The city was flooded with holiday lights. Candle flames flickered in all the windows, and the blessings coming from within blended into a

The Burial 271

discordant chorus. The rider would occasionally glance into the windows that looked out on the street and see people at their holiday tables, set with kid's meat and cups of wine placed between dishes of bitter herbs. Whistling a soft tune, the rider made his unhurried way through the deserted streets of the Lower City, heading toward the Antonia Tower, occasionally glancing up at the unique five-branched candelabra burning above the temple, which were not to be seen anywhere else in the world, or gazing at the moon, which hung even higher up than the candelabra.

The palace of Herod the Great was taking no part in the Passover night celebration. In the auxiliary rooms that faced south, where the officers of the Roman cohort and the Legate of the Legion were quartered, lights were burning and there was a feeling of activity and life. The front section, occupied by the sole and involuntary resident of the palace—the procurator—with its colonnades and gold statues, seemed blinded by the extremely bright moon. Here, inside the palace, darkness and quiet reigned. And the procurator, as he had told Afranius, preferred not to go inside. He had ordered that a bed be made up for him on the balcony where he had dined that evening and conducted the interrogation that morning. The procurator lay down on the couch that had been prepared, but sleep would not come to him. The naked moon hung high overhead in the clear sky, and the procurator was unable to take his eyes off it for several hours.

Around midnight sleep finally took pity on the Hegemon. With a convulsive yawn, the procurator unfastened his cloak and threw it off, removed the strap with its sheathed broad steel knife that belted his tunic and placed it on the chair beside the couch, took off his sandals, and stretched out. Banga immediately got up on the bed and lay down beside him with his head next to his, and the procurator, putting his arm around the dog's neck, finally closed his eyes. Only then did the dog fall asleep too.

The couch stood in semidarkness, shielded from the moon by a column, but a ribbon of moonlight stretched from the stairway to the bed. And as soon as the procurator lost touch with the world of reality around him, he quickly set out on a shining road and ascended it straight to the moon. He even laughed in his sleep with happiness, so splendid and unique was everything on that light-blue, transparent road. He was accompanied by Banga, and walking alongside him was the vagrant philosopher. They were arguing about something complex and important, and neither one of them could convince the other. They did not agree about anything, and that made their dispute all the more engaging and endless. Today's execution, needless to say, turned out to have been a complete misunderstanding-after all, the philosopher who had conceived the absurd notion that all people were good was walking beside him, so he had to be alive. And besides, the very idea that such a man could be executed