The Master and Margarita / Мастер и Маргарита. Книга для чтения на английском языке

At this point all those present moved off down the broad marble steps between walls of roses giving off a heavy scent, descending lower and lower towards the palace wall, towards the gates leading out into a large, smoothly paved square, at the end of which could be seen the columns and statues of Yershalaim’s stadium.

As soon as the group had emerged from the garden into the square and gone up onto the extensive stone platform that dominated it, Pilate, looking around through narrowed eyelids, assessed the situation. The space he had just crossed – that is, the space between the palace wall and the platform – was empty, whereas in front of him Pilate could no longer see the square: it had been devoured by the crowd, which would have flooded both onto the platform itself and into the cleared space if a triple row of Sebastian’s soldiers to Pilate’s left hand and soldiers of the Ituraean Auxiliary Cohort to the right had not held it back.

And so Pilate went up onto the platform, squeezing the unnecessary clasp mechanically in his fist and squinting. The Procurator was squinting not because the sun was stinging his eyes, no! For some reason he did not want to see the group of condemned men who, as he knew very well, would be led up after him onto the platform in just a moment.

As soon as the white cloak with the crimson lining rose up on high on the stone cliff at the edge of the human sea, a wave of sound struck the unseeing Pilate’s ears: “Ha-a-a…” It began softly, rising somewhere in the distance near the hippodrome, then became thunderous and, after being sustained for several seconds, began to abate. “They’ve seen me,” thought the Procurator. Before the wave reached its lowest point, it unexpectedly began to develop again, and as it rolled, it rose higher than the first one, and on the second wave, just as the foam rages on a roller at sea, there raged a whistling and the individual moans of women, discernible through the thunder. “They’ve led them onto the platform…” thought Pilate, “and the moans are because a number of women were crushed when the crowd surged forward.”

He waited for a time, aware that no power could make the crowd fall quiet until it had exhaled all that had accumulated within it and fallen silent itself.

And when that moment came, the Procurator threw up his right arm, and the last sounds were expelled from the crowd.

Then Pilate gathered as much of the hot air as he could into his chest and shouted, and his cracked voice carried over thousands of heads:

“In the name of the Emperor Caesar!”

At this point his ears were struck several times by an abrupt iron cry – in the cohorts, tossing up their spears and insignia, the soldiers had cried out fearsomely:

“Hail, Caesar!”

Pilate threw back his head and turned it straight towards the sun. A green fire flared up beneath his eyelids, which made his brain ignite, and above the crowd flew hoarse Aramaic words:

“Four criminals, arrested in Yershalaim for murders, incitement to revolt[115] and assault on the laws and faith[116], are sentenced to a shameful punishment – hanging on posts! And this punishment will now be carried out on Bald Mountain! The names of the criminals are Dismas, Gestas, Bar-rabban and Ha-Nozri. Here they are before you!”

Pilate pointed to the right, not seeing any of the criminals, but knowing they were there, in the place they were required to be.

The crowd answered with a long hum, as though of surprise or relief. And when it had died away, Pilate continued:

“But only three of them will be executed, for, in accordance with the law and custom, in honour of the Feast of the Passover, one of the condemned men, chosen by the Lesser Sanhedrin and with the ratification of the Roman authorities, is to have his contemptible life restored to him by the magnanimous Emperor Caesar!”

Pilate shouted out the words, and at the same time listened to the way the humming was replaced by a great silence. Now not a sigh, not a rustling reached his ears, and there even came a moment when it seemed to Pilate that absolutely everything around him had vanished. The city he hated had died, and just he alone stood, scorched by the vertical rays, his face digging into the sky. Pilate continued to hold the silence, and then began shouting out:

“The name of the man who will now be released to freedom before you is…”

He paused once again, delaying the name, checking that he had said everything, because he knew the dead city would rise again after the lucky man’s name had been uttered, and no further words would be able to be heard.

“Is that all?” Pilate whispered to himself soundlessly. “It is. The name!”

And, rolling the letter “r” over the silent city, he cried:

“Bar-rabban!”

At this point it seemed to him that the sun, with a ringing sound, burst above him and flooded his ears with fire. In that fire raged a roaring, screams, moans, chuckling and whistling.

Pilate turned and set off back along the platform towards the steps, looking at nothing but the multicoloured blocks of the flooring beneath his feet, so as not to stumble. He knew that now, behind his back, bronze coins and dates were falling like hail onto the platform, people in the howling crowd were climbing onto shoulders, crushing one another, to see a miracle with their own eyes – a man who had already been in the hands of death tearing free of those hands! To see the legionaries taking the ropes off him, involuntarily causing him burning pain in arms dislocated during interrogation, to see him frowning and gasping, but all the same smiling a senseless, mad smile.

He knew that at this very same time the escort was already leading the three with their hands bound towards the side steps to take them out onto the road leading to the west, out of the city towards Bald Mountain. Only when he found himself behind the platform, in its rear, did Pilate open his eyes, knowing that now he was out of danger – no longer could he see the condemned men.

Mingled with the moaning of the crowd, which was beginning to fall quiet, were the readily discernible, piercing cries of the public criers, repeating, some in Aramaic, others in Greek, everything the Procurator had shouted from the platform. The staccato clatter of approaching horses’ hoofs reached his ears too, and a trumpet trumpeting something briefly and merrily. In reply to these sounds, from the roofs of the houses on the street leading out from the bazaar into the square of the hippodrome came the piercing whistling of little boys and cries of “look out!”

The solitary soldier standing in the cleared space of the square with a standard in his hand waved it in alarm, and then the Procurator, the legate of the legion, the secretary and the escort stopped.

The cavalry ala, working up ever more of a canter[117], flew out into the square to cut across one side of it, passing the throng of people by, and to gallop by the shortest route, down a lane beside a stone wall with a vine creeping over it, to Bald Mountain.

On drawing level with Pilate, the fast-trotting commander of the ala, a Syrian as small as a boy and as dark as a mulatto, shouted something shrilly and drew his sword out from its scabbard. The wild, black, lathered horse shied and reared up on its hind legs. Thrusting the sword into its scabbard, the commander struck the horse across the neck with a lash, straightened it up, and rode into the lane, moving into a gallop. After him in a cloud of dust flew the horsemen in rows of three; the ends of their light bamboo lances began to bounce, and past the Procurator sped faces that seemed especially swarthy under their white turbans, and with cheerfully bared, gleaming teeth.

Raising the dust to the sky, the ala burst into the lane, and last to ride past Pilate was a soldier with a trumpet that blazed in the sun behind his back.

Shielding himself from the dust with his hand, and with a discontented frown on his face, Pilate moved onwards, heading for the gates of the palace garden, and the legate, the secretary and the escort moved off after him.

It was about ten o’clock in the morning.

3. The Seventh Proof

Yes, it was about ten o’clock in the morning, illustrious Ivan Nikolayevich,” said the Professor.

The poet passed his hand across his face like a man who has just come to, and saw that it was evening at Patriarch’s.

The water in the pond had blackened, and a light skiff was already sliding across it, and the splashing of an oar and the giggles of some citizeness in the skiff could be heard. People had appeared on the benches in the avenues, but again, on each ofthe three sides of the square apart from the one where our interlocutors were.

It was as if the sky above Moscow had faded, and the full moon could be seen perfectly distinctly on high, not yet golden, but white. Breathing had become much easier, and the voices beneath the lime trees now sounded softer, suited to the evening.

“How on earth did I fail to notice he’d managed to spin an entire story?” thought Bezdomny in amazement. “I mean, it’s already evening now! Yet perhaps it wasn’t even him telling it, simply I fell asleep and dreamt it all?”

But it must be supposed that it was, after all, the Professor who had been telling it, otherwise it would have to be allowed that Berlioz had had the same dream too, because the latter, peering attentively into the foreigner’s face, said:

“Your story is extremely interesting, Professor, although it doesn’t coincide at all with the stories in the Gospels[118].”

“Pardon me,” responded the Professor with a condescending smile, “but you of all people ought to know that absolutely nothing of what is written in the Gospels ever actually happened, and if we start referring to the Gospels as a historical source[119]…” Again he smiled, and Berlioz was taken aback[120], because he had been saying word for word the same thing to Bezdomny while walking along Bronnaya towards Patriarch’s Ponds.

“That is so,” replied Berlioz, “but I’m afraid no one can confirm that what you’ve told us actually happened either.”

“Oh no! One can confirm it!” responded the Professor with extreme confidence, beginning to speak in broken Russian, and in an unexpectedly mysterious way he beckoned the two friends a little closer towards him.

They leant in towards him from both sides, and he said, but now without any accent (which, the devil knows why, was forever coming and going):

“The fact is…” – here the Professor looked around fearfully and began speaking in a whisper – "I was personally present during it all. I was on Pontius Pilate’s balcony, and in the garden when he was talking with Caipha, and on the platform – only secretly, incognito, so to speak, so I beg you – not a word to anyone, and in absolute confidence!. Ssh!”

Silence fell, and Berlioz turned pale.

"How. how long have you been in Moscow?” he asked in a faltering voice[121].

"I’ve only just this moment arrived in Moscow,” replied the Professor, perplexed, and only at this point did the friends think to look properly into his eyes, and they satisfied themselves that the left, the green one, was completely mad, while the right one was empty, black and dead.

"And there’s everything explained for you!” thought Berlioz in confusion. "There’s an insane German come here, or else he’s just gone barmy at Patriarch’s. There’s a thing!”

Yes, everything was, indeed, explained: the very strange breakfast with the late philosopher, Kant, and the ridiculous talk about sunflower oil and Annushka, and the predictions about his head being chopped off, and all the rest – the Professor was insane.

Berlioz immediately grasped what was to be done. Reclining against the back of the bench, he started winking at[122] Bezdomny behind the Professor’s back – as if to say, don’t contradict him – but the bewildered poet failed to understand these signals.

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Berlioz excitedly. “Actually, it’s all possible!. Perfectly possible, even – Pontius Pilate, the balcony and so forth. And are you here alone or with your wife?”

'Alone, alone, I’m always alone,” replied the Professor bitterly.

“But where are your things, Professor?” asked Berlioz, fishing. “At the Metropole? Where have you put up?”

“Me? Nowhere,” replied the crazy German, with his green eye wandering mournfully and wildly over Patriarch’s Ponds.

“How’s that? But. where are you going to be staying?”

“In your apartment,” the madman suddenly replied in an overfamiliar tone, and gave a wink.

“I. I’m delighted,” mumbled Berlioz, “but truly, you’ll find my place inconvenient. And there are wonderful rooms at the Metropole – it’s a first-class hotel…”

“And is there no Devil either?” the sick man cheerfully enquired all of a sudden of Ivan Nikolayevich.

“The Devil too.”

“Don’t contradict him!” Berlioz whispered with his lips alone as he slumped down[123] behind the Professor’s back, grimacing.

“There is no Devil!” Ivan Nikolayevich exclaimed something unnecessary, bewildered by all this nonsense. “What a pain! Just stop behaving like a madman!”

At this point the madman burst into such laughter that a sparrow flitted out from the lime tree above the heads of the seated men.

“Well, now that is positively interesting,” said the Professor, shaking with laughter. “What is it with you? Whatever you try, nothing exists!” He suddenly stopped chuckling and, as is quite understandable in a case of mental illness, after the laughter he went to the other extreme – became irritated and cried out sternly: “So, there really isn’t one, then?”

“Relax, relax, relax, Professor,” muttered Berlioz, fearful of agitating the sick man, “you sit here for a minute with Comrade Bezdomny, and I’ll just run down to the corner, make a telephone call, and then we’ll see you to wherever you like. After all, you don’t know the city…”

Berlioz’s plan has to be acknowledged as the correct one: he needed to run to the nearest public telephone and inform the Foreigners’ Bureau of the fact that there was a visiting consultant from abroad sitting at Patriarch’s Ponds in an obvious state of madness. So it was essential to take measures, or else the result would be some kind of unpleasant nonsense.

“Make a telephone call? Well, all right, make a call,” the sick man consented sadly, then suddenly made a passionate request: “But I implore you in farewell, do at least believe that the Devil exists! I really don’t ask anything greater of you. Bear in mind that for this there exists the seventh proof, and the most reliable one, too! And it will now be put before you.”

“Very well, very well,” said Berlioz in a tone of feigned friendliness[124]; and, with a wink to the disconcerted poet, who did not at all fancy the idea of guarding the mad German, he headed for the exit from Patriarch’s on the corner of Bronnaya and Yermolayevsky Lane.

But the Professor immediately seemed to feel better and brighten up.

“Mikhail Alexandrovich!” he cried in Berlioz’s wake[125].

The latter gave a start, turned, but calmed himself with the thought that his name and patronymic were also known to the Professor from some newspaper or other. But the Professor called out, cupping his hands into a megaphone:

“Would you like me to give instructions for a telegram to be sent to your uncle in Kiev now?”

And again Berlioz was flabbergasted. “How on earth does the madman know of the existence of my uncle in Kiev? After all, there’s nothing said about that in any newspapers, that’s for sure. Aha, perhaps Bezdomny’s right? And what if those documents are false? Oh, what a queer sort… Phone, phone! Phone at once! He’ll soon be sorted out!”

And, listening to nothing more, Berlioz ran on.

Here, at the very exit to Bronnaya, rising from a bench to meet the editor was that exact same citizen who, back then in the sunlight, had issued from the heavy, sultry air. Only now he was no longer airy, but ordinary, fleshly, and in the beginnings of the twilight Berlioz distinctly made out that his little moustache was like chicken feathers, his eyes were small, ironic and half drunk, and his trousers were checked, and pulled up to such an extent that his dirty white socks could be seen.

Mikhail Alexandrovich was simply staggered, but comforted himself with the thought that this was a silly coincidence, and that anyway there was no time to reflect upon it now.

“Looking for the turnstile, Citizen?” enquired the character in checks in a cracked tenor. “Right this way! You’ll come out just where you need to be. How about the price of a quarter of a litre for the directions. for an ex-precentor. to set himself to rights[126]!” Bending low, the fellow swept off his jockey’s cap.

Berlioz did not bother listening to the cadging pseudo-precentor, but ran up to the turnstile and took hold of it with his hand. Having turned it, he was already about to take a step onto the rails when red and white lights sprayed into his face: in the glass box the inscription “Beware of the tram!” lit up.

And the tram did come rushing up straight away, turning on the newly laid line from Yermolayevsky into Bronnaya. Having rounded the bend and come out onto the straight, it suddenly lit up with electricity inside, howled and picked up speed.

The cautious Berlioz, although he was safe where he was standing, decided to go back behind the turnpike; he changed the position of his hand on the revolving part and took a step backwards. And immediately his hand abruptly slipped and came away; his foot, as though on ice, travelled uncontrollably across the cobbles sloping down[127] towards the rails; the other foot flew up into the air, and Berlioz was thrown out onto the rails.

Trying to catch hold of something[128], Berlioz fell onto his back, striking his head a light blow on the cobbles, and he had time to see, high up – but whether to the right or to the left he could no longer comprehend – the gilt moon. He had time to turn onto his side, at the same instant drawing his legs up with a violent movement towards his stomach, and, having turned, he made out the face of the female tram driver – completely white with horror and hurtling towards him with unstoppable power – and her scarlet armband. Berlioz did not cry out, but around him the entire street began screaming in despairing women’s voices. The driver tugged at the electric brake; the nose of the carriage went down onto the ground, and then, an instant afterwards, bounced up[129], and with a crashing and a ringing the panes flew out of the windows. At this point someone in Berlioz’s brain cried out despairingly: “Surely not?” One more time, and for the last time, there was a glimpse of the moon, but already it was falling to pieces, and then it became dark.

The tram covered Berlioz, and a round, dark object was thrown out under the railings of Patriarch’s avenue onto the cobbled, sloping verge[130]. Rolling down off the slope, it started bouncing along the cobblestones of Bronnaya.

It was Berlioz’s severed head.

4. The Pursuit

The women’s hysterical cries had died away; police whistles had finished their drilling, one ambulance had taken the headless body and the severed head to the morgue, another had taken away the beautiful driver, wounded by splinters of glass; yardmen in white aprons had cleared up the splinters of glass and scattered sand on the puddles of blood; but Ivan Nikolayevich remained there on a bench, just as he had fallen onto it without ever having reached the turnstile.

He had tried to get up several times, but his legs would not obey – Bezdomny had suffered something in the nature of paralysis.

The poet had rushed off[131] towards the turnstile as soon as he had heard the first shriek, and had seen the head bouncing on the roadway. This had made him lose his senses to such a degree that, falling onto a bench, he had bitten his hand and drawn blood. He had, of course, forgotten about the mad German and was trying to understand just one thing: how it could possibly be that he had just been there, talking with Berlioz, and a minute later… the head…

Agitated people were running along the avenue past the poet, exclaiming something, but Ivan Nikolayevich did not take their words in[132].

However, two women unexpectedly bumped into each other beside him, and one of them, sharp-nosed and bare-headed, shouted to the other woman right in the poet’s ear:

“Annushka, our Annushka! From Sadovaya! It’s her doing! She bought some sunflower oil at the grocer’s, and she went and smashed a litre bottle on the revolving bit of the turnstile! Made a mess all over her skirt. She was really cursing, she was! And he must have slipped, poor thing, and gone over onto the rails.”

Of everything that the woman shouted out, one word took a hold on Ivan Nikolayevich’s deranged mind[133]: “Annushka…”

''Annushka… Annushka?” mumbled the poet, gazing around uneasily. “Permit me, permit me.”

To the word “Annushka” became attached the words “sunflower oil”, and then for some reason “Pontius Pilate”. The poet rejected Pilate and began linking together a chain, beginning with the word “Annushka”. And that chain linked up very quickly, and led at once to the mad Professor.

I’m sorry! I mean, he said the meeting wouldn’t take place because Annushka had spilt the oil. And, if you’d be so kind, it would not take place! And that’s not all: didn’t he say straight out that a woman would cut off Berlioz’s head?! Yes, yes, yes! And the driver was, after all, a woman! What on earth is all this? Eh?

Not even a grain of doubt remained that the mysterious consultant had definitely known in advance the whole picture of Berlioz’s terrible death. At this point two thoughts penetrated the poet’s brain. The first: “He’s far from mad! That’s all nonsense!” And the second: “Did he perhaps arrange it all himself?!”

But permit me to ask how?!

“Oh no! That we shall find out!”

Making a great effort with himself, Ivan Nikolayevich rose from the bench and rushed back to where he had been talking with the Professor. And it turned out that, fortunately, the latter had not yet left.

On Bronnaya the street lamps had already lit up, and above Patriarch’s the golden moon was shining, and in the always deceptive moonlight it seemed to Ivan Nikolayevich that the man was standing there holding not a cane under his arm, but a rapier.

The retired precentor-cum-trickster was sitting in the very spot where Ivan Nikolayevich had himself just recently been sitting. Now the precentor fastened onto his nose an obviously unnecessary pince-nez, which had one lens missing completely and the other cracked. This made the citizen in checks even more repulsive than he had been when showing Berlioz the way to the rails.

With his heart turning cold, Ivan approached the Professor and, looking into his face, satisfied himself that there were not, and had not been, any signs of madness in that face at all.

“Confess, who are you?” asked Ivan in a muffled voice[134].

The foreigner knitted his brows, gave a look as if he were seeing the poet for the first time and replied with hostility:

“No understand… no speak Russian…”

“The gentleman doesn’t understand!” the precentor chimed in from the bench, though nobody had actually asked him to explain the foreigner’s words.

“Stop pretending!” Ivan said sternly, and felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. “You were speaking excellent Russian just now. You’re not a German or a professor! You’re a murderer and a spy! Your papers!” Ivan cried fiercely.

The enigmatic Professor twisted in disgust a mouth that was twisted enough already and shrugged his shoulders.

“Citizen!” the loathsome precentor butted in[135] again. “What are you doing, disturbing a foreign tourist? You’ll be called to account most severely for this!” And the suspicious Professor pulled a haughty face, turned and started to walk away from Ivan.

Ivan sensed he was losing his self-control. Gasping for breath, he turned to the precentor:

“Hey, Citizen, help me detain a criminal! It’s your duty to do it!”

The precentor became extremely animated, leapt up[136] and started yelling:

“What criminal? Where is he? A foreign criminal?” The precentor’s little eyes began to sparkle. “This one? If he’s a criminal, then one’s first duty should be to shout ‘Help!’ Otherwise he’ll get away. Come on, let’s do it together! Both at once!” And here the precentor spread his jaws wide open.