Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk

by Boris Akunin

  Matvei Bentsionovich said nothing, but he raised his eyebrows in an expression of surprise, as if to ask, What are you saying?

  “Because of the Black Monk,” said Lev Nikolaevich, lowering his voice. “In the middle of the night he went to a little hut where there is a cross scratched on the window, and he lost his mind. He saw something there. And then afterward, in the very same place, another man I knew slightly shot himself with a pistol. Oh, now I've blurted it out! That was supposed to be a secret,” Lev Nikolaevich exclaimed in fright. “I was told about it in strict secrecy—I gave my word. Don't tell anyone else, all right?”

  Well, well, the investigator thought to himself, and he began rubbing the bridge of his nose furiously in order to calm the excited pulsing of his blood. Well, well.

  “I won't tell anyone,” he promised, pretending to give a yawn of boredom. “But you know, I find you very likable too, as it happens, and now it turns out that we have a mutual acquaintance. Would you perhaps care to take a cup of tea or coffee with me? We could talk a little about this and that. Perhaps even about Dostoyevsky.”

  “I should be delighted!” Lev Nikolaevich replied happily. “You know, it's such a rare thing here to meet anyone who is well read and truly cultured. And then again, not everyone finds it interesting to talk with me. I'm not clever, not educated; sometimes I say ridiculous things. We could sit in the Good Samaritan. They serve an original tea there, smoked. And it's not expensive.”

  He was all set to go for a talk with his new acquaintance there and then, but the Breguet in Berdichevsky's pocket jingled loudly four times and once quietly. It was already a quarter past four—what a long time he must have spent praying.

  “My dearest Lev Nikolaevich, I have urgent business to attend to, which will take me two or three hours. If it were possible for us to meet after that—?” The assistant public prosecutor broke off his sentence on an interrogative note, waited for a nod, and then continued. “My name is Matvei Bentsionovich, but I will introduce myself more fully when we meet this evening. Where should I look for you?”

  “Until seven I usually stroll around the town, watching the people and thinking about anything that comes into my head,” the valuable witness explained. “At seven I take supper at the Five Loaves cookshop and then, if it's not raining and the wind is not too strong—and today, as you can see, the weather is fine—I sit on a bench somewhere, with a view over the lake. For a long time. Sometimes until about ten—”

  “Excellent,” Berdichevsky broke in. “Then that's where we'll meet. Name some particular spot.”

  Lev Nikolaevich thought for a moment. “Let's say on the waterfront, near the Rotunda. So that you can find it easily. Will you really come?”

  “You may be quite certain that I shall,” the assistant public prosecutor said with a smile.

  MATVEI BENTSIONOVICH MOPPED his damp forehead and clutched at his heart. Mashenka was absolutely right—he ought to do gymnastics and ride a bicycle, as all enlightened people who were concerned for their physical health did. This was absurd—at the age of thirty-eight he already had a paunch, he suffered from shortness of breath, and he was quite unable to dodge about so rapidly.

  “Alexei Stepanich, really, that's enough of these games!” he appealed to the tropical jungle thickets in which he had just heard the rapid rustling of unshod feet. “It's me, Berdichevsky—you know me very well! Bishop Mitrofanii sent me to see you!”

  The game of hide-and-seek or catch-me-if-you-can or, more accurately, both at the same time, had been going on for quite a while, and the assistant public prosecutor was already worn out.

  Donat Savvich Korovin had stayed at the door of the conservatory. He was smoking a small cigar and observing the maneuvers of the two sides with interest. Matvei Bentsionovich had not actually seen Lentochkin's face yet, but the boy was definitely here—twice the official had caught a glimpse of a naked shoulder through the broad shiny leaves.

  “Don't worry, he'll run out of breath in a moment,” said the doctor. “He's getting weaker by the day. A week ago, when I needed to examine him, the attendants had to chase him for half an hour—they even had to bring him down from the palm trees. But two days ago, fifteen minutes was enough. Yesterday it was ten. That's bad.”

  He could have lent me those attendants, Berdichevsky thought angrily. He's trying to show that the provincial authorities mean nothing to an international authority like him. He took offense at the tone of my letter, just like the father superior.

  However, he actually liked the doctor, unlike the father superior. The doctor was calm, businesslike, and slightly sarcastic, but without being insulting. Having heard the investigator out, he had suggested quite reasonably, “First take a look at your Lentochkin, and then we'll come back here and talk.”

  But, as we have already said, taking a look at Alexei Stepanovich had proved to be far from simple.

  After a few more minutes, he succeeded in driving the wild inhabitant of the jungle into a corner and then, at last, the running about came to an end. He could see a curly head of hair protruding from behind a luxuriant bush, with a pair of blue eyes goggling in fright (beyond the bush, with its scattering of unnaturally blue flowers, there was nothing but a glass wall). The boy had grown terribly thin and lost all the color in his cheeks, Matvei Bentsionovich noticed, and his hair hung down in matted tangles.

  “Don't,” Alyosha said in a whining voice. “I'll fly away into the sky soon. He'll come to collect me. Wait a while.”

  On Donat Savvich's advice, Berdichevsky did not try to creep any closer to the patient, in order not to provoke a fit. He stopped, spread his arms, and began as gently as he could: “Alexei Stepanich, I have reread your last letter, where you wrote about the magical incantation and the buoy keeper's little house. Do you remember what happened there in that house?”

  Korovin chuckled behind Berdichevsky's back. “You're going at it very fast. You think he'll just tell you everything like that?”

  “Don't go there,” Alyosha suddenly told Berdichevsky in a thin little voice. “It will be the end of you.”

  The doctor walked up to the assistant public prosecutor and stood beside him. “My apologies,” he whispered. “I was wrong. You really do have some special kind of effect on him.”

  Encouraged by his success, Matvei Bentsionovich took half a step forward. “Alexei Stepanovich, my dear friend, the bishop is so worried about you that he can't sleep. He can't forgive himself for sending you here. Let's go back to him, eh? He ordered me not to come back without you. Let's go.”

  “Let's go,” Alyosha muttered.

  “And we'll talk about that night?”

  “We'll talk.”

  Berdichevsky glanced around triumphantly at the doctor: How's that then! Korovin frowned anxiously.

  “Something incredible must have happened to you there, I suppose?” Matvei Bentsionovich said in a very quiet voice, drawing out his words like an angler paying out his line.

  “Something incredible.”

  “Did Basilisk appear to you?”

  “Basilisk.”

  “And he gave you a bad fright?”

  “A bad fright.”

  The doctor moved the investigator aside a little. “Wait, will you. He's just repeating the most important words you say—can't you see that? It's a habit he has developed over the last three days. Obsessive recitation. He can't focus his attention for longer than a moment. He doesn't really hear you.”

  “Alexei Stepanovich, can you hear me?” the assistant public prosecutor asked.

  “Hear me,” Lentochkin repeated, making it clear that Donat Savvich was, unfortunately, right.

  Matvei Bentsionovich sighed in disappointment. “What is going to happen to him?”

  “A week, two at the most, and …” The doctor shook his head eloquently. “Unless, of course, a miracle happens.”

  “What sort of miracle?”

  “If I can discover a means of halting the disease process and rever
sing it. All right, let's go. You won't get anything out of him, just like your predecessor.”

  Once they were back in Korovin's study, they began talking, not about poor Alexei Stepanovich, but about Berdichevsky's “predecessor,” that is, about the deceased Colonel Lagrange.

  “In my line of work I have to be a good physiognomist,” said Donat Savvich, switching his gaze from Berdichevsky to the window and back. “And I am very, very rarely mistaken about people. But I must confess that your police chief's behavior has left me baffled. I would have guaranteed quite confidently that he was a well-balanced character with a high level of self-esteem and a primitive, object-related view of the world. People like that do not tend to commit suicide, or to go insane due to psychological trauma. If they do away with themselves, then it's only out of a sense of total hopelessness—when they are threatened with a shameful trial, or when their noses collapse and they go blind from neglected syphilis. If they go insane, then the reason is always something vulgar and uninteresting: their superiors have passed them over for promotion, or the winning ticket in a lottery had the next number to theirs—that was what happened to a certain captain of dragoons. I would never take on a patient like your Lagrange, not for anything. It's not interesting.”

  Somehow, as the conversation proceeded, without any special effort on the part of the two men the initial mutual caution and even hostility completely evaporated, until they were talking like intelligent individuals who respected each other.

  Matvei Bentsionovich also went across to the window and looked at the spruce little houses where Korovin's wards lived. “Supporting your patients must cost you a tidy sum, I suppose?”

  “A little less than a quarter of a million a year. If you divide that by twenty-eight (which is the number of patients that I have), the average cost comes to approximately eight thousand, although, of course, the difference in costs is very great. Lentochkin costs me almost nothing. He lives as free as a bird. And I'm afraid he will soon take wing and ‘fly away into the sky,’ ” the doctor said with a sad laugh.

  Berdichevsky was astounded by this incredible figure. He exclaimed, “Eight thousand! But that's …”

  “You wish to say that it's madness?” Donat Savvich asked with a smile. “More like a millionaire's whim. Other rich men spend their money on items of luxury or courtesans, but I have my own passion. It's not philanthropy, since I don't do it for mankind, but for my own satisfaction. But I spend quite a lot on charity too, because of all the things this earthly life has to offer, the one I value most is my own peace of mind, and I do everything I can to avoid any pangs of conscience.”

  “But doesn't it seem to you that your quarter of a million could be spent to the benefit of a far greater number of people?” asked Matvei Bentsionovich, unable to resist the gibe.

  The doctor smiled again, even more good-naturedly. “You mean the hungry and the homeless? Well, naturally, I don't forget about them. The income from the capital that I inherited amounts to half a million a year. I give away exactly half of it to charitable societies as a voluntary wealth tax or, if you like, as payment for my clear conscience, but then I do exactly as I wish with the remainder. I dine on foie gras without the slightest feeling of guilt. I want to play at doctors, so I do. With complete peace of mind. Would you really begrudge half of your income in exchange for sound sleep and harmony with your own soul?”

  Matvei Bentsionovich merely shrugged, at a loss to reply to this question. There was no point in trying to explain to the millionaire about his twelve children and the payments on the bank loan for his modest house and garden.

  “I spend a mere trifle on myself, twenty or thirty thousand,” Korovin continued. “All the rest goes for my passion. Every one of my patients is a genuine treasure trove. They are all unusual, all talented; you could write a dissertation, or even a book, on any of them. I've already told you that I'm very selective and I don't take just anyone, only those for whom I feel a certain sympathy. Otherwise it's impossible to establish a bond of trust.” He looked at the assistant public prosecutor, smiled at him in a most friendly fashion, and said, “I would probably take somebody like you. If you should happen to develop a mental illness, of course.”

  “Really?” laughed Berdichevsky, feeling flattered. “What sort of person do you think I am?”

  Donat Savvich was on the point of answering, but just then his gaze turned to the window once again and he declared with a conspiratorial air, “We'll find that out in just a moment.”

  He opened the window and shouted to someone: “Sergei Nikolae-vich! Are you eavesdropping again? Ai-ai-ai. Well, tell me, do you have your remarkable glasses with you? Excellent! Then would you be so kind as to call in to see me for a minute?”

  A few moments later a puny little man entered the study, wearing something like a medieval gown and a large beret and carrying a linen bag in which something was rattling.

  “What's that you have there?” the doctor asked curiously, pointing to the bag.

  “Samples,” the strange individual replied, looking Berdichevsky up and down. “Minerals. From the shore. Emanational analysis. I explained it to you. But you're deaf. Who's this? Why about the other?”

  “Right, allow me to introduce you. Mr. Berdichevsky, a guardian of law and order. He has come to investigate our mysterious goings-on. Mr. Lampier, a brilliant physicist, who also happens to be my guest.”

  “I see,” said the assistant public prosecutor, with a sideways glance at Korovin, and then he spoke cautiously to the “physicist.” “Mm-hmm, pleased to meet you, very pleased. How do you do?”

  “A guardian? Investigate!” the madman cried, without replying to the greeting. “But that … yes, yes! A long time ago! And he doesn't look like the other! Just a moment, just a moment … Ah, where are they? Where have they gone?”

  He became so agitated that Matvei Bentsionovich began feeling worried that he might pounce on him, but the doctor winked reassuringly.

  “Are you looking for your remarkable spectacles? Why there they are, in your breast pocket. I wanted to ask you to carry out a chromospectro-graphic inspection of this gentleman.”

  “What's that?” Berdichevsky exclaimed, even more alarmed now. “A chromo—”

  “A chromospectrographic inspection. It's one of Sergei Nikolaevich's inventions. He has discovered that every human being is surrounded by a certain emanation of energy that is invisible to the eye. The color of this emission is determined by the condition of the internal organs, a person's level of intellectual development, and even his moral qualities,” Korovin began to explain with a perfectly serious air. “Mr. Lampier's spectacles render this invisible aureole visible. And I must say that as far as physical health is concerned, Sergei Nikolaevich's emanational diagnosis is quite frequently correct.”

  Meanwhile, the man had already set a huge pair of spectacles with violet lenses on his nose and aimed them at Berdichevsky.

  “Good,” Lampier muttered. “Excellent … Not like the other one … No crimson at all … A hint of yellowish green—ai-ai-ai … But never mind, there's some orange … The head … I see … The heart … Did you know that you have a sick liver?” he suddenly asked in a perfectly normal voice, and Matvei Bentsionovich shuddered, because recently he had been getting stabbing pains in his right side, especially after supper.

  The madman whisked his absurd oculars off his nose, grabbed the investigator by the hand, and started gabbling: “A talk! Absolutely! Face-to-face! I've been waiting a long time, a long time! A lot of blue! That means you'll be able to understand! Immediately! To my place, my place! Oh, at last!”

  He began pulling Berdichevsky after him with so much determination that the startled official barely managed to break free.

  “Calm down, Sergei Nikolaevich, calm down,” said the doctor, coming to Berdichevsky's assistance. “Matvei Bentsionovich and I will just finish talking, and then I'll send him across to your laboratory. You go there and wait.”

  When his
patient had gone out, muttering and waving his arms about, Donat Savvich gave the assistant public prosecutor a glance of mock horror and whispered, “You have no more than five minutes to leave the grounds of the clinic. Otherwise Lampier will come back and you won't get rid of him that easily.”

  It was good advice, and Berdichevsky decided it would be best to take it, especially since there seemed to be no point in delaying at the clinic any longer.

  MATVEI BENTSIONOVICH STRODE along the yellow brick road winding between the low forested hills—no doubt it was the same one that the unfortunate Lagrange had followed only a week earlier on his way from visiting Dr. Korovin. What had been going on then in the doomed police chief's soul? Had he known that he was approaching the end of his last day in this world? What had he been thinking about as he looked down at the town, the monastery, the lake?

  Actually, it was not all that difficult to reconstruct Felix Stan-islavovich's train of thought. It could be assumed that by the evening he had already firmly decided to make his nocturnal excursion to the mysterious hut and check what kind of evil spirit it was that had broken its way through into the human world at that spot. How very like the gallant colonel it was to go dashing in headlong, and damn the consequences.

  Well then, we shall act differently, the assistant public prosecutor thought to himself, although, of course, we shall not ignore that important little house either. The very first thing we shall do is to examine it by the light of day, that is, not today, but tomorrow, because it is already getting dark, and we shall need witnesses.

  And then what? Cut the pane of glass with the cross on it out of the window frame and send it to Zavolzhsk for examination? No, that would take too long. Better summon Semyon Ivanovich here, together with three or four of the brighter police officers, to avoid having to rely on the base Vitalii and his peacekeepers. Establish twenty-four-hour observation posts in the hut and around it. And then we'll see how this demon of ours behaves.