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nightingales.
Where the two who had stabbed Judas went, no one knows, but the route
of the third man in the hood is known. Leaving the road, he headed into the
thick of the olive trees, making his way south. He climbed over the garden
fence far from the main gate, in the southern corner, where the upper stones
of the masonry had fallen out. Soon he was on the bank of the Kedron. Then
he entered the water and for some time made his way in it, until he saw
ahead the silhouettes of two horses and a man beside them. The horses were
also standing in the stream. The water flowed, washing their hoofs. The
horse-handler mounted one of the horses, the man in the hood jumped on to
the other, and the two slowly walked in the stream, and one could hear the
pebbles crunching under the horses' hoofs. Then the riders left the water,
came out on the Yershalaim bank, and rode slowly under the city wall. Here
the horse-handler separated himself, galloped ahead, and disappeared from
view, while the man in the hood stopped his horse, dismounted on the
deserted road, removed his cloak, turned it inside out, took from under the
cloak a flat helmet without plumes and put it on. Now it was a man in a
military chlamys with a short sword at his hip who jumped on to the horse.
He touched the reins and the fiery cavalry horse set off at a trot,
jolting its rider. It was not a long way - the rider was approaching the
southern gate of Yershalaim.
Under the arch of the gateway the restless flame of torches danced and
leaped. The soldiers on guard from the second century of the Lightning
legion sat on stone benches playing dice. Seeing a military man ride in, the
soldiers jumped up, the man waved his hand to them and rode on into the
city.
The city was flooded with festive lights. The flames of lamps played in
all the windows, and from everywhere, merging into one dissonant chorus,
came hymns of praise. Occasionally glancing into windows that looked on to
the street, the rider could see people at tables set with roast kid and cups
of wine amidst dishes of bitter herbs. Whistling some quiet song, the rider
made his way at an unhurried trot through the deserted streets of the Lower
City, heading for the Antonia Tower, glancing occasionally at the
five-branched candlesticks, such as the world had never seen, blazing above
the temple, or at the moon that hung still higher than the five-branched
candlesticks.
The palace of Herod the Great took no part in the solemnities of the
Passover night. In the auxiliary quarters of the palace, facing to the
south, where the officers of the Roman cohort and the legate of the legion
were stationed, lights burned and there was a feeling of some movement and
life. But the front part, the formal part, which housed the sole and
involuntary occupant of the palace - the procurator - all of it, with its
columns and golden statues, was as if blind under the brightest moon. Here,
inside the palace, darkness and silence reigned.
And the procurator, as he had told Aphranius, would not go inside. He
ordered his bed made up on the balcony, there where he had dined and where
he had conducted the interrogation in the morning. The procurator lay on the
made-up couch, but sleep would not come to him. The bare moon hung high in
the clear sky, and the procurator did not take his eyes off it for several
hours.
Approximately at midnight, sleep finally took pity on the hegemon. With
a spasmodic yawn, the procurator unfastened and threw off his cloak, removed
the belt girded over his shirt, with a broad steel knife in a sheath, placed
it on the chair by his couch, took off his sandals, and stretched out. Banga
got on the bed at once and lay down next to him, head to head, and the
procurator, placing his hand on the dog's neck, finally closed his eyes.
Only then did the dog also fall asleep.
The couch was in semi-darkness, shielded from the moon by a column, but
a ribbon of moonlight stretched from the porch steps to the bed. And once
the procurator lost connection with what surrounded him in reality, he
immediately set out on the shining road and went up it straight towards the
moon. He even burst out laughing in his sleep from happiness, so wonderful
and inimitable did everything come to be on the transparent, pale blue road.
He walked in the company of Banga, and beside him walked the wandering
philosopher. They were arguing about something very complex and important,
and neither of them could refute the other. They did not agree with each
other in anything, and that made their argument especially interesting and
endless. It went without saying that today's execution proved to be a sheer
misunderstanding: here this philosopher, who had thought up such an
incredibly absurd thing as that all men are good, was walking beside him,
therefore he was alive. And, of course, it would be terrible even to think
that one could execute such a man. There had been no execution! No
execution! That was the loveliness of this journey up the stairway of the
moon.
There was as much free time as they needed, and the storm would come
only towards evening, and cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible
vices. Thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it
is the most terrible vice!
He, for example, the present procurator of Judea and former tribune of
a legion, had been no coward that time, in the Valley of the Virgins, when
the fierce German had almost torn Rat-slayer the Giant to pieces. But, good
heavens, philosopher! How can you, with your intelligence, allow yourself to
think that, for the sake of a man who has committed a crime against Caesar,
the procurator of Judea would ruin his career?
'Yes, yes...' Pilate moaned and sobbed in his sleep. Of course he
would. In the morning he still would not, but now, at night, after weighing
everything, he would agree to ruin it. He would do everything to save the
decidedly innocent, mad dreamer and healer from execution!
`Now we shall always be together,'[2] said the ragged wandering
philosopher in his dream, who for some unknown reason had crossed paths with
the equestrian of the golden spear. `Where there's one of us, straight away
there will be the other! Whenever I am remembered, you will at once be
remembered, too! I, the foundling, the son of unknown parents, and you, the
son of an astrologer-king and a miller's daughter, the beautiful Pila.'[3]
'Yes, and don't you forget to remember me, the astrologer's son,'
Pilate asked in his dream. And securing in his dream a nod from the En-Sarid
[4] beggar who was walking beside him, the cruel procurator of Judea wept
and laughed from joy in his dream.
This was all very good, but the more terrible was the hegemon's
awakening. Banga growled at the moon, and the pale-blue road, slippery as
though smoothed with oil, fell away before the procurator. He opened his
eyes, and the first thing he remembered was that the execution had been. The
first thing the procurator did was to clutch Banga's collar with a habitual
gesture, then with sick eyes he began searching for the moon and saw that it
had moved slightly to the side and turned silvery. Its light was being
interfered with by an unpleasant, restless light playing on the balcony
right before his eyes. A torch blazed and smoked in the hand of the
centurion Ratslayer. The holder of it glanced sidelong with fear and spite
at the dangerous beast preparing itself to leap.
'Stay, Banga,' the procurator said in a sick voice and coughed.
Shielding himself from the flame with his hand, he went on: 'Even at
night, even by moonlight, I have no peace! ... Oh, gods! ... Yours is also a
bad job, Mark. You cripple soldiers...'
Mark gazed at the procurator in great amazement, and the man
recollected himself. To smooth over the unwarranted words, spoken while not
quite awake, the procurator said:
`Don't be offended, centurion. My position, I repeat, is still worse.
What do you want?'
The head of the secret guard is waiting to see you,' Mark reported
calmly.
'Call him, call him,' the procurator ordered, clearing his throat with
a cough, and he began feeling for his sandals with his bare feet. The flame
played on the columns, the centurion's caligae tramped across the mosaics.
The centurion went out to the garden.
'Even by moonlight I have no peace,' the procurator said to himself,
grinding his teeth.
Instead of the centurion, a man in a hood appeared on the balcony.
'Stay, Banga,' the procurator said quietly and pressed the back of the
dog's head.
Before beginning to speak, Aphranius, as was his custom, looked around
and stepped into the shadow, and having made sure that, besides Banga, there
were no extra persons on the balcony, he said quietly:
`I ask to be tried, Procurator. You turned out to be right. I was
unable to protect Judas of Kiriath, he has been stabbed to death. I ask to
be tried and retired.'
It seemed to Aphranius that four eyes were looking at him - a dog's and
a wolf's.
Aphranius took from under his chlamys a purse stiff with blood, sealed
with two seals.
'This is the bag of money the killers left at the high priest's house.
The blood on this bag is the blood of Judas of Kiriath.'
'How much is there, I wonder?' asked Pilate, bending over the bag.
'Thirty tetradrachmas.'
The procurator grinned and said:
'Not much.'
Aphranius was silent.
'Where is the murdered man?'
That I do not know,' the visitor, who never parted with his hood, said
with calm dignity. 'We will begin a search in the morning.'
The procurator started, abandoning a sandal strap that refused to be
fastened.
'But you do know for certain that he was killed?'
To this the procurator received a dry response:
'I have been working in Judea for fifteen years, Procurator. I began my
service under Valerius Grams. [5] I do not have to see the corpse in order
to say that a man has been killed, and so I report to you that the one who
was called Judas of Kiriath was stabbed to death several hours ago.'
'Forgive me, Aphranius,' answered Pilate, 'I'm not properly awake yet,
that's why I said it. I sleep badly,' the procurator grinned, 'I keep seeing
a moonbeam in my sleep. Quite funny, imagine, it's as if I'm walking along
this moonbeam ... And so, I would like to know your thoughts on this matter.
Where are you going to look for him? Sit down, head of the secret
service.'
Aphranius bowed, moved the chair closer to the bed, and sat down,
clanking his sword.
'I am going to look for him not far from the oil press in the garden of
Gethsemane.'
'So, so. And why there, precisely?'
'As I figure it, Hegemon, Judas was not killed in Yershalaim itself,
nor anywhere very far from it, he was killed near Yershalaim.'
`I regard you as one of the outstanding experts in your business. I
don't know how things are in Rome, but in the colonies you have no equal ...
But, explain to me, why are you going to look for him precisely there?'
'I will by no means admit the notion,' Aphranius spoke in a low voice,
`of Judas letting himself be caught by any suspicious people within city
limits. It's impossible to put a knife into a man secretly in the street.
That means he was lured to a basement somewhere. But the service has already
searched for him in the Lower City and undoubtedly would have found him. He
is not in the city, I can guarantee that. If he was killed far from the
city, this packet of money could not have been dropped off so quickly. He
was killed near the city. They managed to lure him out of the city.'
'I cannot conceive how that could have been done!'
'Yes, Procurator, that is the most difficult question in the whole
affair, and I don't even know if I will succeed in resolving it.'
'It is indeed mysterious! A believer, on the eve of the feast, goes out
of the city for some unknown reason, leaving the Passover meal, and perishes
there. Who could have lured him, and how? Could it have been done by a
woman?' the procurator asked on a sudden inspiration.
Aphranius replied calmly and weightily:
'By no means, Procurator. That possibility is utterly excluded. One
must reason logically. Who was interested in Judas's death? Some wandering
dreamers, some circle in which, first of all, there weren't any women. To
marry, Procurator, one needs money. To bring a person into the world, one
needs the same. But to put a knife into a man with the help of a woman, one
needs very big money, and no vagabond has got it. There was no woman in this
affair, Procurator. Moreover, I will say that such an interpretation of the
murder can only throw us off the track, hinder the investigation, and
confuse me.'
'I see that you are perfectly right, Aphranius,' said Pilate, 'and I
merely allowed myself to express a supposition.'
'Alas, it is erroneous, Procurator.'
`But what is it, then, what is it?' exclaimed the procurator, peering
into Aphranius's face with greedy curiosity.
'I suppose it's money again.'
'An excellent thought! But who could have offered him money at night,
outside the city, and for what?'
'Oh, no, Procurator, it's not that. I have only one supposition, and if
it is wrong, I may not find any other explanations.' Aphranius leaned closer
to the procurator and finished in a whisper: 'Judas wanted to hide his money
in a secluded place known only to himself.'
'A very subtle explanation. That, apparently, is how things were. Now I
understand you: he was lured out not by others, but by his own purpose. Yes,
yes, that's so.'
'So. Judas was mistrustful, he was hiding the money from others.' 'Yes,
in Gethsemane, you said... And why you intend to look for him precisely
there - that, I confess, I do not understand.'
'Oh, Procurator, that is the simplest thing of all. No one would hide
money on the roads, in open and empty places. Judas was neither on the road
to Hebron, nor on the road to Bethany. He had to be in a protected, secluded
place with trees. It's as simple as that. And except for Gethsemane, there
are no such places near Yershalaim. He couldn't have gone far.'
'You have utterly convinced me. And so, what are we to do now?'
'I will immediately start a search for the murderers who tracked Judas
out of the city, and I myself, meanwhile, as I have already reported to you,
will stand trial.'
"What for?'
'My guards lost him in the bazaar last evening, after he left Kaifa's
palace. How it happened, I cannot comprehend. It has never happened before
in my life. He was put under surveillance just after our conversation. But
in the neighbourhood of the bazaar he doubled back somewhere, and made such
a strange loop that he escaped without a trace.'
'So. I declare to you that I do not consider it necessary to try you.
You did all you could, and no one in the world' - here the procurator smiled
- `could do more than you! Penalize the sleuths who lost Judas. But here,
too, I warn you, I would not want it to be anything of a severe sort. In the
last analysis, we did everything to take care of the blackguard!'
'Ah, yes! I forgot to ask,' the procurator rubbed his forehead, how did
they manage to foist the money on Kaifa?'
`You see, Procurator ... that is not especially complicated. The
avengers came from behind Kaifa's palace, where the lane is higher than the
yard. They threw the packet over the fence.'
"With a note?'
'Yes, exactly as you suspected, Procurator.'
'Yes, although...' Here Aphranius tore the seal off the packet and
showed its contents to Pilate.
`Good heavens, what are you doing, Aphranius, those must be temple
seals!'
"The procurator needn't trouble himself with that question,' Aphranius
replied, closing the packet.
'Can it be that you have all the seals?' Pilate asked, laughing.
'It couldn't be otherwise, Procurator,' Aphranius replied very sternly,
not laughing at all.
'I can imagine the effect at Kaifa's!'
'Yes, Procurator, it caused great agitation. They summoned me
immediately.'
Even in the semi-darkness one could see how Pilate's eyes flashed.
'That's interesting, interesting...'
'I venture to disagree, Procurator, it was not interesting. A most
boring and tiresome business. To my question whether anyone had been paid
money in Kaifa's palace, I was told categorically that there had been
nothing of the sort.'
'Ah, yes? Well, so, if no one was paid, no one was paid. It will be
that much harder to find the killers.'
'Absolutely right, Procurator.'
`It suddenly occurs to me, Aphranius: might he not have killed
himself?"
'Oh, no, Procurator,' Aphranius replied, even leaning back in his chair
from astonishment, 'excuse me, but that is entirely unlikely!'
'Ah, everything is likely in this city. I'm ready to bet that in a very
short time rumours of it will spread all over the city.'
Here Aphranius again darted his look at the procurator, thought for a
moment, and replied:
'That may be, Procurator.'
The procurator was obviously still unable to part with this question of
the killing of the man from Kiriath, though everything was already clear,
and he said even with a sort of reverie:
`But I'd like to have seen how they killed him.' 'He was killed with
great art, Procurator,' Aphranius replied, glancing somewhat ironically at
the procurator.
'How do you know that?'
'Kindly pay attention to the bag, Procurator,' Aphranius replied. 'I
guarantee you that Judas's blood gushed out in a stream. I've seen murdered
people in my time, Procurator.'
'So, of course, he won't rise?'
'No, Procurator, he will rise,' replied Aphranius, smiling
philosophically, 'when the trumpet of the messiah they're expecting here
sounds - over him. But before then he won't rise.'
'Enough, Aphranius, the question is clear. Let's go on to the burial.'
The executed men have been buried, Procurator.'
'Oh, Aphranius, it would be a crime to try you. You're deserving of the
highest reward. How was it?'
Aphranius began to tell about it: while he himself was occupied with
Judas's affair, a detachment of the secret guard, under the direction of his
assistant, arrived at the hill as evening came. One of the bodies was not
found on the hilltop. Pilate gave a start and said hoarsely:
'Ah, how did I not foresee it! ...'
'No need to worry, Procurator,' said Aphranius, and he went on with his
narrative: `The bodies of Dysmas and Gestas, their eyes pecked out by
carrion birds, were taken up, and they immediately rushed in search of the
third body. It was discovered in a very short time. A certain man ...'
'Matthew Levi,' said Pilate, not questioningly, but rather
affirmatively.
'Yes, Procurator... Matthew Levi was hiding in a cave on the northern
slope of Bald Skull, waiting for darkness. The naked body of Yeshua Ha-Nozri
was with him. When the guards entered the cave with a torch, Levi fell into
despair and wrath. He shouted about having committed no crime, and about
every man's right by law to bury an executed criminal if he so desires.
Matthew Levi said he did not want to pan with the body. He was agitated,
cried out something incoherent, now begging, now threatening and cursing...'
'Did they have to arrest him?' Pilate asked glumly.
'No, Procurator, no,' Aphranius replied very soothingly, 'they managed
to quiet the impudent madman, explaining to him that the body would be
buried. Levi, having grasped what was being said to him, calmed down, but
announced that he would not leave and wished to take part in the burial. He
said he would not leave even if they started to kill him, and even offered
for that purpose a bread knife he had with him.'
'Was he chased away?' Pilate asked in a stifled voice.
'No, Procurator, no. My assistant allowed him to take part in the
burial.'
'Which of your assistants was in charge of it?' asked Pilate.
'Tolmai,' Aphranius answered and added in alarm: `Perhaps he made a
mistake?'
'Go on,' answered Pilate, `there was no mistake. Generally, I am
beginning to feel a bit at a loss, Aphranius, I am apparendy dealing with a
man who never makes mistakes. That man is you.'
`Matthew Levi was taken in the cart with the bodies of the executed
men, and in about two hours they reached a solitary ravine north of
Yershalaim. There the detachment, working in shifts, dug a deep hole within
an hour and buried all three executed men in it.'
'Naked?'
'No, Procurator, the detachment brought chitons with them for that
purpose. They put rings on the buried men's fingers. Yeshua's with one
notch, Dysmas's with two, and Gestas's with three. The hole has been covered
over and heaped with stones. The landmark is known to Tolmai.'
'Ah, if only I had foreseen it!' Pilate spoke, wincing. I needed to see
this Matthew Levi...'
'He is here, Procurator.'
Pilate, his eyes wide open, stared at Aphranius for some time, and then
said:
'I thank you for everything that has been done in this affair. I ask
you to send Tolmai to me tomorrow, and to tell him beforehand that I am
pleased with him. And you, Aphranius,' here the procurator took a seal ring
from the pouch of the belt lying on the table and gave it to me head of the
secret service, 'I beg you to accept this as a memento.'
Aphranius bowed and said:
'A great honour, Procurator.'
`I request that the detachment that performed the burial be given
rewards. The sleuths who let Judas slip - a reprimand. Have Matthew Levi
sent to me right now. I must have the details on Yeshua's case.'
'Understood, Procurator,' Aphranius replied and began retreating and
bowing, while the procurator clapped his hands and shouted:
To me, here! A lamp to the colonnade!'
Aphranius was going out to the garden when lights began to flash in the
hands of servants behind Pilate's back. Three lamps appeared on the table
before the procurator, and the moonlit night at once retreated to the
garden, as if Aphranius had led it away with him. In place of Aphranius, an
unknown man, small and skinny, stepped on to the balcony beside the gigantic
centurion. The latter, catching the procurator's eye, withdrew to the garden
at once and there disappeared.
The procurator studied the newcomer with greedy and slightly frightened
eyes. So one looks at a man of whom one has heard a great deal, of whom one
has been thinking, and who finally appears.
The newcomer, a man of about forty, was black-haired, ragged, covered
with caked mud, and looked wolf-like from under his knitted brows. In short,
he was very unsightly, and rather resembled a city beggar, of whom there
were many hanging about on the porches of the temple or in the bazaars of
the noisy and dirty Lower City.
The silence continued for a long time, and was broken by the strange
behaviour of the man brought to Pilate. His countenance changed, he swayed,
and if he had not grasped the edge of the table with his dirty hand, he
would have fallen.
'What's wrong with you?' Pilate asked him.
'Nothing,' answered Matthew Levi, and he made a movement as if he were
swallowing something. His skinny, bare, grey neck swelled out and then
slackened again.
'What's wrong, answer me,' Pilate repeated.
'I'm tired,' Levi answered and looked sullenly at the floor.
'Sit down,' said Pilate, pointing to the armchair.
Levi looked at the procurator mistrustfully, moved towards the
armchair, gave a timorous sidelong glance at the gilded armrests, and sat
down not in the chair but beside it on the floor.
'Explain to me, why did you not sit in the chair?' asked Pilate.
'I'm dirty, I'd soil it,' said Levi, looking at the ground.
'You'll presently be given something to eat.'
'I don't want to eat,' answered Levi.
'Why lie?' Pilate asked quietly. 'You haven't eaten for the whole day,
and maybe even longer. Very well, don't eat. I've summoned you so that you
could show me the knife you had with you.'
`The soldiers took it from me when they brought me here,' Levi replied
and added sullenly: 'You must give it back to me, I have to return it to its
owner, I stole it.'
'What for?'
To cut the ropes,' answered Levi.
'Mark!' cried the procurator, and the centurion stepped in under the
columns. 'Give me his knife.'
The centurion took a dirty bread knife from one of the two cases on his
belt, handed it to the procurator, and withdrew.
'Who did you take the knife from?'
'From the bakery by the Hebron gate, just as you enter the city, on the
left.'
Pilate looked at the broad blade, for some reason tried the sharpness
of the edge with his finger, and said:
'Concerning the knife you needn't worry, the knife will be returned to
the shop. But now I want a second thing - show me the charta you carry with
you, on which Yeshua's words are written down.'
Levi looked at Pilate with hatred and smiled such an inimical smile
that his face became completely ugly.
'You want to take away the last thing?' he asked.
'I didn't say "give me",' answered Pilate, 'I said "show me".'
Levi fumbled in his bosom and produced a parchment scroll. Pilate took
it, unrolled it, spread it out between the lights, and, squinting, began to
study the barely legible ink marks. It was difficult to understand these
crabbed lines, and Pilate kept wincing and leaning right to the parchment,
running his finger over the lines. He did manage to make out that the
writing represented an incoherent chain of certain utterances, certain
dates, household records, and poetic fragments. Some of it Pilate could
read: '...there is no death ... yesterday we ate sweet spring baccuroth
...'[7]
Grimacing with the effort, Pilate squinted as he read: '... we shall
see the pure river of the water of life [8] ... mankind shall look at the
sun through transparent crystal...' Here Pilate gave a start. In the last
lines of the parchment he made out the words: '... greater vice ...
cowardice...'
Pilate rolled up the parchment and with an abrupt movement handed it to
Levi.
Take it,' he said and, after a pause, added: `You're a bookish man, I
see, and there's no need for you to go around alone, in beggar's clothing,
without shelter. I have a big library in Caesarea, I am very rich and want
to take you to work for me. You will sort out and look after the papyri, you
will be fed and clothed.'
Levi stood up and replied:
'No, I don't want to.'
'Why?' the procurator asked, his face darkening. `Am I disagreeable to
you? ... Are you afraid of me?'
The same bad smile distorted Levi's face, and he said:
'No, because you'll be afraid of me. It won't be very easy for you to
look me in the face now that you've killed him.'
'Quiet,' replied Pilate. Take some money.'
Levi shook his head negatively, and the procurator went on:
'I know you consider yourself a disciple of Yeshua, but I can tell you
that you learned nothing of what he taught you. For if you had, you would
certainly take something from me. Bear in mind that before he died he said
he did not blame anyone.' Pilate raised a finger significantly, Pilate's
face was twitching. 'And he himself would surely have taken something. You
are cruel, and he was not cruel. Where will you go?'
Levi suddenly came up to the table, leaned both hands on it, and,
gazing at the procurator with burning eyes, whispered to him:
'Know, Hegemon, that I am going to kill a man in Yershalaim. I wanted
to tell you that, so you'd know there will be more blood.'
'I, too, know there will be more of it,' replied Pilate, `you haven't
surprised me with your words. You want, of course, to kill me?'
`You I won't manage to kill,' replied Levi, baring his teeth and
smiling, 'I'm not such a foolish man as to count on that. But I'll kill
Judas of Kiriath, I'll devote the rest of my life to it.'
Here pleasure showed in the procurator's eyes, and beckoning Matthew
Levi to come closer, he said:
'You won't manage to do it, don't trouble yourself. Judas has already
been killed this night.'
Levi sprang away from the table, looking wildly around, and cried out:
'Who did it?'
`Don't be jealous,' Pilate answered, his teeth bared, and rubbed his
hands, 'I'm afraid he had other admirers besides you.'
'Who did it?' Levi repeated in a whisper.
Pilate answered him:
'I did it.'
Levi opened his mouth and stared at the procurator, who said quietly:
`It is, of course, not much to have done, but all the same I did it.'
And he added: 'Well, and now will you take something?'
Levi considered, relented, and finally said:
'Have them give me a piece of clean parchment.'
An hour went by. Levi was not in the palace. Now the silence of the
dawn was broken only by the quiet noise of the sentries' footsteps in the
garden. The moon was quickly losing its colour, one could see at the other
edge of the sky the whitish dot of the morning star. The lamps had gone out
long, long ago. The procurator lay on the couch. Putting his hand under his
cheek, he slept and breathed soundlessly. Beside him slept Banga.
Thus was the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth
procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate.
When Margarita came to the last words of the chapter - '... Thus was
the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth procurator of Judea,
Pontius Pilate' - it was morning.
Sparrows could be heard in the branches of the willows and lindens in
the little garden, conducting a merry, excited morning conversation.
Margarita got up from the armchair, stretched, and only then felt how
broken her body was and how much she wanted to sleep. It is interesting to
note that Margarita's soul was in perfect order. Her thoughts were not
scattered, she was quite unshaken by having spent the night supernaturally.
She was not troubled by memories of having been at Satan's ball, or
that by some miracle the master had been returned to her, that the novel had
risen from the ashes, that everything was back in place in the basement in
the lane, from which the snitcher Aloisy Mogarych had been expelled. In
short, acquaintance with Woland had caused her no psychic damage. Everything
was as if it ought to have been so.
She went to the next room, convinced herself that the master was
soundly and peacefully asleep, turned off the unnecessary table lamp, and
stretched out by the opposite wall on a little couch covered with an old,
torn sheet. A minute later she was asleep, and that morning she had no
dreams. The basement rooms were silent, the builder's whole little house was
silent, and it was quiet in the solitary lane.
But just then, that is, at dawn on Saturday, an entire floor of a
certain Moscow institution was not asleep, and its windows, looking out on a
big asphalt-paved square which special machines, driving around slowly and
droning, were cleaning with brushes, shone with their full brightness,
cutting through the light of the rising sun.
The whole floor was occupied with the investigation of the Woland case,
and the lights had burned all night in dozens of offices.
Essentially speaking, the matter had already become clear on the
previous day, Friday, when the Variety had had to be closed, owing to the
disappearance of its administration and all sorts of outrages which had
taken place during the notorious se and more new material kept arriving all the time and
incessantly on the sleepless floor.
Now the investigators of this strange case, which smacked of obvious
devilry, with an admixture of some hypnotic tricks and distinct criminality,
had to shape into one lump all the many-sided and tangled events that had
taken place in various parts of Moscow.
The first to visit the sleepless, electrically lit-up floor was Arkady
Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics Commission.
After dinner on Friday, in his apartment located in a house by the
Kamenny Bridge, the telephone rang and a male voice asked for Arkady
Apollonovich. Arkady Apollonovich's wife, who picked up the phone, replied
sullenly that Arkady Apollonovich was unwell, had retired for the night, and
could not come to the phone. However, Arkady Apollonovich came to the phone
all the same. To the question of where Arkady Apollonovich was being called
from, the voice in the telephone had said very briefly where it was from.
'This second ... at once ... this minute ...' babbled the ordinarily
very haughty wife of the chairman of the Acoustics Commission, and she flew
to the bedroom like an arrow to rouse Arkady Apollonovich from his bed,
where he lay experiencing the torments of hell at the recollection of
yesterday's s minute, Arkady Apollonovich, with one slipper on his left foot, in nothing
but his underwear, was already at the phone, babbling into it:
'Yes, it's me ... I'm listening, I'm listening ...'
His wife, forgetting for these moments all the loathsome crimes against
fidelity in which the unfortunate Arkady Apollonovich had been exposed, kept
sticking herself out the door to the corridor with a frightened face, poking
a slipper at the air and whispering:
'Put the slipper on, the slipper ... you'll catch cold ...' At which
Arkady Apollonovich, waving his wife away with his bare foot and making
savage eyes at her, muttered into the telephone:
'Yes, yes, yes, surely ... I understand ... I'll leave at once...'
Arkady Apollonovich spent the whole evening on that same floor where
the investigation was being conducted.
It was a difficult conversation, a most unpleasant conversation, for he
had to tell with complete sincerity not only about this obnoxious se box, but along with that - as was indeed necessary - also
about Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko from Yelokhovskaya Street, and about the
Saratov niece, and about much else, the telling of which caused Arkady
Apollonovich inexpressible torments.
Needless to say, the testimony of Arkady Apollonovich, an intelligent
and cultivated man, who had been a witness to the outrageous simself and of his two scoundrelly assistants, a
witness who remembered perfectly well that the magician's name was indeed
Woland, advanced the investigation considerably. And the juxtaposition of
Arkady Apollonovich's testimony with the testimony of others - among whom
were some ladies who had suffered after the sssentially established the place where the culprit in all these adventures
was to be sought.
Apartment no.50 was visited, and not just once, and not only was it
looked over with extreme thoroughness, but the walls were also tapped and
the fireplace flues checked, in search of hiding places. However, none of
these measures yielded any results, and no one was discovered in the
apartment during any of these visits, though it was perfectly clear that
there was someone in the apartment, despite the fact that all persons who in
one way or another were supposed to be in charge of foreign artistes coming
to Moscow decidedly and categorically insisted that there was not and could
not be any black magician Woland in Moscow.
He had decidedly not registered anywhere on arrival, had not shown
anyone his passport or other papers, contracts, or agreements, and no one
had heard anything about him! Kitaitsev, head of the programme department of
the Spectacles Commission, swore to God that the vanished Styopa Likhodeev
had never sent him any performance programme of any Woland for approval and
had never telephoned him about the arrival of such a Woland. So that he,
Kitaitsev, utterly failed to see and understand how Styopa could have
allowed such a suld see and say confidently that he was as pure as crystal.
That same Prokhor Petrovich, chairman of the main Spectacles
Commission...
Incidentally, he returned to his suit immediately after the police came
into his office, to the ecstatic joy of Anna Richardovna and the great
perplexity of the needlessly troubled police.
Also, incidentally, having returned to his place, into his grey striped
suit, Prokhor Petrovich fully approved of all the resolutions the suit had
written during his short-term absence.
... So, then, this same Prokhor Petrovich knew decidedly nothing about
any Woland.
Whether you will or no, something preposterous was coming out:
thousands of spectators, the whole staff of the Variety, and finally
Sempleyarov, Arkady Apollonovich, a most educated man, had seen this
magician, as well as his thrice-cursed assistants, and yet it was absolutely
impossible to find him anywhere. What was it, may I ask, had he fallen
through the ground right after his disgusting s and if the second, then would it not mean
that the administration of the luckless theatre itself, after first
committing some vileness (only recall the broken window in the study and the
behaviour of Ace of Diamonds!), had disappeared from Moscow without a trace?
We must do justice to the one who headed the investigation. The
vanished Rimsky was found with amazing speed. One had only to put together
the behaviour of Ace of Diamonds at the cab stand by the movie theatre with
certain given times, such as when the seance ended, and precisely when
Rimsky could have disappeared, and then immediately send a telegram to
Leningrad. An hour later (towards evening on Friday) came the reply that
Rimsky had been discovered in number four-twelve on the fourth floor of the
Hotel Astoria, next to the room in which the repertory manager of one of the
Moscow theatres, then on tour in Leningrad, was staying - that same room
which, as is known, had gilded grey-blue furniture and a wonderful
bathroom.'
Discovered hiding in the wardrobe of number four-twelve of the Astoria,
Rimsky was questioned right there in Leningrad. After which a telegram came
to Moscow reporting that findirector Rimsky was in an unanswerable state,
that he could not or did not wish to give sensible replies to questions and
begged only to be hidden in a bulletproof room and provided with an armed
guard.
A telegram from Moscow ordered that Rimsky be delivered to Moscow under
guard, as a result of which Rimsky departed Friday evening, under said
guard, on the evening train.
Towards evening on that same Friday, Likhodeev's trail was also found.
Telegrams of inquiry about Likhodeev were sent to all cities, and from Yalta
came the reply that Likhodeev had been in Yalta but had left on a plane for
Moscow.
The only one whose trail they failed to pick up was Varenukha. The
famous theatre administrator known to decidedly all of Moscow had vanished
into thin air.
In the meantime, there was some bother with things happening in other
parts of Moscow, outside the Variety Theatre. It was necessary to explain
the extraordinary case of the staff all singing `Glorious Sea'
(incidentally: Professor Stravinsky managed to put them right within two
hours, by means of some subcutaneous injections), of persons presenting
other persons or institutions with devil knows what in the guise of money,
and also of persons who had suffered from such presentations.
As goes without saying, the most unpleasant, the most scandalous and
insoluble of all these cases was the case of the theft of the head of the
deceased writer Berlioz right from the coffin in the hall of Griboedov's,
carried out in broad daylight.
Twelve men conducted the investigation, gathering as on a
knitting-needle the accursed stitches of this complicated case scattered all
over Moscow.
One of the investigators arrived at Professor Stravinsky's clinic and
first of all asked to be shown a list of the persons who had checked in to
the clinic over the past three days. Thus they discovered Nikanor Ivanovich
Bosoy and the unfortunate master of ceremonies whose head had been torn off.
However, little attention was paid to them. By now it was easy to
establish that these two had fallen victim to the same gang, headed by that
mysterious magician. But to Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless the investigator paid
great attention.
The door of Ivanushka's room no.117 opened towards evening on Friday,
and into the room came a young, round-faced, calm and mild-mannered man, who
looked quite unlike an investigator and yet was one of the best in Moscow.
He saw lying on the bed a pale and pinched young man, in whose eyes one
could read a lack of interest in what went on around him, whose eyes looked
now somewhere into the distance, over his surroundings, now into the young
man himself. The investigator gently introduced himself and said he had
stopped at Ivan Nikolaevich's to talk over the events at the Patriarch's
Ponds two days ago.
Oh, how triumphant Ivan would have been if the investigator had come to
him earlier - say, on Wednesday night, when Ivan had striven so violently
and passionately to make his story about the Patriarch's Ponds heard! Now
his dream of helping to catch the consultant had come true, there was no
longer any need to run after anyone, they had come to him on their own,
precisely to hear his story about what had happened on Wednesday evening.
But, alas, Ivanushka had changed completely in the time that had passed
since the moment of Berlioz's death: he was ready to answer all of the
investigator's questions willingly and politely, but indifference could be
sensed both in Ivan's eyes and in his intonation. The poet was no longer
concerned with Berlioz's fate.
Before the investigator's arrival, Ivanushka lay dozing, and certain
visions passed before him. Thus, he saw a city, strange, incomprehensible,
non-existent, with marble masses, eroded colonnades, roofs gleaming in the
sun, with the black, gloomy and merciless Antonia Tower, with the palace on
the western hill sunk almost up to its rooftops in the tropical greenery of
the garden, with bronze statues blazing in the sunset above this greenery,
and he saw armour-clad Roman centuries moving along under the walls of the
ancient city.
As he dozed, there appeared before Ivan a man, motionless in an
armchair, clean-shaven, with a harried yellow face, a man in a white mantle
with red lining, gazing hatefully into the luxurious and alien garden. Ivan
also saw a treeless yellow hill with empty cross-barred posts. And what had
happened at the Patriarch's Ponds no longer interested the poet Ivan
Homeless.
Tell me, Ivan Nikolaevich, how far were you from the turnstile yourself
when Berlioz slipped under the tram-car?'
A barely noticeable, indifferent smile touched Ivan's lips for some
reason, and he replied:
'I was far away.'
'And the checkered one was right by the turnstile?'
'No, he was sitting on a little bench nearby.'
`You clearly recall that he did not go up to the turnstile at the
moment when Berlioz fell?'
'I recall. He didn't go up to it. He sat sprawled on the bench.'
These questions were the investigator's last. After them he got up,
gave Ivanushka his hand, wished him a speedy recovery, and expressed the
hope that he would soon be reading his poetry again.
'No,' Ivan quietly replied, I won't write any more poetry.'
The investigator smiled politely, allowed himself to express his
certainty that, while the poet was presently in a state of some depression,
it would soon pass.
'No,' Ivan responded, looking not at the investigator but into the
distance, at the fading sky, 'it will never pass. The poems I used to write
were bad poems, and now I understand it.'
The investigator left Ivanushka, having obtained some quite important
material. Following the thread of events from the end to the beginning, they
finally succeeded in reaching the source from which all the events had come.
The investigator had no doubt that these events began with the murder
at the Patriarch's Ponds. Of course, neither Ivanushka nor this checkered
one had pushed the unfortunate chairman of Massolit under the tram-car;
physically, so to speak, no one had contributed to his failing under the
wheels. But the investigator was convinced that Berlioz had thrown himself
under the tram-car (or tumbled under it) while hypnotized.
Yes, there was already a lot of material, and it was known who had to
be caught and where. But the thing was that it proved in no way possible to
Where the two who had stabbed Judas went, no one knows, but the route
of the third man in the hood is known. Leaving the road, he headed into the
thick of the olive trees, making his way south. He climbed over the garden
fence far from the main gate, in the southern corner, where the upper stones
of the masonry had fallen out. Soon he was on the bank of the Kedron. Then
he entered the water and for some time made his way in it, until he saw
ahead the silhouettes of two horses and a man beside them. The horses were
also standing in the stream. The water flowed, washing their hoofs. The
horse-handler mounted one of the horses, the man in the hood jumped on to
the other, and the two slowly walked in the stream, and one could hear the
pebbles crunching under the horses' hoofs. Then the riders left the water,
came out on the Yershalaim bank, and rode slowly under the city wall. Here
the horse-handler separated himself, galloped ahead, and disappeared from
view, while the man in the hood stopped his horse, dismounted on the
deserted road, removed his cloak, turned it inside out, took from under the
cloak a flat helmet without plumes and put it on. Now it was a man in a
military chlamys with a short sword at his hip who jumped on to the horse.
He touched the reins and the fiery cavalry horse set off at a trot,
jolting its rider. It was not a long way - the rider was approaching the
southern gate of Yershalaim.
Under the arch of the gateway the restless flame of torches danced and
leaped. The soldiers on guard from the second century of the Lightning
legion sat on stone benches playing dice. Seeing a military man ride in, the
soldiers jumped up, the man waved his hand to them and rode on into the
city.
The city was flooded with festive lights. The flames of lamps played in
all the windows, and from everywhere, merging into one dissonant chorus,
came hymns of praise. Occasionally glancing into windows that looked on to
the street, the rider could see people at tables set with roast kid and cups
of wine amidst dishes of bitter herbs. Whistling some quiet song, the rider
made his way at an unhurried trot through the deserted streets of the Lower
City, heading for the Antonia Tower, glancing occasionally at the
five-branched candlesticks, such as the world had never seen, blazing above
the temple, or at the moon that hung still higher than the five-branched
candlesticks.
The palace of Herod the Great took no part in the solemnities of the
Passover night. In the auxiliary quarters of the palace, facing to the
south, where the officers of the Roman cohort and the legate of the legion
were stationed, lights burned and there was a feeling of some movement and
life. But the front part, the formal part, which housed the sole and
involuntary occupant of the palace - the procurator - all of it, with its
columns and golden statues, was as if blind under the brightest moon. Here,
inside the palace, darkness and silence reigned.
And the procurator, as he had told Aphranius, would not go inside. He
ordered his bed made up on the balcony, there where he had dined and where
he had conducted the interrogation in the morning. The procurator lay on the
made-up couch, but sleep would not come to him. The bare moon hung high in
the clear sky, and the procurator did not take his eyes off it for several
hours.
Approximately at midnight, sleep finally took pity on the hegemon. With
a spasmodic yawn, the procurator unfastened and threw off his cloak, removed
the belt girded over his shirt, with a broad steel knife in a sheath, placed
it on the chair by his couch, took off his sandals, and stretched out. Banga
got on the bed at once and lay down next to him, head to head, and the
procurator, placing his hand on the dog's neck, finally closed his eyes.
Only then did the dog also fall asleep.
The couch was in semi-darkness, shielded from the moon by a column, but
a ribbon of moonlight stretched from the porch steps to the bed. And once
the procurator lost connection with what surrounded him in reality, he
immediately set out on the shining road and went up it straight towards the
moon. He even burst out laughing in his sleep from happiness, so wonderful
and inimitable did everything come to be on the transparent, pale blue road.
He walked in the company of Banga, and beside him walked the wandering
philosopher. They were arguing about something very complex and important,
and neither of them could refute the other. They did not agree with each
other in anything, and that made their argument especially interesting and
endless. It went without saying that today's execution proved to be a sheer
misunderstanding: here this philosopher, who had thought up such an
incredibly absurd thing as that all men are good, was walking beside him,
therefore he was alive. And, of course, it would be terrible even to think
that one could execute such a man. There had been no execution! No
execution! That was the loveliness of this journey up the stairway of the
moon.
There was as much free time as they needed, and the storm would come
only towards evening, and cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible
vices. Thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it
is the most terrible vice!
He, for example, the present procurator of Judea and former tribune of
a legion, had been no coward that time, in the Valley of the Virgins, when
the fierce German had almost torn Rat-slayer the Giant to pieces. But, good
heavens, philosopher! How can you, with your intelligence, allow yourself to
think that, for the sake of a man who has committed a crime against Caesar,
the procurator of Judea would ruin his career?
'Yes, yes...' Pilate moaned and sobbed in his sleep. Of course he
would. In the morning he still would not, but now, at night, after weighing
everything, he would agree to ruin it. He would do everything to save the
decidedly innocent, mad dreamer and healer from execution!
`Now we shall always be together,'[2] said the ragged wandering
philosopher in his dream, who for some unknown reason had crossed paths with
the equestrian of the golden spear. `Where there's one of us, straight away
there will be the other! Whenever I am remembered, you will at once be
remembered, too! I, the foundling, the son of unknown parents, and you, the
son of an astrologer-king and a miller's daughter, the beautiful Pila.'[3]
'Yes, and don't you forget to remember me, the astrologer's son,'
Pilate asked in his dream. And securing in his dream a nod from the En-Sarid
[4] beggar who was walking beside him, the cruel procurator of Judea wept
and laughed from joy in his dream.
This was all very good, but the more terrible was the hegemon's
awakening. Banga growled at the moon, and the pale-blue road, slippery as
though smoothed with oil, fell away before the procurator. He opened his
eyes, and the first thing he remembered was that the execution had been. The
first thing the procurator did was to clutch Banga's collar with a habitual
gesture, then with sick eyes he began searching for the moon and saw that it
had moved slightly to the side and turned silvery. Its light was being
interfered with by an unpleasant, restless light playing on the balcony
right before his eyes. A torch blazed and smoked in the hand of the
centurion Ratslayer. The holder of it glanced sidelong with fear and spite
at the dangerous beast preparing itself to leap.
'Stay, Banga,' the procurator said in a sick voice and coughed.
Shielding himself from the flame with his hand, he went on: 'Even at
night, even by moonlight, I have no peace! ... Oh, gods! ... Yours is also a
bad job, Mark. You cripple soldiers...'
Mark gazed at the procurator in great amazement, and the man
recollected himself. To smooth over the unwarranted words, spoken while not
quite awake, the procurator said:
`Don't be offended, centurion. My position, I repeat, is still worse.
What do you want?'
The head of the secret guard is waiting to see you,' Mark reported
calmly.
'Call him, call him,' the procurator ordered, clearing his throat with
a cough, and he began feeling for his sandals with his bare feet. The flame
played on the columns, the centurion's caligae tramped across the mosaics.
The centurion went out to the garden.
'Even by moonlight I have no peace,' the procurator said to himself,
grinding his teeth.
Instead of the centurion, a man in a hood appeared on the balcony.
'Stay, Banga,' the procurator said quietly and pressed the back of the
dog's head.
Before beginning to speak, Aphranius, as was his custom, looked around
and stepped into the shadow, and having made sure that, besides Banga, there
were no extra persons on the balcony, he said quietly:
`I ask to be tried, Procurator. You turned out to be right. I was
unable to protect Judas of Kiriath, he has been stabbed to death. I ask to
be tried and retired.'
It seemed to Aphranius that four eyes were looking at him - a dog's and
a wolf's.
Aphranius took from under his chlamys a purse stiff with blood, sealed
with two seals.
'This is the bag of money the killers left at the high priest's house.
The blood on this bag is the blood of Judas of Kiriath.'
'How much is there, I wonder?' asked Pilate, bending over the bag.
'Thirty tetradrachmas.'
The procurator grinned and said:
'Not much.'
Aphranius was silent.
'Where is the murdered man?'
That I do not know,' the visitor, who never parted with his hood, said
with calm dignity. 'We will begin a search in the morning.'
The procurator started, abandoning a sandal strap that refused to be
fastened.
'But you do know for certain that he was killed?'
To this the procurator received a dry response:
'I have been working in Judea for fifteen years, Procurator. I began my
service under Valerius Grams. [5] I do not have to see the corpse in order
to say that a man has been killed, and so I report to you that the one who
was called Judas of Kiriath was stabbed to death several hours ago.'
'Forgive me, Aphranius,' answered Pilate, 'I'm not properly awake yet,
that's why I said it. I sleep badly,' the procurator grinned, 'I keep seeing
a moonbeam in my sleep. Quite funny, imagine, it's as if I'm walking along
this moonbeam ... And so, I would like to know your thoughts on this matter.
Where are you going to look for him? Sit down, head of the secret
service.'
Aphranius bowed, moved the chair closer to the bed, and sat down,
clanking his sword.
'I am going to look for him not far from the oil press in the garden of
Gethsemane.'
'So, so. And why there, precisely?'
'As I figure it, Hegemon, Judas was not killed in Yershalaim itself,
nor anywhere very far from it, he was killed near Yershalaim.'
`I regard you as one of the outstanding experts in your business. I
don't know how things are in Rome, but in the colonies you have no equal ...
But, explain to me, why are you going to look for him precisely there?'
'I will by no means admit the notion,' Aphranius spoke in a low voice,
`of Judas letting himself be caught by any suspicious people within city
limits. It's impossible to put a knife into a man secretly in the street.
That means he was lured to a basement somewhere. But the service has already
searched for him in the Lower City and undoubtedly would have found him. He
is not in the city, I can guarantee that. If he was killed far from the
city, this packet of money could not have been dropped off so quickly. He
was killed near the city. They managed to lure him out of the city.'
'I cannot conceive how that could have been done!'
'Yes, Procurator, that is the most difficult question in the whole
affair, and I don't even know if I will succeed in resolving it.'
'It is indeed mysterious! A believer, on the eve of the feast, goes out
of the city for some unknown reason, leaving the Passover meal, and perishes
there. Who could have lured him, and how? Could it have been done by a
woman?' the procurator asked on a sudden inspiration.
Aphranius replied calmly and weightily:
'By no means, Procurator. That possibility is utterly excluded. One
must reason logically. Who was interested in Judas's death? Some wandering
dreamers, some circle in which, first of all, there weren't any women. To
marry, Procurator, one needs money. To bring a person into the world, one
needs the same. But to put a knife into a man with the help of a woman, one
needs very big money, and no vagabond has got it. There was no woman in this
affair, Procurator. Moreover, I will say that such an interpretation of the
murder can only throw us off the track, hinder the investigation, and
confuse me.'
'I see that you are perfectly right, Aphranius,' said Pilate, 'and I
merely allowed myself to express a supposition.'
'Alas, it is erroneous, Procurator.'
`But what is it, then, what is it?' exclaimed the procurator, peering
into Aphranius's face with greedy curiosity.
'I suppose it's money again.'
'An excellent thought! But who could have offered him money at night,
outside the city, and for what?'
'Oh, no, Procurator, it's not that. I have only one supposition, and if
it is wrong, I may not find any other explanations.' Aphranius leaned closer
to the procurator and finished in a whisper: 'Judas wanted to hide his money
in a secluded place known only to himself.'
'A very subtle explanation. That, apparently, is how things were. Now I
understand you: he was lured out not by others, but by his own purpose. Yes,
yes, that's so.'
'So. Judas was mistrustful, he was hiding the money from others.' 'Yes,
in Gethsemane, you said... And why you intend to look for him precisely
there - that, I confess, I do not understand.'
'Oh, Procurator, that is the simplest thing of all. No one would hide
money on the roads, in open and empty places. Judas was neither on the road
to Hebron, nor on the road to Bethany. He had to be in a protected, secluded
place with trees. It's as simple as that. And except for Gethsemane, there
are no such places near Yershalaim. He couldn't have gone far.'
'You have utterly convinced me. And so, what are we to do now?'
'I will immediately start a search for the murderers who tracked Judas
out of the city, and I myself, meanwhile, as I have already reported to you,
will stand trial.'
"What for?'
'My guards lost him in the bazaar last evening, after he left Kaifa's
palace. How it happened, I cannot comprehend. It has never happened before
in my life. He was put under surveillance just after our conversation. But
in the neighbourhood of the bazaar he doubled back somewhere, and made such
a strange loop that he escaped without a trace.'
'So. I declare to you that I do not consider it necessary to try you.
You did all you could, and no one in the world' - here the procurator smiled
- `could do more than you! Penalize the sleuths who lost Judas. But here,
too, I warn you, I would not want it to be anything of a severe sort. In the
last analysis, we did everything to take care of the blackguard!'
'Ah, yes! I forgot to ask,' the procurator rubbed his forehead, how did
they manage to foist the money on Kaifa?'
`You see, Procurator ... that is not especially complicated. The
avengers came from behind Kaifa's palace, where the lane is higher than the
yard. They threw the packet over the fence.'
"With a note?'
'Yes, exactly as you suspected, Procurator.'
'Yes, although...' Here Aphranius tore the seal off the packet and
showed its contents to Pilate.
`Good heavens, what are you doing, Aphranius, those must be temple
seals!'
"The procurator needn't trouble himself with that question,' Aphranius
replied, closing the packet.
'Can it be that you have all the seals?' Pilate asked, laughing.
'It couldn't be otherwise, Procurator,' Aphranius replied very sternly,
not laughing at all.
'I can imagine the effect at Kaifa's!'
'Yes, Procurator, it caused great agitation. They summoned me
immediately.'
Even in the semi-darkness one could see how Pilate's eyes flashed.
'That's interesting, interesting...'
'I venture to disagree, Procurator, it was not interesting. A most
boring and tiresome business. To my question whether anyone had been paid
money in Kaifa's palace, I was told categorically that there had been
nothing of the sort.'
'Ah, yes? Well, so, if no one was paid, no one was paid. It will be
that much harder to find the killers.'
'Absolutely right, Procurator.'
`It suddenly occurs to me, Aphranius: might he not have killed
himself?"
'Oh, no, Procurator,' Aphranius replied, even leaning back in his chair
from astonishment, 'excuse me, but that is entirely unlikely!'
'Ah, everything is likely in this city. I'm ready to bet that in a very
short time rumours of it will spread all over the city.'
Here Aphranius again darted his look at the procurator, thought for a
moment, and replied:
'That may be, Procurator.'
The procurator was obviously still unable to part with this question of
the killing of the man from Kiriath, though everything was already clear,
and he said even with a sort of reverie:
`But I'd like to have seen how they killed him.' 'He was killed with
great art, Procurator,' Aphranius replied, glancing somewhat ironically at
the procurator.
'How do you know that?'
'Kindly pay attention to the bag, Procurator,' Aphranius replied. 'I
guarantee you that Judas's blood gushed out in a stream. I've seen murdered
people in my time, Procurator.'
'So, of course, he won't rise?'
'No, Procurator, he will rise,' replied Aphranius, smiling
philosophically, 'when the trumpet of the messiah they're expecting here
sounds - over him. But before then he won't rise.'
'Enough, Aphranius, the question is clear. Let's go on to the burial.'
The executed men have been buried, Procurator.'
'Oh, Aphranius, it would be a crime to try you. You're deserving of the
highest reward. How was it?'
Aphranius began to tell about it: while he himself was occupied with
Judas's affair, a detachment of the secret guard, under the direction of his
assistant, arrived at the hill as evening came. One of the bodies was not
found on the hilltop. Pilate gave a start and said hoarsely:
'Ah, how did I not foresee it! ...'
'No need to worry, Procurator,' said Aphranius, and he went on with his
narrative: `The bodies of Dysmas and Gestas, their eyes pecked out by
carrion birds, were taken up, and they immediately rushed in search of the
third body. It was discovered in a very short time. A certain man ...'
'Matthew Levi,' said Pilate, not questioningly, but rather
affirmatively.
'Yes, Procurator... Matthew Levi was hiding in a cave on the northern
slope of Bald Skull, waiting for darkness. The naked body of Yeshua Ha-Nozri
was with him. When the guards entered the cave with a torch, Levi fell into
despair and wrath. He shouted about having committed no crime, and about
every man's right by law to bury an executed criminal if he so desires.
Matthew Levi said he did not want to pan with the body. He was agitated,
cried out something incoherent, now begging, now threatening and cursing...'
'Did they have to arrest him?' Pilate asked glumly.
'No, Procurator, no,' Aphranius replied very soothingly, 'they managed
to quiet the impudent madman, explaining to him that the body would be
buried. Levi, having grasped what was being said to him, calmed down, but
announced that he would not leave and wished to take part in the burial. He
said he would not leave even if they started to kill him, and even offered
for that purpose a bread knife he had with him.'
'Was he chased away?' Pilate asked in a stifled voice.
'No, Procurator, no. My assistant allowed him to take part in the
burial.'
'Which of your assistants was in charge of it?' asked Pilate.
'Tolmai,' Aphranius answered and added in alarm: `Perhaps he made a
mistake?'
'Go on,' answered Pilate, `there was no mistake. Generally, I am
beginning to feel a bit at a loss, Aphranius, I am apparendy dealing with a
man who never makes mistakes. That man is you.'
`Matthew Levi was taken in the cart with the bodies of the executed
men, and in about two hours they reached a solitary ravine north of
Yershalaim. There the detachment, working in shifts, dug a deep hole within
an hour and buried all three executed men in it.'
'Naked?'
'No, Procurator, the detachment brought chitons with them for that
purpose. They put rings on the buried men's fingers. Yeshua's with one
notch, Dysmas's with two, and Gestas's with three. The hole has been covered
over and heaped with stones. The landmark is known to Tolmai.'
'Ah, if only I had foreseen it!' Pilate spoke, wincing. I needed to see
this Matthew Levi...'
'He is here, Procurator.'
Pilate, his eyes wide open, stared at Aphranius for some time, and then
said:
'I thank you for everything that has been done in this affair. I ask
you to send Tolmai to me tomorrow, and to tell him beforehand that I am
pleased with him. And you, Aphranius,' here the procurator took a seal ring
from the pouch of the belt lying on the table and gave it to me head of the
secret service, 'I beg you to accept this as a memento.'
Aphranius bowed and said:
'A great honour, Procurator.'
`I request that the detachment that performed the burial be given
rewards. The sleuths who let Judas slip - a reprimand. Have Matthew Levi
sent to me right now. I must have the details on Yeshua's case.'
'Understood, Procurator,' Aphranius replied and began retreating and
bowing, while the procurator clapped his hands and shouted:
To me, here! A lamp to the colonnade!'
Aphranius was going out to the garden when lights began to flash in the
hands of servants behind Pilate's back. Three lamps appeared on the table
before the procurator, and the moonlit night at once retreated to the
garden, as if Aphranius had led it away with him. In place of Aphranius, an
unknown man, small and skinny, stepped on to the balcony beside the gigantic
centurion. The latter, catching the procurator's eye, withdrew to the garden
at once and there disappeared.
The procurator studied the newcomer with greedy and slightly frightened
eyes. So one looks at a man of whom one has heard a great deal, of whom one
has been thinking, and who finally appears.
The newcomer, a man of about forty, was black-haired, ragged, covered
with caked mud, and looked wolf-like from under his knitted brows. In short,
he was very unsightly, and rather resembled a city beggar, of whom there
were many hanging about on the porches of the temple or in the bazaars of
the noisy and dirty Lower City.
The silence continued for a long time, and was broken by the strange
behaviour of the man brought to Pilate. His countenance changed, he swayed,
and if he had not grasped the edge of the table with his dirty hand, he
would have fallen.
'What's wrong with you?' Pilate asked him.
'Nothing,' answered Matthew Levi, and he made a movement as if he were
swallowing something. His skinny, bare, grey neck swelled out and then
slackened again.
'What's wrong, answer me,' Pilate repeated.
'I'm tired,' Levi answered and looked sullenly at the floor.
'Sit down,' said Pilate, pointing to the armchair.
Levi looked at the procurator mistrustfully, moved towards the
armchair, gave a timorous sidelong glance at the gilded armrests, and sat
down not in the chair but beside it on the floor.
'Explain to me, why did you not sit in the chair?' asked Pilate.
'I'm dirty, I'd soil it,' said Levi, looking at the ground.
'You'll presently be given something to eat.'
'I don't want to eat,' answered Levi.
'Why lie?' Pilate asked quietly. 'You haven't eaten for the whole day,
and maybe even longer. Very well, don't eat. I've summoned you so that you
could show me the knife you had with you.'
`The soldiers took it from me when they brought me here,' Levi replied
and added sullenly: 'You must give it back to me, I have to return it to its
owner, I stole it.'
'What for?'
To cut the ropes,' answered Levi.
'Mark!' cried the procurator, and the centurion stepped in under the
columns. 'Give me his knife.'
The centurion took a dirty bread knife from one of the two cases on his
belt, handed it to the procurator, and withdrew.
'Who did you take the knife from?'
'From the bakery by the Hebron gate, just as you enter the city, on the
left.'
Pilate looked at the broad blade, for some reason tried the sharpness
of the edge with his finger, and said:
'Concerning the knife you needn't worry, the knife will be returned to
the shop. But now I want a second thing - show me the charta you carry with
you, on which Yeshua's words are written down.'
Levi looked at Pilate with hatred and smiled such an inimical smile
that his face became completely ugly.
'You want to take away the last thing?' he asked.
'I didn't say "give me",' answered Pilate, 'I said "show me".'
Levi fumbled in his bosom and produced a parchment scroll. Pilate took
it, unrolled it, spread it out between the lights, and, squinting, began to
study the barely legible ink marks. It was difficult to understand these
crabbed lines, and Pilate kept wincing and leaning right to the parchment,
running his finger over the lines. He did manage to make out that the
writing represented an incoherent chain of certain utterances, certain
dates, household records, and poetic fragments. Some of it Pilate could
read: '...there is no death ... yesterday we ate sweet spring baccuroth
...'[7]
Grimacing with the effort, Pilate squinted as he read: '... we shall
see the pure river of the water of life [8] ... mankind shall look at the
sun through transparent crystal...' Here Pilate gave a start. In the last
lines of the parchment he made out the words: '... greater vice ...
cowardice...'
Pilate rolled up the parchment and with an abrupt movement handed it to
Levi.
Take it,' he said and, after a pause, added: `You're a bookish man, I
see, and there's no need for you to go around alone, in beggar's clothing,
without shelter. I have a big library in Caesarea, I am very rich and want
to take you to work for me. You will sort out and look after the papyri, you
will be fed and clothed.'
Levi stood up and replied:
'No, I don't want to.'
'Why?' the procurator asked, his face darkening. `Am I disagreeable to
you? ... Are you afraid of me?'
The same bad smile distorted Levi's face, and he said:
'No, because you'll be afraid of me. It won't be very easy for you to
look me in the face now that you've killed him.'
'Quiet,' replied Pilate. Take some money.'
Levi shook his head negatively, and the procurator went on:
'I know you consider yourself a disciple of Yeshua, but I can tell you
that you learned nothing of what he taught you. For if you had, you would
certainly take something from me. Bear in mind that before he died he said
he did not blame anyone.' Pilate raised a finger significantly, Pilate's
face was twitching. 'And he himself would surely have taken something. You
are cruel, and he was not cruel. Where will you go?'
Levi suddenly came up to the table, leaned both hands on it, and,
gazing at the procurator with burning eyes, whispered to him:
'Know, Hegemon, that I am going to kill a man in Yershalaim. I wanted
to tell you that, so you'd know there will be more blood.'
'I, too, know there will be more of it,' replied Pilate, `you haven't
surprised me with your words. You want, of course, to kill me?'
`You I won't manage to kill,' replied Levi, baring his teeth and
smiling, 'I'm not such a foolish man as to count on that. But I'll kill
Judas of Kiriath, I'll devote the rest of my life to it.'
Here pleasure showed in the procurator's eyes, and beckoning Matthew
Levi to come closer, he said:
'You won't manage to do it, don't trouble yourself. Judas has already
been killed this night.'
Levi sprang away from the table, looking wildly around, and cried out:
'Who did it?'
`Don't be jealous,' Pilate answered, his teeth bared, and rubbed his
hands, 'I'm afraid he had other admirers besides you.'
'Who did it?' Levi repeated in a whisper.
Pilate answered him:
'I did it.'
Levi opened his mouth and stared at the procurator, who said quietly:
`It is, of course, not much to have done, but all the same I did it.'
And he added: 'Well, and now will you take something?'
Levi considered, relented, and finally said:
'Have them give me a piece of clean parchment.'
An hour went by. Levi was not in the palace. Now the silence of the
dawn was broken only by the quiet noise of the sentries' footsteps in the
garden. The moon was quickly losing its colour, one could see at the other
edge of the sky the whitish dot of the morning star. The lamps had gone out
long, long ago. The procurator lay on the couch. Putting his hand under his
cheek, he slept and breathed soundlessly. Beside him slept Banga.
Thus was the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth
procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate.
When Margarita came to the last words of the chapter - '... Thus was
the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth procurator of Judea,
Pontius Pilate' - it was morning.
Sparrows could be heard in the branches of the willows and lindens in
the little garden, conducting a merry, excited morning conversation.
Margarita got up from the armchair, stretched, and only then felt how
broken her body was and how much she wanted to sleep. It is interesting to
note that Margarita's soul was in perfect order. Her thoughts were not
scattered, she was quite unshaken by having spent the night supernaturally.
She was not troubled by memories of having been at Satan's ball, or
that by some miracle the master had been returned to her, that the novel had
risen from the ashes, that everything was back in place in the basement in
the lane, from which the snitcher Aloisy Mogarych had been expelled. In
short, acquaintance with Woland had caused her no psychic damage. Everything
was as if it ought to have been so.
She went to the next room, convinced herself that the master was
soundly and peacefully asleep, turned off the unnecessary table lamp, and
stretched out by the opposite wall on a little couch covered with an old,
torn sheet. A minute later she was asleep, and that morning she had no
dreams. The basement rooms were silent, the builder's whole little house was
silent, and it was quiet in the solitary lane.
But just then, that is, at dawn on Saturday, an entire floor of a
certain Moscow institution was not asleep, and its windows, looking out on a
big asphalt-paved square which special machines, driving around slowly and
droning, were cleaning with brushes, shone with their full brightness,
cutting through the light of the rising sun.
The whole floor was occupied with the investigation of the Woland case,
and the lights had burned all night in dozens of offices.
Essentially speaking, the matter had already become clear on the
previous day, Friday, when the Variety had had to be closed, owing to the
disappearance of its administration and all sorts of outrages which had
taken place during the notorious se and more new material kept arriving all the time and
incessantly on the sleepless floor.
Now the investigators of this strange case, which smacked of obvious
devilry, with an admixture of some hypnotic tricks and distinct criminality,
had to shape into one lump all the many-sided and tangled events that had
taken place in various parts of Moscow.
The first to visit the sleepless, electrically lit-up floor was Arkady
Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics Commission.
After dinner on Friday, in his apartment located in a house by the
Kamenny Bridge, the telephone rang and a male voice asked for Arkady
Apollonovich. Arkady Apollonovich's wife, who picked up the phone, replied
sullenly that Arkady Apollonovich was unwell, had retired for the night, and
could not come to the phone. However, Arkady Apollonovich came to the phone
all the same. To the question of where Arkady Apollonovich was being called
from, the voice in the telephone had said very briefly where it was from.
'This second ... at once ... this minute ...' babbled the ordinarily
very haughty wife of the chairman of the Acoustics Commission, and she flew
to the bedroom like an arrow to rouse Arkady Apollonovich from his bed,
where he lay experiencing the torments of hell at the recollection of
yesterday's s minute, Arkady Apollonovich, with one slipper on his left foot, in nothing
but his underwear, was already at the phone, babbling into it:
'Yes, it's me ... I'm listening, I'm listening ...'
His wife, forgetting for these moments all the loathsome crimes against
fidelity in which the unfortunate Arkady Apollonovich had been exposed, kept
sticking herself out the door to the corridor with a frightened face, poking
a slipper at the air and whispering:
'Put the slipper on, the slipper ... you'll catch cold ...' At which
Arkady Apollonovich, waving his wife away with his bare foot and making
savage eyes at her, muttered into the telephone:
'Yes, yes, yes, surely ... I understand ... I'll leave at once...'
Arkady Apollonovich spent the whole evening on that same floor where
the investigation was being conducted.
It was a difficult conversation, a most unpleasant conversation, for he
had to tell with complete sincerity not only about this obnoxious se box, but along with that - as was indeed necessary - also
about Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko from Yelokhovskaya Street, and about the
Saratov niece, and about much else, the telling of which caused Arkady
Apollonovich inexpressible torments.
Needless to say, the testimony of Arkady Apollonovich, an intelligent
and cultivated man, who had been a witness to the outrageous simself and of his two scoundrelly assistants, a
witness who remembered perfectly well that the magician's name was indeed
Woland, advanced the investigation considerably. And the juxtaposition of
Arkady Apollonovich's testimony with the testimony of others - among whom
were some ladies who had suffered after the sssentially established the place where the culprit in all these adventures
was to be sought.
Apartment no.50 was visited, and not just once, and not only was it
looked over with extreme thoroughness, but the walls were also tapped and
the fireplace flues checked, in search of hiding places. However, none of
these measures yielded any results, and no one was discovered in the
apartment during any of these visits, though it was perfectly clear that
there was someone in the apartment, despite the fact that all persons who in
one way or another were supposed to be in charge of foreign artistes coming
to Moscow decidedly and categorically insisted that there was not and could
not be any black magician Woland in Moscow.
He had decidedly not registered anywhere on arrival, had not shown
anyone his passport or other papers, contracts, or agreements, and no one
had heard anything about him! Kitaitsev, head of the programme department of
the Spectacles Commission, swore to God that the vanished Styopa Likhodeev
had never sent him any performance programme of any Woland for approval and
had never telephoned him about the arrival of such a Woland. So that he,
Kitaitsev, utterly failed to see and understand how Styopa could have
allowed such a suld see and say confidently that he was as pure as crystal.
That same Prokhor Petrovich, chairman of the main Spectacles
Commission...
Incidentally, he returned to his suit immediately after the police came
into his office, to the ecstatic joy of Anna Richardovna and the great
perplexity of the needlessly troubled police.
Also, incidentally, having returned to his place, into his grey striped
suit, Prokhor Petrovich fully approved of all the resolutions the suit had
written during his short-term absence.
... So, then, this same Prokhor Petrovich knew decidedly nothing about
any Woland.
Whether you will or no, something preposterous was coming out:
thousands of spectators, the whole staff of the Variety, and finally
Sempleyarov, Arkady Apollonovich, a most educated man, had seen this
magician, as well as his thrice-cursed assistants, and yet it was absolutely
impossible to find him anywhere. What was it, may I ask, had he fallen
through the ground right after his disgusting s and if the second, then would it not mean
that the administration of the luckless theatre itself, after first
committing some vileness (only recall the broken window in the study and the
behaviour of Ace of Diamonds!), had disappeared from Moscow without a trace?
We must do justice to the one who headed the investigation. The
vanished Rimsky was found with amazing speed. One had only to put together
the behaviour of Ace of Diamonds at the cab stand by the movie theatre with
certain given times, such as when the seance ended, and precisely when
Rimsky could have disappeared, and then immediately send a telegram to
Leningrad. An hour later (towards evening on Friday) came the reply that
Rimsky had been discovered in number four-twelve on the fourth floor of the
Hotel Astoria, next to the room in which the repertory manager of one of the
Moscow theatres, then on tour in Leningrad, was staying - that same room
which, as is known, had gilded grey-blue furniture and a wonderful
bathroom.'
Discovered hiding in the wardrobe of number four-twelve of the Astoria,
Rimsky was questioned right there in Leningrad. After which a telegram came
to Moscow reporting that findirector Rimsky was in an unanswerable state,
that he could not or did not wish to give sensible replies to questions and
begged only to be hidden in a bulletproof room and provided with an armed
guard.
A telegram from Moscow ordered that Rimsky be delivered to Moscow under
guard, as a result of which Rimsky departed Friday evening, under said
guard, on the evening train.
Towards evening on that same Friday, Likhodeev's trail was also found.
Telegrams of inquiry about Likhodeev were sent to all cities, and from Yalta
came the reply that Likhodeev had been in Yalta but had left on a plane for
Moscow.
The only one whose trail they failed to pick up was Varenukha. The
famous theatre administrator known to decidedly all of Moscow had vanished
into thin air.
In the meantime, there was some bother with things happening in other
parts of Moscow, outside the Variety Theatre. It was necessary to explain
the extraordinary case of the staff all singing `Glorious Sea'
(incidentally: Professor Stravinsky managed to put them right within two
hours, by means of some subcutaneous injections), of persons presenting
other persons or institutions with devil knows what in the guise of money,
and also of persons who had suffered from such presentations.
As goes without saying, the most unpleasant, the most scandalous and
insoluble of all these cases was the case of the theft of the head of the
deceased writer Berlioz right from the coffin in the hall of Griboedov's,
carried out in broad daylight.
Twelve men conducted the investigation, gathering as on a
knitting-needle the accursed stitches of this complicated case scattered all
over Moscow.
One of the investigators arrived at Professor Stravinsky's clinic and
first of all asked to be shown a list of the persons who had checked in to
the clinic over the past three days. Thus they discovered Nikanor Ivanovich
Bosoy and the unfortunate master of ceremonies whose head had been torn off.
However, little attention was paid to them. By now it was easy to
establish that these two had fallen victim to the same gang, headed by that
mysterious magician. But to Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless the investigator paid
great attention.
The door of Ivanushka's room no.117 opened towards evening on Friday,
and into the room came a young, round-faced, calm and mild-mannered man, who
looked quite unlike an investigator and yet was one of the best in Moscow.
He saw lying on the bed a pale and pinched young man, in whose eyes one
could read a lack of interest in what went on around him, whose eyes looked
now somewhere into the distance, over his surroundings, now into the young
man himself. The investigator gently introduced himself and said he had
stopped at Ivan Nikolaevich's to talk over the events at the Patriarch's
Ponds two days ago.
Oh, how triumphant Ivan would have been if the investigator had come to
him earlier - say, on Wednesday night, when Ivan had striven so violently
and passionately to make his story about the Patriarch's Ponds heard! Now
his dream of helping to catch the consultant had come true, there was no
longer any need to run after anyone, they had come to him on their own,
precisely to hear his story about what had happened on Wednesday evening.
But, alas, Ivanushka had changed completely in the time that had passed
since the moment of Berlioz's death: he was ready to answer all of the
investigator's questions willingly and politely, but indifference could be
sensed both in Ivan's eyes and in his intonation. The poet was no longer
concerned with Berlioz's fate.
Before the investigator's arrival, Ivanushka lay dozing, and certain
visions passed before him. Thus, he saw a city, strange, incomprehensible,
non-existent, with marble masses, eroded colonnades, roofs gleaming in the
sun, with the black, gloomy and merciless Antonia Tower, with the palace on
the western hill sunk almost up to its rooftops in the tropical greenery of
the garden, with bronze statues blazing in the sunset above this greenery,
and he saw armour-clad Roman centuries moving along under the walls of the
ancient city.
As he dozed, there appeared before Ivan a man, motionless in an
armchair, clean-shaven, with a harried yellow face, a man in a white mantle
with red lining, gazing hatefully into the luxurious and alien garden. Ivan
also saw a treeless yellow hill with empty cross-barred posts. And what had
happened at the Patriarch's Ponds no longer interested the poet Ivan
Homeless.
Tell me, Ivan Nikolaevich, how far were you from the turnstile yourself
when Berlioz slipped under the tram-car?'
A barely noticeable, indifferent smile touched Ivan's lips for some
reason, and he replied:
'I was far away.'
'And the checkered one was right by the turnstile?'
'No, he was sitting on a little bench nearby.'
`You clearly recall that he did not go up to the turnstile at the
moment when Berlioz fell?'
'I recall. He didn't go up to it. He sat sprawled on the bench.'
These questions were the investigator's last. After them he got up,
gave Ivanushka his hand, wished him a speedy recovery, and expressed the
hope that he would soon be reading his poetry again.
'No,' Ivan quietly replied, I won't write any more poetry.'
The investigator smiled politely, allowed himself to express his
certainty that, while the poet was presently in a state of some depression,
it would soon pass.
'No,' Ivan responded, looking not at the investigator but into the
distance, at the fading sky, 'it will never pass. The poems I used to write
were bad poems, and now I understand it.'
The investigator left Ivanushka, having obtained some quite important
material. Following the thread of events from the end to the beginning, they
finally succeeded in reaching the source from which all the events had come.
The investigator had no doubt that these events began with the murder
at the Patriarch's Ponds. Of course, neither Ivanushka nor this checkered
one had pushed the unfortunate chairman of Massolit under the tram-car;
physically, so to speak, no one had contributed to his failing under the
wheels. But the investigator was convinced that Berlioz had thrown himself
under the tram-car (or tumbled under it) while hypnotized.
Yes, there was already a lot of material, and it was known who had to
be caught and where. But the thing was that it proved in no way possible to