One of my favourite paintings is
The Lovers by Rene Magritte. We see a man and a woman sharing an intimate kiss, but their faces are covered with white cloths. You can certainly interpret this as an image of blinding passion. However, I prefer to view the picture as an image of two people who were destined to meet one another. They don’t know each other by face, but they share this moment of profound intimacy because they have recognised one another.
Awhile ago, whilst looking at the painting, I realised that this scene (or rather something that must have happened prior to it in order for this moment to take place) has been described in one of my favourite novels. I speak about Chapter 13 of Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The text is available online in two English translations, for those who never read it, and I have to say that the passage I’m quoting below is not rendered impeccably in either version; however, the 1997 text generally follows the original Russian text closer, whereby I’m quoting from it. In this chapter (called The Hero Enters), the character of Master is fully introduced to us for the first time.
'She was carrying repulsive, alarming yellow flowers in her hand. Devil knows what they're called, but for
some reason they're the first to appear in Moscow. And these flowers stood out clearly against her black spring
coat. She was carrying yellow flowers! Not a nice colour. She turned down a lane from Tverskaya and then
looked back. Well, you know Tverskaya! Thousands of people were walking along Tverskaya, but I can assure
you that she saw me alone, and looked not really alarmed, but even as if in pain. And I was struck not so much
by her beauty as by an extraordinary loneliness in her eyes, such as no one had ever seen before! Obeying this
yellow sign, I also turned down the lane and followed her. We walked along the crooked, boring lane silently, I
on one side, she on the other. And, imagine, there was not a soul in the lane. I was suffering, because it seemed
to me that it was necessary to speak to her, and I worried that I wouldn't utter a single word, and she would leave,
and I'd never see her again. And, imagine, suddenly she began to speak:
' "Do you like my flowers?"
'I remember clearly the sound of her voice, rather low, slightly husky, and, stupid as it is, it seemed that the
echo resounded in the lane and bounced off the dirty yellow wall. I quickly crossed to her side and, coming up
to her, answered:
'"No!"
'She looked at me in surprise, and I suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, understood that all my life I had loved
precisely this woman! Quite a thing, eh? Of course, you'll say I'm mad?'
'I won't say anything,' Ivan exclaimed, and added: 'I beg you, go on!'
And the guest continued.
'Yes, she looked at me in surprise, and then, having looked, asked thus:
'"You generally don't like flowers?"
'It seemed to me there was hostility in her voice. I was walking beside her, trying to keep in step, and, to my
surprise, did not feel the least constraint.
'"No, I like flowers, but not this kind," I said.
'"Which, then?"
'"I like roses."
'Then I regretted having said it, because she smiled guiltily and threw the flowers into the gutter. Slightly at a loss,
I nevertheless picked them up and gave them to her, but she, with a smile, pushed the flowers away, and I carried
them in my hand.
'So we walked silently for some time, until she took the flowers from my hand and threw them to the pavement,
then put her own hand in a black glove with a bell-shaped cuff under my arm, and we walked on side by side.'
'Go on,' said Ivan, 'and please don't leave anything out!'
'Go on?' repeated the visitor. 'Why, you can guess for yourself how it went on.' He suddenly wiped an
unexpected tear with his right sleeve and continued: `Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley
leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the
way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without
knowing each other, never having seen each other, and that she was living with a different man ... as I was, too,
then ... with that, what's her ...'
'With whom?' asked Homeless.
With that... well... with ...' replied the guest, snapping his fingers?
'You were married?'
'Why, yes, that's why I'm snapping... With that... Varenka ... Manechka ... no, Varenka ... striped dress, the
museum ... Anyhow, I don't remember.
'Well, so she said she went out that day with yellow flowers in her hand so that I would find her at last, and that
if it hadn't happened, she would have poisoned herself, because her life was empty.
'Yes, love struck us instantly. I knew it that same day, an hour later, when, without having noticed the city, we
found ourselves by the Kremlin wall on the embankment.
We talked as if we had parted only the day before, as if we had known each other for many years. We
arranged to meet the next day at the same place on the Moscow River, and we did. The May sun shone down
on us. And soon, very soon, this woman became my secret wife.
Links: Bulgakov, Mikhail. Master and Margarita (1967, English translation by Michael Glenny).Bulgakov, Mikhail. Master and Margarita (1997, English translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky).
