The Garden.
Gumilev.
Posting #6.
“How could we before
live in peace,
Not expecting either joys or
troubles,
Never dreaming of a fiery
radiant combat,
Of the roaring trumpet of
victory?”
N. S. Gumilev. The Sun
of the Spirit.
While I was working on the 16th
chapter of Bulgakov’s Master and
Margarita: The Execution, I was quite stunned to find Bulgakov using the
word “chalma” [“turban]” with regard to the headwear of Yeshua and Gestas during
the execution.
“...By the third hour Gestas lost his mind on account of the flies
and the sun... but was from time to time moving his head, covered by a
turban... Yeshua was luckier than the other two. During the first hour, he
started getting fainting spells, after which he lost consciousness, dropping
his head in an unraveled turban...”
I
decided to return to the 2nd chapter of Pontius Pilate:
“The Procurator, his cheek twitching, said softly: Bring in the accused. And immediately
from the garden area to under the balcony’s columns two legionnaires brought in
and placed in front of the procurator’s armchair a man of some twenty-seven
years of age. The man was dressed in an old and torn blue chiton. His head was
covered by a white piece of cloth with a strap around the forehead, and his
hands were tied behind his back. Under the man’s
left eye there was a large bruise; in the corner of his mouth there was a
cut covered by dried up blood...”
Having
found this strap, which clearly must have had a buckle as fastener, I hit a
dead end.
I
have already written about the “buckle” on Pontius Pilate’s cloak, in
connection with Margarita’s shoes: “Shoes with black
suede bow-onlays tied with steel buckles.”
I’ve
come to the conclusion that Bulgakov is leading the researcher on a false
trail. He is merely suggesting with all these Molierian bows and buckles that
Margarita may be a Frenchwoman.
But
I was very much interested in the white piece of cloth on Yeshua’s head, as in
the 16th chapter of Bulgakov’s Master
and Margarita: The Execution, I found the following information:
“The Roman infantrymen were suffering [from the heat] even more
than the cavalry. The only concession made by the Centurion Krysoboy to the
soldiers was to allow them to take off their helmets and to cover their heads
with white cloth soaked in water. He however kept them standing with their
spears in hand. He himself had the same head-cover, albeit dry, not wet,
walking around near the group of executioners, having not even removed the
silver lion heads from his shirt, and still wearing his leggings, sword [sic!],
and scabbard...”
[The
prototype of Ratkiller will be revealed in one of my other chapters...]
It
is quite possible that when Caiaphas’s people gave a beaten-up Yeshua to the
Roman authorities, one of the soldiers may have taken pity on Yeshua and
covered his head with his own white cloth, fastening it with a strap, as
Yeshua’s hands were tied behind his back.
This
is yet another clue Bulgakov is giving with regard to Yeshua’s prototype being
N. S. Gumilev, who happened to be a volunteer soldier during the First World
War.
But
as I was writing this, I remembered that I had already come upon the word
“mercy” in the novel Master and Margarita,
in connection with Frieda. In chapter 24 The
Extraction of Master, instead of asking for master to be returned to her,
which had been the sole reason why she had accepted all her deprivations and
had lost her nature, substituting it with a new one, she asked Woland to free
Frieda from her curse of the handkerchief she had used to smother her baby.
In
his turn, Woland tells Margarita that he is left with one thing only: to get
lots of rags to plug all cracks in his bedroom.
Bulgakov
draws the researcher’s attention to the strange suggestion on Woland’s part:
“What are you talking about,
Messire? – marveled Margarita, having heard these truly incomprehensible
words.”
Bulgakov
himself provides the explanation:
“I am talking about mercy, –
explained his words Woland, never taking his fiery eye off Margarita. – Sometimes totally unexpectedly it penetrates
into the narrowest little cracks. That’s why I am talking about rags.”
From
Chapter 24 back to Chapter 16 The
Execution, where Ratkiller, “walking in the
vicinity of the group of executioners, noticed the arrival of the cohort
commander, gesticulated to his soldiers the order to open the chain. The
newcomer took Ratkiller aside and whispered something to him. The centurion
saluted the tribune a second time and moved toward the group of the
executioners sitting on the stones at the foot of the poles. Ratkiller
disdainfully looked askance at the dirty rags lying on the ground under the
poles, which recently had been the criminals’ clothes discarded by the
executioners, and called up two of them, ordering them: Follow me!”
It
meant that because of the fast approaching storm the time had come to end the
execution by killing the men hanging on the poles. Even though Dismas was
looking at Yeshua with malice, as Yeshua was drinking the moisture from the
sponge offered to him by an executioner on the tip of a spear, Yeshua showed
mercy to the criminal by asking the executioner to give Dismas a drink as well.
What
conclusion does the researcher come to, in all of this? What kind of discovery
can be made on the basis of the material I have brought together here?
Need
some help?
I
am offering the researcher to look at Chapter 22 of Master and Margarita: With Candles, in which Margarita presents
herself to Woland:
“…Her eyes were drawn to the bed, sitting upon which was he whom
the poor Ivan had just recently on Patriarch Ponds been trying to convince that
the devil did not exist. That non-existent one was now sitting on the bed. His
two eyes were peering into Margarita’s face. The right eye with a golden
sparkle at the bottom would bore anyone to the bottom of their soul, and the
left [eye] was empty and black, something like the narrow eye of a needle, like
an entrance to a bottomless well of darkness and shadows. Woland’s face was
skewed to one side, the right corner of the mouth pulled downward. On the high
balding brow, deep furrows were dug in parallel to the sharp eyebrows. The skin
on Woland’s face was as though forever burned by suntan.
Woland spread himself all over the bed; he was dressed only in a
long night shirt that was dirty and patched up on the left shoulder. He pulled
one bare leg under him, while the other was stretched out on a bench...
He is studying me, thought Margarita, and tried to use her
willpower to stop the trembling in her legs.”
The End.
***
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