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 dosed 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?’15
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.16 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, ’hat 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 longer 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, then, 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 gate17 riding on an ass,18 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.
The prisoner glanced at the procurator in perplexity.
‘I don’t even have an ass, Hegemon,’ he said. ‘I did enter Yershalaim by the Susa gate, but on foot, accompanied only by Matthew Levi, and no one shouted anything to me, because no one in Yershalaim knew me then.’
‘Do you happen to know,’ Pilate continued without taking his eyes off the prisoner, ‘such men as a certain Dysmas, another named Gestas, and a third named Bar-Rabban?’19
‘I do not know these good people,’ the prisoner replied.
‘Truly?’
‘Truly.’
‘And now tell me, why is it that you use the words “good people” all the time? Do you call everyone that, or what?’
‘Everyone,’ the prisoner replied. ‘There are no evil people in the world.’
‘The first I hear of it,’ Pilate said, grinning. ‘But perhaps I know too little of life! … You needn’t record any more,’ he addressed the secretary, who had not recorded anything anyway, and went on talking with the prisoner. ‘You read that in some Greek book?’
‘No, I figured it out for myself.’
‘And you preach it?’
‘Yes.’
‘But take, for instance, the centurion Mark, the one known as Ratslayer – is he good?’
‘Yes,’ replied the prisoner. ‘True, he’s an unhappy man. Since the good people disfigured him, he has become cruel and hard. I’d be curious to know who maimed him.’
‘I can willingly tell you that,’ Pilate responded, ‘for I was a witness to it. The good people fell on him like dogs on a bear. There were Germani fastened on his neck, his arms, his legs. The infantry maniple was encircled, and if one flank hadn’t been cut by a cavalry turm, of which I was the commander — you, philosopher, would not have had the chance to speak with the Ratslayer. That was at the battle of Idistaviso,20 in the Valley of the Virgins.’
‘If I could speak with him,’ the prisoner suddenly said musingly, ‘I’m sure he’d change sharply.’
‘I don’t suppose,’ Pilate responded, ‘that you’d bring much joy to the legate of the legion if you decided to talk with any of his officers or soldiers. Anyhow, it’s also not going to happen, fortunately for everyone, and I will be the first to see to it.’
At that moment a swallow swiftly flitted into the colonnade, described a circle under the golden ceiling, swooped down, almost brushed the face of a bronze statue in a niche with its pointed wing, and disappeared behind the capital of a column. It may be that it thought of nesting there.
During its flight, a formula took shape in the now light and lucid head of the procurator. It went like this: the hegemon has looked into the case of the vagrant philosopher Yeshua, alias Ha-Nozri, and found in it no grounds for indictment. In particular, he has found not the slightest connection between the acts of Yeshua and the disorders that
