Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog

by Boris Akunin

  The dying woman’s eyes glinted briefly with bright fury, and her lips smacked against each other without producing a single sound. But the hands folded piously at her breast trembled, and the hand on the top, the right, struggled to set the thumb between the fingers in a gesture of defiance.

  “Very good, very good,” the bishop said gleefully. “Depart this life with the sign of the devil. That will be just perfect for you. When you die, I shan’t allow them to straighten out your fingers. Lie there in the coffin making that gesture, let everybody take a good look at it.”

  The widow’s fingers unclenched themselves and straightened out; the palm of her right hand settled gracefully on top of her left.

  His Grace nodded and began speaking humanely again, as if he had never lost his temper.

  “See, Marya, how deep you have drunk of bitter grief in your life. You have buried your beloved husband and outlived four children. But still you did not die. Are these flat-faced dogs really more dear to you than the people you loved? Truly, for shame!”

  Mitrofanii waited to see if there would be any sign, but Marya Afanasievna merely closed her eyes.

  “But then I know that there is still much life in you, you have not yet lived out your term, you have not yet become ripe and full of years like the patriarchs of the Old Testament. And here is something else for you to think about. Those for whom the Lord has appointed long life bear the greatest suffering of all, because their ordeal is so very long. But their reward is also a special one. The longer I live in this world, the more it seems to me that the infirmity of old age is not even a test, but rather an expression of special grace from God. And this gift is truly a gift. It is only in the wisdom of advanced age that man is freed from the fear of death. The withering of the flesh and the fading of the mind itself—these are a blessed preparation for another life. Death does not scythe your legs from under you with no warning, but enters slowly, a drop at a time, and in this there is perhaps even a certain sweetness. It is no wonder that in their declining years so many of the venerable secluded ascetics who have lived to a great age are less here, in this life, than there, in a state of heavenly bliss. There are times when their very flesh becomes incorruptible at death, and people are astounded. But why do I speak of the venerable saints? It is the same for anyone who is very old, all those he has known—those he has loved or hated—are already there, waiting for him, he is the only one who has tarried, and therefore he is not afraid. He knows with certainty that people of every kind—both cleverer and more stupid than he, both crueler and kinder, both braver and more cowardly—have crossed this terrible threshold safely. And that means it is not so very terrible after all…”

  At this point Marya Afanasievna, who had been listening to the bishop’s sermon intently, smiled rapturously and Mitrofanii knitted his black brows, because he had anticipated a different effect. He sighed, crossed himself, and abandoned all attempts to remonstrate with her.

  “Well then, if you feel that your time has come, if you are being called—I shall not try to detain you. I shall administer the Last Sacrament and conduct your funeral and lay you in hallowed ground in the proper fashion. I frightened you because I was angry. Die, if your mind is made up. If life no longer has any hold on you, if it has lost its attraction, how can a weak soul such as I am keep you here? Only there is one thing…” He glanced around and spoke to the deacon: “Bring it in now, father.”

  Father Alexii nodded and went out of the door. Silence fell in the bedroom. Marya Afanasievna lay with her eyes closed, and her face already looked as if she were not lying in bed, but in the center of a church, in an open coffin, and from under the tall vaults the angels were singing their sweet song of greeting to her. Mitrofanii got up, walked across to the lithograph hanging on the wall, and began studying it intently.

  But shortly the door opened and the deacon and the lay brother carried in a closed wicker box with a small opening in the top. They set it down on the floor and, with a bow to the bishop, withdrew to the wall.

  Inside the box something rustled strangely and there was a sound that could almost have been squealing. Sister Pelagia craned her neck and stood up on tiptoe in her curiosity as she tried to glance in through the little opening, but Mitrofanii had already thrown back the lid and thrust both his hands into the basket.

  “Here, aunty,” he said in his ordinary, non-churchman’s voice. “I wanted to show you this before you die. That’s why I was a little late. On my instructions, messengers combed the entire district; they even made use of the telegraph, although, as you know, I am not fond of such novelties. In a litter at retired major Sipyagin’s house they found a white bulldog, a female, and her ear is just right, too, take a look. And just two hours ago the express steam launch from Nizhny brought me a gift from first-guild merchant Saikin, a little white male, a month and a half old. And he’s a perfect specimen in every respect. The bitch is not white all over—she has brown socks—but she is exceptionally bandy-legged. Her name is Musya. Sipyagin almost refused to let her go—his daughter didn’t want to part with her at all. I had to threaten him with excommunication for the death of a Christian soul, which was actually unlawful on my part. The little dog doesn’t have a name yet, though. Just look at his brown ear. His nose is pink, just as it is supposed to be, and speckled, but most important of all, his little face has quite remarkably droopy cheeks. When the pups are a little older, we can start breeding again. And in no time at all, in no more than two or three generations, the white bulldog will be restored.”

  He extracted two fat-bellied puppies from the basket. One was a bit bigger than the other, it yelped angrily and kicked out, the other hung there in meek silence.

  Glancing around at the dying woman, Pelagia saw that a magical transformation had taken place and she was quite clearly no longer ready for the grave. She was gazing intently at the bulldog puppies, and the fingers lying on her breast were stirring feebly, as if attempting to catch hold of something.

  A trembling voice, just barely audible, asked: “But are they slobbery?”

  His Grace whispered to Pelagia: “The doctor!”—and he himself went up to the bed and set both puppies down on the widow’s chest.

  “There, take a look for yourself. It’s positively streaming off them.”

  Pelagia darted out into the corridor with such an expression on her face that the doctor, who was standing not far away, nodded sympathetically.

  “Is it over?” he asked.

  She shook her head, her wits still stunned by the miracle that God had just manifested, and without speaking gestured for him to go in.

  The doctor stuck his head out two minutes later. His manner was simultaneously perplexed and brisk.

  “Never anything like it in twenty-seven years of practice,” he told the people who had gathered at the door, and shouted, “Hey, anybody there? Maid! Some hot broth, and make it strong!”

  WHEN THE BISHOP greeted Pelagia he was already refreshed and cheerful, having had time to get washed, change into a light-gray cassock, and drink a glass of cold kvass.

  “Well, what do the Orthodox faithful make of it?” he asked with a cunning smile. “I suppose they’re talking about miraculous deliverance?”

  “Almost everyone has left,” Pelagia reported. “I should think so, after an event like this. They are all impatient to tell their families and friends all about it. But the marshal of the nobility is still here, and so are Bubentsov and his secretary.”

  “With his tail between his legs now, is he, the devil?” asked Mitrofanii, growing serious. “While you, Pelagia, have been idling away the time here, in Zavolzhsk we’ve had serious business to deal with.”

  The nun accepted the reproach without a murmur, bowing her head. After all, she was at fault, she had failed to protect little Zakusai, and if Marya Afanasievna was on the road to recovery, it was none of her doing.

  “Bubentsov has become very strong; he has concocted such a pack of cock-and-bull stories and raised
such a clamor throughout the whole of Russia, that I simply don’t know if I’ll be able to hold him off.”

  And His Grace told Pelagia what she had already heard from Bubentsov himself, except that Mitrofanii’s interpretation of the murders proved to be quite different.

  “All these fantasies about the god Shishiga are simply stupid nonsense. Some evil people took the lives of a couple of souls, undressed them, and cut their heads off, either out of idle mischief or malicious spite, or something else. There are all sorts of vicious monsters in this world. And Bubentsov is delighted; he’s already spun an entire web out of it. That antediluvian chronicle played right into his hands. I know myself that our Zyts are Christians largely in name only and many of them are infected with pagan superstitions, but they are a quiet, peaceful people. Never mind murder—they’re not even in the habit of stealing. But it has only taken this devil a few days to stir up the dregs of darkness from the bottom of people’s souls and plant his whisperers and slanderers. As it says in the Gospel: ‘And then shall many be seduced, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.’ Ugh, such vileness! Now many people are afraid to leave their houses in the evening, and they close the shutters across their doors at night—we’ve had nothing so shameful around here for ten years at least, ever since we got rid of our bandits. Well, never mind, for Satan’s suggestion, seek the Lord’s protection. There’s a stout stick for every dirty trick. Just as one has been found here at Drozdovka.”

  And with this return to a more pleasant theme, Mitrofanii’s mood mellowed once again.

  “What do you say, my little Pelagia?” he asked, narrowing his eyes in laughter. “Can I be forgiven the sin of feeling just a little proud?”

  “Who would not be proud?” the nun replied sincerely. “The Lord will not be vexed. You saved Marya Afanasievna, and everybody saw it, everybody will testify to it.”

  “Indeed. And I am especially pleased to have ruined the game for that stealthy scoundrel who killed the dogs. The filthy villain must have been rubbing his hands in glee at having killed off the old woman, and then…take that.” And the bishop set his fingers into the same gesture that only a little while before he himself had called “the devil’s sign.” “We’re hearty stock. Aunty will live another ten years yet, or fifteen, God willing. And she’ll breed her ugly, flat-faced monsters all over again.”

  Mitrofanii relished his pride for only a very short while, and then decided that was enough. He glanced quizzically at Pelagia and shook his head.

  “Well then, has the work of penance turned out not to be so simple? You were probably thinking: This is nothing serious, a few funny-looking dogs, I’ve untangled tougher knots than this before? Only, you see, the entire business has resolved itself. When I said scoundrel and villain just now, I should have made it clear that it was a woman. After all, the picture is quite clear. Marya Afanasievna was angry with her legitimate heirs, and just to spite them she drew up her will in favor of this Englishwoman. She wasn’t serious, of course, she just wanted to give them a fright. But the Protestant woman’s reason was clouded, which is quite understandable in her situation. From being a household retainer suddenly to become a rich woman in your old age—it’s enough to addle anyone’s brains.”

  “Miss Wrigley is not old,” said Pelagia. “I should say she is no more than fifty.”

  “All the more reason, then. The very age when strength begins to desert the human frame and tomorrow becomes something to be afraid of. They’ll turn her out of the house now, and quite right, too. Ingratitude is a serious sin, and betrayal is the worst of all.”

  “They must not be allowed to throw her out,” Pelagia declared resolutely. “Miss Wrigley did not kill the dogs. When the poison was put in Zagulyai’s and Zakidai’s food, the will had not yet been changed in her favor. I think that the inheritance has absolutely nothing to do with all of this.”

  “Nothing to do with it? Then what need was there to drive the old woman into her grave? And whose plot was it, if not the Englishwoman’s?”

  Mitrofanii stared at his spiritual daughter in amazement, and she raised and lowered those ginger eyebrows that had been bleached by the sun before taking the plunge—straight off the cliff into the River.

  “What need there was, I do not understand, but I do know who killed the dogs.”

  There was a polite but insistent knock at the door—very ill-timed, indeed. The subdeacon put his head in.

  “Your Grace, everyone is assembled in the drawing room and they are asking for you. I said you were resting after the journey, but they begged me to supplicate you for them. The marshal is only waiting for you; the horses are already harnessed to his carriage, but he just won’t go without your blessing. Perhaps you might come?”

  The bishop transferred his gaze from Father Alexii back to Pelagia. Three deep creases had appeared right across his forehead.

  “I think, Pelagia, that our conversation will be a long one. Let us go to the drawing room. I shall observe the necessary proprieties, and afterward we shall continue.”

  EVERYBODY WAS INDEED gathered in the drawing room, where they greeted the bishop with a rapturous murmur, and would certainly have broken into applause if not for their respect for his high church rank. Even Bubentsov himself came up to Mitrofanii and said with feeling: “I am eternally grateful to you, Your Grace, for saving my aunt.”

  And why should he not be grateful—now he could continue with his scheming about the will. For a moment the expression of pleasure on Mitrofanii’s face was darkened by a shadow (evidently due to precisely this thought), and the pastor turned away from this disagreeable young man as if he had simply forgotten to bless him.

  But Spasyonny was already creeping up to him from the other side, intoning tearfully: “For such is our life: verily as the flower and the smoke and the morning dew. Your hand, let me kiss your holy hand.”

  “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Krasnov announced. “A poem has just been born. Listen to my improvisation, gentlemen. In the style of the great Derzhavin! ‘An Ode on the Miraculous Deliverance of the Tsaritsa of Drozdovka, Marya Afanasievna, from Mortal Danger.’

  For all the joyous Russian nation

  I take my flute to sing of this.

  The cause of our exultant bliss,

  Our much beloved queen’s salvation.

  Thy angels white as eiderdown,

  Stung by the venom of the serpent,

  By thy black-hearted, thankless servant

  Were most perfidiously cut down.

  But Providence would not be mocked

  By such perverse malevolence,

  And by our Lord’s own trusty hand

  The loathsome sting was safely plucked—”

  “Kirill Nifontovich!” Miss Wrigley cried out in a trembling voice, interrupting the declamation and holding her skinny arms out to the poet. “Surely you have not also deserted me?”

  Vladimir Lvovich smiled spitefully: “Excellent! Now we can truly see how the cap fits!”

  The Englishwoman somehow suddenly found herself at the center of an empty circle, as if she were being deliberately displayed for public inspection.

  “Miss Wrigley certainly did not like granny’s bulldogs, but to assume that she…No, no, it’s unthinkable,” said Pyotr Georgievich with a shake of his head. “You do not know her at all, Vladimir Lvovich. That is, of course, to external appearances the circumstances might seem, and probably cannot help but seem, suspicious in the highest degree. However, as a person who has known Miss Wrigley since my early childhood, I can vouch for her completely and assure you that this speculation has no—”

  “She’s the one, the Englishwoman, no one else would have done it,” exclaimed one of the guests, interrupting these faltering assurances. “Why, the very idea isn’t even Russian, somehow. Not just to take someone and kill them, but to break the person’s heart. Too tricky altogether for a true Orthodox believer. What’s the point of talking—the business is clear enough.”

&n
bsp; To which Spasyonny added: “They have eyes and they do see, they have ears and they do hear.”

  “Oh, stop all this nonsense!” said Naina Georgievna, going up to Miss Wrigley and taking her by the hand. “Don’t listen to them,” she said in English. “They don’t know what they are saying.” The young woman glanced around, surveying everyone present with hatred in her eyes. “You’ve already condemned her! I won’t let you lay the blame on Janet!”

  The Englishwoman sobbed and pressed her forehead against her pupil’s shoulder in gratitude.

  “Come now, Naina Georgievna, it does not lie in your power to forestall the investigation required by law,” remarked the marshal. “Naturally, we understand and respect your feelings, but leave it to the police to determine whether any crime has been committed in this business and who must bear responsibility. I am profoundly convinced that we are indeed dealing with a crime and that it must be treated as attempted murder. And I am sure that a trial by jury will reach the same conclusion.”

  “Does it mean hard labor?” Miss Wrigley squeaked in terror, glancing all around her like an animal at bay. “Siberia?”

  “Well, certainly not Brighton,” the marshal replied ominously—he prided himself on his knowledge of the European resorts.