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

used to be a tax collector, and I first met him on the road in
Bethphage,'[4] where a fig grove juts out at an angle, and I got
to talking with him. He treated me hostilely at first and even insulted me -
that is, thought he insulted me -- by calling me a dog.' Here the prisoner
smiled. 'I personally see nothing bad about this animal, that I should be
offended by this word . . .'
The secretary stopped writing and stealthily cast a surprised glance,
not at the arrested man, but at the procurator.
'. . . However, after listening to me, he began to soften,' Yeshua went
on, 'finally threw the money down in the road and said he would go
journeying with me . . .'
Pilate grinned with one cheek, baring yellow teeth, and said, turning
his whole body towards the secretary:
'Oh, city ofYershalaim! What does one not hear in it! A tax collector,
do you hear, threw money down in the road!'
Not knowing how to reply to that, the secretary found it necessary to
repeat Pilate's smile.
'He said that henceforth money had become hateful to him,' Yeshua
explained Matthew Levi's strange action and added: 'And since then he has
been my companion.'
His teeth still bared, the procurator glanced at the arrested man, then
at the sun, steadily rising over the equestrian statues of the hippodrome,
which lay far below to the right, and suddenly, in some sickening anguish,
thought that the simplest thing would be to drive this strange robber off
the balcony by uttering just two words: 'Hang him.' To drive the convoy away
as well, to leave the colonnade, go into the palace, order the room
darkened, collapse on the bed, send for cold water, call in a plaintive
voice for his dog Banga, and complain to him about the hemicrania. And the
thought of poison suddenly flashed temptingly in the procurator's sick head,
He gazed with dull eyes at the arrested man and was silent for a time,
painfully trying to remember why there stood before him in the pitiless
morning sunlight of Yershalaim this prisoner with his face disfigured by
beating, and what other utterly unnecessary questions he had to ask him.
'Matthew Levi?' the sick man asked in a hoarse voice and closed his
eyes.
'Yes, Matthew Levi,' the high, tormenting voice came to him.
'And what was it in any case that you said about the temple to the
crowd in the bazaar?'
The responding voice seemed to stab at Pilate's temple, was
inexpressibly painful, and this voice was saying:
'I said, Hegemon, that the temple of the old faith would fall and a new
temple of truth would be built. I said it that way so as to make it more
understandable.'
'And why did you stir up the people in the bazaar, you vagrant, talking
about the truth, of which you have no notion? What is truth?'[15]
And here the procurator thought: 'Oh, my gods! I'm asking him about
something unnecessary at a trial... my reason no longer serves me . . .' And
again he pictured a cup of dark liquid. 'Poison, bring me poison . . .'
And again he heard the voice:
The truth is, first of all, that your head aches, and aches so badly