2. Pontius Pilate

In a white cloak with a blood-red lining, with the shuffling gait of a cavalryman, early in the morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, into the covered colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great^[55] emerged the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate.^[56]

More than anything else on earth the Procurator hated the smell of attar of roses, and everything now betokened a bad day ahead, for that smell had been haunting the Procurator since dawn. It seemed to the Procurator that the smell of roses was being emitted by the cypresses and palms in the garden, and that mingling with the smell of his escort’s leather accoutrements and sweat was that accursed waft of roses. From the wings at the rear of the palace that quartered the Twelfth Lightning Legion’s First Cohort, which had come to Yershalaim^[57] with the Procurator, a puff of smoke carried across the upper court of the garden into the colonnade, and mingling with this rather acrid smoke, which testified to the fact that the cooks in the centuries had started preparing dinner, was still that same heavy odour of roses.

"O gods, gods, why do you punish me?. No, there’s no doubt, this is it, it again, the invincible, terrible sickness… hemicrania, when half my head is aching. there are no remedies for it, no salvation whatsoever. I’ll try keeping my head still.”

On the mosaic floor by the fountain an armchair had already been prepared, and the Procurator sat down in it without looking at anyone and reached a hand out to one side. Into that hand his secretary deferentially placed a piece of parchment. Unable to refrain from a grimace of pain, the Procurator took a cursory sidelong look through what was written, returned the parchment to the secretary and said with difficulty:

“The man under investigation is from Galilee, is he? Was the case sent to the Tetrarch?”

“Yes, Procurator,” replied the secretary.

“And he did what?”

"He refused to give a decision on the case^[58] and sent the Sanhedrin’s death sentence for your ratification,” explained the secretary.

The procurator pulled at his cheek and said quietly:

“Bring the accused here.”

And immediately two legionaries led a man of about twenty-seven from the garden court and onto the balcony under the columns, and stood him in front of the Procurator’s armchair. This man was dressed in an old and ragged light-blue chiton. His head was partly covered by a white cloth with a band around the forehead, and his hands were bound behind his back. Under his left eye the man had a large bruise, and in the corner of his mouth there was the dried blood of a cut. The new arrival looked at the Procurator with uneasy curiosity.

The latter was silent for a while, then asked quietly in Aramaic:

“So it was you inciting the people to demolish the Temple of Yershalaim?”

While speaking, the Procurator sat like stone, and only his lips moved a tiny bit as he pronounced the words. The Procurator was like stone because he was afraid of shaking his head, which was on fire with hellish pain^[59].

The man with his hands bound edged forward a little and began to speak:

“Good man! Believe me…”

But the Procurator, immobile as before and without raising his voice in the least, interrupted him right away:

“Is it me you’re calling a good man? You’re mistaken. Everyone in Yershalaim whispers that I’m a savage monster, and it’s absolutely true.” And in the same monotone he added: “Centurion Rat-Catcher to me.”

It seemed to everyone that the balcony grew darker when the centurion of the first century, Marcus, nicknamed the RatCatcher, appeared before the Procurator. The Rat-Catcher was a head taller than the tallest of the legion’s rank-and-file soldiers, and so broad in the shoulders that he completely blotted out^[60]the as yet low sun.

The Procurator addressed the centurion in Latin:

“The criminal calls me ‘a good man’. Take him away for a minute, explain to him how I should be spoken to. But don’t mutilate him.”

And all except for the motionless Procurator let their eyes follow Marcus the Rat-Catcher, who had waved his arm at the man under arrest, indicating that the latter should follow him.

The eyes of all generally followed the Rat-Catcher wherever he appeared because of his height, and also, for those who were seeing him for the first time, because of the fact that the centurion’s face was disfigured: his nose had once been broken by a blow from a Germanic cudgel.

Marcus’s heavy boots pounded across the mosaic, the bound man followed him noiselessly; complete silence fell in the colonnade, and the doves in the garden court by the balcony could be heard cooing, while the water too sang an intricate, pleasant song in the fountain.

The Procurator felt like getting up, putting his temple under the jet of water and freezing like that. But he knew this would not help him either.

Leading the prisoner out from under the columns into the garden, the Rat-Catcher took the whip from the hands of a legionary who was standing by the pedestal of a bronze statue and, with a gentle swing, struck the prisoner across the shoulders. The centurion’s movement was insouciant and easy, but the bound man instantly collapsed to the ground as though his legs had been chopped from under him; he choked on the air, the colour drained from his face, and his eyes became senseless.

Easily, with just his left hand, Marcus tugged the fallen man up^[61] into the air like an empty sack, set him on his feet and began in a nasal voice, mispronouncing the Aramaic words:

“Call the Roman Procurator ‘Hegemon’.^[62] No other words. Stand to attention. Do you understand me, or do I hit you?”

The prisoner staggered, but controlled himself; the colour returned; he took breath and answered hoarsely:

“I understand you. Don’t beat me.”

A minute later he was standing before the Procurator once more.

There was the sound of a flat, sick voice.

“Name?”

“Mine?” the prisoner responded hastily, his entire being expressing his readiness to answer sensibly and not provoke any more anger.

In a low voice the Procurator said:

“I know mine. Don’t pretend to be more stupid than you are. Yours.”

“Yeshua,”^[63] the prisoner replied hurriedly.

“Do you have another name?”

“Ha-Nozri.”^[64]

“Your place of birth?”

“The town of Gamala,” replied the prisoner, indicating with his head that over there, somewhere far away to his right, in the north, lay the town of Gamala.

“What are you by blood?”

“I don’t know exactly,” replied the prisoner animatedly. “I don’t remember my parents. I was told my father was a Syrian…”

“Where is your permanent home?”

“I don’t have any permanent place to live,” replied the prisoner shyly. “I travel from town to town.”

“That can be expressed more briefly, in a word – a vagrant,” said the Procurator, and asked: “Do you have relatives?”

“There’s no one. I’m alone in the world.”

“Are you literate?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know any language other than Aramaic?”

“I do. Greek.”

A swollen eyelid was raised, an eye clouded with suffering stared at the prisoner. The other eye remained closed.

Pilate began speaking in Greek:

“So it was you meaning to demolish the building of the Temple and calling on the people to do it.”

At this point the prisoner again became animated; his eyes ceased to express fright, and he began speaking in Greek:

“I, goo…” – at this point there was a flash of horror in the prisoner’s eyes at having almost said the wrong thing – “I, Hegemon, have never in my life meant to demolish the building of the Temple and have not incited anyone to commit this senseless act.”

Surprise expressed itself on the face of the secretary, who was hunched over^[65] a low table, recording the testimony. He raised his head, but immediately bent it down again towards the parchment.

“A host of people of various kinds throngs to this city for the feast. Among them there may be magi, astrologers, soothsayers and murderers,” said the Procurator in a monotone, “and liars may be found too. You, for example, are a liar. It’s clearly recorded: inciting to demolish the Temple. Such is people’s testimony.”

“These good people,” the prisoner began, then hastily added “Hegemon” and continued: “learnt nothing and muddled up^[66] all I said. In general, I’m beginning to worry that this muddle will continue for a very long time. And all because he records what I say incorrectly.”

Silence fell. By now both painful eyes were looking hard at the prisoner.

“I repeat to you, but for the last time, stop pretending to be mad, you villain,” pronounced Pilate in a gentle monotone. “Not a lot of what you’ve said is recorded, but what is recorded is enough to hang you.”

“No, no, Hegemon,” said the prisoner, his whole body tensing up^[67] in his desire to convince, “he goes around, there’s this man that goes around with goatskin parchment and writes incessantly. But once I took a glance at the parchment and I was horrified. I’d said absolutely nothing of what was recorded there. I begged him: for God’s sake, won’t you burn your parchment? But he tore it out of my hands and ran away.”

“Who is this?” Pilate asked with distaste, and put his hand up to his temple.

“Levi Matthew,” explained the prisoner willingly. “He was a tax collector, and I first met him in the street in Bethphage, where the corner of the fig orchard sticks out, and I got into conversation with him. His initial attitude towards me was hostile, and he even insulted me – that is, he thought he was insulting me by calling me a dog.” Here the prisoner grinned. “I personally see nothing bad about the animal to make me take offence at the word…”

The secretary stopped recording and cast a surreptitious look of surprise^[68] – not at the prisoner, but at the Procurator.

“. However, after listening to me he began to soften,” continued Yeshua, “finally threw the money down on the road and said he would come travelling with me.”

Pilate grinned with one cheek, baring his yellow teeth, and said, turning the whole of his trunk towards the secretary:

“Oh, city of Yershalaim! The things you hear in it! A tax collector, do you hear, throwing the money onto the road!”

Not knowing how to reply to this, the secretary deemed it necessary to duplicate Pilate’s smile.

“And he said that henceforth money was hateful to him,” Yeshua said, explaining Levi Matthew’s strange actions, and added: “And since then he’s become my travelling companion.”

With his teeth still bared, the Procurator glanced at the prisoner, then at the sun, which was rising steadily over the equestrian statues of the hippodrome lying far below to the right, and suddenly, in a nauseating sort of anguish, he thought of how it would be simplest of all to banish this strange villain from the balcony by pronouncing just the two words: “Hang him” – to banish the escort too, leave the colonnade for the interior of the palace, order the room to be darkened, drop onto a couch, demand some cold water, summon the dog, Banga, in a plaintive voice^[69] and complain to him about the hemicrania. And a sudden thought of poison flashed seductively through the Procurator’s aching head.

He looked at the prisoner with lacklustre eyes and was silent for a while, agonizing as he tried to remember why, in the full blaze of Yershalaim’s pitiless morning sun, a prisoner with a face disfigured by blows was standing before him, and what other totally unnecessary questions he would have to ask.

“Levi Matthew?” the sick man asked in a hoarse voice, and closed his eyes.

“Yes, Levi Matthew,” came the high-pitched, tormenting voice.

“But what were you saying, after all, to the crowd at the bazaar about the Temple?”

The voice of the man answering seemed to stab into Pilate’s brow; it was inexpressibly agonizing, and that voice said:

“I was saying, Hegemon, that the temple of the old faith would collapse and a new temple of truth would be created. I put it like that so it would be clearer.”

“And why were you, you vagrant, stirring up^[70] the people at the bazaar, telling them about truth, of which you have no conception? What is truth?”

And at this point the Procurator thought: “O my gods! I’m asking him about something unnecessary during the trial. My mind isn’t serving me any more…” And again he had a vision of a goblet of dark liquid. “Give me poison, poison.”

And once more he heard the voice:

“The truth first and foremost is that your head aches, and aches so badly that you’re faint-heartedly contemplating death. Not only do you not have the strength to talk to me, you find it hard even to look at me. And now I’m your involuntary torturer^[71], which grieves me. You can’t even think about anything, and you dream only of the arrival of your dog, evidently the only creature you feel affection for. But your torment will come to an end in a moment: your headache will go.”

The secretary stared goggle-eyed at the prisoner and stopped in mid-word.

Pilate raised his martyr’s eyes to the prisoner and saw that the sun was already quite high above the hippodrome, that a ray had stolen into the colonnade and was creeping towards Yeshua’s worn-down sandals, and that he was trying to stay out of the sun.

At this point the Procurator rose from his armchair, gripped his head in his hands, and on his yellowish, clean-shaven face an expression of horror appeared. But he immediately suppressed it by will-power^[72] and lowered himself back into the armchair.

The prisoner, meanwhile, was continuing with his speech, yet the secretary was recording nothing more, and merely stretching his neck out like a goose, trying not to let slip a single word.

“There you are, it’s all over,” said the prisoner, casting benevolent glances at Pilate, “and I’m extremely pleased about that. I’d advise you, Hegemon, to leave the palace for a time and take a walk somewhere in the surrounding area – well, perhaps in the gardens on the Mount of Olives. The storm will begin” – the prisoner turned around and narrowed his eyes at the sun – “later on, towards evening. The walk would do you a lot of good, and I’d accompany you with pleasure. Certain new ideas have occurred to me that you might, I think, find interesting, and I’d willingly share them with you, particularly as you give the impression of being a very intelligent man.”

The secretary turned deathly pale^[73] and dropped his scroll on the floor.

“The trouble is,” continued the bound man, whom nobody was stopping, “you’re too self-contained, and you’ve utterly lost your faith in people. I mean, you must agree, you really shouldn’t make a dog the sole object of your affection. Your life is a poor one, Hegemon,” and at this point the speaker permitted himself a smile.

The secretary was thinking about only one thing now: should he believe his own ears or not? He had to believe them. Then he tried to imagine in precisely^[74] what whimsical form the anger of the hot-tempered Procurator would express itself at this unheard-of impertinence from the prisoner. And this the secretary was unable to imagine, although he knew the Procurator well.

At that moment there rang out the cracked, rather hoarse voice of the Procurator, who said in Latin:

“Untie his hands.”

One of the legionaries in the escort struck his spear on the ground, handed it to another one, went forward and took the ropes off the prisoner. The secretary picked up the scroll and decided not to record anything for the time being, nor to be surprised at anything.

“Confess: are you a great doctor?” Pilate asked quietly in Greek.

“No, Procurator, I’m not a doctor,” replied the prisoner, rubbing a twisted and swollen purple wrist in delight.

From under his brows Pilate’s eyes bored sternly into the prisoner, and those eyes were no longer lacklustre; the sparks that everyone knew had appeared in them.

“I didn’t ask you,” said Pilate, “perhaps you know Latin too?”

“Yes, I do,” replied the prisoner.

Colour appeared in Pilate’s yellowish cheeks, and he asked in Latin:

“How did you happen to know I wanted to call my dog?”

“It’s very simple,” the prisoner replied in Latin, “you were moving your hand through the air” – and the prisoner repeated Pilate’s gesture – “as though you wanted to stroke something, and your lips…”

“Yes,” said Pilate.

They were silent for a moment. Pilate asked a question in Greek:

“And so are you a doctor?”

“No, no,” replied the prisoner animatedly, “believe me, I’m not a doctor.”

“Well, all right. If you want to keep it a secret, do so. It has no direct bearing on the case. So you claim you didn’t call on anyone to demolish. or set fire to, or in any other way destroy the Temple?”

"I repeat: I haven’t called upon anyone, Hegemon, to perform such acts. What, do I seem feeble-minded?”

"Oh no, you don’t seem at all feeble-minded,” the Procurator replied quietly, and smiled a fearsome sort of smile^[75], "so swear, then, that it didn’t happen.”

"What do you want me to swear on?” asked the unbound man, who was now very animated.

"Well, on your life, perhaps,” replied the Procurator. "It’s the very time to swear on it, since it hangs by a thread – be aware of that.”

"And do you think it was you that hung it up, Hegemon?” asked the prisoner. "If so, you’re very much mistaken.”

Pilate started and replied through his teeth:

"I can cut the thread.”

"And you’re mistaken about that too,” retorted the prisoner, smiling brightly and using his hand to shield himself from the sun. "You must agree that it s quite certain the thread can be cut only by the one who hung it up?”

"Right, right,” said Pilate, smiling, "now I have no doubt that the idle layabouts in Yershalaim followed on your heels. I don’t know who hung your tongue in place, but they certainly hung a quick one. Incidentally, tell me: is it true you entered Yershalaim through the Susim Gate, riding on an ass and accompanied by a crowd of plebs, who were shouting out greetings to you as though to some kind of prophet?” – here the Procurator indicated the scroll of parchment.