“And so,” he said, “answer: do you know a certain Judas of Kiriath, and what precisely did you say to him, if you did say anything, about Caesar?”
“It was like this,” the prisoner willingly began recounting. “In the evening the day before yesterday I met a young man outside the Temple who gave his name as Judas from the town of Kiriath. He invited me to his home in the Lower Town and gave me hospitality.”
“A good man?” asked Pilate, and a devilish light glinted in his eyes.
“A very good and inquisitive man,” the prisoner confirmed. “He showed the greatest interest in my ideas, received me most cordially…”
“Lit the lamps…”[83] said Pilate through gritted teeth in the same tone as the prisoner, and his eyes were glimmering as he did so.
“Yes,” continued Yeshua, a little surprised at how well informed the Procurator was, “he asked me to set out my opinion on the power of the state. He was extremely interested in that question.”
“And so what did you say?” asked Pilate. “Or are you going to reply that you’ve forgotten what you said?” But there was already a hopelessness in Pilate’s tone.
“Among other things,” the prisoner recounted, “I said that any sort of power is coercion of the people, and that the time will come when there will be no power, neither of the caesars, nor of any other sort of authority. Man will move on to the kingdom of truth and justice, where no kind of power will be needed at all.”
“And after that?”
“There was nothing after that,” said the prisoner. “At that point people ran in, started tying me up and led me off to prison.”
The secretary was rapidly scribbling the words down on the parchment[84], trying not to miss a single one.
“There has never been in all the world – is not and never shall be – a greater and finer power for the people than the power of the Emperor Tiberius!”[85] waxed Pilate’s cracked and sick voice.
For some reason, the Procurator was looking with hatred at the secretary and the escort.
“And it is not for you, you mad criminal, to deliberate about it!” At this point Pilate exclaimed: “Dismiss the escort from the balcony!” and, turning to the secretary, added: “Leave me alone with the criminal; it’s a matter of state[86] here.”
The escort lifted their spears and, with their metal-shod caligæ[87][88] pounding rhythmically, they walked from the balcony into the garden, and the secretary followed them.
The silence on the balcony was for some time broken only by the song of the water in the fountain. Pilate could see the disc of water swelling at the top of the pipe, its edges breaking off[89]and dropping down in little streams[90].
The prisoner was the first to speak:
“I can see that something bad has happened because of my talking with that young man from Kiriath. I have a premonition, Hegemon, that he will suffer some misfortune, and I feel very sorry for him.”
"I think,” replied the Procurator with a strange grin, "there is someone else in the world you ought to feel more sorry for than Judas of Kiriath, and who will have a much worse time of it than Judas! And so, Marcus the Rat-Catcher, a cold and confirmed butcher; the people who, as I can see” – the Procurator indicated Yeshua’s disfigured face – “beat you for your sermons; the villains Dismas and Gestas, who, with their gang, killed four soldiers; and finally the filthy traitor Judas – they’re all good people?”
“Yes,” replied the prisoner.
“And the kingdom of truth will come?”
“It will, Hegemon,” replied Yeshua with conviction.
“It will never come!” Pilate suddenly shouted in such a terrible voice that Yeshua staggered backwards[91]. Thus, many years before in the Valley of the Virgins, Pilate had shouted to his horsemen the words: “Cut them down! Cut them down. Rat-Catcher the giant’s been caught!” Once more he raised his voice, cracked by commands, yelling out the words so they could be heard in the garden: “Criminal! Criminal! Criminal!”
And then, lowering his voice, he asked:
“Yeshua Ha-Nozri, do you believe in any gods?”
“There’s just one God,” replied Yeshua. “I believe in Him.”
“Then pray to him! Pray as hard as you can! Stills.” – at this point Pilate’s voice sank – “it won’t help. You have no wife?” asked Pilate, mournfully somehow[92], and not understanding what was happening to him.
“No, there’s just me.”
“Hateful city…” the Procurator suddenly muttered for some reason, then flexed his shoulders as if he were cold and rubbed his hands as though washing them. “If you’d been murdered before your meeting with Judas of Kiriath, truly, it would have been better.”
“You could release me, though, Hegemon,” the prisoner unexpectedly requested, and his voice became uneasy. “I can see they want to kill me.”
A spasm distorted Pilate’s face; he turned the inflamed, red-veined whites of his eyes to Yeshua and said:
“Do you suppose, you unfortunate man, that the Roman Procurator is going to release someone who has said what you have said? O gods, gods! Or do you think I’m prepared to take your place? I don’t share your ideas! And listen to me: if from this moment on you utter so much as a word, start talking to anyone, beware of me! I repeat to you: beware!”
“Hegemon…”
“Silence!” exclaimed Pilate, and his furious gaze followed the swallow that had again fluttered onto the balcony. “Come here!” shouted Pilate.
And when the secretary and the escort had returned to their places, Pilate announced that he was ratifying the death sentence pronounced at the meeting of the Lesser Sanhedrin on the criminal Yeshua Ha-Nozri, and the secretary recorded what Pilate said.
A minute later Marcus the Rat-Catcher stood before the Procurator. The Procurator ordered him to hand the criminal over to the Chief of the Secret Service, and at the same time to convey to him the Procurator’s order that Yeshua Ha-Nozri be kept apart from the other condemned men, and also that the Secret Service detachment be forbidden, on pain of severe punishment, to converse with Yeshua about anything whatsoever, or to reply to any of his questions.
At a sign from Marcus, the escort closed up around Yeshua and led him from the balcony.
Next in front of the Procurator appeared a handsome man with a blond beard and eagle’s feathers in the crest of his helmet, with gold lions’ faces glittering on his chest and gold studs on his sword belt, wearing triple-soled boots, laced to the knees, and with a crimson cloak thrown over his left shoulder. This was the legate in command of the legion.
The Procurator asked where the Sebastian Cohort was now. The legate reported that its men were forming a cordon on the square in front of the hippodrome where the criminals’ sentences would be announced to the people.
Then the Procurator gave orders for the legate to detail two centuries from the Roman Cohort. One of them, under the command of the Rat-Catcher, was to escort the criminals, the carts with the instruments