I’m reading a book I love right this movement and, for someone who grew up watching the films and revelling in the style, the fantasy, I still can’t quite point out what I love about it. The book is Master and Margarita - a well known and well worn classic that a million scholars have expounded over within their own echo chamber pedestal. It chronicles that great farce of Satan visiting Moscow, upsetting a few locals with some well made predictions and seemingly innocent use of an (mostly) free apartment, followed by a very grand ball. Amidst this, there’s some fascinating interludes with an extremely personable Pontius Pilate (with a dog, to make even the hard hearted of us extremely distracted - for what is greater love than that between human and loaf?) and the very confusing elevation of a Romance novel written about that great historical figure during his condemnation of God’s son on earth.

The romantic (present age) author himself, a man going by the name of Master and appearing to be rather diminished by his unfavourable book reviews (the fun trap of an author hating on their critics in such obvious meta that it can be ignored) forms a deceptively pivotal part. His erstwhile wide-eyed and virtuous love follows various scraps and trails to find him, wilting defiantly in that very heroine type way and eventually comes to that wholesome tradition of Making A Pact With Satan. During her literary excavations of her hearth (not a metaphor for her heart but literally, as she attempts to recover the burnt romance manuscript when her love flees in a lack of sanity) and the subsequent excitement of flying naked on a broom through Moscow, we get treated to some extremely polite and frankly ludicrously forced smiles and accolades as she’s whirled into acting host to Satan’s ball of lowly kings.

A ludicrous scene not just because she’s literally bleeding and suffering from her garments, let alone the murderers and rapists gracing themselves for light kisses of her hand, but more so because she exemplifies a fascinating trait all the people do throughout this book. People placed in a position where they feel they must act in a way (let’s say for it to be considered Proper) going along with the plot. Does it matter that they hadn’t anticipated this beforehand and if approached with a particular proposition, might have considered no? Certainly not! They are here, things have escalated excitingly and so off they roll down the hill since they’d already taken the first step. Margarita, whilst an almost piously virtuous woman (who though cheating on her husband is really being true to pure love) sets an agenda: to find the Master. From that agenda nothing will deviate her course - not the uppending of her world knowledge via the introduction of hell-powered magic, not the talking cat nor the prostration and acceptance of some nastily dubious ongoings.

In this unyielding and steadforth approach for the sake of another Margarita separates herself from other characters in the book. Those who hold their initial goal but bend to fear or more aptly put, cowardice. Those wayward and amusingly described side plot characters who come looking to cheat, swindle or profiteer from the unfolding events. Was it their self-propelled greed or was it their lack of resolve that caused them to fail in their pursuits? In many ways this is left opaque, though the two shining beacons within this book - Margarita’s love and Pontious’ desire for kindness - suggest that there are some things the devil does not thwart or indeed, does not even try to.

The reimagining of evil and once again the lack of any real presence of good (or god) allows this book to explore once more the relationship of humans with their interpretation of what it means to be bad. The thieves and cheats are exploited and made great sport of by Satan’s minions usually from their own making and initiated from their own depravities. Meanwhile, the culturally bad or incorrect actions (those of cheating and those of allowing political maneuverings to thwart the legal system) are in truer essence underpinned by something better. By love, by kindness and quite interestingly - by our own weakness and inability to act. It’s quite a forgiving and loving take on the devil to paint them as understanding the limitations of humans, with punishment met out to those who truly had no good in their hearts and rewards and solace delivered to those wrongly hurt by their environs. It’s a take that recognises our dependency on our compatriots, our cultural and legal constraints and from there doesn’t fault us for the faulty decisions. It’s a practical and loving evil without the fantasy elevation of an ideal good.

In some ways this book feels like it scribes in two palettes. Those characters who have a nobler cause involving others and those who don’t. To separate this chaff there is a dark grinning shape who escalates all, pushing each rock off the hill to see where it lands. The latter to the ditch, further mired into their dirt and the former to forgiveness and a new story. The people don’t change, inside. They roll along, maneuvered and manipulated but strung along to their own fibrous compass. They change externally and in response to their culture, the surrounding people, the surrounding restrictions. Inside they remain truer. Within there may be morals that are good and these, even wounded in the external world, find redemption and peace beyond.