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

face rose, the procurator looked with amazement straight into the high
priest's eyes.
'I confess, this answer stuns me,' the procurator began softly, 'I'm
afraid there may be some misunderstanding here.'
Pilate explained himself. Roman authority does not encroach in the
least upon the rights of the local spiritual authorities, the high priest
knows that very well, but in the present case we are faced with an obvious
error. And this error Roman authority is, of course, interested in
correcting.
In fact, the crimes of Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri are quite incomparable
in their gravity. If the latter, obviously an insane person, is guilty of
uttering preposterous things in Yershalaim and some other places, the
former's burden of guilt is more considerable. Not only did he allow himself
to call directly for rebellion, but he also killed a guard during the
attempt to arrest him. Bar-Rabban is incomparably more dangerous than
Ha-Nozri.
On the strength of all the foregoing, the procurator asks the high
priest to reconsider the decision and release the less harmful of the two
condemned men, and that is without doubt Ha-Nozri. And so? ...
Kaifa said in a quiet but firm voice that the Sanhedrin had thoroughly
familiarized itself with the case and informed him a second time that it
intended to free Bar-Rabban.
'What? Even after my intercession? The intercession of him through
whose person Roman authority speaks? Repeat it a third time. High Priest.'
'And a third time I repeat that we are setting Bar-Rabban free,' Kaifa
said softly.
It was all over, and there was nothing more to talk about. Ha-Nozri was
departing for ever, and there was no one to cure the dreadful, wicked pains
of the procurator, there was no remedy for them except death. But it was not
this thought which now struck Pilate. The same incomprehensible anguish that
had already visited him on the balcony pierced his whole being. He tried at
once to explain it, and the explanation was a strange one: it seemed vaguely
to the procurator that there was something he had not finished saying to the
condemned man, and perhaps something he had not finished hearing.
Pilate drove this thought away, and it flew off as instantly as it had
come flying. It flew off, and the anguish remained unexplained, for it could
not well be explained by another brief thought that flashed like lightning
and at once went out -- 'Immortality . . . immortality has come . . .' Whose
immortality had come? That the procurator did not understand, but the
thought of this enigmatic immortality made him grow cold in the scorching
sun.
'Very well,' said Pilate, 'let it be so.'
Here he turned, gazed around at the world visible to him, and was
surprised at the change that had taken place. The bush laden with roses had
vanished, vanished were the cypresses bordering the upper terrace, and the
pomegranate tree, and the white statue amidst the greenery, and the greenery
itself. In place of it all there floated some purple mass,[28]
water weeds swayed in it and began moving off somewhere, and Pilate himself
began moving with them. He was carried along now, smothered and burned, by
the most terrible wrath - the wrath of impotence.