Cats
Continued.
“…So
why are you holed up in squalor?
Forever
being a quaint child,
Why
aren’t you living at the court,
Eating
and drinking from pure silver
Among
the parrots and the pooches?..”
Nikolai Gumilev. Marquis
de Carabas.
(Gumilev’s poem will continue into the next
posting’s epigraph.)
Bulgakov gives a dramatic description of the
procurator “lying on his bed in the stormy semi-darkness,
talking to himself... with inflamed eyes, expressing impatience, and not only
staring at the two white roses drowned in a red pool [more about this in
the coming later segment Oil and Wine],
but incessantly turning his face to the garden toward
the watery mist and sand, indicating that he was waiting for someone,
impatiently waiting… Finally, the procurator heard the long-awaited steps and
flapping on the stairs… The procurator stretched his neck and his eyes glistened,
showing gladness. Between the two marble lions, first appeared the head of a
man under a hood, and then the completely wet man in a cloak sticking to his
body. It was the same man who, before the verdict, had been whispering with the
procurator in the darkened room of the palace, and who, during the execution,
had been sitting on a three-legged stool, playing with a twig…”
And now, finally, Bulgakov gives us a description of
the “man in a cloak.”---
“The man was of middle age with a very
pleasant round and neat face, and a fleshy nose. His hair was of some
indefinite color. Now that it was drying up, the color was light. The
nationality of the visitor would be hard to figure out. The main feature
defining his face was good-naturedness,
which was however spoiled by the eyes, or rather not so much
the eyes as the manner of the visitor to look at his interlocutor. Normally
the visitor was hiding his little eyes under the cover of his rather strange,
as though swollen eyelids. Then in the slits of these eyes there shone a
malice-free mischief. It could be supposed that the procurator’s visitor was
disposed to humor. But occasionally, totally banishing this glittering humor
from the slits, the present guest would open his eyelids wide and look at his
interlocutor suddenly and point blank, as if he needed quickly to examine some
inconspicuous spot on the interlocutor’s nose. This lasted for just one moment,
after which the lids were lowered again, narrowing into slits, and there again
there would shine in them that same good-naturedness and the sly mind.”
The reader ought to realize the importance of
Bulgakov’s description of both the appearance and the character of this man,
because this personage is a composite image, which I will be addressing later
in this chapter.
If in Vasenka’s case Bulgakov puts an emphasis on his
eyes hidden behind smoky eyeglasses, in the case of the man in a cloak, whom
Bulgakov calls “guest” in this chapter, the most prominent feature of his
appearance is the “fleshy nose.”
Considering that at supper Pontius Pilate and his
guest are eating meat, piece after piece, pouring wine into it at that,
Bulgakov clearly accentuates the visitor’s refined sense of smell, thus
comparing him to an animal. The manner of keeping his “little eyes under the
cover of the eyelids” also points us in that direction.
Bulgakov writes that the guest had “slits,” instead of
eyes. The fact that the guest “felt as though four
eyes were looking at him: dog’s eyes and wolf’s eyes,” and as we already
know, Pontius Pilate had a dog, thus the “wolf’s eyes” must therefore belong to
Pilate himself,-- indicate that Bulgakov’s Pilate is a wolf, that is, a wild
animal, who himself proudly says that “in Yerushalaim everybody whispers about me that I am a
fierce monster, which is of course perfectly true.”
Pontius Pilate calls Mark the Ratkiller “a cold and dedicated
executioner” and a “bear.”
All of this means that, aside from birds, Bulgakov
introduces animals into his works just as well. Here is the picture that we
have. Pontius Pilate is a wolf; Mark the Ratkiller is a bear, who
in this case no longer kills cockroaches, but rats.
On the other hand, Bulgakov gives “wolf’s eyes” to S.
L. Maksudov in the Notes of a Dead Man,
and also to A. S. Pushkin in his play Alexander
Pushkin. Wolf’s eyes may also signify the eyes of a hunted prey, and also
“defiant” eyes, ready for an attack.
Although Pontius Pilate was a professional military
man, he served in a diplomatic post in Judea, which automatically makes him a
cat of sorts, as a diplomat requires a certain agility of the mind, whereas a
wolf is a pack animal, more indicative of military service.
All this means that a person does not have to be
identified with a single animal. He can be both a wolf and a cat, and more.
Pontius Pilate’s guest cannot be a dog, or a wolf, or even
more a bear. His extraordinary nose, as well as the slits of the eyes, the
desire to seek darkness, to stay in the shadows, that is, to hide, clearly
indicate the cat race. Even Bulgakov’s unwillingness to call him by his proper
name or to identify his profession indicates a feline furtiveness of this
personage.
The man in the cloak not merely speaks softly,---
he prefers to speak in a whisper, not trusting the servants or the walls
even when he is seemingly alone with Pontius Pilate. To say nothing of his
habit of always dwelling in the shadows and of hiding his face under a lowered
hood even in the heat, even inside a dark room.
The reader might have a pretty good idea by now what
profession this man must belong to. Bulgakov adds to all of this a “sly mind.”
In the Russian language, the word “lukavy”
(sly, mischievous) is associated with
the devil. The idea of murdering Judas and taking revenge on Caiaphas by
throwing him back the bag with money previously received by Judas from Caiaphas
for his betrayal of Yeshua, belongs, in Bulgakov, to Woland. Moreover, it is
after having received proof that Yeshua had been faithful to the end to
himself, to God and to his teaching, that Woland follows up with the sweet
part, namely, his revenge on Caiaphas. In order to get his revenge, it is not
enough for Woland to insert another “formula” into the procurator’s head. The
man in the cloak, whom Pilate was waiting for with such impatience, had to play
an extremely important role in the execution of this revenge plan. It goes
without saying that the devil himself had to have a hand in this as well...
This is why it gives one such a pleasure to read the
dialogue between the guest and Pontius Pilate, as, during all this time, the
“guest” is buying himself time to figure out his general plan of action
regarding the killing of Judas..
Although a very important (for the understanding of
the relationship between Pontius Pilate and his guest) part of this dialogue
belongs to another chapter (The Garden),
but even the part that remains is sufficient for us to have an interesting
conversation, as here we are only covering the part that concerns Judas. And
only right before the conversation about Judas itself,-- only then do we find
out that the “man in the cloak,” Pontius Pilate’s guest, is none other than the
chief of the secret service to the procurator of Judea, that is, to Pontius
Pilate.
And then, after the conversation moves on directly to
Judas, only then do we find out Pontius Pilate’s guest’s name, which is Aphranius.
***
And so, the cat and mouse game begins between the two
prominent Romans, both guided by the devil bent on revenge.
…Aphranius in Bulgakov is a complex character.
Considering the nature of his job, it seems strange that Bulgakov gives him
such qualities as “good-naturedness” and “non-malice.” No less strange is the
fact that Bulgakov lets us know that his Aphranius is a “bright man.” (See my posted segment LX: Yeshua and Woland.) Bulgakov gives Aphranius light-colored hair,
same color as he gives to the Bolshevik orator in White Guard. Bulgakov observes “non-malicious slyness” in Aphranius,
and indeed, the man does produce an impression of being sly. It is
demonstrably clear from Aphranius’ conversation with Pontius Pilate. The latter
has to resort to dragging information out of Aphranius, as the man in the cloak
doesn’t part easily with the tricks of his trade. The task of Aphranius is to
draw as much information as possible out of Pontius Pilate without irritating
him, to let him talk, and, most importantly, not to allow the procurator
to understand the train of his thoughts, not to mention the fact that Aphranius
is very skillful at concealing the depth of his mind. As he talks to Pilate, Aphranius
is buying himself time to think through the details of the plan of Judas’
murder. By naming money as Judas’s
primary passion, Aphranius is lying to Pilate, as his word “young,” and to an
even greater extent the word “handsome” (unwarranted, as Pilate never asks him
about that), tell the reader that Judas’s real and overwhelming passion was
women, which was precisely the vice he was hooked on, and paid for with his
life, in Bulgakov’s sub-novel Pontius
Pilate.
Aphranius has no intention of telling the procurator
how he is going to have Judas murdered and he lies to him again later by saying
that during the murder he was not present, as by the nature of his profession
he does not trust anybody with his plans or his actions. At the end of their
conversation, Aphranius already has the plan of action figured out, and also
how Judas’s murder was to be explained not only to the public, but also to the
procurator himself. Here Bulgakov very skillfully plays upon a certain parable in
the Bible. (See this later in this chapter.)
Aphranius is a very interesting figure, and I include
him both here, in Cats, and in The Garden, to be posted later.
Letting us into Aphranius’ kitchen, whose character
moves on to Bulgakov’s main novel Master
and Margarita as the detective who interrogates Ivanushka in the
psychiatric clinic as well as all other persons who found themselves there
after the “séance of black magic”, Bulgakov makes the reader think about two
things. First, already since the specially noted by Bulgakov sixteenth century
(he only gives two historical dates in Master
and Margarita, both of them belonging to that century: the year 1571 and
the sixteenth century itself), Russia has considered herself the Third Rome
(about this see my segment #XXXVI of the chapter The Fantastic Novel of Master and Margarita), which is why all those
who are familiar with Russian history would not be surprised by the character
Aphranius of the First Rome traveling into the nameless character of the
Russian investigator of the Third Rome.
Secondly, Bulgakov clearly shows that all official
conclusions arrived at by the investigator, whom, incidentally, Bulgakov gives
no name, ought to be taken with a grain of salt. Bulgakov shows that all that
is being put into an official paper is a legend which is spread among the people,
feeding on rumors and expanding. [See my Spy
Novel for more about this.]
Although at first Aphranius seems to be surprised by
Pontius Pilate’s information regarding Judas “to be slaughtered this night,” he
quickly gets the message when Pilate keeps his long and convoluted explanations
to him that it is Pilate himself who wants Judas to be slaughtered. Aphranius
is still playing the game of not getting it, however, explaining to Pilate how
difficult the plan of the “villains” is:
“But
you just think…tracking down the man, slaughtering him, and even finding out
how much he got, and managing to return this money to Caiaphas,--- and all that
in the course of one night? Tonight?”
Having received from Pontius Pilate a verbose
reiteration of his hunch that Judas is to be “slaughtered tonight,” --- “There was not a case
once that my foreboding deceived me… Here a spasm contorted the face of the
procurator,” --- Aphranius pretends that finally he understood what Pontius
Pilate wanted from him. Bulgakov shows this by using two contrasting words: “submissively” and “sternly” (carrots and sticks):
“I
hear you, submissively replied the guest; he got up, straightened up, and
suddenly asked sternly: So, they shall
slaughter him, Igemon?”
Finally, Pontius Pilate too understands that Aphranius
“got it” as to what Pilate expects from him. And now the conversation switches
back to the subject of money. Who, if not the devil himself, could plant in
both their heads a plan from a Biblical parable, which is connected in both of
them --- what a surprise! --- with the money which Judas has received from
Caiaphas? Think about it!
To be continued tomorrow…
No comments:
Post a Comment