And the latter, ever raising his voice, went on with his confession and got Nikanor Ivanovich definitively muddled, because he suddenly started addressing someone who was not on-stage, and responded for this absent one himself, calling himself now dear sir, now baron, now father, now son, now formally, and now familiarly.
Nikanor Ivanovich understood only one thing, that the actor died an evil death, crying out: ‘Keys! My keys!’, after which he collapsed on the floor, gasping and carefully tearing off his tie.
Having died, Kurolesov got up, brushed the dust from his trousers, bowed with a false smile, and withdrew to the accompaniment of thin applause. And the master of ceremonies began speaking thus:
‘We have just heard The Covetous Knight wonderfully performed by Savva Potapovich. This knight hoped that frolicking nymphs would come running to him, and that many other pleasant things in the same vein would occur. But, as you see, none of it happened, no nymphs came running to him, and the muses paid him no tribute, and he raised no mansions, but, on the contrary, ended quite badly, died of a stroke, devil take him, on his chest of currency and jewels. I warn you that the same sort of thing, if not worse, is going to happen to you if you don’t turn over your currency!’
Whether Pushkin’s poetry produced such an effect, or it was the prosaic speech of the master of ceremonies, in any case a shy voice suddenly came from the house:
‘I’ll turn over my currency.’
‘Kindly come to the stage,’ the master of ceremonies courteously invited, peering into the dark house.
On-stage appeared a short, fair-haired citizen, who, judging by his face, had not shaved in about three weeks.
‘Beg pardon, what is your name?’ the master of ceremonies inquired.
‘Kanavkin, Nikolai,’ the man responded shyly.
‘Ah! Very pleased, Citizen Kanavkin. And so? ...’
‘I’ll turn it over,’ Kanavkin said quietly.
‘How much?’
‘A thousand dollars and twenty ten-rouble gold pieces.’
‘Bravo! That’s all, then?’
The programme announcer stared straight into Kanavkin’s eyes, and it even seemed to Nikanor Ivanovich that those eyes sent out rays that penetrated Kanavkin like X-rays. The house stopped breathing.
‘I believe you!’ the artiste exclaimed finally and extinguished his gaze. ‘I do! These eyes are not lying! How many times have I told you that your basic error consists in underestimating the significance of the human eye. Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes - never! A sudden question is put to you, you don’t even flinch, in one second you get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but — alas - the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it’s all over! They see it, and you’re caught!’
Having delivered, and with great ardour, this highly convincing speech, the artiste tenderly inquired of Kanavkin:
‘And where is it hidden?’
‘With my aunt, Porokhovnikova, on Prechistenka.’
‘Ah! That’s ... wait ... that’s Klavdia Ilyinishna, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes! A separate little house? A little front garden opposite? Of course, I know, I know! And where did you put it there?’
‘In the cellar, in a candy tin ...’
The artiste clasped his hands.
‘Have you ever seen the like?’ he cried out, chagrined. ‘Why, it’ll get damp and mouldy there! Is it conceivable to entrust currency to such people? Eh? Sheer childishness! By God! ...’
Kanavkin himself realized he had fouled up and was in for it, and he hung his tufty head.
‘Money,’ the artiste went on, ‘must be kept in the state bank, in special dry and well-guarded rooms, and by no means in some aunt’s cellar, where it may, in particular, suffer damage from rats! Really, Kanavkin, for shame! You’re a grown-up!’
Kanavkin no longer knew what to do with himself, and merely picked at the lapel of his jacket with his finger.
‘Well, all right,’ the artiste relented, ‘let bygones be ...’ And he suddenly added unexpectedly: ‘Ah, by the way ... so that in one ... to save a trip ... this same aunt also has some, eh?’
Kanavkin, never expecting such a turn of affairs, wavered, and the theatre fell silent.
‘Ehh, Kanavkin ...’ the master of ceremonies said in tender reproach, ‘and here I was praising him! Look, he just went and messed it up for no reason at all! It’s absurd, Kanavkin! Wasn’t I just talking about eyes? Can’t we see that the aunt has got some? Well, then why do you torment us for nothing?’
‘She has!’ Kanavkin cried dashingly.
‘Bravo!’ cried the master of ceremonies.
‘Bravo!’ the house roared frightfully.
When things quieted down, the master of ceremonies congratulated Kanavkin, shook his hand, offered him a ride home to the city in a car, and told someone in the wings to go in that same car to fetch the aunt and ask her kindly to come for the programme at the women’s theatre.
‘Ah, yes, I wanted to ask you, has the aunt ever mentioned where she hides hers?’ the master of ceremonies inquired, courteously offering Kanavkin a cigarette and a lighted match. As he lit up, the man grinned somehow wistfully.
‘I believe you, I believe you,’ the artiste responded with a sigh. ‘Not just her nephew, the old pinchfist wouldn’t tell the devil himself! Well, so, we’ll try to awaken some human feelings in her. Maybe not all the strings have rotted in her usurious little soul. Bye-bye, Kanavkin!’
And the happy Kanavkin drove off. The artiste inquired whether there were any others who wished to turn over their currency, but was answered with silence.
‘Odd birds, by God!’ the artiste said, shrugging, and the curtain hid him.
The lights went out, there was darkness for a while, and in it a nervous tenor was heard singing from far away:
‘There great heaps of gold do shine, and all those heaps of gold are Mine ...’[97]
Then twice the sound of subdued applause came from somewhere.
‘Some little lady in the women’s theatre is turning hers over,’ Nikanor Ivanovich’s red-bearded neighbour spoke up unexpectedly, and added with a sigh: ‘Ah, if it wasn’t for my geese! ... I’ve got fighting geese in Lianozovo, my dear fellow ... they’ll die without me, I’m afraid. A fighting bird’s delicate, it needs care ... Ah, if it wasn’t for my geese! ... They won’t surprise me with Pushkin ...’ And again he began to sigh.
Here the house lit up brightly, and Nikanor Ivanovich dreamed that cooks in white chef’s hats and with ladles in their hands came pouring from all the doors. Scullions dragged in a cauldron of soup and a stand with cut-up rye bread. The spectators livened up. The jolly cooks shuttled among the theatre buffs, ladled out bowls of soup, and distributed bread.
‘Dig in, lads,’ the cooks shouted, ‘and turn over your currency! What’s the point of sitting here? Who wants to slop up this swill! Go home, have a good drink, a little bite, that’s the way!’
‘Now, you, for instance, what’re you doing sitting here, old man?’ Nikanor Ivanovich was directly addressed by a fat cook with a raspberry-coloured neck, as he offered him a bowl in which a lone cabbage leaf floated in some liquid.
‘I don’t have any! I don’t! I don’t!’ Nikanor Ivanovich cried out in a terrible voice. ‘You understand, I don’t!’
‘You don’t?’ the cook bellowed in a menacing bass. ‘You don’t?’ he asked in a tender woman’s voice. ‘You don’t, you don’t,’ he murmured soothingly, turning into the nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna.
She was gently shaking Nikanor Ivanovich by the shoulder as he moaned in his sleep. Then the cooks melted away, and the theatre with its curtain broke up. Through his tears, Nikanor Ivanovich made out his room in the hospital and two people in white coats, who were by no means casual cooks getting at p
eople with their advice, but the doctor and that same Praskovya Fyodorovna, who was holding not a bowl but a little dish covered with gauze, with a syringe lying on it.
‘What is all this?’ Nikanor Ivanovich said bitterly, as they were giving him the injection. ‘I don’t have any and that’s that! Let Pushkin turn over his currency for them. I don’t have any!’
‘No, you don’t, you don’t,’ the kind-hearted Praskovya Fyodorovna soothed him, ‘and if you don’t, there’s no more to be said.’
After the injection, Nikanor Ivanovich felt better and fell asleep without any dreams.
But, thanks to his cries, alarm was communicated to room 120, where the patient woke up and began looking for his head, and to room 118, where the unknown master became restless and wrung his hands in anguish, looking at the moon, remembering the last bitter autumn night of his life, a strip of light under the basement door, and uncurled hair.
From room 118, the alarm flew by way of the balcony to Ivan, and he woke up and began to weep.
But the doctor quickly calmed all these anxious, sorrowing heads, and they began to fall asleep. Ivan was the last to become oblivious, as dawn was already breaking over the river. After the medicine, which suffused his whole body, calm came like a wave and covered him. His body grew lighter, his head basked in the warm wind of reverie. He fell asleep, and the last waking thing he heard was the pre-dawn chirping of birds in the woods. But they soon fell silent, and he began dreaming that the sun was already going down over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was cordoned off by a double cordon ...
CHAPTER 16
The Execution
The sun was already going down over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was cordoned off by a double cordon.
The cavalry ala that had cut across the procurator’s path around noon came trotting up to the Hebron gate of the city. Its way had already been prepared. The infantry of the Cappadocian cohort had pushed the conglomeration of people, mules and camels to the sides, and the ala, trotting and raising white columns of dust in the sky, came to an intersection where two roads met: the south road leading to Bethlehem, and the north-west road to Jaffa. The ala raced down the north-west road. The same Cappadocians were strung out along the sides of the road, and in good time had driven to the sides of it all the caravans hastening to the feast in Yershalaim. Crowds of pilgrims stood behind the Cappadocians, having abandoned their temporary striped tents, pitched right on the grass. Going on for about a half-mile, the ala caught up with the second cohort of the Lightning legion and, having covered another half-mile, was the first to reach the foot of Bald Mountain. Here they dismounted. The commander broke the ala up into squads, and they cordoned off the whole foot of the small hill, leaving open only the way up from the Jaffa road.
After some time, the ala was joined at the hill by the second cohort, which climbed one level higher and also encircled the hill in a wreath.
Finally the century under the command of Mark Ratslayer arrived. It went stretched out in files along the sides of the road, and between these files, convoyed by the secret guard, the three condemned men rode in a cart, white boards hanging around their necks with ‘robber and rebel’ written on each of them in two languages — Aramaic and Greek.
The cart with the condemned men was followed by others laden with freshly hewn posts with crosspieces, ropes, shovels, buckets and axes. Six executioners rode in these carts. They were followed on horseback by the centurion Mark, the chief of the temple guard of Yershalaim, and that same hooded man with whom Pilate had had a momentary meeting in a darkened room of the palace.
A file of soldiers brought up the rear of the procession, and behind it walked about two thousand of the curious, undaunted by the infernal heat and wishing to be present at the interesting spectacle. The curious from the city were now joined by the curious from among the pilgrims, who were admitted without hindrance to the tail of the procession. Under the shrill cries of the heralds who accompanied the column and cried aloud what Pilate had cried out at around noon, the procession drew itself up Bald Mountain.
The ala admitted everyone to the second level, but the second century let only those connected with the execution go further up, and then, manoeuvring quickly, spread the crowd around the entire hill, so that people found themselves between the cordons of infantry above and cavalry below. Now they could watch the execution through the sparse line of the infantry.
And so, more than three hours had gone by since the procession climbed the mountain, and the sun was already going down over Bald Mountain, but the heat was still unbearable, and the soldiers in both cordons suffered from it, grew weary with boredom, and cursed the three robbers in their hearts, sincerely wishing them the speediest death.
The little commander of the ala, his brow moist and the back of his white shirt dark with sweat, having placed himself at the foot of the hill by the open passage, went over to the leather bucket of the first squad every now and then, scooped handfuls of water from it, drank and wetted his turban. Somewhat relieved by that, he would step away and again begin pacing back and forth on the dusty road leading to the top. His long sword slapped against his laced leather boot. The commander wished to give his cavalrymen an example of endurance, but, pitying his soldiers, he allowed them to stick their spears pyramid-like in the ground and throw their white cloaks over them. Under these tents, the Syrians hid from the merciless sun. The buckets were quickly emptied, and cavalrymen from different squads took turns going to fetch water in the gully below the hill, where in the thin shade of spindly mulberries a muddy brook was living out its last days in the devilish heat. There, too, catching the unsteady shade, stood the bored horse-handlers, holding the quieted horses.
The weariness of the soldiers and the abuse they aimed at the robbers were understandable. The procurator’s apprehensions concerning the disorders that might occur at the time of the execution in the city of Yershalaim, so hated by him, fortunately were not borne out. And when the fourth hour of the execution came, there was, contrary to all expectations, not a single person left between the two files, the infantry above and the cavalry below. The sun had scorched the crowd and driven it back to Yershalaim. Beyond the file of two Roman centuries there were only two dogs that belonged to no one knew whom and had for some reason ended up on the hill. But the heat got to them, too, and they lay down with their tongues hanging out, panting and paying no attention to the green-backed lizards, the only beings not afraid of the sun, darting among the scorching stones and some sort of big-thorned plants that crept on the ground.
No one attempted to rescue the condemned men either in Yershalaim itself, flooded with troops, or here on the cordoned-off hill, and the crowd went back to the city, for indeed there was absolutely nothing interesting in this execution, while there in the city preparations were under way for the great feast of Passover, which was to begin that evening.
The Roman infantry on the second level suffered still more than the cavalry. The only thing the centurion Ratslayer allowed his soldiers was to take off their helmets and cover their heads with white headbands dipped in water, but he kept them standing, and with their spears in their hands. He himself, in the same kind of headband, but dry, not wet, walked about not far from the group of executioners, without even taking the silver plaques with lions’ muzzles off his shirt, or removing his greaves, sword and knife. The sun beat straight down on the centurion without doing him any harm, and the lions’ muzzles were impossible to look at — the eyes were devoured by the dazzling gleam of the silver which was as if boiling in the sun.
Ratslayer’s mutilated face expressed neither weariness nor displeasure, and it seemed that the giant centurion was capable of pacing like that all day, all night and the next day - in short, for as long as necessary. Of pacing in the same way, holding his hands to the heavy belt with its bronze plaques, glancing in the same stem way now at the posts with the executed men, now at the file of soldiers, kicking aside with the toe of a shaggy boot in the same ind
ifferent way human bones whitened by time or small flints that happened under his feet.
That man in the hood placed himself not far from the posts on a three-legged stool and sat there in complacent motionlessness, though poking the sand with a twig from time to time out of boredom.
What has been said about there not being a single person beyond the file of legionaries is not quite true. There was one person, but he simply could not be seen by everyone. He had placed himself, not on the side where the way up the mountain was open and from where it would have been most convenient to watch the execution, but on the north side, where the slope was not gentle and accessible, but uneven, with gaps and clefts, where in a crevice, clutching at the heaven-cursed waterless soil, a sickly fig tree was trying to live.
Precisely under it, though it gave no shade, this sole spectator who was not a participant in the execution had established himself, and had sat on a stone from the very beginning, that is, for over three hours now. Yes, he had chosen not the best but the worst position for watching the execution. But still, even from there the posts could be seen, and there could also be seen, beyond the file of soldiers, the two dazzling spots on the centurion’s chest, and that was apparently quite enough for a man who obviously wished to remain little noticed and not be bothered by anyone.
But some four hours ago, at the start of the execution, this man had behaved quite differently, and might have been noticed very well, which was probably why he had now changed his behaviour and secluded himself.
It was only when the procession came to the very top, beyond the file, that he had first appeared, and as an obvious latecomer at that. He was breathing hard, and did not walk but ran up the hill, pushing his way, and, seeing the file close together before him as before everyone else, made a naive attempt, pretending he did not understand the angry shouts, to break through the soldiers to the very place of execution, where the condemned men were already being taken from the cart. For that he received a heavy blow in the chest with the butt end of a spear, and he leaped back from the soldiers, crying out not in pain but in despair. At the legionary who had dealt the blow he cast a dull glance, utterly indifferent to everything, like a man insensible to physical pain.
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