one wheel and a pile of barrels.  There was no
one in  the garden, work had ended  at  sunset, and now over Judas choirs of
nightingales pealed and trilled.
     Judas's goal was near. He  knew that  on his right in the  darkness  he
would  presently begin  to hear  the  soft whisper of  water  falling in the
grotto. And  so it  happened, he heard it. It  was  getting  cooler. Then he
slowed his pace and called softly:
     'Niza!'
     But  instead  of Niza, a stocky  male  figure, detaching  itself from a
thick olive trunk, leaped out on the road, and something gleamed in its hand
and at once  went out. With a weak cry, Judas rushed back,  but a second man
barred his way.
     The first man, in front of him, asked Judas:
     'How much did you just get? Speak, if you want to save your life!' Hope
flared up in Judas's heart, and he cried out desperately:
     Thirty tetradrachmas!' Thirty tetradrachmas! I have it all with me!
     Here's the money! Take it, but grant me my life!'
     The man in front instantly  snatched the  purse from Judas's hands. And
at the same instant a knife flew up behind Judas's back and struck the lover
under the shoulder-blade. Judas was flung forward and  thrust  out his hands
with clawed  fingers into the  air. The front man caught Judas on his  knife
and buried it up to the hilt in Judas's heart.
     'Ni ... za ...'Judas  said,  not in his own high and clear young voice,
but in  a low and reproachful  one, and uttered not another  sound. His body
struck the earth so hard that it hummed.
     Then a third figure appeared  on the  road. This third one wore a cloak
with a hood.
     `Don't linger,'  he ordered. The  killers  quickly  wrapped  the  purse
together with a note handed to them by the third man  in a piece of hide and
criss-crossed it  with twine.  The second put the bundle into his bosom, and
then the two killers plunged off the roadsides and the darkness between  the
olive trees ate them. The third squatted down by the murdered man and looked
at his face. In the darkness it appeared white  as chalk  to the gazing  man
and somehow spiritually beautiful.
     A  few seconds  later  there  was not  a living  man on  the  road. The
lifeless  body  lay with  outstretched arms. The left foot was in a spot  of
moonlight,  so that  each strap of  the sandal could be seen distinctly. The
whole  garden  of  Gethsemane  was  just  then  pealing  with  the  song  of
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.

        CHAPTER 27. The End of Apartment No.50


     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 sance of black magic the  day  before. But
the thing was that more 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 sance and the night's scandal, followed by the expulsion of his
Saratov niece from the apartment.
     Not in a second, true, yet not in a minute either, but in  a quarter of
a 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 sance and
the fight in the  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  sance, a
sensible and qualified  witness, who gave an  excellent description  of  the
mysterious masked magician himself  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  sance  (the one in  violet
underwear who had shocked Rimsky and,  alas, many others), and the messenger
Karpov, who  had been sent to  apartment no.50 on  Sadovaya Street - at once
essentially 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 sance in the Variety. And when told that Arkady Apollonovich
had  seen this  magician  at  the  seance with his own  eyes, Kitaitsev only
spread his arms and raised his  eyes  to heaven. And  from Kitaitsev's  eyes
alone one could 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  n