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Chapter 27
The End of Apartment No. 50
[Konets kvartiry No. 50]
Margarita slept But not sleeping was a whole floor of a Moscow organization, and its windows, which opened onto a large asphalt-covered square were brightly lit. This building is obviously Lubyanka, the NKVD/KGB headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square. The phrase is introduced chiastically and through contrast, and the floor and windows of the building substitute for the organization itself. Bulgakov never refer to the NKVD by name, and almost never uses a noun for its agents. That the windows are ominously lit through the night may be a reference as well to Stalin's famous all-night vigils.
apartment on Kamenny Bridge: Sempleyarov apparently lives in the famous House on the Embankment.
Caucasian fur cap, papakha, burka: Styopa's dress shows evidence of an earlier version of the novel, in which he was sent to the Caucasus instead of Yalta.
black Mauser
