by Boris Akunin
Shortly before three in the afternoon Pelagius wandered out of the town and found himself close to Lenten Spit, opposite Outskirts Island. In recent weeks this place had acquired a disquieting reputation among the pilgrims and local residents, and so the shore was completely deserted.
The novice walked along the spit until he reached its very end and then began skipping from one boulder to another, moving ever closer to the island. Here and there, for some incomprehensible reason, he thrust a stick that he had picked up into the water. Beside one of the boulders he squatted down on his haunches for a long time and fumbled in the cold water with his hands—as if he were catching fish. Although he lifted nothing out of the water, he seemed quite delighted about something and even clapped his chilly hands together.
He came back to the beginning of the spit, sat down on a rock beside an old boat that was moored there, and began working away with a pair of knitting needles, looking around him every now and then. And quite soon the person for whom the youth had apparently been waiting put in an appearance.
The monk walking along the path leading from the old chapel did not appear particularly meek and mild: a matted beard, bushy eyebrows, and a bluish nose with open pores, set in a large, crumpled face.
Pelagius jumped up and greeted him with a low bow. “Would you perhaps be the venerable holy elder Kleopa?”
“Indeed I am,” said the monk, squinting gloomily at the young lad. He scooped up some water out of the lake with his broad palm and drank it. “What do you want?” Heaving a sigh full of suffering that scalded the novices nostril with the sour smell of stale alcohol, he began taking his oars out of the bushes.
“I have come to implore your holy blessing,” Pelagius chirped in a shrill tenor.
Brother Kleopa was surprised at first, but his spiritual and bodily state at that moment were more conducive to irritability than astonishment, and he raised his massive, heavy fist as if to strike the boy. “Come here to play jokes, have you? I'll give you a blessing, you red-haired pup! I'll blacken your other eye for you!”
The young monk moved back a few steps, but did not run away. “But I was thinking of offering you fifty kopecks,” he said, and then he took the silver coin out of his sleeve and showed it to Kleopa.
“Give that here.” The boatman took the coin, bit on it with teeth yellow from smoke, and seemed satisfied. “Well, what do you want, tell me.”
The novice babbled shyly, “I have a dream. I want to be a holy elder.”
“A holy elder? You will be,” said Kleopa, mellowed by the silver. “In about fifty years for certain, you will be, you can't avoid it. Unless, of course, you die before then. And as for holiness, you're already standing there in a cassock, even though you're no more than a spring chicken. What's your name?”
“Pelagius, Holy Father.”
Kleopa pondered for a moment, obviously trying to recall his saints. “After Saint Pelagius of Laodicea, who persuaded his faithful wife to honor brotherly love above the love of a husband? Why, Saint Pelagius was getting well on, and you still haven't seen anything at all of life. What made a brainless young thing like you become a monk? Live a bit, sin to your heart's content, then atone for it all by prayer, that's the way the wise ones do it. The holy elder Israel, over there in the hermitage”— he nodded in the direction of the island—“now there's a prudent man for you. He had his fun and plucked plenty of young chicks, and now he's the abbot. He lived well here on earth, and now he's prepared a fine little place for himself in Heaven, close to the Father and the Son. That's the way to do it.”
The little monk's brown eyes lit up. “Ah, if only I could just get a little glimpse of the holy elder!”
“Sit here and wait. He comes out onto the shore sometimes, only not very often—not got the strength he used to have. I reckon he'll be ascending soon.”
Pelagius leaned down toward the boatman and whispered, “Couldn't I take a closer look, eh? Take me over to the island, Father, and I'll remember you in my prayers forever.”
Kleopa pushed the boy back as he untied the mooring rope. “Oh, don't want much, do you! You know what you'd get for that?”
“Is it absolutely impossible?” the ginger novice asked in a quiet voice, showing the corner of a piece of paper protruding from his white fist.
Brother Kleopa looked closely—it looked like a ruble all right. “It's not allowed,” he sighed regretfully. “If they find out, it's the punishment cell for sure. A week, or even two. And I can't live on bread and water— water makes my head swell up.”
“But I've heard tell that these days none of the brothers except you will dare take a boat to the island anyway. They won't put you in the punishment cell, Father. And how will they find out? There's nobody here, is there?” And he stuffed the note into Kleopa's hand, the little tempter.
Kleopa took the bribe, looked at it, and started thinking.
And then another note appeared, as if out of nowhere.
The redheaded imp forced it into the boatman's reluctant fingers. “Just a quick glimpse, with one eye, eh?”
The monk turned both notes over, stroked them lovingly, and shook his gray locks.
“Well, you won't be able to see him with two, heh-heh!” Kleopa laughed, delighted with his own joke. “Who fixed your fizzog for you, eh? Had a dustup with some workmen, I bet? As quiet as they come, but I can see you're a rascal! Over some girls, was it? Oh, you won't last long as a novice, Pelagius. They'll throw you out. Tell me, was it the workmen, then? Over some girls?”
“It was girls,” the young monk confessed, lowering his eyes.
“I knew it. ‘I want to be a holy elder,’ ” Kleopa mimicked as he tucked the fifty-kopeck coin and the notes in behind his belt. “And you want to see the island for the sake of a bit of mischief, I suppose? Don't lie—tell me the truth!”
“I'm just curious, that's all,” said Pelagius with a sniff, entering fully into his role.
“And where did you get so much money from? Did you pilfer it from the donations?”
“No, Father, of course not! I have an uncle who's a merchant. He feels sorry for me and sends me money.”
“A merchant—that's good. Was it him put you in the monastery for your pranks? Never mind, if he feels sorry for you, he'll be merciful and take you back, just wait and see. Right, I'll tell you what, Pelagius.” The boatman looked around at the deserted shore and made his mind up. “There was this one time last year, you see. I flayed the skin off my finger on Father Martirii's face—the stinking dog stuck his teeth in the way of my fist. My hand swelled up so bad I couldn't row with it. So I struck a deal with Ezekiel the street sweeper to help me out: me on one oar, him on the other … We rowed the boat three days like that. Anyway, that's an old story now. But if they see us, I'll say my hand's hurting again. Climb in!” Then he tore a strip of cloth off his undershirt and wound it around his hand.
They laid into the oars and moved off.
“Only you look here,” Kleopa warned Pelagius sternly. “Don't you set one foot out of the boat onto the island! I'm the only one who's allowed to go there. And keep your ears open for what the elder says—I've got a memory like a sieve nowadays, and he won't say it twice. To be honest, sometimes I forget before I get back to the father steward. Then I tell him any nonsense that comes into my head.”
As he rowed, Pelagius kept glancing over his shoulder at Outskirts Island slowly drifting closer. It was deserted, with no movement at all: black rocks, pale gray grass, straight pines jutting up from the top of the hill, like hair standing on end.
The boat nudged against the sand, and Brother Kleopa picked up the basket of provisions and jumped out onto the shore. He wagged his finger at his partner, as if to say, Stay there and don't move.
The little novice turned around on his bench, propped his chin in his hands, and opened his eyes as wide as he possibly could—in short, he got ready.
And then he saw one of the black boulders suddenly start to move: it seemed to bre
ak into two parts, one larger and one smaller. The smaller part straightened up and became a featureless black sack, pointed at the top and broader at the bottom.
The sack slowly moved downhill, to the edge of the water. Pelagius could make out two hands, a staff, a white border along the edge of the abbot's robe, and, just below the top of the cowl, a skull and crossbones. The boy raised his hand to cross himself at the sight.
The boatman set down what he had brought on a flat rock in a habitual manner: three small loaves of bread, three earthenware pots, a little bag of salt. Then he walked up to the elder, pressed his lips against the bony yellow hand, and was blessed in reply with the sign of the cross.
Pelagius sat in the boat, shuddering. The skull and crossbones certainly looked terrifying, but the worst thing was the holes in the covering of the face, and the two glittering eyes looking out through them, straight at the novice. And even that was not enough for the faceless holy elder Israel. Moving his feet with difficulty, he walked right up to the boat, stood facing the quailing young monk, and stared steadily at him for a while—he was probably not used to seeing any emissaries from the outside world apart from Kleopa.
The boatman explained: “I hurt my hand. I couldn't row on my own.”
The ascetic nodded, still looking at the novice. Then Kleopa cleared his throat and asked, “What will the phrase be today?”
Pelagius thought he saw the black figure start, as if awaking from a state of reverie or trance. It turned toward the monk, and a low, hoarse voice spoke very clearly, with gaps between the words: “Today—dost— Thou—release—Thy—servant—the—death.”
“Oh, my Lord,” Kleopa exclaimed, taking fright at something and starting to cross himself frantically. “Now we're for it…” He hastily clambered back into the boat and pushed off from the shore with his foot.
“What's wrong, Uncle?” the boy asked, looking back at the holy elder (he was standing quite still, leaning on his staff). “What was that he said about death, eh?”
“I'll give you uncle,” Kleopa snapped, absorbed in his own thoughts. “Lay into that oar there, lay into it! Well now, there's a fine trip we've made!”
They had almost reached the shoreline of Canaan before he explained: “If the words are ‘Today dost Thou release Thy servant,’ one of the hermits has passed away. Tomorrow I'll bring another one to take his place. Father Ilarii's been waiting a long time. They'll sing his requiem this evening, take him to the Farewell Chapel to take his leave of the world all alone, sew up his cowl, and cut holes in it. And at first light I'll take a living man to join the dead. Ah, why can't people be happy to live in the world?” Kleopa shook his shaggy head. “But how do you like that holy elder Israel! That makes seven he's outlived now. He must have sinned in real style, the Lord still won't take him to Himself yet. Which one of them's passed on, then? Holy elder Theognost or holy elder David? What was it that he said, exactly?”
“Today dost Thou release Thy servant, the death,” Pelagius recited. “But why was ‘the death’ added at the end?”
Kleopa moved his lips, remembering the words. He answered the question with a shrug, as if to say, That's none of our business.
WHAT ELSE SHOULD be told about the events of that day?
Probably what happened at the buoy keeper's hut, although it won't make any sense at all.
When he left the boatman, Pelagius did not go straight back to the town; first he strolled along the shore as far as a solitary log hut—the selfsame ominous hut that has already featured in our narrative several times. It was hardly any distance to walk from Lenten Spit: a hundred paces to the Farewell Chapel, and then another hundred and fifty.
The novice walked around the outside of the plain little dwelling and glanced inside through the small dusty window. He pressed his cheek against the glass and started running his finger over the eight-pointed cross crudely scratched into it. He said just one word: “Aha.”
Then he suddenly squatted down on his haunches and started rummaging in the weeds with his hands. He picked up some small object and held it close to his face (the light of the autumn day was already fading and it was hard to see). He said “Aha” a second time.
And then the boy set off with remarkable fearlessness toward the boarded-up door and tugged on the handle. When it creaked open quite easily, he looked at the nails protruding from it and nodded to himself.
He went inside. In the semidarkness he could see a table with an open coffin lying on it and the lid of the coffin lying on the floor. The novice felt the wooden box from this side and that; then for some reason he set the lid in place and slapped it gently. The coffin closed tightly, with a quiet crunch.
The youth went over to the window, where there were two sacks of straw lying on the floor. For some reason he set one on top of the other. Then, with an anxious glance through the window at the rapidly failing light, he got up on a bench and began running his hand along the smoothly trimmed logs of the wall. He started at the top, just under the ceiling, then checked the next row down, then the next, and the next. Having finished these mysterious manipulations on one wall, he moved on to the next and continued with this strange occupation for some time.
When the windowpane was already tinted pink by the final glow of sunset, Pelagius uttered the word “Aha” for a third time, in a louder and happier voice than before.
He took a knitting needle from inside his cassock, poked at the beam with it for a moment, and then extracted something really tiny, no bigger than a cherry pit, with his fingers.
He didn't stay in the hut any longer after that.
He strode off rapidly along the deserted path to New Ararat and half an hour later he was already on the waterfront, near the automatic dispensers of holy water. First he strolled past (there were rather a lot of people); then he seized his chance and slipped nimbly into the crack between the pavilion and the fence.
Ten minutes later a modest young lady in a black pilgrim's dress emerged onto the promenade, wearing a head scarf pulled right down to her eyes—a precaution that was probably unnecessary, for the bruise was, in any case, invisible in the evening twilight.
A Few Things Are Made Clear
THAT EVENING POLINA Andreevna wrote a letter in her room.
To His Grace Mitrofanii, light, joy, and strength.
If you are reading this letter of mine, Father, it means that I have been overtaken by disaster and was not able to tell you everything in person. But then, what is “disaster”? Perhaps what people are accustomed to calling disaster is really cause for joy, because when the Lord calls one of us to Himself, what is bad about that? Even if he does not call us, but subjects us to some terrible test, that also is no cause for sadness, for after all, that is why we are born into the world—to be tested.
Ah, but why am I preaching to you, my pastor, about what is obvious? Forgive my stupidity.
But above all, forgive my deception, my willfulness, and my flight. Forgive me for stealing all your money and for irritating you so often with my obstinacy.
And so, now that you have forgiven me (for how could you not forgive me if I have been overtaken by disaster?), let me move straight on to the essential matter, for I have a lot to write, and I have more business to deal with tonight. But I shall tell you about that business at the very end. First I shall recount everything in the proper order, as you like things done (in other words, not the “woman's way” but the “man's way”): what I have heard from others; what I have seen with my own eyes; what conclusions I draw from all this.
What I have heard.
Many people have already seen the Black Monk on Canaan during the night. Basilisk frightens some with his sudden appearance and others take fright themselves when they see him in the distance, creeping or hurrying along. I must have overheard a dozen or so such stories in the town and the monastery. The general opinion among the monks and the local people is that Basilisks Hermitage is an evil spot, because one of the ascetics has sold his soul to the E
nemy of Man, and so the place is cursed and the holy elders should be removed from there, Outskirts Island should be declared an uninhabitable wilderness, and it should be prohibited to land there or even come close in a boat.
Let me say immediately that all this is absolute nonsense. Saint Basilisk has not descended from Heaven, but remains serene in his place beside the Throne of the Lord, which is where he should be. There is nothing mystical about this story—it is only a matter of malicious deception. Today, as the end of my second day on Canaan approaches, I have become absolutely convinced that the appearances of the Black Monk are nothing more than a cunning and ingenious performance.
What I have seen.
The secret of the “walking on water” is very easily explained. Between the fourth and fifth rocks that jut up out of the water beyond the end of the Lenten Spit, I discovered an ordinary wooden bench under the surface of the water. It is hidden in the shallows, lying on its side. When it is stood on its ironbound feet, the board is one inch below the surface of the water. At night, even from close up, anyone walking along this bench would certainly appear to be walking on the water. I cannot say anything definite about the “unearthly glow” that is supposed to envelop Basilisk; however, I expect that if you were to hold a powerful electric torch behind your back and suddenly switch it on, it would produce more or less the same effect: it would give a sharp outline to your silhouette and the light would spread out, dissipating into the darkness. This simple trick should produce a great impression on monks who are frightened to death by the “walking on water” and are unlikely ever to have seen an electric light. And possibly also on anybody who has a lively imagination or is inclined toward mysticism. Imagine a moonlit night, an unnaturally bright light, a black figure with no face hovering above the water. I encountered it on dry land, and my blood still ran cold! No, I am skipping ahead, and that is the “woman's way.” I shall write about my encounter with “Basilisk” later.
