khail
Alexandrovich  went deeper into  the  maze, which only a highly educated man
can go into without risking  a broken neck, the poet learned more  and  more
interesting and useful  things about the  Egyptian Osiris, [9] a  benevolent
god  and the son of Heaven and Earth, and about the  Phoenician god  Tammoz,
[10] and about Marduk, [11]  and even about  a lesser known,  terrible  god,
Vitzliputzli,'[12] once greatly venerated by  the Aztecs in Mexico. And just
at the moment when Mikhail Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs
used  to  fashion figurines of Vitzli-putzli  out of dough - the  first  man
appeared in the walk.
     Afterwards, when, frankly speaking,  it was already too  late,  various
institutions presented  reports describing this  man.  A  comparison of them
cannot but cause  amazement. Thus, the  first of them  said that the man was
short, had gold teeth, and limped on his right leg. The second, that the man
was enormously  tall,  had platinum  crowns, and limped on his left leg. The
third laconically averred that the man had no distinguishing  marks. It must
be acknowledged that none of these reports is of any value.
     First  of all,  the man described  did  not  limp  on any  leg, and was
neither  short nor  enormous,  but  simply tall. As for  his  teeth,  he had
platinum crowns on the  left side and gold  on the right. He was  wearing an
expensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour.  His grey beret
was cocked rakishly over one ear;  under his arm he carried a  stick with  a
black knob shaped  like a poodle's head. [13] He looked to  be a little over
forty.  Mouth somehow  twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right eye  black,
left  - for some  reason  - green.  Dark eyebrows, but one  higher  than the
other. In short, a foreigner. [14]
     Having passed by  the  bench  on  which  the  editor  and the poet were
placed, the foreigner  gave them a sidelong look, stopped, and  suddenly sat
down on the next bench, two steps away from the friends.
     `A German...'  thought  Berlioz. `An  Englishman...'  thought Homeless.
'My, he must be hot in those gloves.'
     And the foreigner gazed around at the tall buildings that rectangularly
framed  the pond, making it  obvious  that  he  was seeing the place for the
first  time and that it  interested him.  He rested  his glance on the upper
floors, where the glass dazzlingly reflected the broken-up sun which was for
ever  departing from Mikhail  Alexandrovich, then shifted  it lower  down to
where  the  windows  were  beginning  to  darken  before   evening,   smiled
condescendingly at something, narrowed his eves,  put his hands on  the knob
and his chin on his hands.
     'For instance, Ivan,'  Berlioz was saying,  `you portrayed the birth of
Jesus, the son of God, very well and satirically, but the gist of it is that
a whole series  of  sons  of God were  born  before Jesus,  like,  say,  the
Phoenician Adonis, [15]  the Phrygian Atris,  [16] the Persian Mithras. [17]
And, to put it briefly, not  one  of  them was  born or ever  existed, Jesus
included, and  what's necessary is that, instead of portraying his birth or,
suppose, the  coming of the  Magi,'[18]  you portray  the  absurd rumours of
their coming. Otherwise  it follows from your story that he really was born!
...'
     Here Homeless made an attempt to stop his painful hiccupping by holding
his breath, which caused  him to hiccup more  painfully  and loudly,  and at
that  same moment  Berlioz  interrupted his  speech,  because  the foreigner
suddenly got  up and  walked towards  the writers.  They  looked  at him  in
surprise.
     'Excuse me, please,' the approaching man began speaking, with a foreign
accent but without distorting the words, 'if, not being your acquaintance, I
allow  myself...  but  the  subject  of  your  learned  conversation  is  so
interesting that...'
     Here he politely took off his beret and the  friends  had  nothing left
but to stand up and make their bows.
     'No, rather a Frenchman ....' thought Berlioz.
     'A Pole? ...' thought Homeless.
     It must  be  added  that from  his  first  words  the  foreigner made a
repellent impression on the poet, but  Berlioz rather liked  him - that  is,
not liked but ... how to put it ... was interested, or whatever.
     'May I sit down?' the foreigner asked politely, and the friends somehow
involuntarily moved apart; the foreigner adroitly sat  down between them and
at once entered into the conversation:
     'Unless  I  heard  wrong,  you  were  pleased  to  say that Jesus never
existed?' the foreigner asked, turning his green left eye to Berlioz.
     'No, you did  not  hear  wrong,' Berlioz replied courteously,  'that is
precisely what I was saying.'
     'Ah, how interesting!' exclaimed the foreigner.
     'What the devil does he want?' thought Homeless, frowning.
     'And you were agreeing with your  interlocutor?' inquired the stranger,
turning to Homeless on his right.
     'A hundred per cent!' confirmed the man, who was fond of  whimsical and
figurative expressions.
     'Amazing!' exclaimed the uninvited interlocutor and, casting a thievish
glance around and muffling his low voice for some reason, he said:
     'Forgive  my importunity,  but,  as I understand, along with everything
else, you also do not believe in God?' he made frightened eyes and added:
     'I swear I won't tell anyone!'
     'No, we don't believe in God,' Berlioz replied, smiling slightly at the
foreign tourist's fright, but we can speak of it quite freely.'
     The  foreigner sat  back  on the  bench and asked, even  with a  slight
shriek of curiosity:
     'You are - atheists?!'
     Yes, we're atheists,' Berlioz smilingly replied, and  Homeless thought,
getting angry: 'Latched on to us, the foreign goose!'
     'Oh,  how  lovely!' the  astonishing  foreigner  cried  out  and  began
swiveling his head, looking from one writer to the other.
     'In  our country atheism  does not surprise anyone,' Berlioz  said with
diplomatic politeness. 'The majority of  our population consciously and long
ago ceased believing in the fairytales about God.'
     Here the  foreigner pulled the following stunt: he got up and shook the
amazed editor's hand, accompanying it with these words:
     'Allow me to thank you with all my heart!'
     'What are you thanking him for?' Homeless inquired, blinking.
     'For some very important  information, which is of great interest to me
as  a  traveler,'  the  outlandish  fellow  explained,  raising  his  finger
significantly.
     The important  information  apparendy  had  indeed  produced  a  strong
impression on the traveler, because he passed his frightened glance over the
buildings, as if afraid of seeing an atheist in every window.
     'No, he's not an Englishman ...' thought Berlioz, and Homeless thought:
     'Where'd  he  pick up  his Russian, that's the  interesting thing!' and
frowned again.
     'But, allow  me  to  ask  you,'  the foreign  visitor  spoke after some
anxious reflection, 'what,  then,  about the proofs of  God's existence,  of
which, as is known, there are exactly five?'
     'Alas!' Berlioz said with regret. 'Not  one  of these proofs  is  worth
anything,  and  mankind  shelved them  long  ago. You must agree that in the
realm of reason there can be no proof of God's existence.'
     'Bravo!'  cried the  foreigner.  'Bravo!  You  have perfectly  repeated
restless old Immanuel's [19] thought in this  regard. But  here's the hitch:
he  roundly  demolished  all five proofs, and then, as if  mocking  himself,
constructed a sixth of his own.'
     'Kant's  proof,'  the learned editor objected with a subtle  smile, 'is
equally unconvincing.  Not  for nothing did  Schiller say that  the  Kantian
reasoning  on  this  question  can satisfy only  slaves  and Strauss  simply
laughed at this proof.' Berlioz spoke, thinking all the while: 'But, anyhow,
who is he? And why does he speak Russian so well?'
     They  ought to take  this Kant  and  give him a  three-year  stretch in
Solovki [22] for such proofs!' Ivan Nikolaevich plumped quite unexpectedly.
     'Ivan!' Berlioz whispered, embarrassed.
     But  the suggestion of  sending Kant to Solovki not  only did not shock
the foreigner, but even sent him into raptures.
     'Precisely, precisely,'  he  cried, and his green  left eye, turned  to
Berlioz,  flashed. 'Just the place  for him! Didn't I  tell him that time at
breakfast?
     "As you  will,  Professor,  but  what  you've  thought  up doesn't hang
together. It's clever, maybe, but mighty unclear. You'll be laughed at."'
     Berlioz goggled his eyes. 'At  breakfast... to Kant? ... What  is  this
drivel?' he thought.
     'But,' the outlander went on, unembarrassed by  Berlioz's amazement and
addressing the  poet,  'sending him to Solovki is unfeasible, for the simple
reason  that he  has  been abiding for over  a  hundred  years now in places
considerably more remote than Solovki, and to  extract him from  there is in
no way possible, I assure you.'
     'Too bad!' the feisty poet responded.
     'Yes, too bad!' the stranger agreed, his eye flashing, and went on:
     'But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then,
one may  ask,  who governs human  life and, in  general, the  whole order of
things on earth?'
     'Man governs  it himself,'  Homeless angrily hastened to reply  to this
admittedly  none-too-clear  question.  `Pardon  me,'  the stranger responded
gently, 'but in  order to  govern, one needs,  after  all, to have a precise
plan for certain, at least somewhat  decent, length of time. Allow me to ask
you, then, how man can govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity
of making a plan for at least  some ridiculously short period - well, say, a
thousand years - but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?
     `And in fact,' here the  stranger turned to Berlioz, 'imagine that you,
for  instance,  start  governing,  giving  orders to  others  and  yourself,
generally, so  to  speak, acquire  a taste for  it,  and  suddenly  you  get
...hem... hem ...  lung cancer...' -  here the foreigner smiled sweetly, and
if the thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure -  'yes, cancer' - narrowing
his eyes like a cat, he  repeated the sonorous word - 'and so your governing
is over!
     'You are no longer  interested  in anyone's fate  but  your  own.  Your
family starts lying to  you. Feeling  that something is  wrong,  you rush to
learned  doctors, then  to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well.
Like the first,  so  the second and third are  completely senseless, as  you
understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still  recently thought he
was governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box,
and the people around him, seeing that the man lying there is no longer good
for anything, burn him in an oven.
     'And sometimes  it's  worse still: the man  has just decided  to go  to
Kislovodsk' - here the foreigner squinted  at Berlioz - 'a trifling  matter,
it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly, no one knows
why, he slips and falls under a tram-car! Are you going to say it was he who
governed himself that way? Would it not be more correct to think that he was
governed by someone else  entirely?' And here  the unknown man  burst into a
strange little laugh.
     Berlioz listened with great attention to the unpleasant story about the
cancer and the tram-car, and certain alarming thoughts began to torment him.
     'He's  not a foreigner... He's not  a foreigner...' he thought, 'he's a
most peculiar specimen ... but, excuse me, who is he then? ...'
     You'd  like  to   smoke,  I  see?'  the  stranger   addressed  Homeless
unexpectedly. "Which kind do you prefer?'
     'What,  have you got several?' the poet, who had run out of cigarettes,
asked glumly.
     'Which do you prefer?' the stranger repeated.
     'Okay - Our Brand,' Homeless replied spitefully.
     The unknown  man immediately took  a cigarette case from his pocket and
offered it to Homeless:
     'Our Brand...'
     Editor and poet were both struck,  not so  much by  Our Brand precisely
turning up in the cigarette case, as by the cigarette case itself. It was of
huge size, made  of  pure gold, and, as it was  opened,  a  diamond triangle
flashed white and blue fire on its lid.
     Here the writers thought differently. Berlioz: 'No, a foreigner!',  and
Homeless: 'Well, devil take him, eh! ...'
     The poet and the owner of the cigarette case lit up, but the non-smoker
Berlioz declined.
     'I  must counter  him like this,' Berlioz decided, 'yes, man is mortal,
no one disputes that. But the thing is...'
     However, before he managed to utter these words, the foreigner spoke:
     'Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst
of it  is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal - there's  the trick!  And
generally he's unable to say what he's going to do this same evening.'
     `What an absurd  way  of putting the question ...' Berlioz  thought and
objected:
     'Well, there's  some exaggeration here. About  this same  evening I  do
know more or less certainly. It goes without saying, if a brick  should fall
on my head on Bronnaya. . '
     'No  brick,' the  stranger interrupted  imposingly, `will ever fall  on
anyone's head just out of  the blue.  In this particular case, I assure you,
you are not in danger of that at all. You will die a different death.'
     'Maybe  you know  what kind precisely?' Berlioz inquired with perfectly
natural irony, getting drawn into an  utterly absurd conversation. 'And will
tell me?'
     'Willingly,' the unknown  man responded. He looked Berlioz up  and down
as if he were going to make him a suit, muttered through his teeth something
like: 'One,  two  ... Mercury in the  second house  ...  moon gone ... six -
disaster... evening - seven...' then announced loudly and joyfully:
     'Your head will be cut off!'
     Homeless goggled his  eyes wildly  and  spitefully  at  the  insouciant
stranger, and Berlioz asked, grinning crookedly:
     'By whom precisely? Enemies? Interventionists?'[23]
     'No,' replied his interlocutor,  'by a Russian woman,  a Komsomol  [24]
girl.'
     `Hm...'  Berlioz mumbled, vexed at the  stranger's  little joke, `well,
excuse me, but that's not very likely.'
     'And I beg  you to excuse me,' the foreigner replied, 'but it's so. Ah,
yes, I wanted  to ask you,  what are you going to do tonight, if  it's not a
secret?'
     `It's not a secret. Right now  I'll stop by my place  on  Sadovaya, and
then  at ten  this evening there will be a meeting at  Massolit, and  I will
chair it.'
     'No, that simply cannot be,' the foreigner objected firmly.
     'Why not?'
     `Because,' the  foreigner replied  and, narrowing his eyes, looked into
the  sky,  where, anticipating  the cool of the  evening,  black  birds were
tracing noiselessly, 'Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has
not only bought it, but has already spilled it. So the meeting will not take
place.'
     Here, quite understandably, silence fell under the lindens.
     `Forgive   me,'  Berlioz  spoke   after  a  pause,   glancing   at  the
drivel-spouting foreigner, 'but what has sunflower oil got to do with it ...
and which Annushka?'
     'Sunflower  oil has got this  to do with it,'  Homeless suddenly spoke,
obviously deciding to declare war on the uninvited  interlocutor.  'Have you
ever happened, citizen, to be in a hospital for the mentally ill?'
     'Ivan! ...' Mikhail Alexandrovich  exclaimed quietly. But the foreigner
was not a bit offended and burst into the merriest laughter.
     'I  have,  I  have, and  more than once!'  he cried  out, laughing, but
without taking his unlaughing eye  off the poet. 'Where haven't I been! Only
it's too bad  I didn't get around to asking the professor what schizophrenia
is. So you will have to find that out from him yourself, Ivan Nikolaevich!'
     'How do you know my name?'
     'Gracious, Ivan Nikolaevich, who doesn't know you?' Here  the foreigner
took out of his pocket the previous day's issue of the Literary Gazette, and
Ivan Nikolaevich saw his own picture on the very first page and under it his
very  own verses.  But the proof of fame and popularity, which yesterday had
delighted the poet, this time did not delight him a bit.
     'Excuse me,' he said, and his face darkened, 'could you wait one little
moment? I want to say a couple of words to my friend.'
     'Oh, with pleasure!' exclaimed  the stranger. 'It's so nice here  under
the lindens, and, by the way, I'm not in any hurry.'
     'Listen here, Misha,' the poet whispered,  drawing Berlioz aside, 'he's
no foreign tourist, he's a spy. A Russian emigre [25] who has  crossed  back
over. Ask for his papers before he gets away...'
     'YOU  think so?' Berlioz whispered  worriedly, and thought: 'Why,  he's
right...'
     'Believe me,' the poet rasped  into his ear, `he's pretending to  be  a
fool  in order  to find  out something or  other. Just hear  how  he  speaks
Russian.'  As  he  spoke, the poet  kept glancing sideways, to make sure the
stranger did not escape. 'Let's go and detain him, or he'll get away...'
     And the poet pulled Berlioz back to the bench by the arm.
     The unknown man was not sitting, but was  standing near it,  holding in
his hands some booklet in a  dark-grey binding, a  sturdy  envelope  made of
good paper, and a visiting card.
     `Excuse  me for  having forgotten,  in  the  heat of  our  dispute,  to
introduce myself. Here is my card, my passport, and an invitation to come to
Moscow for a consultation,' the stranger said weightily, giving both writers
a penetrating glance.
     They  were  embarrassed. 'The devil,  he  heard everything...'  Berlioz
thought, and with a polite gesture indicated that there was  no need to show
papers. While the foreigner was pushing them at the editor, the poet managed
to make out the word  `Professor' printed  in foreign type on  the card, and
the initial letter of the last name - a double 'V' - 'W'.
     `My pleasure,' the editor meanwhile muttered in embarrassment, and  the
foreigner put the papers back in his pocket.
     Relations  were thus restored,  and  all  three sat  down on the  bench
again.
     'You've been invited here as a consultant, Professor?' asked Berlioz.
     'Yes, as a consultant.'
     "You're German?' Homeless inquired.
     'I?  ...' the professor repeated  and suddenly fell to thinking.  'Yes,
perhaps I am German ...' he said.
     'YOU speak real good Russian,' Homeless observed.
     'Oh, I'm  generally a polyglot and know  a great number  of languages,'
the professor replied.
     'And what is your field?' Berlioz inquired.
     'I am a specialist in black magic.'
     There he goes!...' struck in Mikhail Alexandrovich's head.
     'And  ... and you've been  invited here  in that  capacity?'  he asked,
stammering.
     'Yes, in that capacity,' the professor confirmed, and  explained: 'In a
state  library  here  some  original  manuscripts   of   the   tenth-century
necromancer Gerbert of Aurillac [26] have been found. So it is necessary for
me to sort them out. I am the only specialist in the world.'
     'Aha! You're a historian?' Berlioz asked with great relief and respect.
     'I am a  historian,' the scholar confirmed,  and added with no rhyme or
reason: This evening there will be an interesting story at the Ponds!'
     Once again editor and  poet were extremely surprised, but the professor
beckoned them both to him, and when they leaned towards him, whispered:
     'Bear in mind that Jesus did exist.'
     `You  see.  Professor,' Berlioz  responded  with  a  forced  smile, `we
respect  your  great learning, but on this question we hold  to  a different
point of view.'
     `There's  no  need  for any  points of  view,'  the  strange  professor
replied, 'he simply existed, that's all.'
     'But there's need for some proof...' Berlioz began.
     "There's no need  for  any proofs,' replied the professor, and he began
to  speak softly,  while his accent  for some reason  disappeared: 'It's all
very simple: In a white cloak with blood-red lining, with the shuffling gait
of a cavalryman, early in the  morning of  the fourteenth  day of the spring
month of Nissan...'[27]

        CHAPTER 2. Pontius Pilate


     In a  white cloak with blood-red lining, with  the shuffling gait of  a
cavalryman, early in  the morning of the  fourteenth day of the spring month
of Nisan, there came out to the covered colonnade between the two  wings  of
the palace of  Herod the Great' the procurator of Judea, [2] Pontius Pilate.
[3]
     More than anything in the world the procurator hated  the smell of rose
oil,  and now everything foreboded a  bad day,  because this smell had  been
pursuing the procurator since dawn.
     It seemed to the procurator that a rosy smell exuded from the cypresses
and palms in the garden, that the smell  of leather trappings and sweat from
the convoy was mingled with the cursed rosy flux.
     From the outbuildings at the back of the palace, where the first cohort
of the Twelfth  Lightning legion, [4]  which had come to Yershalaim [5] with
the procurator, was quartered, a whiff of smoke reached the colonnade across
the upper  terrace  of  the palace,  and  this  slightly acrid  smoke, which
testified  that  the centuries' mess cooks had begun to prepare dinner,  was
mingled with the same thick rosy scent.
     'Oh, gods, gods,  why do you punish me? ... Yes, no doubt, this  is it,
this is it again, the invincible,  terrible illness... hemicrania, when half
of the head aches ...  there's no remedy for it, no escape  ... I'll try not
to move my head...'
     On the mosaic  floor by  the fountain a chair was already prepared, and
the procurator,  without looking  at anyone, sat in it and reached his  hand
out to one side. His secretary deferentially placed  a sheet of parchment in
this  hand. Unable to  suppress  a  painful grimace,  the  procurator  ran a
cursory, sidelong  glance over  the writing, returned  the  parchment to the
secretary, and said with difficulty:
     "The accused is from Galilee? [6] Was the case sent to the tetrarch?'
     'Yes, Procurator,' replied the secretary.
     'And what then?'
     'He refused to make a decision on the case and sent the Sanhedrin's [7]
death sentence to you for confirmation,' the secretary explained.
     The procurator twitched his cheek and said quietly:
     'Bring in the accused.'
     And at once two legionaries  brought a  man  of about twenty-seven from
the garden terrace to the balcony under the columns and stood him before the
procurator's chair.  The  man was dressed in  an  old  and  torn  light-blue
chiton. His head was covered by a white cloth with a leather band around the
forehead, and his hands were bound behind his back. Under the man's left eye
there was a large bruise, in the corner of his mouth a cut caked with blood.
     The man gazed at the procurator with anxious curiosity.
     The latter paused, then asked quietly in Aramaic: [8]
     `So  it  was you  who  incited the  people to  destroy  the  temple  of
Yershalaim?'[9]
     The procurator  sat  as  if made of stone while he  spoke, and only his
lips  moved slightly  as he  pronounced the words. The procurator was  as if
made of  stone because he was afraid to move his head, aflame with  infernal
pain.
     The man with bound hands leaned forward somewhat and began to speak:
     'Good man! Believe me ...'
     But me procurator, motionless as before and  not raising  his  voice in
the least, straight away interrupted him:
     'Is it  me  that you are calling  a good  man? You  are mistaken. It is
whispered about me in  Yershalaim that I am a fierce  monster, and  that  is
perfectly  correct.' And he added in the same monotone: 'Bring the centurion
Ratslayer.'
     It  seemed  to  everyone that it became darker on the balcony  when the
centurion of the first century, Mark, nicknamed Ratslayer, presented himself
before the  procurator. Ratslayer was a head taller than the tallest soldier
of the  legion and so broad in the shoulders  that he completely blocked out
the still-low sun.
     The procurator addressed the centurion in Latin:
     `The criminal  calls me "good  man".  Take  him outside for  a  moment,
explain to him how I ought to be spoken to. But no maiming.'
     And everyone  except the motionless procurator  followed Mark Ratslayer
with  their eyes  as  he  motioned to the  arrested  man, indicating that he
should  go  with  him. Everyone generally followed Ratslayer with their eyes
wherever he appeared,  because  of his height, and those who were seeing him
for the  first  time also because  the  centurion's face was disfigured: his
nose had once been smashed by a blow from a Germanic club.
     Mark's heavy boots thudded across the mosaic, the bound man noiselessly
went  out with  him, complete silence fell in the colonnade,  and  one could
hear pigeons cooing on the garden terrace near the balcony and water singing
an intricate, pleasant song in the fountain.
     The  procurator would  have  liked to get up,  put his temple under the
spout, and stay standing that way. But he knew that even that would not help
him.
     Having  brought the  arrested man  from under  the  columns  out to the
garden, Ratslayer took a whip from the hands of a legionary who was standing
at the foot of a bronze statue and, swinging easily, struck the arrested man
across the shoulders. The centurion's movement was casual and light, yet the
bound man instantly collapsed on the ground as if his legs had been cut from
under him; he gasped for air, the colour drained from his face, and his eyes
went vacant.
     With his left hand only Mark heaved the fallen man into the air like an
empty  sack, set him  on his feet, and spoke nasally,  in  poorly pronounced
Aramaic:
     The Roman procurator is called Hegemon. [10] Use no  other words. Stand
at attention. Do you understand me, or do I hit you?'
     The arrested man swayed, but got  hold of himself, his colour returned,
he caught his breath and answered hoarsely:
     I understand. Don't beat me.'
     A moment later he was again standing before the procurator.
     A lusterless, sick voice sounded:
     'Name?'
     'Mine?' the arrested man hastily  responded, his whole being expressing
a readiness to answer sensibly, without provoking further wrath.
     The procurator said softly:
     'I know my own. Don't pretend to be stupider than you are. Yours.'
     'Yeshua,'[11] the prisoner replied promptly.
     'Any surname?'
     'Ha-Nozri.'
     'Where do you come from?'
     The town of Gamala,'[12] replied the prisoner, indicating with his head
that there, somewhere far off to his  right, in the north,  was the  town of
Gamala.
     'Who are you by blood?'
     'I don't know exactly,' the arrested  man replied animatedly, `I  don't
remember my parents. I was told that my father was a Syrian...'
     "Where is your permanent residence?'
     'I have no permanent home,' the prisoner answered shyly, 'I travel from
town to town.'
     That  can be  put more briefly, in  a word - a vagrant,' the procurator
said, and asked:
     'Any family?'
     "None. I'm alone in the world.'
     'Can you read and write?'
     'Yes.'
     'Do you know any language besides Aramaic?'
     'Yes. Greek.'
     A swollen eyelid rose, an eye clouded with suffering fixed the arrested
man. The other eye remained shut.
     Pilate spoke in Greek.
     'So it was you who was going to  destroy the temple building and called
on the people to do that?'
     Here the prisoner again became animated, his eyes ceased to show  fear,
and he spoke in Greek:
     'Never, goo...' Here terror flashed in the prisoner's eyes,  because he
had nearly  made  a  slip. 'Never, Hegemon, never in my life was I going  to
destroy the temple building, nor did I incite anyone to this senseless act.'
     Surprise showed on  the face of the secretary, hunched over a low table
and writing down the testimony. He raised his head, but immediately  bent it
to the parchment again.
     'All sorts  of people gather  in this  town for the  feast.  Among them
there  are magicians, astrologers, diviners and  murderers,' the  procurator
spoke in  monotone, `and  occasionally also liars. You,  for instance, are a
liar. It  is written clearly: "Incited to  destroy the  temple". People have
testified to it.'
     These  good  people,' the prisoner spoke and, hastily adding `Hegemon',
went on: '... haven't any learning and have confused everything I told them.
Generally,  I'm beginning to be  afraid that  this confusion may go on for a
very  long   time.  And  all  because  he  writes  down  the  things  I  say
incorrectly.'
     Silence fell. By now both sick eyes rested heavily on the prisoner.
     'I repeat to you, but for  the last time, stop pretending that you're a
madman,  robber,' Pilate  said softly  and monotonously,  `there's not  much
written in your record, but what there is enough to hang you.'
     'No, no, Hegemon,' the  arrested man  said,  straining all over in  his
wish to  convince, `there's one with a  goatskin  parchment who  follows me,
follows me  and keeps writing all  the  time. But  once  I peeked  into this
parchment and was  horrified. I said  decidedly  nothing of  what's  written
there. I implored him: "Burn your parchment, I beg  you!" But he tore it out
of my hands and ran away.'
     'Who is that?' Pilate asked squeamishly and touched his temple with his
hand.
     'Matthew Levi,'[13] the  prisoner explained willingly. 'He used to be a
tax collector, and I first met him  on the  road  in Bethphage,'[14] where a
fig grove juts out at an angle, and I got to talking with him. He treated me
hostilely at first and even insulted me -  that is, thought he insulted me -
by  calling me a dog.' Here the  prisoner smiled. `I personally see  nothing
bad about this animal, that I should be offended by this word...'
     The secretary stopped writing and  stealthily cast  a surprised glance,
not at the arrested man, but at the procurator.
     '... However, after listening to me,  he began to  soften,' Yeshua went
on, `finally  threw  the  money down  in the  road  and  said  he  would  go
journeying with me...'
     Pilate  grinned with one cheek, baring  yellow teeth, and said, turning
his whole body towards the secretary:
     'Oh, city of Yershalaim! What does one not hear in it! A tax collector,
do you hear, threw money down in the road!'
     Not  knowing how to reply  to that, the secretary found it necessary to
repeat Pilate's smile.
     `He  said  that  henceforth money  had become hateful  to  him,' Yeshua
explained Matthew Levi's  strange action and  added:  'And since then he has
been my companion.'
     His teeth still bared, the procurator glanced at the arrested man, then
at the sun, steadily rising over the equestrian  statues of  the hippodrome,
which lay far  below  to the right, and suddenly, in some sickening anguish,
thought that  the simplest thing would be to drive this  strange  robber off
the balcony by uttering just two words: 'Hang him.' To drive the convoy away
as  well,  to  leave  the  colonnade,  go into the palace,  order  the  room
darkened, collapse  on  the bed, send  for cold water,  call in  a plaintive
voice for his dog Banga, and complain  to  him about the hemicrania. And the
thought of poison suddenly flashed temptingly in the procurator's sick head.
     He gazed with dull eyes at the arrested man and was silent for a  time,
painfully trying to  remember  why  there  stood before him in  the pitiless
morning sunlight of Yershalaim  this  prisoner with  his face  disfigured by
beating, and what other utterly unnecessary questions he had to ask him.
     'Matthew Levi?'  the sick  man asked in a hoarse voice  and closed  his
eyes.
     'Yes, Matthew Levi,' the high, tormenting voice came to him.
     `And what was  it in any  case that you said about  the temple  to  the
crowd in the bazaar?'
     The  responding   voice  seemed  to  stab   at  Pilate's  temple,   was
inexpressibly painful, and this voice was saying:
     'I said, Hegemon, that the temple of the old faith would fall and a new
temple  of truth would  be built. I  said it that way  so as to make it more
understandable.'
     'And why did you stir up the people in the bazaar, you vagrant, talking
about the truth, of which you have no notion? What is truth?'[15]
     And here the  procurator thought: 'Oh,  my  gods!  I'm asking him about
something unnecessary at a  trial... my reason no longer  serves me...'  And
again he pictured a cup of dark liquid. 'Poison, bring me poison...'
     And again he heard the voice:
     The truth is, first of  all,  that your head aches, and aches  so badly
that you're  having  faint-hearted thoughts of death. You're not only unable
to speak to me, but it is even hard for you to look at me. And I am now your
unwilling torturer, which upsets me. You can't even think about anything and
only  dream  that  your  dog should  come, apparently the one  being you are
attached to. But  your suffering will  soon be  over, your  headache will go
away.'
     The secretary goggled his eyes at the prisoner  and stopped writing  in
mid-word.
     Pilate raised  his tormented eyes to the  prisoner and saw that the sun
already stood quite high over the hippodrome, that  a ray had penetrated the
colonnade and  was  stealing towards Yeshua's worn sandals, and that the man
was trying to step out of the sun's way.
     Here the  procurator  rose from his chair, clutched his head  with  his
hands, and his  yellowish,  shaven face  expressed dread. But  he  instantly
suppressed it with his will and lowered himself into his chair again.
     The  prisoner meanwhile continued his speech,  but the secretary was no
longer writing it down, and only stretched his neck like a goose, trying not
to let drop a single word.
     'Well,  there,  it's  all  over,'  the  arrested   man  said,  glancing
benevolently at  Pilate,  `and  I'm extremely glad  of it. I'd  advise  you,
Hegemon, to leave the  palace for a while  and go for a stroll  somewhere in
the vicinity - say, in the gardens on the Mount of Olives. [16] A storm will
come...' the prisoner  turned, narrowing  his eyes at the sun, '...later on,
towards  evening. A stroll  would do you much  good, and I  would be glad to
accompany  you. Certain new thoughts have occurred to me, which I think  you
might  find interesting, and I'd  willingly share them with you, the more so
as you give the impression of being a very intelligent man.'
     The secretary turned deathly pale and dropped the scroll on the floor.
     'The trouble  is,' the bound man went on, not stopped by  anyone, 'that
you are too closed off and have definitively lost faith  in people. You must
agree,  one can't  place  all  one's  affection  in  a  dog.  Your  life  is
impoverished, Hegemon.' And here the speaker allowed himself to smile.
     The secretary now  thought of  only one  thing, whether to believe  his
ears or not.  He  had to  believe.  Then he  tried to imagine precisely what
whimsical form the wrath of  the hot-tempered procurator  would take at this
unheard-of impudence from the prisoner. And this the secretary was unable to
imagine, though he knew the procurator well.
     Then  came  the cracked, hoarse  voice of the procurator, who  said  in
Latin:
     'Unbind his hands.'
     One  of the convoy  legionaries rapped  with his spear,  handed  it  to
another, went over and took the ropes off the prisoner. The secretary picked
up his scroll, having decided to record nothing for now, and to be surprised
at nothing.
     `Admit,'  Pilate  asked  softly  in  Greek,  `that   you  are  a  great
physician?'
     'No,  Procurator,  I  am  not  a  physician,'  the  prisoner   replied,
delightedly rubbing a crimped and swollen purple wrist.
     Scowling  deeply,  Pilate  bored the prisoner with his eyes,  and these
eyes were no longer dull, but flashed with sparks familiar to all.
     'I didn't ask you,' Pilate said, 'maybe you also know Latin?'
     'Yes, I do,' the prisoner replied.
     Colour came to Pilate's yellowish cheeks, and he asked in Latin:
     'How did you know I wanted to call my dog?'
     'It's very  simple,' the prisoner replied in  Latin.  `You  were moving
your hand in the air' - and the prisoner repeated  Pilate's gesture - `as if
you wanted to stroke something, and your lips...'
     'Yes,' said Pilate.
     There was silence. Then Pilate asked a question in Greek:
     'And so, you are a physician?'
     'No,  no,'  the  prisoner  replied  animatedly, `believe me, I'm  not a
physician.'
     Very  well,  then, if you want to keep  it  a secret,  do so. It has no
direct bearing on  the case. So you maintain that  you did not incite anyone
to destroy ... or set fire to, or in any other way demolish the temple?'
     `I repeat,  I  did not incite anyone  to such acts, Hegemon. Do  I look
like a halfwit?'
     'Oh, no, you don't look like a halfwit,' the procurator replied quietly
and smiled some strange smile. 'Swear, then, that it wasn't so.'
     `By  what  do  you  want me  to swear?' the  unbound  man  asked,  very
animated.
     'Well,  let's  say, by your life,' the procurator  replied. 'It's  high
time you swore by it, since it's hanging by a hair, I can tell you.'
     'You don't think it was you who hung it, Hegemon?' the prisoner asked.
     'If so, you are very mistaken.'
     Pilate gave a start and replied through his teeth:
     'I can cut that hair.'
     `In  that,  too,  you  are  mistaken,'  the  prisoner retorted, smiling
brightly and  shielding himself from the sun with  his hand. 'YOU must agree
that surely only he who hung it can cut the hair?'
     'So, so,' Pilate  said,  smiling, 'now I have no doubts  that the  idle
loafers of Yershalaim followed at your heels.  I don't know  who hung such a
tongue on  you,  but he hung it well. Incidentally, tell me, is it true that
you  entered  Yershalaim  by  the  Susa gate  [17]  riding  on an ass,  [18]
accompanied  by a crowd of riff-raff who shouted  greetings to you  as  some
kind of prophet?' Here the procurator pointed to the parchment scroll.
     The prisoner glanced at the procurator in perplexity.
     'I don't even have  an ass, Hegemon,' he said. `I  did enter Yershalaim
by the  Susa gate, but on foot, accompanied only by Matthew Levi, and no one
shouted anything to me, because no one in Yershalaim knew me then.'
     'Do  you happen to know,' Pilate continued without taking his eyes  off
the prisoner,  `such  men as a certain  Dysmas,  another named Gestas, and a
third named Bar-Rabban?'[19]
     'I do not know these good people,' the prisoner replied.
     Truly?'
     Truly.'
     'And now tell me, why is it that you use me words "good people" all the
time? Do you call everyone that, or what?'
     'Everyone,'  the  prisoner replied.  There  are no evil  people  in the
world.'
     The first I hear of it,' Pilate said, grinning. 'But perhaps I know too
little of life! ...
     You needn't record any more,' he addressed the  secretary,  who had not
recorded anything  anyway, and went on talking  with the prisoner. 'YOU read
that in some Greek book?'
     'No, I figured it out for myself.'
     'And you preach it?'
     'Yes.'
     `But take, for instance, the centurion Mark, the one known as Ratslayer
- is he good?'
     'Yes,' replied the prisoner.  True, he's an unhappy man. Since the good
people disfigured him, he has become cruel  and hard. I'd be curious to know
who maimed him.'
     'I can willingly tell you that,' Pilate responded, 'for I was a witness
to it. The good people  fell on him like  dogs on a bear. There were Germans
fastened  on  his  neck, his  arms,  his  legs.  The  infantry  maniple  was
encircled, and if one flank hadn't been cut by a cavalry turmae, of which  I
was the commander - you, philosopher, would not have had the chance to speak
with the  Rat-slayer. That was at  the battle  of  Idistaviso, [20]  in  the
Valley of the Virgins.'
     `If I could speak with him,' the prisoner suddenly said  musingly, 'I'm
sure he'd change sharply.'
     'I don't suppose,' Pilate responded, 'that you'd bring much  joy to the
legate of the  legion  if you  decided to  talk with any of his  officers or
soldiers. Anyhow, it's also  not going to  happen, fortunately for everyone,
and I will be the first to see to it.'
     At that  moment a swallow swiftly flitted into the colonnade, described
a circle under the golden  ceiling, swooped down, almost brushed the face of
a bronze statue in a niche with its pointed wing, and disappeare