"Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Now, Berlioz wanted to prove to the poet that the main thing was not
how Jesus was, good or bad, but that this same Jesus, as a person, simply
never existed in the world, and all the stories about him were mere fiction,
the most ordinary mythology.
It must be noted that the editor was a well-read man and in his
conversation very skilfully pointed to ancient historians - for instance,
the famous Philo of Alexandria[6] and the brilliantly educated
Flavius Josephus[7] - who never said a word about the existence
of Jesus. Displaying a solid erudition, Mikhail Alexandrovich also informed
the poet, among other things, that the passage in the fifteenth book of
Tacitus's famous Annals, the forty-fourth chapter, where mention is made of
the execution of Jesus, was nothing but a later spurious interpolation.
The poet, for whom everything the editor was telling him was new,
listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing his pert green eyes on
him, and merely hiccuped from time to time, cursing the apricot soda under
his breath.
There's not a single Eastern religion,' Berlioz was saying, 'in which,
as a rule, an immaculate virgin did not give birth to a god. And in just the
same wav, without inventing anything new, the Christians created their
Jesus, who in fact never lived. It's on this that the main emphasis should
be placed . . .'
Berlioz's high tenor rang out in the deserted walk, and as Mikhail
Alexandrovich went deeper into the maze, which only a highly educated man
can go into without risking a broken neck, the poet learned more and more
interesting and useful things about the Egyptian Osiris,[9] a
benevolent god and the son of Heaven and Earth, and about the Phoenician god
Tammoz,[10] and about Marduk," and even about a lesser known,
terrible god, Vitzliputzli,'[2] once greatly venerated by the
Aztecs in Mexico. And just at the moment when Mikhail Alexandrovich was
telling the poet how the Aztecs used to fashion figurines of Vitzli-putzli
out of dough -- the first man appeared in the walk.
Afterwards, when, frankly speaking, it was already too late, various
institutions presented reports describing this man. A comparison of them
cannot but cause amazement. Thus, the first of them said that the man was
short, had gold teeth, and limped on his right leg. The second, that the man
was enormously tall, had platinum crowns, and limped on his left leg. The
third laconically averred that the man had no distinguishing marks. It must
be acknowledged that none of these reports is of any value.
First of all, the man described did not limp on any leg, and was
neither short nor enormous, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had
platinum crowns on the left side and gold on the right. He was wearing an
expensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour. His grey beret
was cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm 1-e carried a stick with a
black knob shaped like a poodle's head.[13] He looked to be a
little over forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right
eye black, left -- for some reason -- green. Dark eyebrows, but one higher
than the other. In short, a foreigner.[14]
Having passed by the bench on which the editor and the poet were
placed, the foreigner gave them a sidelong look, stopped, and suddenly sat
down on the next bench, two steps away from the friends.