In truth: the crimes of Bar-rabban and Ha-Nozri were quite incomparable in gravity. If the latter, an obvious madman, was guilty of the utterance of absurd speeches which had stirred up the people in Yershalaim and several other places, the former was much more significantly burdened. Not only had he permitted himself direct calls to revolt^[104], but he had also killed a guard during attempts to capture him. Bar-rabban was incomparably more dangerous than Ha-Nozri.

On the strength of all he had set out, the Procurator requested that the High Priest review the decision and leave at liberty the less harmful of the two condemned men – and that, without doubt, was Ha-Nozri. And so?…

Caipha said in a quiet but firm voice that the Sanhedrin had familiarized itself carefully with the case and was reporting for the second time that it intended to free Bar-rabban.

“What? Even after my pleading? The pleading of the man in whose person speaks the power of Rome? High Priest, repeat it a third time.”

“And for the third time I report that we are freeing Bar-rabban,” said Caipha quietly.

It was all over, and there was nothing more to talk about. Ha-Nozri was going away for ever, and there was no one to cure the Procurator’s terrible, vicious pains; there was no remedy for them but death. But this was not the thought that struck Pilate now. It was still that same incomprehensible anguish which had already visited him on the balcony that was permeating his entire being. He immediately tried to explain it, and the explanation was a strange one: the Procurator had the vague feeling there was something he had not finished saying to the condemned man, something he had not finished hearing.

Pilate banished this thought, and it flew away in an instant, just as it had come. It flew away, but the anguish remained unexplained, for it could not possibly be explained by the other brief thought that came in a flash, like lightning, but that was extinguished straight away: "Immortality… immortality has come…” Whose immortality had come? That the Procurator did not understand, but the thought of this mysterious immortality made him turn cold in the full blaze of the sun.

"Very well,” said Pilate, "so be it.”

At this point he looked around, took in at a glance the world that was visible to him, and was amazed at the change that had taken place. The bush laden with roses had vanished, the cypresses that fringed the upper terrace had vanished, as had the pomegranate tree, and the white statue in the verdure, and the verdure itself. In place of it all, some sort of dense crimson mush began floating around, seaweed began to sway about in it and then moved off somewhere, and Pilate himself moved off with it too. Now he was being borne away, smothered and scorched by^[105] the most terrible rage – the rage of impotence^[106].

“I feel stifled^[107],” said Pilate, “I feel stifled!”

With a cold, moist hand he ripped the clasp from the neckband of his cloak, and the clasp fell onto the sand.

"It’s close today, there’s a thunderstorm somewhere,” responded Caipha, not taking his eyes from the flushed face of the Procurator and foreseeing all the trials and tribulations yet to come. "Oh, what a terrible month Nisan is this year!”

"No,” said Pilate, "it’s not because it’s close, I’ve started feeling stifled with you, Caipha.” And, narrowing his eyes, Pilate smiled and added: "Take care of yourself, High Priest.”

The High Priest’s dark eyes flashed, and he expressed surprise on his face no worse than the Procurator had done earlier.

"What am I hearing, Procurator?” replied Caipha proudly and calmly. "Are you threatening me after a judgement that has been pronounced and ratified by you yourself? Is this possible? We are accustomed to the Roman Procurator choosing his words before saying anything. Could anyone have heard us, Hegemon?”

Pilate looked at the High Priest with lifeless eyes and, baring his teeth, gave a semblance of a smile^[108].

"Come, come, High Priest! Who can possibly hear us now, here? Do you think I’m like the wandering young simpleton who’s being executed today? Am I a boy, Caipha? I know what I’m saying, and where I’m saying it. The garden is cordoned off, the palace is cordoned off, so that a mouse couldn’t get through a single crack! Not just a mouse, either, even that – what’s his name. from the town of Kiriath – couldn’t get through. Incidentally, do you know such a man, High Priest? Yes… if such a man got in here, he’d feel bitterly sorry for himself – you’ll believe me on that score^[109], of course? So be aware then, that you, High Priest, will get no peace from now on! Neither you, nor your people,” and Pilate pointed into the distance to the right, to where the Temple was glowing on high. “It’s I that am telling you this – Pontius Pilate, the horseman of the Golden Lance^[110]!”^[111]

“I know, I know!” black-bearded Caipha replied fearlessly, and his eyes flashed. He raised his arm up towards the sky and continued: “The Judaic people know you hate them with a fierce hatred and will cause them many sufferings, but you will not destroy them completely! God will protect them! And all-powerful Caesar will hear – he will hear and will shield us from Pilate the destroyer!”

“Oh no!” exclaimed Pilate, and with every word he was finding things easier and easier: there was no need to pretend any more, there was no need to pick his words. “You’ve complained about me to Caesar too much, and now my hour has come, Caipha! Now word will fly from me – and not to the Governor in Antioch, and not to Rome, but direct to Capreae, to the Emperor himself – word of how in Yershalaim you shelter notorious rebels from death! And it won’t be water from Solomon’s Pond, as I wanted, for your benefit, that I’ll be treating Yershalaim to then! No, not water! Remember how, because of you, I had to remove the shields with the Emperor’s monograms from the walls, relocate the troops – I had to come here myself, see, to take a look at what was going on! Remember my word: you’ll see not just one cohort here in Yershalaim, High Priest, no! – the entire Fulminata legion is going to advance right up to the walls of the city; the Arab cavalry is going to come up, and then you’re going to hear bitter crying and moaning. Then you’ll remember this Bar-rabban that was saved and you’ll regret you sent the philosopher with his message of peace to his death!”

The High Priest’s face was covered in blotches^[112]; his eyes were burning. He, like the Procurator, bared his teeth in a smile and replied:

“Do you yourself believe what you’re saying now, Procurator? No, you don’t! It wasn’t peace, not peace that this seducer of the people brought to us here in Yershalaim – and you, horseman, understand that very well. You wanted to release him so he would stir up the people, ridicule the faith and deliver the people up to Roman swords! But I, the High Priest of Judaea, while I yet live, will not yield the faith up to profanation and will protect the people! Do you hear, Pilate?” and here Caipha raised his hand menacingly: “Listen carefully, Procurator!”

Caipha fell silent, and again the Procurator heard what sounded like the roar of the sea, rolling up to the very walls of Herod the Great’s garden.^[113] This roar rose up from below to the feet and into the face of the Procurator. And behind his back, there, beyond the wings of the palace, could be heard disquieting trumpet signals, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, the clanking of iron – here the Procurator realized that the Roman infantry was already setting out in accordance with his order, hastening to the final parade before the deaths of the terrified rebels and villains.

“Do you hear, Procurator?” the High Priest repeated quietly. “Are you really going to try and tell me that all that” – the High Priest raised both arms, and the dark hood fell from his head – “was provoked by the pitiful villain Bar-rabban?”

The Procurator wiped his damp, cold forehead with the back of his wrist and looked down at the ground; then, screwing his eyes up at the sky, saw that the burning hot sphere was almost directly above his head and that Caipha’s shadow had shrunk away completely by the lion’s tail, and quietly and indifferently he said:

“It’s getting towards midday. We got carried away with our conversation, but in the mean time we do need to carry on.”

Having apologized to the High Priest in refined phrases, he asked him to take a seat on a bench in the shade of a magnolia and wait while he summoned the remaining people required for a final brief conference and gave one more order concerning the execution.

Caipha bowed politely, placing his hand upon his heart, and remained in the garden while Pilate returned to the balcony. There he ordered the waiting secretary to invite into the garden the legate of the legion, the tribune of the cohort, and also the two members of the Sanhedrin and the commander of the Temple guard, who were awaiting a summons on the lower terrace of the garden in a circular pavilion with a fountain. To this Pilate added that he would himself be coming out into the garden straight away too, then he withdrew into the interior of the palace.

While the secretary was convening the conference^[114], the Procurator had a meeting in a room obscured from the sun by dark blinds with some sort of man whose face was half covered by a hood, though the rays of the sun could not possibly have troubled him inside the room. This meeting was extremely brief. The Procurator said a few quiet words to the man, after which the latter withdrew, while Pilate went through the colonnade into the garden.

There, in the presence of all those he had wished to see, the Procurator solemnly and drily confirmed that he was ratifying Yeshua Ha-Nozri’s death sentence, and he enquired officially of the members of the Sanhedrin as to which of the prisoners they would like to let live. On receiving the reply that it was Bar-rabban, the Procurator said:

“Very well,” and ordered the secretary to enter it in the minutes straight away, squeezed in his hand the clasp that the secretary had picked up from the sand and said solemnly: “It’s time!”

At this point all those present moved off down the broad marble steps between walls of roses giving off a heavy scent, descending lower and lower towards the palace wall, towards the gates leading out into a large, smoothly paved square, at the end of which could be seen the columns and statues of Yershalaim’s stadium.

As soon as the group had emerged from the garden into the square and gone up onto the extensive stone platform that dominated it, Pilate, looking around through narrowed eyelids, assessed the situation. The space he had just crossed – that is, the space between the palace wall and the platform – was empty, whereas in front of him Pilate could no longer see the square: it had been devoured by the crowd, which would have flooded both onto the platform itself and into the cleared space if a triple row of Sebastian’s soldiers to Pilate’s left hand and soldiers of the Ituraean Auxiliary Cohort to the right had not held it back.

And so Pilate went up onto the platform, squeezing the unnecessary clasp mechanically in his fist and squinting. The Procurator was squinting not because the sun was stinging his eyes, no! For some reason he did not want to see the group of condemned men who, as he knew very well, would be led up after him onto the platform in just a moment.

As soon as the white cloak with the crimson lining rose up on high on the stone cliff at the edge of the human sea, a wave of sound struck the unseeing Pilate’s ears: “Ha-a-a…” It began softly, rising somewhere in the distance near the hippodrome, then became thunderous and, after being sustained for several seconds, began to abate. “They’ve seen me,” thought the Procurator. Before the wave reached its lowest point, it unexpectedly began to develop again, and as it rolled, it rose higher than the first one, and on the second wave, just as the foam rages on a roller at sea, there raged a whistling and the individual moans of women, discernible through the thunder. “They’ve led them onto the platform…” thought Pilate, “and the moans are because a number of women were crushed when the crowd surged forward.”

He waited for a time, aware that no power could make the crowd fall quiet until it had exhaled all that had accumulated within it and fallen silent itself.

And when that moment came, the Procurator threw up his right arm, and the last sounds were expelled from the crowd.

Then Pilate gathered as much of the hot air as he could into his chest and shouted, and his cracked voice carried over thousands of heads:

“In the name of the Emperor Caesar!”

At this point his ears were struck several times by an abrupt iron cry – in the cohorts, tossing up their spears and insignia, the soldiers had cried out fearsomely:

“Hail, Caesar!”

Pilate threw back his head and turned it straight towards the sun. A green fire flared up beneath his eyelids, which made his brain ignite, and above the crowd flew hoarse Aramaic words:

“Four criminals, arrested in Yershalaim for murders, incitement to revolt^[115] and assault on the laws and faith^[116], are sentenced to a shameful punishment – hanging on posts! And this punishment will now be carried out on Bald Mountain! The names of the criminals are Dismas, Gestas, Bar-rabban and Ha-Nozri. Here they are before you!”

Pilate pointed to the right, not seeing any of the criminals, but knowing they were there, in the place they were required to be.

The crowd answered with a long hum, as though of surprise or relief. And when it had died away, Pilate continued:

“But only three of them will be executed, for, in accordance with the law and custom, in honour of the Feast of the Passover, one of the condemned men, chosen by the Lesser Sanhedrin and with the ratification of the Roman authorities, is to have his contemptible life restored to him by the magnanimous Emperor Caesar!”

Pilate shouted out the words, and at the same time listened to the way the humming was replaced by a great silence. Now not a sigh, not a rustling reached his ears, and there even came a moment when it seemed to Pilate that absolutely everything around him had vanished. The city he hated had died, and just he alone stood, scorched by the vertical rays, his face digging into the sky. Pilate continued to hold the silence, and then began shouting out:

“The name of the man who will now be released to freedom before you is…”

He paused once again, delaying the name, checking that he had said everything, because he knew the dead city would rise again after the lucky man’s name had been uttered, and no further words would be able to be heard.

“Is that all?” Pilate whispered to himself soundlessly. “It is. The name!”

And, rolling the letter “r” over the silent city, he cried:

“Bar-rabban!”

At this point it seemed to him that the sun, with a ringing sound, burst above him and flooded his ears with fire. In that fire raged a roaring, screams, moans, chuckling and whistling.

Pilate turned and set off back along the platform towards the steps, looking at nothing but the multicoloured blocks of the flooring beneath his feet, so as not to stumble. He knew that now, behind his back, bronze coins and dates were falling like hail onto the platform, people in the howling crowd were climbing onto shoulders, crushing one another, to see a miracle with their own eyes – a man who had already been in the hands of death tearing free of those hands! To see the legionaries taking the ropes off him, involuntarily causing him burning pain in arms dislocated during interrogation, to see him frowning and gasping, but all the same smiling a senseless, mad smile.

He knew that at this very same time the escort was already leading the three with their hands bound towards the side steps to take them out onto the road leading to the west, out of the city towards Bald Mountain. Only when he found himself behind the platform, in its rear, did Pilate open his eyes, knowing that now he was out of danger – no longer could he see the condemned men.

Mingled with the moaning of the crowd, which was beginning to fall quiet, were the readily discernible, piercing cries of the public criers, repeating, some in Aramaic, others in Greek, everything the Procurator had shouted from the platform. The staccato clatter of approaching horses’ hoofs reached his ears too, and a trumpet trumpeting something briefly and merrily. In reply to these sounds, from the roofs of the houses on the street leading out from the bazaar into the square of the hippodrome came the piercing whistling of little boys and cries of “look out!”

The solitary soldier standing in the cleared space of the square with a standard in his hand waved it in alarm, and then the Procurator, the legate of the legion, the secretary and the escort stopped.

The cavalry ala, working up ever more of a canter^[117], flew out into the square to cut across one side of it, passing the throng of people by, and to gallop by the shortest route, down a lane beside a stone wall with a vine creeping over it, to Bald Mountain.

On drawing level with Pilate, the fast-trotting commander of the ala, a Syrian as small as a boy and as dark as a mulatto, shouted something shrilly and drew his sword out from its scabbard. The wild, black, lathered horse shied and reared up on its hind legs. Thrusting the sword into its scabbard, the commander struck the horse across the neck with a lash, straightened it up, and rode into the lane, moving into a gallop. After him in a cloud of dust flew the horsemen in rows of three; the ends of their light bamboo lances began to bounce, and past the Procurator sped faces that seemed especially swarthy under their white turbans, and with cheerfully bared, gleaming teeth.

Raising the dust to the sky, the ala burst into the lane, and last to ride past Pilate was a soldier with a trumpet that blazed in the sun behind his back.

Shielding himself from the dust with his hand, and with a discontented frown on his face, Pilate moved onwards, heading for the gates of the palace garden, and the legate, the secretary and the escort moved off after him.

It was about ten o’clock in the morning.