by Boris Akunin
It was not a kingdom of death at all, she told herself, but the gateway to Heaven. Something like a cloakroom, where pure souls left their outer clothing before entering into their bright dwelling. There were the clothes, no longer needed. Lying there and decaying.
But in fact they were not even decaying very fast, the intrepid investigator told herself. All these bodies had not belonged to ordinary people, but to holy elders. And therefore their remains were incorruptible. There should have been a stench of dead flesh and decay, but if anything had decayed here, then it was Time itself. That was what the smell was: the decay of Time.
She walked on between the walls of heaped-up bodies, no longer afraid of anything. And then the remains came to an end. Polina Andreevna saw a bare stone wall on her left, and on her right the row of bodies was incomplete, with only three bodies lying one on top of the other.
Leaning down over the top body, she saw that this man had died recently. A bald head gleamed between the folds of the slit cowl: the hairless, wrinkled face seemed to be sleeping, not dead.
The holy elder Theognost. It was a week since he had passed on, and there was no smell of decay at all. Or could the composition of the air be different here, in the cave? Polina Andreevna decisively dismissed this last thought as sacrilegious and undoubtedly prompted by the Eternal Doubter and Enemy of Man. He was a holy elder—that was why he was not decaying.
The gallery led on farther, into the pitch darkness and up a gentle incline. And from up ahead, out of the very heart of the hill, she suddenly heard a faint sound, alarming and terribly unpleasant, as if somewhere in the distance someone was scraping an iron claw across a sheet of glass.
Mrs. Lisitsyna shuddered. She took a few steps forward, and the sound disappeared. Had she imagined it?
No, a moment later the claw set about its scraping once again. Her heart skipped a beat: bats! Oh Lord, give me strength and protect me from stupid womanish fears. What was wrong with bats? There was nothing dangerous about them. And it wasn't true that they sucked blood—that was just a childish fantasy.
She halted in indecision, peering into the ominous darkness, and then suddenly took several quick steps forward: the gallery continued onward, but at this point she could see the vague outlines of three doors in its walls: two on the right, one on the left. There was a thin strip of light under the door on the left.
The hermits’ cells!
Her timid fear of loathsome flying creatures was immediately forgotten. She had no time for such nonsense when there in front of her was the goal for which she had risked all these horrors!
Lisitsyna crept up to the door with the light seeping from under it. Just like the outer door, it had no bolt, but its hinges were well oiled, and when Polina Andreevna pulled it gently toward her it did not creak or squeak.
She had to blow out her candle.
Pressing her eye to the narrow crack, she saw a crude table, illuminated by an oil lamp, and a man leaning over a book (she heard the rustle of a page being turned). The man was sitting with his back to her and his head was as perfectly smooth and shiny as the head of a pawn on a chessboard.
Lisitsyna opened the door a bit farther to get a better look at the cell—only the tiniest little bit, but this time it betrayed her and squeaked.
The chair scraped on the floor and the sitter swung around sharply. Against the light she could not see his face, but there was a double white border on the front of his cassock, the sign of the rank of abbot. The holy elder Israel!
Polina Andreevna panicked and slammed the door, which was stupid. She was suddenly left in pitch darkness, and in her fright she even forgot in which direction the exit lay. But how could she run anyway when she could not see a thing?
She froze there in the absolute blackness, where there was nothing but that stealthy, harrowing scraping sound: kshi-ik, kshi-ik, kshi-ik. Any moment now she would feel a webbed wing brush against her cheek!
But she was only left standing there for a few seconds. The door opened, lighting up the gallery. The abbot of the hermitage was standing in the doorway, holding a lamp. His cranium was as naked as the deceased Theognost's had been, and he also had no beard or mustache—but at least he had eyebrows and eyelashes, or the sight would have been absolutely terrifying. Set at the center of his naked face was a large, thoroughbred nose, above a plump-lipped mouth. And Polina recognized the piercing gaze of those black eyes, even though she had only seen them through the holes in a cowl.
The holy elder shook his bald head and spoke in a familiar voice— low and slightly husky. “So you did come. You guessed the riddle. You are a brave one.” He did not seem very surprised at the appearance of an uninvited guest in the hermitage in the middle of the night.
But that was not why Polina Andreevna was taken aback.
“Holy father, do you talk?” she gasped.
“Not with them,” said Israel, nodding toward the doors on the other side of the gallery. “But to myself, when I am alone. Come in. It is not permitted to be in the Approach at night.”
“Where? The Approach? The Approach to what?” Mrs. Lisitsyna looked farther along the gallery. “And why is it not permitted?”
Israel did not answer the first question. To the second he replied, “The charter forbids it. From sunset until dawn, we must be in our cells, devoting ourselves to reading, prayer, and sleep. Come in.”
He moved aside and she stepped into the cell, a narrow chamber cut into the rock, its only furnishings a table, a chair, and a pallet lying in the corner. A dark icon hung on the wall, with a flickering icon lamp, and in another corner stood a small stove, with its chimney running straight into the low ceiling, where there was also a dark slit, no doubt an air duct.
So this is how salvation is attained, Lisitsyna thought mournfully as she surveyed the squalid dwelling. This is the place where prayers are offered for the whole of mankind.
The hermit looked at his nocturnal visitor in a strange manner, as if he were waiting for something or perhaps wished to make sure of something. His gaze was so intense that it made Polina Andreevna shudder.
“Lovely …” the holy father said in a barely audible voice. “Beautiful. Even better than beautiful—full of life. And there is nothing, nothing at all.” He crossed himself with sweeping movements and declared in a different, joyful voice: “Saved! Delivered! The Lord has freed me!”
His eyes were no longer alert and probing—they seemed to be filled with light; they glowed.
“Sit on the chair,” he said gently. “Let me take a better look at you.”
She sat down on the very edge and glanced in apprehension at this strange hermit. “You seem to have been expecting me, Father.”
“I was,” the abbot confirmed, putting the lamp down on the table. “I was hoping you would come. And praying to God that you would.”
“But… but how did you guess?”
“That you were not a novice, but a woman?” Israel carefully pulled the hood back off her head, but immediately took his hand away. “I have a special intuition for the female sex; I can't be deceived. All my life I have been able to recognize a woman from her smell, her skin, her body hair. Almost all of mine has fallen out now, it is true,” the holy elder said with a smile, “but never mind that—I knew straightaway who you were. And I realized that you were daring. You weren't afraid to dress up as a novice and come to the island in the boat. And it was obvious that you were intelligent, too—with that keen, inquisitive look. And when you came the second time, I could see quite clearly that you had caught the special meaning in my words. Not like those dimwits in Ararat. And on the last few occasions I spoke only for you, I put all my hope in you. I hoped you would guess.”
“Guess what? About Theognost's death?”
“Yes.”
“What did happen to him?”
Israel looked away from her face and wrinkled up the skin on his forehead.
“He was killed. At first I thought he had passed on in the ordinary way
, that his time had come. He had not come out of his cell by midday and I decided to look in. I saw him lying on his pine twigs (Theognost would have no truck with pallets). He was quite still and not breathing. He had been weak and unwell, and so I was not at all surprised. I was about to close his mouth when I saw threads between his teeth. Threads of red wool. Theognost had a red knitted scarf to wrap around his throat. Well, the scarf was lying a little distance away, on the table, neatly folded. How could that be, I thought. I unfolded it and saw that in one spot the wool was torn and there were threads sticking up …”
“Someone came in the night,” Mrs. Lisitsyna interrupted hastily, “covered Theognost's face with his own scarf, and smothered him? It's the only possible explanation. As he was choking, the holy father gnawed the wool with his teeth, that's why there were threads between them. And afterward the killer folded the scarf and left it on the table.”
The abbot nodded approvingly.
“I was right about you—you are intelligent. You saw everything straightaway. I had to think a lot longer than you did. When I finally realized what had happened, I shuddered inwardly. Who could have committed such an appalling deed? It wasn't me. Then who? Could it have been the holy elder David? Perhaps a devil had possessed him and incited him to commit evil? But David was even more infirm than Theognost; his heart was so bad that he hardly ever rose from his bed. He couldn't have done it! So it was an outsider. A fourth person. Isn't that right?”
“Yes,” said Polina Andreevna, and nodded. She was still in no hurry to share her own theories with the holy elder—she had the impression the hermit had not yet told her everything.
“Three months ago someone came. At night, like you. He came into my cell,” said Israel, confirming her guess.
“A little man, disheveled and fidgety?” she asked.
The holy elder screwed up his eyes. “I see that you know him. Yes, a little man. What he said was incomprehensible—he slavered as he spoke. He was like a holy fool. But he did not kill Theognost.”
At those words Lisitsyna took her spectacles out of their case, put them on her nose, and looked attentively at the abbot of the hermitage. “You seem very sure of that. Why?”
“He is not that kind of man. I know people very well. And I saw his eyes. People with eyes like that do not kill, let alone kill a sleeping man, in secret. I did not understand what he tried to tell me when he was here. About some kind of rays. He kept trying to inspect my bald head more closely. I drove him out. But I did not complain to the monks in Ararat. It is hard to explain anything to them, with one or two words a day, and the holy fool did no harm. No, my daughter, it was someone else who smothered Theognost. And I believe I know who.”
“Cucullus non fach monachum,” Polina Andreevna said with an understanding nod.
“Yes. I said that just for you, so that the boatman would not understand.”
“But how did you know that I can understand Latin?”
The holy elder laughed, parting the plump lips that were so out of keeping with the taut skin of his ascetic face.
“Do you think I can't tell an educated woman from a cook? You have a mark from your spectacles on the bridge of your nose—it's just barely visible, but I am observant when it comes to details. Wrinkles here”—he pointed to the corners of her eyes with his finger. “That's from reading a lot. You know, my dear, I know everything there is to know about women. I only need one glance and I can tell any woman her life story.”
Mrs. Lisitsyna could not tolerate such self-assurance, not even from a holy elder. “Any woman! Then what can you tell me about my life?”
Israel inclined his head to one side, as if he were checking something that he already knew in part. He spoke without hurrying.
“You are thirty years old. No, more likely thirty-one. Not an innocent young lady, but not married either. A widow, I think. You have no sweetheart and you do not want one, because …” He took his startled listener's hands in his own and looked at her nails and her palms. “Because you are a nun or a novice. You grew up in the country, on an estate in the central region of Russia, but later you lived in the capital and were accepted into high society. What you want above all else is to live an exclusively spiritual life, but it is hard for you, because you are young and there is still a lot of strength in you. And above all—there is a lot of love in you. You are filled with this unexpended love. You are overflowing with it.” The holy elder sighed. “I used to value women like you more than anything else. There is nothing on earth more precious than they are. And some time ago, five or six years, you suffered a great disaster, an immense grief, after which you decided to leave the world behind. Look into my eyes. Yes, that's right… I see, I can see what that grief was. Shall I tell you?”
“No!” Polina Andreevna exclaimed with a shudder. “Don't!”
The holy elder smiled a gentle, otherworldly smile. “Don't be surprised—there is no magic in this. You have probably heard that before I became a monk I was an inveterate sensualist. Women were the entire meaning of my former life. I loved the tribe of Eve more than anything else on earth. No, that's wrong: apart from women there was nothing that I loved. For as long as I can remember, I was always like that, from my earliest childhood.”
“Yes, I have heard that you used to be an outrageous Don Juan, that you had a thousand women and even compiled an atlas of their bodies.” She looked at the wizened old man with a fearful curiosity that was far from appropriate for an individual of the conventual calling.
“The idea of the atlas is a stupid, cynical joke. And as for sleeping with a thousand women—that's nonsense. No great prowess is required to rack up the numbers. Anyone can do that, if he is not disgusted by three-ruble whores. No, my dear, the body alone was never enough for me; I wanted to possess the soul as well.”
As he spoke about women, the hermit was transformed. His eyes became gentle and pensive, his mouth twisted into a sad smile, and even his speech became freer, as if it were not an ascetic monk talking, but some ordinary man.
“After all, what is the most magical thing about women? Their infinite variety. And with every woman I loved, I became different from the way I was before. Like a frog taking on the temperature of his surroundings. And for that, every one of them loved me. For the way that I existed only for her, perhaps not for long, but still I was hers alone. And how they loved me! I lived on their love, I was nourished by it, as a vampire is by living blood. It was not lascivious passion that set my head spinning, but the knowledge that now she would sacrifice her immortal soul for my sake! That I meant more to her than God himself! Only women know how to love like that.” The abbot lowered his head and sighed repentantly. “But once I had taken possession of the body and the soul, drunk my fill of blood, I soon began feeling bored. One thing I could never do and regarded as a base deception was to pretend to love. And I had no pity at all for those I had ceased to love. It is a great sin to make a heart your own and then simply smash it against the ground. A heartbreaker—the word may sound beautiful, but there is no greater crime on earth … and I always knew that. Drop by drop, year by year this poison accumulated within me. And when my cup was full and began to overflow, I was suddenly enlightened—I cannot say if it was a blessing or a punishment. Probably both. I repented. There was one story … I will tell it to you later, but first let me finish about myself … I entered a monastery to find salvation, but I did not find it, for there is much vanity in monasteries too. Then I conceived the desire to come here, to Basilisk's Hermitage. I waited four years until my turn came. Now I have been trying to save my soul here for two years, and still cannot. Of all those who have ascended to Heaven from this place, I am the only one who has been tested for so long—for my sins. Do you know what torment I have suffered as a monk?” The holy father gave Polina Andreevna a doubtful glance, as if he were not sure whether to tell her or not. “I will tell you. You are not some dim-witted virgin. Desires of the flesh have tormented me. Incessantly, through all my
years as a monk. By day and especially by night. That was the ordeal I was given—according to my deeds. The monks used to whisper—I do not know how they found out—that in Basilisk's Hermitage the Lord first of all granted release from sensual yearnings, in order to purge His lambs’ thoughts and bring them closer to Himself. And it was true: the other hermits were quickly released from desires of the flesh, but there was no release for me. Every night was filled with voluptuous visions. Everyone here loses the hair on their heads and bodies—it is in the nature of the place. But I kept my hair longer than anyone else. It was only when I had become abbot and outlived everyone else that my hair fell out.”
“But why does the hermits’ hair fall out?” Mrs. Lisitsyna asked, looking compassionately at the holy elder's bald cranium.
He explained: “It is a special mercy from God and a deliverance from the flesh. During the first few weeks the holy fathers are greatly tormented by lice and fleas—the charter does not allow us to wash. But without hair the torment is far less, and our hands are freed from shameful scratching to be clasped in devout prayer.” He clasped his hands piously in front of himself to demonstrate. “I was tormented by the insects for more than a year. There was no end to my suffering, and I repeated after Job: ‘I decay, hounded in spirit, begging for death but not receiving it.’ There was no death and no forgiveness for me. Things have only improved recently. I can feel that my body has grown weaker. It is hard to walk, my belly will not hold my food, and when I rise in the morning everything inside my head is spinning.” Israel smiled triumphantly. “That means it is close already. I do not have long to wait for deliverance. And just recently, I have been granted relief from my greatest torment. God has called off the demon of fleshly desire. And now I have bright, joyful dreams. When I saw you, so young and beautiful, I listened to my feelings—and nothing stirred within me. The Lord has purged me. Purged me and forgiven me.”
