The naked Margarita is happily flying on her broom above the apartment house where she’s wreaked havoc on Latunsky’s apartment and is smashing windows in every other when through a window she spots a small boy in bed, evidently frightened. She flys in to comfort him. "It’s just some boys breaking windows," she tells him.
"I’ll tell you a fairy tale," said Margarita, and put her burning hand on top of the boy’s close-cropped head. "Once upon a time there was a lady. She had no children, and no happiness either. And at first she cried for a long time, but then she became wicked…" Margarita fell silent, and took her hand away—the boy was sleeping. (p. 206)
Margarita, turned into a witch by the devil in exchange for information about her lover, has forsaken all the reality of her former life, her nice but uninspiring husband, her finery; everything that it would seem a large portion of Russian women would give their eyeteeth to have. But for Margarita, it is freedom to be, to love, to seek justice and revenge. Evidently, tippy-toeing around wasn’t Margarita’s chosen style and flying nude on a broom may be what she’s repressed all her life. Repression, the Russian way of life for its citizens at that time. Yet she’s still retained the heart of a woman as she offers some comfort to the little boy who’s a stranger to her.
One other thing I caught in this book (besides a double "the" on p. 207) was another tear in the fourth wall:
Margarita stepped back and said with dignity, "Go to the devil’s mother. What do you mean, Claudine? Mind who you’re talking to," and, after a second’s thought, she added a long, unprintable oath. All this had a sobering effect on the thoughtless fat man." (p. 210)
Note "a long unprintable oath." This, dear reader, is directed to us.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology