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© Mikhail Bulgakov
© Translated from the russian by Michael Glenny
© 1967 Collins and Harvill Press, London
OCR: Scout
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Translated from the russian by Michael Glenny
Collins and Harvill Press, London
Printed in Great Britain by Collins Clear-Type Press London and Glasgow
1967 in the English translation
The Harvill Press, London, and
Harper air Row Publishers Inc., New York
OCR: Scout
BOOK ONE
1 Never Talk to Strangers
2 Pontius Pilate
3 The Seventh Proof
4 The Pursuit
5 The Affair at Griboyedov
6 Schizophrenia
7 The Haunted Flat
8 A Duel between Professor and Poet
9 Koroviev's Tricks
10 News from Yalta
11 The Two Ivans
12. Black Magic Revealed
13 Enter the Hero
14 Saved by Cock-Crow
15 The Dream of Nikanor Ivanovich
16 The Execution
17 A Day of Anxiety
18 Unwelcome Visitors
book two
19 Margarita
20 Azazello's Cream
21 The Flight
22 By Candlelight
23 Satan's Rout
24 The Master is Released
25 How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Karioth
26 The Burial
27 The Last of Flat No. 50
28 The Final Adventure of Koroviev and Behemoth
29 The Fate of the Master and Margarita is Decided
30 Time to Go
31 On Sparrow Hills
32 Absolution and Eternal Refuge
Epilogue
'Say at last--who art thou?'
'That Power I serve
Which wills forever evil
Yet does forever good.'
Goethe, Faust
At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at
Patriarch's Ponds. The first of them--aged about forty, dressed in a greyish
summer suit--was short, dark-haired, well-fed and bald. He carried his
decorous pork-pie hat by the brim and his neatly shaven face was embellished
by black hornrimmed spectacles of preternatural dimensions. The other, a
broad-shouldered young man with curly reddish hair and a check cap pushed
back to the nape of his neck, was wearing a tartan shirt, chewed white
trousers and black sneakers.
The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, editor of
a highbrow literary magazine and chairman of the management cofnmittee of
one of the biggest Moscow literary clubs, known by its abbreviation as
massolit; his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov who
wrote under the pseudonym of Bezdomny.
Reaching the shade of the budding lime trees, the two writers went
straight to a gaily-painted kiosk labelled'Beer and Minerals'.
There was an oddness about that terrible day in May which is worth
recording : not only at the kiosk but along the whole avenue parallel to
Malaya Bronnaya Street there was not a person to be seen. It was the hour of
the day when people feel too exhausted to breathe, when Moscow glows in a
dry haze as the sun disappears behind the Sadovaya Boulevard--yet no one had
come out for a walk under the limes, no one was sitting on a bench, the
avenue was empty.
'A glass of lemonade, please,'said Berlioz.
'There isn't any,'replied the woman in the kiosk. For some reason the
request seemed to offend her.
'Got any beer?' enquired Bezdomny in a hoarse voice.
'Beer's being delivered later this evening' said the woman.
'Well what have you got?' asked Berlioz.
'Apricot juice, only it's warm' was the answer.
'All right, let's have some.'
The apricot juice produced a rich yellow froth, making the air smell
like a hairdresser's. After drinking it the two writers immediately began to
hiccup. They paid and sat down on a bench facing the pond, their backs to
Bronnaya Street.Then occurred the second oddness, which affected Berlioz
alone. He suddenly stopped hiccuping, his heart thumped and for a moment
vanished, then returned but with a blunt needle sticking into it. In
addition Berlioz was seized by a fear that was groundless but so powerful
that he had an immediate impulse to run away from Patriarch's Ponds without
looking back.
Berlioz gazed miserably about him, unable to say what had frightened
him. He went pale, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and thought: '
What's the matter with me? This has never happened before. Heart playing
tricks . . . I'm overstrained ... I think it's time to chuck everything up
and go and take the waters at Kislovodsk. . . .'
Just then the sultry air coagulated and wove itself into the shape of a
man--a transparent man of the strangest appearance. On his small head was a
jockey-cap and he wore a short check bum-freezer made of air. The man was
seven feet tall but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin and with a face
made for derision.
Berlioz's life was so arranged that he was not accustomed to seeing
unusual phenomena. Paling even more, he stared and thought in consternation
: ' It can't be!'
But alas it was, and the tall, transparent gentleman was swaying from
left to right in front of him without touching the ground.
Berlioz was so overcome with horror that he shut his eyes. When he
opened them he saw that it was all over, the mirage had dissolved, the
chequered figure had vanished and the blunt needle had simultaneously
removed itself from his heart.
'The devil! ' exclaimed the editor. ' D'you know, Ivan, the heat
nearly gave me a stroke just then! I even saw something like a hallucination
. . . ' He tried to smile but his eyes were still blinking with fear and his
hands trembled. However he gradually calmed down, flapped his handkerchief
and with a brave enough ' Well, now. . . ' carried on the conversation that
had been interrupted by their drink of apricot juice.
They had been talking, it seemed, about Jesus Christ. The fact was that
the editor had commissioned the poet to write a long anti-religious poem for
one of the regular issues of his magazine. Ivan Nikolayich had written this
poem in record time, but unfortunately the editor did not care for it at
all. Bezdomny had drawn the chief figure in his poem, Jesus, in very black
colours, yet in the editor's opinion the whole poem had to be written again.
And now he was reading Bezdomny a lecture on Jesus in order to stress the
poet's fundamental error.
It was hard to say exactly what had made Bezdomny write as he
had--whether it was his great talent for graphic description or complete
ignorance of the subject he was writing on, but his Jesus had come out,
well, completely alive, a Jesus who had really existed, although admittedly
a Jesus who had every possible fault.
Berlioz however wanted to prove to the poet that the main object was
not who Jesus was, whether he was bad or good, but that as a person Jesus
had never existed at all and that all the stories about him were mere
invention, pure myth.
The editor was a well-read man and able to make skilful reference to
the ancient historians, such as the famous Philo of Alexandria and the
brilliantly educated Josephus Flavius, neither of whom mentioned a word of
Jesus' existence. With a display of solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich
informed the poet that incidentally, the passage in Chapter 44 of the
fifteenth book of Tacitus' Annals, where he describes the execution of
Jesus, was nothing but a later forgery.
The poet, for whom everything the editor was saying was a novelty,
listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing him with his bold
green eyes, occasionally hiccuping and cursing the apricot juice under his
breath.
'There is not one oriental religion,' said Berlioz, ' in which an
immaculate virgin does not bring a god into the world. And the Christians,
lacking any originality, invented their Jesus in exactly the same way. In
fact he never lived at all. That's where the stress has got to lie.
Berlioz's high tenor resounded along the empty avenue and as Mikhail
Alexandrovich picked his way round the sort of historical pitfalls that can
only be negotiated safely by a highly educated man, the poet learned more
and more useful and instructive facts about the Egyptian god Osiris, son of
Earth and Heaven, about the Phoenician god Thammuz, about Marduk and even
about the fierce little-known god Vitzli-Putzli, who had once been held in
great veneration by the Aztecs of Mexico. At the very moment when Mikhail
Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs used to model figurines of
Vitzli-Putzli out of dough-- the first man appeared in the avenue.
Afterwards, when it was frankly too late, various bodies collected
their data and issued descriptions of this man. As to his teeth, he haid
platinum crowns on his left side and gold ones on his tight. He wore an
expensive grey suit and foreign shoes of the same colour as his suit. His
grey beret was stuck jauntily over one ear and under his arm he carried a
walking-stick with a knob in the shape of a poodle's head. He looked
slightly over forty. Crooked sort of mouth. Clean-shav-n. Dark hair. Right
eye black, left ieye for some reason green. Eyebrows black, but one higher
than the other. In short--a foreigner.
As he passed the bench occupied by the editor and the poet, the
foreigner gave them a sidelong glance, stopped and suddenly sat down on the
next bench a couple of paces away from the two friends.
'A German,'' thought Berlioz. ' An Englishman. ...' thought Bezdomny.
' Phew, he must be hot in those gloves!'
The stranger glanced round the tall houses that formed a square round
the pond, from which it was obvious that he seeing this locality for the
first time and that it interested him. His gaze halted on the upper storeys,
whose panes threw back a blinding, fragmented reflection of the sun which
was setting on Mikhail Alexandrovich for ever ; he then looked downwards to
where the windows were turning darker in the early evening twilight, smiled
patronisingly at something, frowned, placed his hands on the knob of his
cane and laid his chin on his hands.
'You see, Ivan,' said Berlioz,' you have written a marvellously
satirical description of the birth of Jesus, the son of God, but the whole
joke lies in the fact that there had already been a whole series of sons of
God before Jesus, such as the Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Attis, the
Persian Mithras. Of course not one of these ever existed, including Jesus,
and instead of the nativity or the arrival of the Magi you should have
described the absurd rumours about their arrival. But according to your
story the nativity really took place! '
Here Bezdomny made an effort to stop his torturing hiccups and held his
breath, but it only made him hiccup more loudly and painfully. At that
moment Berlioz interrupted his speech because the foreigner suddenly rose
and approached the two writers. They stared at him in astonishment.
'Excuse me, please,' said the stranger with a foreign accent, although
in correct Russian, ' for permitting myself, without an introduction . . .
but the subject of your learned conversation was so interesting that. . .'
Here he politely took off his beret and the two friends had no
alternative but to rise and bow.
'No, probably a Frenchman.. . .' thought Berlioz.
'A Pole,' thought Bezdomny.
I should add that the poet had found the stranger repulsive from first
sight, although Berlioz had liked the look of him, or rather not exactly
liked him but, well. . . been interested by him.
'May I join you? ' enquired the foreigner politely, and as the two
friends moved somewhat unwillingly aside he adroitly placed himself 'between
them and at once joined the conversation. ' If I am not mistaken, you were
saying that Jesus never existed, were you not? ' he asked, turning his green
left eye on Berlioz.
'No, you were not mistaken,' replied Berlioz courteously. ' I did
indeed say that.'
'Ah, how interesting! ' exclaimed the foreigner.
'What the hell does he want?' thought Bezdomny and frowned.
'And do you agree with your friend? ' enquired the unknown man,
turning to Bezdomny on his right.
'A hundred per cent! ' affirmed the poet, who loved to use pretentious
numerical expressions.
'Astounding! ' cried their unbidden companion. Glancing furtively
round and lowering his voice he said : ' Forgive me for being so rude, but
am I right in thinking that you do not believe in God either? ' He gave a
horrified look and said: ' I swear not to tell anyone! '
'Yes, neither of us believes in God,' answered Berlioz with a faint
smile at this foreign tourist's apprehension. ' But we can talk about it
with absolute freedom.'
The foreigner leaned against the backrest of the bench and asked, in a
voice positively squeaking with curiosity :
'Are you . . . atheists? '
'Yes, we're atheists,' replied Berlioz, smiling, and Bezdomny thought
angrily : ' Trying to pick an argument, damn foreigner! '
'Oh, how delightful!' exclaimed the astonishing foreigner and swivelled
his head from side to side, staring at each of them in turn.
'In our country there's nothing surprising about atheism,' said
Berlioz with diplomatic politeness. ' Most of us have long ago and quite
consciously given up believing in all those fairy-tales about God.'
At this the foreigner did an extraordinary thing--he stood up and shook
the astonished editor by the hand, saying as he did so :
'Allow me to thank you with all my heart!'
'What are you thanking him for? ' asked Bezdomny, blinking.
'For some very valuable information, which as a traveller I find
extremely interesting,' said the eccentric foreigner, raising his forefinger
meaningfully.
This valuable piece of information had obviously made a powerful
impression on the traveller, as he gave a frightened glance at the houses as
though afraid of seeing an atheist at every window.
'No, he's not an Englishman,' thought Berlioz. Bezdomny thought: '
What I'd like to know is--where did he manage to pick up such good Russian?
' and frowned again.
'But might I enquire,' began the visitor from abroad after some
worried reflection, ' how you account for the proofs of the existence of
God, of which there are, as you know, five? '
'Alas! ' replied Berlioz regretfully. ' Not one of these proofs is
valid, and mankind has long since relegated them to the archives. You must
agree that rationally there can be no proof of the existence of God.'
'Bravo!' exclaimed the stranger. ' Bravo! You have exactly repeated
the views of the immortal Emmanuel on that subject. But here's the oddity of
it: he completely demolished all five proofs and then, as though to deride
his own efforts, he formulated a sixth proof of his own.'
'Kant's proof,' objected the learned editor with a thin smile, ' is
also unconvincing. Not for nothing did Schiller say that Kant's reasoning on
this question would only satisfy slaves, and Strauss simply laughed at his
proof.'
As Berlioz spoke he thought to himself: ' But who on earth is he? And
how does he speak such good Russian? '
'Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for
that " proof " of his! ' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly.
'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed.
But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an asylum not only did not
surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. ' Exactly, exactly! ' he
cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered. ' That's exactly
the place for him! I said to him myself that morning at breakfast: " If
you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may be clever but
it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad." '
Berlioz's eyes bulged. ' At breakfast ... to Kant? What is he rambling
about? ' he thought.
'But,' went on the foreigner, unperturbed by Berlioz's amazement and
turning to the poet, ' sending him to Solovki is out of the question,
because for over a hundred years now he has been somewhere far away from
Solovki and I assure you that it is totally impossible to bring him back.'
'What a pity!' said the impetuous poet.
'It is a pity,' agreed the unknown man with a glint in his eye, and
went on: ' But this is the question that disturbs me--if there is no God,
then who, one wonders, rules the life of man and keeps the world in order? '
'Man rules himself,' said Bezdomny angrily in answer to such an
obviously absurd question.
'I beg your pardon,' retorted the stranger quietly,' but to rule one
must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow
me to enquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only
incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a
thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow? '
'In fact,' here the stranger turned to Berlioz, ' imagine what would
happen if you, for instance, were to start organising others and yourself,
and you developed a taste for it--then suddenly you got. . . he, he ... a
slight heart attack . . . ' at this the foreigner smiled sweetly, as though
the thought of a heart attack gave him pleasure. . . . ' Yes, a heart
attack,' he repeated the word sonorously, grinning like a cat, ' and that's
the end of you as an organiser! No one's fate except your own interests you
any longer. Your relations start lying to you. Sensing that something is
amiss you rush to a specialist, then to a charlatan, and even perhaps to a
fortune-teller. Each of them is as useless as the other, as you know
perfectly well. And it all ends in tragedy: the man who thought he was in
charge is suddenly reduced to lying prone and motionless in a wooden box and
his fellow men, realising that there is no more sense to be had of him,
incinerate him.
'Sometimes it can be even worse : a man decides to go to
Kislovodsk,'--here the stranger stared at Berlioz--' a trivial matter you
may think, but he cannot because for no good reason he suddenly jumps up and
falls under a tram! You're not going to tell me that he arranged to do that
himself? Wouldn't it be nearer the truth to say that someone quite different
was directing his fate?' The stranger gave an eerie peal of laughter.
Berlioz had been following the unpleasant story about the heart attack
and the tram with great attention and some uncomfortable thoughts had begun
to worry him. ' He's not a foreigner . . . he's not a foreigner,' he
thought, ' he's a very peculiar character . . . but I ask you, who is he? .
. . '
'I see you'd like to smoke,' said the stranger unexpectedly, turning
to Bezdomny, ' what sort do you prefer? '
'Do you mean you've got different sorts? ' glumly asked the poet, who
had run out of cigarettes.
'Which do you prefer? ' repeated the mysterious stranger.
'Well, then " Our Brand ",' replied Bezdomny, irritated.
The unknown man immediately pulled a cigarette case out of his pocket
and offered it to Bezdomny.
" Our Brand " . . .'
The editor and the poet were not so much surprised by the fact that the
cigarette case actually contained ' Our Brand' as by the cigarette case
itself. It was of enormous dimensions, made of solid gold and on the inside
of the cover a triangle of diamonds flashed with blue and white fire.
Their reactions were different. Berlioz thought: ' No, he's a
foreigner.' Bezdomny thought: ' What the hell is he . . .? '
The poet and the owner of the case lit their cigarettes and Berlioz,
who did not smoke, refused.
'I shall refute his argument by saying' Berlioz decided to himself, '
that of course man is mortal, no one will argue with that. But the fact is
that . . .'
However he was not able to pronounce the words before the stranger
spoke:
'Of course man is mortal, but that's only half the problem. The trouble
is that mortality sometimes comes to him so suddenly! And he cannot even say
what he will be doing this evening.'
'What a stupid way of putting the question. ' thought Berlioz and
objected :
'Now there you exaggerate. I know more or less exactly what I'm going
to be doing this evening. Provided of course that a brick doesn't fall on my
head in the street. . .'
'A brick is neither here nor there,' the stranger interrupted
persuasively. ' A brick never falls on anyone's head. You in particular, I
assure you, are in no danger from that. Your death will be different.'
'Perhaps you know exactly how I am going to die? ' enquired Berlioz
with understandable sarcasm at the ridiculous turn that the conversation
seemed to be taking. ' Would you like to tell me?'
'Certainly,' rejoined the stranger. He looked Berlioz up and down as
though he were measuring him for a suit and muttered through his teeth
something that sounded like : ' One, two . . . Mercury in the second house .
. . the moon waning . . . six-- accident . . . evening--seven . . . ' then
announced loudly and cheerfully : ' Your 'head will be cut off!'
Bezdomny turned to the stranger with a wild, furious stare and Berlioz
asked with a sardonic grin :
'By whom? Enemies? Foreign spies? '
'No,' replied their companion, ' by a Russian woman, a member of the
Komsomol.'
'Hm,' grunted Berlioz, upset by the foreigner's little joke. ' That,
if you don'c mind my saying so, is most improbable.'
'I beg your pardon,' replied the foreigner, ' but it is so. Oh yes, I
was going to ask you--what are you doing this evening, if it's not a secret?
'
'It's no secret. From here I'm going home, and then at ten o'clock
this evening there's a meeting at the massolit and I shall be in the chair.'
'No, that is absolutely impossible,' said the stranger firmly.
'Why?'
'Because,' replied the foreigner and frowned up at the sky where,
sensing the oncoming cool of the evening, the birds were flying to roost, '
Anna has already bought the sunflower-seed oil, in fact she has not only
bought it, but has already spilled it. So that meeting will not take place.'
With this, as one might imagine, there was silence beneath the lime
trees.
'Excuse me,' said Berlioz after a pause with a glance at the
stranger's jaunty beret, ' but what on earth has sunflower-seed oil got to
do with it... and who is Anna? '
'I'll tell you what sunflower-seed oil's got to do with it,' said
Bezdomny suddenly, having obviously decided to declare war on their
uninvited companion. ' Have you, citizen, ever had to spend any time in a
mental hospital? '
'Ivan! ' hissed Mikhail Alexandrovich.
But the stranger was not in the least offended and gave a cheerful
laugh. ' Yes, I have, I have, and more than once! ' he exclaimed laughing,
though the stare that he gave the poet was mirthless. ' Where haven't I
been! My only regret is that I didn't stay long enough to ask the professor
what schizophrenia was. But you are going to find that out from him
yourself, Ivan Nikolayich!'
'How do you know my name? '
'My dear fellow, who doesn't know you? ' With this the foreigner
pulled the previous day's issue of The Literary Gazette out of his pocket
and Ivan Nikolayich saw his own picture on the front page above some of his
own verse. Suddenly what had delighted him yesterday as proof of his fame
and popularity no longer gave the poet any pleasure at all.
'I beg your pardon,' he said, his face darkening. ' Would you excuse
us for a minute? I should like a word or two with my friend.'
'Oh, with pleasure! ' exclaimed the stranger. ' It's so delightful
sitting here under the trees and I'm not in a hurry to go anywhere, as it
happens.'
'Look here, Misha,' whispered the poet when he had drawn Berlioz
aside. ' He's not just a foreign tourist, he's a spy. He's a Russian emigre
and he's trying to catch us out. Ask him for his papers and then he'll go
away . . .'
'Do you think we should? ' whispered Berlioz anxiously, thinking to
himself--' He's right, of course . . .'
'Mark my words,' the poet whispered to him. ' He's pretending to be an
idiot so that he can trap us with some compromising question. You can hear
how he speaks Russian,' said the poet, glancing sideways and watching to see
that the stranger was not eavesdropping. ' Come on, let's arrest him and
then we'll get rid of him.'
The poet led Berlioz by the arm back to the bench.
The unknown man was no longer sitting on it but standing beside it,
holding a booklet in a dark grey binding, a fat envelope made of good paper
and a visiting card.
'Forgive me, but in the heat of our argument I forgot to introduce
myself. Here is my card, my passport and a letter inviting me to come to
Moscow for consultations,' said the stranger gravely, giving both writers a
piercing stare.
The two men were embarrassed. ' Hell, he overheard us . . . ' thought
Berlioz, indicating with a polite gesture that there was no need for this
show of documents. Whilst the stranger was offering them to the editor, the
poet managed to catch sight of the visiting card. On it in foreign lettering
was the word ' Professor ' and the initial letter of a surname which began
with a'W'.
'Delighted,' muttered the editor awkwardly as the foreigner put his
papers back into his pocket. Good relations having been re-established, all
three sat down again on the bench.
'So you've been invited here as a consultant, have you, professor? '
asked Berlioz.
'Yes, I have.'
'Are you German? ' enquired Bezdomny.
'I? ' rejoined the professor and thought for a moment. ' Yes, I
suppose I am German. . . . ' he said.
'You speak excellent Russian,' remarked Bezdomny.
'Oh, I'm something of a polyglot. I know a great number of languages,'
replied the professor.
'And what is your particular field of work? ' asked Berlioz.
'I specialise in black magic.'
'Like hell you do! . . . ' thought Mikhail Alexandrovich.
'And ... and you've been invited here to give advice on that? ' he
asked with a gulp.
'Yes,' the professor assured him, and went on : ' Apparently your
National Library has unearthed some original manuscripts of the
ninth-century necromancer Herbert Aurilachs. I have been asked to decipher
them. I am the only specialist in the world.'
'Aha! So you're a historian? ' asked Berlioz in a tone of considerable
relief and respect.
' Yes, I am a historian,' adding with apparently complete
inconsequence, ' this evening a historic event is going to take place here
at Patriarch's Ponds.'
Again the editor and the poet showed signs of utter amazement, but the
professor beckoned to them and when both had bent their heads towards him he
whispered :
'Jesus did exist, you know.'
'Look, professor,' said Berlioz, with a forced smile, ' With all
respect to you as a scholar we take a different attitude on that point.'
'It's not a question of having an attitude,' replied the strange
professor. ' He existed, that's all there is to it.'
'But one must have some proof. . . . ' began Berlioz.
'There's no need for any proof,' answered the professor. In a low
voice, his foreign accent vanishing altogether, he began :
'It's very simple--early in the morning on the fourteenth of the
spring month of Nisan the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in a white
cloak lined with blood-red...
Early in the morning on the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan the
Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in a white cloak lined with blood-red,
emerged with his shuffling cavalryman's walk into the arcade connecting the
two wings of the palace of Herod the Great.
More than anything else in the world the Procurator hated the smell of
attar of roses. The omens for the day were bad, as this scent had been
haunting him since dawn.
It seemed to the Procurator that the very cypresses and palms in the
garden were exuding the smell of roses, that this damned stench of roses was
even mingling with the smell of leather tackle and sweat from his mounted
bodyguard.
A haze of smoke was drifting towards the arcade across the upper
courtyard of the garden, coming from the wing at the rear of the palace, the
quarters of the first cohort of the XII Legion ; known as the ' Lightning',
it had been stationed in Jerusalem since the Procurator's arrival. The same
oily perfume of roses was mixed with the acrid smoke that showed that the
centuries' cooks had started to prepare breakfast.
'Oh gods, what are you punishing me for? . . . No, there's no doubt, I
have it again, this terrible incurable pain . . . hemicrania, when half the
head aches . . . there's no cure for it, nothing helps. ... I must try not
to move my head. . . . '
A chair had already been placed on the mosaic floor by the fountain;
without a glance round, the Procurator sat in it and stretched out his hand
to one side. His secretary deferentially laid a piece of parchment in his
hand. Unable to restrain a grimace of agony the Procurator gave a fleeting
sideways look at its contents, returned the parchment to his secretary and
said painfully:
'The accused comes from Galilee, does he? Was the case sent to the
tetrarch? '
'Yes, Procurator,' replied the secretary. ' He declined to confirm the
finding of the court and passed the Sanhedrin's sentence of death to you for
confirmation.'
The Procurator's cheek twitched and he said quietly :
'Bring in the accused.'
At once two legionaries escorted a man of about twenty-seven from the
courtyard, under the arcade and up to the balcony, where they placed him
before the Procurator's chair. The man was dressed in a shabby, torn blue
chiton. His head was covered with a white bandage fastened round his
forehead, his hands tied behind his back. There was a large bruise under the
man's left eye and a scab of dried blood in one corner of his mouth. The
prisoner stared at the Procurator with anxious curiosity.
The Procurator was silent at first, then asked quietly in Aramaic:
'So you have been inciting the people to destroy the temple of
Jerusalem? '
The Procurator sat as though carved in stone, his lips barely moving as
he pronounced the words. The Procurator was like stone from fear of shaking
his fiendishly aching head.
The man with bound hands made a slight move forwards and began
speaking:
'Good man! Believe me . . . '
But the Procurator, immobile as before and without raising his voice,
at once interrupted him :
'You call me good man? You are making a mistake. The rumour about me
in Jerusalem is that I am a raving monster and that is absolutely correct,'
and he added in the same monotone :
'Send centurion Muribellum to me.'
The balcony seemed to darken when the centurion of the first century.
Mark surnamed Muribellum, appeared before the Procurator. Muribellum was a
head taller than the tallest soldier in the legion and so broad in the
shoulders that he completely obscured the rising sun.
The Procurator said to the centurion in Latin:
'This criminal calls me " good man ". Take him away for a minute and
show him the proper way to address me. But do not mutilate him.'
All except the motionless Procurator watched Mark Muribellum as he
gestured to the prisoner to follow him. Because of his height people always
watched Muribellum wherever he went. Those who saw him for the first time
were inevitably fascinated by his disfigured face : his nose had once been
smashed by a blow from a German club.
Mark's heavy boots resounded on the mosaic, the bound man followed him
noiselessly. There was complete silence under the arcade except for the
cooing of doves in the garden below and the water singing its seductive tune
in the fountain.
The Procurator had a sudden urge to get up and put his temples under
the stream of water until they were numb. But he knew that even that would
not help.
Having led the prisoner out of the arcade into the garden, Muribellum
took a whip from the hands of a legionary standing by the plinth of a bronze
statue and with a gentle swing struck the prisoner across the shoulders. The
centurion's movement was slight, almost negligent, but the bound man
collapsed instantly as though his legs had been struck from under him and he
gasped for air. The colour fled from his face and his eyes clouded.
With only his left hand Mark lifted the fallen man into the air as
lightly as an empty sack, set him on his feet and said in broken, nasal
Aramaic:
'You call a Roman Procurator " hegemon " Don't say anything else.
Stand to attention. Do you understand or must I hit you again? '
The prisoner staggered helplessly, his colour returned, he gulped and
answered hoarsely :
'I understand you. Don't beat me.'
A minute later he was again standing in front of the Procurator. The
harsh, suffering voice rang out:
'Name?'
'Mine? ' enquired the prisoner hurriedly, his whole being expressing
readiness to answer sensibly and to forestall any further anger.
The Procurator said quietly :
'I know my own name. Don't pretend to be stupider than you are. Your
name.'
'Yeshua,' replied the prisoner hastily.
'Surname?'
'Ha-Notsri.'
'Where are you from? '
'From the town of Gamala,' replied the prisoner, nodding his head to
show that far over there to his right, in the north, was the town of Gamala.
'Who are you by birth? '
'I don't know exactly,' promptly answered the prisoner, ' I don't
remember my parents. I was told that my father was a Syrian. . . .'
'Where is your fixed abode? '
'I have no home,' said the prisoner shamefacedly, ' I move from town
to town.'
'There is a shorter way of saying that--in a word you are a vagrant,'
said the Procurator and asked: ' Have you any relations?'
'No, none. Not one in the world.'
'Can you read and write? ' ' Yes.'
'Do you know any language besides Aramaic?
'' Yes. Greek.'
One swollen eyelid was raised and a pain-clouded eye stared at the
prisoner. The other eye remained closed. Pilate said in Greek :
'So you intended to destroy the temple building and incited the people
to do so?'
'Never, goo . . . ' Terror flashed across the prisoner's face for
having so nearly said the wrong word. ' Never in my life, hegemon, have I
intended to destroy the temple. Nor have I ever tried to persuade anyone to
do such a senseless thing.'
A look of amazement came over the secretary's face as he bent over a
low table recording the evidence. He raised his head but immediately lowered
it again over his parchment.
'People of all kinds are streaming into the city for the feast-day.
Among them there are magicians, astrologers, seers and murderers,' said the
Procurator in a monotone. ' There are also liars. You, for instance, are a
liar. It is clearly written down : he incited people to destroy the temple.
Witnesses have said so.'
'These good people,' the prisoner began, and hastily adding '
hegemon', he went on, ' are unlearned and have confused everything I said. I
am beginning to fear that this confusion will last for a very long time. And
all because he untruthfully wrote down what I said.'
There was silence. Now both pain-filled eyes stared heavily at the
prisoner.
'I repeat, but for the last time--stop pretending to be mad,
scoundrel,' said Pilate softly and evenly. ' What has been written down
about you is little enough, but it is sufficient to hang you.'
'No, no, hegemon,' said the prisoner, straining with the desire to
convince. ' This man follows me everywhere with nothing but his goatskin
parchment and writes incessantly. But I once caught a glimpse of that
parchment and I was horrified. I had not said a word of what was written
there. I begged him-- please burn this parchment of yours! But he tore it
out of my hands and ran away.'
'Who was he? ' enquired Pilate in a strained voice and put his hand to
his temple.
'Matthew the Levite,' said the prisoner eagerly. ' He was a
tax-collector. I first met him on the road to Bethlehem at the corner where
the road skirts a fig orchard and I started talking to him. At first he was
rude and even insulted me, or rather he thought he was insulting me by
calling me a dog.' The prisoner laughed. ' Personally I see nothing wrong
with that animal so I was not offended by the word. . . .'
The secretary stopped taking notes and glanced surreptitiously, not at
the prisoner, but at the Procurator.
'However, when he had heard me out he grew milder,' went on Yeshua,'
and in the end he threw his money into the road and said that he would go
travelling with me. . . .'
Pilate laughed with one cheek. Baring his yellow teeth and turning
fully round to his secretary he said :
'Oh, city of Jerusalem! What tales you have to tell! A tax-collector,
did you hear, throwing away his money!'
Not knowing what reply was expected of him, the secretary chose to
return Pilate's smile.
'And he said that henceforth he loathed his money,' said Yeshua in
explanation of Matthew the Levite's strange action, adding : ' And since
then he has been my companion.'
His teeth still bared in a grin, the Procurator glanced at the
prisoner, then at the sun rising inexorably over the equestrian statues of
the hippodrome far below to his left, and suddenly in a moment of agonising
nausea it occurred to him that the simplest thing would be to dismiss this
curious rascal from his balcony with no more than two words : ' Hang him. '
Dismiss the body-guard too, leave the arcade and go indoors, order the room
to be darkened, fall on to his couch, send for cold water, call for his dog
Banga in a pitiful voice and complain to the dog about his hemicrania.
Suddenly the tempting thought of poison flashed through the Procurator's
mind.
He stared dully at the prisoner for a while, trying painfully to recall
why this man with the bruised face was standing in front of him in the
pitiless Jerusalem morning sunshine and what further useless questions he
should put to him.
'Matthew the Levite? ' asked the suffering man in a hoarse voice,
closing his eyes.
'Yes, Matthew the Levite,' came the grating, high-pitched reply.
'So you did make a speech about the temple to the crowd in the temple
forecourt? '
The voice that answered seemed to strike Pilate on the forehead,
causing him inexpressible torture and it said:
'I spoke, hegemon, of how the temple of the old beliefs would fall
down and the new temple of truth would be built up. I used those words to
make my meaning easier to understand.'
'Why should a tramp like you upset the crowd in the bazaar by talking
about truth, something of which you have no conception? What is truth? '
At this the Procurator thought: ' Ye gods! This is a court of law and I
am asking him an irrelevant question . . . my mind no longer obeys me. . . .
' Once more he had a vision of a goblet of dark liquid. ' Poison, I need
poison.. .. ' And again he heard the voice :
'At this moment the truth is chiefly that your head is aching and
aching so hard that you are having cowardly thoughts about death. Not only
are you in no condition to talk to me, but it even hurts you to look at me.
This makes me seem to be your torturer, which distresses me. You cannot even
think and you can only long for your dog, who is clearly the only creature
for whom you have any affection. But the pain will stop soon and your
headache will go.'
The secretary stared at the prisoner, his note-taking abandoned. Pilate
raised his martyred eyes to the prisoner and saw how high the sun now stood
above the hippodrome, how a ray had penetrated the arcade, had crept towards
Yeshua's patched sandals and how the man moved aside from the sunlight. The
Procurator stood up and clasped his head in his hands. Horror came over his
yellowish, clean-shaven face. With an effort of will he controlled his
expression and sank back into his chair.
Meanwhile the prisoner continued talking, but the secretary had stopped
writing, craning his neck like a goose in the effort not to miss a single
word.
'There, it has gone,' said the prisoner, with a kindly glance at
Pilate. ' I am so glad. I would advise you, hegemon, to leave the palace for
a while and take a walk somewhere nearby, perhaps in the gardens or on Mount
Eleona. There will be thunder . . .' The prisoner turned and squinted into
the sun . . . ' later, towards evening. A walk would do you a great deal of
good and I should be happy to go with you. Some new thoughts have just come
into my head which you might, I think, find interesting and I should like to
discuss them with you, the more so as you strike me as a man of great
intelligence.' The secretary turned mortally pale and dropped his scroll to
the ground. ' Your trouble is,' went on the unstoppable prisoner, ' that
your mind is too closed and you have finally lost your faith in human
beings. You must admit that no one ought to lavish all their devotion on a
dog. Your life is a cramped one, hegemon.' Here the speaker allowed himself
to smile.
The only thought in the secretary's mind now was whether he could
believe his ears. He had to believe them. He then tried to guess in what
strange form the Procurator's fiery temper might break out at the prisoner's
unheard-of insolence. Although he knew the Procurator well the secretary's
imagination failed him.
Then the hoarse, broken voice of the Procurator barked out in Latin:
'Untie his hands.'
One of the legionary escorts tapped the ground with his lance, gave it
to his neighbour, approached and removed the prisoner's bonds. The secretary
picked up his scroll, decided to take no more notes for a while and to be
astonished at nothing he might hear.
'Tell me,' said Pilate softly in Latin, ' are you a great physician?'
'No, Procurator, I am no physician,' replied the prisoner, gratefully
rubbing his twisted, swollen, purpling wrist.
Staring from beneath his eyelids, Pilate's eyes bored into the prisoner
and those eyes were no longer dull. They now flashed with their familiar
sparkle. ' I did not ask you,' said Pilate. ' Do you know Latin too? '
'Yes, I do,' replied the prisoner.
The colour flowed back into Pilate's yellowed cheeks and he asked in
Latin:
'How did you know that I wanted to call my dog? '
'Quite simple,' the prisoner answered in Latin. ' You moved your hand
through the air . . . ' the prisoner repeated Pilate's gesture . . . ' as
though to stroke something and your lips . . .'
'Yes,' said Pilate.
There was silence. Then Pilate put a question in Greek :
'So you are a physician? '
'No, no,' was the prisoner's eager reply. ' Believe me I am not.'
'Very well, if you wish to keep it a secret, do so. It has no direct
bearing on the case. So you maintain that you never incited people to tear
down ... or burn, or by any means destroy the temple?'
'I repeat, hegemon, that I have never tried to persuade anyone to
attempt any such thing. Do I look weak in the head? '
'Oh no, you do not,' replied the Procurator quietly, and smiled an
ominous smile. ' Very well, swear that it is not so.'
'What would you have me swear by? ' enquired the unbound prisoner with
great urgency.
'Well, by your life,' replied the Procurator. ' It is high time to
swear by it because you should know that it is hanging by a thread.'
'You do not believe, do you, hegemon, that it is you who have strung
it up?' asked the prisoner. ' If you do you are mistaken.'
Pilate shuddered and answered through clenched teeth :
'I can cut that thread.'
'You are mistaken there too,' objected the prisoner, beaming and
shading himself from the sun with his hand. ' You must agree, I think, that
the thread can only be cut by the one who has suspended it? '
'Yes, yes,' said Pilate, smiling. ' I now have no doubt that the idle
gapers of Jerusalem have been pursuing you. I do not know who strung up your
tongue, but he strung it well. By the way. tell me, is it true that you
entered Jerusalem by the Susim Gate mounted on a donkey, accompanied by a
rabble who greeted you as though you were a prophet? ' Here the Procurator
pointed to a scroll of parchment.
© Mikhail Bulgakov
© Translated from the russian by Michael Glenny
© 1967 Collins and Harvill Press, London
OCR: Scout
---------------------------------------------------------------
Translated from the russian by Michael Glenny
Collins and Harvill Press, London
Printed in Great Britain by Collins Clear-Type Press London and Glasgow
1967 in the English translation
The Harvill Press, London, and
Harper air Row Publishers Inc., New York
OCR: Scout
BOOK ONE
1 Never Talk to Strangers
2 Pontius Pilate
3 The Seventh Proof
4 The Pursuit
5 The Affair at Griboyedov
6 Schizophrenia
7 The Haunted Flat
8 A Duel between Professor and Poet
9 Koroviev's Tricks
10 News from Yalta
11 The Two Ivans
12. Black Magic Revealed
13 Enter the Hero
14 Saved by Cock-Crow
15 The Dream of Nikanor Ivanovich
16 The Execution
17 A Day of Anxiety
18 Unwelcome Visitors
book two
19 Margarita
20 Azazello's Cream
21 The Flight
22 By Candlelight
23 Satan's Rout
24 The Master is Released
25 How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Karioth
26 The Burial
27 The Last of Flat No. 50
28 The Final Adventure of Koroviev and Behemoth
29 The Fate of the Master and Margarita is Decided
30 Time to Go
31 On Sparrow Hills
32 Absolution and Eternal Refuge
Epilogue
'Say at last--who art thou?'
'That Power I serve
Which wills forever evil
Yet does forever good.'
Goethe, Faust
At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at
Patriarch's Ponds. The first of them--aged about forty, dressed in a greyish
summer suit--was short, dark-haired, well-fed and bald. He carried his
decorous pork-pie hat by the brim and his neatly shaven face was embellished
by black hornrimmed spectacles of preternatural dimensions. The other, a
broad-shouldered young man with curly reddish hair and a check cap pushed
back to the nape of his neck, was wearing a tartan shirt, chewed white
trousers and black sneakers.
The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, editor of
a highbrow literary magazine and chairman of the management cofnmittee of
one of the biggest Moscow literary clubs, known by its abbreviation as
massolit; his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolayich Poniryov who
wrote under the pseudonym of Bezdomny.
Reaching the shade of the budding lime trees, the two writers went
straight to a gaily-painted kiosk labelled'Beer and Minerals'.
There was an oddness about that terrible day in May which is worth
recording : not only at the kiosk but along the whole avenue parallel to
Malaya Bronnaya Street there was not a person to be seen. It was the hour of
the day when people feel too exhausted to breathe, when Moscow glows in a
dry haze as the sun disappears behind the Sadovaya Boulevard--yet no one had
come out for a walk under the limes, no one was sitting on a bench, the
avenue was empty.
'A glass of lemonade, please,'said Berlioz.
'There isn't any,'replied the woman in the kiosk. For some reason the
request seemed to offend her.
'Got any beer?' enquired Bezdomny in a hoarse voice.
'Beer's being delivered later this evening' said the woman.
'Well what have you got?' asked Berlioz.
'Apricot juice, only it's warm' was the answer.
'All right, let's have some.'
The apricot juice produced a rich yellow froth, making the air smell
like a hairdresser's. After drinking it the two writers immediately began to
hiccup. They paid and sat down on a bench facing the pond, their backs to
Bronnaya Street.Then occurred the second oddness, which affected Berlioz
alone. He suddenly stopped hiccuping, his heart thumped and for a moment
vanished, then returned but with a blunt needle sticking into it. In
addition Berlioz was seized by a fear that was groundless but so powerful
that he had an immediate impulse to run away from Patriarch's Ponds without
looking back.
Berlioz gazed miserably about him, unable to say what had frightened
him. He went pale, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and thought: '
What's the matter with me? This has never happened before. Heart playing
tricks . . . I'm overstrained ... I think it's time to chuck everything up
and go and take the waters at Kislovodsk. . . .'
Just then the sultry air coagulated and wove itself into the shape of a
man--a transparent man of the strangest appearance. On his small head was a
jockey-cap and he wore a short check bum-freezer made of air. The man was
seven feet tall but narrow in the shoulders, incredibly thin and with a face
made for derision.
Berlioz's life was so arranged that he was not accustomed to seeing
unusual phenomena. Paling even more, he stared and thought in consternation
: ' It can't be!'
But alas it was, and the tall, transparent gentleman was swaying from
left to right in front of him without touching the ground.
Berlioz was so overcome with horror that he shut his eyes. When he
opened them he saw that it was all over, the mirage had dissolved, the
chequered figure had vanished and the blunt needle had simultaneously
removed itself from his heart.
'The devil! ' exclaimed the editor. ' D'you know, Ivan, the heat
nearly gave me a stroke just then! I even saw something like a hallucination
. . . ' He tried to smile but his eyes were still blinking with fear and his
hands trembled. However he gradually calmed down, flapped his handkerchief
and with a brave enough ' Well, now. . . ' carried on the conversation that
had been interrupted by their drink of apricot juice.
They had been talking, it seemed, about Jesus Christ. The fact was that
the editor had commissioned the poet to write a long anti-religious poem for
one of the regular issues of his magazine. Ivan Nikolayich had written this
poem in record time, but unfortunately the editor did not care for it at
all. Bezdomny had drawn the chief figure in his poem, Jesus, in very black
colours, yet in the editor's opinion the whole poem had to be written again.
And now he was reading Bezdomny a lecture on Jesus in order to stress the
poet's fundamental error.
It was hard to say exactly what had made Bezdomny write as he
had--whether it was his great talent for graphic description or complete
ignorance of the subject he was writing on, but his Jesus had come out,
well, completely alive, a Jesus who had really existed, although admittedly
a Jesus who had every possible fault.
Berlioz however wanted to prove to the poet that the main object was
not who Jesus was, whether he was bad or good, but that as a person Jesus
had never existed at all and that all the stories about him were mere
invention, pure myth.
The editor was a well-read man and able to make skilful reference to
the ancient historians, such as the famous Philo of Alexandria and the
brilliantly educated Josephus Flavius, neither of whom mentioned a word of
Jesus' existence. With a display of solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich
informed the poet that incidentally, the passage in Chapter 44 of the
fifteenth book of Tacitus' Annals, where he describes the execution of
Jesus, was nothing but a later forgery.
The poet, for whom everything the editor was saying was a novelty,
listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing him with his bold
green eyes, occasionally hiccuping and cursing the apricot juice under his
breath.
'There is not one oriental religion,' said Berlioz, ' in which an
immaculate virgin does not bring a god into the world. And the Christians,
lacking any originality, invented their Jesus in exactly the same way. In
fact he never lived at all. That's where the stress has got to lie.
Berlioz's high tenor resounded along the empty avenue and as Mikhail
Alexandrovich picked his way round the sort of historical pitfalls that can
only be negotiated safely by a highly educated man, the poet learned more
and more useful and instructive facts about the Egyptian god Osiris, son of
Earth and Heaven, about the Phoenician god Thammuz, about Marduk and even
about the fierce little-known god Vitzli-Putzli, who had once been held in
great veneration by the Aztecs of Mexico. At the very moment when Mikhail
Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs used to model figurines of
Vitzli-Putzli out of dough-- the first man appeared in the avenue.
Afterwards, when it was frankly too late, various bodies collected
their data and issued descriptions of this man. As to his teeth, he haid
platinum crowns on his left side and gold ones on his tight. He wore an
expensive grey suit and foreign shoes of the same colour as his suit. His
grey beret was stuck jauntily over one ear and under his arm he carried a
walking-stick with a knob in the shape of a poodle's head. He looked
slightly over forty. Crooked sort of mouth. Clean-shav-n. Dark hair. Right
eye black, left ieye for some reason green. Eyebrows black, but one higher
than the other. In short--a foreigner.
As he passed the bench occupied by the editor and the poet, the
foreigner gave them a sidelong glance, stopped and suddenly sat down on the
next bench a couple of paces away from the two friends.
'A German,'' thought Berlioz. ' An Englishman. ...' thought Bezdomny.
' Phew, he must be hot in those gloves!'
The stranger glanced round the tall houses that formed a square round
the pond, from which it was obvious that he seeing this locality for the
first time and that it interested him. His gaze halted on the upper storeys,
whose panes threw back a blinding, fragmented reflection of the sun which
was setting on Mikhail Alexandrovich for ever ; he then looked downwards to
where the windows were turning darker in the early evening twilight, smiled
patronisingly at something, frowned, placed his hands on the knob of his
cane and laid his chin on his hands.
'You see, Ivan,' said Berlioz,' you have written a marvellously
satirical description of the birth of Jesus, the son of God, but the whole
joke lies in the fact that there had already been a whole series of sons of
God before Jesus, such as the Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Attis, the
Persian Mithras. Of course not one of these ever existed, including Jesus,
and instead of the nativity or the arrival of the Magi you should have
described the absurd rumours about their arrival. But according to your
story the nativity really took place! '
Here Bezdomny made an effort to stop his torturing hiccups and held his
breath, but it only made him hiccup more loudly and painfully. At that
moment Berlioz interrupted his speech because the foreigner suddenly rose
and approached the two writers. They stared at him in astonishment.
'Excuse me, please,' said the stranger with a foreign accent, although
in correct Russian, ' for permitting myself, without an introduction . . .
but the subject of your learned conversation was so interesting that. . .'
Here he politely took off his beret and the two friends had no
alternative but to rise and bow.
'No, probably a Frenchman.. . .' thought Berlioz.
'A Pole,' thought Bezdomny.
I should add that the poet had found the stranger repulsive from first
sight, although Berlioz had liked the look of him, or rather not exactly
liked him but, well. . . been interested by him.
'May I join you? ' enquired the foreigner politely, and as the two
friends moved somewhat unwillingly aside he adroitly placed himself 'between
them and at once joined the conversation. ' If I am not mistaken, you were
saying that Jesus never existed, were you not? ' he asked, turning his green
left eye on Berlioz.
'No, you were not mistaken,' replied Berlioz courteously. ' I did
indeed say that.'
'Ah, how interesting! ' exclaimed the foreigner.
'What the hell does he want?' thought Bezdomny and frowned.
'And do you agree with your friend? ' enquired the unknown man,
turning to Bezdomny on his right.
'A hundred per cent! ' affirmed the poet, who loved to use pretentious
numerical expressions.
'Astounding! ' cried their unbidden companion. Glancing furtively
round and lowering his voice he said : ' Forgive me for being so rude, but
am I right in thinking that you do not believe in God either? ' He gave a
horrified look and said: ' I swear not to tell anyone! '
'Yes, neither of us believes in God,' answered Berlioz with a faint
smile at this foreign tourist's apprehension. ' But we can talk about it
with absolute freedom.'
The foreigner leaned against the backrest of the bench and asked, in a
voice positively squeaking with curiosity :
'Are you . . . atheists? '
'Yes, we're atheists,' replied Berlioz, smiling, and Bezdomny thought
angrily : ' Trying to pick an argument, damn foreigner! '
'Oh, how delightful!' exclaimed the astonishing foreigner and swivelled
his head from side to side, staring at each of them in turn.
'In our country there's nothing surprising about atheism,' said
Berlioz with diplomatic politeness. ' Most of us have long ago and quite
consciously given up believing in all those fairy-tales about God.'
At this the foreigner did an extraordinary thing--he stood up and shook
the astonished editor by the hand, saying as he did so :
'Allow me to thank you with all my heart!'
'What are you thanking him for? ' asked Bezdomny, blinking.
'For some very valuable information, which as a traveller I find
extremely interesting,' said the eccentric foreigner, raising his forefinger
meaningfully.
This valuable piece of information had obviously made a powerful
impression on the traveller, as he gave a frightened glance at the houses as
though afraid of seeing an atheist at every window.
'No, he's not an Englishman,' thought Berlioz. Bezdomny thought: '
What I'd like to know is--where did he manage to pick up such good Russian?
' and frowned again.
'But might I enquire,' began the visitor from abroad after some
worried reflection, ' how you account for the proofs of the existence of
God, of which there are, as you know, five? '
'Alas! ' replied Berlioz regretfully. ' Not one of these proofs is
valid, and mankind has long since relegated them to the archives. You must
agree that rationally there can be no proof of the existence of God.'
'Bravo!' exclaimed the stranger. ' Bravo! You have exactly repeated
the views of the immortal Emmanuel on that subject. But here's the oddity of
it: he completely demolished all five proofs and then, as though to deride
his own efforts, he formulated a sixth proof of his own.'
'Kant's proof,' objected the learned editor with a thin smile, ' is
also unconvincing. Not for nothing did Schiller say that Kant's reasoning on
this question would only satisfy slaves, and Strauss simply laughed at his
proof.'
As Berlioz spoke he thought to himself: ' But who on earth is he? And
how does he speak such good Russian? '
'Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for
that " proof " of his! ' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly.
'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed.
But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an asylum not only did not
surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. ' Exactly, exactly! ' he
cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered. ' That's exactly
the place for him! I said to him myself that morning at breakfast: " If
you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may be clever but
it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad." '
Berlioz's eyes bulged. ' At breakfast ... to Kant? What is he rambling
about? ' he thought.
'But,' went on the foreigner, unperturbed by Berlioz's amazement and
turning to the poet, ' sending him to Solovki is out of the question,
because for over a hundred years now he has been somewhere far away from
Solovki and I assure you that it is totally impossible to bring him back.'
'What a pity!' said the impetuous poet.
'It is a pity,' agreed the unknown man with a glint in his eye, and
went on: ' But this is the question that disturbs me--if there is no God,
then who, one wonders, rules the life of man and keeps the world in order? '
'Man rules himself,' said Bezdomny angrily in answer to such an
obviously absurd question.
'I beg your pardon,' retorted the stranger quietly,' but to rule one
must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow
me to enquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only
incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a
thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow? '
'In fact,' here the stranger turned to Berlioz, ' imagine what would
happen if you, for instance, were to start organising others and yourself,
and you developed a taste for it--then suddenly you got. . . he, he ... a
slight heart attack . . . ' at this the foreigner smiled sweetly, as though
the thought of a heart attack gave him pleasure. . . . ' Yes, a heart
attack,' he repeated the word sonorously, grinning like a cat, ' and that's
the end of you as an organiser! No one's fate except your own interests you
any longer. Your relations start lying to you. Sensing that something is
amiss you rush to a specialist, then to a charlatan, and even perhaps to a
fortune-teller. Each of them is as useless as the other, as you know
perfectly well. And it all ends in tragedy: the man who thought he was in
charge is suddenly reduced to lying prone and motionless in a wooden box and
his fellow men, realising that there is no more sense to be had of him,
incinerate him.
'Sometimes it can be even worse : a man decides to go to
Kislovodsk,'--here the stranger stared at Berlioz--' a trivial matter you
may think, but he cannot because for no good reason he suddenly jumps up and
falls under a tram! You're not going to tell me that he arranged to do that
himself? Wouldn't it be nearer the truth to say that someone quite different
was directing his fate?' The stranger gave an eerie peal of laughter.
Berlioz had been following the unpleasant story about the heart attack
and the tram with great attention and some uncomfortable thoughts had begun
to worry him. ' He's not a foreigner . . . he's not a foreigner,' he
thought, ' he's a very peculiar character . . . but I ask you, who is he? .
. . '
'I see you'd like to smoke,' said the stranger unexpectedly, turning
to Bezdomny, ' what sort do you prefer? '
'Do you mean you've got different sorts? ' glumly asked the poet, who
had run out of cigarettes.
'Which do you prefer? ' repeated the mysterious stranger.
'Well, then " Our Brand ",' replied Bezdomny, irritated.
The unknown man immediately pulled a cigarette case out of his pocket
and offered it to Bezdomny.
" Our Brand " . . .'
The editor and the poet were not so much surprised by the fact that the
cigarette case actually contained ' Our Brand' as by the cigarette case
itself. It was of enormous dimensions, made of solid gold and on the inside
of the cover a triangle of diamonds flashed with blue and white fire.
Their reactions were different. Berlioz thought: ' No, he's a
foreigner.' Bezdomny thought: ' What the hell is he . . .? '
The poet and the owner of the case lit their cigarettes and Berlioz,
who did not smoke, refused.
'I shall refute his argument by saying' Berlioz decided to himself, '
that of course man is mortal, no one will argue with that. But the fact is
that . . .'
However he was not able to pronounce the words before the stranger
spoke:
'Of course man is mortal, but that's only half the problem. The trouble
is that mortality sometimes comes to him so suddenly! And he cannot even say
what he will be doing this evening.'
'What a stupid way of putting the question. ' thought Berlioz and
objected :
'Now there you exaggerate. I know more or less exactly what I'm going
to be doing this evening. Provided of course that a brick doesn't fall on my
head in the street. . .'
'A brick is neither here nor there,' the stranger interrupted
persuasively. ' A brick never falls on anyone's head. You in particular, I
assure you, are in no danger from that. Your death will be different.'
'Perhaps you know exactly how I am going to die? ' enquired Berlioz
with understandable sarcasm at the ridiculous turn that the conversation
seemed to be taking. ' Would you like to tell me?'
'Certainly,' rejoined the stranger. He looked Berlioz up and down as
though he were measuring him for a suit and muttered through his teeth
something that sounded like : ' One, two . . . Mercury in the second house .
. . the moon waning . . . six-- accident . . . evening--seven . . . ' then
announced loudly and cheerfully : ' Your 'head will be cut off!'
Bezdomny turned to the stranger with a wild, furious stare and Berlioz
asked with a sardonic grin :
'By whom? Enemies? Foreign spies? '
'No,' replied their companion, ' by a Russian woman, a member of the
Komsomol.'
'Hm,' grunted Berlioz, upset by the foreigner's little joke. ' That,
if you don'c mind my saying so, is most improbable.'
'I beg your pardon,' replied the foreigner, ' but it is so. Oh yes, I
was going to ask you--what are you doing this evening, if it's not a secret?
'
'It's no secret. From here I'm going home, and then at ten o'clock
this evening there's a meeting at the massolit and I shall be in the chair.'
'No, that is absolutely impossible,' said the stranger firmly.
'Why?'
'Because,' replied the foreigner and frowned up at the sky where,
sensing the oncoming cool of the evening, the birds were flying to roost, '
Anna has already bought the sunflower-seed oil, in fact she has not only
bought it, but has already spilled it. So that meeting will not take place.'
With this, as one might imagine, there was silence beneath the lime
trees.
'Excuse me,' said Berlioz after a pause with a glance at the
stranger's jaunty beret, ' but what on earth has sunflower-seed oil got to
do with it... and who is Anna? '
'I'll tell you what sunflower-seed oil's got to do with it,' said
Bezdomny suddenly, having obviously decided to declare war on their
uninvited companion. ' Have you, citizen, ever had to spend any time in a
mental hospital? '
'Ivan! ' hissed Mikhail Alexandrovich.
But the stranger was not in the least offended and gave a cheerful
laugh. ' Yes, I have, I have, and more than once! ' he exclaimed laughing,
though the stare that he gave the poet was mirthless. ' Where haven't I
been! My only regret is that I didn't stay long enough to ask the professor
what schizophrenia was. But you are going to find that out from him
yourself, Ivan Nikolayich!'
'How do you know my name? '
'My dear fellow, who doesn't know you? ' With this the foreigner
pulled the previous day's issue of The Literary Gazette out of his pocket
and Ivan Nikolayich saw his own picture on the front page above some of his
own verse. Suddenly what had delighted him yesterday as proof of his fame
and popularity no longer gave the poet any pleasure at all.
'I beg your pardon,' he said, his face darkening. ' Would you excuse
us for a minute? I should like a word or two with my friend.'
'Oh, with pleasure! ' exclaimed the stranger. ' It's so delightful
sitting here under the trees and I'm not in a hurry to go anywhere, as it
happens.'
'Look here, Misha,' whispered the poet when he had drawn Berlioz
aside. ' He's not just a foreign tourist, he's a spy. He's a Russian emigre
and he's trying to catch us out. Ask him for his papers and then he'll go
away . . .'
'Do you think we should? ' whispered Berlioz anxiously, thinking to
himself--' He's right, of course . . .'
'Mark my words,' the poet whispered to him. ' He's pretending to be an
idiot so that he can trap us with some compromising question. You can hear
how he speaks Russian,' said the poet, glancing sideways and watching to see
that the stranger was not eavesdropping. ' Come on, let's arrest him and
then we'll get rid of him.'
The poet led Berlioz by the arm back to the bench.
The unknown man was no longer sitting on it but standing beside it,
holding a booklet in a dark grey binding, a fat envelope made of good paper
and a visiting card.
'Forgive me, but in the heat of our argument I forgot to introduce
myself. Here is my card, my passport and a letter inviting me to come to
Moscow for consultations,' said the stranger gravely, giving both writers a
piercing stare.
The two men were embarrassed. ' Hell, he overheard us . . . ' thought
Berlioz, indicating with a polite gesture that there was no need for this
show of documents. Whilst the stranger was offering them to the editor, the
poet managed to catch sight of the visiting card. On it in foreign lettering
was the word ' Professor ' and the initial letter of a surname which began
with a'W'.
'Delighted,' muttered the editor awkwardly as the foreigner put his
papers back into his pocket. Good relations having been re-established, all
three sat down again on the bench.
'So you've been invited here as a consultant, have you, professor? '
asked Berlioz.
'Yes, I have.'
'Are you German? ' enquired Bezdomny.
'I? ' rejoined the professor and thought for a moment. ' Yes, I
suppose I am German. . . . ' he said.
'You speak excellent Russian,' remarked Bezdomny.
'Oh, I'm something of a polyglot. I know a great number of languages,'
replied the professor.
'And what is your particular field of work? ' asked Berlioz.
'I specialise in black magic.'
'Like hell you do! . . . ' thought Mikhail Alexandrovich.
'And ... and you've been invited here to give advice on that? ' he
asked with a gulp.
'Yes,' the professor assured him, and went on : ' Apparently your
National Library has unearthed some original manuscripts of the
ninth-century necromancer Herbert Aurilachs. I have been asked to decipher
them. I am the only specialist in the world.'
'Aha! So you're a historian? ' asked Berlioz in a tone of considerable
relief and respect.
' Yes, I am a historian,' adding with apparently complete
inconsequence, ' this evening a historic event is going to take place here
at Patriarch's Ponds.'
Again the editor and the poet showed signs of utter amazement, but the
professor beckoned to them and when both had bent their heads towards him he
whispered :
'Jesus did exist, you know.'
'Look, professor,' said Berlioz, with a forced smile, ' With all
respect to you as a scholar we take a different attitude on that point.'
'It's not a question of having an attitude,' replied the strange
professor. ' He existed, that's all there is to it.'
'But one must have some proof. . . . ' began Berlioz.
'There's no need for any proof,' answered the professor. In a low
voice, his foreign accent vanishing altogether, he began :
'It's very simple--early in the morning on the fourteenth of the
spring month of Nisan the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in a white
cloak lined with blood-red...
Early in the morning on the fourteenth of the spring month of Nisan the
Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in a white cloak lined with blood-red,
emerged with his shuffling cavalryman's walk into the arcade connecting the
two wings of the palace of Herod the Great.
More than anything else in the world the Procurator hated the smell of
attar of roses. The omens for the day were bad, as this scent had been
haunting him since dawn.
It seemed to the Procurator that the very cypresses and palms in the
garden were exuding the smell of roses, that this damned stench of roses was
even mingling with the smell of leather tackle and sweat from his mounted
bodyguard.
A haze of smoke was drifting towards the arcade across the upper
courtyard of the garden, coming from the wing at the rear of the palace, the
quarters of the first cohort of the XII Legion ; known as the ' Lightning',
it had been stationed in Jerusalem since the Procurator's arrival. The same
oily perfume of roses was mixed with the acrid smoke that showed that the
centuries' cooks had started to prepare breakfast.
'Oh gods, what are you punishing me for? . . . No, there's no doubt, I
have it again, this terrible incurable pain . . . hemicrania, when half the
head aches . . . there's no cure for it, nothing helps. ... I must try not
to move my head. . . . '
A chair had already been placed on the mosaic floor by the fountain;
without a glance round, the Procurator sat in it and stretched out his hand
to one side. His secretary deferentially laid a piece of parchment in his
hand. Unable to restrain a grimace of agony the Procurator gave a fleeting
sideways look at its contents, returned the parchment to his secretary and
said painfully:
'The accused comes from Galilee, does he? Was the case sent to the
tetrarch? '
'Yes, Procurator,' replied the secretary. ' He declined to confirm the
finding of the court and passed the Sanhedrin's sentence of death to you for
confirmation.'
The Procurator's cheek twitched and he said quietly :
'Bring in the accused.'
At once two legionaries escorted a man of about twenty-seven from the
courtyard, under the arcade and up to the balcony, where they placed him
before the Procurator's chair. The man was dressed in a shabby, torn blue
chiton. His head was covered with a white bandage fastened round his
forehead, his hands tied behind his back. There was a large bruise under the
man's left eye and a scab of dried blood in one corner of his mouth. The
prisoner stared at the Procurator with anxious curiosity.
The Procurator was silent at first, then asked quietly in Aramaic:
'So you have been inciting the people to destroy the temple of
Jerusalem? '
The Procurator sat as though carved in stone, his lips barely moving as
he pronounced the words. The Procurator was like stone from fear of shaking
his fiendishly aching head.
The man with bound hands made a slight move forwards and began
speaking:
'Good man! Believe me . . . '
But the Procurator, immobile as before and without raising his voice,
at once interrupted him :
'You call me good man? You are making a mistake. The rumour about me
in Jerusalem is that I am a raving monster and that is absolutely correct,'
and he added in the same monotone :
'Send centurion Muribellum to me.'
The balcony seemed to darken when the centurion of the first century.
Mark surnamed Muribellum, appeared before the Procurator. Muribellum was a
head taller than the tallest soldier in the legion and so broad in the
shoulders that he completely obscured the rising sun.
The Procurator said to the centurion in Latin:
'This criminal calls me " good man ". Take him away for a minute and
show him the proper way to address me. But do not mutilate him.'
All except the motionless Procurator watched Mark Muribellum as he
gestured to the prisoner to follow him. Because of his height people always
watched Muribellum wherever he went. Those who saw him for the first time
were inevitably fascinated by his disfigured face : his nose had once been
smashed by a blow from a German club.
Mark's heavy boots resounded on the mosaic, the bound man followed him
noiselessly. There was complete silence under the arcade except for the
cooing of doves in the garden below and the water singing its seductive tune
in the fountain.
The Procurator had a sudden urge to get up and put his temples under
the stream of water until they were numb. But he knew that even that would
not help.
Having led the prisoner out of the arcade into the garden, Muribellum
took a whip from the hands of a legionary standing by the plinth of a bronze
statue and with a gentle swing struck the prisoner across the shoulders. The
centurion's movement was slight, almost negligent, but the bound man
collapsed instantly as though his legs had been struck from under him and he
gasped for air. The colour fled from his face and his eyes clouded.
With only his left hand Mark lifted the fallen man into the air as
lightly as an empty sack, set him on his feet and said in broken, nasal
Aramaic:
'You call a Roman Procurator " hegemon " Don't say anything else.
Stand to attention. Do you understand or must I hit you again? '
The prisoner staggered helplessly, his colour returned, he gulped and
answered hoarsely :
'I understand you. Don't beat me.'
A minute later he was again standing in front of the Procurator. The
harsh, suffering voice rang out:
'Name?'
'Mine? ' enquired the prisoner hurriedly, his whole being expressing
readiness to answer sensibly and to forestall any further anger.
The Procurator said quietly :
'I know my own name. Don't pretend to be stupider than you are. Your
name.'
'Yeshua,' replied the prisoner hastily.
'Surname?'
'Ha-Notsri.'
'Where are you from? '
'From the town of Gamala,' replied the prisoner, nodding his head to
show that far over there to his right, in the north, was the town of Gamala.
'Who are you by birth? '
'I don't know exactly,' promptly answered the prisoner, ' I don't
remember my parents. I was told that my father was a Syrian. . . .'
'Where is your fixed abode? '
'I have no home,' said the prisoner shamefacedly, ' I move from town
to town.'
'There is a shorter way of saying that--in a word you are a vagrant,'
said the Procurator and asked: ' Have you any relations?'
'No, none. Not one in the world.'
'Can you read and write? ' ' Yes.'
'Do you know any language besides Aramaic?
'' Yes. Greek.'
One swollen eyelid was raised and a pain-clouded eye stared at the
prisoner. The other eye remained closed. Pilate said in Greek :
'So you intended to destroy the temple building and incited the people
to do so?'
'Never, goo . . . ' Terror flashed across the prisoner's face for
having so nearly said the wrong word. ' Never in my life, hegemon, have I
intended to destroy the temple. Nor have I ever tried to persuade anyone to
do such a senseless thing.'
A look of amazement came over the secretary's face as he bent over a
low table recording the evidence. He raised his head but immediately lowered
it again over his parchment.
'People of all kinds are streaming into the city for the feast-day.
Among them there are magicians, astrologers, seers and murderers,' said the
Procurator in a monotone. ' There are also liars. You, for instance, are a
liar. It is clearly written down : he incited people to destroy the temple.
Witnesses have said so.'
'These good people,' the prisoner began, and hastily adding '
hegemon', he went on, ' are unlearned and have confused everything I said. I
am beginning to fear that this confusion will last for a very long time. And
all because he untruthfully wrote down what I said.'
There was silence. Now both pain-filled eyes stared heavily at the
prisoner.
'I repeat, but for the last time--stop pretending to be mad,
scoundrel,' said Pilate softly and evenly. ' What has been written down
about you is little enough, but it is sufficient to hang you.'
'No, no, hegemon,' said the prisoner, straining with the desire to
convince. ' This man follows me everywhere with nothing but his goatskin
parchment and writes incessantly. But I once caught a glimpse of that
parchment and I was horrified. I had not said a word of what was written
there. I begged him-- please burn this parchment of yours! But he tore it
out of my hands and ran away.'
'Who was he? ' enquired Pilate in a strained voice and put his hand to
his temple.
'Matthew the Levite,' said the prisoner eagerly. ' He was a
tax-collector. I first met him on the road to Bethlehem at the corner where
the road skirts a fig orchard and I started talking to him. At first he was
rude and even insulted me, or rather he thought he was insulting me by
calling me a dog.' The prisoner laughed. ' Personally I see nothing wrong
with that animal so I was not offended by the word. . . .'
The secretary stopped taking notes and glanced surreptitiously, not at
the prisoner, but at the Procurator.
'However, when he had heard me out he grew milder,' went on Yeshua,'
and in the end he threw his money into the road and said that he would go
travelling with me. . . .'
Pilate laughed with one cheek. Baring his yellow teeth and turning
fully round to his secretary he said :
'Oh, city of Jerusalem! What tales you have to tell! A tax-collector,
did you hear, throwing away his money!'
Not knowing what reply was expected of him, the secretary chose to
return Pilate's smile.
'And he said that henceforth he loathed his money,' said Yeshua in
explanation of Matthew the Levite's strange action, adding : ' And since
then he has been my companion.'
His teeth still bared in a grin, the Procurator glanced at the
prisoner, then at the sun rising inexorably over the equestrian statues of
the hippodrome far below to his left, and suddenly in a moment of agonising
nausea it occurred to him that the simplest thing would be to dismiss this
curious rascal from his balcony with no more than two words : ' Hang him. '
Dismiss the body-guard too, leave the arcade and go indoors, order the room
to be darkened, fall on to his couch, send for cold water, call for his dog
Banga in a pitiful voice and complain to the dog about his hemicrania.
Suddenly the tempting thought of poison flashed through the Procurator's
mind.
He stared dully at the prisoner for a while, trying painfully to recall
why this man with the bruised face was standing in front of him in the
pitiless Jerusalem morning sunshine and what further useless questions he
should put to him.
'Matthew the Levite? ' asked the suffering man in a hoarse voice,
closing his eyes.
'Yes, Matthew the Levite,' came the grating, high-pitched reply.
'So you did make a speech about the temple to the crowd in the temple
forecourt? '
The voice that answered seemed to strike Pilate on the forehead,
causing him inexpressible torture and it said:
'I spoke, hegemon, of how the temple of the old beliefs would fall
down and the new temple of truth would be built up. I used those words to
make my meaning easier to understand.'
'Why should a tramp like you upset the crowd in the bazaar by talking
about truth, something of which you have no conception? What is truth? '
At this the Procurator thought: ' Ye gods! This is a court of law and I
am asking him an irrelevant question . . . my mind no longer obeys me. . . .
' Once more he had a vision of a goblet of dark liquid. ' Poison, I need
poison.. .. ' And again he heard the voice :
'At this moment the truth is chiefly that your head is aching and
aching so hard that you are having cowardly thoughts about death. Not only
are you in no condition to talk to me, but it even hurts you to look at me.
This makes me seem to be your torturer, which distresses me. You cannot even
think and you can only long for your dog, who is clearly the only creature
for whom you have any affection. But the pain will stop soon and your
headache will go.'
The secretary stared at the prisoner, his note-taking abandoned. Pilate
raised his martyred eyes to the prisoner and saw how high the sun now stood
above the hippodrome, how a ray had penetrated the arcade, had crept towards
Yeshua's patched sandals and how the man moved aside from the sunlight. The
Procurator stood up and clasped his head in his hands. Horror came over his
yellowish, clean-shaven face. With an effort of will he controlled his
expression and sank back into his chair.
Meanwhile the prisoner continued talking, but the secretary had stopped
writing, craning his neck like a goose in the effort not to miss a single
word.
'There, it has gone,' said the prisoner, with a kindly glance at
Pilate. ' I am so glad. I would advise you, hegemon, to leave the palace for
a while and take a walk somewhere nearby, perhaps in the gardens or on Mount
Eleona. There will be thunder . . .' The prisoner turned and squinted into
the sun . . . ' later, towards evening. A walk would do you a great deal of
good and I should be happy to go with you. Some new thoughts have just come
into my head which you might, I think, find interesting and I should like to
discuss them with you, the more so as you strike me as a man of great
intelligence.' The secretary turned mortally pale and dropped his scroll to
the ground. ' Your trouble is,' went on the unstoppable prisoner, ' that
your mind is too closed and you have finally lost your faith in human
beings. You must admit that no one ought to lavish all their devotion on a
dog. Your life is a cramped one, hegemon.' Here the speaker allowed himself
to smile.
The only thought in the secretary's mind now was whether he could
believe his ears. He had to believe them. He then tried to guess in what
strange form the Procurator's fiery temper might break out at the prisoner's
unheard-of insolence. Although he knew the Procurator well the secretary's
imagination failed him.
Then the hoarse, broken voice of the Procurator barked out in Latin:
'Untie his hands.'
One of the legionary escorts tapped the ground with his lance, gave it
to his neighbour, approached and removed the prisoner's bonds. The secretary
picked up his scroll, decided to take no more notes for a while and to be
astonished at nothing he might hear.
'Tell me,' said Pilate softly in Latin, ' are you a great physician?'
'No, Procurator, I am no physician,' replied the prisoner, gratefully
rubbing his twisted, swollen, purpling wrist.
Staring from beneath his eyelids, Pilate's eyes bored into the prisoner
and those eyes were no longer dull. They now flashed with their familiar
sparkle. ' I did not ask you,' said Pilate. ' Do you know Latin too? '
'Yes, I do,' replied the prisoner.
The colour flowed back into Pilate's yellowed cheeks and he asked in
Latin:
'How did you know that I wanted to call my dog? '
'Quite simple,' the prisoner answered in Latin. ' You moved your hand
through the air . . . ' the prisoner repeated Pilate's gesture . . . ' as
though to stroke something and your lips . . .'
'Yes,' said Pilate.
There was silence. Then Pilate put a question in Greek :
'So you are a physician? '
'No, no,' was the prisoner's eager reply. ' Believe me I am not.'
'Very well, if you wish to keep it a secret, do so. It has no direct
bearing on the case. So you maintain that you never incited people to tear
down ... or burn, or by any means destroy the temple?'
'I repeat, hegemon, that I have never tried to persuade anyone to
attempt any such thing. Do I look weak in the head? '
'Oh no, you do not,' replied the Procurator quietly, and smiled an
ominous smile. ' Very well, swear that it is not so.'
'What would you have me swear by? ' enquired the unbound prisoner with
great urgency.
'Well, by your life,' replied the Procurator. ' It is high time to
swear by it because you should know that it is hanging by a thread.'
'You do not believe, do you, hegemon, that it is you who have strung
it up?' asked the prisoner. ' If you do you are mistaken.'
Pilate shuddered and answered through clenched teeth :
'I can cut that thread.'
'You are mistaken there too,' objected the prisoner, beaming and
shading himself from the sun with his hand. ' You must agree, I think, that
the thread can only be cut by the one who has suspended it? '
'Yes, yes,' said Pilate, smiling. ' I now have no doubt that the idle
gapers of Jerusalem have been pursuing you. I do not know who strung up your
tongue, but he strung it well. By the way. tell me, is it true that you
entered Jerusalem by the Susim Gate mounted on a donkey, accompanied by a
rabble who greeted you as though you were a prophet? ' Here the Procurator
pointed to a scroll of parchment.