The Master and Margarita

It was all over, and there was nothing more to talk about. Ha-Nozri was departing for ever, and there was no one to cure the dreadful, wicked pains of the procurator, there was no remedy for them except death. But it was not this thought which now struck Pilate. The same incomprehensible anguish that had already visited him on the balcony pierced his whole being. He tried at once to explain it, and the explanation was a strange one: it seemed vaguely to the procurator that there was something he had not finished saying to the condemned man, and perhaps something he had not finished hearing.

Pilate drove this thought away, and it flew off as instantly as it had come flying. It flew off, and the anguish remained unexplained, for it could not well be explained by another brief thought that flashed like lightning and at once went out — ‘Immortality ... immortality has come ...’ Whose immortality had come? That the procurator did not understand, but the thought of this enigmatic immortality made him grow cold in the scorching sun.

‘Very well,’ said Pilate, ‘let it be so.’

Here he turned, gazed around at the world visible to him, and was surprised at the change that had taken place. The bush laden with roses had vanished, vanished were the cypresses bordering the upper terrace, and the pomegranate tree, and the white statue amidst the greenery, and the greenery itself. In place of it all there floated some purple mass,²⁸ water weeds swayed in it and began moving off somewhere, and Pilate himself began moving with them. He was carried along now, smothered and burned, by the most terrible wrath — the wrath of impotence.

‘Cramped,’ said Pilate, ‘I feel cramped!’

With a cold, moist hand he tore at the clasp on the collar of his cloak, and it fell to the sand.

‘It’s sultry today, there’s a storm somewhere,’ Kaifa responded, not taking his eyes off the procurator’s reddened face, and foreseeing all the torments that still lay ahead, he thought: ‘Oh, what a terrible month of Nisan we’re having this year!’

‘No,’ said Pilate, ‘it’s not because of the sultriness, I feel cramped with you here, Kaifa.’ And, narrowing his eyes, Pilate smiled and added: ‘Watch out for yourself, High Priest.’

The high priest’s dark eyes glinted, and with his face - no less artfully than the procurator had done earlier — he expressed amazement.

‘What do I hear, Procurator?’ Kaifa replied proudly and calmly. ‘You threaten me after you yourself have confirmed the sentence passed? Can that be? We are accustomed to the Roman procurator choosing his words before he says something. What if we should be overheard, Hegemon?’

Pilate looked at the high priest with dead eyes and, baring his teeth, produced a smile.

‘What’s your trouble, High Priest? Who can hear us where we are now? Do you think I’m like that young vagrant holy fool who is to be executed today? Am I a boy, Kaifa? I know what I say and where I say it. There is a cordon around the garden, a cordon around the palace, so that a mouse couldn’t get through any crack! Not only a mouse, but even that one, what’s his name ... from the town of Kiriath, couldn’t get through. Incidentally, High Priest, do you know him? Yes ... if that one got in here, he’d feel bitterly sorry for himself, in this you will, of course, believe me? Know, then, that from now on, High Priest, you will have no peace! Neither you nor your people’ — and Pilate pointed far off to the right, where the temple blazed on high — ’it is I who tell you so, Pontius Pilate, equestrian of the Golden Spear!‘²⁹

‘I know, I know!’ the black-bearded Kaifa fearlessly replied, and his eyes flashed. He raised his arm to heaven and went on: ‘The Jewish people know that you hate them with a cruel hatred, and will cause them much suffering, but you will not destroy them utterly! God will protect them! He will hear us, the almighty Caesar will hear, he will protect us from Pilate the destroyer!’