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

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СКАЧАТЬ be – a greater and finer power for the people than the power of the Emperor Tiberius!”[85] waxed Pilate’s cracked and sick voice.

      For some reason, the Procurator was looking with hatred at the secretary and the escort.

      “And it is not for you, you mad criminal, to deliberate about it!” At this point Pilate exclaimed: “Dismiss the escort from the balcony!” and, turning to the secretary, added: “Leave me alone with the criminal; it’s a matter of state[86] here.”

      The escort lifted their spears and, with their metal-shod caligæ[87][88] pounding rhythmically, they walked from the balcony into the garden, and the secretary followed them.

      The silence on the balcony was for some time broken only by the song of the water in the fountain. Pilate could see the disc of water swelling at the top of the pipe, its edges breaking off[89]and dropping down in little streams[90].

      The prisoner was the first to speak:

      “I can see that something bad has happened because of my talking with that young man from Kiriath. I have a premonition, Hegemon, that he will suffer some misfortune, and I feel very sorry for him.”

      "I think,” replied the Procurator with a strange grin, "there is someone else in the world you ought to feel more sorry for than Judas of Kiriath, and who will have a much worse time of it than Judas! And so, Marcus the Rat-Catcher, a cold and confirmed butcher; the people who, as I can see” – the Procurator indicated Yeshua’s disfigured face – “beat you for your sermons; the villains Dismas and Gestas, who, with their gang, killed four soldiers; and finally the filthy traitor Judas – they’re all good people?”

      “Yes,” replied the prisoner.

      “And the kingdom of truth will come?”

      “It will, Hegemon,” replied Yeshua with conviction.

      “It will never come!” Pilate suddenly shouted in such a terrible voice that Yeshua staggered backwards[91]. Thus, many years before in the Valley of the Virgins, Pilate had shouted to his horsemen the words: “Cut them down! Cut them down. Rat-Catcher the giant’s been caught!” Once more he raised his voice, cracked by commands, yelling out the words so they could be heard in the garden: “Criminal! Criminal! Criminal!”

      And then, lowering his voice, he asked:

      “Yeshua Ha-Nozri, do you believe in any gods?”

      “There’s just one God,” replied Yeshua. “I believe in Him.”

      “Then pray to him! Pray as hard as you can! Stills.” – at this point Pilate’s voice sank – “it won’t help. You have no wife?” asked Pilate, mournfully somehow[92], and not understanding what was happening to him.

      “No, there’s just me.”

      “Hateful city…” the Procurator suddenly muttered for some reason, then flexed his shoulders as if he were cold and rubbed his hands as though washing them. “If you’d been murdered before your meeting with Judas of Kiriath, truly, it would have been better.”

      “You could release me, though, Hegemon,” the prisoner unexpectedly requested, and his voice became uneasy. “I can see they want to kill me.”

      A spasm distorted Pilate’s face; he turned the inflamed, red-veined whites of his eyes to Yeshua and said:

      “Do you suppose, you unfortunate man, that the Roman Procurator is going to release someone who has said what you have said? O gods, gods! Or do you think I’m prepared to take your place? I don’t share your ideas! And listen to me: if from this moment on you utter so much as a word, start talking to anyone, beware of me! I repeat to you: beware!”

      “Hegemon…”

      “Silence!” exclaimed Pilate, and his furious gaze followed the swallow that had again fluttered onto the balcony. “Come here!” shouted Pilate.

      And when the secretary and the escort had returned to their places, Pilate announced that he was ratifying the death sentence pronounced at the meeting of the Lesser Sanhedrin on the criminal Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and the secretary recorded what Pilate said.

      A minute later Marcus the Rat-Catcher stood before the Procurator. The Procurator ordered him to hand the criminal over to the Chief of the Secret Service, and at the same time to convey to him the Procurator’s order that Yeshua Ha-Nozri be kept apart from the other condemned men, and also that the Secret Service detachment be forbidden, on pain of severe punishment, to converse with Yeshua about anything whatsoever, or to reply to any of his questions.

      At a sign from Marcus, the escort closed up around Yeshua and led him from the balcony.

      Next in front of the Procurator appeared a handsome man with a blond beard and eagle’s feathers in the crest of his helmet, with gold lions’ faces glittering on his chest and gold studs on his sword belt, wearing triple-soled boots, laced to the knees, and with a crimson cloak thrown over his left shoulder. This was the legate in command of the legion.

      The Procurator asked where the Sebastian Cohort was now. The legate reported that its men were forming a cordon on the square in front of the hippodrome where the criminals’ sentences would be announced to the people.

      Then the Procurator gave orders for the legate to detail two centuries from the Roman Cohort. One of them, under the command of the Rat-Catcher, was to escort the criminals, the carts with the instruments of execution and the executioners when they departed for Bald Mountain[93],[94] and when they arrived there, was to form the upper cordon. The other one was to be sent to Bald Mountain straight away, and was to begin cordoning it off[95]immediately. To this same end – that is, to guard the mount – the Procurator asked the legate to send an auxiliary cavalry regiment, the Syrian ala[96].[97]

      When the legate had left the balcony, the Procurator ordered the secretary to invite the President of the Sanhedrin, two of its members and the chief of Yershalaim’s Temple guard to the palace, but added as he did so that he would like things arranged in such a way that he could speak with the President in advance[98] and in private before the conference with all of these people.

      The Procurator’s order was carried out[99] quickly and precisely, and the sun, which was scorching Yershalaim with an extraordinary sort of frenzy[100] during these days, had not yet had time to approach its highest point when, on the upper terrace of the garden by the two white-marble lions guarding the steps, the Procurator and the Acting President of the Sanhedrin, the High Priest of Judaea, Joseph Caipha, met.

      It was quiet in the garden. But, having emerged from under[101]the colonnade into the garden’s sun-drenched upper courtyard with its palm trees on monstrous elephantine СКАЧАТЬ