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

Pilate another piece of parchment.
'What's this now?' Pilate asked and frowned.
Having read what had been handed to him, he changed countenance even
more: Either the dark blood rose to his neck and face, or something else
happened, only his skin lost its yellow tinge, turned brown, and his eyes
seemed to sink.
Again it was probably owing to the blood rising to his temples and
throbbing in them, only something happened to the procurator's vision. Thus,
he imagined that the prisoner's head floated off somewhere, and another
appeared in its place.[21] On this bald head sat a scant-pointed
golden diadem. On the forehead was a round canker, eating into the skin and
smeared with ointment. A sunken, toothless mouth with a pendulous,
capricious lower lip. It seemed to Pilate that the pink columns of the
balcony and the rooftops of Yershalaim far below, beyond the garden,
vanished, and everything was drowned in the thickest green ofCaprean
gardens. And something strange also happened to his hearing: it was as if
trumpets sounded far away, muted and menacing, and a nasal voice was very
clearly heard, arrogandy drawling: 'The law of lese-majesty. . .'
Thoughts raced, short, incoherent and extraordinary: 'I'm lost! . . .'
then: 'We're lost! . . .' And among them a totally absurd one, about some
immortality, which immortality for some reason provoked unendurable anguish.
Pilate strained, drove the apparition away, his gaze returned to the
balcony, and again the prisoner's eyes were before him.
'Listen, Ha-Nozri,' the procurator spoke, looking at Yeshua somehow
strangely: the procurator's face was menacing, but his eyes were alarmed,
'did you ever say anything about the great Caesar? Answer! Did you? . . .
Yes ... or ... no?' Pilate drew the word 'no' out somewhat longer than is
done in court, and his glance sent Yeshua some thought that he wished as if
to instil in the prisoner.
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant,' the prisoner observed.
'I have no need to know,' Pilate responded in a stifled, angry voice,
'whether it is pleasant or unpleasant for you to speak the truth. You will
have to speak it anyway. But, as you speak, weigh every word, unless you
want a not only inevitable but also painful death.'
No one knew what had happened with the procurator of Judea, but he
allowed himself to raise his hand as if to protect himself from a ray of
sunlight, and from behind his hand, as from behind a shield, to send the
prisoner some sort of prompting look.
'Answer, then,' he went on speaking, 'do you know a certain Judas from
Kiriath,[22] and what precisely did you say to him about Caesar,
if you said anything?'
'It was like this,' the prisoner began talking eagerly. The evening
before last, near the temple, I made the acquaintance of a young man who
called himself Judas, from the town of Kiriath. He invited me to his place
in the Lower City and treated me to . . .'
'A good man?' Pilate asked, and a devilish fire flashed in his eyes.
'A very good man and an inquisitive one,' the prisoner confirmed. 'He
showed the greatest interest in my thoughts and received me very cordially.
..'
'Lit the lamps . . .'[23] Pilate spoke through his teeth, in