d behind the
capital of a column. It may be that it thought of nesting there.
During its flight, a formula took shape in the now light and lucid head
of the procurator. It went like this: the hegemon has looked into the case
of the vagrant philosopher Yeshua, alias Ha-Nozri, and found in it no
grounds for indictment. In particular, he has found not the slightest
connection between the acts of Yeshua and the disorders that have lately
taken place in Yershalaim. The vagrant philosopher has proved to be mentally
ill. Consequently, the procurator has not confirmed the death sentence on
Ha-Nozri passed by the Lesser Sanhedrin. But seeing that Ha-Nozri's mad
utopian talk might cause disturbances in Yershalaim, the procurator is
removing Yeshua from Yershalaim and putting him under confinement in
Stratonian Caesarea on the Mediterranean - that is, precisely where the
procurator's residence was.
It remained to dictate it to the secretary.
The swallow's wings whiffled right over the hegemon's head, the bird
darted to the fountain basin and then flew out into freedom. The procurator
raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw the dust blaze up in a pillar around
him.
'Is that all about him?' Pilate asked the secretary.
'Unfortunately not,' the secretary replied unexpectedly and handed
Pilate another piece of parchment.
'What's this now?' Pilate asked and frowned.
Having read what had been handed to him, he changed countenance even
more: Either the dark blood rose to his neck and face, or something else
happened, only his skin lost its yellow tinge, turned brown, and his eyes
seemed to sink.
Again it was probably owing to the blood rising to his temples and
throbbing in them, only something happened to the procurator's vision. Thus,
he imagined that the prisoner's head floated off somewhere, and another
appeared in its place. [21] On this bald head sat a scant-pointed golden
diadem. On the forehead was a round canker, eating into the skin and smeared
with ointment. A sunken, toothless mouth with a pendulous, capricious lower
lip. It seemed to Pilate that the pink columns of the balcony and the
rooftops of Yershalaim far below, beyond the garden, vanished, and
everything was drowned in the thickest green of Caprean gardens. And
something strange also happened to his hearing: it was as if trumpets
sounded far away, muted and menacing, and a nasal voice was very clearly
heard, arrogantly drawling: 'The law of lese-majesty...'
Thoughts raced, short, incoherent and extraordinary: 'I'm lost! ...'
then: 'We're lost! ...' And among them a totally absurd one, about some
immortality, which immortality for some reason provoked unendurable anguish.
Pilate strained, drove the apparition away, his gaze returned to the
balcony, and again the prisoner's eyes were before him.
'Listen, Ha-Nozri,' the procurator spoke, looking at Yeshua somehow
strangely: the procurator's face was menacing, but his eyes were alarmed,
'did you ever say anything about the great Caesar? Answer! Did you?...Yes
... or ... no?' Pilate drew the word 'no' out somewhat longer than is done
in court, and his glance sent Yeshua some thought that he wished as if to
instill in the prisoner.
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant,' the prisoner observed.
`I have no need to know,' Pilate responded in a stifled, angry voice,
'whether it is pleasant or unpleasant for you to speak the truth. You will
have to speak it anyway. But, as you speak, weigh every word, unless you
want a not only inevitable but also painful death.'
No one knew what had happened with the procurator of Judea, but he
allowed himself to raise his hand as if to protect himself from a ray of
sunlight, and from behind his hand, as from behind a shield, to send the
prisoner some sort of prompting look.
'Answer, then,' he went on speaking, `do you know a certain Judas from
Kiriath, [22] and what precisely did you say to him about Caesar, if you
said anything?'
'It was like this,' the prisoner began talking eagerly. The evening
before last, near the temple, I made the acquaintance of a young man who
called himself Judas, from the town of Kiriath. He invited me to his place
in the Lower City and treated me to...'
'A good man?' Pilate asked, and a devilish fire flashed in his eyes.
'A very good man and an inquisitive one,' the prisoner confirmed. 'He
showed the greatest interest in my thoughts and received me very
cordially...'
'Lit the lamps...'[23] Pilate spoke through his teeth, in the same tone
as the prisoner, and his eyes glinted.
Yes,' Yeshua went on, slightly surprised that the procurator was so
well informed, 'and asked me to give my view of state authority. He was
extremely interested in this question.'
'And what did you say?' asked Pilate. 'Or are you going to reply that
you've forgotten what you said?' But there was already hopelessness in
Pilate's tone.
`Among other things,' the prisoner recounted, `I said that all
authority is violence over people, and that a time will come when there will
be no authority of the Caesars, nor any other authority. Man will pass into
the kingdom of truth and justice, where generally there will be no need for
any authority.'
'Go on!'
'I didn't go on,' said the prisoner. 'Here men ran in, bound me, and
took me away to prison.'
The secretary, trying not to let drop a single word, rapidly traced the
words on his parchment.
'There never has been, is not, and never will be any authority in this
world greater or better for people than the authority of the emperor
Tiberius!' Pilate's cracked and sick voice swelled. For some reason the
procurator looked at the secretary and the convoy with hatred.
`And it is not for you, insane criminal, to reason about it!' Here
Pilate shouted: 'Convoy, off the balcony!' And turning to the secretary, he
added: 'Leave me alone with the criminal, this is a state matter!'
The convoy raised their spears and with a measured tramp of hobnailed
caligae walked off the balcony into the garden, and the secretary followed
the convoy.
For some time the silence on the balcony was broken only by the water
singing in the fountain. Pilate saw how the watery dish blew up over the
spout, how its edges broke off, how it fell down in streams.
The prisoner was the first to speak.
'I see that some misfortune has come about because I talked with that
young man from Kiriath. I have a foreboding, Hegemon, that he will come to
grief, and I am very sorry for him.'
'I think,' the procurator replied, grinning strangely, `that there is
now someone else in the world for whom you ought to feel sorrier than' for
Judas of Kiriath, and who is going to have it much worse than Judas! ...
So, then, Mark Rat-slayer, a cold and convinced torturer, the people
who, as I see,' the procurator pointed to Yeshua's disfigured face, `beat
you for your preaching, the robbers Dysmas and Gestas, who with their
confreres killed four soldiers, and, finally, the dirty traitor Judas - are
all good people?'
'Yes,' said the prisoner.
'And the kingdom of truth will come?'
'It will, Hegemon,' Yeshua answered with conviction.
'It will never come!' Pilate suddenly cried out in such a terrible
voice that Yeshua drew back. Thus, many years before, in the Valley of the
Virgins, Pilate had cried to his horsemen the words: 'Cut them down! Cut
them down! The giant Rat-slayer is trapped!' He raised his voice, cracked
with commanding, still more, and called out so that his words could be heard
in the garden: 'Criminal! Criminal! Criminal!' And then, lowering his voice,
he asked: 'Yeshua Ha-Nozri, do you believe in any gods?'
'God is one,' replied Yeshua, 'I believe in him.'
Then pray to him! Pray hard! However...' here Pilate's voice gave out,
'that won't help. No wife?' Pilate asked with anguish for some reason, not
understanding what was happening to him.
`No, I'm alone.'
'Hateful city...' the procurator suddenly muttered for some reason,
shaking his shoulders as if he were cold, and rubbing his hands as though
washing them, 'if they'd put a knife in you before your meeting with Judas
of Kiriath, it really would have been better.'
`Why don't you let me go, Hegemon?' the prisoner asked unexpectedly,
and his voice became anxious. 'I see they want to kill me.'
A spasm contorted Pilate's face, he turned to Yeshua the inflamed,
red-veined whites of his eyes and said:
`Do you suppose, wretch, that the Roman procurator will let a man go
who has said what you have said? Oh, gods, gods! Or do you think I'm ready
to take your place? I don't share your thoughts! And listen to me: if from
this moment on you say even one word, if you speak to anyone at all, beware
of me! I repeat to you - beware!'
`Hegemon...'
'Silence!' cried Pilate, and his furious gaze followed the swallow that
had again fluttered on to the balcony. 'To me!' Pilate shouted.
And when the secretary and the convoy returned to their places, Pilate
announced that he confirmed the death sentence passed at the meeting of the
Lesser Sanhedrin on the criminal Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and the secretary wrote
down what Pilate said.
A moment later Mark Rat-slayer stood before the procurator. The
procurator ordered him to hand the criminal over to the head of the secret
service, along with the procurator's directive that Yeshua Ha-Nozri was to
be separated from the other condemned men, and also that the soldiers of the
secret service were to be forbidden, on pain of severe punishment, to talk
with Yeshua about anything at all or to answer any of his questions.
At a sign from Mark, the convoy closed around Yeshua and led him from
the balcony.
Next there stood before the procurator a handsome, light-bearded man
with eagle feathers on the crest of his helmet, golden lions' heads shining
on his chest, and golden plaques on his sword belt, wearing triple-soled
boots laced to the knees, and with a purple cloak thrown over his left
shoulder. This was the legate in command of the legion.
The procurator asked him where the Sebastean cohort was stationed at
the moment. The legate told him that the Sebasteans had cordoned off the
square in front of the hippodrome, where the sentencing of the criminals was
to be announced to the people.
Then the procurator ordered the legate to detach two centuries from the
Roman cohort. One of them, under the command of Rat-slayer, was to convoy
the criminals, the carts with the implements for the execution and the
executioners as they were transported to Bald Mountain, [24] and on arrival
was to join the upper cordon. The other was to be sent at once to Bald
Mountain and immediately start forming the cordon. For the same purpose,
that is, to guard the mountain, the procurator asked the legate to send an
auxiliary cavalry regiment - the Syrian ala.
After the legate left the balcony, the procurator ordered the secretary
to summon to the palace the president of the Sanhedrin, two of its members,
and the head of the temple guard in Yershalaim, adding that he asked things
to be so arranged that before conferring with all these people, he could
speak with the president previously and alone.
The procurator's order was executed quickly and precisely, and the sun,
which in those days was scorching Yershalaim with an extraordinary
fierceness, had not yet had time to approach its highest point when, on the
upper terrace of the garden, by the two white marble lions that guarded the
stairs, a meeting took place between the procurator and the man fulfilling
the duties of president of the Sanhedrin, the high priest of the Jews,
Joseph Kaifa. [25]
It was quiet in the garden. But when he came out from under the
colonnade to the sun-drenched upper level of the garden with its palm trees
on monstrous elephant legs, from which there spread before the procurator
the whole of hateful Yershalaim, with its hanging bridges, fortresses, and,
above all, that utterly indescribable heap of marble with golden dragon
scales for a roof - the temple of Yershalaim - the procurator's sharp ear
caught, far below, where the stone wall separated the lower terraces of the
palace garden from the city square, a low rumble over which from time to
time there soared feeble, thin moans or cries.
The procurator understood that there, on the square, a numberless crowd
of Yershalaim citizens, agitated by the recent disorders, had already
gathered, that this crowd was waiting impatiently for the announcement of
the sentences, and that restless water sellers were crying in its midst.
The procurator began by inviting the high priest on to the balcony, to
take shelter from the merciless heat, but Kaifa politely apologized [26] and
explained that he could not do that on the eve of the feast.
Pilate covered his slightly balding head with a hood and began the
conversation. This conversation took place in Greek.
Pilate said that he had looked into the case of Yeshua Ha-Nozri and
confirmed the death sentence.
Thus, three robbers - Dysmas, Gestas and Bar-Rabban - and this Yeshua
Ha-Nozri besides, were condemned to be executed, and it was to be done that
day. The first two, who had ventured to incite the people to rebel against
Caesar, had been taken in armed struggle by the Roman authorities, were
accounted to the procurator, and, consequently, would not be talked about
here. But the second two, Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri, had been seized by the
local authorities and condemned by the Sanhedrin. According to the law,
according to custom, one of these two criminals had to be released in honour
of the great feast of Passover, which would begin that day. And so the
procurator wished to know which of the two criminals the Sanhedrin intended
to set free: Bar-Rabban or Ha-Nozri? [27]
Kaifa inclined his head to signify that the question was clear to him,
and replied:
`The Sanhedrin asks that Bar-Rabban be released.' The procurator knew
very well that the high priest would give precisely that answer, but his
task consisted in showing that this answer provoked his astonishment.
This Pilate did with great artfulness. The eyebrows on the arrogant
face rose, the procurator looked with amazement straight into the high
priest's eyes.
'I confess, this answer stuns me,' the procurator began softly, `I'm
afraid there may be some misunderstanding here.'
Pilate explained himself. Roman authority does not encroach in the
least upon the rights of the local spiritual authorities, the high priest
knows that very well, but in the present case we are faced with an obvious
error. And this error Roman authority is, of course, interested in
correcting.
In fact, the crimes of Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri are quite incomparable
in their gravity. If the latter, obviously an insane person, is guilty of
uttering preposterous things in Yershalaim and some other places, the
former's burden of guilt is more considerable. Not only did he allow himself
to call directly for rebellion, but he also killed a guard during the
attempt to arrest him. Bar-Rabban is incomparably more dangerous than
Ha-Nozri.
On the strength of all the foregoing, the procurator asks the high
priest to reconsider the decision and release the less harmful of the two
condemned men, and that is without doubt Ha-Nozri. And so? ...
Kaifa said in a quiet but firm voice that the Sanhedrin had thoroughly
familiarized itself with the case and informed him a second time that it
intended to free Bar-Rabban.
'What? Even after my intercession? The intercession of him through
whose person Roman authority speaks? Repeat it a third time, High Priest.'
'And a third time I repeat that we are setting Bar-Rabban free,' Kaifa
said softly.
It was all over, and there was nothing more to talk about. Ha-Nozri was
departing for ever, and there was no one to cure the dreadful, wicked pains
of the procurator, there was no remedy for them except death. But it was not
this thought which now struck Pilate. The same incomprehensible anguish that
had already visited him on the balcony pierced his whole being. He tried at
once to explain it, and the explanation was a strange one: it seemed vaguely
to the procurator that there was something he had not finished saying to the
condemned man, and perhaps something he had not finished hearing.
Pilate drove this thought away, and it flew off as instantly as it had
come flying. It flew off, and the anguish remained unexplained, for it could
not well be explained by another brief thought that flashed like lightning
and at once went out - 'Immortality... immortality has come...' Whose
immortality had come? That the procurator did not understand, but the
thought of this enigmatic immortality made him grow cold in the scorching
sun.
'Very well,' said Pilate, 'let it be so.'
Here he turned, gazed around at the world visible to him, and was
surprised at the change that had taken place. The bush laden with roses had
vanished, vanished were the cypresses bordering the upper terrace, and the
pomegranate tree, and the white statue amidst the greenery, and the greenery
itself. In place of it all there floated some purple mass, [28] water weeds
swayed in it and began moving off somewhere, and Pilate himself began moving
with them. He was carried along now, smothered and burned, by the most
terrible wrath - the wrath of impotence.
'Cramped,' said Pilate, 'I feel cramped!'
With a cold, moist hand he tore at the clasp on the collar of his
cloak, and it fell to the sand.
'It's sultry today, there's a storm somewhere,' Kaifa responded, not
taking his eyes off the procurator's reddened face, and foreseeing all the
torments that still lay ahead, he thought: 'Oh, what a terrible month of
Nisan we're having this year!'
'No,' said Pilate, 'it's not because of the sultriness, I feel cramped
with you here, Kaifa.' And, narrowing his eyes, Pilate smiled and added:
"Watch out for yourself, High Priest.'
The high priest's dark eyes glinted, and with his face - no less
artfully than the procurator had done earlier - he expressed amazement.
'What do I hear, Procurator?' Kaifa replied proudly and calmly. "You
threaten me after you yourself have confirmed the sentence passed? Can that
be? We are accustomed to the Roman procurator choosing his words before he
says something. What if we should be overheard, Hegemon?'
Pilate looked at the high priest with dead eyes and, baring his teeth,
produced a smile.
'What's your trouble, High Priest? Who can hear us where we are now? Do
you think I'm like that young vagrant holy fool who is to be executed today?
Am I a boy, Kaifa? I know what I say and where I say it. There is a cordon
around the garden, a cordon around the palace, so that a mouse couldn't get
through any crack! Not only a mouse, but even that one, what's his name...
from the town of Kiriath, couldn't get through. Incidentally, High Priest,
do you know him? Yes... if that one got in here, he'd feel bitterly sorry
for himself, in this you will, of course, believe me? Know, then, that from
now on, High Priest, you will have no peace! Neither you nor your people' -
and Pilate pointed far off to the right, where the temple blazed on high
-'it is I who tell you so, Pontius Pilate, equestrian of the Golden
Spear!'[29]
'I know, I know!' the black-bearded Kaifa fearlessly replied, and his
eyes flashed. He raised his arm to heaven and went on: "The Jewish people
know that you hate them with a cruel hatred, and will cause them much
suffering, but you will not destroy them utterly! God will protect them! He
will hear us, the almighty Caesar will hear, he will protect us from Pilate
the destroyer!'
'Oh, no!' Pilate exclaimed, and he felt lighter and lighter with every
word: there was no more need to pretend, no more need to choose his words,
`you have complained about me too much to Caesar, and now my hour has come,
Kaifa! Now the message will fly from me, and not to the governor in Antioch,
and not to Rome, but directly to Capreae, to the emperor himself, the
message of how you in Yershalaim are sheltering known criminals from death.
And then it will not be water from Solomon's Pool that I give Yershalaim to
drink, as I wanted to do for your own good! No, not water! Remember how on
account of you I had to remove the shields with the emperor's insignia from
the walls, had to transfer troops, had, as you see, to come in person to
look into what goes on with you here! Remember my words: it is not just one
cohort that you will see here in Yershalaim, High Priest - no! The whole
Fulminata legion will come under the city walls, the Arabian cavalry will
arrive, and then you will hear bitter weeping and wailing! You will remember
Bar-Rabban then, whom you saved, and you will regret having sent to his
death a philosopher with his peaceful preaching!'
The high priest's face became covered with blotches, his eyes burned.
Like the procurator, he smiled, baring his teeth, and replied:
`Do you yourself believe what you are saying now, Procurator? No, you
do not! It is not peace, not peace, that the seducer of the people of
Yershalaim brought us, and you, equestrian, understand that perfectly well.
You wanted to release him so that he could disturb the people, outrage the
faith, and bring the people under Roman swords! But I, the high priest of
the Jews, as long as I live, will not allow the faith to be outraged and
will protect the people! Do you hear, Pilate?' And Kaifa raised his arm
menacingly: 'Listen, Procurator!'
Kaifa fell silent, and the procurator again heard a noise as if of the
sea, rolling up to the very walls of the garden of Herod the Great. The
noise rose from below to the feet and into the face of the procurator. And
behind his back, there, beyond the wings of the palace, came alarming
trumpet calls, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, the clanking of iron.
The procurator understood that the Roman infantry was already setting
out, on his orders, speeding to the parade of death so terrible for rebels
and robbers.
`Do you hear, Procurator?' the high priest repeated quietly. 'Are you
going to tell me that all this' - here the high priest raised both arms and
the dark hood fell from his head - 'has been caused by the wretched robber
Bar-Rabban?'
The procurator wiped his wet, cold forehead with the back of his hand,
looked at the ground, then, squinting at the sky, saw that the red-hot ball
was almost over his head and that Kaifa's shadow had shrunk to nothing by
the lion's tail, and said quietly and indifferently:
'It's nearly noon. We got carried away by our conversation, and yet we
must proceed.'
Having apologized in refined terms before the high priest, he invited
him to sit down on a bench in the shade of a magnolia and wait until he
summoned the other persons needed for the last brief conference and gave one
more instruction connected with the execution.
Kaifa bowed politely, placing his hand on his heart, and stayed in the
garden while Pilate returned to the balcony. There he told the secretary,
who had been waiting for him, to invite to the garden the legate of the
legion and the tribune of the cohort, as well as the two members of the
Sanhedrin and the head of the temple guard, who had been awaiting his
summons on the lower garden terrace, in a round gazebo with a fountain. To
this Pilate added that he himself would come out to the garden at once, and
withdrew into the palace.
While the secretary was gathering the conference, the procurator met,
in a room shielded from the sun by dark curtains, with a certain man, whose
face was half covered by a hood, though he could not have been bothered by
the sun's rays in this room. The meeting was a very short one. The
procurator quietly spoke a few words to the man, after which he withdrew and
Pilate walked out through the colonnade to the garden.
There, in the presence of all those he had desired to see, the
procurator solemnly and dryly stated that he confirmed the death sentence on
Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and officially inquired of the members of the Sanhedrin as
to whom among the criminals they would like to grant life. Having received
the reply that it was Bar-Rabban, the procurator said:
Very well,' and told the secretary to put it into the record at once,
clutched in his hand the clasp that the secretary had picked up from the
sand, and said solemnly: It is time!'
Here all those present started down the wide marble stairway between
walls of roses that exuded a stupefying aroma, descending lower and lower
towards the palace wall, to the gates opening on to the big, smoothly paved
square, at the end of which could be seen the columns and statues of the
Yershalaim stadium.
As soon as the group entered the square from the garden and mounted the
spacious stone platform that dominated the square, Pilate, looking around
through narrowed eyelids, assessed the situation.
The space he had just traversed, that is, the space from the palace
wall to the platform, was empty, but before him Pilate could no longer see
the square - it had been swallowed up by the crowd, which would have poured
over the platform and the cleared space as well, had it not been kept at bay
by a triple row of Sebastean soldiers to the left of Pilate and soldiers of
the auxiliary Iturean cohort to his right.
And so, Pilate mounted the platform, mechanically clutching the useless
clasp in his fist and squinting his eyes. The procurator was squinting not
because the sun burned his eyes - no! For some reason he did not want to see
the group of condemned men who, as he knew perfectly well, were now being
brought on to the platform behind him.
As soon as the white cloak with crimson lining appeared high up on the
stone cliff over the verge of the human sea, the unseeing Pilate was struck
in the ears by a wave of sound: 'Ha-a-a...' It started mutedly, arising
somewhere far away by the hippodrome, then became thunderous and, having
held out for a few seconds, began to subside. They've seen me,' the
procurator thought. The wave had not reached its lowest point before it
started swelling again unexpectedly and, swaying, rose higher than the
first, and as foam boils up on the billows of the sea, so a whistling boiled
up on this second wave and, separate, distinguishable from the thunder, the
wails of women. They've been led on to the platform,' thought Pilate, `and
the wails mean that several women got crushed as the crowd surged forward.'
He waited for some time, knowing that no power could silence the crowd
before it exhaled all that was pent up in it and fell silent of itself.
And when this moment came, the procurator threw up his right arm, and
the last noise was blown away from the crowd.
Then Pilate drew into his breast as much of the hot air as he could and
shouted, and his cracked voice carried over thousands of heads:
'In the name of the emperor Caesar! ...'
Here his ears were struck several times by a clipped iron shout: the
cohorts of soldiers raised high their spears and standards and shouted out
terribly:
'Long live Caesar!'
Pilate lifted his face and thrust it straight into the sun. Green fire
flared up behind his eyelids, his brain took flame from it, and hoarse
Aramaic words went flying over the crowd:
`Four criminals, arrested in Yershalaim for murder, incitement to
rebellion, and outrages against the laws and the faith, have been sentenced
to a shameful execution - by hanging on posts! And this execution will
presently be carried out on Bald Mountain! The names of the criminals are
Dysmas, Gestas, Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri. Here they stand before you!'
Pilate pointed to his right, not seeing any criminals, but knowing they
were there, in place, where they ought to be.
The crowd responded with a long rumble as if of surprise or relief.
When it died down, Pilate continued:
'But only three of them will be executed, for, in accordance with law
and custom, in honour of the feast of Passover, to one of the condemned, as
chosen by the Lesser Sanhedrin and confirmed by Roman authority, the
magnanimous emperor Caesar will return his contemptible life!'
Pilate cried out the words and at the same time listened as the rumble
was replaced by a great silence. Not a sigh, not a rustle reached his ears
now, and there was even a moment when it seemed to Pilate that everything
around him had vanished altogether. The hated city died, and he alone is
standing there, scorched by the sheer rays, his face set against the sky.
Pilate held the silence a little longer, and then began to cry out:
'The name of the one who will now be set free before you is...' He made
one more pause, holding back the name, making sure he had said all, because
he knew that the dead city would resurrect once the name of the lucky man
was spoken, and no further words would be heard. 'All?' Pilate whispered
soundlessly to himself. 'All. The name!' And, rolling the letter 'r' over
the silent city, he cried:
'Bar-Rabban!'
Here it seemed to him that the sun, clanging, burst over him and
flooded his ears with fire. This fire raged with roars, shrieks, wails,
guffaws and whistles.
Pilate turned and walked back across the platform to the stairs,
looking at nothing except the multicoloured squares of the flooring under
his feet, so as not to trip. He knew that behind his back the platform was
being showered with bronze coins, dates, that people in the howling mob were
climbing on shoulders, crushing each other, to see the miracle with their
own eyes - how a man already in the grip of death escaped that grip! How the
legionaries take the ropes off him, involuntarily causing him burning pain
in his arms, dislocated during his interrogation; how he, wincing and
groaning, nevertheless smiles a senseless, crazed smile.
He knew that at the same time the convoy was already leading the three
men with bound arms to the side stairs, so as to take them to the road going
west from the city, towards Bald Mountain. Only when he was off the
platform, to the rear of it, did Pilate open his eyes, knowing that he was
now safe - he could no longer see the condemned men.
Mingled with the wails of the quieting crowd, yet distinguishable from
them, were the piercing cries of heralds repeating, some in Aramaic, others
in Greek, all that the procurator had cried out from the platform. Besides
that, there came to his ears the tapping, clattering and approaching thud of
hoofs, and a trumpet calling out something brief and merry. These sounds
were answered by the drilling whistles of boys on the roofs of houses along
the street that led from the bazaar to the hippodrome square, and by cries
of 'Look out!'
A soldier, standing alone in the cleared space of the square with a
standard in his hand, waved it anxiously, and then the procurator, the
legate of the legion, the secretary and the convoy stopped.
A cavalry ala, at an ever-lengthening trot, flew out into the square,
so as to cross it at one side, bypassing the mass of people, and ride down a
lane under a stone wall covered with creeping vines, taking the shortest
route to Bald Mountain.
At a flying trot, small as a boy, dark as a mulatto, the commander of
the ala, a Syrian, coming abreast of Pilate, shouted something in a high
voice and snatched his sword from its sheath. The angry, sweating black
horse shied and reared. Thrusting his sword back into its sheath, the
commander struck the horse's neck with his crop, brought him down, and rode
off into the lane, breaking into a gallop. After him, three by three,
horsemen flew in a cloud of dust, the tips of their light bamboo lances
bobbing, and faces dashed past the procurator - looking especially swarthy
under their white turbans - with merrily bared, gleaming teeth.
Raising dust to the sky, the ala burst into the lane, and the last to
ride past Pilate was a soldier with a trumpet slung on his back, blazing in
the sun.
Shielding himself from the dust with his hand and wrinkling his face
discontentedly, Pilate started on in the direction of the gates to the
palace garden, and after him came the legate, the secretary, and the convoy.
It was around ten o'clock in the morning.
CHAPTER 3. The Seventh Proof
'Yes, it was around ten o'clock in the morning, my esteemed Ivan
Nikolaevich,' said the professor.
The poet passed his hand over his face like a man just coming to his
senses, and saw that it was evening at the Patriarch's Ponds. The water in
the pond had turned black, and a light boat was now gliding on it, and one
could hear the splash of oars and the giggles of some citizeness in the
little boat. The public appeared on the benches along the walks, but again
on the other three sides of the square, and not on the side where our
interlocutors were.
The sky over Moscow seemed to lose colour, and the full moon could be
seen quite distinctly high above, not yet golden but white. It was much
easier to breathe, and the voices under the lindens now sounded softer,
eveningish.
`How is it I didn't notice that he'd managed to spin a whole story?...'
Homeless thought in amazement. 'It's already evening! ... Or maybe he wasn't
telling it, but I simply fell asleep and dreamed it all?'
But it must be supposed that the professor did tell the story after
all, otherwise it would have to be assumed that Berlioz had had the same
dream, because he said, studying the foreigner's face attentively:
'Your story is extremely interesting, Professor, though it does not
coincide at all with the Gospel stories.'
'Good heavens,' the professor responded, smiling condescendingly, 'you
of all people should know that precisely nothing of what is written in the
Gospels ever actually took place, and if we start referring to the Gospels
as a historical source...' he smiled once more, and Berlioz stopped short,
because this was literally the same thing he had been saying to Homeless as
they walked down Bronnaya towards the Patriarch's Ponds.
'That's so,' Berlioz replied, 'but I'm afraid no one can confirm that
what you've just told us actually took place either.'
'Oh, yes! That there is one who can!' the professor, beginning to speak
in broken language, said with great assurance, and with unexpected
mysteriousness he motioned the two friends to move closer.
They leaned towards him from both sides, and he said, but again without
any accent, which with him, devil knows why, now appeared, now disappeared:
The thing is...' here the professor looked around fearfully and spoke
in a whisper, `that I was personally present at it all. I was on Pontius
Pilate's balcony, and in the garden when he talked with Kaifa, and on the
platform, only secretly, incognito, so to speak, and therefore I beg you -
not a word to anyone, total secrecy, shh...'
Silence fell, and Berlioz paled.
'YOU ... how long have you been in Moscow?' he asked in a quavering
voice.
'I just arrived in Moscow this very minute,' the professor said
perplexedly, and only here did it occur to the friends to take a good look
in his eyes, at which they became convinced that his left eye, the green
one, was totally insane, while the right one was empty, black and dead.
'There's the whole explanation for you!' Berlioz thought in
bewilderment. 'A mad German has turned up, or just went crazy at the Ponds.
What a story!'
Yes, indeed, that explained the whole thing: the strangest breakfast
with the late philosopher Kant, the foolish talk about sunflower oil and
Annushka, the predictions about his head being cut off and all the rest -
the professor was mad.
Berlioz realized at once what had to be done. Leaning back on the
bench, he winked to Homeless behind the professor's back - meaning, don't
contradict him - but the perplexed poet did not understand these signals.
'Yes, yes, yes,' Berlioz said excitedly, `incidentally it's all
possible... even very possible, Pontius Pilate, and the balcony, and so
forth... Did you come alone or with your wife?'
'Alone, alone, I'm always alone,' the professor replied bitterly.
'And where are your things, Professor?' Berlioz asked insinuatingly.
'At the Metropol?* Where are you staying?'
'I? ... Nowhere,' the half-witted German answered, his green eye
wandering in wild anguish over the Patriarch's Ponds.
'How's that? But ... where are you going to live?'
'In your apartment,' the madman suddenly said brashly, and winked.
'I ... I'm very glad ...' Berlioz began muttering, 'but, really, you
won't be comfortable at my place ... and they have wonderful rooms at the
Metropol, it's a first-class hotel...'
'And there's no devil either?' the sick man suddenly inquired merrily
of Ivan Nikolaevich.
'No devil...'
'Don't contradict him,' Berlioz whispered with his lips only, dropping
behind the professor's back and making faces.
There isn't any devil!' Ivan Nikolaevich, at a loss from all this
balderdash, cried out not what he ought. 'What a punishment! Stop playing
the psycho!'
Here the insane man burst into such laughter that a sparrow flew out of
the linden over the seated men's heads.
'Well, now that is positively interesting!' the professor said, shaking
with laughter. 'What is it with you - no matter what one asks for, there
isn't any!' He suddenly stopped laughing and, quite understandably for a
mentally ill person, fell into the opposite extreme after laughing, became
vexed and cried sternly: 'So you mean there just simply isn't any?'
'Calm down, calm down, calm down, Professor,' Berlioz muttered, for
fear of agitating the sick man. 'You sit here for a little minute with
comrade Homeless, and I'll just run to the corner to make a phone call, and
then we'll take you wherever you like. You don't know the city...'
Berlioz's plan must be acknowledged as correct: he had to run to the
nearest public telephone and inform the foreigners' bureau, thus and so,
there's some consultant from abroad sitting at the Patriarch's Ponds in an
obviously abnormal state. So it was necessary to take measures, lest some
unpleasant nonsense result.
To make a call? Well, then make your call,' the sick man agreed sadly,
and suddenly begged passionately: `But I implore you, before you go, at
least believe that the devil exists! I no longer ask you for anything more.
Mind you, there exists a seventh proof of it, the surest of all! And it
is going to be presented to you right now!'
'Very good, very good,' Berlioz said with false tenderness and, winking
to the upset poet, who did not relish at all the idea of guarding the mad
German, set out for the exit from the Ponds at the corner of Bronnaya and
Yermolaevsky Lane.
And the professor seemed to recover his health and brighten up at once.
'Mikhail Alexandrovich!' he shouted after Berlioz.
The latter gave a start, looked back, but reassured himself with the
thought that the professor had also learned his name and patronymic from
some newspaper.
Then the professor called out, cupping his hands like a megaphone:
`Would you like me to have a telegram sent at once to your uncle in
Kiev?'
And again Berlioz winced. How does the madman know about the existence
of