‘He is here, Procurator.’
Pilate, his eyes wide open, stared at Aphranius for some time, and then said:
‘I thank you for everything that has been done in this affair. I ask you to send Tolmai to me tomorrow, and to tell him beforehand that I am pleased with him. And you, Aphranius,’ here the procurator took a seal ring from the pouch of the belt lying on the table and gave it to the head of the secret service, ‘I beg you to accept this as a memento.’
Aphranius bowed and said:
‘A great honour, Procurator.’
‘I request that the detachment that performed the burial be given rewards. The sleuths who let Judas slip — a reprimand. Have Matthew Levi sent to me right now. I must have the details on Yeshua’s case.’
‘Understood, Procurator,’ Aphranius replied and began retreating and bowing, while the procurator clapped his hands and shouted:
‘To me, here! A lamp to the colonnade!’
Aphranius was going out to the garden when lights began to flash in the hands of servants behind Pilate’s back. Three lamps appeared on the table before the procurator, and the moonlit night at once retreated to the garden, as if Aphranius had led it away with him. In place of Aphranius, an unknown man, small and skinny, stepped on to the balcony beside the gigantic centurion. The latter, catching the procurator’s eye, withdrew to the garden at once and there disappeared.
The procurator studied the newcomer with greedy and slightly frightened eyes. So one looks at a man of whom one has heard a great deal, of whom one has been thinking, and who finally appears.
The newcomer, a man of about forty, was black-haired, ragged, covered with caked mud, and looked wolf-like from under his knitted brows. In short, he was very unsightly, and rather resembled a city beggar, of whom there were many hanging about on the porches of the temple or in the bazaars of the noisy and dirty Lower City.
The silence continued for a long time, and was broken by the strange behaviour of the man brought to Pilate. His countenance changed, he swayed, and if he had not grasped the edge of the table with his dirty hand, he would have fallen.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Pilate asked him.
‘Nothing,’ answered Matthew Levi, and he made a movement as if he were swallowing something. His skinny, bare, grey neck swelled out and then slackened again.
‘What’s wrong, answer me,’ Pilate repeated.
‘I’m tired,’ Levi answered and looked sullenly at the floor.
‘Sit down,’ said Pilate, pointing to the armchair.
Levi looked at the procurator mistrustfully, moved towards the armchair, gave a timorous sidelong glance at the gilded armrests, and sat down not in the chair but beside it on the floor.
‘Explain to me, why did you not sit in the chair?’ asked Pilate.
‘I’m dirty, I’d soil it,’ said Levi, looking at the ground.
‘You’ll presently be given something to eat.’
‘I don’t want to eat,’ answered Levi.
‘Why lie?’ Pilate asked quietly. ‘You haven’t eaten for the whole day, and maybe even longer. Very well, don’t eat. I’ve summoned you so that you could show me the knife you had with you.’
‘The soldiers took it from me when they brought me here,’ Levi replied and added sullenly: ‘You must give it back to me, I have to return it to its owner, I stole it.’
‘What for?’
‘To cut the ropes,’ answered Levi.
‘Mark!’ cried the procurator, and the centurion stepped in under the columns. ‘Give me his knife.’
The centurion took a dirty bread knife from one of the two cases on his belt, handed it to the procurator, and withdrew.
‘Who did you take the knife from?’
‘From the bakery by the Hebron gate, just as you enter the city, on the left.’
Pilate looked at the broad blade, for some reason tried the sharpness of the edge with his finger, and said:
‘Concerning the knife you needn’t worry, the knife will be returned to the shop. But now I want a second thing — show me the charta you carry with you, on which Yeshua’s words are written down.’
Levi looked at Pilate with hatred and smiled such an inimical smile that his face became completely ugly.
‘You want to take away the last thing?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t say “give me”,’ answered Pilate, ‘I said “show me”.’
Levi fumbled in his bosom and produced a parchment scroll. Pilate took it, unrolled it, spread it out between the lights, and, squinting, began to study the barely legible ink marks. It was difficult to understand these crabbed lines, and Pilate kept wincing and leaning right to the parchment, running his finger over the lines. He did manage to make out that the writing represented an incoherent chain of certain utterances, certain dates, household records, and poetic fragments. Some of it Pilate could read: ‘... there is no death ... yesterday we ate sweet spring baccuroth ...’7
Grimacing with the effort, Pilate squinted as he read: ‘... we shall see the pure river of the water of
