26. The Burial

Perhaps it was this dusk that was the reason for the sharp change in the Procurator’s appearance. It was as if he had become visibly older, bent and anxious besides. Once he looked around, and for some reason shuddered upon casting a glance at the empty armchair on the back of which lay his cloak. The night of the feast was approaching, the shadows of evening were playing their game, and it probably appeared to the weary Procurator that there was someone sitting in the empty armchair. Having admitted faint-heartedness and given the cloak a shake, the Procurator left it alone and started hurrying around the balcony, now rubbing his hands, now hurrying up to the table and grabbing the goblet, now coming to a halt and starting to gaze senselessly at the mosaic on the floor, as though trying to read letters of some sort in it.

For the second time already that day depression was descending on him. Rubbing his temple, in which there remained only a dull, slightly aching memory of the hellish pain of the morning, the Procurator kept on struggling to understand the reason for his spiritual torment. And he quickly realized it, but tried to deceive himself. It was clear to him that he had irrevocably lost something that afternoon, and now he wanted to make amends for what had been lost by some petty and worthless, but, most importantly, belated actions. And his self-deception consisted in the Procurator trying to convince himself that these actions, the present ones of the evening, were no less important than the sentence of the morning. But the Procurator was managing this very badly.

At one of his turns he stopped abruptly and whistled. In response to this whistle a low bark rang out in the dusk, and there leapt out from the garden onto the balcony a gigantic sharp-eared dog with a grey coat, wearing a collar with gilt studs.

“Banga, Banga,” cried the Procurator weakly.

The dog rose up on its hind legs, dropped the front ones onto its master’s shoulders so that it all but knocked him to the ground and licked his cheek. The Procurator sat down in his armchair. Banga, with his tongue hanging out and breathing rapidly, lay down by its master’s feet, and the joy in the dog’s eyes signified that the thunderstorm, the only thing in the world that the fearless dog was afraid of, had ended, and also the fact that it was here again, alongside the man it loved, respected and considered the mightiest in the world, the master of all men, thanks to whom even the dog itself was considered a privileged creature, superior and special. Yet, having lain down at his feet, and without even looking at its master, but looking into the darkening garden, the dog immediately realized that a calamity had befallen its master. For that reason it changed its position, got up, came in from the side and put its front paws and head on the Procurator’s knees, smearing the bottom of his cloak with wet sand. Banga’s actions were probably meant to signify that it was comforting its master and was prepared to meet misfortune together with him. It was attempting to express this both in its eyes, which were turned sidelong towards its master, and in its pricked, wary ears. Thus the two of them, both the dog and the man, who loved one another, saw in the night of the feast on the balcony.

At this time the Procurator’s guest was extremely busy. After leaving the upper terrace of the garden in front of the balcony, he had gone down the staircase onto the garden’s lower terrace, had turned to the right and gone out towards the barracks located on the territory of the palace. It was in these barracks that the two centuries which had come to Yershalaim along with the Procurator for the feasts were quartered, and also the Procurator’s Secret Guard, which was commanded by this very guest. The guest did not spend much time in the barracks, no more than ten minutes, but on the expiration of those ten minutes three carts emerged from the barracks’ courtyard, loaded with entrenching tools and a barrel of water. The carts were accompanied by fifteen men in grey cloaks, horsemen. In their company, the carts emerged from the territory of the palace through the rear gates, bore to the west, went out through the gates in the city wall and set off first of all along a track to the Bethlehem road, and then along it to the north; they went as far as the crossroads by the Hebron gates, and then moved down the Jaffa road, along which the procession with the condemned men had passed on their way to the execution in the afternoon. At this time it was already dark, and the moon had appeared on the horizon.

Shortly after the carts had left with the team accompanying them, the Procurator’s guest, having changed into a dark, worn tunic, had also departed on horseback from the territory of the palace. The guest had headed not out of the city, but into the city. A little while later he could have been seen riding up to the Tower of Antonia, located in the north and in the immediate proximity of the Great Temple. The guest had also spent a very short time in the Tower, and then his trail had come to light in the Lower City, in its crooked and confused streets. The guest had arrived there now riding on a mule.

The guest, who knew the city well, easily found the street that he wanted. It bore the name Greek Street, since several Greek shops were situated on it, including one in which they traded in carpets. The guest stopped his mule by this very shop, dismounted and tied it to a ring by the gates. The shop had already been locked up. The guest went in through the gate which was to be found next to the entrance to the shop and entered a small, square courtyard, surrounded by sheds in the shape of the letter pokoi. Turning a corner in the courtyard, the guest found himself by the stone terrace of a house entwined in ivy, and looked around. Both the house and the sheds were dark; the lights had not yet been lit. Softly the guest said:

“Niza!”

At this call a door creaked, and in the evening twilight there appeared on the terrace a young woman without a shawl. She bent over the terrace handrail, peering anxiously in her desire to find out who had come. Recognizing the visitor, she began smiling at him cordially, nodded and waved.

“Are you alone?” Afranius asked softly in Greek.

“I am,” whispered the woman on the terrace. “My husband left for Caesarea this morning.” At this point the woman glanced round at the door and added in a whisper: “But the maidservant’s at home.” At this point she made a gesture meaning “come in”. Afranius glanced round and stepped onto the stone steps. After this, both he and the woman disappeared inside the little house.

Afranius now spent not long at all with this woman – certainly not more than five minutes or so. After that, he left the house and the terrace, pulled his hood down low over his eyes and went out into the street. Lamps were already being lit in the houses at this time; the pre-feast crush of people was still very great, and Afranius on his mule was lost in the stream of passersby on foot and riding. His route thereafter is known to no one.

But when left alone, the woman that Afranius had called Niza began changing her clothes, and did so very hurriedly. Yet no matter how hard it was for her to find the things she needed in the dark room, she did not light the lamp and did not summon the maidservant. Only after she was prepared and already had a dark shawl on her head was her voice heard in the little house:

“If anyone asks for me, say I’ve gone to visit Enanta.”

The grumbling of the old maidservant was heard in the darkness:

“Enanta? Oh, that Enanta! But your husband forbade you to visit her, didn’t he? She’s a procuress, that Enanta of yours! I’ll tell your husband…”

“Now, now, now, be quiet,” Niza responded, and slipped like a shadow out of the little house. Niza’s sandals tapped over the stone flags of the little courtyard. Grumbling, the maidservant closed the door onto the terrace. Niza left her home.

At this very time from another lane in the Lower Town – a winding lane, running down in steps towards one of the city ponds, from the gate of an unprepossessing house, the blind side of which backed onto the lane, while the windows looked out onto the courtyard – there emerged a young man with a neatly trimmed little beard wearing a clean white keffiyeh, a new tallith for the feast with tassels at the bottom and nice new squeaky sandals. The handsome, hook-nosed man, dressed up for the big feast, walked jauntily, overtaking passers-by hurrying home for their festive meal, and watched as one window after another lit up. The young man was heading down the road leading past the bazaar towards the palace of the High Priest Caipha, situated by the foot of the Temple Mount.

Some time later he could be seen entering the gates of Caipha’s palace. And some time later still, leaving that courtyard.

After the visit to the palace, in which lamps and torches were already burning, in which the bustle of the feast was under way, the young man started walking even more jauntily, even more joyfully, and began hurrying back to the Lower Town. On that very corner where the street opened into the market square, in the seething and the jostling, he was overtaken by a light woman, who walked with a dancing sort of step, wearing a dark shawl drawn right down to her eyes. As she overtook the handsome young man, this woman drew the shawl back a little higher for a moment and cast a glance in the direction of the young man, yet not only did she not slacken her pace, she quickened it, as though trying to give the man she had overtaken the slip.

Not only did the young man notice the woman, no, he recognized her, and when he recognized her, he jumped, stopped, gazing at her back in bewilderment, and immediately set off to catch up with her. All but knocking over a passer-by with a jug in his hands, the young man caught up with the woman and, breathing hard in agitation, called out to her:

“Niza!”

The woman turned and narrowed her eyes: cold annoyance was expressed on her face, and she answered drily in Greek:

“Ah, is it you, Judas? I didn’t recognize you at first. Still, that’s a good thing. We have a saying that a person who isn’t recognized gets rich.”

So agitated that his heart began jumping like a bird under a black shawl, Judas asked with a catch in his voice and in a whisper, fearing that passers-by might hear:

“Wherever are you going, Niza?”

“And why do you need to know that?” replied Niza, slackening her pace and gazing at Judas haughtily.

Then certain childish intonations could be heard in Judas’s voice, and he started whispering in dismay:

“But what do you mean? We made arrangements, didn’t we? I wanted to come and see you. You said you’d be at home all evening…”

“Oh no, no,” Niza replied, and stuck out her lower lip capriciously, which made it seem to Judas that her face, the most beautiful face he had ever seen in his life, had become even more beautiful, “I got bored. It’s a feast day for you, but what on earth do you expect me to do? Sit and listen to you sighing on the terrace? And be afraid, what’s more, that the maidservant will tell my husband about it? No, no – and so I decided to go out of town and listen to the nightingales.”

“What do you mean ‘out of town’?” asked the bewildered Judas. “By yourself?”

“Of course, by myself,” replied Niza.

“Allow me to accompany you,” requested Judas, gasping for breath. His thoughts were in a whirl; he had forgotten everything on earth, and he looked with imploring eyes into Niza’s blue ones, which seemed now to be black.

Niza made no reply and increased her pace.

“Why don’t you say anything, Niza?” asked Judas piteously, matching her pace.

“And I won’t be bored with you?” Niza suddenly asked, and stopped. At this point Judas’s thoughts became utterly confused.

“Well, all right,” Niza finally softened, “come on.”

“But where to, where to?”

“Hang on. let’s go into this little courtyard and make arrangements, or else I’m afraid someone I know will see me, and then they’ll say I was with my lover in the street.”

And at that point Niza and Judas disappeared from the bazaar. They were whispering in the gateway of some courtyard.

“Go to the olive estate,” whispered Niza, pulling the shawl down over her eyes and turning away from some man who was going through the gateway with a bucket, “to Gethsemane, beyond Kidron, got it?”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

“I’ll go on ahead,” continued Niza, “but don’t you follow on my heels, you go separately from me. I’ll go off in front… When you cross the stream. you know where the grotto is?”

“I know, I know.”

“You’ll go up past the olive press and turn towards the grotto. I’ll be there. Only don’t you dare come after me immediately: have patience, wait here.” And with these words Niza went out from the gateway as though she had never been talking with Judas.

Judas stood alone for some time, trying to collect his scattered thoughts. Among them was the thought of how he would explain his absence from his family’s festive meal. Judas stood thinking up some sort of lie, but in his agitation he failed to consider or prepare anything properly, and his legs carried him away out of the gateway by themselves, without his volition.

Now he had altered his route: he was no longer heading for the Lower Town, but had turned back towards Caipha’s palace. The feast had already entered the city. Not only were lights twinkling in the windows around Judas, but doxologies could already be heard. The final latecomers were driving their donkeys along, whipping them on and shouting at them. His legs carried Judas by themselves, and he did not notice the terrifying, moss-covered Towers of Antonia fly past him, he did not hear the roar of trumpets in the fortress, he paid no attention to the mounted Roman patrol with a torch that flooded his path with a disquieting light.

After passing the tower, Judas turned and saw that terribly high above the Temple two gigantic five-branched candlesticks had been lit. But even them Judas made out dimly: it seemed to him that over Yershalaim there had begun to shine ten lamps, unprecedented in size, rivalling the light of the single lamp rising ever higher over Yershalaim – the lamp of the moon.

Nothing was of any concern to Judas now; he headed towards the Gethsemane Gate; he wanted to leave the city as quickly as he could. It seemed to him at times that, among the backs and faces of the passers-by, there was a glimpse in front of him of a little dancing figure leading him on. But this was an illusion – Judas understood that Niza had significantly outstripped him. Judas ran past the money-changers’ and finally came to the Gethsemane Gate. There, burning with impatience, he was nonetheless forced to pause. There were camels entering the city, and a Syrian military patrol, which Judas inwardly cursed, rode in after them…

But everything comes to an end. The impatient Judas was already outside the city wall. On his left-hand side Judas caught sight of a small graveyard and, beside it, several striped pilgrims’ tents. Crossing the dusty road flooded in moonlight, Judas hurried towards the stream of Kidron with the aim of crossing it. The water murmured quietly beneath Judas’s feet. Jumping from stone to stone, he finally came out onto the opposite Gethsemane bank, and saw with great joy that here the road below the gardens was empty. Already visible not far away were the crumbling gates of the olive estate.

After the stifling city Judas was struck by the heavy scent of the spring night. Pouring out over the wall from the garden was a wave of scent of myrtles and acacias from Gethsemane’s glades.

Nobody was guarding the gates – there was nobody in them, and a few minutes later Judas was already running beneath the secretive shade of the huge, spreading olives. The road led uphill. Judas climbed, breathing hard, at times coming out of the darkness onto carpets of patterned moonlight, reminding him of the carpets he had seen in the shop belonging to Niza’s jealous husband. After some time there was a glimpse in a glade to Judas’s left of an olive press with a heavy stone wheel and a stack of barrels of some sort. There was nobody in the garden. Work had stopped at sunset, and now above Judas there rolled the thunderous singing of choirs of nightingales.

Judas’s goal was at hand. He knew that very soon in the darkness on the right he would begin to hear the quiet whispering of the water falling in the grotto. And so it was, he did hear it. It was becoming ever cooler.

Then he slackened his pace and cried softly:

“Niza!”

But instead of Niza, separating itself from the thick trunk of an olive tree, out onto the road jumped a thickset male figure; something flashed in his hand and at once died away. With a weak cry, Judas rushed back, but a second man blocked his path.

The first man, the one who was ahead of him, asked Judas: “How much have you just been given? Speak, if you want to preserve your life!”

Hope blazed up in Judas’s heart, and he exclaimed desperately:

“Thirty tetradrachms! Thirty tetradrachms! I have all I was given with me. Here’s the money! Take it, but give me back my life!”

The man who was ahead instantly snatched the purse out of Judas’s hands. And at the same moment a knife flew up behind Judas’s back and struck the infatuated man like lightning beneath the shoulder blade. Judas was flung forwards, and he threw his hands with their bent fingers out into the air. The man ahead caught Judas on his own knife and plunged it up to the hilt into Judas’s heart.

“Ni… za…” said Judas, not in his own high and clear young voice, but in a voice low and reproachful, and he did not emit a single sound more. His body struck the ground so hard that the ground started buzzing.

Then a third figure appeared on the road. This third man wore a hooded cloak.

"Don’t linger,” he ordered. The murderers quickly packed the purse together with a note, handed them by the third man, into a piece of leather, and criss-crossed it with string. The second man stuck the package in his bosom, and then the two murderers hurried off the road in different directions, and the darkness ate them up between the olive trees. But the third man squatted down beside the murdered man and gazed into his face. To the man looking it appeared white as chalk in the shade, and somehow spiritually beautiful.

A few seconds later there was no living person on the road. The lifeless body lay with outstretched arms. The left foot had fallen into a patch of moonlight so that every strap of the sandal was distinctly visible. At this time the entire Garden of Gethsemane thundered with the song of nightingales. No one knows where the two men who had murdered Judas made for, but the route of the third man in the hood is known. Leaving the path, he headed into a thicket of olive trees, making his way south. He climbed over the garden wall at a distance from the main gates, in its southern corner, where the topmost stones had fallen out of the stonework. Soon he was on the bank of the Kidron. Then he entered the water and made his way through the water for some time, until he saw in the distance the silhouettes of two horses and a man beside them. The horses were standing in the stream too. The water gushed as it washed round their hoofs. The horseholder mounted one of the horses, the hooded man leapt up onto the other, and they both set off slowly in the stream, and the stones could be heard crunching under the horses’ hoofs. Then the horsemen rode out of the water, made their way out onto the Yershalaim bank and set off at a walk beneath the city wall. At this point the horse-holder broke away, galloped on ahead and disappeared from view, while the hooded man stopped his horse, dismounted from it on the deserted road, took off his cloak, turned it inside out, took out from under the cloak a flat helmet without plumage and put it on. Now there leapt up onto the horse a man in a military chlamys and with a short sword at his hip. He touched the reins and the fiery horse set off at a trot, shaking the rider about. The journey was not a long one – the horseman was approaching Yershalaim’s southern gate.

Under the archway of the gate the restless flames of torches danced and leapt. The soldiers on watch from the Lightning Legion’s second century were sitting on stone benches playing dice. On seeing the military man riding in, the soldiers leapt up from their seats; he waved to them and entered the city.

The city was flooded with festive lights. The flames of lamps were playing in all the windows, and doxologies rang out from everywhere, merging into a discordant choir. Glancing occasionally into windows that looked out into the street, the horseman could see people at festive tables, on which there lay kid’s meat and where goblets of wine stood between dishes of bitter herbs. Whistling some quiet little song, the horseman made his way at an unhurried trot along the deserted streets of the Lower Town, heading for the Tower of Antonia, casting occasional glances at the five-branched candelabra, never seen anywhere before in the world, that burned above the Temple – or at the moon, which hung even higher than the five-branched candelabra.

The palace of Herod the Great took no part at all in the celebration of the Passover night. In the south-facing ancillary chambers of the palace, where the officers of the Roman Cohort and the Legate of the Legion were accommodated, lights were shining, and there was a sense there of some sort of movement and life. But the front, the official part – where the single and unwilling resident of the palace, the Procurator, was – seemed in its entirety, with its colonnades and golden statues, to have gone blind beneath the brightest of moons. Here, inside the palace, gloom and silence held sway. And the Procurator, just as he had said to Afranius, had had no desire to go inside. He had ordered a bed to be prepared on the balcony, in the same place where he had eaten dinner and had that morning conducted the interrogation. The Procurator had lain down on the couch that had been prepared, but sleep had refused to come to him. The bare moon hung high in the clear sky, and the Procurator did not take his eyes off it over the course of several hours.

At about midnight sleep finally took pity on the Hegemon. With a convulsive yawn, the Procurator undid and threw off his cloak, took off the belt that engirdled his shirt with a broad steel knife in a sheath, put it in the armchair by the couch, took off his sandals and stretched out. Banga immediately got up onto his bed and lay down beside him, head to head, and, putting his hand on the dog’s neck, the Procurator finally closed his eyes. Only then did the dog, too, fall asleep.

The couch was in semi-darkness, hidden from the moon by a column, but from the steps of the porch to the bed stretched a ribbon of moonlight. And as soon as the Procurator lost connection with what was around him in reality, he immediately moved off along the shining path and went up it straight towards the moon. He even burst out laughing in happiness in his sleep, so splendid and unique had everything turned out on the transparent blue path. He walked, accompanied by Banga, and next to him walked the vagrant philosopher. They argued about something very complex and important, and neither one of them could defeat the other. They did not agree with one another about anything, and because of that their argument was particularly interesting and interminable. It goes without saying that the execution that day proved to be the most complete misunderstanding – after all, the philosopher who had thought up such an incredibly absurd thing as the idea that all people were good was here, walking along next to him, therefore he was alive. And, of course, it would be absolutely awful even to think that such a man could be executed. There had been no execution! None! And that was the delightful thing about that journey up the stairway of the moon.

They had all the free time they needed, and the storm would come only towards evening, and cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices. So said Yeshua Ha-Nozri. No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it is the most terrible vice!

So, for example, the present Procurator of Judaea, the former tribune of a legion, had not been a coward then, had he, in the Valley of the Virgins, when the frenzied Teutons had almost torn Rat-Catcher the Giant to pieces. But forgive me, philosopher! Surely you, with your intelligence, can’t concede the notion that the Procurator of Judaea would ruin his career for a man who has committed a crime against Caesar?

“Yes, yes,” Pilate moaned and sobbed in his sleep.

Of course he would. That morning he would not yet have done so, but now, in the night, after weighing everything up,he was prepared to ruin it. He would do anything to save from execution the mad dreamer and doctor who was guilty of absolutely nothing.

“We shall always be together now,” he was told in his sleep by the ragged vagrant philosopher who had crossed the path, who knows how, of the horseman with the golden lance. “If there is one – then that means the other is there too. If I am remembered – you too will be remembered straight away!I, a foundling, the son of unknown parents, and you, the son of the astrologer-king and the miller’s daughter, the beautiful Pila.”

“Yes, don’t you forget, you remember me, the astrologer’s son, in your prayers,” Pilate requested in his sleep. And, securing a nod from the beggar from En-Sarid walking next to him in his sleep, the cruel Procurator of Judaea cried and laughed with joy in his sleep.

All this was good, but all the more terrible was the Hegemon’s awakening. Banga started growling at the moon, and the blue path ahead of the Procurator, slippery, as though smeared with oil, vanished. He opened his eyes, and the first thing he remembered was that the execution had taken place. The first thing the Procurator did was to catch hold of Banga’s collar with a customary gesture, then with painful eyes he began searching for the moon and saw it had moved a little to one side and become silvery. Its light was interrupted by an unpleasant, restless light playing on the balcony right before his eyes. A torch was glowing and smoking in the hands of the centurion Rat-Catcher. The man holding it was looking askance in terror and with malice at the dangerous beast which was ready to pounce.

“Let him be, Banga,” said the Procurator in a sick voice, and coughed. Shielding himself from the flame with his hand, he continued: “Even at night, even in the moonlight I have no peace. O gods! You have a bad job too, Marcus. You maim soldiers…”

Marcus gazed at the Procurator in the greatest astonishment and the latter came to his senses. To gloss over the uncalled-for words, uttered while only half awake, the Procurator said:

“Don’t take offence, Centurion. My position, I repeat, is even worse. What do you want?”

“The Chief of the Secret Guard is here to see you,” Marcus calmly informed him.

“Call him in, call him in,” the Procurator ordered, clearing his throat with a cough, and started feeling for his sandals with his bare feet. The flame began playing on the columns, and the centurion’s caligae began tapping across the mosaic. The centurion went out into the garden.

“Even in the moonlight I have no peace,” the Procurator said to himself, grinding his teeth.

In the centurion’s place on the balcony there appeared a hooded man.

“Banga, let him be,” the Procurator said quietly, and squeezed the top of the dog’s head.

Before starting to speak, Afranius, as was his custom, looked around and moved away into the shadows, and, satisfying himself that, apart from Banga, there was no one else on the balcony, said quietly:

“Please put me on trial, Procurator. You have proved right. I was unable to keep Judas of Kiriath safe: he’s been murdered. I request a trial and dismissal.”

It seemed to Afranius that four eyes were gazing at him – a dog’s and a wolf’s.

Afranius took out from beneath his chlamys a purse stiffened with blood and sealed with two seals.

“This bag of money was thrown by the murderers into the High Priest’s house. The blood on this bag is the blood of Judas of Kiriath.”

“How much is in there, I wonder?” Pilate asked, leaning towards the bag.

“Thirty tetradrachms.”

The Procurator grinned and said:

“Not a lot.”

Afranius was silent.

“Where is the dead man?”

“That I don’t know,” the man who was never parted from his hood replied with calm dignity, “we’ll begin the search in the morning.”

The Procurator gave a start and dropped the strap of his sandal, which would not do up for anything.

“But you know for sure he’s dead?”

To this the Procurator got a dry response:

“Procurator, I’ve been working in Judaea for fifteen years. I began my service in Valerius Gratus’s time. It’s not essential for me to see a corpse to say that a man is dead, and I’m reporting to you now that the man they called Judas from the town of Kiriath was murdered several hours ago.”

“Forgive me, Afranius,” replied Pilate, “I’ve not woken up properly yet, and that’s why I said that. I sleep badly” – the Procurator grinned – “and I dream about a moonbeam all the time. It’s so ridiculous, imagine it. As if I’m going for a walk along this beam. So, I’d like to know your intentions in this matter. Where do you mean to look for him? Sit down, Chief of the Secret Service.”

Afranius bowed, moved an armchair up a little closer to the bed and sat down, making a clatter with his sword.

“I mean to look for him not far from the olive press in the Garden of Gethsemane.”

“I see, I see. And why there exactly?”

“As I understand it, Hegemon, Judas was killed not in Yershalaim itself and not somewhere far away from it. He was killed in the vicinity of Yershalaim.”

“I consider you an outstanding expert in your field. Well, I don’t know how things are in Rome, but in the colonies you have no equal. Explain why?”

“Under no circumstances can I accept the idea,” said Afranius softly, “that Judas let himself be caught by some suspicious person or other within the boundaries of the city. You can’t kill secretly in the street. So he had to be lured into some cellar. But the service was already looking for him in the Lower Town and would undoubtedly have found him. But he isn’t in the city, I guarantee you that. If he’d been killed far from the city, this package of money couldn’t have been dropped off so quickly. He was killed close by the city. They managed to lure him outof the city.”

“I cannot comprehend how it could have been done.”

“Yes, Procurator, that is the most difficult question in this whole affair, and I don’t even know whether I shall succeed in resolving it.”

“It really is mysterious! On the evening of the feast a believer goes off out of town, no one knows why, abandoning the Passover meal, and there he perishes. Who could have lured him out, and with what? Was it a woman that did it?” the Procurator suddenly asked, inspired.

Afranius replied calmly and weightily:

“Under no circumstances, Procurator. That possibility is completely ruled out. Logical reasoning is required. Who had an interest in Judas’s death? Vagrant visionaries of some sort, some sort of circle in which, above all, there were no women. To marry, Procurator, money is required, to bring a person into the world it s needed too, but to murder a man with the help of a woman, a very large sum of money is needed, and no vagrants have that. There was no woman in this business, Procurator. I’ll say more, such an interpretation of the murder can only throw us off the scent, hinder the investigation and get me confused.”

“I can see that you’re absolutely right, Afranius,” said Pilate, “and I only permitted myself to make a suggestion.”

“Alas, it’s a mistaken one, Procurator.”

“But what, what then?” exclaimed the Procurator, peering into Afranius’s face with avid curiosity.

“I presume it s that same thing: money again.”

“A remarkable idea! But who could have offered him money at night, outside of town, and for what?”

“Oh no, Procurator, it’s not like that. I have a single supposition, and if it’s wrong, I may not find any other explanations.” Afranius leant a little closer to the Procurator and finished what he was saying in a whisper: “Judas wanted to hide his money in a secluded place known only to him.”

'A very subtle explanation. And that’s evidently how the matter stood. Now I understand you: he was lured out not by other people, but by his own thinking. Yes, yes, that s it.”

“Right. Judas was mistrustful. He was hiding the money from people.”

“Yes, you said, in Gethsemane. But then why you intend looking for him specifically there – that, I confess, I don’t understand.”

“Oh, Procurator, that’s simplest of all. Nobody is going to hide money on the roads, in open and empty places. Judas was neither on the road to Hebron, nor on the road to Bethany. He needed to be in a sheltered, secluded place with trees. It’s that simple. And there are no other such places in the vicinity of Yershalaim, apart from Gethsemane. He couldn’t have gone far.”

“You’ve completely convinced me. So, what’s to be done now?”

“I shall immediately start looking for the murderers who tracked Judas down outside the city, and in the mean time, as I’ve already told you, I shall myself go on trial.”

“Why?”

“My guards lost him at the bazaar in the evening, after he’d left Caipha’s palace. How it occurred, I don’t understand. This has never happened in my life before. He was put under observation straight after our conversation. But in the bazaar district he slipped off somewhere and made such a strange loop that he escaped without trace.”

“Right. I declare to you that I do not consider it necessary to make you stand trial. You did everything you could, and nobody in the world” – here the Procurator smiled – “could have managed to do more than you! Punish the agents who lost Judas. But even then, I warn you, I wouldn’t want the punishment to be severe, not even in the slightest. In the end, we did everything to look after this villain! Yes, I forgot to ask” – the Procurator wiped his brow – “how ever did they contrive to drop the money off at Caipha’s?”

“You see, Procurator… It s not particularly complicated. The avengers passed by the rear of Caipha’s palace, where the lane lies above the rear courtyard. They threw the package over the wall.”

“With a note?”

“Yes, exactly as you supposed, Procurator. Yes, anyway.” At this point Afranius broke the seal off the package and showed its interior to Pilate.

“Please, what are you doing, Afranius – those seals are presumably from the Temple, after all!”

“It’s not worth the Procurator worrying himself over that question,” replied Afranius, closing the package.

“Surely you don’t have every seal, do you?” asked Pilate, laughing.

“It cannot be otherwise, Procurator,” replied Afranius very severely, without any laughter.

“I can imagine what it was like at Caipha’s!”

“Yes, Procurator, it caused very great agitation. I was asked to come immediately.”

Even in the semi-darkness Pilate’s eyes could be seen flashing.

“That’s interesting, interesting…”

“I beg to differ, Procurator: it wasn’t interesting. A most dull and exhausting business. At my question as to whether any money had been paid out to anyone in Caipha’s palace, I was told categorically that no such thing had happened.”

“Oh really? Well, if none was paid out, then none was paid out. The harder it will be to find the murderers.”

“Perfectly correct, Procurator.”

“Yes, Afranius, here’s what’s suddenly occurred to me: did he not commit suicide?”

“Oh no, Procurator,” Afranius replied, even leaning back in his armchair in surprise, “forgive me, but that s most unlikely!”

“Hah, in this city, anything’s likely! I’m prepared to bet that in the shortest time rumours of it will spread throughout the entire city.”

At this point Afranius cast his look at the Procurator, had a think and replied:

“It’s possible, Procurator.”

The Procurator was apparently still unable to drop this question of the murder of the man from Kiriath, although absolutely everything was clear as it was, and, even with a certain dreaminess, he said:

“I’d have liked to see how they killed him, though.”

“He was killed with extreme artistry, Procurator,” Afranius replied, giving the Procurator some rather ironic looks.

“And how on earth do you know that?”

“Be so kind as to pay attention to the bag,” replied Afranius. “I can guarantee you that Judas’s blood gushed out like a wave. I’ve seen some dead men in my time, Procurator!”

“So he won’t be rising again, of course?”

“Yes, Procurator, he will be rising again,” Afranius replied with a philosophical smile, “when the trumpet of the Messiah that they’re expecting here resounds above him. But he won’t rise again any earlier.”

“Enough, Afranius! That question is clear. Let’s move on to the burial.”

“The executed men have been buried, Procurator.”

“Oh, Afranius, putting you on trial would be a crime. You are worthy of the highest reward. How was it?”

Afranius began telling him, and told how at the time when he was himself busy with the matter of Judas, a team of the Secret Guard, led by his deputy, had reached the hill when evening had set in. It had failed to find one of the bodies on the summit. Pilate gave a start and said hoarsely:

“Oh, how on earth did I fail to foresee this!”

“It’s not worth worrying, Procurator,” said Afranius, and continued his narrative.

They had picked up the bodies of Dismas and Gestas, with their eyes pecked out by predatory birds, and immediately hastened to look for the third body. It had been found in a very short time. A certain person…

“Levi Matthew,” said Pilate, not so much enquiringly as affirmatively.

“Yes, Procurator…”

Levi Matthew had been hiding in a cave on the northern slope of Bald Skull, waiting for darkness. The naked body of Yeshua Ha-Nozri had been with him. When the guard had entered the cave with a torch, Levi had fallen into despair and rage. He had shouted that he had committed no crime and that, by law, any man had the right to bury an executed criminal if he wanted. Levi Matthew had said that he did not wish to part with this body. He had been excited, shouting out something incoherent, at times begging, at times threatening and cursing…

“Did he have to be arrested?” asked Pilate gloomily.

“No, Procurator, no,” replied Afranius very reassuringly, "it proved possible to calm the audacious madman by explaining that the body was to be buried.”

When he had grasped what had been said, Levi had quietened down, but had announced that he was going nowhere and wanted to participate in the burial. He had said he would not go away, even if they set out to kill him, and he had even offered a bread knife which he had had with him for that purpose.

"Was he driven off?” asked Pilate in a crushed voice.

"No, Procurator, no. My deputy allowed him to participate in the burial.”

"Which of your deputies was in charge of this?” asked Pilate.

"Tolmai,” replied Afranius, and added in alarm: "Perhaps he made an error?”

"Continue,” replied Pilate. "There was no error. All in all, I’m beginning to get a little flustered, Afranius; I’m evidently dealing with a man who never makes any errors. That man is you.”

Levi Matthew had been taken in the cart together with the bodies of the executed men, and a couple of hours later they had reached a deserted ravine to the north of Yershalaim. There, working in shifts, the team had in the course of an hour dug out a deep pit and in it buried all three executed men.

“Naked?”

“No, Procurator: the team had taken tunics with them for the purpose. Rings were put on the fingers of the buried men. Yeshua’s with one cut in it, Dismas’s with two and Gestas’s with three. The pit was filled up and covered over with stones. The landmark is known to Tolmai.”

“Oh, if only I could have foreseen it!” began Pilate, frowning. “I ought to see this Levi Matthew, you know…”

“He’s here, Procurator.”

Opening his eyes wide, Pilate gazed at Afranius for some time and then said this:

“I’m grateful to you for everything that’s been done in connection with this matter. Tomorrow please send Tolmai to me; tell him in advance that I’m pleased with him, and you, Afranius” – here the Procurator took a ring out of the pocket of a belt that was lying on the table and handed it to the Chief of the Secret Service – “please accept this as a memento.”

Afranius bowed and said:

“It’s a great honour, Procurator.”

“Please give rewards to the team that carried out the burial. To the agents who lost Judas, a reprimand. And send Levi Matthew to me at once. I need details on the case of Yeshua.”

“Very well, Procurator,” Afranius responded, and started to retreat, bowing, while the Procurator clapped his hands and shouted:

“Come here to me! A lamp to the colonnade!”

Afranius was already moving away into the garden, and behind Pilate’s back lights could already be glimpsed in the hands of the servants. Three lamps appeared on the table in front of the Procurator, and the moonlit night immediately retreated into the garden, as though Afranius had taken it away with him. In place of Afranius, onto the balcony alongside the giant centurion stepped a stranger, small and skinny. The former, catching the Procurator’s glance, immediately retreated into the garden and disappeared.

The Procurator studied the new arrival with greedy and slightly frightened eyes. People look that way at someone of whom they have heard a lot, of whom they have themselves been thinking and who has finally appeared.

The new arrival, getting on for forty, was black, ragged and covered in dried mud, and looked from under his brows, like a wolf. In short, he was very unsightly, and most likely resembled a city beggar, many of whom knock about on the terraces of the Temple or in the bazaars of the noisy and dirty Lower Town.

The silence lasted a long time, and it was broken by the strange behaviour of the man brought before Pilate. He changed countenance, swayed, and, had he not grabbed the edge of the table with a dirty hand, would have fallen.

“What’s wrong with you?” Pilate asked him.

“Nothing,” Levi Matthew replied, and made a movement as if he had swallowed something. His skinny, bare, dirty neck swelled out, then subsided again.

“What’s wrong with you – answer,” Pilate repeated.

“I’m tired,” Levi replied, and looked gloomily at the floor.

“Sit down,” Pilate said, and indicated an armchair.

Levi looked at the Procurator mistrustfully, moved towards the armchair, looked askance in fright at the gold arms and sat down not in the armchair, but alongside it on the floor.

“Explain, why didn’t you sit down in the armchair?” asked Pilate.

“I’m dirty, I’ll soil it,” said Levi, looking at the ground.

“You’ll be given something to eat in a moment.”

“I don’t want to eat,” replied Levi.

“Why ever lie?” asked Pilate quietly. “After all, you haven’t eaten all day, or perhaps even longer. Well, all right, don’t eat. I summoned you for you to show me the knife you had.”

“The soldiers took it away from me when they were bringing me in here,” Levi replied, and added gloomily: “You give it back to me, I need to return it to the owner; I stole it.”

“Why?”

“To cut the ropes,” replied Levi.

“Marcus!” cried the Procurator, and the centurion stepped in beneath the columns. “Give his knife to me.”

The centurion took the dirty bread knife out of one of the two cases on his belt, handed it to the Procurator, and himself withdrew.

“And who did you take the knife from?”

“The bread shop by the Hebron Gate, immediately on the left as you enter the city.”

Pilate looked at the broad blade, for some reason tried it with his finger to see if the knife was sharp, and said:

“As regards the knife, don’t worry, the knife will be returned to the shop. But now I need something else: show me the charter you carry about with you where Yeshua’s words are written down.”

Levi looked at Pilate with hatred and smiled such an unkind smile that his face was completely disfigured.

“You want to take away everything? The last thing I have as well?” he asked.

“I didn’t say ‘Hand it over’,” replied Pilate, “I said ‘Show me’.”

Levi rummaged around in his bosom and took out a roll of parchment. Pilate took it, opened it out, spread it out between the lights and, squinting, began studying the barely decipherable ink marks. It was hard to understand these uneven lines, and Pilate frowned and bent right down to the parchment with his finger tracing them. Nonetheless, he managed to make out that what was written represented an incoherent series of sayings, dates of some sort, housekeeping notes and fragments of poetry. Pilate read some of it: “There is no death… Yesterday we ate the sweet young figs of spring.”

Grimacing from the strain, Pilate screwed his eyes up and read:

“We shall see the pure river of the water of life. Mankind will look at the sun through transparent crystal.”

At this point Pilate gave a start. In the last lines of the parchment he made out the words: “greater vice. cowardice”.

Pilate rolled the parchment up and with an abrupt movement handed it to Levi.

“Take it,” he said and, after a short silence, added: “You’re a man of books, so far as I can see, and there’s no reason for you to go around alone in the clothes of a beggar with no shelter. I have a big library in Caesarea, I’m very rich, and I want to take you into my service. You’ll sort out and look after the papyri, you’ll be fed and clothed.”

Levi stood up and replied:

“No, I don’t want to.”

“Why not?” the Procurator asked, his face darkening. “Do you find me unpleasant, are you afraid of me?”

That same nasty smile distorted Levi’s face, and he said:

“No, because you’ll be afraid of me. You won’t find it particularly easy to look me in the face after having killed him.”

“Silence,” replied Pilate, “take some money.”

Levi shook his head in refusal, but the Procurator continued:

“I know you consider yourself Yeshua’s disciple, but I can tell you that you’ve mastered nothing of what he taught you. For if that were the case, you’d be sure to take something from me. Bear in mind that before he died, he said he blamed no one.” Pilate raised a finger meaningfully, and Pilate’s face was twitching. “And he himself would have taken something without fail. You’re cruel, but he wasn’t cruel. Where will you go?”

Levi suddenly approached the table, leant both hands upon it and, looking at the Procurator with burning eyes, whispered to him:

"Know, Hegemon, that I’m going to murder a certain person in Yershalaim. I want to tell you this so you know there’s going to be some more blood.”

"I know too that there’s going to be some more of it,” replied Pilate, "you haven’t surprised me with your words. You want to murder me, of course?”

"I’ll have no success in murdering you,” Levi replied, baring his teeth in a smile, "I’m not such a stupid man as to count on that, but I am going to murder Judas of Kiriath; I shall devote the rest of my life to it.”

At this point delight was expressed in the Procurator’s eyes, and, beckoning Levi Matthew closer to him with his finger, he said:

"You’ll have no success in doing that, don’t you trouble yourself. Judas has already been murdered tonight.”

Levi jumped back from the table, gazing around wildly, and cried out:

"Who did it?”

"Don’t be jealous,” Pilate replied with a grin, 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, but the latter said quietly:

“What’s been done isn’t very much, of course, but all the same, I did it.” And he added: “Well, now will you take something?”

Levi had a think, softened, and finally said:

“Give orders for me to be given a piece of clean parchment.”

An hour passed. Levi was gone from the palace. Now the silence of dawn was broken only by the quiet noise of the sentries’ footsteps in the garden. The moon was rapidly fading, and at the other edge of the sky could be seen the little whitish spot of the morning star. The lamps had gone out ages ago. On the couch lay the Procurator. With his hand under his cheek he was sleeping and breathing soundlessly. Sleeping alongside him was Banga.

Thus the fifth Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, greeted the dawn of the fifteenth of Nisan.