The Master and Margarita (29 page)

Turning his gaze to the foot of the hill, Levi fixed on the place where the strung-out cavalry regiment stood, and saw that considerable changes had taken place there. From above, Levi was able to distinguish very well the soldiers bustling about, pulling spears out of the ground, throwing cloaks on, the horse-handlers trotting towards the road leading black horses by their bridles. The regiment was moving off, that was clear. Spitting and shielding himself with his hand from the dust blowing in his face, Levi tried to grasp what it might mean if the cavalry was about to leave. He shifted his gaze further up and made out a little figure in a crimson military chlamys climbing towards the place of execution. And here a chill came over the heart of the former tax collector in anticipation of the joyful end.

The man climbing the mountain in the fifth hour of the robbers” sufferings was the commander of the cohort, who had come galloping from Yershalaim accompanied by an aide. At a gesture from Ratslayer, the file of soldiers parted, and the centurion saluted the tribune. The latter, taking Ratslayer aside, whispered something to him. The centurion saluted him a second time and moved towards the group of executioners, who were sitting on stones at the foot of the posts. The tribune meanwhile directed his steps towards the one sitting on the three-legged stool, and the seated man politely rose to meet the tribune. And the tribune said something to him in a low voice, and the two went over to the posts. They were joined by the head of the temple guard.

Ratslayer, casting a squeamish sidelong glance at the dirty rags lying on the ground near the posts, rags that had recently been the criminals” clothing, and which the executioners had rejected, called two of them and ordered: “Follow me!”

From the nearest post came a hoarse, senseless song. Gestas, hanging on it, had lost his mind from the flies and sun towards the end of the third hour, and was now quietly singing something about grapes, but his head, covered with a turban, occasionally swayed all the same, and then the flies rose sluggishly from his face and settled on it again.

Dysmas, on the second post, suffered more than the other two because he did not lose consciousness, and he swung his head constantly and rhythmically, right and left, so that his ears struck his shoulders.

Yeshua was more fortunate than the other two. In the very first hour, he began to have blackouts, and then he fell into oblivion, hanging his head in its unwound turban. The flies and horseflies dierefore covered him completely, so that his face disappeared under the black swarming mass. In his groin, and on his belly, and in his armpits, fat horseflies sat sucking at his yellow naked body.

Obeying the gestures of the man in the hood, one of the executioners took a spear and another brought a bucket and a sponge to the post. The first executioner raised the spear and with it tapped first one, then the other of Yeshua’s arms, stretched out and bound with ropes to the crossbar of the post. The body, with its protruding ribs, gave a start. The executioner passed the tip of the spear over the belly. Then Yeshua raised his head, and the flies moved off with a buzz, revealing the face of the hanged man, swollen with bites, the eyes puffy, an unrecognizable face.

Ungluing his eyelids, Ha-Nozri looked down. His eyes, usually clear, were slightly clouded.

“Ha-Nozri!” said the executioner.

Ha-Nozri moved his swollen Ups and answered in a hoarse robber’s voice: “What do you want? Why have you come to me?”

“Drink!” said the executioner, and a water-soaked sponge on the tip of a spear rose to Yeshua’s lips. Joy flashed in his eyes, he clung to the sponge and began greedily imbibing the moisture. From the neighbouring post came the voice of Dysmas: “Injustice! I’m a robber just like him!”

Dysmas strained but was unable to move, his arms being bound to the crossbar in three places with loops of rope. He drew in his belly, clawed the ends of the crossbar with his nails, kept his head turned towards Yeshua’s post, malice blazed in the eyes of Dysmas.

A dusty cloud covered the place, it became much darker. When the dust blew away, the centurion shouted: “Silence on the second post!”

Dysmas fell silent. Yeshua tore himself away from the sponge, and trying to make his voice sound gentle and persuasive, but not succeeding, he begged the executioner hoarsely: “Give him a drink.”

It was growing ever darker. The storm cloud had already poured across half the sky, aiming towards Yershalaim, boiling white clouds raced ahead of the storm cloud suffused with black moisture and fire. There was a flash and a thunderclap right over the hill. The executioner removed the sponge from the spear.

“Praise the magnanimous hegemon!” he whispered solemnly, and gendy pricked Yeshua in the heart. He twitched and whispered: “Hegemon ...”

Blood ran down his belly, his lower jaw twitched convulsively and his head dropped.

At the second thunderclap, the executioner was already giving Dysmas a drink, and with the same words: “Praise the hegemon!” — killed him as well.

Gestas, deprived of reason, cried out fearfully as soon as the executioner came near him, but when the sponge touched his lips, he growled something and seized it with his teeth. A few seconds later his body, too, slumped as much as the ropes would allow.

The man in the hood followed the executioner and the centurion, and after him came the head of the temple guard. Stopping at the first post, the man in the hood examined the blood-covered Yeshua attentively, touched his foot with his white hand, and said to his companions: “Dead.”

The same was repeated at the other two posts.

After that the tribune motioned to the centurion and, turning, started off the hilltop together with the head of the temple guard and the man in me hood. Semi-darkness set in, and lightning farrowed the black sky. Fire suddenly sprayed out of it, and the centurion’s shout: “Raise the cordon!”, was drowned in rumbling. The happy soldiers rushed headlong down the hill, putting on their helmets.

Darkness covered Yershalaim.

Torrents of rain poured down suddenly and caught the centuries halfway down the hill. The deluge fell so terribly that the soldiers were already pursued by raging streams as they ran downhill. Soldiers slipped and fell in the sodden clay, hurrying to get to the level road, along which – now barely visible through the sheet of water – the thoroughly drenched cavalry was heading for Yershalaim. A few minutes later only one man remained in the smoky brew of storm, water and fire on the hill.

Shaking the not uselessly stolen knife, falling from slippery ledges, clutching at whatever was there, sometimes crawling on his knees, he strained towards the posts. He now vanished in total darkness, now was suddenly illumined by a tremulous light.

Having made his way to the posts, already up to his ankles in water, he tore off his heavy water-soaked tabard, remaining just in his shirt, and clung to Yeshua’s feet. He cut the ropes on his shins, stepped up on the lower crossbar, embraced Yeshua and freed his arms from the upper bonds. The naked, wet body of Yeshua collapsed on Levi and brought him to the ground.

Levi wanted to heave it on to his shoulders straight away, but some thought stopped him. He left the body with its thrown-back head and outspread arms on the ground in the water, and ran, his feet slithering apart in the clayey mire, to the other posts. He cut the ropes on them as well, and the two bodies collapsed on the ground.

Several minutes passed, and all that remained on the top of the hill was these two bodies and the three empty posts. Water beat on the bodies and rolled them over.

By that time both Levi and the body of Yeshua were gone from the hilltop.

Chapter 17. An Unquiet Day

On Friday morning, that is, the day after the accursed séance, all the available staff of the Variety — the bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich Lastochkin, two accountants, three typists, both box-office girls, the messengers, ushers, cleaning women — in short, all those available, were not at their places doing their jobs, but were all sitting on the window-sills looking out on Sadovaya and watching what was going on by the wall of the Variety. By this wall a queue of many thousands clung in two rows, its tail reaching to Kudrinskaya Square. At the head of the line stood some two dozen scalpers well known to theatrical Moscow.

The line behaved with much agitation, attracting the notice of the citizens streaming past, and was occupied with the discussion of inflammatory tales about yesterday’s unprecedented séance of black magic.

These same tales caused the greatest consternation in the bookkeeper Vassilv Stepanovich, who had not been present at the previous evening’s performance.

The ushers told of God knows what, among other things that after the conclusion of the famous séance, some female citizens went running around in the street looking quite indecent, and so on in the same vein. The modest and quiet Vassily Stepanovich merely blinked his eyes, listening to the tall tales of these wonders, and decidedly did not know what to undertake, and yet something had to be undertaken, and precisely by him, because he now turned out to be the senior member of the whole Variety team.

By ten o’clock the line of people desiring tickets had swelled so much that rumour of it reached the police, and with astonishing swiftness detachments were sent, both on foot and mounted, to bring this line into some sort of order. However, in itself even an orderly snake a half-mile long presented a great temptation, and caused utter amaze-ment in the citizens on Sadovaya.

That was outside, but inside the Variety things were also none too great. Early in the morning the telephones began to ring and went on ringing without interruption in Likhodeev’s office, in Rimsky’s office, at the bookkeeper’s, in the box office, and in Varenukha’s office.

Vassily Stepanovich at first made some answer, the box-office girl also answered, the ushers mumbled something into the telephones, but then they stopped altogether, because to questions of where Likhodeev, Varenukha and Rimsky were, there was decidedly no answer. At first they tried to get off by saying “Likhodeev’s at home”, but the reply to this was that they had called him at home, and at home they said Likhodeev was at the Variety.

An agitated lady called, started asking for Rimsky, was advised to call his wife, to which the receiver, sobbing, answered that she was his wife and that Rimskv was nowhere to be found. Some sort of nonsense was beginning.

The cleaning woman had already told everybody that when she came to the findirector’s office to clean, she saw the door wide open, the lights on, the window to the garden broken, the armchair lying on the floor, and no one in the office.

Shortly after ten o’clock, Madame Rimsky burst into the Variety. She was sobbing and wringing her hands. Vassily Stepanovich was utterly at a loss and did not know how to counsel her. Then at half past ten came the police. Their first and perfectly reasonable question was: “What’s going on here, dozens? What’s this all about?”

The team stepped back, bringing forward the pale and agitated Vassily Stepanovich. He had to call things by their names and confess that the administration of the Variety in the persons of the director, the findirector and the administrator had vanished and no one knew where, that the master of ceremonies had been taken to a psychiatric hospital after yesterday’s séance, and that, to put it briefly, this séance yesterday had frankly been a scandalous séance.

The sobbing Madame Rimsky, having been calmed down as much as possible, was sent home, and the greatest interest was shown in the cleaning woman’s story about the shape in which the findirector’s office had been found. The staff were asked to go to their places and get busy, and in a short while the investigation appeared in the Variety building, accompanied by a sharp-eared, muscular, ash-coloured dog with extremely intelligent eyes. The whisper spread at once among the Variety staff that the dog was none other than the famous Ace of Diamonds. And so it was. His behaviour amazed them all. The moment Ace of Diamonds ran into the findirector’s office, he growled, baring his monstrous yellow fangs, then crouched on his belly and, with some sort of look of anguish and at the same time of rage in his eyes, crawled towards the broken window. Overcoming his fear, he suddenly jumped up on the window-sill and, throwing back his sharp muzzle, howled savagely and angrily. He refused to leave the window, growled and twitched, and kept trying to jump out.

The dog was taken from the office and turned loose in the lobby, whence he walked out through the main entrance to the street and led those following him to the cab stand. There he lost the trail he had been pursuing. After that Ace of Diamonds was taken away.

The investigation settled in Varenukha’s office, where they began summoning in turn all the Variety staff members who had witnessed yesterday’s events during the séance. It must be said that the investigation had at every step to overcome unforeseen difficulties. The thread kept snapping off in their hands.

There had been posters, right? Right. But during the night they had been pasted over with new ones, and now, strike me dead, there wasn’t a single one to be found! And the magician himself, where had he come from?

Ah, who knows! But there was a contract drawn up with him?

“I suppose so,” the agitated Vassily Stepanovich replied.

“And if one was drawn up, it had to go through bookkeeping?”

“Most assuredly,” responded the agitated Vassily Stepanovich.

“Then where is it?”

“Not here,” the bookkeeper replied, turning ever more pale and spreading his arms.

And indeed no trace of the contract was found in the files of the bookkeeping office, nor at the findirector’s, nor at Likhodeev’s or Varenukha’s.

And what was this magician’s name? Vassily Stepanovich did not know, he had not been at the séance yesterday. The ushers did not know, the box-office girl wrinkled her brow, wrinkled it, thought and thought, and finally said: “Wo ... Woland, seems like ...”

Or maybe not Woland? Maybe not Woland. Maybe Faland.

It turned out that in the foreigners” bureau they had heard precisely nothing either about any Woland, or for that matter any Faland, the magician.