Ivan Nikolayevich is technically the first to catch sight of the black tomcat—“huge as a hog, black as pitch or a crow”—but by no means the last. When Styopa Likhodeyev awakes from his hangover in Chapter 7, he gets introduced in short order to the novel’s most infamous anthropomorphic character. Bulgakov turns his novel to the giant cat in the room:
A third visitor sprawled insolently on the padded ottoman that had once belonged to the jeweler’s lady— namely, a black tom of terrifying proportions, with a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork in the other with which he had already managed to impale a pickled mushroom.
Behemoth—the anthropomorphic, gun-slinging, primus-toting cat—is a prime member of Woland’s crew and a memorable figure. As the “Prince of Darkness” having taken real-world form, the talking cat scatters comic relief throughout the novel with his gilded whiskers and shootouts against Moscow investigators. He singlehandedly burns down Griboyodev’s and Berlioz’s apartment. In this acquaintance with Styopa, he drinks vodka with his pickled mushroom.
As a literary creation, Behemoth is equal parts fantastic, absurd, and endearing. He speaks to the novel’s force of magic and transformation. Bulgakov’s literary creation is part of a story that subverts expectations of normalcy in its wildly unexpected twists and turns. Like raining money and disappearing theater directors, Behemoth defies reason, strikes terror, and forces those around him to reevaluate reality. The novel’s anthropomorphism de-familiarizes everyday modernity for both Styopa Likhodeyev and the reader.