Cats
Continued.
“…My kind cat, my learned cat
Suppresses his unhappy sigh,
And with his white well-chiseled paw
He angrily combs out the flees.”
Nikolai Gumilev. Marquis
de Carabas.
It is precisely this skillful dance around the money
on the part of both Aphranius and Pontius Pilate, which demonstrates that all
this so-called “plan” is a gift to both Aphranius and Pilate from the devil
[Woland]. The following points are stated as proof of this assertion:
1.
Namely, all the
lies told by Aphranius about the main passion of the young and handsome Judas
being not women but money.
2.
Pontius Pilate’s
wish that the bag of money received by Judas from Caiaphas be returned to
Caiaphas on the “holiday night” with the note: “I am returning the cursed money.”
3.
Even such a detail
as the “leather bag” with money prepared by Pontius Pilate in advance and “lying on the armchair behind him” under
the procurator’s cloak all evening for this purpose.
4.
This detail is
very important. It demonstrates that Judas’s murder was not a “matter of
state,” but quite the contrary, in practical terms it amounted to a conspiracy
between Pontius Pilate and Aphranius, undermining the stated policy of Rome
which was not to incite the Jews against her.
5.
But the most
convincing proof is provided by the following words, as quoted from Bulgakov:
“Perhaps
this twilight was the cause of a sharp change in the appearance of the procura-tor.
As though he aged a lot in this short span of time; his back bent, and besides,
he became disquieted. At one point he glanced back and for some reason
shuddered, glancing at the empty armchair, with its back covered by the
cloak. The holiday night was approaching, the evening shadows were
playing their game, and most probably the procurator had a mere hallucination
when he imagined that someone was sitting in that empty armchair…”
The words shadows and someone conspicuously refer to Woland, that is, to the devil in Pontius Pilate. Who else, indeed, could
be sitting in that chair, but an invisible Woland? (Regarding the invisibility
of the devil, see my posted segments XLVIII-XLIX.) If we remember Woland
suggesting to Berlioz and Ivanushka “that I was personally
present during all this: on Pontius Pilate’s balcony, when he was talking to
Caiaphas, and on the platform, but only secretly, incognito, so to speak,”
we have to conclude that, according to Bulgakov, he must have been invisible,
as one of his optional attributes.
All this is very important for the understanding of Aphranius
himself, about which later. But first we must figure out the situation with the
money. As we know, following the murder of Judas, Aphranius shows up that same
night at Pontius Pilate’s residence with a report and with a bag of money,
sealed under two seals, all soaked in blood. “The clever” Aphranius does not
give his own version of how Judas could
be lured outside the city at night. The honor of figuring that out goes to
Pontius Pilate, who immediately comes to the conclusion that this had to be
done by a woman.
All this dialog between the two professionals is a
sheer pleasure to read, as they are working out a version which will become the
unofficial rumor spread among the populace, which will eventually become the
basis of the official report to Rome.
“Coolly and weightily,” Aphranius rejects the “woman”
possibility, as the villains who wanted to avenge the death of Yeshua were
paupers, whereas, “in order to have a man slaughtered with the help of a woman,
a lot of money would be required.”
And here Aphranius is obliged to deliver his version
of events in a whisper, namely, that “Judas wanted to hide his money in a
secluded place known to him only.”
Here Bulgakov skillfully splits a parable from the
Bible about a master who on his departure gave each of his servants a certain
amount of talents. On his return he gathered his servants to ask what they did
with his money. They all told him their different stories of profit, but one of
the servants told him that all he did was to bury his talent in the ground so
that now he could give that cursed money back, as he wanted to have nothing to
do with it.
Bulgakov separates this parable into two parts:
1.
The idea that
Judas wanted to bury the money received from Caiaphas goes to Aphranius.
2.
The idea of
returning the “cursed” money goes to Pontius Pilate.
Beautifully done!
***
It is time for us now to approach the genealogy of Aphranius,
and what a beautiful family tree he has indeed!
Bulgakov’s Aphranius is a composite portrait.
Describing his appearance, Bulgakov underscores the man’s humble roots. The Aphranius
family is native to Rome, but its origin is plebeian. By the time of Christ, Aphranii
were already working for the government, thus becoming part of the nobility.
This fact is pointed out by Aphranius to Pontius Pilate in Bulgakov’s novel:
“As
for me, Procurator, I have been working for fifteen years now in Judea. I
started my service under Valerius Gratus.”
The quality of Bulgakov’s research never ceases to
amaze me. How seriously did this writer approach his work. We must not forget
that he, like his younger brother Nikolai, studied and became a medical doctor
in Kiev. After the Revolution, Nikolai Afanasievich Bulgakov [1898-1966]
participated in the White Movement and ended up in France, where he became a
well-known scientist in his field. A Russian biologist and bacteriologist,
after World War Two he worked at the famed Pasteur Institute in Paris. These
facts help us understand how Mikhail Bulgakov treated the work of a writer. His
own background as a physician plus the words of one of his idols on that
subject (“The
right place of a writer is his scientific study.” A. S. Pushkin.) helped
him formulate such an unusual attitude, as he had.
It may be interesting to note here that Valerius
Gratus was a prominent political figure in the Roman province of Judea in the
early first century AD. Nothing is known about his origin or beginnings. In 15
AD he became the fourth procurator of Judea. He is known for quashing two large
bands of robbers who terrorized Judea during his rule, killing the most
notorious among them Simon, a former slave of Herod the Great, with his own
hand. Alongside the Roman pro-Consul Quintilius Varus, he suppressed a powerful
Jewish rebellion in Judea also during his tenure.
He is also known for minting a variety of coins,
eagerly sought by modern collectors. Curiously, the coin connection is perhaps
responsible for Bulgakov-- always a careful researcher!-- choosing the name Aphranius
for his character. There were actually two persons of that name, Spurius Aphranius
and Marcus Aphranius, whose likenesses appeared on Roman coins!
Such details were important to Bulgakov, as he drew
great pleasure from writing his compositions for himself. In this respect
Bulgakov followed his role model Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin who argued that
“a Russian writer must write for himself.” This practice not only amused him,
but also gave him a high standing in his own eyes, a self-respect, which his
sister called (very inaccurately, in my opinion) his “satanic pride.”
I can hardly imagine another “scientist-writer” who
would draw so much personal pleasure from the act of creating.
Yet another Aphranius, namely, Aphranius Quintianus,
happened to be a co-conspirator in a plot against Emperor Nero, which is also
fitting for the role played by Bulgakov’s Aphranius in Pontius Pilate, considering that his work as the chief of the
secret service was supposed to constantly deal with conspiracies against Rome,
which it was his job to prevent.
[Bulgakov is a contrarian, which means that he
frequently picks up an idea and turns it over on its head.] But if we take,
say, the event of Judas’s murder, it can also be called a “conspiracy against
Rome,” as it was hardly in the interest of Rome. [Regarding the fact that Aphranius
must have had his own view about the events taking place in Yerushalaim, I will
be writing in my later chapter The
Garden.]
Aphranius, the “man in a cloak,” who never lifts his
hood either in dark rooms or in the worst heat under the burning sun, looks
very much like a conspirator, talking softly and in whisper. His eerie manner (“Before he began
talking, Aphranius, as was his usual custom, glanced back and moved into the
shadow…”) confirms the same. The cloak which Aphranius is wearing is
not a regular cloak, but it can be turned inside out, converting into “military
attire.”[sic!]
He rides a “hot cavalry horse… with a short sword on
his hip, in a flat helmet without plumage.”
All of this points to the nature of his being the
chief of the secret service, but also to many facets of Aphranius himself, that
is, to his family tree, which obviously included a number of military men, but
was not limited to them.
One of his relatives, Lucius Aphranius, floruit 1st
century AD, was a comic poet. Here is the subtle justification for Bulgakov’s
descriptive words, most unusual words when applied to a man whose job it is to
issue orders of executions and to check whether the executed prisoners are indeed
dead --- “non-malicious mischief shining in the slits
of the eyes,” “an expression of good-naturedness,” as well as: “it is fair to suggest that the procurator’s guest was prone
to humor... good-naturedness and a sly mind” in his eyes.
...Bulgakov has this amazing gift of shaping such a
terrific character out of a plain entry in an encyclopedic dictionary, uniting
in one body and soul all the known representatives of the Aphranius clan!
There is a reason why Bulgakov shows Aphranius as a
ghost. The first time it happens is when Aphranius comes to see Pontius
Pilate.---
“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.”
Next when he is leaving the procurator’s palace,
already dry, but going on a “wet job.---”
“It could be heard how he [Aphranius]
rustled walking on the wet sand of the grounds. Then one could hear the sound
of his boots on the marble between the lions, then his legs were cut off, then
his body, and finally vanished the hood of his cloak.”
It is very interesting that Bulgakov writes after
this:
“Only then did the procurator realize that
the sun was gone and that the twilight had come...” (More about this in my chapter Two Bears, Segment The Moon,
to be posted later.)
And see how the following lines fit both Aphranius’
occupation (he is the chief of the secret service) and the fact that Bulgakov
describes him as a ghost.---
“Aphranius started retreating and bowing
and the procurator clapped his hands and shouted: Light to the colonnade!”
Which means that the whole conversation between the
two conspirators about Judas’ murder was conducted in complete darkness.
“Aphranius was already leaving for the
garden… Three candelabra appeared .on the table before the procurator, and the
moonlit night retreated into the garden as if Aphranius had taken it away with
him.”
If Pontius Pilate tells Aphranius: “I sleep badly, and
all the time I see in my dream a moonbeam… as though I am walking upon that
beam,” Aphranius, “the man who never parts
with his cloak,” takes away the “moonlit night” with him.
In this both these characters have something in
common, strange though it seems, with another cat, Professor V. I. Persikov,
who does not even suspect that the discovery he made was brought to him by the “foggy pale moon crescent,” which “threw glints of multicolored lights into the plate-glass of
the study, and could be seen faraway and high up alongside the dark massive cap
of Christ the Savior Cathedral.”
Yet again we find the moon – the night –death. [This
will be discussed in the not yet posted chapter Two Bears.]
To be continued…
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