LITMIR.BIZ

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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 have the strength to talk to me, you find it hard even to look at me. And now I’m your involuntary torturer[71], which grieves me. You can’t even think about anything, and you dream only of the arrival of your dog, evidently the only creature you feel affection for. But your torment will come to an end in a moment: your headache will go.”

      The secretary stared goggle-eyed at the prisoner and stopped in mid-word.

      Pilate raised his martyr’s eyes to the prisoner and saw that the sun was already quite high above the hippodrome, that a ray had stolen into the colonnade and was creeping towards Yeshua’s worn-down sandals, and that he was trying to stay out of the sun.

      At this point the Procurator rose from his armchair, gripped his head in his hands, and on his yellowish, clean-shaven face an expression of horror appeared. But he immediately suppressed it by will-power[72] and lowered himself back into the armchair.

      The prisoner, meanwhile, was continuing with his speech, yet the secretary was recording nothing more, and merely stretching his neck out like a goose, trying not to let slip a single word.

      “There you are, it’s all over,” said the prisoner, casting benevolent glances at Pilate, “and I’m extremely pleased about that. I’d advise you, Hegemon, to leave the palace for a time and take a walk somewhere in the surrounding area – well, perhaps in the gardens on the Mount of Olives. The storm will begin” – the prisoner turned around and narrowed his eyes at the sun – “later on, towards evening. The walk would do you a lot of good, and I’d accompany you with pleasure. Certain new ideas have occurred to me that you might, I think, find interesting, and I’d willingly share them with you, particularly as you give the impression of being a very intelligent man.”

      The secretary turned deathly pale[73] and dropped his scroll on the floor.

      “The trouble is,” continued the bound man, whom nobody was stopping, “you’re too self-contained, and you’ve utterly lost your faith in people. I mean, you must agree, you really shouldn’t make a dog the sole object of your affection. Your life is a poor one, Hegemon,” and at this point the speaker permitted himself a smile.

      The secretary was thinking about only one thing now: should he believe his own ears or not? He had to believe them. Then he tried to imagine in precisely[74] what whimsical form the anger of the hot-tempered Procurator would express itself at this unheard-of impertinence from the prisoner. And this the secretary was unable to imagine, although he knew the Procurator well.

      At that moment there rang out the cracked, rather hoarse voice of the Procurator, who said in Latin:

      “Untie his hands.”

      One of the legionaries in the escort struck his spear on the ground, handed it to another one, went forward and took the ropes off the prisoner. The secretary picked up the scroll and decided not to record anything for the time being, nor to be surprised at anything.

      “Confess: are you a great doctor?” Pilate asked quietly in Greek.

      “No, Procurator, I’m not a doctor,” replied the prisoner, rubbing a twisted and swollen purple wrist in delight.

      From under his brows Pilate’s eyes bored sternly into the prisoner, and those eyes were no longer lacklustre; the sparks that everyone knew had appeared in them.

      “I didn’t ask you,” said Pilate, “perhaps you know Latin too?”

      “Yes, I do,” replied the prisoner.

      Colour appeared in Pilate’s yellowish cheeks, and he asked in Latin:

      “How did you happen to know I wanted to call my dog?”

      “It’s very simple,” the prisoner replied in Latin, “you were moving your hand through the air” – and the prisoner repeated Pilate’s gesture – “as though you wanted to stroke something, and your lips…”

      “Yes,” said Pilate.

      They were silent for a moment. Pilate asked a question in Greek:

      “And so are you a doctor?”

      “No, no,” replied the prisoner animatedly, “believe me, I’m not a doctor.”

      “Well, all right.

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