Challenged by Berlioz to predict the future, the thin, wily stranger assesses his new acquaintance and nails the bet. Woland’s appraisal of the editor’s fate in Chapter 1 is the first of many foreshadowed misfortunes to come:
‘Willingly,’ responded the stranger. He looked Berlioz up and down as though measuring him for a new suit, and muttered through his teeth something that sounded like ‘One, two... Mercury in the second house….. the Moon is gone... six—misfortune….. evening—seven.’ Then he announced loudly and gaily, ‘Your head will be cut off!’
Woland’s wager—outlandish as it may seem—does not take long to check. As Berlioz leaves the turnstiles two chapters later, he slips onto his back in front of the streetcar tracks and gets his head lopped off in the collision. True to Woland’s very last word, Berlioz dies headless and at the hands of a woman.
Uncanny foresight becomes a long-running trend. Woland divines Andrey Fokich’s death by liver cancer, and Koroviev intuits that Nikanor Ivanovich will secret his illicit payments in the ventilator flue. The Devil knows about Berlioz’s impoverished uncle and determines Fokich’s net worth to the ruble. Time and again, the Devil peers into his crystal ball and gets everything right.
The Devil’s overwhelming success against mortals seems almost unfair. In Berlioz’s case, for instance, it’s unclear whether he passively foretells the future or plays a role in bringing about the events as well. Woland may be a great future reader, a sinister manipulator of reality, or both. But this mix of prescience and power complicates the novel’s moral arena. Woland’s seeming omniscience and power go so far as to rival God’s, blurring the distinctions between the realm of the devil and the divine. In The Master and Margarita, shadows may be equal rivals to light.