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 Gailee? Was the case sent to the tetrarch?"
"Yes, procurator," replied the secretary.
"And what did he do?"
"He refused to give a judgement in the case and sent the death sentence pronounced by the Sinedrion to you for confirmation," explained the secretary.
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 forehead, 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 inticed 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, beleive 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 Rattkiller to me."
It seemed to everyone that it became dark on the balcony when Mark the centurion, nicknamed Rattkiller, who commanded the first centry, came and stood before the procurator. Ratkiller was a head taller than the tallest solgier 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.
Marks 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.
Whith 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 nasal voice, mispronounsing the Aramaic words, "Address the Roman procurator as Hegemon. Do not use other words. Stand in 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 prrocurator 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 exaclty," 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 inticing the people to do this?"
Here the prisoner again became animated, the fear dissapeared 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 parchhment.
"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 plaintly 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 am 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 the 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,"-- there the prisoner laughed. "I personally have no bad feelings about dogs that would cause me to take offence 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 travelling 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 can it tell! Did you hear about that, a tax collector who throws him 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 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 head.
He looked at the prisoner with lusterless eyes and was silent for awhile, 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 that 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 suffering will soon end, and your headache will pass."
The secretary looked goggle-eyed at the prisoner and stopped writing in the middle of the word.
Pilate raised his martured 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 am 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, towards evening. The walk would do you 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 deadly 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 there 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. Than 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
