The Master and Margarita / Мастер и Маргарита. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Михаил Булгаков

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      “Your place of birth?”

      “The town of Gamala,” replied the prisoner, indicating with his head that over there, somewhere far away to his right, in the north, lay the town of Gamala.

      “What are you by blood?”

      “I don’t know exactly,” replied the prisoner animatedly. “I don’t remember my parents. I was told my father was a Syrian…”

      “Where is your permanent home?”

      “I don’t have any permanent place to live,” replied the prisoner shyly. “I travel from town to town.”

      “That can be expressed more briefly, in a word – a vagrant,” said the Procurator, and asked: “Do you have relatives?”

      “There’s no one. I’m alone in the world.”

      “Are you literate?”

      “Yes.”

      “Do you know any language other than Aramaic?”

      “I do. Greek.”

      A swollen eyelid was raised, an eye clouded with suffering stared at the prisoner. The other eye remained closed.

      Pilate began speaking in Greek:

      “So it was you meaning to demolish the building of the Temple and calling on the people to do it.”

      At this point the prisoner again became animated; his eyes ceased to express fright, and he began speaking in Greek:

      “I, goo…” – at this point there was a flash of horror in the prisoner’s eyes at having almost said the wrong thing – “I, Hegemon, have never in my life meant to demolish the building of the Temple and have not incited anyone to commit this senseless act.”

      Surprise expressed itself on the face of the secretary, who was hunched over[65] a low table, recording the testimony. He raised his head, but immediately bent it down again towards the parchment.

      “A host of people of various kinds throngs to this city for the feast. Among them there may be magi, astrologers, soothsayers and murderers,” said the Procurator in a monotone, “and liars may be found too. You, for example, are a liar. It’s clearly recorded: inciting to demolish the Temple. Such is people’s testimony.”

      “These good people,” the prisoner began, then hastily added “Hegemon” and continued: “learnt nothing and muddled up[66] all I said. In general, I’m beginning to worry that this muddle will continue for a very long time. And all because he records what I say incorrectly.”

      Silence fell. By now both painful eyes were looking hard at the prisoner.

      “I repeat to you, but for the last time, stop pretending to be mad, you villain,” pronounced Pilate in a gentle monotone. “Not a lot of what you’ve said is recorded, but what is recorded is enough to hang you.”

      “No, no, Hegemon,” said the prisoner, his whole body tensing up[67] in his desire to convince, “he goes around, there’s this man that goes around with goatskin parchment and writes incessantly. But once I took a glance at the parchment and I was horrified. I’d said absolutely nothing of what was recorded there. I begged him: for God’s sake, won’t you burn your parchment? But he tore it out of my hands and ran away.”

      “Who is this?” Pilate asked with distaste, and put his hand up to his temple.

      “Levi Matthew,” explained the prisoner willingly. “He was a tax collector, and I first met him in the street in Bethphage, where the corner of the fig orchard sticks out, and I got into conversation with him. His initial attitude towards me was hostile, and he even insulted me – that is, he thought he was insulting me by calling me a dog.” Here the prisoner grinned. “I personally see nothing bad about the animal to make me take offence at the word…”

      The secretary stopped recording and cast a surreptitious look of surprise[68] – not at the prisoner, but at the Procurator.

      “. However, after listening to me he began to soften,” continued Yeshua, “finally threw the money down on the road and said he would come travelling with me.”

      Pilate grinned with one cheek, baring his yellow teeth, and said, turning the whole of his trunk towards the secretary:

      “Oh, city of Yershalaim! The things you hear in it! A tax collector, do you hear, throwing the money onto the road!”

      Not knowing how to reply to this, the secretary deemed it necessary to duplicate Pilate’s smile.

      “And he said that henceforth money was hateful to him,” Yeshua said, explaining Levi Matthew’s strange actions, and added: “And since then he’s become my travelling companion.”

      With his teeth still bared, the Procurator glanced at the prisoner, then at the sun, which was rising steadily over the equestrian statues of the hippodrome lying far below to the right, and suddenly, in a nauseating sort of anguish, he thought of how it would be simplest of all to banish this strange villain from the balcony by pronouncing just the two words: “Hang him” – to banish the escort too, leave the colonnade for the interior of the palace, order the room to be darkened, drop onto a couch, demand some cold water, summon the dog, Banga, in a plaintive voice[69] and complain to him about the hemicrania. And a sudden thought of poison flashed seductively through the Procurator’s aching head.

      He looked at the prisoner with lacklustre eyes and was silent for a while, agonizing as he tried to remember why, in the full blaze of Yershalaim’s pitiless morning sun, a prisoner with a face disfigured by blows was standing before him, and what other totally unnecessary questions he would have to ask.

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

      “Yes, Levi Matthew,” came the high-pitched, tormenting voice.

      “But what were you saying, after all, to the crowd at the bazaar about the Temple?”

      The voice of the man answering seemed to stab into Pilate’s brow; it was inexpressibly agonizing, and that voice said:

      “I was saying, Hegemon, that the temple of the old faith would collapse and a new temple of truth would be created. I put it like that so it would be clearer.”

      “And why were you, you vagrant, stirring up[70] the people at the bazaar, telling them about truth, of which you have no conception? What is truth?”

      And at this point the Procurator thought: “O my gods! I’m asking him about something unnecessary during the trial. My mind isn’t serving me any more…” And again he had a vision of a goblet of dark liquid. “Give me poison, poison.”

      And once more he heard the voice:

      “The truth first and foremost is that your head aches, and aches so badly that you’re faint-heartedly contemplating death. Not only do you not СКАЧАТЬ