Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita (1997) -
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procurator's residence was.
It remained to dictate it to the secretary.
The swallow's wings whiffled right over the hegemon's head, the bird
darted to the fountain basin and then flew out into freedom. The procurator
raised his eyes to the prisoner and saw the dust blaze up in a pillar around
him.
'Is that all about him?' Pilate asked the secretary.
'Unfortunately not,' the secretary replied unexpectedly and handed
Pilate another piece of parchment.
'What's this now?' Pilate asked and frowned.
Having read what had been handed to him, he changed countenance even
more: Either the dark blood rose to his neck and face, or something else
happened, only his skin lost its yellow tinge, turned brown, and his eyes
seemed to sink.
Again it was probably owing to the blood rising to his temples and
throbbing in them, only something happened to the procurator's vision. Thus,
he imagined that the prisoner's head floated off somewhere, and another
appeared in its place.[21] On this bald head sat a scant-pointed
golden diadem. On the forehead was a round canker, eating into the skin and
smeared with ointment. A sunken, toothless mouth with a pendulous,
capricious lower lip. It seemed to Pilate that the pink columns of the
balcony and the rooftops of Yershalaim far below, beyond the garden,
vanished, and everything was drowned in the thickest green ofCaprean
gardens. And something strange also happened to his hearing: it was as if
trumpets sounded far away, muted and menacing, and a nasal voice was very
clearly heard, arrogandy drawling: 'The law of lese-majesty. . .'
Thoughts raced, short, incoherent and extraordinary: 'I'm lost! . . .'
then: 'We're lost! . . .' And among them a totally absurd one, about some
immortality, which immortality for some reason provoked unendurable anguish.