"What for?”
“My guards lost him in the bazaar last evening, after he left Kaifa’s palace. How it happened, I cannot comprehend. It has never happened before in my life. He was put under surveillance just after our conversation. But in the neighbourhood of the bazaar he doubled back somewhere, and made such a strange loop that he escaped without a trace.”
“So. I declare to you that I do not consider it necessary to try you.
You did all you could, and no one in the world” – here the procurator smiled
- “could do more than you! Penalize the sleuths who lost Judas. But here, too, I warn you, I would not want it to be anything of a severe sort. In the last analysis, we did everything to take care of the blackguard!”
“Yes, although ...” Here Aphranius tore the seal off the packet and showed its contents to Pilate.
“Good heavens, what are you doing, Aphranius, those must be temple seals!”
"The procurator needn’t trouble himself with that question,” Aphranius replied, closing the packet.
“Can it be that you have all the seals?” Pilate asked, laughing.
“It couldn’t be otherwise. Procurator,” Aphranius replied very sternly, not laughing at all.
“I can imagine the effect at Kaifa’s!”
“Yes, Procurator, it caused great agitation. They summoned me immediately.”
Even in the semi-darkness one could see how Pilate’s eyes flashed.
“That’s interesting, interesting ...”
“I venture to disagree. Procurator, it was not interesting. A most boring and tiresome business. To my question whether anyone had been paid money in Kaifa’s palace, I was told categorically that there had been nothing of the sort.”
“Ah, yes? Well, so, if no one was paid, no one was paid. It will be that much harder to find the killers.”
“Absolutely right. Procurator.”
“It suddenly occurs to me, Aphranius: might he not have killed himself?”[153]
“Oh, no. Procurator,” Aphranius replied, even leaning back in his chair from astonishment, “excuse me, but that is entirely unlikely!”
“Ah, everything is likely in this city. I’m ready to bet that in a very short time rumours of it will spread all over the city.”
Here Aphranius again darted his look at the procurator, thought for a moment, and replied: “That may be. Procurator.”
The procurator was obviously still unable to part with this question of the killing of the man from Kiriath, though everything was already clear, and he said even with a sort of reverie: “But I’d like to have seen how they killed him.” “He was killed with great art. Procurator,” Aphranius replied, glancing somewhat ironically at the procurator. “How do you know that?”
“Kindly pay attention to the bag. Procurator,” Aphranius replied. “I guarantee you that Judas’s blood gushed out in a stream. I’ve seen murdered people in my time. Procurator.”
“So, of course, he won’t rise?”
“No, Procurator, he will rise,” replied Aphranius, smiling philosophically, “when the trumpet of the messiah they’re expecting here sounds -over him. But before then he won’t rise.”
“Enough, Aphranius, the question is clear. Let’s go on to the burial.”
The executed men have been buried. Procurator.” “Oh, Aphranius, it would be a crime to try you. You’re deserving of the highest reward. How was it?”
Aphranius began to tell about it: while he himself was occupied with Judas’s affair, a detachment of the secret guard, under the direction of his assistant, arrived at the hill as evening came. One of the bodies was not found on the hilltop. Pilate gave a start and said hoarsely: “Ah, how did I not foresee it! ...”
“No need to worry. Procurator,” said Aphranius, and he went on with his narrative: “The bodies of Dysmas and Gestas, their eyes pecked out by carrion birds, were taken up, and they immediately rushed in search of the third body. It was discovered in a very short time. A certain man ...”
“Matthew Levi,” said Pilate, not questioningly, but rather affirmatively. ; “Yes, Procurator ... Matthew Levi was hiding in a cave on the northern slope of Bald Skull, waiting for darkness. The naked body of Yeshua Ha-Nozri was with him. When the guards entered the cave with a torch, Levi fell into despair and wrath. He shouted about having committed no crime, and about every man’s right by law to bury an executed criminal if he so desires. Matthew Levi said he did not want to pan with the body. He was agitated, cried out something incoherent, now begging, now threatening and cursing ...”
“Did they have to arrest him?” Pilate asked glumly.
“No, Procurator, no,” Aphranius replied very soothingly, “they managed to quiet the impudent madman, explaining to him that the body would be buried. Levi, having grasped what was being said to him, calmed down, but announced that he would not leave and wished to take part in the burial. He said he would not leave even if they started to kill him, and even offered for that purpose a bread knife he had with him.”
“Was he chased away?” Pilate asked in a stifled voice.
“No, Procurator, no. My assistant allowed him to take part in the burial.”
“Which of your assistants was in charge of it?” asked Pilate.
“Tolmai,” Aphranius answered and added in alarm: “Perhaps he made a mistake?”
“Go on,” answered Pilate, “there was no mistake. Generally, I am beginning to feel a bit at a loss, Aphranius, I am apparently dealing with a man who never makes mistakes. That man is you.”
“Matthew Levi was taken in the cart with the bodies of the executed men, and in about two hours they reached a solitary ravine north of Yershalaim. There the detachment, working in shifts, dug a deep hole within an hour and buried all three executed men in it.”
“Naked?”
“No, Procurator, the detachment brought chitons with them for that purpose. They put rings on the buried men’s fingers. Yeshua’s with one notch, Dysmas’s with two, and Gestas’s with three. The hole has been covered over and heaped with stones. The landmark is known to Tolmai.”
“Ah, if only I had foreseen it!” Pilate spoke, wincing. I needed to see miss Matthew Levi...”
“He is here. Procurator.”
Pilate, his eyes wide open, stared at Aphranius for some time, and then said: “I thank you for everything that has been done in this affair. I ask you to send Tolmai to me tomorrow, and to tell him beforehand that I am pleased with him. And you, Aphranius,” here the procurator took a seal ring from the pouch of the belt lying on the table and gave it to me head of the secret service, “I beg you to accept this as a memento.”
Aphranius bowed and said: “A great honour. Procurator.”
“I request that the detachment that performed the burial be given rewards. The sleuths who let Judas slip — a reprimand. Have Matthew Levi sent to me right now. I must have the details on Yeshua’s case.”
“Understood, Procurator,” Aphranius replied and began retreating and bowing, while the procurator clapped his hands and shouted: To me, here! A lamp to the colonnade!”
Aphranius was going out to the garden when lights began to flash in the hands of servants behind Pilate’s back. Three lamps appeared on the table before the procurator, and the moonlit night at once retreated to the garden, as if Aphranius had led it away with him. In place of Aphranius, an unknown man, small and skinny, stepped on to the balcony beside the gigantic centurion. The latter, catching the procurator’s eye, withdrew to the garden at once and there disappeared.
The procurator studied the newcomer with greedy and slightly frightened eyes. So one looks at a man of whom one has heard a great deal, of whom one has been thinking, and who finally appears.
The newcomer, a man of about forty, was black-haired, ragged, covered with caked mud, and looked wolf-like from under his knitted brows. In short, he was very unsightly, and rather resembled a city beggar, of whom there were many hanging about on the porches of the temple or in the
bazaars of the noisy and dirty Lower City.
The silence continued for a long time, and was broken by the strange behaviour of the man brought to Pilate. His countenance changed, he swayed, and if he had not grasped the edge of the table with his dirty hand, he would have fallen.
“What’s wrong with you?” Pilate asked him.
“Nothing,” answered Matthew Levi, and he made a movement as if he were swallowing something. His skinny, bare, grey neck swelled out and then slackened again.
“What’s wrong, answer me,” Pilate repeated.
“I’m tired,” Levi answered and looked sullenly at the floor.
“Sit down,” said Pilate, pointing to the armchair.
Levi looked at the procurator mistrustfully, moved towards the armchair, gave a timorous sidelong glance at the gilded armrests, and sat down not in the chair but beside it on the floor.
“Explain to me, why did you not sit in the chair?” asked Pilate.
“I’m dirty, I’d soil it,” said Levi, looking at the ground.
“You’ll presently be given something to eat.”
“I don’t want to eat,” answered Levi.
“Why lie?” Pilate asked quietly. “You haven’t eaten for the whole day, and maybe even longer. Very well, don’t eat. I’ve summoned you so that you could show me the knife you had with you.”
“The soldiers took it from me when they brought me here,” Levi replied and added sullenly: “You must give it back to me, I have to return it to its owner, I stole it.”
“What for?”
To cut the ropes,” answered Levi.
“Mark!” cried the procurator, and the centurion stepped in under the columns. “Give me his knife.”
The centurion took a dirty bread knife from one of the two cases on his belt, handed it to the procurator, and withdrew.
“Who did you take the knife from?”
“From the bakery by the Hebron gate, just as you enter the city, on the left.”
Pilate looked at the broad blade, for some reason tried the sharpness of the edge with his finger, and said: “Concerning the knife you needn’t worry, the knife will be returned to the shop. But now I want a second thing — show me the charta you carry with you, on which Yeshua’s words are written down.”
Levi looked at Pilate with hatred and smiled such an inimical smile that his face became completely ugly.
“You want to take away the last thing?” he asked.
“I didn’t say ‘give me’,” answered Pilate, “I said ‘show me’.”
Levi fumbled in his bosom and produced a parchment scroll. Pilate took it, unrolled it, spread it out between the lights, and, squinting, began to study the barely legible ink marks. It was difficult to understand these crabbed lines, and Pilate kept wincing and leaning right to the parchment, running his finger over the lines. He did manage to make out that the writing represented an incoherent chain of certain utterances, certain dates, household records, and poetic fragments. Some of it Pilate could read: “... there is no death ... yesterday we ate sweet spring baccuroth...”[154]
Grimacing with the effort, Pilate squinted as he read: “... we shall see the pure river of the water of life[155] ... mankind shall look at the sun through transparent crystal...” Here Pilate gave a start. In the last lines of the parchment he made out the words: “... greater vice ... cowardice ...”
Pilate rolled up the parchment and with an abrupt movement handed it to Levi.
Take it,” he said and, after a pause, added: “You’re a bookish man, I see, and there’s no need for you to go around alone, in beggar’s clothing, without shelter. I have a big library in Caesarea, I am very rich and want to take you to work for me. You will sort out and look after the papyri, you will be fed and clothed.”
Levi stood up and replied: “No, I don’t want to.”
“Why?” the procurator asked, his face darkening. “Am I disagreeable to you? ... Are you afraid of me?”
The same bad smile distorted Levi’s face, and he said: “No, because you’ll be afraid of me. It won’t be very easy for you to look me in the face now that you’ve killed him.”
“Quiet,” replied Pilate. Take some money.”
Levi shook his head negatively, and the procurator went on: “I know you consider yourself a disciple of Yeshua, but I can tell you that you learned nothing of what he taught you. For if you had, you would certainly take something from me. Bear in mind that before he died he said he did not blame anyone.” Pilate raised a finger significantly, Pilate’s face was twitching. “And he himself would surely have taken something. You are cruel, and he was not cruel. Where will you go?”
Levi suddenly came up to the table, leaned both hands on it, and, gazing at the procurator with burning eyes, whispered to him: “Know, Hegemon, that I am going to kill a man in Yershalaim. I wanted to tell you that, so you’d know there will be more blood.”
“I, too, know there will be more of it,” replied Pilate, “you haven’t surprised me with your words. You want, of course, to kill me?”
“You I won’t manage to loll,” replied Levi, baring his teeth and smiling, “I’m not such a foolish man as to count on that. But I’ll kill Judas of Kiriath, I’ll devote the rest of my life to it.”
Here pleasure showed in the procurator’s eyes, and beckoning Matthew Levi to come closer, he said: ““You won’t manage to do it, don’t trouble yourself. Judas has already been killed this night.”
Levi sprang away from the table, looking wildly around, and cried out: “Who did it?”
“Don’t be jealous,” Pilate answered, his teeth bared, and rubbed his hands, “I’m afraid he had other admirers besides you.”
“Who did it?” Levi repeated in a whisper.
Pilate answered him: “I did it.”
Levi opened his mouth and stared at the procurator, who said quietly: “It is, of course, not much to have done, but all the same I did it.”
And he added: “Well, and now will you take something?”
Levi considered, relented, and finally said: “Have them give me a piece of clean parchment.”
An hour went by. Levi was not in the palace. Now the silence of the dawn was broken only by the quiet noise of the sentries” footsteps in the garden. The moon was quickly losing its colour, one could see at the other edge of the sky the whitish dot of the morning star. The lamps had gone out long, long ago. The procurator lay on the couch. Putting his hand under his cheek, he slept and breathed soundlessly. Beside him slept Banga.
Thus was the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth procurator of Judea, Pondus Pilate.
Chapter 27. The End of Apartment No.50
When Margarita came to the last words of the chapter — “... Thus was the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate” — it was morning.
Sparrows could be heard in the branches of the willows and lindens in the little garden, conducting a merry, excited morning conversation.
Margarita got up from the armchair, stretched, and only then felt how broken her body was and how much she wanted to sleep. It is interesting to note that Margarita’s soul was in perfect order. Her thoughts were not scattered, she was quite unshaken by having spent the night supernaturally.
She was not troubled by memories of having been at Satan’s ball, or that by some miracle the master had been returned to her, that the novel had risen from the ashes, that everything was back in place in the basement in the lane, from which the snitcher Aloisy Mogarych had been expelled. In short, acquaintance with Woland had caused her no psychic damage. Everything was as if it ought to have been so.
She went to the next room, convinced herself that the master was soundly and peacefully asleep, turned off the unnecessary table lamp, and stretched out by the opposite wall on a little couch covered with an old, torn sheet. A minute later she was asleep, and that morning she had no dreams. The basement rooms were silent, the builder’s whole little house was s
ilent, and it was quiet in the solitary lane.
But just then, that is, at dawn on Saturday, an entire floor of a certain Moscow institution was not asleep, and its windows, looking out on a big asphalt-paved square which special machines, driving around slowly and droning, were cleaning with brushes, shone with their full brightness, cutting through the light of the rising sun.
The whole floor was occupied with the investigation of the Woland case, and the lights had burned all night in dozens of offices.
Essentially speaking, the matter had already become clear on the previous day, Friday, when the Variety had had to be closed, owing to the disappearance of its administration and all sorts of outrages which had taken place during the notorious séance of black magic the day before. But the thing was that more and more new material kept arriving all the time and incessantly on the sleepless floor.
Now the investigators of this strange case, which smacked of obvious devilry, with an admixture of some hypnotic tricks and distinct criminality, had to shape into one lump all the many-sided and tangled events that had taken place in various parts of Moscow.
The first to visit the sleepless, electrically lit-up floor was Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics Commission.
After dinner on Friday, in his apartment located in a house by the Kamenny Bridge, the telephone rang and a male voice asked for Arkady Apollonovich. Arkady Apollonovich’s wife, who picked up the phone, replied sullenly that Arkady Apollonovich was unwell, had retired for the night, and could not come to the phone. However, Arkady Apollonovich came to the phone all the same. To the question of where Arkady Apollonovich was being called from, the voice in the telephone had said very briefly where it was from.
“This second ... at once ... this minute ...” babbled the ordinarily very haughty wife of the chairman of the Acoustics Commission, and she flew to the bedroom like an arrow to rouse Arkady Apollonovich from his bed, where he lay experiencing the torments of hell at the recollection of yesterday’s séance and the night’s scandal, followed by the expulsion of his Saratov niece from the apartment.