Enter the Hero

She’s carrying the flowers in her hands, but they’re already roses. They shouldn’t be roses, not yet. Nowadays you can get them whole year round though, no point in settling for anything less. Black pants, but not many women wear dresses anymore.

But the feeling’s there, the instinct can’t lie, not to me, not in this matter.

She looks at me, briefly. We walk past each other. But this can’t be it, I turn around and she does too. She does too, because it’s her.

“You dropped your hat” I hear her voice.                                        

I look at the ground, then walk up to her and grab my hat. She turns away, ready to go on.

“Wait!” I interrupt her, because this can’t be it. “I like your flowers.”

“Well, who wouldn’t like roses?” She smirks. “Thank you.”

“Where did you get them?”

“I got it from my students. The end of the school year.”

“Students are giving out bouquets full of roses now?”

“Yeah, sometimes. But only if they’re graduating. Uh, shame I don’t teach at university, maybe I’d get semi-good quality whisky then.”

She’s joking, but she seems like one of those people that learned to cover their sadness with jokes.            

“Do you not like roses?”

“I like them, everybody does. Weren’t you going the other way?”

We’ve been walking next to each other for a while already.

“I think this way’s good.”

“Hmm”

We walk in silence for a bit.

“So what do you teach?” I ask.

“Literature.”

Oh, that’s perfect!

“That’s perfect! I mean… I’m writing a book, it’s only just a draft at this point, but maybe you would like to read it?”

“Just what I need after a year of grading essays.” She laughs.

“Oh, but I insist. Coffee’s on me. Or wine. Or an actually-good quality whisky.”

“Ah, how tempting! Not today though, still have couple of things to do.’”

Well, I thought it would all go quicker, go smoother, but I agree to meet another time, we exchange contacts and then she excuses herself. I turn around and go back to my house, now with renewed energy to continue my work. I feel as if I’m a student myself, juggling between a wanting to write a story that will shake people up… and needing to impress her, the best book for her to cherish.

I went into a writing frenzy the following week and wondered if she really wanted to meet me again after all and that maybe it isn’t even her and I’m going in the wrong direction. But here she was, the book was halfway done as well and when I finally decided ‘oh, whatever’, and asked her out, she accepted.

We just talked that first time and I gave her my newest draft. On the second meeting she said she’d been busy but will get around to reading it as soon as she can. Later we started going chapter by chapter, discussing each one. She was taking her time, was very methodical and had a lot of thoughts regarding the structural part.

“What about the story itself? What do you think about it?” I ask her at our 8^th meeting. First time she came to my place.

“It’s… kind of out there” she replies in a casual, humorous way, so typical for her “But as long as it feels right for you, it’s good. I’m never the one to stand between a writer and their idea. What awful teacher would that make me?” she smiles again.

“Yes, it is unconventional, but that’s exactly what our society needs. It needs to realize what it’s losing. It needs a nudge in the right direction. My book could be that nudge, right? If only it gets to be published…”

She was looks up at me, surprised. What a weird look, I thought she’d understand.

“You seems very passionate about it. Fair enough, but it can’t be that serious, right?”

The feeling of despair comes over me. Was it all for nothing? Somewhere in the back of my head I had this thought all along. But anticipating the worst was supposed to be just a precaution. It turned out to be the truth instead. And now she was looking at me, amused, almost cocky. I stood up, enraged.

“How could you say that? Doesn’t it matter to you at all? Then you’re no Margarita…”

And I snatch the draft from her hands, then throw it in the fireplace, desperately, as if I don’t have a copy on my computer. We both look at it as it crumples and burns a little, only for the little fire to be put off by the stack of paper a moment later. It feels embarrassing and insulting and I’d love to leave, but it’s my place so I have to kick her out.

I look at her face and can’t tell whether she’s looking scared, confused, perplexed. Maybe everything at once. Her eyes are fixed on the extinguished fire. We’re like that, stuck in silence, for a while.

“And you’re… what, ‘Master’?”

How could she not know a russian literature classic, she teaches things like that.

“Get out.”

“No way. For real?”

She gets up, but instead of leaving, she walks up to me, sighs, puts her hand on my shoulder. Her tone changes, all patient, as if she really understands at least something.

“Look…” she starts “I guess it’s kind of like in the book, huh? A writer meets a woman with the flowers on the street, they start bonding over the book he’s working on… but I… uh…”

Maybe not all is lost, I could help her understand a little bit more.

“That’s not all. My book’s controversial, it’s gonna get shunned and you, you were depressed before you met me, unhappy in a relationship, you told me yourself… We need to help each other, it was meant to be. When so many things match, it can’t be a coincidence.”

“So you want us to save each other?”

In the end it is their love that saved them. They were both up against something they couldn’t have fought on their own. Bulgakov told the story of lovers who met on the street in Moscow, they fell in love instantly. And it really felt like it could’ve been us.

The man worked on the book and the woman, Margarita, unhappily married, fell in love with his vision. She wanted to commit suicide before they met, but love for Master changed her, he got in trouble for writing unfavorable book, ended up in psychiatric hospital, but she got him back, albeit in an unconventional way.

“And do I get to make a deal with the devil?” she continued “Where is he, tell me please, already roaming the streets? Or do I wait till you check yourself in to a hospital?”

“I wouldn’t take it so literally…”

“Ah, yes, cause that would be against common sense, right?”

Was she now laughing at me? She didn’t look scared now, that’s certain, just angry. In answer to her rhetorical question I went to grab my hardly burned book.

“It’s important to me, you know, the book. And I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s special in some way. That I need someone to help me. I was writing it, day and night, thinking that someone like you will appear. And then you did.”

She frowned as I went on with my explanation.

“And I thought my book could give you something too. That it would make you feel better, find a purpose after the break up. It’s not all about me, I thought about us both.”

She shook her head.

“Oh no. I don’t need your saving. I don’t need some book to save me. Even the grandest of books.”

“And I. I’d make you feel better.”

“Do you really think it’s that easy? One handsome man chatting me up and, boom, depression’s gone. I loved my boyfriend. So much. When we fell for each other, I finally felt good. I thought that maybe love really is the answer. But it all caught up to me eventually. Each month I felt worse, didn’t have energy for anything. I would spend it all on forcing myself to go to work. In summer, when I didn’t have to go there anymore, I almost didn’t get up from bed. He was patient at first, but who could stand it in the long run? I didn’t want to get help. And one day he finally left. It was a wake up call for me. At first I couldn’t believe it. Next few days, I mostly just cried, but I knew the time has come and I had to change. I went to the doctor, started taking pills. Now I appreciate what he did, it was hard for him too… I don’t feel good now. Just fine, just stable. But I’m better now and I don’t need this book or anything else to make me feel alive, to excite me. I saved myself. I don’t feel awful all the time and that’s enough for me.”

‘Master’ looks at me. I expect him to say something, but he doesn’t. I don’t really know what’s going through this head anymore, I get no further explanation. I thought my story would incite something in him, I hoped for something to come out of it. But he just sat there, unreadable, staring at his manifesto, so I can’t speak for him anymore.

So I get up, ready to leave, not knowing why I stayed for so long anyway.

“Well, bye” I said and left.

I never saw this man again. Maybe he found his Margarita, but it wasn’t me. Maybe he reconsidered, maybe I saved him in the end, maybe me leaving was a wake up call for him too. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

I don’t know if he published his book, I wouldn’t be able to find out easily. It had no title yet and after all that I realized he never told me his name. Maybe I was supposed to give him one, like Margarita did for Master.