So far Bulgakov has killed off one of the main characters, but added two more; a weird little man and a large black cat. Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz has been beheaded by a train, and the poet has realized that something is decidedly odd about the Professor and chases after him, ending up in the river and with only someone else’s longjohns to continue about the town.
Bulgakov’s humor–and here I must assume that it is the author himself and not the translators that have injected such–is subtle but side-splitting if the reader catches it:
The point is that at the present time the house was owned by that very same MASSOLIT which had been headed by the unfortunate Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz before his appearance at Patriarch’s Ponds. (p. 45) [and before his beheading!]
And this in particular, indicating that I’m not the only one noticing the character’s complex names:
"The lad must have gotten held up on the Klyazma," said the thick-voiced Nastasya Lukinishna Nepremenova, an orphan from a Moscow merchant family, who had become a writer and turned out naval battle stories under the pen name, "Bosun George." (p. 48)
I don’t believe I can read another Russian novel without smiling and thinking of "Bosun George."
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology