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could also be seen, beyond the file of soldiers, the two dazzling spots on
the centurion's chest, and that was apparently quite enough for a man who
obviously wished to remain little noticed and not be bothered by anyone.
But some four hours ago, at the start of the execution, this man had
behaved quite differently, and might have been noticed very well, which was
probably why he had now changed his behaviour and secluded himself.
It was only when the procession came to the very top, beyond the file,
that he had first appeared, and as an obvious latecomer at that. He was
breathing hard, and did not walk but ran up the hill, pushing his way, and,
seeing the file close together before him as before everyone else, made a
naive attempt, pretending he did not understand the angry shouts, to break
through the soldiers to the very place of execution, where the condemned men
were already being taken from the cart. For that he received a heavy blow in
the chest with the butt end of a spear, and he leaped back from the
soldiers, crying out not in pain but in despair. At the legionary who had
dealt the blow he cast a dull glance, utterly indifferent to everything,
like a man insensible to physical pain.
Coughing and breathless, clutching his chest, he ran around the hill,
trying to find some gap in the file on the north side where he could slip
through. But it was too late, the ring was closed. And the man, his face
distorted with grief, was forced to renounce his attempts to break through
to the carts, from which the posts had already been unloaded. These attempts
would have led nowhere, except that he would have been seized, and to be
arrested on that day by no means entered his plans.
And so he went to the side, towards the crevice, where it was quieter
and nobody bothered him.
Now, sitting on the stone, this black-bearded man, his eyes festering
from the sun and lack of sleep, was in anguish. First he sighed, opening his
tallith, worn out in his wanderings, gone from light-blue to dirty grey, and
bared his chest, which had been hurt by the spear and down which ran dirty
sweat; then, in unendurable pain, he raised his eyes to the sky, following
the three vultures that had long been floating in great circles on high,
anticipating an imminent feast; then he peered with hopeless eyes into the
yellow earth, and saw on it the half-destroyed skull of a dog and lizards
scurrying around it.
The man's sufferings were so great that at times he began talking to
himself.
'Oh, fool that I am ...' he muttered, swaying on the stone in the pain
of his heart and clawing his swarthy chest with his nails. 'Fool, senseless
woman, coward! I'm not a man, I'm carrion!'
He would fall silent, hang his head, then, after drinking some warm
water from a wooden flask, he would revive again and clutch now at the knife
hidden on his chest under the tallith, now at the piece of parchment lying
before him on the stone next to a stylus and a pot of ink.
On this parchment some notes had already been scribbled:
The minutes run on, and I, Matthew Levi, am here on Bald Mountain, and
still no death!'
Further:
The sun is sinking, but no death.'
Now Matthew Levi wrote hopelessly with the sharp stylus:
'God! Why are you angry with him? Send him death.'
Having written this, he sobbed tearlessly and again wounded his chest
with his nails.
The reason for Levi's despair lay in the terrible misfortune that had
befallen Yeshua and him and, besides that, in the grave error that he, Levi,
in his own opinion, had committed. Two days earlier, Yeshua and Levi had
been in Bethphage near Yershalaim, where they had visited a certain gardener
who liked Yeshua's preaching very much. The two visitors had spent the whole
morning working in the garden, helping their host, and planned to go to
Yershalaim towards evening when it cooled off. But Yeshua began to hurry for
some reason, said he had urgent business in the city, and left alone around
noontime. Here lay Matthew Levi's first error. Why, why had he let him go
alone!
Nor was Matthew Levi to go to Yershalaim that evening. He was struck by
some unexpected and terrible ailment. He began to shake, his whole body was
filled with fire, his teeth chattered, and he kept asking to drink all the
time.
He could not go anywhere. He collapsed on a horse blanket in the
gardener's shed and lay there till dawn on Friday, when the illness released
Levi as unexpectedly as it had fallen upon him. Though he was still weak and
his legs trembled, he took leave of his host and, oppressed by some
foreboding of disaster, went to Yershalaim. There he learned that his
foreboding had not deceived him - the disaster occurred. Levi was in the
crowd and heard the procurator announce the sentence.
When the condemned men were led off to the mountain, Matthew Levi ran
alongside the file in the crowd of the curious, trying to let Yeshua know in
some inconspicuous way that at least he, Levi, was there with him, that he
had not abandoned him on his last journey, and that he was praying that
death would overtake Yeshua as soon as possible. But Yeshua, who was looking
into the distance towards where he was being taken, of course did not see
Levi.
And then, when the procession had gone about a half-mile along the
road, a simple and ingenious thought dawned on Matthew, who was being
jostled by the crowd just next to the file, and in his excitement he at once
showered himself with curses for not having thought of it earlier. The file
of soldiers was not solid, there were spaces between them. Given great
dexterity and a precise calculation, one could bend down, slip between two
legionaries, make it to the cart and jump into it. Then Yeshua would be
saved from suffering.
One instant would be enough to stab Yeshua in the back with a knife,
crying to him: 'Yeshua! I save you and go with you! I, Matthew, your
faithful and only disciple!'
And if God granted him one more free instant, he would also have time
to stab himself and avoid death on a post. This last, however, was of little
interest to Levi, the former tax collector. He was indifferent to how he
died. He wanted one thing, that Yeshua, who had never in his life done the
least evil to anyone, should escape torture.
The plan was a very good one, but the fact of the matter was that Levi
had no knife with him. Nor did he have a single piece of money.
Furious with himself, Levi got out of the crowd and ran back to the
city. A single feverish thought was leaping in his burning head: how to
procure a knife there in the city, in any way possible, and have time to
overtake the procession.
He ran up to the city gate, manoeuvring amid the throng of caravans
being sucked into the city, and saw to his left the open door of a little
shop where bread was sold. Breathing hard after running down the scorched
road, Levi got control of himself, entered the shop very sedately, greeted
the woman behind the counter, asked her to take the top loaf from the shelf,
which for some reason he liked better than the others, and when she turned
around, silently and quickly took from the counter that than which there
could be nothing better - a long, razor-sharp bread knife - and at once
dashed out of the shop.
A few moments later he was again on the Jaffa road. But the procession
was no longer in sight. He ran. At times he had to drop down right in the
dust and lie motionless to recover his breath. And so he would lie there, to
the astonishment of people riding on mules or walking on foot to Yershalaim.
He would lie listening to his heart pounding not only in his chest but
in his head and ears. Having recovered his breath a little, he would jump up
and continue running, but ever slower and slower. When he finally caught
sight of the long procession raising dust in the distance, it was already at
the foot of the hill.
'Oh, God! ...' Levi moaned, realizing that he was going to be too late.
And he was too late.
When the fourth hour of the execution had gone by, Levi's torments
reached their highest degree and he fell into a rage. Getting up from the
stone, he flung to the ground the stolen knife - stolen in vain, as he now
thought - crushed the flask with his foot, depriving himself of water, threw
off his kefia, seized his thin hair, and began cursing himself.
He cursed himself, calling out meaningless words, growled and spat,
abused his father and mother for bringing a fool into the world.
Seeing that curses and abuse had no effect and nothing in the
sun-scorched place was changed by them, he clenched his dry fists, raised
them, squinting, to the sky, to the sun that was sliding ever lower,
lengthening the shadows and going to fall into the Mediterranean, and
demanded an immediate miracle from God. He demanded that God at once send
Yeshua death.
Opening his eyes, he became convinced that everything on the hill was
unchanged, except that the blazing spots on the centurion's chest had gone
out. The sun was sending its rays into the backs of the executed men, who
were facing Yershalaim. Then Levi shouted:
'I curse you. God!'
In a rasping voice he shouted that he was convinced of God's injustice
and did not intend to believe in him any longer.
You are deaf!' growled Levi. `If you were not deaf, you would have
heard me and killed him straight away!'
Shutting his eyes, Levi waited for the fire that would fall from the
sky and strike him instead. This did not happen, and Levi, without opening
his eyes, went on shouting offensive and sarcastic things at the sky. He
shouted about his total disappointment, about the existence of other gods
and religions. Yes, another god would not have allowed it, he would never
have allowed a man like Yeshua to be burnt by the sun on a post.
'I was mistaken!' Levi cried in a completely hoarse voice. 'You are a
god of evil! Or are your eyes completely clouded by smoke from the temple
censers, and have your ears ceased to hear anything but the trumpeting
noises of the priests? You are not an almighty god! You are a black god! I
curse you, god of robbers, their soul and their protector!'
Here something blew into the face of the former tax collector, and
something rustled under his feet. It blew once more, and then, opening his
eyes, Levi saw that, either under the influence of his curses, or owing to
other reasons, everything in the world was changed. The sun had disappeared
before reaching the sea, where it sank every evening. Having swallowed it, a
storm cloud was rising menacingly and inexorably against the sky in the
west. Its edges were already seething with white foam, its black smoky belly
was tinged with yellow. The storm cloud was growling, threads of fire fell
from it now and again. Down the Jaffa road, down the meagre Hinnom valley,
over the tents of the pilgrims, driven by the suddenly risen wind, pillars
of dust went flying.
Levi fell silent, trying to grasp whether the storm that was about to
cover Yershalaim would bring any change in the fate of the unfortunate
Yeshua. And straight away, looking at the threads of fire cutting up the
cloud, he began to ask that lightning strike Yeshua's post. Repentantly
looking into the clear sky that had not yet been devoured by the cloud, and
where the vultures were veering on one wing to escape the storm, Levi
thought he had been insanely hasty with his curses: now God was not going to
listen to him.
Turning his gaze to the foot of the hill, Levi fixed on the place where
the strung-out cavalry regiment stood, and saw that considerable changes had
taken place there. From above, Levi was able to distinguish very well the
soldiers bustling about, pulling spears out of the ground, throwing cloaks
on, the horse-handlers trotting towards the road leading black horses by
their bridles. The regiment was moving off, that was clear. Spitting and
shielding himself with his hand from the dust blowing in his face, Levi
tried to grasp what it might mean if the cavalry was about to leave. He
shifted his gaze further up and made out a little figure in a crimson
military chlamys climbing towards the place of execution. And here a chill
came over the heart of the former tax collector in anticipation of the
joyful end.
The man climbing the mountain in the fifth hour of the robbers'
sufferings was the commander of the cohort, who had come galloping from
Yershalaim accompanied by an aide. At a gesture from Ratslayer, the file of
soldiers parted, and the centurion saluted the tribune. The latter, taking
Ratslayer aside, whispered something to him. The centurion saluted him a
second time and moved towards the group of executioners, who were sitting on
stones at the foot of the posts. The tribune meanwhile directed his steps
towards the one sitting on the three-legged stool, and the seated man
politely rose to meet the tribune. And the tribune said something to him in
a low voice, and the two went over to the posts. They were joined by the
head of the temple guard.
Ratslayer, casting a squeamish sidelong glance at the dirty rags lying
on the ground near the posts, rags that had recently been the criminals'
clothing, and which the executioners had rejected, called two of them and
ordered:
'Follow me!'
From the nearest post came a hoarse, senseless song. Gestas, hanging on
it, had lost his mind from the flies and sun towards the end of the third
hour, and was now quietly singing something about grapes, but his head,
covered with a turban, occasionally swayed all the same, and then the flies
rose sluggishly from his face and settled on it again.
Dysmas, on the second post, suffered more than the other two because he
did not lose consciousness, and he swung his head constantly and
rhythmically, right and left, so that his ears struck his shoulders.
Yeshua was more fortunate than the other two. In the very first hour,
he began to have blackouts, and then he fell into oblivion, hanging his head
in its unwound turban. The flies and horseflies therefore covered him
completely, so that his face disappeared under the black swarming mass. In
his groin, and on his belly, and in his armpits, fat horseflies sat sucking
at his yellow naked body.
Obeying the gestures of the man in the hood, one of the executioners
took a spear and another brought a bucket and a sponge to the post. The
first executioner raised the spear and with it tapped first one, then the
other of Yeshua's arms, stretched out and bound with ropes to the crossbar
of the post. The body, with its protruding ribs, gave a start. The
executioner passed the tip of the spear over the belly. Then Yeshua raised
his head, and the flies moved off with a buzz, revealing the face of the
hanged man, swollen with bites, the eyes puffy, an unrecognizable face.
Ungluing his eyelids, Ha-Nozri looked down. His eyes, usually clear,
were slightly clouded.
'Ha-Nozri!' said the executioner.
Ha-Nozri moved his swollen lips and answered in a hoarse robber's
voice:
'What do you want? Why have you come to me?'
'Drink!' said the executioner, and a water-soaked sponge on the tip of
a spear rose to Yeshua's lips. Joy flashed in his eyes, he clung to the
sponge and began greedily imbibing the moisture. From the neighbouring post
came the voice of Dysmas:
'Injustice! I'm a robber just like him!'
Dysmas strained but was unable to move, his arms being bound to the
crossbar in three places with loops of rope. He drew in his belly, clawed
the ends of the crossbar with his nails, kept his head turned towards
Yeshua's post, malice blazed in the eyes of Dysmas.
A dusty cloud covered the place, it became much darker. When the dust
blew away, the centurion shouted:
'Silence on the second post!'
Dysmas fell silent. Yeshua tore himself away from the sponge, and
trying to make his voice sound gentle and persuasive, but not succeeding, he
begged the executioner hoarsely:
'Give him a drink.'
It was growing ever darker. The storm cloud had already poured across
half the sky, aiming towards Yershalaim, boiling white clouds raced ahead of
the storm cloud suffused with black moisture and fire. There was a flash and
a thunderclap right over the hill. The executioner removed the sponge from
the spear.
'Praise the magnanimous hegemon!' he whispered solemnly, and gently
pricked Yeshua in the heart. He twitched and whispered:
`Hegemon...'
Blood ran down his belly, his lower jaw twitched convulsively and his
head dropped.
At the second thunderclap, the executioner was already giving Dysmas a
drink, and with the same words:
'Praise the hegemon!' - killed him as well.
Gestas, deprived of reason, cried out fearfully as soon as the
executioner came near him, but when the sponge touched his lips, he growled
something and seized it with his teeth. A few seconds later his body, too,
slumped as much as the ropes would allow.
The man in the hood followed the executioner and the centurion, and
after him came the head of the temple guard. Stopping at the first post, the
man in the hood examined the blood-covered Yeshua attentively, touched his
foot with his white hand, and said to his companions:
'Dead.'
The same was repeated at the other two posts.
After that the tribune motioned to the centurion and, turning, started
off the hilltop together with the head of the temple guard and the man in
the hood. Semi-darkness set in, and lightning farrowed the black sky. Fire
suddenly sprayed out of it, and the centurion's shout: 'Raise the cordon!',
was drowned in rumbling. The happy soldiers rushed headlong down the hill,
putting on their helmets.
Darkness covered Yershalaim.
Torrents of rain poured down suddenly and caught the centuries halfway
down the hill. The deluge fell so terribly that the soldiers were already
pursued by raging streams as they ran downhill. Soldiers slipped and fell in
the sodden clay, hurrying to get to the level road, along which - now barely
visible through the sheet of water - the thoroughly drenched cavalry was
heading for Yershalaim. A few minutes later only one man remained in the
smoky brew of storm, water and fire on the hill.
Shaking the not uselessly stolen knife, falling from slippery ledges,
clutching at whatever was there, sometimes crawling on his knees, he
strained towards the posts. He now vanished in total darkness, now was
suddenly illumined by a tremulous light.
Having made his way to the posts, already up to his ankles in water, he
tore off his heavy water-soaked tallith, remaining just in his shirt, and
clung to Yeshua's feet. He cut the ropes on his shins, stepped up on the
lower crossbar, embraced Yeshua and freed his arms from the upper bonds. The
naked, wet body of Yeshua collapsed on Levi and brought him to the ground.
Levi wanted to heave it on to his shoulders straight away, but some
thought stopped him. He left the body with its thrown-back head and
outspread arms on the ground in the water, and ran, his feet slithering
apart in the clayey mire, to the other posts. He cut the ropes on them as
well, and the two bodies collapsed on the ground.
Several minutes passed, and all that remained on the top of the hill
was these two bodies and the three empty posts. Water beat on the bodies and
rolled them over.
By that time both Levi and the body of Yeshua were gone from the
hilltop.
On Friday morning, that is, the day after the accursed se, all the
available staff of the Variety - the bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich
Lastochkin, two accountants, three typists, both box-office girls, the
messengers, ushers, cleaning women - in short, all those available, were not
at their places doing their jobs, but were all sitting on the window-sills
looking out on Sadovaya and watching what was going on by the wall of the
Variety. By this wall a queue of many thousands clung in two rows, its tail
reaching to Kudrinskaya Square. At the head of the line stood some two dozen
scalpers well known to theatrical Moscow.
The line behaved with much agitation, attracting the notice of the
citizens streaming past, and was occupied with the discussion of
inflammatory tales about yesterday's unprecedented shat, among other things that after the
conclusion of the famous sng to the tall
tales of these wonders, and decidedly did not know what to undertake, and
yet something had to be undertaken, and precisely by him, because he now
turned out to be the senior member of the whole Variety team.
By ten o'clock the line of people desiring tickets had swelled so much
that rumour of it reached the police, and with astonishing swiftness
detachments were sent, both on foot and mounted, to bring this line into
some sort of order. However, in itself even an orderly snake a half-mile
long presented a great temptation, and caused utter amazement in the
citizens on Sadovaya.
That was outside, but inside the Variety things were also none too
great. Early in the morning the telephones began to ring and went on ringing
without interruption in Likhodeev's office, in Rimsky's office, at the
bookkeeper's, in the box office, and in Varenukha's office.
Vassily Stepanovich at first made some answer, the box-office girl also
answered, the ushers mumbled something into the telephones, but then they
stopped altogether, because to questions of where Likhodeev, Varenukha and
Rimsky were, there was decidedly no answer. At first they tried to get off
by saying 'Likhodeev's at home', but the reply to this was that they had
called him at home, and at home they said Likhodeev was at the Variety.
An agitated lady called, started asking for Rimsky, was advised to call
his wife, to which the receiver, sobbing, answered that she was his wife and
that Rimsky was nowhere to be found. Some sort of nonsense was beginning.
The cleaning woman had already told everybody that when she came to the
findirector's office to clean, she saw the door wide open, the lights on,
the window to the garden broken, the armchair lying on the floor, and no one
in the office.
Shortly after ten o'clock, Madame Rimsky burst into the Variety. She
was sobbing and wringing her hands. Vassily Stepanovich was utterly at a
loss and did not know how to counsel her. Then at half past ten came the
police. Their first and perfectly reasonable question was:
"What's going on here, citizens? What's this all about?'
The team stepped back, bringing forward the pale and agitated Vassily
Stepanovich. He had to call things by their names and confess that the
administration of the Variety in the persons of the director, the
findirector and the administrator had vanished and no one knew where, that
the master of ceremonies had been taken to a psychiatric hospital after
yesterday's st interest was shown in the cleaning woman's
story about the shape in which the findirector's office had been found. The
staff were asked to go to their places and get busy, and in a short while
the investigation appeared in the Variety building, accompanied by a
sharp-eared, muscular, ash-coloured dog with extremely intelligent eyes. The
whisper spread at once among the Variety staff that the dog was none other
than the famous Ace of Diamonds. And so it was. His behaviour amazed them
all. The moment Ace of Diamonds ran into the findirector's office, he
growled, baring his monstrous yellow fangs, then crouched on his belly and,
with some sort of look of anguish and at the same time of rage in his eyes,
crawled towards the broken window. Overcoming his fear, he suddenly jumped
up on the window-sill and, throwing back his sharp muzzle, howled savagely
and angrily. He refused to leave the window, growled and twitched, and kept
trying to jump out.
The dog was taken from the office and turned loose in the lobby, whence
he walked out through the main entrance to the street and led those
following him to the cab stand. There he lost the trail he had been
pursuing. After that Ace of Diamonds was taken away.
The investigation settled in Varenukha's office, where they began
summoning in turn all the Variety staff members who had witnessed
yesterday's events during the se unforeseen difficulties. The thread kept
snapping off in their hands.
There had been posters, right? Right. But during the night they had
been pasted over with new ones, and now, strike me dead, there wasn't a
single one to be found! And the magician himself, where had he come from?
Ah, who knows! But there was a contract drawn up with him?
I suppose so,' the agitated Vassily Stepanovich replied.
'And if one was drawn up, it had to go through bookkeeping?'
'Most assuredly,' responded the agitated Vassily Stepanovich.
'Then where is it?'
`Not here,' the bookkeeper replied, turning ever more pale and
spreading his arms.
And indeed no trace of the contract was found in the files of the
bookkeeping office, nor at the findirector's, nor at Likhodeev's or
Varenukha's.
And what was this magician's name? Vassily Stepanovich did not know, he
had not been at the snkled her brow, wrinkled it, thought and thought, and
finally said:
'Wo... Woland, seems like...'
Or maybe not Woland? Maybe not Woland. Maybe Faland.
It turned out that in the foreigners' bureau they had heard precisely
nothing either about any Woland, or for that matter any Faland, the
magician.
The messenger Karpov said that this same magician was supposedly
staying in Likhodeev's apartment. The apartment was, of course, visited at
once - no magician was found there. Likhodeev himself was not there either.
The housekeeper Grunya was not there, and where she had gone nobody
knew.
The chairman of the management, Nikanor Ivanovich, was not there,
Bedsornev was not there!
Something utterly preposterous was coming out: the whole top
administration had vanished, a strange, scandalous seance had taken place
the day before, but who had produced it and at whose prompting, no one knew.
And meanwhile it was drawing towards noon, when the box office was to
open. But, of course, there could be no talk of that! A huge piece of
cardboard was straight away posted on the doors of the Variety reading:
'Today's Show Cancelled'. The line became agitated, beginning at its
head, but after some agitation, it nevertheless began to break up, and about
an hour later no trace of it remained on Sadovaya. The investigation
departed to continue its work elsewhere, the staff was sent home, leaving
only the watchmen, and the doors of the Variety were locked.
The bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich had urgently to perform two tasks.
First, to go to the Commission on Spectacles and Entertainment of the
Lighter Type with a report on yesterday's events and, second, to visit the
Finspectacle sector so as to turn over yesterday's receipts - 21,711
roubles.
The precise and efficient Vassily Stepanovich wrapped the money in
newspaper, criss-crossed it with string, put it in his briefcase, and,
knowing his instructions very well, set out, of course, not for a bus or a
tram, but for the cab stand.
The moment the drivers of the three cabs saw a passenger hurrying
towards the stand with a tightly stuffed briefcase, all three left empty
right under his nose, looking back at him angrily for some reason.
Struck by this circumstance, the bookkeeper stood like a post for a
long time, trying to grasp what it might mean.
About three minutes later, an empty cab drove up, but the driver's face
twisted the moment he saw the passenger.
'Are you free?' Vassily Stepanovich asked with a cough of surprise.
'Show your money,' the driver replied angrily, without looking at the
passenger.
With increasing amazement, the bookkeeper, pressing the precious
briefcase under his arm, pulled a ten-rouble bill from his wallet and showed
it to the driver.
'I won't go!' the man said curtly.
'I beg your pardon...' the bookkeeper tried to begin, but the driver
interrupted him.
'Got any threes?'
The completely bewildered bookkeeper took two three-rouble bills from
his wallet and showed them to the driver.
'Get in,' he shouted, and slapped down the flag of the meter so that he
almost broke it. 'Let's go!'
'No change, is that it?' the bookkeeper asked timidly.
`A pocket full of change!' the driver bawled, and the eyes in the
mirror went bloodshot. 'It's my third case today. And the same thing
happened with the others, too. Some son of a bitch gives me a tenner, I give
him change - four-fifty. He gets out, the scum! About five minutes later, I
look: instead of a tenner, it's a label from a seltzer bottle!' Here the
driver uttered several unprintable words. 'Another one, beyond Zubovskaya. A
tenner. I give him three roubles change. He leaves. I go to my wallet,
there's a bee there - zap in the finger! Ah, you! ...' and again the driver
pasted on some unprintable words. 'And no tenner. Yesterday, in the Variety
here' (unprintable words), 'some vermin of a conjurer did a s'Oh-oh! ...'
Having got where he had to go, having paid satisfactorily, the
bookkeeper entered the building and went down the corridor towards the
manager's office, and realized on his way that he had come at the wrong
time. Some sort of tumult reigned in the offices of the Spectacles
Commission. A messenger girl ran past the bookkeeper, her kerchief all
pushed back on her head and her eyes popping.
'Nothing, nothing, nothing, my dears!' she shouted, addressing no one
knew whom. The jacket and trousers are there, but inside the jacket there's
nothing!'
She disappeared through some door, and straight away from behind it
came the noise of smashing dishes. The manager of the commission's first
sector, whom the bookkeeper knew, ran out of the secretary's room, but he
was in such a state that he did not recognize the bookkeeper and disappeared
without a trace.
Shaken by all this, the bookkeeper reached the secretary's room, which
was the anteroom to the office of the chairman of the commission, and here
he was definitively dumbfounded.
From behind the closed door of the office came a terrible voice,
undoubtedly belonging to Prokhor Petrovich, the chairman of the commission.
`Must be scolding somebody!' the consternated bookkeeper thought and,
looking around, saw something else: in a leather armchair, her head thrown
back, sobbing unrestrainedly, a wet handkerchief in her hand, legs stretched
out into the middle of the room, lay Prokhor Petrovich's personal secretary
- the beautiful Anna Richardovna.
Anna Richardovna's chin was all smeared with lipstick, and down her
peachy cheeks black streams of sodden mascara flowed from her eyelashes.
Seeing someone come in, Anna Richardovna jumped up, rushed to the
bookkeeper, clutched the lapels of his jacket, began shaking him and
shouting:
'Thank God! At least one brave man has been found! Everybody ran away,
everybody betrayed us! Let's go, let's go to him, I don't know what to do!'
And, still sobbing, she dragged the bookkeeper into the office.
Once in the office, the bookkeeper first of all dropped his briefcase,
and all the thoughts in his head turned upside-down. And, it must be said,
not without reason.
At a huge writing desk with a massive inkstand an empty suit sat and
with a dry pen, not dipped in ink, traced on a piece of paper. The suit was
wearing a necktie, a fountain pen stuck from its pocket, but above the
collar there was neither neck nor head, just as there were no hands sticking
out of the sleeves. The suit was immersed in work and completely ignored the
turmoil that reigned around it. Hearing someone come in, the suit leaned
back and from above the collar came the voice, quite familiar to the
bookkeeper, of Prokhor Petrovich:
'What is this? Isn't it written on the door that I'm not receiving?'
The beautiful secretary shrieked and, wringing her hands, cried out:
'You see? You see?! He's not there! He's not! Bring him back, bring him
back!'
Here someone peeked in the door of the office, gasped, and flew out.
The bookkeeper felt his legs trembling and sat on the edge of a chair,
but did not forget to pick up his briefcase. Anna Richardovna hopped around
the bookkeeper, worrying his jacket, and exclaiming:
'I always, always stopped him when he swore by the devil! So now the
devil's got him!' Here the beauty ran to the writing desk and in a tender,
musical voice, slightly nasal from weeping, called out:
'Prosha! Where are you!'
'Who here is "Prosha" to you?' the suit inquired haughtily, sinking
still deeper into the armchair.
'He doesn't recognize me! Me he doesn't! Do you understand? ... ' the
secretary burst into sobs.
'I ask you not to sob in the office!' the hot-tempered striped suit now
said angrily, and with its sleeve it drew to itself a fresh stack of papers,
with the obvious aim of appending its decision to them.
'No, I can't look at it, I can't!' cried Anna Richardovna, and she ran
out to the secretary's room, and behind her, like a shot, flew the
bookkeeper.
'Imagine, I'm sitting here,' Anna Richardovna recounted, shaking with
agitation, again clutching at the bookkeeper's sleeve, 'and a cat walks in.
Black, big as a behemoth. Of course, I shout "scat" to it. Out it goes, and
in comes a fat fellow instead, also with a sort of cat-like mug, and says:
"What are you doing, citizeness, shouting 'scat' at visitors?" And -
whoosh - straight to Prokhor Petrovich. Of course, I run after him,
shouting: "Are you out of your mind?" And this brazen-face goes straight to
Prokhor Petrovich and sits down opposite him in the armchair. Well, that one
... he's the kindest-hearted man, but edgy. He blew up, I don't deny it. An
edgy man, works like an ox - he blew up. "Why do you barge in here
unannounced?" he says. And that brazen-face, imagine, sprawls in the
armchair and says, smiling:
"I've come," he says, "to discuss a little business with you." Prokhor
Petrovich blew up again: "I'm busy." And the other one, just think, answers:
"You're not busy with anything ..." Eh? Well, here, of course, Prokhor
Petrovich's patience ran out, and he shouted: "What is all this? Get him out
of here, devil take me!" And that one, imagine, smiles and says: "Devil take
you? That, in fact, can be done!" And - bang! Before I had time to scream, I
look: the one with the cat's mug is gone, and th ... there ... sits ... the
suit ... Waaa! ...' Stretching her mouth, which had lost all shape entirely,
Anna Richardovna howled.
After choking with sobs, she caught her breath, but then began pouring
out something completely incoherent:
'And it writes, writes, writes! You could lose your mind! Talks on the
telephone! A suit! They all ran away like rabbits!'
The bookkeeper only stood and shook. But here fate came to his aid.
Into the secretary's room, with calm, business-like strides, marched the
police, to the number of two men. Seeing them, the beauty sobbed still
harder, jabbing towards the door of the office with her hand.
'Let's not cry now, citizeness,' the first said calmly, and the
bookkeeper, feeling himself quite superfluous there, ran out of the
secretary's room and a minute later was already in the fresh air. There was
some sort of draught in his head, a soughing as in a chimney, and through
this soughing he heard scraps of the stories the ushers told about
yesterday's cat, who had taken part in the sgankovsky Lane, and
to calm himself a little he walked the distance to the affiliate on foot.
The affiliate for city spectacles was housed in a peeling old mansion
set back from the street, and was famous for the porphyry columns in its
vestibule. But it was not the columns that struck visitors to the affiliate
that day, but what was going on at the foot of them.
Several visitors stood in stupefaction and stared at a weeping girl
sitting behind a small table on which lay special literature about various
spectacles, which the girl sold. At that moment, the girl was not offering
any of this literature to anyone, and only waved her hand at sympathetic
inquiries, while at the same time, from above, from below, from the sides,
and from all sections of the affiliate poured the ringing of at least twenty
overwrought telephones.
After weeping for a while, the girl suddenly gave a start and cried out
hysterically:
'Here it comes again!' and unexpectedly began singing in a tremulous
soprano:
'Glorious sea, sacred Baikal...'[1]
A messenger appeared on the stairs, shook his fist at someone, and
began singing along with the girl in a dull, weak-voiced baritone:
'Glorious boat, a barrel of cisco ...'[2]
The messenger's voice was joined by distant voices, the choir began to
swell, and finally the song resounded in all corners of the affiliate. In
the neighbouring room no. 6, which housed the account comptroller's section,
one powerful, slightly husky octave stood out particularly.
'Hey, Barguzin [3] ... make the waves rise and fall! ...' bawled the
messenger on the stairs.
Tears flowed down the girl's face, she tried to clench her teeth, but
her mouth opened of itself, as she sang an octave higher than the messenger:
'This young lad's ready to frisk-o!'
What struck the silent visitors to the affiliate was that the
choristers, scattered in various places, sang quite harmoniously, as if the
whole choir stood there with its eyes fixed on some invisible director.
Passers-by in Vagankovsky Lane stopped by the fence of the yard,
wondering at the gaiety that reigned in the affiliate.
As soon as the first verse came to an end, the singing suddenly ceased,
again as if to a director's baton. The messenger quietly swore and
disappeared.
Here the front door opened, and in it appeared a citizen in a summer
jacket, from under which protruded the skirts of a white coat, and with him
a policeman.
'Take measures, doctor, I implore you!' the girl cried hysterically.
The secretary of the affiliate ran out to the stairs and, obviously
burning with shame and embarrassment, began falteringly:
'You see, doctor, we have a case of some sort of mass hypnosis, and so
it's necessary that...' He did not finish the sentence, began to choke on
his words, and suddenly sang out in a tenor:
'Shilka and Nerchinsk ...'[4]
'Fool!' the girl had time to shout, but, without explaining who she was
abusing, produced instead a forced roulade and herself began singing about
Shilka and Nerchinsk.
`Get hold of yourself! Stop singing!' the doctor addressed the
secretary.
There was every indication that the secretary would himself have given
anything to stop singing, but stop singing he could not, and together with
the choir he brought to the hearing of passers-by in the lane the news that
'in the wilderness he was not touched by voracious beast, nor brought down
by bullet of shooters.'
The moment the verse ended, the girl was the first to receive a dose of
valerian from the doctor, who then ran after the secretary to give the
others theirs.
'Excuse me, dear citizeness,' Vassily Stepanovich addressed the girl,
'did a black cat pay you a visit?'
`What cat?' the girl cried in anger. 'An ass, it's an ass we've got
sitting in the affiliate!' And adding to that: `Let him hear, I'll tell
everything' - she indeed told what had happened.
It turned out that the manager of the city affiliate, 'who has made a
perfect mess of lightened entertainment' (the girl's words), suffered from a
mania for organizing all sorts of little clubs. 'Blew smoke in the
authorities' eyes!' screamed the girl.
In the course of a year this manager had succeeded in organizing a club
of Lermontov studies [5], of chess and checkers, of ping-pong, and of
horseback riding. For the summer, he was threatening to organize clubs of
fresh-water canoeing and alpinism. And so today, during lunch-break, this
manager comes in ...
' ...with some son of a bitch on his arm,' the girl went on, 'hailing
from nobody knows where, in wretched checkered trousers, a cracked
pince-nez, and ... with a completely impossible mug! ...'
And straight away, the girl said, he recommended him to all those
eating in the affiliate's dining room as a prominent specialist in
organizing choral-singing clubs.
The faces of the future alpinists darkened, but the manager immediately
called on everyone to cheer up, while the specialist joked a little, laughed
a little, and swore an oath that singing takes no time at all, but that,
incidentally, there was a whole load of benefits to be derived from it.
Well, of course, as the girl said, the first to pop up were Fanov and
Kosarchuk, well-known affiliate toadies, who announced that they would sign
up. Here the rest of the staff realized that there was no way around the
singing, and they, too, had to sign up for the club. They decided to sing
during the lunch break, since the rest of the time was taken up by Lermontov
and checkers. The manager, to set an example, declared that he was a tenor,
and everything after that went as in a bad dream. The checkered
specialist-choirmaster bawled out:
'Do, mi, sol, do!' - dragged the most bashful from behind the
bookcases, where they had tried to save themselves from singing, told
Kosarchuk he had perfect pitch, began whining, squealing, begging them to be
kind to an old singing-master, tapped the tuning fork on his knuckle,
beseeched them to strike up 'Glorious Sea'.
Strike up they did. And gloriously. The checkered one really knew his
business. They finished the first verse. Here the director excused himself,
said: `Back in a minute...', and disappeared. They thought he would actually
come back in a minute. But ten minutes went by and he was not there. The
staff was overjoyed - he had run away!
Then suddenly, somehow of themselves, they began the second verse. They
were all led by Kosarchuk, who may not have had perfect pitch, but did have
a rather pleasant high tenor. They sang it through. No director! They moved
to their places, but had not managed to sit down when, against their will,
they began to sing. To stop was impossible. After three minutes of silence,
they would strike up again. Silence - strike up! Then they realized that
they were in trouble. The manager locked himself in his office from shame!
Here the girl's story was interrupted - the valerian had not done much
good.
A quarter of an hour later, three trucks drove up to the fence in
Vagankovsky, and the entire staff of the affiliate, the manager at its head,
was loaded on to them.
As soon as the first truck, after lurching in the gateway, drove out
into the lane, the staff members, who were standing on the platform holding
each other's shoulders, opened their mouths, and the whole lane resounded
with the popular song. The second truck picked it up, then the third. And so
they drove on. Passers-by hurrying about their own business would cast only
a fleeting glance at the trucks, not surprised in the least, thinking it was
a group excursion to the country. And they were indeed going to the country,
though not on an excursion, but to Professor Stravinsky's clinic.
Half an hour later, the bookkeeper, who had lost his head completely,
reached the financial sector, hoping finally to get rid of the box-office
money. Having learned from experience by now, he first peeked cautiously
into the oblong hall where, behind frosted-glass windows with gold
lettering, the staff was sitting. Here the bookkeeper discovered no signs of
alarm or scandal. It was quiet, as it ought to be in a decent institution.
Vassily Stepanovich stuck his head through the window with 'Cash
Deposits' written over it, greeted some unfamiliar clerk, and politely asked
for a deposit slip.
'What do you need it for?' the clerk in the window asked.
The bookkeeper was amazed.
'I want to turn over some cash. I'm from the Variety.'
'One moment,' the clerk replied and instantly closed the opening in the
window with a grille.
'Strange!...' thought the bookkeeper. His amazement was perfectly
the centurion's chest, and that was apparently quite enough for a man who
obviously wished to remain little noticed and not be bothered by anyone.
But some four hours ago, at the start of the execution, this man had
behaved quite differently, and might have been noticed very well, which was
probably why he had now changed his behaviour and secluded himself.
It was only when the procession came to the very top, beyond the file,
that he had first appeared, and as an obvious latecomer at that. He was
breathing hard, and did not walk but ran up the hill, pushing his way, and,
seeing the file close together before him as before everyone else, made a
naive attempt, pretending he did not understand the angry shouts, to break
through the soldiers to the very place of execution, where the condemned men
were already being taken from the cart. For that he received a heavy blow in
the chest with the butt end of a spear, and he leaped back from the
soldiers, crying out not in pain but in despair. At the legionary who had
dealt the blow he cast a dull glance, utterly indifferent to everything,
like a man insensible to physical pain.
Coughing and breathless, clutching his chest, he ran around the hill,
trying to find some gap in the file on the north side where he could slip
through. But it was too late, the ring was closed. And the man, his face
distorted with grief, was forced to renounce his attempts to break through
to the carts, from which the posts had already been unloaded. These attempts
would have led nowhere, except that he would have been seized, and to be
arrested on that day by no means entered his plans.
And so he went to the side, towards the crevice, where it was quieter
and nobody bothered him.
Now, sitting on the stone, this black-bearded man, his eyes festering
from the sun and lack of sleep, was in anguish. First he sighed, opening his
tallith, worn out in his wanderings, gone from light-blue to dirty grey, and
bared his chest, which had been hurt by the spear and down which ran dirty
sweat; then, in unendurable pain, he raised his eyes to the sky, following
the three vultures that had long been floating in great circles on high,
anticipating an imminent feast; then he peered with hopeless eyes into the
yellow earth, and saw on it the half-destroyed skull of a dog and lizards
scurrying around it.
The man's sufferings were so great that at times he began talking to
himself.
'Oh, fool that I am ...' he muttered, swaying on the stone in the pain
of his heart and clawing his swarthy chest with his nails. 'Fool, senseless
woman, coward! I'm not a man, I'm carrion!'
He would fall silent, hang his head, then, after drinking some warm
water from a wooden flask, he would revive again and clutch now at the knife
hidden on his chest under the tallith, now at the piece of parchment lying
before him on the stone next to a stylus and a pot of ink.
On this parchment some notes had already been scribbled:
The minutes run on, and I, Matthew Levi, am here on Bald Mountain, and
still no death!'
Further:
The sun is sinking, but no death.'
Now Matthew Levi wrote hopelessly with the sharp stylus:
'God! Why are you angry with him? Send him death.'
Having written this, he sobbed tearlessly and again wounded his chest
with his nails.
The reason for Levi's despair lay in the terrible misfortune that had
befallen Yeshua and him and, besides that, in the grave error that he, Levi,
in his own opinion, had committed. Two days earlier, Yeshua and Levi had
been in Bethphage near Yershalaim, where they had visited a certain gardener
who liked Yeshua's preaching very much. The two visitors had spent the whole
morning working in the garden, helping their host, and planned to go to
Yershalaim towards evening when it cooled off. But Yeshua began to hurry for
some reason, said he had urgent business in the city, and left alone around
noontime. Here lay Matthew Levi's first error. Why, why had he let him go
alone!
Nor was Matthew Levi to go to Yershalaim that evening. He was struck by
some unexpected and terrible ailment. He began to shake, his whole body was
filled with fire, his teeth chattered, and he kept asking to drink all the
time.
He could not go anywhere. He collapsed on a horse blanket in the
gardener's shed and lay there till dawn on Friday, when the illness released
Levi as unexpectedly as it had fallen upon him. Though he was still weak and
his legs trembled, he took leave of his host and, oppressed by some
foreboding of disaster, went to Yershalaim. There he learned that his
foreboding had not deceived him - the disaster occurred. Levi was in the
crowd and heard the procurator announce the sentence.
When the condemned men were led off to the mountain, Matthew Levi ran
alongside the file in the crowd of the curious, trying to let Yeshua know in
some inconspicuous way that at least he, Levi, was there with him, that he
had not abandoned him on his last journey, and that he was praying that
death would overtake Yeshua as soon as possible. But Yeshua, who was looking
into the distance towards where he was being taken, of course did not see
Levi.
And then, when the procession had gone about a half-mile along the
road, a simple and ingenious thought dawned on Matthew, who was being
jostled by the crowd just next to the file, and in his excitement he at once
showered himself with curses for not having thought of it earlier. The file
of soldiers was not solid, there were spaces between them. Given great
dexterity and a precise calculation, one could bend down, slip between two
legionaries, make it to the cart and jump into it. Then Yeshua would be
saved from suffering.
One instant would be enough to stab Yeshua in the back with a knife,
crying to him: 'Yeshua! I save you and go with you! I, Matthew, your
faithful and only disciple!'
And if God granted him one more free instant, he would also have time
to stab himself and avoid death on a post. This last, however, was of little
interest to Levi, the former tax collector. He was indifferent to how he
died. He wanted one thing, that Yeshua, who had never in his life done the
least evil to anyone, should escape torture.
The plan was a very good one, but the fact of the matter was that Levi
had no knife with him. Nor did he have a single piece of money.
Furious with himself, Levi got out of the crowd and ran back to the
city. A single feverish thought was leaping in his burning head: how to
procure a knife there in the city, in any way possible, and have time to
overtake the procession.
He ran up to the city gate, manoeuvring amid the throng of caravans
being sucked into the city, and saw to his left the open door of a little
shop where bread was sold. Breathing hard after running down the scorched
road, Levi got control of himself, entered the shop very sedately, greeted
the woman behind the counter, asked her to take the top loaf from the shelf,
which for some reason he liked better than the others, and when she turned
around, silently and quickly took from the counter that than which there
could be nothing better - a long, razor-sharp bread knife - and at once
dashed out of the shop.
A few moments later he was again on the Jaffa road. But the procession
was no longer in sight. He ran. At times he had to drop down right in the
dust and lie motionless to recover his breath. And so he would lie there, to
the astonishment of people riding on mules or walking on foot to Yershalaim.
He would lie listening to his heart pounding not only in his chest but
in his head and ears. Having recovered his breath a little, he would jump up
and continue running, but ever slower and slower. When he finally caught
sight of the long procession raising dust in the distance, it was already at
the foot of the hill.
'Oh, God! ...' Levi moaned, realizing that he was going to be too late.
And he was too late.
When the fourth hour of the execution had gone by, Levi's torments
reached their highest degree and he fell into a rage. Getting up from the
stone, he flung to the ground the stolen knife - stolen in vain, as he now
thought - crushed the flask with his foot, depriving himself of water, threw
off his kefia, seized his thin hair, and began cursing himself.
He cursed himself, calling out meaningless words, growled and spat,
abused his father and mother for bringing a fool into the world.
Seeing that curses and abuse had no effect and nothing in the
sun-scorched place was changed by them, he clenched his dry fists, raised
them, squinting, to the sky, to the sun that was sliding ever lower,
lengthening the shadows and going to fall into the Mediterranean, and
demanded an immediate miracle from God. He demanded that God at once send
Yeshua death.
Opening his eyes, he became convinced that everything on the hill was
unchanged, except that the blazing spots on the centurion's chest had gone
out. The sun was sending its rays into the backs of the executed men, who
were facing Yershalaim. Then Levi shouted:
'I curse you. God!'
In a rasping voice he shouted that he was convinced of God's injustice
and did not intend to believe in him any longer.
You are deaf!' growled Levi. `If you were not deaf, you would have
heard me and killed him straight away!'
Shutting his eyes, Levi waited for the fire that would fall from the
sky and strike him instead. This did not happen, and Levi, without opening
his eyes, went on shouting offensive and sarcastic things at the sky. He
shouted about his total disappointment, about the existence of other gods
and religions. Yes, another god would not have allowed it, he would never
have allowed a man like Yeshua to be burnt by the sun on a post.
'I was mistaken!' Levi cried in a completely hoarse voice. 'You are a
god of evil! Or are your eyes completely clouded by smoke from the temple
censers, and have your ears ceased to hear anything but the trumpeting
noises of the priests? You are not an almighty god! You are a black god! I
curse you, god of robbers, their soul and their protector!'
Here something blew into the face of the former tax collector, and
something rustled under his feet. It blew once more, and then, opening his
eyes, Levi saw that, either under the influence of his curses, or owing to
other reasons, everything in the world was changed. The sun had disappeared
before reaching the sea, where it sank every evening. Having swallowed it, a
storm cloud was rising menacingly and inexorably against the sky in the
west. Its edges were already seething with white foam, its black smoky belly
was tinged with yellow. The storm cloud was growling, threads of fire fell
from it now and again. Down the Jaffa road, down the meagre Hinnom valley,
over the tents of the pilgrims, driven by the suddenly risen wind, pillars
of dust went flying.
Levi fell silent, trying to grasp whether the storm that was about to
cover Yershalaim would bring any change in the fate of the unfortunate
Yeshua. And straight away, looking at the threads of fire cutting up the
cloud, he began to ask that lightning strike Yeshua's post. Repentantly
looking into the clear sky that had not yet been devoured by the cloud, and
where the vultures were veering on one wing to escape the storm, Levi
thought he had been insanely hasty with his curses: now God was not going to
listen to him.
Turning his gaze to the foot of the hill, Levi fixed on the place where
the strung-out cavalry regiment stood, and saw that considerable changes had
taken place there. From above, Levi was able to distinguish very well the
soldiers bustling about, pulling spears out of the ground, throwing cloaks
on, the horse-handlers trotting towards the road leading black horses by
their bridles. The regiment was moving off, that was clear. Spitting and
shielding himself with his hand from the dust blowing in his face, Levi
tried to grasp what it might mean if the cavalry was about to leave. He
shifted his gaze further up and made out a little figure in a crimson
military chlamys climbing towards the place of execution. And here a chill
came over the heart of the former tax collector in anticipation of the
joyful end.
The man climbing the mountain in the fifth hour of the robbers'
sufferings was the commander of the cohort, who had come galloping from
Yershalaim accompanied by an aide. At a gesture from Ratslayer, the file of
soldiers parted, and the centurion saluted the tribune. The latter, taking
Ratslayer aside, whispered something to him. The centurion saluted him a
second time and moved towards the group of executioners, who were sitting on
stones at the foot of the posts. The tribune meanwhile directed his steps
towards the one sitting on the three-legged stool, and the seated man
politely rose to meet the tribune. And the tribune said something to him in
a low voice, and the two went over to the posts. They were joined by the
head of the temple guard.
Ratslayer, casting a squeamish sidelong glance at the dirty rags lying
on the ground near the posts, rags that had recently been the criminals'
clothing, and which the executioners had rejected, called two of them and
ordered:
'Follow me!'
From the nearest post came a hoarse, senseless song. Gestas, hanging on
it, had lost his mind from the flies and sun towards the end of the third
hour, and was now quietly singing something about grapes, but his head,
covered with a turban, occasionally swayed all the same, and then the flies
rose sluggishly from his face and settled on it again.
Dysmas, on the second post, suffered more than the other two because he
did not lose consciousness, and he swung his head constantly and
rhythmically, right and left, so that his ears struck his shoulders.
Yeshua was more fortunate than the other two. In the very first hour,
he began to have blackouts, and then he fell into oblivion, hanging his head
in its unwound turban. The flies and horseflies therefore covered him
completely, so that his face disappeared under the black swarming mass. In
his groin, and on his belly, and in his armpits, fat horseflies sat sucking
at his yellow naked body.
Obeying the gestures of the man in the hood, one of the executioners
took a spear and another brought a bucket and a sponge to the post. The
first executioner raised the spear and with it tapped first one, then the
other of Yeshua's arms, stretched out and bound with ropes to the crossbar
of the post. The body, with its protruding ribs, gave a start. The
executioner passed the tip of the spear over the belly. Then Yeshua raised
his head, and the flies moved off with a buzz, revealing the face of the
hanged man, swollen with bites, the eyes puffy, an unrecognizable face.
Ungluing his eyelids, Ha-Nozri looked down. His eyes, usually clear,
were slightly clouded.
'Ha-Nozri!' said the executioner.
Ha-Nozri moved his swollen lips and answered in a hoarse robber's
voice:
'What do you want? Why have you come to me?'
'Drink!' said the executioner, and a water-soaked sponge on the tip of
a spear rose to Yeshua's lips. Joy flashed in his eyes, he clung to the
sponge and began greedily imbibing the moisture. From the neighbouring post
came the voice of Dysmas:
'Injustice! I'm a robber just like him!'
Dysmas strained but was unable to move, his arms being bound to the
crossbar in three places with loops of rope. He drew in his belly, clawed
the ends of the crossbar with his nails, kept his head turned towards
Yeshua's post, malice blazed in the eyes of Dysmas.
A dusty cloud covered the place, it became much darker. When the dust
blew away, the centurion shouted:
'Silence on the second post!'
Dysmas fell silent. Yeshua tore himself away from the sponge, and
trying to make his voice sound gentle and persuasive, but not succeeding, he
begged the executioner hoarsely:
'Give him a drink.'
It was growing ever darker. The storm cloud had already poured across
half the sky, aiming towards Yershalaim, boiling white clouds raced ahead of
the storm cloud suffused with black moisture and fire. There was a flash and
a thunderclap right over the hill. The executioner removed the sponge from
the spear.
'Praise the magnanimous hegemon!' he whispered solemnly, and gently
pricked Yeshua in the heart. He twitched and whispered:
`Hegemon...'
Blood ran down his belly, his lower jaw twitched convulsively and his
head dropped.
At the second thunderclap, the executioner was already giving Dysmas a
drink, and with the same words:
'Praise the hegemon!' - killed him as well.
Gestas, deprived of reason, cried out fearfully as soon as the
executioner came near him, but when the sponge touched his lips, he growled
something and seized it with his teeth. A few seconds later his body, too,
slumped as much as the ropes would allow.
The man in the hood followed the executioner and the centurion, and
after him came the head of the temple guard. Stopping at the first post, the
man in the hood examined the blood-covered Yeshua attentively, touched his
foot with his white hand, and said to his companions:
'Dead.'
The same was repeated at the other two posts.
After that the tribune motioned to the centurion and, turning, started
off the hilltop together with the head of the temple guard and the man in
the hood. Semi-darkness set in, and lightning farrowed the black sky. Fire
suddenly sprayed out of it, and the centurion's shout: 'Raise the cordon!',
was drowned in rumbling. The happy soldiers rushed headlong down the hill,
putting on their helmets.
Darkness covered Yershalaim.
Torrents of rain poured down suddenly and caught the centuries halfway
down the hill. The deluge fell so terribly that the soldiers were already
pursued by raging streams as they ran downhill. Soldiers slipped and fell in
the sodden clay, hurrying to get to the level road, along which - now barely
visible through the sheet of water - the thoroughly drenched cavalry was
heading for Yershalaim. A few minutes later only one man remained in the
smoky brew of storm, water and fire on the hill.
Shaking the not uselessly stolen knife, falling from slippery ledges,
clutching at whatever was there, sometimes crawling on his knees, he
strained towards the posts. He now vanished in total darkness, now was
suddenly illumined by a tremulous light.
Having made his way to the posts, already up to his ankles in water, he
tore off his heavy water-soaked tallith, remaining just in his shirt, and
clung to Yeshua's feet. He cut the ropes on his shins, stepped up on the
lower crossbar, embraced Yeshua and freed his arms from the upper bonds. The
naked, wet body of Yeshua collapsed on Levi and brought him to the ground.
Levi wanted to heave it on to his shoulders straight away, but some
thought stopped him. He left the body with its thrown-back head and
outspread arms on the ground in the water, and ran, his feet slithering
apart in the clayey mire, to the other posts. He cut the ropes on them as
well, and the two bodies collapsed on the ground.
Several minutes passed, and all that remained on the top of the hill
was these two bodies and the three empty posts. Water beat on the bodies and
rolled them over.
By that time both Levi and the body of Yeshua were gone from the
hilltop.
On Friday morning, that is, the day after the accursed se, all the
available staff of the Variety - the bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich
Lastochkin, two accountants, three typists, both box-office girls, the
messengers, ushers, cleaning women - in short, all those available, were not
at their places doing their jobs, but were all sitting on the window-sills
looking out on Sadovaya and watching what was going on by the wall of the
Variety. By this wall a queue of many thousands clung in two rows, its tail
reaching to Kudrinskaya Square. At the head of the line stood some two dozen
scalpers well known to theatrical Moscow.
The line behaved with much agitation, attracting the notice of the
citizens streaming past, and was occupied with the discussion of
inflammatory tales about yesterday's unprecedented shat, among other things that after the
conclusion of the famous sng to the tall
tales of these wonders, and decidedly did not know what to undertake, and
yet something had to be undertaken, and precisely by him, because he now
turned out to be the senior member of the whole Variety team.
By ten o'clock the line of people desiring tickets had swelled so much
that rumour of it reached the police, and with astonishing swiftness
detachments were sent, both on foot and mounted, to bring this line into
some sort of order. However, in itself even an orderly snake a half-mile
long presented a great temptation, and caused utter amazement in the
citizens on Sadovaya.
That was outside, but inside the Variety things were also none too
great. Early in the morning the telephones began to ring and went on ringing
without interruption in Likhodeev's office, in Rimsky's office, at the
bookkeeper's, in the box office, and in Varenukha's office.
Vassily Stepanovich at first made some answer, the box-office girl also
answered, the ushers mumbled something into the telephones, but then they
stopped altogether, because to questions of where Likhodeev, Varenukha and
Rimsky were, there was decidedly no answer. At first they tried to get off
by saying 'Likhodeev's at home', but the reply to this was that they had
called him at home, and at home they said Likhodeev was at the Variety.
An agitated lady called, started asking for Rimsky, was advised to call
his wife, to which the receiver, sobbing, answered that she was his wife and
that Rimsky was nowhere to be found. Some sort of nonsense was beginning.
The cleaning woman had already told everybody that when she came to the
findirector's office to clean, she saw the door wide open, the lights on,
the window to the garden broken, the armchair lying on the floor, and no one
in the office.
Shortly after ten o'clock, Madame Rimsky burst into the Variety. She
was sobbing and wringing her hands. Vassily Stepanovich was utterly at a
loss and did not know how to counsel her. Then at half past ten came the
police. Their first and perfectly reasonable question was:
"What's going on here, citizens? What's this all about?'
The team stepped back, bringing forward the pale and agitated Vassily
Stepanovich. He had to call things by their names and confess that the
administration of the Variety in the persons of the director, the
findirector and the administrator had vanished and no one knew where, that
the master of ceremonies had been taken to a psychiatric hospital after
yesterday's st interest was shown in the cleaning woman's
story about the shape in which the findirector's office had been found. The
staff were asked to go to their places and get busy, and in a short while
the investigation appeared in the Variety building, accompanied by a
sharp-eared, muscular, ash-coloured dog with extremely intelligent eyes. The
whisper spread at once among the Variety staff that the dog was none other
than the famous Ace of Diamonds. And so it was. His behaviour amazed them
all. The moment Ace of Diamonds ran into the findirector's office, he
growled, baring his monstrous yellow fangs, then crouched on his belly and,
with some sort of look of anguish and at the same time of rage in his eyes,
crawled towards the broken window. Overcoming his fear, he suddenly jumped
up on the window-sill and, throwing back his sharp muzzle, howled savagely
and angrily. He refused to leave the window, growled and twitched, and kept
trying to jump out.
The dog was taken from the office and turned loose in the lobby, whence
he walked out through the main entrance to the street and led those
following him to the cab stand. There he lost the trail he had been
pursuing. After that Ace of Diamonds was taken away.
The investigation settled in Varenukha's office, where they began
summoning in turn all the Variety staff members who had witnessed
yesterday's events during the se unforeseen difficulties. The thread kept
snapping off in their hands.
There had been posters, right? Right. But during the night they had
been pasted over with new ones, and now, strike me dead, there wasn't a
single one to be found! And the magician himself, where had he come from?
Ah, who knows! But there was a contract drawn up with him?
I suppose so,' the agitated Vassily Stepanovich replied.
'And if one was drawn up, it had to go through bookkeeping?'
'Most assuredly,' responded the agitated Vassily Stepanovich.
'Then where is it?'
`Not here,' the bookkeeper replied, turning ever more pale and
spreading his arms.
And indeed no trace of the contract was found in the files of the
bookkeeping office, nor at the findirector's, nor at Likhodeev's or
Varenukha's.
And what was this magician's name? Vassily Stepanovich did not know, he
had not been at the snkled her brow, wrinkled it, thought and thought, and
finally said:
'Wo... Woland, seems like...'
Or maybe not Woland? Maybe not Woland. Maybe Faland.
It turned out that in the foreigners' bureau they had heard precisely
nothing either about any Woland, or for that matter any Faland, the
magician.
The messenger Karpov said that this same magician was supposedly
staying in Likhodeev's apartment. The apartment was, of course, visited at
once - no magician was found there. Likhodeev himself was not there either.
The housekeeper Grunya was not there, and where she had gone nobody
knew.
The chairman of the management, Nikanor Ivanovich, was not there,
Bedsornev was not there!
Something utterly preposterous was coming out: the whole top
administration had vanished, a strange, scandalous seance had taken place
the day before, but who had produced it and at whose prompting, no one knew.
And meanwhile it was drawing towards noon, when the box office was to
open. But, of course, there could be no talk of that! A huge piece of
cardboard was straight away posted on the doors of the Variety reading:
'Today's Show Cancelled'. The line became agitated, beginning at its
head, but after some agitation, it nevertheless began to break up, and about
an hour later no trace of it remained on Sadovaya. The investigation
departed to continue its work elsewhere, the staff was sent home, leaving
only the watchmen, and the doors of the Variety were locked.
The bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich had urgently to perform two tasks.
First, to go to the Commission on Spectacles and Entertainment of the
Lighter Type with a report on yesterday's events and, second, to visit the
Finspectacle sector so as to turn over yesterday's receipts - 21,711
roubles.
The precise and efficient Vassily Stepanovich wrapped the money in
newspaper, criss-crossed it with string, put it in his briefcase, and,
knowing his instructions very well, set out, of course, not for a bus or a
tram, but for the cab stand.
The moment the drivers of the three cabs saw a passenger hurrying
towards the stand with a tightly stuffed briefcase, all three left empty
right under his nose, looking back at him angrily for some reason.
Struck by this circumstance, the bookkeeper stood like a post for a
long time, trying to grasp what it might mean.
About three minutes later, an empty cab drove up, but the driver's face
twisted the moment he saw the passenger.
'Are you free?' Vassily Stepanovich asked with a cough of surprise.
'Show your money,' the driver replied angrily, without looking at the
passenger.
With increasing amazement, the bookkeeper, pressing the precious
briefcase under his arm, pulled a ten-rouble bill from his wallet and showed
it to the driver.
'I won't go!' the man said curtly.
'I beg your pardon...' the bookkeeper tried to begin, but the driver
interrupted him.
'Got any threes?'
The completely bewildered bookkeeper took two three-rouble bills from
his wallet and showed them to the driver.
'Get in,' he shouted, and slapped down the flag of the meter so that he
almost broke it. 'Let's go!'
'No change, is that it?' the bookkeeper asked timidly.
`A pocket full of change!' the driver bawled, and the eyes in the
mirror went bloodshot. 'It's my third case today. And the same thing
happened with the others, too. Some son of a bitch gives me a tenner, I give
him change - four-fifty. He gets out, the scum! About five minutes later, I
look: instead of a tenner, it's a label from a seltzer bottle!' Here the
driver uttered several unprintable words. 'Another one, beyond Zubovskaya. A
tenner. I give him three roubles change. He leaves. I go to my wallet,
there's a bee there - zap in the finger! Ah, you! ...' and again the driver
pasted on some unprintable words. 'And no tenner. Yesterday, in the Variety
here' (unprintable words), 'some vermin of a conjurer did a s'Oh-oh! ...'
Having got where he had to go, having paid satisfactorily, the
bookkeeper entered the building and went down the corridor towards the
manager's office, and realized on his way that he had come at the wrong
time. Some sort of tumult reigned in the offices of the Spectacles
Commission. A messenger girl ran past the bookkeeper, her kerchief all
pushed back on her head and her eyes popping.
'Nothing, nothing, nothing, my dears!' she shouted, addressing no one
knew whom. The jacket and trousers are there, but inside the jacket there's
nothing!'
She disappeared through some door, and straight away from behind it
came the noise of smashing dishes. The manager of the commission's first
sector, whom the bookkeeper knew, ran out of the secretary's room, but he
was in such a state that he did not recognize the bookkeeper and disappeared
without a trace.
Shaken by all this, the bookkeeper reached the secretary's room, which
was the anteroom to the office of the chairman of the commission, and here
he was definitively dumbfounded.
From behind the closed door of the office came a terrible voice,
undoubtedly belonging to Prokhor Petrovich, the chairman of the commission.
`Must be scolding somebody!' the consternated bookkeeper thought and,
looking around, saw something else: in a leather armchair, her head thrown
back, sobbing unrestrainedly, a wet handkerchief in her hand, legs stretched
out into the middle of the room, lay Prokhor Petrovich's personal secretary
- the beautiful Anna Richardovna.
Anna Richardovna's chin was all smeared with lipstick, and down her
peachy cheeks black streams of sodden mascara flowed from her eyelashes.
Seeing someone come in, Anna Richardovna jumped up, rushed to the
bookkeeper, clutched the lapels of his jacket, began shaking him and
shouting:
'Thank God! At least one brave man has been found! Everybody ran away,
everybody betrayed us! Let's go, let's go to him, I don't know what to do!'
And, still sobbing, she dragged the bookkeeper into the office.
Once in the office, the bookkeeper first of all dropped his briefcase,
and all the thoughts in his head turned upside-down. And, it must be said,
not without reason.
At a huge writing desk with a massive inkstand an empty suit sat and
with a dry pen, not dipped in ink, traced on a piece of paper. The suit was
wearing a necktie, a fountain pen stuck from its pocket, but above the
collar there was neither neck nor head, just as there were no hands sticking
out of the sleeves. The suit was immersed in work and completely ignored the
turmoil that reigned around it. Hearing someone come in, the suit leaned
back and from above the collar came the voice, quite familiar to the
bookkeeper, of Prokhor Petrovich:
'What is this? Isn't it written on the door that I'm not receiving?'
The beautiful secretary shrieked and, wringing her hands, cried out:
'You see? You see?! He's not there! He's not! Bring him back, bring him
back!'
Here someone peeked in the door of the office, gasped, and flew out.
The bookkeeper felt his legs trembling and sat on the edge of a chair,
but did not forget to pick up his briefcase. Anna Richardovna hopped around
the bookkeeper, worrying his jacket, and exclaiming:
'I always, always stopped him when he swore by the devil! So now the
devil's got him!' Here the beauty ran to the writing desk and in a tender,
musical voice, slightly nasal from weeping, called out:
'Prosha! Where are you!'
'Who here is "Prosha" to you?' the suit inquired haughtily, sinking
still deeper into the armchair.
'He doesn't recognize me! Me he doesn't! Do you understand? ... ' the
secretary burst into sobs.
'I ask you not to sob in the office!' the hot-tempered striped suit now
said angrily, and with its sleeve it drew to itself a fresh stack of papers,
with the obvious aim of appending its decision to them.
'No, I can't look at it, I can't!' cried Anna Richardovna, and she ran
out to the secretary's room, and behind her, like a shot, flew the
bookkeeper.
'Imagine, I'm sitting here,' Anna Richardovna recounted, shaking with
agitation, again clutching at the bookkeeper's sleeve, 'and a cat walks in.
Black, big as a behemoth. Of course, I shout "scat" to it. Out it goes, and
in comes a fat fellow instead, also with a sort of cat-like mug, and says:
"What are you doing, citizeness, shouting 'scat' at visitors?" And -
whoosh - straight to Prokhor Petrovich. Of course, I run after him,
shouting: "Are you out of your mind?" And this brazen-face goes straight to
Prokhor Petrovich and sits down opposite him in the armchair. Well, that one
... he's the kindest-hearted man, but edgy. He blew up, I don't deny it. An
edgy man, works like an ox - he blew up. "Why do you barge in here
unannounced?" he says. And that brazen-face, imagine, sprawls in the
armchair and says, smiling:
"I've come," he says, "to discuss a little business with you." Prokhor
Petrovich blew up again: "I'm busy." And the other one, just think, answers:
"You're not busy with anything ..." Eh? Well, here, of course, Prokhor
Petrovich's patience ran out, and he shouted: "What is all this? Get him out
of here, devil take me!" And that one, imagine, smiles and says: "Devil take
you? That, in fact, can be done!" And - bang! Before I had time to scream, I
look: the one with the cat's mug is gone, and th ... there ... sits ... the
suit ... Waaa! ...' Stretching her mouth, which had lost all shape entirely,
Anna Richardovna howled.
After choking with sobs, she caught her breath, but then began pouring
out something completely incoherent:
'And it writes, writes, writes! You could lose your mind! Talks on the
telephone! A suit! They all ran away like rabbits!'
The bookkeeper only stood and shook. But here fate came to his aid.
Into the secretary's room, with calm, business-like strides, marched the
police, to the number of two men. Seeing them, the beauty sobbed still
harder, jabbing towards the door of the office with her hand.
'Let's not cry now, citizeness,' the first said calmly, and the
bookkeeper, feeling himself quite superfluous there, ran out of the
secretary's room and a minute later was already in the fresh air. There was
some sort of draught in his head, a soughing as in a chimney, and through
this soughing he heard scraps of the stories the ushers told about
yesterday's cat, who had taken part in the sgankovsky Lane, and
to calm himself a little he walked the distance to the affiliate on foot.
The affiliate for city spectacles was housed in a peeling old mansion
set back from the street, and was famous for the porphyry columns in its
vestibule. But it was not the columns that struck visitors to the affiliate
that day, but what was going on at the foot of them.
Several visitors stood in stupefaction and stared at a weeping girl
sitting behind a small table on which lay special literature about various
spectacles, which the girl sold. At that moment, the girl was not offering
any of this literature to anyone, and only waved her hand at sympathetic
inquiries, while at the same time, from above, from below, from the sides,
and from all sections of the affiliate poured the ringing of at least twenty
overwrought telephones.
After weeping for a while, the girl suddenly gave a start and cried out
hysterically:
'Here it comes again!' and unexpectedly began singing in a tremulous
soprano:
'Glorious sea, sacred Baikal...'[1]
A messenger appeared on the stairs, shook his fist at someone, and
began singing along with the girl in a dull, weak-voiced baritone:
'Glorious boat, a barrel of cisco ...'[2]
The messenger's voice was joined by distant voices, the choir began to
swell, and finally the song resounded in all corners of the affiliate. In
the neighbouring room no. 6, which housed the account comptroller's section,
one powerful, slightly husky octave stood out particularly.
'Hey, Barguzin [3] ... make the waves rise and fall! ...' bawled the
messenger on the stairs.
Tears flowed down the girl's face, she tried to clench her teeth, but
her mouth opened of itself, as she sang an octave higher than the messenger:
'This young lad's ready to frisk-o!'
What struck the silent visitors to the affiliate was that the
choristers, scattered in various places, sang quite harmoniously, as if the
whole choir stood there with its eyes fixed on some invisible director.
Passers-by in Vagankovsky Lane stopped by the fence of the yard,
wondering at the gaiety that reigned in the affiliate.
As soon as the first verse came to an end, the singing suddenly ceased,
again as if to a director's baton. The messenger quietly swore and
disappeared.
Here the front door opened, and in it appeared a citizen in a summer
jacket, from under which protruded the skirts of a white coat, and with him
a policeman.
'Take measures, doctor, I implore you!' the girl cried hysterically.
The secretary of the affiliate ran out to the stairs and, obviously
burning with shame and embarrassment, began falteringly:
'You see, doctor, we have a case of some sort of mass hypnosis, and so
it's necessary that...' He did not finish the sentence, began to choke on
his words, and suddenly sang out in a tenor:
'Shilka and Nerchinsk ...'[4]
'Fool!' the girl had time to shout, but, without explaining who she was
abusing, produced instead a forced roulade and herself began singing about
Shilka and Nerchinsk.
`Get hold of yourself! Stop singing!' the doctor addressed the
secretary.
There was every indication that the secretary would himself have given
anything to stop singing, but stop singing he could not, and together with
the choir he brought to the hearing of passers-by in the lane the news that
'in the wilderness he was not touched by voracious beast, nor brought down
by bullet of shooters.'
The moment the verse ended, the girl was the first to receive a dose of
valerian from the doctor, who then ran after the secretary to give the
others theirs.
'Excuse me, dear citizeness,' Vassily Stepanovich addressed the girl,
'did a black cat pay you a visit?'
`What cat?' the girl cried in anger. 'An ass, it's an ass we've got
sitting in the affiliate!' And adding to that: `Let him hear, I'll tell
everything' - she indeed told what had happened.
It turned out that the manager of the city affiliate, 'who has made a
perfect mess of lightened entertainment' (the girl's words), suffered from a
mania for organizing all sorts of little clubs. 'Blew smoke in the
authorities' eyes!' screamed the girl.
In the course of a year this manager had succeeded in organizing a club
of Lermontov studies [5], of chess and checkers, of ping-pong, and of
horseback riding. For the summer, he was threatening to organize clubs of
fresh-water canoeing and alpinism. And so today, during lunch-break, this
manager comes in ...
' ...with some son of a bitch on his arm,' the girl went on, 'hailing
from nobody knows where, in wretched checkered trousers, a cracked
pince-nez, and ... with a completely impossible mug! ...'
And straight away, the girl said, he recommended him to all those
eating in the affiliate's dining room as a prominent specialist in
organizing choral-singing clubs.
The faces of the future alpinists darkened, but the manager immediately
called on everyone to cheer up, while the specialist joked a little, laughed
a little, and swore an oath that singing takes no time at all, but that,
incidentally, there was a whole load of benefits to be derived from it.
Well, of course, as the girl said, the first to pop up were Fanov and
Kosarchuk, well-known affiliate toadies, who announced that they would sign
up. Here the rest of the staff realized that there was no way around the
singing, and they, too, had to sign up for the club. They decided to sing
during the lunch break, since the rest of the time was taken up by Lermontov
and checkers. The manager, to set an example, declared that he was a tenor,
and everything after that went as in a bad dream. The checkered
specialist-choirmaster bawled out:
'Do, mi, sol, do!' - dragged the most bashful from behind the
bookcases, where they had tried to save themselves from singing, told
Kosarchuk he had perfect pitch, began whining, squealing, begging them to be
kind to an old singing-master, tapped the tuning fork on his knuckle,
beseeched them to strike up 'Glorious Sea'.
Strike up they did. And gloriously. The checkered one really knew his
business. They finished the first verse. Here the director excused himself,
said: `Back in a minute...', and disappeared. They thought he would actually
come back in a minute. But ten minutes went by and he was not there. The
staff was overjoyed - he had run away!
Then suddenly, somehow of themselves, they began the second verse. They
were all led by Kosarchuk, who may not have had perfect pitch, but did have
a rather pleasant high tenor. They sang it through. No director! They moved
to their places, but had not managed to sit down when, against their will,
they began to sing. To stop was impossible. After three minutes of silence,
they would strike up again. Silence - strike up! Then they realized that
they were in trouble. The manager locked himself in his office from shame!
Here the girl's story was interrupted - the valerian had not done much
good.
A quarter of an hour later, three trucks drove up to the fence in
Vagankovsky, and the entire staff of the affiliate, the manager at its head,
was loaded on to them.
As soon as the first truck, after lurching in the gateway, drove out
into the lane, the staff members, who were standing on the platform holding
each other's shoulders, opened their mouths, and the whole lane resounded
with the popular song. The second truck picked it up, then the third. And so
they drove on. Passers-by hurrying about their own business would cast only
a fleeting glance at the trucks, not surprised in the least, thinking it was
a group excursion to the country. And they were indeed going to the country,
though not on an excursion, but to Professor Stravinsky's clinic.
Half an hour later, the bookkeeper, who had lost his head completely,
reached the financial sector, hoping finally to get rid of the box-office
money. Having learned from experience by now, he first peeked cautiously
into the oblong hall where, behind frosted-glass windows with gold
lettering, the staff was sitting. Here the bookkeeper discovered no signs of
alarm or scandal. It was quiet, as it ought to be in a decent institution.
Vassily Stepanovich stuck his head through the window with 'Cash
Deposits' written over it, greeted some unfamiliar clerk, and politely asked
for a deposit slip.
'What do you need it for?' the clerk in the window asked.
The bookkeeper was amazed.
'I want to turn over some cash. I'm from the Variety.'
'One moment,' the clerk replied and instantly closed the opening in the
window with a grille.
'Strange!...' thought the bookkeeper. His amazement was perfectly