Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk

by Boris Akunin

  “Why have you abandoned the helm, Nakhimov?” Lagrange yelled to the captain.

  The captain swung his huge fist through the air. “I can't turn it on my own! This ship's a heap of junk—it can't hold its course in a high sea! I told the archimandrite! This rust bucket was made for taking young ladies on rides along the Neva, but this is the Blue Sea! We're being carried onto Devil's Rock—there are shoals there!”

  At that very moment the steamship gave a sudden jerk and stopped dead in its tracks. The police chief and the captain were both flung against the wall of the deckhouse and they almost fell. The ship shifted a little and began slowly turning around its own axis.

  “That's it, we're aground!” the captain shouted in despair. “Unless we can turn the bow into the waves, in a quarter of an hour we'll heel over and that'll be the end—we'll be done for! Oh, those blockheaded peasants.” He raised a threatening hand in the direction of his praying crew. “I should give them a good thrashing, but I can't—I've taken a vow of nonviolence!”

  Felix Stanislavovich wrinkled up his brow in intense concentration. “And if they get a good thrashing, then what?”

  “Everyone heaves on the cable, and we can bring her around. But what point is there now?” The captain threw his hands up in the air, then went down on his knees himself and began intoning in a nasal voice, “Accept, Oh Lord, the soul of Thy servant, whose hope is set in Thee, our God the Creator and Sustainer …”

  “Heave on a cable?” the colonel asked brusquely. “Why, we can get that done soon enough.” He walked up to the nearest monk, leaned down over him, and said emphatically, “Right then, up you get, Father, or I'll knock your Eucharist around the back of your head.”

  The praying man failed to heed the warning. Then Felix Stanislavovich jerked him to his feet and in two ticks put his violent intention into effect. He left the holy man spitting out bloody saliva in amazement, and immediately set about the next one. In less than a minute all the deckhands had been restored to a state of complete subordination.

  “Now what is it we have to pull on?” Lagrange asked the captain, who was stunned by his efficient initiative.

  And everything was all right, God is merciful: they all heaved together and swung the bow around in the right direction. No one was drowned.

  AS THEY WERE saying goodbye, with the ship already standing at the quayside in New Ararat, Brother Jonah (that was the captain's name) clung to Felix Stanislavovich's hand for a long time with his own claw of iron.

  “Give up your job,” Jonah boomed, gazing into the colonel's face with the bright blue eyes that were set so strikingly in his own broad, coarse features. “Come and be my first mate. We'll have a grand time sailing together. Things can get pretty interesting here on the Blue Sea—you've seen that for yourself. And you'll be saving your soul at the same time.”

  “If it weren't for the female passengers,” said the colonel, stroking his mustache, because just at that moment Natalya Genrikhovna had come out to the gangway, with a stern expression on her face and wearing a severe black head scarf instead of her frivolous hat. The porter following her down the slope was carrying an entire pyramid of suitcases, bags, and boxes, managing somehow to balance this entire ancient Egyptian structure on his head. The lady pilgrim halted, crossed herself with broad, sweeping gestures, and bowed from the waist to this splendid town—or rather, to its illuminated quayside, because it was evening and New Ararat itself could not be seen: the Basilisk had been stuck on the shoal for half a day while it waited for the tug, and had only reached the island very late, when it was already dark.

  Lagrange bowed gallantly to his accomplice in romantic adventure, but she had evidently already prepared herself for spiritual enlightenment and purgation, and she simply strode on by, without even turning her head to look at the colonel.

  Ah, women, Felix Stanislavovich thought to himself with a smile of complete understanding and respect for the lady's redemptive state of mind.

  “All right, Father, we'll meet again on my return voyage. I think that will be in two or three days—it's hardly going to be any longer than that. Since you believe that by then the weather will have sett—” Turning back to face the captain, he stopped short, because Brother Jonah was staring off into the darkness and his face had changed quite strikingly: it had become enraptured and strangely perplexed at the same time, as if the bold captain had heard the fateful song of a Siren or spied a young maiden running over the waves—a sign to sailors that their sorrows will soon be forgotten and good fortune is coming their way.

  Following the direction of the strangely silent captain's gaze, La-grange did indeed see a supple young female silhouette, only it was not slipping along between the foaming crests of the waves, but standing absolutely still under a lamppost on the quayside. The young lady raised a finger and beckoned the captain peremptorily, and he set off toward the gangway, moving like a sleepwalker, without even glancing around at the man who would not be his first mate.

  Being curious both by constitution and by virtue of his job, as well as naturally passionate and attracted to female beauty, Felix Stanislavovich picked up his yellow traveling bag of patent pigskin and set off, following stealthily in the captain's footsteps or—as sailors say—in his wake. Intuition and experience told the colonel that with such a marvelous figure and assured bearing, the waiting woman's face was bound to be beautiful. But he had to make sure, did he not?

  “Hello, Lidia Evgenievna,” Jonah boomed timidly as he approached the lady.

  She reached out an imperious hand in a long gray glove—but not, as it turned out, to be kissed or shaken.

  “Did you bring it?” she asked.

  The captain took something very small from inside the front of his monk's robe and laid it on the slim palm, but the colonel had no chance to see what it was, because at that moment the lady turned her face toward him and raised her veil with a gentle movement of her hand— evidently in order to take a better look at the stranger. Two seconds, or perhaps three, were all the time she needed, but that briefest possible period was also long enough for Lagrange to be struck dumb.

  Oh!

  The chief of police clutched at his tight collar. Those immense, fathomless eyes, with that strange glimmer! Those hollows below the cheekbones! And that curve of the eyelashes! And that mournful hint of shadow beside those defenseless lips! Damnation!

  Lagrange shouldered aside the bisonlike Brother Jonah and raised his cap.

  “My lady, I am here for the first time—I know nobody and nothing. I have come to pray at the holy places. Please help a man who has suffered terribly and advise me where the most heinous of sinners should direct his steps first. To the monastery? To Basilisk's Hermitage? Or, perhaps, to some shrine? And incidentally, allow me to introduce myself: Felix Stanislavovich Lagrange, former cavalry colonel.”

  The beautiful lady's face was already half-concealed again behind the light, flimsy gauze, but he saw her lovely mouth twist into a disdainful grimace below the edge of the veil. Paying absolutely no attention to the police chief's cunning and psychologically faultless approach, the young woman whom the captain had called Lidia Evgenievna put the small bundle in her handbag, turned gracefully on her heels, and walked away. Brother Jonah heaved a deep sigh and Lagrange began blinking rapidly.

  This is unheard of, thought Lagrange. First that nanny goat from St. Petersburg hadn't even bothered to say goodbye to him, and now he had to suffer this humiliation! Disconcerted, the colonel took a convenient little mirror out of the pocket of his waistcoat and checked to see whether anything off-putting could possibly have happened to his face—a sudden nervous eczema, a pimple, or, God forbid, a string of snot dangling from his nose. But no, Felix Stanislavovich's appearance was as handsome and agreeable as always: that manly chin and resolute mouth, that magnificent mustache and moderately proportioned, perfectly clean nose.

  The colonel's mood was finally ruined completely by some short little idiot in a beret wearing
gigantic dark glasses. First he blocked La-grange's path, then fiddled with the frame of his clownish oculars for some reason, and finally muttered, “Perhaps this one? Red—that's good. But the head! Crimson! No, he won't do!” And then he cast any pretense at civil behavior to the four winds and began waving his hands angrily at the colonel. “Go on, get away! What are you standing there for? Numskull! Blockhead!”

  What a town!

  THE NOAH'S ARK HOTEL, about which the colonel had heard from His Grace Mitrofanii, was good, except for the prices. It was really quite incredible—six rubles for a room! Naturally, the colonel had been provided with a certain sum from the bishop's personal fund, quite adequate to cover even such an extravagant billet as this one, but the chief of police decided to draw on the resourcefulness that was so essentially typical of his character. He signed the guest book, thereby indicating his firm intention to take a room for at least three days, and then, after finding fault with the view from the window, did not stay in the Ark at all, but sought out a more economical lodging for himself. Rooms in the Refuge of the Lowly cost the guests only a ruble a night—in other words, he would make a clear profit of five rubles a day. Father Mitrofanii wasn't the kind of individual to go delving into petty details, and if someday, when the accounts were being checked, the consistorial auditor should go poking his nose into the matter, then there was the entry in the book: F. S. Lagrange had been at Noah's Ark and left his mark, and all the rest was sheer nonsensical conjecture.

  The following morning, after spending the night in a tiny room with a view of the blank brick wall of the monastery's fish-smoking shed, the chief of police drank tea and immediately set out to reconnoiter. The information that His Grace had received from Alexei Stepanovich Lentochkin needed to be thoroughly checked, for it raised doubts about absolutely everything—in the first place about the character of the emissary himself, whom the colonel knew slightly and personally thought of as a “skitter bug.” And now, as if it were not enough to be a frivolous and irresponsible character who ought to have been kept under police surveillance following the outrageous events in K——, Lentochkin had decided to go insane as well. But who could tell exactly when his reason had become clouded—perhaps he'd arrived in Ararat already totally barmy, and this entire business was a load of raving nonsense!

  Felix Stanislavovich armed himself with a map of New Ararat, divided the town up into squares, and two hours later had combed every one of them thoroughly, keeping his ears and his eyes open and jotting down anything worthy of interest in a special little notebook.

  Beside a little fountain of medicinal water he found several respectable-looking pilgrims of a rather advanced age talking in low voices, discussing the night just past, which had turned out bright, although the moon was already a mere sliver.

  “He's been seen again,” a gentleman in a gray top hat with a mourning band of black crepe was saying in a voice of hushed mystery. “Psoi Timofeevich was watching through a telescope, from the Conception Bell Tower. He didn't risk going any closer.”

  “And what did he see?” asked his listeners, moving closer.

  “You know what he saw. Him. Walking along over the waves. Then the moon went behind a cloud, and when it came out again, he was gone …” The narrator crossed himself and all the others followed his example.

  “Psoi Tim.,” Lagrange jotted down, so that he could locate the eyewitness later and question him. However, in the course of his reconnaissance he heard talk of the previous night's water-walking not just once, but quite a number of times. It turned out that in addition to the unknown Psoi Timofeevich, several other bold fellows had been observing from a safe distance, and they had all seen something—one of them even asserted that the Black Monk had not walked, but rushed along above the water. Another had actually seen a pair of webbed wings, like a bat's, behind Basilisk's back (and we all know who has those).

  In the Fatted Calf chophouse the chief of police heard an argument between two elderly ladies about whether the buoy keeper's wife and the infant she had miscarried ought to have been buried in hallowed ground, and whether the monastery cemetery might be defiled in some way as a result. After all, he had been seen by the fence two days ago— one of the women who made the Communion bread had gotten such a terrible fright that she was still stuttering and stammering. They eventually agreed that the buoy keeper's wife was all right, but the unchristened fruit of her womb ought to have been burned and the ashes scattered to the wind.

  Later, some of the senior, gray-bearded brothers from the monastery were sitting on a bench in a square overlooking the lake and discoursing in low, decorous voices about how any doubtfulness in matters of faith led to wavering and temptation, and one old monk, to whom the others listened with particular attention, called for Basilisk's Hermitage to be closed for a while, in order to see whether the monastery's patron would calm down, and said that if, after all this, he stopped his rampaging, it meant that Outskirts Island was a bad place, possibly even cursed, and should be left uninhabited.

  The colonel stood behind the bench for a while, pretending to be admiring the starry sky (for basic astronomical reasons there was no moonlight that night). Then he walked on.

  He heard all sorts of other things too. Apparently, Basilisk had been seen at night not only on the water and by the graveyard, but even in Ararat itself. Near the old Church of SS. Kosma and Damian (which had burned down), on the monastery wall, in the Gethsemane Grotto. And every time the Black Monk appeared to anyone, he had pointed a monitory finger in the direction of Outskirts Island.

  And so it turned out that the skitter bug's exposition of the facts had not been a lie after all. Certain phenomena, the meaning and significance of which had not yet been established, had indeed occurred. The first task of the investigation could be considered complete.

  Further investigative activities were planned in the following sequence: take testimony from Dr. Korovin and interrogate the insane Lentochkin—provided, of course, that he had not already become totally inarticulate—and then after that, having collected all the preliminary information, set up an ambush on Lenten Spit, arrest the phantom without fail, and establish his true identity. In short it was all not so very difficult. Felix Stanislavovich had unraveled more cunning tangles in his time.

  The hour was already too late for a visit to the clinic, and the colonel turned back toward the Refuge of the Lowly, now not so much listening to the conversation of the people he met as simply observing the mores of New Ararat.

  Lagrange definitely liked the town. A clean, decent, sober place. No tramps, no beggars (who would let them onto the steamer so that they could get to the island?), no one dressed in patched rags to insult the eye. Simple people, nonecclesiastics—fishermen and artisans—dressed cleanly and respectably; women in white head scarves with round faces and well-nourished bodies. All the streetlamps lit and working properly, pavements made of smoothly planed planks, good quality roadways surfaced with oak tiles, without a single chip in them anywhere. You probably couldn't find such an exemplary town anywhere else in Russia.

  The colonel also found New Ararat interesting for another, exclusively professional reason. As a settlement that had grown up around a monastery and was located on church land, the town was not included in any administrative district—it was under the direct governance of the archimandrite and therefore lacked the usual administrative structures. From the provincial statistics, Lagrange knew that there were never any crimes or untoward incidents of any kind on the islands. He wanted to find out how they managed here without any police or bureaucrats or firemen.

  The answer to the last question was not long in coming—it was almost as if someone had deliberately decided to arrange a demonstration for the police chief of Zavolzhsk.

  As he was walking across the town's main square, Lagrange heard a noise—people shouting and bells ringing frantically—and he saw some boys running as hard they could, with intensely serious expressions on their faces. Drawing in
the night air with a nose that was highly sensitive to extraordinary events, Felix Stanislavovich caught the smell of smoke and realized there was a fire.

  He followed the boys, lengthening his stride. After he turned one corner and then another, there it was, blazing like a scarlet bush that had blossomed in the darkness—the Unleavened Bread Pavilion, a wooden construction in a pseudoclassical style. It was blazing furiously, unstop-pably—some sparks from the brazier must have found their way into the wrong place, and the cook had failed to notice. There he was in his white cap and leather apron, and two kitchen boys with him, all running around the burning bush, waving their hands in the air. But there was no point in waving like that—the establishment was done for; the colonel could see straightaway, with his experienced eye, that there was no way to put the blaze out. The danger was that it might leap across to the next house. Ah, what was needed here was a fire pump.

  And then immediately, the very moment he had the thought, he heard a ringing of bells, a clatter of hooves, and a cheerful jangling of harness from around the corner, and two teams of horses came hurtling onto the street illuminated by the blaze.

  The first was a dashing threesome of blacks drawing a carriage in which an extremely tall, emaciated monk was standing erect, wearing a purple skullcap and a pectoral cross with precious stones (the archimandrite himself, Felix Stanislavovich immediately guessed from the cross). Hurrying along behind it came a team of six sorrel horses, drawing the very latest fire engine, far more modern than anything that had ever been seen in Zavolzhsk. Seated in state on this monster with gleaming copper flanks were seven monks in polished helmets holding gaffs, picks, and axes.

  The reverend archimandrite leapt down to the ground while his carriage was still moving and began issuing commands in stentorian tones, and the firemen carried them out with a precision that the colonel found simply delightful.