The Master and Margarita 2 страница

"Hmmm..." grunted Berlioz, irritated by the stranger's little joke, "Well, excuse me, but that's highly unlikely."

"No, please excuse me," replied the foreigner, "but that's how it is. By the way, I wanted to ask you, what will you be doing this evening, if it's not a secret?"

"It's not. First I'm going home to my place on Sadovaya and then at ten there's a meeting at MASSOLIT which I'll be chairing."

"No, that can't be," firmly protested the foreigner.

"And why is that?"

"Because," replied the foreigner, narrowing his eyes and looking up at the sky where the blackbirds were circling noiselessly in anticipation of the evening coolness, "Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil and not just bought it, but spilled it as well. So the meeting won't take place."

At this point, as one might expect, silence fell under the lindens.

"Excuse me," resumed Berlioz after a pause, looking at the nonsense-spouting foreigner, "but what's sunflower oil got to do with it... and who is this Annushka?"

"Here's what the sunflower oil has to do with it," interjected Bezdomny suddenly, evidently deciding to declare war on their uninvited interlocutor. "You haven't by any chance spent some time in a mental hospital, have you?"

"Ivan!" softly exclaimed Mikhail Alexandrovich.

Neter Talk to Strangers I1

But the foreigner was not the least bit insulted and he burst out with a hearty laugh.

"I have indeed, I have indeed, and more than once!" he exclaimed, laughing, his unsmiling eye still focused on the poet. "And where haven't I beenl I'm only sorry I never managed to ask the professor what schizophrenia is. So you'll have to ask him yourself, Ivan Nikolayevich!"

"How do you know my name?"

"Goodness, Ivan Nikolayevich, who doesn't know you?" At which point the foreigner pulled the previous day's Literary Gazette out of his pocket, and Ivan Nikolayevich saw a picture of himself on the front page and underneath it some of his poems. But the evidence of his fame and popularity which had so delighted the poet the day before now gave him no pleasure whatsoever.

"Excuse me," he said and his face darkened, "but could you wait a minute? I'd like to have a word with my colleague."

"Oh, by all means!" exclaimed the stranger. "It's so pleasant here under the lindens, and besides I'm in no hurry to go anywhere."

"Look here, Misha," whispered the poet after taking Berlioz aside, "he isn't a tourist at all, but a spy. He's a Russian emigré who's managed to get back here. Ask to see his papers or he'll get away."

"You really think so?" whispered Berlioz anxiously, thinking to himself, "He's probably right..."

"Mark my words," hissed the poet in his ear, "he's playing the fool in order to pump us for information. You heard how well he speaks Russian," said the poet, looking at the stranger out of the comer of his eye to make sure he did not run off. "C'mon, let's grab him or he'll get away."

The poet took Berlioz by the arm and led him over to the bench.

The stranger was no longer seated on the bench, but was standing near it, holding a small booklet bound in dark gray, a thick envelope made of good quality paper, and a visiting card.

"Excuse me," he said with importance, looking intently at the two men of letters, "but in the heat of our discussion I neglected to introduce myself. Here is my card, my passport, and my invitation to come to Moscow as a consultant."

They became embarrassed. "Damn, he's heard everything," thought Berlioz, and he made a polite gesture to show that a presentation of papers was not necessary. When the foreigner thrust them at the editor, the poet managed to make out the word "Professor" written on the card in foreign letters and also the first letter of his surname—the double V, a "W."

Meanwhile the editor mumbled an embarrassed "I'm very pleased to meet you," and the foreigner shoved the documents into his pocket.

Thus relations between them were restored, and all three again sat down on the bench.

12 The Master and Margarita

"So, you've been invited here as a consultant. Professor?" asked Berlioz.

"Yes, that's right."

"Are you a German?" queried Bezdomny.

"Who, me?" replied the professor and suddenly grew pensive. "Yes, I suppose I'm a German," he said.

"Your Russian is first-rate," observed Bezdomny.

"Oh, in general I'm a polyglot and know a great many languages," answered the professor.

"And what is your field?" inquired Berlioz.

"I'm a specialist in black magic."

"Well I'll be..." flashed through Mikhail Alexandrovich's head.

"And... and is it in that capacity that you've been invited here?" stammered Berlioz.

"Yes, it is," affirmed the professor, and he went on to explain, "Some authentic manuscripts of the tenth century master of black magic, Gerbert of Aurillac, have been discovered here in your State Library. And I've been asked to examine them. I'm the only person in the whole world who's qualified to do so."

"Ah! So you're a historian then?" asked Berlioz with great respect and relief.

"Yes, I'm a historian," confirmed the scholar and added, apropos of nothing, "This evening some interesting history will take place at Patriarch's Ponds."

And again both the editor and the poet were completely dumbfounded. The professor motioned to both of them to come closer, and when they had, he whispered, "Keep in mind that Jesus did exist."

"You know, Professor," answered Berlioz with a forced smile, "we respect your great knowledge, but we happen to have a different point of view regarding that issue."

"No points of view are necessary," replied the strange professor. "He simply existed, and that's all there is to it."

"But surely some proof is required" began Berlioz.

"No, no proof is required," answered the professor. He began to speak softly and as he did, his accent somehow disappeared. "It's all very simple: Early in the morning on the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, wearing a white cloak with a blood-red lining, and shuffling with his cavalryman's gait.."

II

Pontius Pilate

E

ARLY in the morning on the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan, wearing a white cloak with a blood-red lining, and shuffling with his cavalryman's gait into the roofed colonnade that connected the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great, walked the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate.

More than anything in the world the procurator loathed the smell of rose oil, and everything now pointed to a bad day, since that smell had been pursuing him since dawn. It seemed to the procurator that the palms and cypresses in the garden were emitting a rose scent and that even the smell of leather gear and sweat coming from the escort contained a hellish trace of roses. From the outbuildings at the rear of the palace, the quarters of the first cohort of the Twelfth Lightning Legion, which had accompanied the procurator to Yershalaim, smoke was drifting across the upper terrace of the garden into the colonnade, and this acrid smoke, which signaled that the centuries' cooks had begun to prepare dinner, contained an admixture ofthat same oily rose scent

"O gods, gods, why are you punishing me?... Yes, there's no doubt about it, it's back again, that horrible, relentless affliction... the hemi-crania that shoots pain through half my head... there's no remedy for it, no relief... I'll try not to move my head..."

An armchair had been set out for him on the mosaic floor near the fountain, and the procurator sat down in it and without looking at anyone, put his hand out sideways. His secretary respectfully handed him a piece of parchment. Unable to hold back a grimace of pain, the procurator gave a fleeting sidelong glance at what was written on the parchment, handed it back to the secretary, and said with difficulty, "The accused is from Galilee? Was the case sent to the tetrarch?"

"Yes, Procurator," replied the secretary.

"And what did he do?"

14 The Master and Margarita

"He refused to give a judgment in the case and sent the death sentence pronounced by the Sinedrion to you for confirmation," explained the secretary.

The procurator's cheek twitched, and he said quietly, "Bring in the accused/

Two legionaries immediately left the garden terrace, proceeded through the colonnade and came out onto the balcony, escorting a man of about twenty-seven whom they stood before the procurator's chair. The man was dressed in a light-blue chiton that was old and torn. He had a white bandage on his head that was held in place by a leather thong tied around his forehead, and his hands were tied behind his back. There was a large bruise under the man's left eye, and a cut with dried blood on it in the corner of his mouth. The prisoner looked with anxious curiosity at the procurator.

The procurator was silent for a moment, then he said quiedy in Aramaic, "So it was you who incited the people to destroy the temple of Yershalaim?"

The procurator sat stonelike, moving his lips only slightly as he spoke. The procurator was stonelike because he was afraid to move his head, which was seared by hellish pain.

The man whose hands were bound took a few steps forward and began to speak, "My good man! Believe me..."

But the procurator, perfectly still as before and without raising his voice, interrupted him on the spot, "Is it me you are calling a good man? You are mistaken. Word has it in Yershalaim that I am a savage monster, and that is absolutely true." In the same monotone, he added, "Bring centurion Ratkiller to me."

It seemed to everyone that it became dark on the balcony when Mark the centurion, nicknamed Ratkiller, who commanded the first century, came and stood before the procurator. Ratkiller was a head taller than the tallest soldier in the legion and so broad in the shoulders that he blocked out the sun which was still low in the sky.

The procurator addressed the centurion in Latin, "The criminal calls me 'good man.' Take him away for a moment and explain to him how he should address me. But don't maim him."

Everyone except the motionless procurator stared at Mark Ratkiller as he gestured to the prisoner to follow him.

Because of his height, Ratkiller was usually stared at by everyone wherever he went, and those seeing him for the first time also stared because of his disfigured face: his nose had once been smashed by a German club.

Mark's heavy boots stamped on the mosaic, the bound man followed him out noiselessly, complete silence ensued in the colonnade, and one could hear the doves cooing on the garden terrace by the balcony and the water in the fountain singing a pleasant and intricate tune.

Pontius Pilate 15

The procurator felt the urge to get up, put his temple under the water, and freeze in that position. But he knew that even that would not help him.

After leading the prisoner through the colonnade and out into the garden, Ratkiller took a whip from the hands of a legionary standing at die foot of a bronze statue and struck the prisoner a mild blow across the shoulders. The centurion's stroke was casual and light, but the bound man sank to the ground instantly as if his legs had been knocked out from under him. He gasped for breath, the color left his face, and his eyes glazed over.

With just his left hand Mark lifted the fallen man into the air lightly as if he were an empty sack, stood him on his feet, and began speaking in a nasal voice, mispronouncing the Aramaic words, "Address the Roman procurator as Hegemon. Do not use other words. Stand at attention. Have you understood me or do I have to hit you again?"

The prisoner swayed on his feet but got control of himself. His color returned, he caught his breath and answered hoarsely, "I understand you. Don't beat me."

A minute later he was again standing before the procurator.

A flat, sick-sounding voice was heard, "Name?"

"Mine?" the prisoner responded quickly, demonstrating with all his being his readiness to answer sensibly, and not to provoke more anger.

The procurator said softly, "Mine—I know. Do not pretend to be more stupid than you are. Yours."

"Yeshua," the prisoner replied hurriedly.

"Is there a surname?"

"Ha-Notsri."

"Where are you from?"

"The city of Gamala," answered the prisoner, indicating with a toss of his head that somewhere far away, off to his right, in the north, was the city of Gamala.

"Who are you by birth?"

"I don't know exactly," the prisoner replied readily. "I don't remember my parents. I've been told that my father was a Syrian..."

"Where is your permanent residence?"

"I have none," answered the prisoner shyly. "I travel from town to town."

"That can be expressed more succinctly in one word—vagrant," said the procurator. Then he asked, "Do you have any family?"

"None. I am alone in the world."

"Are you literate?"

"Yes."

"Do you know any language besides Aramaic?"

"Yes. Greek."

One swollen lid was raised, and an eye glazed by suffering stared at

16 The Master and Margarita

the prisoner. The other eye remained closed.

Pilate began speaking in Greek, "So you intended to destroy the temple building and were inciting the people to do this?"

Here the prisoner again became animated, the fear disappeared from his eyes, and he began in Greek, "I, goo—," the prisoner's eyes flashed with horror at having again almost said the wrong thing, "Never in my life, Hegemon, have I intended to destroy the temple nor have I ever tried to instígate such a senseless action."

A look of surprise crossed the face of the secretary, who was bent over a low table, writing down the testimony. He raised his head, but then immediately lowered it to the parchment.

"All kinds of different people flock into the city for the holiday. Among them are magi, astrologers, soothsayers, and murderers," said the procurator in a monotone. "And liars as well. You, for example. It is plainly written: He incited the people to destroy the temple. People have testified to that."

Those good people," began the prisoner, and after hastily adding, "Hegemon," he continued, "are ignorant and have muddled what I said. In fact, I'm beginning to fear that this confusion will go on for a long time. And all because he writes down what I said incorrectly."

Silence ensued. Now both pained eyes gazed at the prisoner seriously.

"I will tell you again, but for the last time: stop pretending to be crazy, villain," said Pilate in a soft monotone. "Not much has been recorded against you, but it is enough to hang you."

"No, no, Hegemon," said the prisoner, straining every nerve in his desire to be convincing, "There's someone who follows, follows me around everywhere, always writing on a goatskin parchment. And once I happened to see the parchment and was aghast. Absolutely nothing that was written there did I ever say. I begged him, 'For God's sake burn your parchment!' But he snatched it out of my hands and ran away."

"Who is he?" asked Pilate distastefully, touching his hand to his temple.

"Levi Matvei," the prisoner explained willingly. "He was a tax collector, and I first met him on a road in Bethphage at the place where the fig orchard juts out at an angle, and I struck up a conversation with him. At first he treated me with hostility and even insulted me, that is, he thought he was insulting me by calling me a dog,"—here the prisoner laughed. "I personally have no bad feelings about dogs that would cause me to take offense at the name..."

The secretary stopped writing and cast a furtive, surprised glance not at the prisoner but at the procurator.

"...However, after he heard me out, he began to soften," continued Yeshua, "and finally he threw his money down on the road and said that he'd come traveling with me..."

Pilate laughed with one side of his mouth, baring his yellow teeth. Turning his whole body to the secretary, he said, "O, city of Yershalaim!

Pontiiu Pilote 17

What tales it can tell! Did you hear that, a tax collector who throws his money on the road!"

Not knowing how to respond to that, the secretary deemed it obligatory to smile as Pilate had.

"But he said that money had become hateful to him," said Yeshua in explanation of Levi Matvei's strange behavior, and then he added, "Since then he has been my traveling companion."

His teeth still bared, the procurator glanced first at the prisoner, and then at the sun, which was rising steadily over the equestrian statues of the hippodrome located far below to the right, and suddenly, as an agonizing wave of nausea swept over him, the procurator realized that the simplest way to get this strange miscreant off his balcony was with two words, "Hang him." Get rid of the escort too, leave the colonnade, go inside the palace, order the room to be darkened, collapse on the bed, ask for some cold water, call piteously for the dog Banga, and complain to him about his hemicrania. Suddenly the thought of poison flashed seductively through the procurator's aching head.

He looked at the prisoner with lusterless eyes and was silent for awhile, trying desperately to recall why this prisoner with a face disfigured by beatings was standing before him in Yershalaim's pitiless morning sun, and what other pointless questions had to be addressed to him.

"Levi Matvei, did you say?" the sick man asked in a hoarse voice and shut his eyes.

"Yes, Levi Matvei," came the high voice that was tormenting him.

"But still, what was it that you said about the temple to the crowd in the marketplace?"

The voice of the man answering seemed to pierce the side of Pilate's forehead. Inexpressibly tormenting, that voice said, "I said, Hegemon, that the temple of the old faith will fall and that a new temple of truth will be created. I said it that way to make it easier to understand."

"Why did you, a vagrant, stir up the crowds in the marketplace by talking about truth, when you have no conception of what it is? What is truth?"

And here the procurator thought, "O my gods! I am questioning about something irrelevant to the case... My brain isn't working anymore..." And again he had a vision of a cup of dark liquid. "Poison, give me poison..."

And again he heard the voice, "The truth is, first of all, that your head aches, so badly, in fact, that you're having fainthearted thoughts about death. Not only are you too weak to talk to me, but you're even having trouble looking at me. That I, at this moment, am your unwilling executioner upsets me. You can't think about anything and the only thing you want is to call your dog, the only creature, it seems, to whom you are attached. But your sufferings will soon end, and your headache will pass."

18 The Master and Margarita

The secretary looked goggle-eyed at the prisoner and stopped writing in the middle of a word.

Pilate raised his martyred eyes to the prisoner and saw that the sun was already high above the hippodrome, that one ray had penetrated the colonnade and was creeping toward Yeshua's tattered sandals, and that he was trying to step out of the sun.

The procurator then got up from his chair and pressed his head with his hands, a look of horror appearing on his yellowish, clean-shaven face. But he immediately suppressed it with an effort of will and again lowered himself into the chair.

Meanwhile the prisoner went on talking, but the secretary no longer wrote any of it down, he just craned his neck like a goose, not wanting to miss a single word.

"Well, then, it's all over," said the prisoner, looking kindly at Pilate, "and I'm very glad that it is. I would advise you, Hegemon, to leave the palace for a short while and take a stroll somewhere in the vicinity, perhaps in the gardens on Mount Eleon. There will be a thunderstorm..." the prisoner turned and squinted his eyes at the sun, "...later on, towards evening. The walk would do you a lot of good, and I would be happy to accompany you. Some new ideas have occurred to me which may, I think, be of interest to you, and I would be especially happy to share them with you since you strike me as being a very intelligent man."

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

The trouble is," continued the bound man, whom no one was stopping, "that you are too isolated and have lost all faith in people. After all, you will agree, one shouldn't lavish all one's attention on a dog. Your life is impoverished, Hegemon," and here the speaker allowed himself a smile.

The secretary now had only one thought: whether or not to believe his own ears. There was no other choice but to believe. Then he tried to imagine in exactly what fanciful way the procurator would express his anger at the prisoner's unprecedented insolence. But the secretary could not imagine this, even though he knew the procurator very well.

Then the procurator's hoarse and cracked voice was heard, saying in Latin, "Untie his hands."

One of the legionaries in the escort tapped his spear, handed it to someone else, and went over and removed the prisoner's bonds. The secretary picked up the scroll, decided not to write anything down for the time being and not to be surprised at anything.

"Tell the truth," said Pilate sofdy in Greek, "are you a great physician?"

"No, Procurator, I am not a physician," answered the prisoner, rubbing his mangled, swollen, reddened wrists with pleasure.

Pilate looked probingly at the prisoner from beneath his brows, and his eyes, no longer dull, gave off their familiar sparkle.

Pontius Pilate 19

"I did not ask you before," said Pilate, "but do you, perhaps, know Latin too?"

"Yes, I do," answered the prisoner.

Pilate's yellowish cheeks filled with color, and he asked in Latin, "How did you know that I wanted to call my dog?"

"That was very simple," replied the prisoner in Latin, "You waved your hand in the air," the prisoner repeated Pilate's gesture—"as if you were petting something, and your lips..."

"Yes," said Pilate.

They were both silent for awhile. Then Pilate asked in Greek, "And so, you are a physician?"

"No, no," was the prisoner's animated reply, "Believe me, I am not a physician."

"Well, all right. If you wish to keep it secret, you may do so. It has no direct bearing on the case. So you maintain that you did not incite them to tear down... or bum, or in any other manner destroy the temple?"

"I repeat, Hegemon, I did not incite them to any such actions. Do I look like an imbecile?"

"Oh, no, you do not look like an imbecile," replied the procurator softly, breaking out in a fearsome smile. "So swear that you did nothing ofthat kind."

"What would you have me swear by?" asked the unbound prisoner excitedly.

"Well, by your life," answered the procurator. "It is most timely that you swear by your life since it is hanging by a thread, understand that."

"You do not think, do you, Hegemon, that you hung it there?" asked the prisoner. "If you do, you are very much mistaken."

Pilate shuddered and answered through his teeth, "I can cut that thread."

"You are mistaken about that too," retorted the prisoner, smiling brightly and shielding himself from the sun with his hand. "Don't you agree that that thread can only be cut by the one who hung it?"

"Yes, yes," said Pilate, smiling. "Now I have no doubt that the idle gawkers of Yershalaim followed at your heels. I do not know who hung up your tongue, but he did a good job. By the way, tell me: is it true that you entered Yershalaim through the Shushan Gate astride a donkey and accompanied by rabble, who shouted their welcome to you as if you were some kind of prophet?" Here the procurator pointed to the scroll of parchment.

The prisoner looked uncomprehendingly at the procurator.

"I have no donkey, Hegemon," he said. "I did enter Yershalaim through the Shushan Gate, but on foot, and accompanied only by Levi Matvei, and no one shouted to me since no one in Yershalaim knew me then."

"Don't you know these people," continued Pilate, keeping his eyes

20 The Master and Margarita

fixed on the prisoner, "a certain Dismas, Gestas, and Bar-rabban?"

"I do not know those good people," answered the prisoner.

"Is that the truth?"

"Yes, it is."

"And now tell me, why do you keep using the words 'good people?' Do you call everyone that?"

"Yes, everyone," replied the prisoner. "There are no evil people in the world."

"That is the first time I have heard that," said Pilate with a laugh, "but maybe I know little of life! You don't have to write down any more," he said to the secretary, although the latter had not been writing anything down, and then he continued speaking to the prisoner, "Did you read that in some Greek book?"

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