‘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, as 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?’[24]
‘No,’ replied his interlocutor, ‘by a Russian woman, a Komsomol[25] 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 émigré[26] 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 forei
‘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[27] 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 Nisan...’[28]
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[29] the procurator of Judea,[30] Pontius Pilate.[31]
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,[32] which had come to Yershalaim[33] 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?[34] 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[35] 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 comer 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:[36]
‘So it was you who incited the people to destroy the temple of Yershalaim?’[37]
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 the 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.[38] 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 lustreless, 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,’[39] the prisoner replied promptly.
‘Any surname?’
‘Ha-Nozri.’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘The town of Gamala,’[40] 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.
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