Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

by Boris Akunin

  Berdichevsky was immediately struck by a bold idea: to promote this escorted walk from the carriage to the porch to the rank of habit. And, in addition, could he not perhaps introduce a farewell handshake? Well, why not? Nuns’ hands could not be kissed, but a handshake—that was very restrained, chaste, comradely.

  On the porch the public prosecutor doffed his cap—with his left hand, so that his right hand was free, but nonetheless he couldn’t bring himself to proffer it, and the idea never entered Pelagia’s head. “Good night,” she said.

  She took hold of the door handle and suddenly cried out—in a sweet, defenseless voice, like a girl. She pulled her hand away, and Berdichevsky saw a small drop of blood on her middle finger.

  “There’s a nail sticking out!” the nun said in annoyance. “It’s high time this handle was changed for a brass one.”

  She began taking out her handkerchief.

  “Allow me, allow me!” Matvei Bentsionovich exclaimed, hardly able to believe his good luck. “You can’t use a handkerchief, come now! What if, God forbid, it has lockjaw on it! What if there are microbes? It has to be sucked clean, I know that from … a certain article I read.” Then he completely lost his head—he seized hold of Pelagia’s hand and raised the pricked finger to his lips.

  She was so astonished that she never even thought of pulling away. She merely gave the public prosecutor a curious look, as if she were seeing him for the first time.

  Had she guessed?

  But at this stage Berdichevsky no longer cared. The warmth of her hand and the taste of her blood had set his head spinning—as if he were some kind of starving vampire. He sucked in the salty liquid as hard as he could. The only thing he regretted was that this was not a bite from a deadly poisonous snake.

  Pelagia came to her senses and jerked her finger away. “Spit it out!” she ordered him. “Who knows what sort of filth there was on it!”

  Matvei Bentsionovich spat delicately into his handkerchief—although, of course, he would have preferred to swallow. He muttered in embarrassment, already regretting his spontaneous impulse, “I’ll pull that detestable nail out right away.”

  Oh, disaster! She had guessed, she must have guessed! With her astute mind. It was all over, now she would shun him, avoid his company!

  He removed the lantern from the shaft of the carriage and took a pair of pincers out of a box under the seat (an essential item for any horse-drawn vehicle—in order to remove a splinter from a hoof if a horse went lame).

  He walked back up onto the porch, brisk and businesslike. He pulled out the sly nail and displayed it. “Strange,” said Pelagia. “The end is rusty, but the head is still shiny. As if it had only just been hammered in.”

  Berdichevsky shone the lantern on it and saw that the point had a dull glint to it. From the blood? Yes, there was blood. But it was glinting higher up than that, from some other, oily substance, lighter in color. The public prosecutor caught his breath, but this time the reason was not amorous languor.

  “Quick! To the hospital!” he shouted at the top of his voice.

  Cra-ack, cra-ack

  PROFESSOR ZASEKIN, THE senior physician at the Martha and Mary Hospital and a celebrity famous throughout the whole of Russia, paid no attention to the scratch on Pelagia’s finger. He just looked at it, shrugged his shoulders, and didn’t even bother to wipe it with iodine. But he paid extremely serious attention to the nail. He took it to the laboratory, spent an hour or so conjuring with it, and returned perplexed.

  “A curious composition,” he told the public prosecutor and his companion. “It will take time to determine the complete formula, but it includes both Agaricus muscarus and Strychnos toxifera, and the concentration of Escherichia coli is simply phenomenal. Someone mixed up an absolutely devastating cocktail. If you, my dear fellow, had not sucked that rubbish out immediately after the trauma was sustained …” The doctor shook his head expressively. “It’s remarkable that the wound is absolutely clean. You must have put your heart and soul into it and sucked with real passion. Well done!”

  Matvei Bentsionovich blushed, afraid even to glance at Pelagia. But she asked, “Someone ‘mixed it up’? Do you mean to say, doctor, that this poison was concocted artificially?”

  Berdichevsky felt ashamed for being so concerned with trivialities when the matter was so serious.

  “Beyond the slightest doubt,” said the professor. “There’s no mixture of that kind to be found anywhere in nature. This is a master’s handiwork. And he’s not local, either—there are no laboratories in Zavolzhsk that could do this.”

  The public prosecutor turned cold when he realized the full implications of this statement. And Pelagia’s face changed, too. At that moment Matvei Bentsionovich loved her so much that the inside of his nose began to itch. If someone were to have said to him just then: This is the individual who attempted to kill the being so dear to your heart—the state counselor would have thrown himself on the fiend, seized him by the throat, and … At that moment Berdichevsky, a man of peace and a paterfamilias, was afflicted with a dark mist before his eyes and difficulty in breathing. He had never before suspected himself capable of such fury.

  An emergency council was called immediately, in the middle of the night, in the bishops chambers. Matvei Bentsionovich was pale and resolute. Outwardly he maintained his composure, except that he tugged on his nose more frequently than usual. “It is obvious now that this is not a solitary maniac, but an entire gang. And that makes the ‘Warsaw bandits’ scenario the most likely. Those people regard it as a matter of honor to get even for one of their own. Once they’ve got it into their head that Sister Pelagia was responsible for the death of one of their henchmen, they won’t rest until they kill her. I’ll abandon all my other cases and go to Warsaw if necessary, or Moscow, or even Zhitomir, but I’ll find the blackguards. Only there is no way of telling how long the investigation will take. And in the meantime, our dear Sister is in mortal danger, and we cannot even speculate from which direction the blow will come next time. You are now our only hope, Your Grace.”

  His Eminence, who had been roused from his bed, was wearing his dressing gown and felt slippers. His fingers trembled as they tugged agitatedly at the cross hanging around his neck. “We must keep her safe—that’s the first thing,” Mitrofanii said in a hoarse voice. “That’s all I care about. I’ll send her as far away as possible, to some quiet hermitage. And let no one know a thing. And I won’t even ask you!” he shouted at his spiritual daughter, expecting her to resist.

  But the nun didn’t say anything. Clearly, the cunning trick with the nail had seriously scared her. Berdichevsky felt so sorry for the poor thing that he started blinking rapidly, and the bishop frowned and grunted: “In the Znamensky Convent on the Angara River, the mother superior is a former pupil of mine—I have told you about her. It is an isolated place, and quiet,” said His Eminence, bending down one finger. And then he bent down a second: “There is also a good hermitage on the Ussuri. You can see strangers coming from ten miles away. The elder there is a friend of mine. I’ll take you there myself—all the way to the Angara or the Ussuri, whichever you wish.”

  “No!” the public prosecutor and the nun exclaimed in a single voice.

  “You can’t go,” Berdichevsky explained. “You are too noticeable. And it’s already clear that they are watching us day and night. It has to be done quietly and secretly.”

  Pelagia added, “It would be best if I go alone.”

  “And not in nun’s robes, of course. You’d better change,” Berdichevsky suggested, although he was sure the idea would be rejected.

  At that Mitrofanii and the nun exchanged glances, but said nothing.

  “I swore an oath,” Pelagia said in an uncertain voice, which mystified Berdichevsky (the public prosecutor was unaware of the existence of Mrs. Lisitsyna).

  “In a case like this I release you from your promise. Temporarily. You’ll travel to Siberia as Lisitsyna, and then change your garments.
Now tell me, where do you want to go?”

  “Instead of Siberia, I’d rather go to Palestine,” the holy sister suddenly announced. “I have always dreamed of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.”

  The men liked this unexpected idea.

  “Yes, indeed!” Matvei Bentsionovich exclaimed. “Abroad is the safest place.”

  “And it is educational,” the bishop declared with a nod. “I, too, have dreamed of it all my life, but there has never been enough time. And I am a member of the Palestine Society. Go, my daughter. You will find it dreary in the hermitage, I know your restless nature. But there you can travel and gather new impressions. You won’t notice the time flying by. I’ll write to the father archimandrite at the mission and the mother superior at the Gornensky Convent. Travel in Palestine as a pilgrim and live in the convent, while Matvei catches these villains.” And the bishop sat down that very moment to write the letters of recommendation—on special paper, with the episcopal monogram.

  The precautions were thought through in detail.

  In the morning Pelagia was taken away in an ambulance carriage—there were many witnesses. When her pupils came running to the hospital, they were told the headmistress was very ill and orders had been given not to allow anyone in to see her. But that night the nun slipped out through the back door, and Berdichevsky drove her more than ten miles away from the town to a small landing stage where a launch was waiting. The conspirators sailed another five miles away and stopped in the middle of the River.

  Half an hour later there hove into view a steamer, aglow with lights, sailing downstream from Zavolzhsk. The lamp on the cutter blinked and the riverboat captain, forewarned by secret telegram, halted his engine—quietly, with no shouting through megaphones and no whistling, in order not to wake the sleeping passengers.

  Matvei Bentsionovich helped Pelagia climb the gangplank. It was the first time he had seen her not as a nun, but as a lady—in a traveling dress and a hat with a veil. Ever since they left the hospital, he had been tormented by the most outrageous fantasies at the sight of this outfit. He had kept repeating to himself: “A woman, she is just a woman.” The public prosecutor’s soul was all atremble with insane hopes. But Pelagia was preoccupied, her thoughts soaring somewhere far away.

  When they stepped onboard the steamer, Berdichevsky’s heart was suddenly wrung when he heard a voice in his head saying sadly: “Say good-bye. You will never see her again.”

  “Don’t go away …” the public prosecutor began, talking confused nonsense in his panic. “I’ll be completely …” And then he started, struck by an idea that seemed heaven-sent. “You know, why don’t you go to the Angara after all? The bishop can’t go, but I could accompany you. And then I could start on the investigation afterward. Eh?”

  He imagined how the two of them would travel across the whole of Siberia together. He gulped.

  “No, I’m going to Palestine,” the traveler murmured, as preoccupied as ever. “But I have to be in time. Or they’ll kill…”

  Matvei Bentsionovich didn’t really understand the part about “being in time,” but the ending sobered him up and made him feel ashamed. The life of a being dear to him was in danger. And his duty was not to go traipsing across the Siberian expanses with the lady of his heart, but to find the villains responsible, and as soon as possible. “I swear to you that I will find these bandits,” the state counselor said in a quiet voice.

  “I believe you will,” Pelagia replied affectionately, but once again seemingly with no great interest. “Only it seems to me that they aren’t bandits, and the stolen money has nothing at all to do with the case … but you will work all that out for yourself.”

  The captain, who had come to meet his extraordinary passenger in person, hurried them along: “Madam, we are drifting with the current, and there are shoals to starboard here. We need to start the engine.”

  Taking advantage of the fact that Pelagia was not in a habit, but a dress, Berdichevsky kissed her hand—on the strip of bare skin above the lace glove.

  She touched her lips to his forehead and made the sign of the cross over him, then the public prosecutor walked down the gangplank, looking back with every step.

  The slim silhouette was first veiled in twilight, then it merged completely into the darkness.

  PELAGIA FOLLOWED THE sailor who was carrying her suitcase. The deck was empty, except for some lover of the night air dozing, wrapped in a woolen rug, under the window of the saloon.

  When the lady in the hat with the veil had walked past, the man in the rug stirred and flexed his fingers slightly, producing a dry, unpleasant cracking sound: Cra-ack, cra-ack.

  Mysterious and beautiful

  FEW ARE GRANTED the good fortune, at their first sight of the Holy Land, to see it as it is in reality—mysterious and beautiful. Polina Andreevna Lisitsyna was fortunate. The port of Jaffa, Palestine’s gateway to the sea, presented itself to her view in the guise, not of a yellowish-gray heap of dust and stones, but of a shiny round Christmas tree decoration. It was like those times in your childhood when you stole up to the doors of the parlor in the middle of the night to peep in through the crack, and at first you could see nothing, but then suddenly something round shimmered and sparkled in the darkness, and your heart skipped a beat in anticipation of a miracle.

  That is exactly how it was with Jaffa.

  For all the steamships puffing and panting and slapping at the water with its wheels, it had failed to reach its destined shore before sunset. Black sky fused with black water, and disappointed passengers wandered off dejectedly to pack their things. The only people left on deck were Mrs. Lisitsyna and some peasant pilgrims, whose entire baggage consisted of canvas knapsacks, copper kettles, and pilgrims’ staffs.

  But shortly thereafter the doors of darkness opened slightly. First a solitary light appeared, like a pale star, then another beside it, and a third, and a fourth, and soon the cliff city came tumbling out onto the sea, a golden apple dappled with paler specks of light.

  The peasants went down on their knees and began intoning a prayer. Their foreheads beat so fervently against the deck that Polina Andreevna, who was savoring the solemnity of the moment, put her hands over her ears. The breeze carried the sweet aroma of oranges from the land.

  “Ioppia,” said the traveler, speaking the port’s biblical name out loud.

  Three thousand years earlier, cedar trees from Phoenicia had been floated to this place to build the temple of Solomon. It was amid these very waves that the Lord had ordered the whale to swallow the obstinate Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights.

  The steamship slowed and stopped, its anchor chain clanged, and its whistle gave a long-drawn-out blast. The passengers came running out onto the deck, clamoring excitedly in various tongues.

  The spell was broken.

  IN THE MORNING it became clear that the vessel had dropped anchor half a mile from land—it could not go any closer because of the shoals. They stood there for half a day without moving, because there was a stiff breeze blowing, but after lunch, as soon as the rough sea calmed a little, an entire flotilla of longboats set out from the shore, oars flailing like grim death. The men sitting in these boats looked terribly like pirates, swarthy-faced, with tattered rags wound around their heads.

  The steamer was boarded in the blink of an eye. The pirates scrambled in single file up the gangplank lowered to the surface of the water and scattered in various directions with startling speed. Some grabbed hold of passengers’ hands and dragged them to the side, while others ignored the people completely and deftly swung the bundles and suitcases up onto their shoulders.

  The navigator, Prokofii Sergeevich, whom Lisitsyna had befriended during the voyage, explained that this was how things were done in Jaffa. Two clans of Arab porters held a monopoly on unloading ships: one of them handled the people, the other the baggage, a division that was strictly observed.

  The women pilgrims, seized around the
waist by muscular arms, squealed desperately, and some even tried to struggle, pummeling the insolent fellows with considerable force, but the porters were accustomed to this and merely grinned.

  In less than two minutes, the first longboat, crammed full of astounded pilgrims, pushed off from the side and was immediately followed by a skiff loaded with bundles, teapots, and staffs.

  The second boat was filled just as quickly And then a hot, sweaty aboriginal came running up to Polina Andreevna and grabbed hold of her waist.

  “Thank you, I can …”

  She never finished the sentence. The intrepid fellow playfully flung her over his shoulder and went trotting down the gangplank. Lisitsyna could only gasp. Down below her the water swayed and glittered. The porter’s hands were rough and at the same time astonishingly gentle, so that she was obliged to suppress an agreeable inner stirring that was distinctly sinful.

  A quarter of an hour later the pilgrim from Zavolzhsk set foot on the land of Palestine and began fluttering her arms about in an attempt to keep her balance—in two weeks at sea she had become unaccustomed to solid ground. She put her hand over her eyes to shield them from the blinding sun, and looked around.

  Foul and fetid

  WHAT AN AWFUL place this was!

  Of course, small Russian towns could also be really dreadful—squalid and dirty with the poverty on every side enough to make you feel sick, but at least there the puddles reflected the sky, there were green trees soaring up over the sagging roofs, and in late May the air was scented with bird-cherry blossom. And it was so quiet! Close your eyes, and there was nothing but the rustling of the leaves, the buzzing of the bees, and the chiming of bells from the church nearby.

  But in Jaffa every single sense organ brought our pilgrim nothing but distress.

  Her eyes—because whichever way they looked they encountered heaps of decaying refuse, piles of fish offal, tattered and disheveled rags that were anything but picturesque; and besides that, the dust made them water and they kept screwing themselves up against the unbearably bright sun.