life8 ... mankind shall look at the sun through transparent crystal ...’ Here Pilate gave a start. In the last lines of the parchment he made out the words: ‘... greater vice ... cowardice...’
Pilate rolled up the parchment and with an abrupt movement handed it to Levi.
‘Take it,’ he said and, after a pause, added: ‘You’re a bookish man, I see, and there’s no need for you to go around alone, in beggar’s clothing, without shelter. I have a big library in Caesarea, I am very rich and want to take you to work for me. You will sort out and look after the papyri, you will be fed and clothed.’
Levi stood up and replied:
‘No, I don’t want to.’
‘Why?’ the procurator asked, his face darkening. ‘Am I disagreeable to you? ... Are you afraid of me?’
The same bad smile distorted Levi’s face, and he said:
‘No, because you’ll be afraid of me. It won’t be very easy for you to look me in the face now that you’ve killed him.’
‘Quiet,’ replied Pilate. ‘Take some money.’
Levi shook his head negatively, and the procurator went on:
‘I know you consider yourself a disciple of Yeshua, but I can tell you that you learned nothing of what he taught you. For if you had, you would certainly take something from me. Bear in mind that before he died he said he did not blame anyone.’ Pilate raised a finger significantly, Pilate’s face was twitching. ‘And he himself would surely have taken something. You are cruel, and he was not cruel. Where will you go?’
Levi suddenly came up to the table, leaned both hands on it, and, gazing at the procurator with burning eyes, whispered to him:
‘Know, Hegemon, that I am going to kill a man in Yershalaim. I wanted to tell you that, so you’d know there will be more blood.’
‘I, too, know there will be more of it,’ replied Pilate, ‘you haven’t surprised me with your words. You want, of course, to kill me?’
‘You I won’t manage to kill,’ replied Levi, baring his teeth and smiling, ‘I’m not such a foolish man as to count on that. But I’ll kill Judas of Kiriath, I’ll devote the rest of my life to it.’
Here pleasure showed in the procurator’s eyes, and beckoning Matthew Levi to come closer, he said:
‘You won’t manage to do it, don’t trouble yourself. Judas has already been killed this night.’
Levi sprang away from the table, looking wildly around, and cried out:
‘Who did it?’
‘Don’t be jealous,’ Pilate answered, his teeth bared, and rubbed his hands, ‘I’m afraid he had other admirers besides you.’
‘Who did it?’ Levi repeated in a whisper.
Pilate answered him:
‘I did it.’
Levi opened his mouth and stared at the procurator, who said quietly:
‘It is, of course, not much to have done, but all the same I did it.’ And he added: ‘Well, and now will you take something?’
Levi considered, relented, and finally said:
‘Have them give me a piece of clean parchment.’
An hour went by. Levi was not in the palace. Now the silence of the dawn was broken only by the quiet noise of the sentries’ footsteps in the garden. The moon was quickly losing its colour, one could see at the other edge of the sky the whitish dot of the morning star. The lamps had gone out long, long ago. The procurator lay on the couch. Putting his hand under his cheek, he slept and breathed soundlessly. Beside him slept Banga.
Thus was the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate.
CHAPTER 27
When Margarita came to the last words of the chapter — ‘... Thus was the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate’ — it was morning.
Sparrows could be heard in the branches of the willows and lindens in the little garden, conducting a merry, excited morning conversation.
Margarita got up from the armchair, stretched, and only then felt how broken her body was and how much she wanted to sleep. It is interesting to note that Margarita’s soul was in perfect order. Her thoughts were not scattered, she was quite unshaken by having spent the night supernaturally. She was not troubled by memories of having been at Satan’s ball, or that by some miracle the master had been returned to her, that the novel had risen from the ashes, that everything was back in place in the basement in the lane, from which the snitcher Aloisy Mogarych had been expelled. In short, acquaintance with Woland had caused her no psychic damage. Everything was as if it ought to have been so.
She went to the next room, convinced herself that the master was soundly and peacefully asleep, turned off the unnecessary table lamp, and stretched out by the opposite wall on a little couch covered with an old, torn sheet. A minute later she was asleep, and that morning she had no dreams. The basement rooms were silent, the builder’s whole little house was silent, and it was quiet in the solitary lane.
But just then, that is, at dawn on Saturday, an entire floor of a certain Moscow institution was not asleep, and its windows, looking out on a big asphalt-paved square which special machines, driving around slowly and droning, were cleaning with brushes, shone with their full brightness, cutting through the light of the rising sun.
The whole floor was occupied with the investigation of the Woland case, and the lights had burned all night in dozens of offices.
