He knew that at the same time the convoy was already leading the three men with bound arms to the side stairs, so as to take them to the road going west from the city, towards Bald Mountain. Only when he was off the platform, to the rear of it, did Pilate open his eyes, knowing that he was now safe — he could no longer see the condemned men.
Mingled with the wails of the quieting crowd, yet distinguishable from them, were the piercing cries of heralds repeating, some in Aramaic, others in Greek, all that the procurator had cried out from the platform. Besides that, there came to his ears the tapping, clattering and approaching thud of hoofs, and a trumpet calling out something brief and merry. These sounds were answered by the drilling whistles of boys on the roofs of houses along the street that led from the bazaar to the hippodrome square, and by cries of ‘Look out!’
A soldier, standing alone in the cleared space of the square with a standard in his hand, waved it anxiously, and then the procurator, the legate of the legion, the secretary and the convoy stopped.
A cavalry ala, at an ever-lengthening trot, flew out into the square, so as to cross it at one side, bypassing the mass of people, and ride down a lane under a stone wall covered with creeping vines, taking the shortest route to Bald Mountain.
At a flying trot, small as a boy, dark as a mulatto, the commander of the ala, a Syrian, coming abreast of Pilate, shouted something in a high voice and snatched his sword from its sheath. The angry, sweating black horse shied and reared. Thrusting his sword back into its sheath, the commander struck the horse’s neck with his crop, brought him down, and rode off into the lane, breaking into a gallop. After him, three by three, horsemen flew in a cloud of dust, the tips of their light bamboo lances bobbing, and faces dashed past the procurator - looking especially swarthy under their white turbans — with merrily bared, gleaming teeth.
Raising dust to the sky, the ala burst into the lane, and the last to ride past Pilate was a soldier with a trumpet slung on his back, blazing in the sun.
Shielding himself from the dust with his hand and wrinkling his face discontentedly, Pilate started on in the direction of the gates to the palace garden, and after him came the legate, the secretary, and the convoy.
It was around ten o‘clock in the morning.
CHAPTER 3
‘Yes, it was around ten o’clock in the morning, my esteemed Ivan Nikolaevich,‘ said the professor.
1 The poet passed his hand over his face like a man just coming to his senses, and saw that it was evening at the Patriarch’s Ponds. The water in the pond had turned black, and a light boat was now gliding on it, and one could hear the splash of oars and the giggles of some citizeness in the little boat. The public appeared on the benches along the walks, but again on the other three sides of the square, and not on the side where our interlocutors were.
The sky over Moscow seemed to lose colour, and the full moon could be seen quite distinctly high above, not yet golden but white. It was much easier to breathe, and the voices under the lindens now sounded softer, eveningish.
‘How is it I didn’t notice that he’d managed to spin a whole story? ...’ Homeless thought in amazement. ‘It’s already evening! ... Or maybe he wasn’t telling it, but I simply fell asleep and dreamed it all?’
But it must be supposed that the professor did tell the story after all, otherwise it would have to be assumed that Berlioz had had the same dream, because he said, studying the foreigner’s face attentively:
‘Your story is extremely interesting, Professor, though it does not coincide at all with the Gospel stories.’
‘Good heavens,’ the professor responded, smiling condescendingly, ‘you of all people should know that precisely nothing of what is written in the Gospels ever actually took place, and if we start referring to the Gospels as a historical source...’ he smiled once more, and Berlioz stopped short, because this was literally the same thing he had been saying to Homeless as they walked down Bronnaya towards the Patriarch’s Ponds.
‘That’s so,’ Berlioz replied, ‘but I’m afraid no one can confirm that what you’ve just told us actually took place either.’
‘Oh, yes! That there is one who can!’ the professor, beginning to speak in broken language, said with great assurance, and with unexpected mysteriousness he motioned the two friends to move closer.
They leaned towards him from both sides, and he said, but again without any accent, which with him, devil knows why, now appeared, now disappeared:
‘The thing is ...’ here the professor looked around fearfully and spoke in a whisper, ‘that I was personally present at it all. I was on Pontius Pilate’s balcony, and in the garden when he talked with Kaifa, and on the platform, only secretly, incognito, so to speak, and therefore I beg you - not a word to anyone, total secrecy, shh ...’
Silence fell, and Berlioz paled.
‘You ... how long have you been in Moscow?’ he asked in a quavering voice.
‘I just arrived in Moscow this very minute,’ the professor said perplexedly, and only here did it occur to the friends to take a good look in his eyes, at which they became convinced that his left eye, the green one, was totally insane, while the right one was empty, black and dead.
‘There’s the whole explanation for you!’ Berlioz thought in bewilderment. ‘A mad German has turned up, or just went crazy at the Ponds. What a story!’
Yes, indeed, that explained the whole thing: the most strange breakfast with the late philosopher Kant, the foolish talk about sunflower oil and Annushka, the predictions about his head being cut off and all the rest — the professor was mad.
Berlioz realized at once what had to be done. Leaning back on the bench, he winked to Homeless behind the professor’s back — meaning, don’t contradict him — but the perplexed poet did not understand these signals.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Berlioz said excitedly, ‘incidentally it’s all possible ... even very possible, Pontius Pilate, and the balcony, and so forth ... Did you come alone or with your wife?’
‘Alone, alone, I’m always alone,’ the professor replied bitterly.
‘And where are your things, Professor?’ Berlioz asked insinuatingly. ‘At the Metropol?1 Where are you staying?’
‘I? ... Nowhere,’ the half-witted German answered, his green eye wandering in wild anguish over the Patriarch’s
