فصل 2

II

Pontius Pilate

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 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 of that 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 hemicrania 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?”

“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 foreshead, 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 quietly 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.

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 the 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 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 instigate 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! 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 a while, 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.” 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, toward 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 softly 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.

“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 a while. 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 burn, 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 of that 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 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?” “No, I came to that conclusion on my own.”

“And that is what you preach?”

“Yes.”

“But what about the centurion Mark, whom they call Ratkiller, is he—a good man?”

“Yes, he is,” answered the prisoner, “but he’s an unhappy man. Ever since good people disfigured him, he’s been cruel and hard. I’m curious to know, who mutilated him?” “I’ll gladly tell you,” retorted Pilate, “because I was a witness. Good people attacked him the way dogs attack bears. The Germans grabbed him by his neck, arms, and legs. An infantry maniple had been ambushed, and if the cavalry turma under my command had not broken through from the flank, then you, philosopher, would not have had to talk with Ratkiller. It happened in the battle of Idistaviso, in the Valley of the Maidens.” “If I could just talk to him,” interjected the prisoner wistfully, “I’m sure he would change drastically.”

“I imagine,” rejoined Pilate, “that the legate of the legion would have little cause to rejoice if you took it into your head to talk to one of his officers or soldiers. Fortunately for all of us, however, that will not happen, and I’m the one who will see that it doesn’t.” At that moment a swallow darted into the colonnade, flew in a circle under the gilded ceiling, swooped down, its pointed wing almost grazing the face of one of the bronze statues in the niche, and then took cover behind the capital of the column. Perhaps it had decided to build a nest there.

During the swallow’s flight, the following thought was taking shape in the procurator’s now bright and clear head: the Hegemon had looked into the case of the vagrant philosopher Yeshua, called Ha-Notsri, and found the criminal charges against him to be unsubstantiated. Specifically, he found no connection whatsoever between Yeshua’s actions and the recent disorders in Yershalaim. The vagrant philosopher turned out to be mentally ill. In consequence of which, the procurator does not confirm the death sentence pronounced against Ha-Notsri by the Lesser Sinedrion. However, in view of the fact that Ha-Notsri’s insane, utopian speeches might cause unrest in Yershalaim, the procurator is removing Yeshua from Yershalaim and sentencing him to confinement in Strato’s Caesarea on the Mediterranean, that is, the site of the procurator’s residence.

All he had to do was to dictate it to the secretary.

The swallow’s wings whirred above the Hegemon’s head, the bird made a dash for the basin of the fountain and flew out into freedom. The procurator looked up at the prisoner and saw a column of dust swirling up next to him.

“Is that all there is against him?” Pilate asked the secretary.

“Unfortunately, no,” replied the secretary unexpectedly, and he handed Pilate another piece of parchment.

“What else is there, then?” asked Pilate with a frown.

After he read the parchment, his face changed even more. Either because of the dark blood suffusing his neck and face, or because of something else, his skin lost its yellow cast, turned grayish brown, and his eyes seemed to sink in.

The blood pouring and pounding into his temples was probably also responsible for what had happened to the procurator’s vision. He seemed to see the prisoner’s head float off somewhere, and another head appear in its place. On top of this bald head was a gold crown with widely-spaced points. On the forehead was a round sore, eating away at the skin and smeared with ointment. The mouth was sunken and toothless, with a capricious and protruding lower lip. Pilate had the feeling that the rose columns on the balcony had disappeared as had the roofs of Yershalaim in the distance below the garden, and that everything around him had drowned in the thick greenery of the Capreaean gardens. And something strange had happened to his hearing too—trumpets seemed to be sounding softly and menacingly in the distance and a nasal voice was clearly heard, haughtily intoning the words, “The law pertaining to insults to the sovereign …” Brief, strange, disconnected thoughts sped through his brain, “He is lost!”—then, “We are lost!” And included among them was a totally absurd notion about some sort of immortality, and for some reason this immortality evoked a sense of unbearable anguish.

Pilate pulled himself together, drove away the vision, directed his gaze back to the balcony, and the eyes of the prisoner again appeared before him.

“Listen, Ha-Notsri,” began the procurator, looking at Yeshua rather strangely: the procurator’s face was menacing, but his eyes were anxious. “Did you ever say anything about the great Caesar? Answer! Did you? Or … did you … not?” Pilate drew out the word “not” a bit longer than was appropriate at a trial, and his eyes transmitted a certain thought to Yeshua, which he seemed to want to suggest to the prisoner.

“It is easy and pleasant to tell the truth,” observed the prisoner.

“I do not care,” retorted Pilate in a choked and angry voice, “whether you find it pleasant or unpleasant to tell the truth. But you will have to tell the truth. And when you speak, weigh every word, unless you want a death that is not only inevitable, but excruciating as well.” No one knows what had come over the procurator of Judea, but he permitted himself to raise his arm, as if shielding himself from the sun, and, using his hand as a shield, to shoot a meaningful glance at the prisoner.

“And so,” he said, “answer the question: do you know a certain Judas from Kerioth, and if so, what exactly did you say to him, if you said anything, about Caesar?” “It happened like this,” began the prisoner willingly, “the day before yesterday in the evening, I met a young man near the temple, who called himself Judas, from the town of Kerioth. He invited me to his house in the Lower City and offered me his hospitality …” “Is he a good man?” asked Pilate, and a diabolical spark flashed in his eyes.

“A very good man and eager for knowledge,” assented the prisoner. “He expressed a great deal of interest in my ideas, gave me an enthusiastic welcome …” “Lit the candles,” said Pilate through his teeth, speaking in the same tone of voice as the prisoner, his eyes glittering.

“Yes,” continued Yeshua, somewhat surprised by how well-informed the procurator was. “He asked me to express my views on the power of the state. That question was of great interest to him.” “And what did you say?” asked Pilate. “Or will you reply that you forgot what you said?” But hopelessness already sounded in Pilate’s voice.

“Among other things,” continued the prisoner, “I said that every kind of power is a form of violence against people and that there will come a time when neither the power of the Caesars, nor any other kind of power will exist. Man will enter the kingdom of truth and justice, where no such power will be necessary.” “Go on!”

“There was nothing more,” said the prisoner, “because it was then that they rushed in, tied me up, and took me off to prison.” Trying not to miss a word, the secretary quickly scribbled everything down on the parchment.

“There is not, never has been, and never will be any greater and finer power on earth than the power of the Emperor Tiberius!” Pilate’s broken and ailing voice swelled forth.

For some reason the procurator looked at the secretary and the escort with hatred.

“And it is not for you, insane criminal, to debate it!” Pilate then began shouting, “Remove the escort from the balcony!” And turning to the secretary, he added, “Leave me alone with the criminal, this is a matter of state.” The escort raised their spears and, clacking their heavily soled caligas in unison, marched off the balcony into the garden. The secretary went out after them.

For a short while the only thing that disturbed the silence on the balcony was the song of the water in the fountain. Pilate saw the plate of water swell up over the small pipe, break off at the edges, and fall down in rivulets.

The prisoner was the first to speak, “I see that a calamity has occurred because I talked to the young man from Kerioth. I have a premonition, Hegemon, that misfortune will befall him, and I feel very sorry for him.” “I think,” replied the procurator with a strange laugh, “there is someone else in the world you ought to feel sorrier for than Judas of Kerioth, someone whose fate will be far worse than Judas’s! And so, Mark Ratkiller, a cold and confirmed executioner, the people, who as I can see,” the procurator pointed to Yeshua’s disfigured face, “beat you for your preaching, the outlaws Dismas and Gestas, who, along with their gang, killed four soldiers, the filthy traitor Judas—are they all good people?” “Yes,” answered the prisoner.

“And the kingdom of truth will come?”

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

“It will never come!” Pilate shouted in such a terrible voice that Yeshua recoiled. Many years before, in the Valley of the Maidens Pilate had shouted to his cavalrymen in the same voice, “Cut them down! Cut them down! They’ve got the giant Ratkiller!” He raised his voice—cracked from giving commands—even higher, shouting out the words so they would be heard in the garden: “Criminal! Criminal! Criminal!” And then, his voice lowered, he asked, “Yeshua Ha-Notsri, do you believe in any gods?”

“There is one God,” replied Yeshua. “I believe in Him.”

“Then pray to him! Pray as hard as you can! But,” here Pilate’s voice dropped, “it won’t help. Have you no wife?” asked Pilate, sounding somehow depressed, not comprehending what was happening to him.

“No, I’m alone.”

“Hateful city …” Pilate muttered suddenly, his shoulders hunched as if he were chilled, and he wiped his hands as if he were washing them. “You would have been better off, really, if they had cut your throat before you met Judas of Kerioth.” “Couldn’t you let me go, Hegemon?” asked the prisoner suddenly, and his voice became anxious. “I can see that they want to kill me.” Pilate’s face convulsed in a spasm, he turned the inflamed, bloodshot whites of his eyes toward Yeshua, and said, “Do you suppose, you poor wretch, that the Roman procurator will release a man who said what you said? O gods, gods! Or do you think that I am prepared to take your place? I do not share your ideas! And listen to me: if after this you say even a word, or try and talk to anyone, beware of me! I repeat: beware!” “Hegemon …”

“Be quiet!” screamed Pilate, his crazed eyes following the swallow that had flown back onto the balcony. “Come here!” he shouted.

When the secretary and the escort returned to their places, Pilate announced that he was confirming the death sentence passed by the Lesser Sinedrion upon the criminal Yeshua Ha-Notsri, and the secretary copied down what Pilate said.

A minute later Mark Ratkiller stood before the procurator. The procurator ordered him to hand the criminal over to the chief of the secret service and in doing so to pass on the procurator’s orders that Yeshua Ha-Notsri be separated from the other condemned men, and that, in addition, the secret service command be forbidden, under threat of severe punishment, to converse with Yeshua on any subject or to answer any of his questions.

At a signal from Mark the escort closed ranks around Yeshua and led him off the balcony.

Next to appear before the procurator was a handsome, blond-bearded man with eagle feathers in the crest of his helmet, gold lion heads gleaming on his chest, gold studs on his sword belt, triple-soled sandals laced up to his knees, and a crimson cloak thrown over his left shoulder. He was the legate in command of the legion.

The procurator asked him where the Sebastian cohort was currently stationed. The legate informed him that they were on cordon duty on the square in front of the hippodrome, where the sentences pronounced on the criminals would be announced to the people.

The procurator then directed the legate to detach two centuries from the Roman cohort. One, under the command of Ratkiller, was to escort the criminals to Bald Mountain along with the wagons carrying the executioners and the equipment for the execution. When the escort reached its destination, it was to join the ranks of the upper cordon. The other century was to be sent to Bald Mountain immediately and to commence formation of a cordon without delay. To assist in this task, that is, the securing of the mountain, the procurator asked that the legate send an auxillary cavalry regiment—the Syrian ala.

After the legate left the balcony, the procurator ordered the secretary to invite to the palace the president of the Sinedrion, two of its members, and the head of the temple guard of Yershalaim, but in giving the order, he added his request that he wished to speak to the president in private prior to his meeting with all of them.

The procurator’s orders were executed swiftly and precisely, and the sun, which had been scorching Yershalaim with unusual fury in recent days, had still not reached its zenith when, on the upper terrace of the garden, near the two white marble lions guarding the staircase, the procurator met with the president of the Sinedrion and high priest of Judea, Joseph Kaifa.

It was quiet in the garden. But after emerging from the colonnade onto the sun-drenched upper terrace of the garden with its monstrous, elephant-legged palm trees, the terrace that looked out over the whole city of Yershalaim, which he detested, with its hanging bridges, fortresses, and, most important, the utterly indescribable block of marble with golden dragon scales instead of a roof—the temple of Yershalaim,—the procurator’s sharp ears picked up a sound coming from below and far away, from the direction of the stone wall that separated the lower terraces of the palace garden from the city square. It was a low rumbling sound, above which would shoot from time to time feeble, thin, half moans, half screams.

The procurator knew that there on the square a countless multitude of Yershalaim’s inhabitants had already gathered, stirred up by the recent disorders, that the crowds were impatiently awaiting the pronouncement of the sentences, and that restless water-sellers were circulating and shouting out their wares.

The procurator began by inviting the high priest onto the balcony to escape from the merciless heat, but Kaifa politely declined, explaining that he could not do that on the eve of a holiday. Pilate pulled his hood over his slightly balding head and began the conversation. It was conducted in Greek.

Pilate said that he had reviewed the case of Yeshua Ha-Notsri and had confirmed the death sentence.

Thus, three outlaws, Dismas, Gestas, and Bar-rabban had been condemned to death and were to be executed that day, along with Yeshua Ha-Notsri. The first two, who had conspired to incite the people to rebel against Caesar, had been forcibly detained by Roman authorities and were under the procurator’s jurisdiction, and, consequently, no more would be said about them. The last two, Bar-rabban and Ha-Notsri, were apprehended by local authorities and sentenced by the Sinedrion. In accordance with both law and custom, one of these two criminals would have to be released in honor of the great holiday of Passover beginning that day.

And so, the procurator wanted to know which of the two criminals the Sinedrion intended to free: Bar-rabban or Ha-Notsri?

Kaifa inclined his head to signify that he understood the question, and replied, “The Sinedrion asks that Bar-rabban be released.” The procurator knew very well that this would be the high priest’s answer, but his task was to appear astonished by such a reply.

Pilate did this with great skill. The eyebrows on his haughty face arched upward, and the procurator looked at the high priest with amazement.

“I must admit, your reply astonishes me,” began the procurator softly. “I fear there may be some misunderstanding here.” Pilate went on to explain. The Roman government did not infringe upon the rights of the local religious authorities, as the high priest well knew, but in this particular instance an obvious mistake seemed to have been made. And, naturally, the Roman government had an interest in correcting that mistake.

In point of fact: the crimes committed by Bar-rabban and by Ha-Notsri were not comparable in terms of seriousness. The latter, clearly a deranged individual, was guilty of making absurd speeches that incited the people of Yershalaim and other locales, but the former bore a far heavier burden of guilt. Not only had he made direct calls to rebellion, he had even killed a guard in the attempt to arrest him. Bar-rabban was incomparably more dangerous than Ha-Notsri.

In view of all the above, the procurator was asking the high priest to review the decision and to release the less dangerous of the two condemned prisoners, which was, without question, Ha-Notsri. And so? … Kaifa said in a quiet but firm voice that the Sinedrion had reviewed the case very thoroughly and again reiterated its intention to free Bar-rabban.

“What? Even after my petition? A petition made by a spokesman of the Roman government? Repeat it, High Priest, for the third time.” “I am informing you for the third time that we are freeing Bar-rabban,” said Kaifa quietly.

It was all over, and there was nothing more to be said. Ha-Notsri was departing forever, and there would be no one to cure the procurator’s horrible, savage headaches. There would be no remedy for them, except death. But it was not this thought that struck Pilate at that moment. That same incomprehensible anguish, which had come over him on the balcony, pierced his entire being once again. He immediately tried to explain this anguish, and the explanation was strange: the procurator had the dim sense that there was something he had not finished saying to the condemned man, or perhaps something he had not finished listening to.

Pilate dismissed that thought, and it flew away as fast as it had flown in. The thought flew away, and the feeling of anguish remained unexplained, for it could not be explained by a second brief thought that flashed like lightning and immediately died out, “Immortality … immortality has come …” Whose immortality has come? The procurator did not understand this, but the thought of that mysterious immortality made him turn cold despite the broiling sun.

“Very well then,” said Pilate, “So be it.”

Then he looked around, surveyed the world that was visible to him and was amazed at the change that had occurred. The rose bush, laden with flowers, had vanished, as had the cypresses bordering the upper terrace, and the pomegranate tree, and the white statue in the foliage, even the foliage itself. In place of all this floated a crimson sediment in which seaweed began to sway and move somewhere, and Pilate moved along with it. Now he was engulfed by the most terrible rage of all, rage that choked and burned him—the rage of powerlessness.

“I’m suffocating,” said Pilate. “Suffocating!”

With a cold, damp hand he tore the clasp off the collar of his cloak, and it fell on the sand.

“It’s stifling today, a thunderstorm is brewing,” rejoined Kaifa, staring intently at the procurator’s reddened face and foreseeing all the torments yet to come. “What a terrible month Nisan has been this year!” “No,” said Pilate, “it’s not the sultry weather that’s making me suffocate, it’s you, Kaifa.” And, narrowing his eyes, he smiled and added, “Beware, High Priest.” The high priest’s dark eyes flashed, and no less artfully than the procurator had earlier, he put a look of astonishment on his face.

“What am I hearing, Procurator?” replied Kaifa proudly and calmly. “Are you threatening me over a sentence you confirmed yourself? Can that be? We are accustomed to having the Roman procurator choose his words carefully before he speaks. What if someone overheard us, Hegemon?” Pilate looked at the high priest with dead eyes and bared his teeth in a smile.

“What are you saying, High Priest! Who could possibly overhear us here? Do I look like the young, vagrant holy fool who will be executed today? Am I a boy, Kaifa? I know what I’m saying and where I’m saying it. The garden is cordoned off and the palace is too, so there’s not even a crack for a mouse to squeeze through! And not just a mouse, but that, what’s-his-name … from Kerioth. By the way, do you know such a person, High Priest? Yes … if someone like that were to get in here, he would regret it bitterly. You don’t doubt what I’m saying, do you, High Priest? Know, then, that from now on you shall have no peace, High Priest! Neither you nor your people,” said Pilate, pointing far off to the right, where the temple blazed on the heights. “It is I who am telling you this—Pontius Pilate, Knight of the Golden Spear!” “I know, I know,” fearlessly replied the black-bearded Kaifa, and his eyes flashed. He raised his hand up to the sky and went on, “The people of Judea know that you hate them with a fierce hatred and will cause them many torments, but you will never destroy them! God will defend them! He will hear us, the almighty Caesar will hear us, and he will protect us from the scourge of Pilate!” “Oh, no!” exclaimed Pilate, feeling more and more at ease with every word he spoke: he did not have to pretend anymore, he did not have to choose his words carefully. “You have made too many complaints against me to Caesar, and now my time has come, Kaifa! Now I shall relay word, not to the governor-general in Antioch, not to Rome, but straight to Capreae, to the Emperor himself, word about how you are shielding known rebels from death. And then it will not be water from Solomon’s Pool that I shall give Yershalaim to drink, as I had wanted to do for your benefit! No, it will not be water! Remember how, because of you, I had to take the shields with the imperial insignia off the walls, to transfer troops, and remember how I had to come here myself to see what was going on! Remember my words: what you will see here, High Priest, will not be one cohort in Yershalaim, oh, no! The entire Lightning Legion will be at the city walls, so will the Arabian cavalry, and then you will hear bitter weeping and groaning! Then you will remember the Bar-rabban you saved and you will regret that you sent to death the philosopher who preached peace!” The high priest’s face had become covered with blotches, his eyes burned. Like the procurator, he smiled, baring his teeth, and replied, “Procurator, do you yourself believe what you just said? No, you do not! It was not peace that that rabble-rouser brought to Yershalaim, and you, Knight, know that very well. You wanted to release him so that he would stir the people up, do violence to their religion, and subject them to Roman swords! But I, High Priest of Judea, shall not, so long as I live, allow the faith to be profaned, and I shall protect the people! Do you hear, Pilate?” And here Kaifa raised his hand threateningly, “Take heed, Procurator!” Kaifa fell silent, and again the procurator heard what sounded like the sea rolling up to the walls of the garden of Herod the Great. This noise rose from below up to the procurator’s feet and into his face. And behind him, beyond the wings of the palace was heard the anxious blaring of trumpets, the heavy crunch of hundreds of feet, and the clanking of iron. The procurator now realized that the Roman infantry was already moving out, in accordance with his orders, heading toward the pre-execution parade that was so terrifying to outlaws and insurgents.

“Can you hear, Procurator?” quietly repeated the high priest. “Are you really telling me that all this,”—here the high priest raised both his hands, and the dark hood fell from his head—“was caused by that miserable outlaw Bar-rabban?” The procurator wiped his cold, damp forehead with the back of his wrist and looked down at the ground. Then, squinting up at the sky, he saw that the scorching ball was almost directly overhead, and that Kaifa’s shadow by the lion’s tail had shrunk away to nothing. He said quietly and indifferently, “It’s not long till noon. We got carried away by our conversation, but we must proceed.” After making intricately worded excuses, Pilate asked the high priest to sit down on a bench in the shade of the magnolias and wait while he summoned the others needed for the brief, final meeting and gave one last order regarding the execution.

Kaifa made a polite bow, his hand pressed to his heart, and remained in the garden while Pilate returned to the balcony. There he ordered the waiting secretary to summon to the garden the legate of the legion, the tribune of the cohort, two members of the Sinedrion, and the chief of the temple guard, all of whom were awaiting his summons on the lower terrace in the round gazebo with the fountain. Pilate added that he himself was about to go out to the garden, and then he disappeared inside the palace.

While the secretary gathered people for the meeting, Pilate was in a darkened room, shuttered against the sun, meeting with a man whose face was half-covered by a hood, even though the sun’s rays could not possibly have bothered him in that room. This meeting was extremely brief. The procurator said a few quiet words to the man who then left, and Pilate returned to the garden through the colonnade.

There, in the presence of everyone whom he had wished to see, the procurator solemnly and dryly acknowledged his confirmation of Yeshua Ha-Notsri’s death sentence, and formally asked the members of the Sinedrion which of the criminals they wished to spare. After receiving the answer that it was Bar-rabban, the procurator said, “Very well,” and ordered the secretary to enter it in the official record, squeezed the clasp which the secretary had picked up off the sand, and said solemnly, “It is time!” All present then started down the wide marble staircase between the walls of roses that exuded an overpowering scent. They descended lower and lower to the palace wall, to the gates that opened out onto a large, smoothly paved square, at the far end of which could be seen the columns and statues of the Yershalaim hippodrome.

As soon as the group emerged from the garden onto the square and mounted the vast stone platform that dominated it, Pilate surveyed the scene through narrowed eyelids and assessed the situation. Although the space he had just traversed, that is, from the palace walls to the platform, was empty, he could no longer see the square directly in front of him because it had been devoured by the crowd. The crowd would have engulfed the platform and the open space as well if it had not been held back by the triple row of Sebastian soldiers on Pilate’s left and the soldiers of the Ituraean auxiliary cohort on his right.

And so, Pilate mounted the platform, clutching the superfluous clasp mechanically in his fist and squinting. But the procurator was not squinting because the sun burned his eyes. No! He was squinting because he did not want to see the condemned men who, as he knew very well, were now being led up onto the platform behind him.

As soon as the white cloak with the crimson lining appeared atop the stone cliff, high above the edge of the human sea, a wave of sound—“Ah-h-h-h”—assailed the ears of the unseeing Pilate. It began softly, originating somewhere in the distance near the hippodrome, then attained a thunderous volume, which lasted for several seconds before beginning to subside. “They’ve seen me,” thought the procurator. Rather than ebbing completely, the wave unexpectedly began to swell once again, rising even higher than before, and on top of this second wave, like seething foam on the crest of a breaker, whistles and women’s screams were heard above the thunder. “They’ve been led onto the platform,” thought Pilate, “and there are screams because several women were crushed when the crowd surged forward.” He waited for a few moments, knowing that no force could silence the crowd until it had released all its pent-up emotions and quieted down by itself.

And when that moment came, the procurator threw up his right arm, and the noise of the crowd finally subsided.

Then Pilate took as much of the scorching air into his lungs as he could and began to shout. His broken voice carried over the thousands of heads, “In the name of the Emperor Caesar! …” His ears were immediately assailed by a choppy, metallic din, repeated several times, that came from the soldiers in the cohorts as they threw their spears and insignia up into the air and shouted out in fearsome tones, “Hail Caesar!” Pilate craned his neck and looked straight up at the sun. A green flame flared up under his eyelids, setting his brain on fire, and the hoarse Aramaic words flew out over the crowd, “Four criminals, arrested in Yershalaim for murder, incitement to rebellion, and abuse of the laws and the faith, have been sentenced to the shameful death of hanging on posts! And the execution shall take place shortly on Bald Mountain! The names of the criminals are Dismas, Gestas, Bar-rabban, and Ha-Notsri. Here they stand before you!” Pilate pointed to the right, without seeing the prisoners, but knowing that they were there where they were supposed to be.

The crowd replied with a prolonged roar that seemed to signify either surprise or relief. When it quieted down, Pilate continued, “But only three of them shall be executed, for, in accordance with law and custom, in honor of the Passover holiday, one of the condemned, as chosen by the Lesser Sinedrion and confirmed by the power of Rome, shall have his contemptible life restored to him by the magnanimous Emperor Caesar!” While Pilate was shouting out these words, he was also listening to the deep silence that followed in the wake of the roar. Now not a sigh or a rustle reached his ears, and there was even a moment when it seemed as if everything around him had disappeared completely. The city he detested had died, and he was standing there alone, being scorched by the rays that were shooting down on his upturned face. Pilate held onto the silence for a while and then began to shout out, “The name of the one whose release you are about to witness is …” Pilate paused again, holding back the name, making sure that he had said everything he was supposed to, because he knew that once he had pronounced the lucky one’s name, the dead city would spring to life and nothing he might say subsequently would be audible.

“Is that everything?” Pilate whispered wordlessly to himself. “Yes, everything. The name!”

And, rolling the “r” out over the silent crowd, he cried out, “Bar-rabban!”

It then seemed to him that the sun began ringing and burst overhead, engulfing his ears in flame. And raging inside this flame were roaring, shrieks, groans, laughter, and whistling.

Pilate turned and walked back along the platform to the steps, looking at nothing but the multicolored tiles beneath his feet, so as not to stumble. He knew that a hail of bronze coins and dates was raining down on the platform behind him, and that people in the roaring crowd were climbing on one another’s shoulders, crushing one another, trying to see the miracle with their own eyes—a man who was already in the hands of death, had been torn from its grip! To see the legionaries remove his bonds, unintentionally causing him searing pain in his arms which had been dislocated during his interrogation; to see him grimacing and groaning as he smiled an insane, senseless smile.

Pilate knew that the escort was now leading the three men with bound hands over to the side stairs in order to bring them out to the road heading west, out of the city, to Bald Mountain. It was only when he was down on the ground, with the platform at his back, that he opened his eyes, knowing that he was safe—the condemned men were out of sight.

Blending with the wail of the crowd, which was beginning to die down, were the piercing cries of the various heralds, repeating—some in Aramaic, others in Greek—what the procurator had just proclaimed from the platform. In addition, he could hear the staccato clatter of horses’ hooves approaching, and the short, cheerful blast of a trumpet. Echoing these sounds were the sharp whistles of the boys on the rooftops of the street that led from the marketplace to the hippodrome square, and by shouts of “Watch out!” A soldier, standing alone in a cleared part of the square with a badge in his hand, waved at them anxiously, and then the procurator, the legate of the legion, the secretary, and the escort came to a halt.

The cavalry ala, picking up speed, galloped out onto the square in order to cut across it diagonally. Bypassing a throng of people, it headed down the lane along the vine-covered stone wall, the shortest route to Bald Mountain.

Flying by at a gallop, the commander of the ala, a Syrian, small as a boy and dark as a mulatto, shouted out something in a thin voice as he passed Pilate and drew his sword from its sheath. His vicious, sweaty, raven-black horse shied and reared up on its hind legs. After sheathing his sword, the commander struck his horse across the neck with a whip, steadied it, and rode off down the lane at a gallop. Behind him in a cloud of dust rode the horsemen, in rows of three, the tips of their light bamboo lances bobbing up and down. The faces that streamed past the procurator with gaily bared, flashing teeth looked especially swarthy beneath the white turbans.

Raising a cloud of dust, the ala tore down the lane; the last one to ride past Pilate was a soldier with a trumpet on his back that glowed in the sun.

Shielding his face from the dust with his hand and frowning with dissatisfaction, Pilate moved on, heading for the gates of the palace garden, and following behind him were the legate of the legion, the secretary, and the escort.

It was about ten o’clock in the morning.