25. How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Kiriath

The darkness that had come from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city the Procurator hated. The suspension bridges joining the Temple to the terrible Tower of Antonia disappeared, the abyss descended from the sky and poured overthe winged gods above the hippodrome, the Hasmonean Palace with its embrasures, the bazaars, the caravanserais, the lanes, the ponds… Yershalaim, the great city, vanished as if it had never existed on the earth. Everything was devoured by the darkness that frightened every living thing in Yershalaim and its environs. A strange cloud had been carried in from the direction of the sea towards the end of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan.

Its belly had already fallen on Bald Skull, where the executioners had hurriedly stabbed those being executed, it fell on the Temple in Yershalaim, crawled in smoking streams from its mount and poured over the Lower Town. It was pouring into windows, driving people from the winding streets and into the houses. It was in no hurry to yield its moisture and yielded only light. As soon as the smoking black brew was ripped apart by fire, the glittering scaly covering of the great hulk of the Temple would soar upwards out of the pitch darkness. But it would die down in an instant, and the Temple would be plunged into the dark abyss. Several times it rose up out of it and then disappeared again, and each time that disappearance was accompanied by the din of catastrophe.

Other tremulous glimmerings called forth from the abyss the Palace of Herod the Great, standing opposite the Temple on the western mount, and terrible eyeless golden statues soared towards the black sky, reaching out their arms to it. But again the heavenly fire would be concealed and heavy claps of thunder would drive the golden idols into the darkness.

Torrential rain gushed unexpectedly, and then the thunderstorm turned into a hurricane. On the very spot where at about midday the Procurator and the High Priest had been conversing by the marble bench in the garden, with a cannon-like bang a cypress was broken in two like a cane. Together with watery dust and hail, onto the balcony beneath the columns were borne plucked roses, magnolia leaves, small branches and sand. The hurricane racked the garden.

At this time there was only one man beneath the columns, and that man was the Procurator.

He was not sitting in an armchair now, but lying on a couch by a small low table, covered with victuals and jugs of wine. Another couch, empty, was on the other side of the table. At the Procurator’s feet stretched an untouched red puddle, as if of blood, and the fragments of a smashed jug lay around. The servant who had been setting the table for the Procurator before the thunderstorm had for some reason lost his head under his gaze, become anxious about not having pleased him in some way, and the Procurator, getting angry with him, had smashed the jug onto the mosaic floor, saying:

“Why don’t you look me in the face when you’re serving? Have you stolen something, then?”

The African’s black face had turned grey; mortal terror had appeared in his eyes; he had started trembling, and all but smashed a second jug too, but the Procurator’s wrath had for some reason flown away just as quickly as it had come. The African had wanted to rush to pick up the fragments and wipe away the puddle, but the Procurator had waved his hand at him and the slave had run off. The puddle, though, had remained.

Now, during the hurricane, the African was hiding beside a niche where there stood a statue of a white, naked woman with her head bowed, afraid to show himself at the wrong time, and at the same time fearful too of missing the moment when he might be called by the Procurator.

Lying on the couch in the semi-darkness of the thunderstorm, the Procurator poured wine into his goblet himself, drank in long draughts, at times laid hands on some bread, crumbled it, swallowed it in small pieces, from time to time sucked out some oysters, chewed on a lemon and drank again.

Had it not been for the roar of the water, had it not been for the claps of thunder, which seemed to threaten to flatten the roof of the palace, had it not been for the knocking of the hail, hammering on the steps of the balcony, it would have been possible to hear that the Procurator was muttering something, conversing with himself. And had the inconsistent flickering of the heavenly fire turned into a constant light, an observer might have seen that the Procurator’s face, with eyes inflamed by his latest bouts of insomnia and by the wine, expressed impatience, that the Procurator was not only looking at two white roses, drowned in the red puddle, but was constantly turning his face to the garden, towards the watery dust and the sand, that he was waiting for somebody, waiting impatiently.

Some time passed, and the shroud of water before the Procurator’s eyes began to thin. However fierce the hurricane might have been, it was weakening. Branches were no longer cracking and falling. The claps of thunder and the flashes were becoming rarer. No longer did there float above Yershalaim a violet coverlet with white trimming, but an ordinary grey rearguard cloud. The storm was being carried down towards the Dead Sea.

It was now already possible to hear individually both the noise of the rain and the noise of the water precipitating down the gutters and straight down the steps of the staircase by which the Procurator had descended in the daytime for the announcement of the sentence in the square. And finally the fountain that had hitherto been drowned out began to be audible too. It was getting lighter. In the grey shroud that was hurrying away to the east, blue windows appeared.

At this point, from afar, through the tapping of the rain, now very light, there came to the ears of the Procurator the weak sounds of trumpets and the rattle of several hundred hoofs. Hearing this, the Procurator shifted, and his face became animated. The ala was returning from Bald Mountain. To judge by the sound, it was crossing over that same square where the sentence had been announced.

Finally the Procurator heard both long-awaited footsteps and a slapping on the staircase leading to the upper terrace of the garden directly in front of the balcony. The Procurator stretched out his neck, and his eyes started shining, expressing joy.

Between two marble lions there appeared first a head in a hood, and then an utterly wet man too, in a cloak that clung to his body. It was that same man who had been whispering with the Procurator in a darkened room of the palace before the sentence, and who during the execution had been sitting on a three-legged stool, playing with a little twig.

The man in the hood cut across the garden terrace, taking no notice of the puddles, stepped onto the mosaic floor of the balcony and, raising his hand, said in a pleasant, high voice:

“May the Procurator prosper and be joyful!” The visitor spoke in Latin.

“Ye gods!” exclaimed Pilate. “There’s not a dry stitch on you, is there? What a hurricane! Eh? Do please come through to me straight away. Be so kind as to change your clothes.”

The visitor threw back his hood, revealing a thoroughly wet head with the hair sticking to the forehead, and, with a polite smile on his shaved face, he started off refusing to change his clothes, giving assurances that a little rain could not harm him in any way.

“I’ll hear none of it,” Pilate replied, and clapped his hands. By so doing he summoned the servants who were hiding from him, and ordered them to take care of the visitor and then to serve a hot dish at once. The Procurator’s visitor needed very little time to dry his hair, change his clothes, change his shoes and generally tidy himself up, and he soon appeared on the balcony in dry sandals, in a dry crimson military cloak and with his hair smoothed down.

At that time the sun had returned to Yershalaim and, before leaving and sinking into the Mediterranean Sea, was sending its parting rays to the city the Procurator hated and gilding the steps of the balcony. The fountain had completely revived and sang away with all its might; doves had come out onto the sand and were cooing, hopping over broken branches and pecking at something in the wet sand. The red puddle had been wiped up, the pieces of broken pottery cleared away, and there was meat steaming on the table.

“I am listening for the Procurator’s orders,” said the visitor, approaching the table.

“But you’ll hear nothing until you sit down and drink some wine,” Pilate replied amiably, and pointed to the other couch.

The visitor lay down, and a servant poured a rich red wine into his goblet. Another servant, leaning carefully over Pilate’s shoulder, filled the Procurator’s goblet. After that, with a gesture the latter sent both servants away.

From time to time while the visitor was drinking and eating, Pilate, sipping wine, looked at his guest with narrowed eyes. The man who had come to see Pilate was middle-aged, with a very pleasant, rounded and neat face and with a fleshy nose. His hair was an indefinite sort of colour. Now, as it dried, it was getting lighter. The newcomer’s nationality would have been hard to establish. The basic thing that defined his face was probably the good-natured expression which was, however, spoilt by the eyes, or rather, not by the eyes, but by the visitor’s manner of looking at the person with whom he was talking. The newcomer usually kept his small eyes beneath half-closed eyelids that were rather strange, as though slightly puffy. In the little slits of those eyes there then shone a mild cunning. It must be assumed that the Procurator’s guest was inclined to humour. But at times, completely expelling this gleaming humour from the slits, the Procurator’s present guest would open his eyelids wide and glance at his interlocutor suddenly and directly, as though with the aim of quickly making out some inconspicuous little blemish on the interlocutor’s nose. This would last for one moment, after which the eyelids were lowered again, the slits narrowed, and they would begin to shine with good nature and cunning intelligence.

The visitor did not refuse a second goblet of wine either; he swallowed several oysters with obvious enjoyment, tried some boiled vegetables and ate a piece of meat.

When he was full up, he praised the wine:

“A splendid vine, Procurator – is it Falernum?”

“Cecubum, thirty years old,” the Procurator responded amiably.

The guest put his hand to his heart, refused anything else to eat, declared that he was full. Then Pilate filled his own goblet, and his guest did the same. Both diners poured off some of the wine from their goblets into the dish of meat, and the Procurator pronounced loudly, raising his goblet:

“To us, and to you, Caesar, father of the Romans, the dearest and the best of men!”

After that, they finished the wine, and the Africans cleared the victuals away from the table, leaving the fruits and the jugs there. Once again the Procurator sent the servants away with a gesture and remained alone under the colonnade with his guest.

“And so,” Pilate began softly, “what can you tell me about the mood in this city?”

He involuntarily turned his gaze to where, down below, beyond the terraces of the garden, both colonnades and flat roofs were burning out, gilt by the final rays.

“I think, Procurator,” his guest replied, “that the mood in Yershalaim is now satisfactory.”

“So it can be guaranteed that disorders are no longer a threat?”

“Only one thing in the world,” replied the guest, casting affectionate glances at the Procurator, “can be guaranteed: the might of the great Caesar.”

“May the gods send him a long life,” Pilate joined in at once, “and universal peace.” He was silent for a moment, then continued: “So you think the troops can now be withdrawn?”

“I think the Lightning Legion Cohort can leave,” replied the guest, and added: “It would be good if, in parting, it marched through the city in procession.”

“A very good idea,” the Procurator said approvingly, “I’ll dismiss it the day after tomorrow and I’ll leave myself, and – I swear to you by the Feast of the Twelve Gods, I swear by the lares – I’d give a great deal to do it today!”

“Does the Procurator not like Yershalaim?” asked the guest good-naturedly.

“Mercy me,” exclaimed the Procurator with a smile, “there’s no more unreliable place on earth. And I’m not talking now about nature! I’m unwell every time I have to come here. And even that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But these feasts – the magi, the wizards, the magicians, these flocks of pilgrims… Fanatics, fanatics! And take just this Messiah alone that they’ve suddenly started waiting for this year! All you’re doing every minute is expecting to be a witness to the most unpleasant bloodshed. Shuffling the troops all the time, reading denunciations and slanders, half of which, what’s more, are written against you yourself! You must agree, that is dull. Oh, if it weren’t for the imperial service!.”

“Yes, the feasts here are difficult,” the guest agreed.

“With all my soul I wish they’d end soon,” Pilate added energetically. “I’ll finally get the opportunity to return to Caesarea. Can you believe it, this ludicrous structure of Herod’s” – the Procurator waved his arm the length of the colonnade so it became clear he was talking about the palace – “really is driving me out of my mind. I can’t bear to spend the night in it. The world has never known odder architecture! Yes, but let’s get back to business. First of all, this accursed Bar-rabban isn’t troubling you?”

And at this point the guest sent his special look towards the Procurator’s cheek. But the latter was gazing into the distance with bored eyes, frowning fastidiously and contemplating the part of the city that, lying at his feet, was dying away in the twilight. The guest’s look died away too, and his eyelids dropped.

“One must imagine that Bar has now become as harmless as a lamb,” the guest began, and little wrinkles appeared on his round face. “It’s awkward for him to rebel now.”

“Too renowned?” asked Pilate with a grin.

“As always, the Procurator has a subtle understanding of the question!”

“But in any event,” the Procurator remarked anxiously, and a long, slim finger with the black stone of a ring rose up, “one will have to…”

“Oh, the Procurator can be certain that, while I am in Judaea, Bar won’t take a step without men following at his heels.”

“Now I feel calm – as, incidentally, I always do when you’re here.”

“The Procurator is too kind!”

“And now please inform me about the execution,” said the Procurator.

“What specifically interests the Procurator?”

“Were there any attempts on the part of the crowd at expressing indignation? That’s the most important thing, of course.”

“None,” replied the guest.

“Very good. Did you yourself establish that death had come?”

“The Procurator can be certain of it.”

“And tell me. were they given a drink before being hung on the poles?”

“Yes. But he” – here the guest closed his eyes – “refused to drink it.”

“Who precisely?” asked Pilate.

“Forgive me, Hegemon!” exclaimed the guest. “Didn’t I name him? Ha-Nozri.”

“The madman!” said Pilate, for some reason grimacing. Beneath his left eye a vein began to twitch. “Dying of sunburn! Why on earth refuse what’s offered in accordance with the law? In what terms did he refuse?”

“He said,” replied the guest, again closing his eyes, “he was grateful and attached no blame for his life having been taken away.”

“To whom?” Pilate asked indistinctly.

“That, Hegemon, he did not say.”

“Did he try to preach anything in the presence of the soldiers?”

“No, Hegemon, he was not verbose on this occasion. The only thing he did say was that he considered one of the most important among human vices to be cowardice.”

“In relation to what was it said?” – the guest heard a suddenly cracked voice.

“That was impossible to understand. In general he behaved strangely though, as always.”

“What was so strange?”

“All the time he was trying to look into the eyes of those around him, first of one, then of another, and all the time he was smiling a confused sort of smile.”

“Nothing more?” asked a hoarse voice.

“Nothing more.”

The Procurator banged his goblet, pouring himself some wine. He drained it to the very dregs, then began to speak:

“The point is as follows: although we are unable to discover – at the given time, at least – any admirers or followers of his, it nonetheless cannot be guaranteed that there are none of them at all.”

The guest listened attentively with his head bowed.

“And so, to avoid any surprises,” continued the Procurator, “I would ask you, immediately and without any fuss, to wipe the bodies of all three executed men from the face of the earth, and to bury them in secret and in silence, so that not a word should be heard of them any more.”

“Very well, Hegemon,” said the guest, and he rose, saying: “In view of the complexity and responsibility of the matter, allow me to go straight away.”

“No, take a seat again,” said Pilate, stopping his guest with a gesture, “there are two more questions. Your immense services in the most difficult work in your position as Chief of the Procurator of Judaea’s Secret Service give me the pleasant opportunity of reporting about them in Rome.”

At this point the guest’s face turned pink; he stood up and bowed to the Procurator, saying:

“I merely carry out my duty in the imperial service!”

“But I’d like to ask you,” continued the Hegemon, “if you’re offered a transfer away from here with a promotion, to refuse it and remain here. Not for anything would I want to part with you. May you be rewarded in some other way.”

“I am happy to serve under your command, Hegemon.”

“That’s very pleasant for me. And so, the second question. It concerns that, what’s his name… Judas of Kiriath.”

And at this point the guest threw one of his looks at the Procurator, and immediately, as is proper, extinguished it.

“They say,” the Procurator continued, lowering his voice, “he is supposed to have been given money for having welcomed that mad philosopher so warmly into his home.”

“He will be given it,” the Chief of the Secret Service quietly corrected Pilate.

“And is it a large sum?”

“That nobody can know, Hegemon.”

“Even you?” said the Hegemon, expressing praise through his astonishment.

“Alas, even I,” the guest calmly replied. “But that he will be given the money this evening, that I do know. He is summoned to Caipha’s palace today.”

“Ah, the greedy old man from Kiriath,” remarked the Procurator with a smile. “He is an old man, isn’t he?”

“The Procurator is never mistaken, but on this occasion he has made a mistake,” the guest replied cordially, “the man from Kiriath is a young man.”

“You don’t say! Can you give me a description of him? A fanatic?”

“Oh no, Procurator.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“He’s very handsome.”

“What else? Does he perhaps have some passion or other?”

“It’s hard to know everyone in this huge city so very precisely, Procurator…”

“Oh no, no, Afranius! Don’t belittle your merits.”

“He does have one passion, Procurator.” The guest made a tiny pause. “A passion for money.”

“And what does he do?”

Afranius raised his eyes upwards, thought for a moment and replied: “He works for one of his relatives in a money-changer’s.” “Ah, right, right, right.” At this point the Procurator fell silent, looked around to see if there was anyone on the balcony, and then said quietly: “Well, the point is this – I have today received information that he is going to be murdered tonight.”

Here the guest not only threw his look at the Procurator, he even held it there for a little, and after that replied:

“You were too flattering about me, Procurator. I don’t think I deserve your report. I don’t have this information.”

“You are worthy of the very highest reward,” the Procurator replied, “but there is such information.”

“Might I be so bold as to ask who this information is from?” “Permit me not to tell you that for the time being, particularly as it is casual, vague and unreliable. But it’s my duty to foresee everything. Such is my position, it’s my duty above all else to trust my premonitions, for never yet have they deceived me. But the information is that one of Ha-Nozri’s secret friends, indignant at this money-changer’s monstrous treachery, is arranging with his accomplices to kill him tonight and to drop off the money he receives for his treachery at the High Priest’s with a note: ‘I am returning the accursed money’.”

The Chief of the Secret Service cast no more of his unexpected looks at the Hegemon and carried on listening to him with narrowed eyes, while Pilate continued:

“Just imagine, will it be pleasant for the High Priest to receive such a gift on the night of the feast?”

“Not only not pleasant, Procurator,” replied the guest with a smile, “but I expect it will cause a very great scandal.”

“I too am of the same opinion myself. And that’s why I’m asking you to take the matter up – that is, to take all possible measures for the protection of Judas of Kiriath.”

“The Hegemon’s command will be carried out,” Afranius began, “but I must reassure the Hegemon: the villains’ plan is extremely impracticable. I mean, just think about it” – the guest turned around as he spoke, and then continued – “track a man down, murder him and on top of that find out how much he was given, and contrive to return the money to Caipha, and all that in one night? Tonight?”

“But he will nonetheless be murdered tonight,” Pilate repeated stubbornly. “I have a premonition, I’m telling you! There has never been an instance of one deceiving me,” at this point a spasm flitted over the Procurator’s face, and he gave his hands a brief rub.

“Yes, sir,” the guest responded obediently, then he rose, stood up straight, and suddenly asked sternly: “So he’ll be murdered, Hegemon?”

“Yes,” replied Pilate, “and the only hope is that assiduousness of yours that so astonishes everyone.”

The guest adjusted the heavy belt beneath his cloak and said:

“I have the honour to wish you to prosper and be joyful.”

“Ah yes,” Pilate exclaimed softly, “I completely forgot, didn’t I? I owe you some money, don’t I?”

The guest was astonished.

“Truly, Procurator, you don’t owe me anything.”

“What do you mean, ‘I don’t’! During my entrance into Jerusalem, you remember, the crowd of beggars… and I wanted to toss them some money, but I didn’t have any, and I took some from you.”

“Procurator, that was a trifling matter!”

“Even a trifling matter should be remembered.”

At this point Pilate turned around, picked up the cloak lying on the armchair behind him, took out from underneath it a leather pouch and held it out to the guest. The latter bowed as he took it, and hid it away beneath his cloak.

“I await,” began Pilate, “a report on the burial, and also on this matter of Judas of Kiriath this very night – do you hear, Afranius: tonight. The guard will be given the order to wake me as soon as you appear. I await you.”

“I’m honoured,” said the Chief of the Secret Service and, turning around, he left the balcony. He could be heard crunching across the wet sand of the terrace, then the tapping of his boots across the marble between the lions was heard, then his legs were cut off, then his body, and finally his hood disappeared as well. Only at that point did the Procurator see that the sun had already gone and the dusk had arrived.