The Master and Margarita

  “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 corner 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 me 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 perfecdv 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 ait, 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.

  “All sorts of people gather in this town for the feast. Among them there are magicians, astrologers, diviners and murderers,” the procurator spoke in monotone, “and occasionally also liars. You, for instance, are a liar. It is written clearly: "Incited to destroy the temple". People have testified to it.”

  These good people,” the prisoner spoke and, hastily adding “Hegemon”, went on: “... haven’t any learning and have confused everything I told them. Generally, I’m beginning to be afraid that this confusion may go on for a very long time. And all because he writes down the things I say incorrectly.”

  Silence fell. By now both sick eyes rested heavily on the prisoner.

  “I repeat to you, but for the last time, stop pretending that you’re a madman, robber,” Pilate said softly and monotonously, “there’s not much written in your record, but what there is is enough to hang you.”

  “No, no, Hegemon,” the arrested man said, straining all over in his wish to convince, “there’s one with a goatskin parchment who follows me, follows me and keeps writing all the time. But once I peeked into this parchment and was horrified. I said decidedly nothing of what’s written there. I implored him: "Burn your parchment, I beg you!" But he tore it out of my hands and ran away.”

  “Who is that?” Pilate asked squeamishly and touched his temple with his hand.

  “Matthew Levi,”[41] the prisoner explained willingly. “He used to be a tax collector, and I first met him on the road in Bethphage,[42] where a fig grove juts out at an angle, and I got to talking with him. He treated me hostilely at first and even insulted me that is, thought he insulted me — by calling me a dog.” Here the prisoner smiled. “I personally see nothing bad about this animal, that I should be offended by this word...”

  The secretary stopped writing and stealthily cast a surprised glance, not at the arrested man, but at the procurator.

  “... However, after listening to me, he began to soften,” Yeshua went on, “finally threw the money down in the road and said he would go journeying with me ...”

  Pilate grinned with one cheek, baring yellow teeth, and said, turning his whole body towards the secretary: “Oh, city ofYershalaim! What does one not hear in it! A tax collector, do you hear, threw money down in the road!”

  Not knowing how to reply to that, the secretary found it necessary to repeat Pilate’s smile.

  “He said that henceforth money had become hateful to him,” Yeshua explained Matthew Levi’s strange action and added: “And since then he has been my companion.”

  His teeth still bared, the procurator glanced at the arrested man, then at the sun, steadily rising over the equestrian statues of the hippodrome, which lay far below to the right, and suddenly, in some sickening anguish, thought that the simplest thing would be to drive this strange robber off the balcony by uttering just two words: “Hang him.” To drive the convoy away as well, to leave the colonnade, go into the palace, order the room darkened, collapse on the bed, send for cold water, call in a plaintive voice for his dog Banga, and complain to him about the hemicrania. And the thought of poison suddenly flashed temptingly in the procurator’s sick head, He gazed with dull eyes at the arrested man and was silent for a time, painfully trying to remember why there stood before him in the pitiless morning sunlight of Yershalaim this prisoner with his face disfigured by beating, and what other utterly unnecessary questions he had to ask him.

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

  “Yes, Matthew Levi,” the high, tormenting voice came to him.

  “And what was it in any case that you said about the temple to the crowd in the bazaar?”

  The responding voice seemed to stab at Pilate’s temple, was inexpressibly painful, and this voice was saying: “I said, Hegemon, that the temple of the old faith would fall and a new temple of truth would be built. I said it that way so as to make it more understandable.”

  “And why did you stir up the people in the bazaar, you vagrant, talking about the truth, of which you have no notion? What is truth?”[43]

  And here the procurator thought: “Oh, my gods! I’m asking him about something unnecessary at a trial... my reason no longer serves me ...” And again he pictured a cup of dark liquid. “Poison, bring me poison ...”

  And again he heard the voice: The truth is, first of all, that your head aches, and aches so badly that you’re having faint-hearted thoughts of death. You’re not only unable to speak to me, but it is even hard for you to look at me. And I am now your unwilling torturer, which upsets me. You can’t even think about anything and only dream that your dog should come, apparently the one being you are attached to. But your suffering will soon be over, your headache will go away.”

  The secretary goggled his eyes at the prisoner and stopped writing in mid-word.

  Pilate raised his tormented eyes to the prisoner and saw that the sun already stood quite high over the hippodrome, that a ray had penetrated the colonnade and was stealing towards Yeshua’s worn sandals, and that the man was trying to step out of the sun’s way.

  Here the procurator rose from his chair, clutched his head with his hands, and his yellowish, shaven face expressed dread. But he instantly suppressed it with his will and lowered himself into his chair again.

  The prisoner meanwhile continued his speech, but the secretary was no longer writing it down, and only stretched his neck like a goose, trying not to let drop a single word.

  “Well, there, it’s all over,” the arrested man said, glancing benevolently at Pilate, “and I’m extremely glad of it. I’d advise you, Hegemon, to leave the palace for a while and go for a stroll somewhere in the vicinity – say, in the gardens on the Mount of Olives.[44] A storm will come ...” the prisoner turned, narrowing his eyes at the sun,”... later on, towards evening. A stroll would do you much good, and I would be glad to accompany you. Certain new thoughts have occurred to me, which I think you might find interesting, and I’d willingly share them with you, the more so as you give the impression of being a very intelligent man.”

  The secretary turned deathly pale and dropped the scroll on the floor.

  “The trouble is,” the bound man went on, not stopped by anyone, “that you are too closed off and have definitively lost faith in people. You must agree, one can’t place all one’s affection in a dog. Your life is impoverished, Hegemon.” And here the speaker allowed himself to smile.

  The secretary now thought of only one thing, whether to believe his ears or not. He had to believe. Then he tried to imagine precisely what whimsical form the wrath of the hot-tempered procurator would take at this unheard-of impudence from the prisoner. And this the secretary was unable to imagine, though he knew the procurator well.

  Then came the cracked, hoarse voice of the procurator, who said in Latin: “Unbind his hands.”

  One of the convoy legionaries rapped with his spear, handed it to another, went over and took the ropes off the prisoner. The secretary picked up his scroll, having decided to record nothing for now, and to be surprised at nothing.

  “Admit,” Pilate asked softly in Greek, “that you are a great physician?”

  “No, Procurator, I am not a physician,” the prisoner replied, delightedly rubbing a crimped and swollen purple wrist.

  Scowling deeply, Pilate bored the prisoner with his eyes, and these eyes were no long
er dull, but flashed with sparks familiar to all.

  “I didn’t ask you,” Pilate said, “maybe you also know Latin?”

  “Yes, I do,” the prisoner replied.

  Colour came to Pilate’s yellowish cheeks, and he asked in Latin: “How did you know I wanted to call my dog?”

  “It’s very simple,” the prisoner replied in Latin. “You were moving your hand in the air” — and the prisoner repeated Pilate’s gesture — “as if you wanted to stroke something, and your lips ...”

  “Yes,” said Pilate.

  There was silence. Then Pilate asked a question in Greek: “And so, you are a physician?”

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

  Very well, then, if you want to keep it a secret, do so. It has no direct bearing on the case. So you maintain that you did not incite anyone to destroy ... or set fire to, or in any other way demolish the temple?”

  “I repeat, I did not incite anyone to such acts, Hegemon. Do I look like a halfwit?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t look like a halfwit,” the procurator replied quietly and smiled some strange smile. “Swear, men, that it wasn’t so.”

  “By what do you want me to swear?” the unbound man asked, very animated.

  “Well, let’s say, by your life,” the procurator replied. “It’s high time you swore by it, since it’s hanging by a hair, I can tell you.”

  “You don’t think it was you who hung it, Hegemon?” the prisoner asked.

  “If so, you are very mistaken.”

  Pilate gave a start and replied through his teeth: “I can cut that hair.”

  “In that, too, you are mistaken,” the prisoner retorted, smiling brightly and shielding himself from the sun with his hand. “You must agree that surely only he who hung it can cut the hair?”

  “So, so,” Pilate said, smiling, “now I have no doubts that the idle loafers of Yershalaim followed at your heels. I don’t know who hung such a tongue on you, but he hung it well. Incidentally, tell me, is it true that you entered Yershalaim by the Susa gate[45] riding on an ass,[46] accompanied by a crowd of riff-raff who shouted greetings to you as some kind of prophet?” Here the procurator pointed to the parchment scroll.