Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk

by Boris Akunin

She lit a candle and listened closely to the mysterious sound. Then she set off, but not to the right. She went to the left.

  Basilisk

  THE GALLERY THAT the holy elder Israel had called the Approach gradually rose higher and higher as it led on. The walls on both sides were bare now, and Polina Andreevna saw that there would be enough room for many hundreds more dead bodies.

  The sound was clearer now and harder to bear—an iron claw scraping, not against glass, but against a naked, defenseless heart. At one point, when Lisitsyna could stand it no longer, she set the traveling bag down on the ground and put her hands over her ears, despite the risk that her hair might catch fire from the burning candle clutched in her fingers.

  Her hair did not catch fire, but a drop of wax fell onto her temple, and the sudden hot sensation settled Polina Andreevna's nerves.

  She picked up the bag and went farther.

  Thus far the gallery had been almost straight, or at least there had not been any visible bends, but now it suddenly turned a ninety-degree corner.

  Mrs. Lisitsyna peeped around the corner and froze.

  There was dull light glimmering up ahead. The explanation for the strange scraping sound must be very close now.

  Polina Andreevna blew out her candle, pressed herself flat against the wall, and took a cautious step around the corner.

  She crept forward on tiptoe, without making a sound.

  The passage widened out into a round cave with its high ceiling lost in darkness.

  But Polina Andreevna did not even glance upward—she was so stunned by the picture that opened up to her eyes.

  Lying in the middle of the cave was a perfectly round sphere, with its bottom third sunk into the ground. It was about the same size as one of those large balls of snow that children use as the base for a snowman. The surface of the sphere shimmered with shifting rainbow patterns in violet, green, and pink. The sight was so wonderful, so unexpected after wandering so long in the dark, that Lisitsyna gasped.

  A lantern stood beside the sphere, illuminating the smooth, glittering surface, setting it flashing and sparkling, and she could see a black shadow hunched over between the lantern and the sphere, swaying in a steady rhythm, like a pendulum. The sickening scraping sounds matched its movements perfectly.

  Polina Andreevna took another short step forward, but just at that moment the sound broke off, and in the sudden silence the gentle rustle made by the sole of her shoe sounded deafening.

  The crouching figure froze, as if it were listening. It made a careful movement, as if stroking the sphere or gently sweeping something off it.

  What should she do? Freeze stock-still and hope that it would be all right, or make a run for it?

  Mrs. Lisitsyna was standing in a most uncomfortable position, with one foot extended in front of her and supporting all her weight, and the other foot poised on its toes.

  And then she felt an irresistible tickling in her nose. She suppressed the sneeze by pressing a finger against the base of her nose, but she could not suppress the sudden intake of breath.

  The black man (if, of course, it was a man) made a quick movement that puzzled Polina Andreevna at first, but when the rounded upper part of the silhouette suddenly became pointed, she realized he had pulled a cowl up over his head.

  There was no point in hiding any longer. And Mrs. Lisitsyna did not try to run away. She walked straight toward the standing hermit (she could see now that it was a hermit) and he backed away.

  When she had almost reached the slim black shadow, Polina Andreevna was halted by the terrible glint in the eyes behind those holes. That must be the way the eyes of a basilisk glinted. Not the righteous Saint Basilisk's eyes, but those of that appalling, nightmarish emissary of hell with the body of a toad, the tail of a snake, and the head of a cock. The monster whose death-dealing gaze cracked stones, withered flowers, and struck people dead on the spot.

  “So this is what you are really like, Alexei Stepanovich,” Polina An-dreevna said with a shudder.

  The Black Monk did not budge, and so she continued—in a low voice, without hurrying.

  “Yes, it is you, I know it. There is nobody else it could be. At first I suspected Sergei Nikolaevich Lampier, but now, after walking through the Approach alone in the darkness, I have seen the light. That often happens: when the eyes are blind, the sight of the mind and the soul becomes keener; they are not distracted by false appearances. Sergei Nikolaevich could not have carried you all the way from the conservatory to the lake. He is not strong enough, he is too puny, and it is a long way. And then, I could not get that saying of Galileo's about measuring the immeasurable out of my head: I found it in the notebook with all the formulae, but where had I seen it before? I have remembered now, only a moment ago. It was in your third letter. So by that time you must already have been in Lampier's laboratory and looked at his notebook. After that everything fell into place very quickly. Everything became clear. It's just a shame I did not realize sooner.” Polina Andreevna paused to see if the hermit would reply to that, but he said nothing. “On the very first day you found the bench hidden under the water and hinted at this ‘piquant circumstance’ in your letter, promising to reveal all the next day and present a simple answer to the riddle. That night you went to track down the ‘Black Monk’—and you succeeded. You followed the hoaxer to the clinic to discover who he was. You saw the laboratory and you were intrigued. You pried into his notes … I could not understand a thing from those formulae, but you could. They were right at the university when they predicted you would be another Faraday. There was something written there about this cave and this sphere that changed all your plans and you began playing out your own nocturnal performance.” She glanced fearfully at the mysterious, glimmering sphere. “What is so special about this sphere that could make you do such terrible things and destroy so many people's lives?”

  “Enough,” said the hermit, pulling off the cowl that was no longer needed and shaking his head of curly hair. “This sphere contains everything that I could ever desire. Absolute freedom, fame, riches, happiness! First, this object consists of at least a hundred thousand ounces of the most precious metal in the world, and every ounce is a month of life without any limitations. Second, and most important, that half-witted midget has given me the idea for a great project, a great idea! I am the only one who can appreciate it and understand it! When they threw me out of the university, I thought it was the end of everything. But no, behold, here is my future.” He gestured around the cave. “No need for degrees, no need to spend years as an assistant to some provincial luminary of science. I shall set up my own laboratory, in Switzerland. I shall develop the theory of emanation myself! No one can tell me what to do; I have no need to beg for money from anyone! Oh, the world shall know the name of Lentochkin!” Alexei Stepanovich leaned down and stroked the shimmering surface lovingly. “It is a shame that I have not managed to file off more platinum-iridium. But never mind—what I have already will suffice for my purposes.”

  He turned to face Polina Andreevna, and the sunken cheeks wrinkled up into the semblance of a smile, with no trace of their former dimples.

  “You tracked me down a bit too soon, Sister. But at least now I can speak out after mumbling to myself for so long. Much more of that and my brains might really have addled. You have a quick mind; you are able to appreciate my scheme. Well conceived, was it not? Especially the primordial nakedness? I had to maintain a foothold in Canaan somehow, while I prepared everything. During the day I relax in Eden, eating pineapples (ah, how sick I am of those damn things!), and at night I take my cassock out from under a bush and go striding off around the island to frighten the locals. And the best thing is that I am absolutely beyond suspicion. Mr. Lampier and I made an excellent pair of ‘Basilisks’—we frightened all the curious and pious pilgrims away from the shoreline. Ah, one more month and I would have filed off not five pounds, but fifty or a hundred. Then I could have set up an entire research center, not just
a laboratory. The conditions in which the natural factor comes into effect have been determined and confirmed in Lampier's experiments,” he said in a low voice, no longer talking to Polina Andreevna, but to himself. “Now I can try to create an artificial factor—there will be enough money to make a start, and then the blockheads will shell out…”

  “What is this factor?” Lisitsyna asked guardedly.

  Alexei Stepanovich started and beamed another withered smile at her.

  “You wouldn't understand that. But you can appreciate the elegance of my solution to the problem. I arranged everything quite beautifully, didn't I? A quiet idiot sitting in his glass palace and talking in riddles, luring the stupid carp to the right spot—that empty hut. Then hook them, bash them over the head, and into the bucket with them! I know that you, Mademoiselle Pelagia, could never stand the sight of me, but you must agree it was all wonderfully well planned.”

  “Yes, it was ingenious,” Polina Andreevna conceded. “But absolutely ruthless. It was your cruelty that first made me dislike you so much. I did not like the hideous revenge you took on the vice-chancellor to settle your grudge.”

  Alexei Stepanovich started walking around the cave, shaking his work-weary fingers.

  “Oh, yes, of course. Prince Bolkonsky would not have acted like that. That's why he never became a Bonaparte. But I shall. There is my Toulon!” Lentochkin nodded at the miraculous sphere again. “With this fulcrum, I can overturn that other, far more voluminous sphere. Ah, I should have smacked you harder that time, with the stilt. I have had only six nights with the sphere, and now I shall have to leave. Never mind—what I already have will suffice for my idea.”

  He slapped himself on the chest and halted beside the gaping black maw of the gallery. Raising one hand to his mouth, he licked the palm—it was covered with bloody, broken blisters. However, it was not the blisters that caught Mrs. Lisitsyna's attention, but the strange long blade glittering in Alexei Stepanovich's fingers.

  “What's that you have there?”

  “This?” He held up a narrow strip of metal covered with brilliant points of light. “A diamond grit file. It's the only thing that will touch platinum-iridium. I borrowed it from the good Mr. Lampier. Of course, he is an absolute blockhead, but I am grateful to him for his idea of a nuclear factor and his analysis of the material of the meteorite.”

  Polina Andreevna did not understand about the idea, or about the “material of the meteorite” either, but she did not ask any questions— she had only just realized that after his apparently random movements around the cave, Lentochkin was now blocking her only route of escape.

  “Are you going to kill me too?” she asked quietly, gazing mesmerized at the glittering file. “Like Lagrange, like Theognost, like Ilarii?”

  Alyosha pressed one hand to his chest, as if he were trying to justify his actions. “I do not kill anyone unnecessarily, only if I have to. It's La-grange's own fault that he had such a hard head—I couldn't stun him, so I had to shoot him. Theognost was preventing me from moving into the hermitage—he was occupying my place. And the monks had already held Ilarii's funeral, so he was already as good as dead anyway.”

  His white teeth suddenly glinted in the light of the lantern, making it clear that the ingenious youth was not trying to justify himself at all; he was joking. But then his smile instantly disappeared and he spoke in a serious, puzzled voice.

  “There's just one thing I don't understand. What were you counting on when you came in here? You already knew you would find me here, not that weakling Lampier! Were you hoping I would take a chivalrous attitude toward a lady? That was foolish! Really, Sister, I simply cannot let you live, no matter how much I might wish to. I need at least one day to get away from the archipelago.”

  He sighed regretfully, then winked and bared his teeth—he had only been playing the fool again.

  “To tell you the truth, regardless of that consideration, I would still kill you anyway. I don't feel any pity for you, you skulking little mouse. And why should I want a witness like you around when I am a world-famous scientist?”

  Alexei Stepanovich lifted up the hand holding the file, and it flashed and sparkled with points of multicolored light, like a magic wand in some fairy tale.

  “Just look, Mademoiselle Pelagia. It is a beautiful dream—to receive your death from a thing of such beauty; Cleopatra herself would envy you. And it is so sharp that it will quite easily run through your ginger head from one ear to the other. I'll put you in the pile, under some dried-out righteous holy man,” said Alyosha, screwing up his eyes dreamily. “The hermits won't notice you straightaway. Only when you start to rot. You're not a saint, are you—so you're not guaranteed incorruptibility.” He laughed. “And you'll enjoy it. At least when you're dead, you'll be lying under a man.”

  Polina Andreevna backed away, covering her chest with the traveling bag like a shield. Her fingers fumbled in panic at the catch.

  “Go away, Alexei Stepanovich. Do not take another sin on your soul; you have already committed more than enough atrocities. I swear to you in Christ's name that I will do nothing until tomorrow, until three o'clock in the afternoon. You will have time to leave the island on the morning ferry.”

  She clicked the small, nickel-plated balls apart and thrust her hand into the traveling bag. Lagrange's revolver was in there, wrapped in her drawers. She would not shoot, of course, but it would be enough to frighten him. Then Alyosha would understand what she had been counting on when she entered the cave and put herself in danger.

  Lentochkin took a few quick steps forward, and Polina Andreevna suddenly realized that she would not have enough time to unwrap the thin silk. She ought to have taken the gun out sooner, while she was walking along the gallery.

  She pressed her back against the uneven wall. She could retreat no farther.

  The false hermit was in no hurry. He stopped in front of the cringing woman as if he were contemplating where to strike—at the ear, as he had threatened, at the neck, or at the stomach.

  The lantern had almost run out of oil and was hardly giving any light at all. The darkness behind Alyosha's back was impenetrable.

  “Why have you got your head down like that?” Lentochkin laughed. “Would you like to butt, but God didn't give you any horns? If that's the case, you shouldn't have meddled in the corrida, my little hornless cow.” He suddenly raised the file above his head like a toreador's sword and sang a phrase from the latest fashionable opera: ‘Toréador, prends garde ä toi…”

  The melody was suddenly choked off as he collapsed under the blow from the knotty staff that came smashing down on his curly head.

  There, standing just behind the spot where Alyosha had been, was a black shadow in a pointed cowl. Polina Andreevna tried to scream, but her mouth would not draw in the air.

  “I have violated the charter for you,” the holy elder Israel said in a peevish voice. “I have left my cell at night. Defiled myself with the sin of violence. And all because I knew that women like you are obstinate and curious to the point of foolhardiness. There was no way you would ever go back to the world until you had sniffed out every last detail with that freckled nose of yours. Well then, look, since you are already here.

  There it is, the heavenly fragment that we hermits have guarded for hundreds of years. It is the sign sent down to our founding father, Saint Basilisk. Only be sure not to say a word of this to anyone. Agreed?”

  Mrs. Lisitsyna nodded without speaking, for after all these horrors she had not yet recovered the gift of speech.

  “And who is this boy?” the abbot asked, leaning on his staff as he bent down over the body on the ground.

  Before she could answer, Alyosha suddenly lifted himself up and thrust the file deep into the center of the hermits chest. Then he pulled it out and struck again.

  Israel fell on top of his murderer. His hands fumbled at the ground, but he could not get up, or even raise his head.

  It took Lentochkin only a few moments
to toss the holy elders body aside and get to his feet, but that was enough for Polina Andreevna to run from the wall to the middle of the cave, grab the revolver out of the traveling bag, and free it from the slippery silk. She threw the bag down on the ground, clutched the fluted handle of the revolver in both hands, and aimed it at Lentochkin.

  He looked at her without any sign of fear. His mouth twisted into a crooked sneer as he rubbed the bruised back of his head and tugged the blade out of the hermit's chest without the slightest effort—like pulling a knife out of butter.

  “Do you know how to use a firearm, Sister?” Lentochkin asked mockingly. “Do you know which little thingamajig to press?”

  He walked casually straight toward her, waddling. The diamonds on the file were dull now—the blood had dimmed their sparkle.

  “Yes! This is a Smith & Wesson forty-five six-shooter, central-firing with a double-action trigger,” Mrs. Lisitsyna replied, blurting out the information she had gleaned from the ballistics textbook. “The bullet weighs half an ounce, its initial velocity is seven hundred feet a second, and it can puncture a pine board three inches thick from a distance of twenty paces.”

  It was a shame that her voice was so unsteady.

  But even so the required effect was achieved.

  Lentochkin stopped dead and looked at the black hole of the muzzle, perplexed.

  “And where's the thirty-eight-caliber Colt?” Polina Andreevna asked, hoping to reinforce the impression she had made. “The one you used to shoot Lagrange? Give it to me, but slowly, with the handle first.”

  When Alyosha failed to respond, she did not say anything else to him, but simply cocked the trigger. The click was not really all that loud, but in the silence of the cave it sounded most impressive.

  The murderer shuddered, dropped the file on the ground, and held his hands out, palms upward. “I haven't got it! I threw it in the water that night! I couldn't hide it in the conservatory, could I? What if the gardener had found it?”