped out in front of them like a murderer in an alley, striking them both at once like lightning or a Finnish knife . She became his secret wife, visiting him every afternoon, and she was the one who began to call him a master . The novel was finished in August, typed in five copies, and then the master went out into life holding it in his hands, and his life ended . He describes the catastrophe that followed: the editor who looked at him as if he had a swollen cheek, the critics Latunsky and Ariman and the writer Mstislav Lavrovich who attacked the novel, the articles that grew more threatening, and the onset of mental illness . He tells of burning the heavy manuscript of the novel and the draft notebooks in the stove, breaking his fingernails as he tore up the notebooks and stuck them vertically between the logs . His beloved arrived in the midst of the burning, pulled the last sheaf from the stove with her bare hands, and wept irrepressibly . She promised to cure him and said he would restore it, asking why she had not kept a copy . She left with the words "Tomorrow morning I'll be here," and a quarter of an hour later there came a knock at his window . The master whispers the rest into Ivan's ear, and what he tells is known only to the poet . He ends by saying that in mid-January, in the same coat but with the buttons torn off, he was huddled with cold in his little yard, and that he finally made his way to the clinic on foot across the entire city, getting away with having his left toes frostbitten . He tells Ivan that he is incurable and does not believe Stravinsky when he says he will bring him back to life .

Discipleship and the Continuation of the Work

When Ivan begs to know what happened afterwards with Yeshua and Pilate, the master replies with a painful twitch that he cannot recall his novel without trembling, and that Ivan's acquaintance from the Patriarch's Ponds would do it better than he . Before Ivan can collect his senses, the grille closes with a quiet clang and the master vanishes . The novel's epilogue reveals the lasting effect of this encounter: Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, now a professor of history who knows everything, remains an uneasy inhabitant of normal reality, and each year with the coming of the spring full moon he returns to the parable which for this world looks like folly . The master's story, his renunciation of his name, and his devotion to his novel have transformed Ivan from the feisty poet who chased a cat through Moscow into a historian who carries the memory of the truth he was once told.