Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

by Boris Akunin

MATVEI BENTSIONOVICH WAS quite unrecognizable, he was such a changed man—or so said all his subordinates, and his acquaintances, and his family. What had happened to that customary mild manner, that way of becoming embarrassed so easily over the slightest trifle? That habit of looking to one side when he spoke to you? Of mumbling and peppering his speech with parasitical phrases, all sorts of “you knows,” “with your permissions,” and “to tell the truths”? And finally, that laughable habit of grabbing hold of his long nose when he was in the slightest difficulty and twisting it as if it were a screw or a bolt?

  Berdichevsky’s thick-lipped and rather weak mouth was now permanently set in a tight line, his brown eyes had acquired the gleam of molten steel and turned partly orange, and his speech had acquired briskness and brevity. In short, this most agreeable and cultured of men had been transformed into the perfect public prosecutor.

  The first to experience the transformation undergone by the state counselor were his subordinates. On the morning following Sister Pelagia’s evacuation, their boss had arrived at work at first light, stationed himself in the doorway, watch in hand, and severely rebuked every individual who turned up at the office later than the prescribed time, which had hitherto been regarded by everyone, including the district public prosecutor himself, as a rather arbitrary abstraction. Then one by one Matvei Bentsionovich had summoned the employees attached to the investigative section and given each of them an assignment, one that in itself seemed perfectly clear but was rather vague as far as the overall goal was concerned. Previously the public prosecutor had been in the habit of gathering everyone together and holding forth at length about the strategy and overall picture of an investigation, but this time no explanations were given, the implication being: be so good as to do as you are ordered and not to discuss the matter. The officials had left their chief’s office with intent, sullen expressions, responded to their colleagues’ importunate questions with a dismissive wave of the hand—no time, no time—and rushed off to carry out their instructions. The public prosecutor’s office, hitherto the least busy of the province’s public departments owing to the low level of criminal activity in Zavolzhie, instantly became like the divisional headquarters of some army at the height of maneuvers: the officials no longer crept about like flies, but scuttled around like cockroaches, the doors no longer closed with a discreet “click-click,” but with a deafening crash, and there was now almost always an impatient line for the telegraph apparatus.

  The next victim of Berdichevsky’s newly acquired ferocity was the governor himself, Anton Antonovich von Haggenau. Following the public prosecutor’s sudden transformation, he completely stopped visiting the Nobles’ Club, where he had formerly delighted in spending an hour or two analyzing games of chess; but he did not dare to neglect the traditional Tuesday game of whist with the baron. He sat there, unusually taciturn, glancing all the time at his watch. However, when he was playing as His Excellency’s partner against the head of the chamber of commerce, the governor committed a blunder by covering the public prosecutor’s queen with a king. The old Matvei Bentsionovich would simply have said, “Never mind, it’s my fault for confusing you,” but this unrecognizable individual dashed his cards down on the table and called Anton Antonovich a “muddle-head.” The governor fluttered his white Teutonic eyelashes and looked around plaintively at his wife, Ludmila Platonovna.

  She had already heard the alarming rumors from the public prosecutor’s office, and so now she decided she would waste no more time, but must call on the prosecutor’s wife, Marya Gavrilovna, straightaway.

  She paid the visit and inquired cautiously, over coffee, if Matvei Bentsionovich was well and whether his character might not be adversely affected by the approach of his fortieth birthday, a frontier that many men find very difficult to cross.

  He had changed, the public prosecutor’s wife complained. Something seemed to have got into her Motya—he had become irritable, he hardly ate a thing, and he ground his teeth in his sleep. Marya Gavrilovna immediately moved on to issues of more immediate concern: her Kiriusha had chronic diarrhea, and Sonechka was coming down with something, God grant that it wasn’t measles.

  “When my Antosha reached forty, he went a bit odd as well,” said Ludmila Platonovna, returning to the subject of husbands. “He gave up smoking his pipe and started rubbing tincture of garlic into his bald patch. But after a year he settled down and moved on to the next stage of life. And everything will be all right for you too, my darling. You just treat him gently, with understanding.”

  After her visitor had left, Marya Gavrilovna thought for another ten minutes or so about the sudden misfortune that her husband had suffered. Eventually she decided to bake his favorite poppy-seed roll and leave the rest to the will of the Almighty.

  IN THE ENTIRE town of Zavolzhsk, Mitrofanii was the only one who knew the true reason for the public prosecutor’s tense and preoccupied state of mind. Bearing in mind the episode of the boot print that almost cost Pelagia her life, and also the ubiquitous presence of their unknown enemy, they had agreed between them to maintain the strictest possible secrecy.

  The disappearance of the headmistress of the diocesan school was explained by medical reasons: the holy sister had supposedly caught a chill in the kidneys from her insane habit of swimming in icy water and been urgently dispatched to the Caucasus to take the waters. The progressive ideologue Svekolkina was running riot in the school, tormenting the poor little girls with decimals and equilateral triangles.

  Late in the evening Matvei Bentsionovich would call on Mitrofanii and report in detail about all the measures that had been taken, following which they would open the atlas of the world and try to work out where Pelagia was just at the moment—for some reason this gave both of them inexpressible pleasure. For instance, the bishop would say, “She must be sailing past Kerch. You can see both shorelines there, the Crimea and the Caucasus. And beyond the bay the waves are different, real sea waves.” Or, “She’s sailing across the Sea of Marmora. The sun’s hot there—she’s probably broken out in freckles.” And the bishop and the public prosecutor would smile dreamily, one of them gazing into the corner of the room, and the other looking up at the ceiling.

  Then Berdichevsky disappeared from the town, supposedly summoned by the ministry. He was gone for a week.

  When he returned he hurried from the quayside straight to the bishop, without even going home first.

  Well, what a rogue!

  THE MOMENT THE door of the study closed behind him, he blurted out:

  “She was right. But then, she always is! No, no, I won’t start getting ahead of myself.

  “As you recall, we decided to base our search for the bandits on their initial crime, the theft of Manuila’s ‘treasury’ That event marked the beginning of the grim trail. The Warsaw bandits were assumed to have picked out their victim in advance and ‘shadowed’ him in their usual way, waiting for a convenient moment. I was intending to reconstruct the route followed by the Foundlings and follow it, searching for witnesses.”

  “I remember, I remember all that,” said the bishop, trying to hurry his spiritual son, since he could tell from the narrator’s face that he had not come back empty-handed. “You were hoping to establish who gave the bandits their … what do you call it…”

  “Lead,” Berdichevsky prompted. “Who pointed them toward the sect’s ‘treasury’ And from there to reach the bandits themselves. One of the most important rules of detective work is that the shortest path to the criminal is from the victim’s own social circle.”

  “Yes, yes! Just get on with it. Did you find the person who did the pointing?”

  “There wasn’t one! And all this has nothing at all to do with the case! Ah, Your Eminence, don’t interrupt, let me tell you everything in the right order.”

  The bishop threw his hands up apologetically, then put one of them to his lips, as if to say: I won’t say a word. And the story finally got under way, although His Eminence was unable to maint
ain a complete silence—that was simply not in his character.

  “Shelukhin and his entourage boarded the steamer at Nizhni, where, as I ascertained, they had arrived by train from Moscow,” the public prosecutor reported. “The conductor remembered the false Manuila, a rather colorful character for first class. He traveled in his compartment alone, and the other ragamuffins, who had places in the standard open carriage, took turns to visit him. The reason for the first class compartment is clear enough—to make the whole thing more convincing: Look, there really is a prophet on this train! And it is also clear why there was always someone with Shelukhin—because of the casket… The Foundlings have something like a gathering place in Moscow, a basement in Khitrovka, beside the synagogue. We can assume they deliberately stay as close as possible to their fellow believers, but the genuine Jews won’t allow these people in fancy costume into the synagogue and they want nothing to do with them. Manuila’s flock prays outside in the street. It’s an amusing sight: they cover their heads with the edges of their robes and mumble in broken Hebrew. The idle onlookers poke fun at them, the Jews spit at them. A real fairground show. You should also bear in mind that most of the Foundlings are extremely unattractive in appearance. Ugly, damaged by drink, with noses eaten away by syphilis … It’s curious that the Khitrovka ragamuffins leave these holy fools alone—they pity them, I suppose. I observed the Foundlings for a while and spoke to a few of them. Do you know what struck me most of all? They ask for alms, but they don’t take money—only things that they can eat. They say they don’t need kopecks, because money belongs to the tsar, while food comes from God.”

  “You say they don’t take money? Then where did the ‘treasury’ come from?”

  “That’s the whole point! Where was it from? You and I assumed that the contents of the stolen casket were alms collected by the Foundlings. That Manuila had changed all those countless kopecks and half-kopecks for banknotes and put them away neatly in a little box. And then I discover, no—he did nothing of the kind! I was even distracted from the Warsaw theory, because I was so curious about where the money had come from. I began inquiring cautiously whether the false Jews had heard anything about Manuila’s treasury. I must say that for the most part they are very open, trusting people—exactly the kind who usually fall victim to scoundrels. They said: We know, we’ve heard about it. Some merchant in the town of Borovsk gave Manuila ‘a huge amount of money’ for projects in the Holy Land. Naturally, I went to Borovsk and had a word with the merchant.”

  “But how did you find him?” Mitrofanii gasped, astounded at the depths of persistence and energy that apparently resided within his spiritual son.

  “It wasn’t difficult at all. Borovsk is a small town. Wealthy, clean, sober—Old Believers live there. Everyone knows everything about everyone else. They won’t forget the appearance of such an impressive character as the prophet Manuila in a hurry. It happened like this: The Borovsk merchant (his name is Pafnutiev) was sitting in his grocery shop and trading—it was a market day. He was approached by a skinny tramp wearing a loose robe with a belt of blue rope, with tangled hair, no hat, and holding a staff. The tramp asked for bread. Pafnutiev is not fond of beggars and started shaming him, calling him a ‘sponger’ and a ‘cadger.’ The other man answered him: I’m a beggar, but you’re poor, and being poor is a lot worse than being a beggar. ‘I’m poor?’ Pafnutiev exclaimed, offended because he is known as one of the richest men in Borovsk. Manuila said to him: ‘Of course you are! You’ve lived to the age of forty-seven and still not realized that a beggar is far more blessed than a moneybags like you.’ The merchant was astounded—how did this stranger know how old he was?—and the best he could manage was to babble in reply: ‘How is he more blessed?’ ‘In spirit,’ the tramp replied.”

  Mitrofanii could not resist snorting at that. “So Manuila doesn’t recognize Christ? But it was very smart the way he slipped in that piece from the Gospel about the blessed in spirit.”

  “And it wasn’t the only piece like that. The prophet also informed Pafnutiev that the gate leading to God is narrow, not everyone can get through it. You just think, he said, who will get through more easily—a beggar, or you? And he slapped his own skinny sides. Pafnutiev weighs at least three hundred pounds, if not three-fifty—just the way a successful merchant is supposed to look. Well, everyone there started laughing, the lesson was so clear. Pafnutiev didn’t take offense, though. In his own words, he ‘fell into a rather thoughtful state,’ closed the shop, and took the ‘strange man’ home with him, to talk.”

  “There’s something I don’t understand. He was supposed to be dumb, this Manuila. Or at least inarticulate. I was actually thinking what an original prophet he was—managing without words.”

  “He is tremendously articulate. He has some kind of speech defect, he lisps or something of the kind, but that doesn’t limit the effect he has. Pafnutiev said, ‘He explains things unintelligibly, but clearly’ Allow me to draw your special attention to the ‘rather thoughtful state’ into which Pafnutiev fell and which made him behave in a manner quite untypical of such a man.”

  “Hypnotic abilities?” His Eminence guessed.

  “And apparently quite exceptional ones. You remember how he cured the girl Durka of her dumbness? He is a most cunning character and very—how shall I put it?—thorough. Do you know how he got around Pafnutiev when they sat down to drink tea? He told the merchant the entire story of his life, with details that not many people know.”

  “Perhaps it was no accident that he approached Pafnutiev at the market!”

  Matvei Bentsionovich nodded. “He had gathered his information, prepared in advance. And certainly not, I make so bold as to assure you, for the sake of a crust of bread. Pafnutiev was unable to tell me what they talked about. He mumbled and snapped his fingers, without adducing anything substantial from what Manuila had said.” The public prosecutor paused for effect. “The ‘man of God’ tried to persuade the merchant to give all his riches to those in need, for only then could he find true freedom and discover the path to God. A rich man’s conscience, Manuila told him, is overgrown with fur, otherwise he could not dine on fine white rolls when others do not have so much as a crust of black bread. ‘If you become poor, your conscience will be laid bare and the gates of heaven will open. But whether these gates are worth your fancy bread—you must make up your own mind about that.’”

  “Well then, did his arguments persuade the moneybags?” the bishop asked with a smile.

  Berdichevsky raised one finger as if to say: Listen and you will find out.

  “In part. ‘I was terribly frightened,’ Pafnutiev told me. ‘The Devil got into me and wouldn’t let me give away all my wealth.’ He had a bundle of ‘unclean’ money in an icon case, behind the icon. As far as I understand it, this is a habit the Borovsk merchants have—if they make a sinful profit by selling rotten goods or cheating someone, they put the dishonest earnings behind an icon to ‘purify’ them. So that was the money that Pafnutiev gave this opponent of riches—all that he had hidden there. At first Manuila hesitated—he didn’t want to take it, said he had no use for it. But in the end, naturally, he took it gladly. He said it would come in useful for the naked and hungry in Palestine. The land there was poor, not like in Russia.” Matvei Bentsionovich could not resist laughing—the cunning rogue apparently inspired his admiration.

  “And now what?” Mitrofanii inquired. “Does Pafnutiev regret giving away his money? Does he understand that he was duped?”

  “Believe it or not, he doesn’t. At the end of our conversation he turned sulky and hung his head. Ah,’ he said, ‘I feel so ashamed. It wasn’t Manuila, it was God I tried to buy off with that rag full of bank notes. I should have given away everything I had, and then I would have saved my soul.’ Ah, well, never mind Pafnutiev and his woes. That’s not the most important thing here.”

  “Then what is?”

  “Guess how much money the merchant contributed.”

  �
��How should I know? It must have been quite a lot.”

  “One and a half thousand rubles. That’s how much there was in the rag.”

  Mitrofanii was disappointed. “Is that all?”

  “That’s the whole point!” Matvei Bentsionovich exclaimed. “Why would the Warsaw gangs be interested in going after small change like that, and even committing murder for it? And we can’t even be sure that Manuila handed over the entire sum to his ‘little brother.’ He probably kept the lion’s share for himself. What was that I said at the beginning? Pelagia was right. It has nothing to do with the casket, and everything to do with Manuila himself. So the robbery theory is eliminated. The people we are looking for are definitely not bandits.”

  “But then who are they?” asked Mitrofanii, knitting his brows. “Who hates Pelagia so much that they want to bury her alive or poison her?”

  “As far as the poisoner is concerned, we know absolutely nothing. But we do know quite a lot about the first attacker. So we shall start with him,” the public prosecutor declared with an assurance that indicated he had already drawn up a plan of further action. “What, in your opinion, is the most remarkable thing in Ratsevich’s story?”

  “The fact that he was a gendarme. And that he was dismissed from the service.”

  “I think it is something else: the fact that he managed to pay off his debts. Ratsevich had no funds of his own to do that, otherwise he would never have let the whole business get as far as prison and expulsion from the gendarmes corps. Ergo, the money to buy himself out of debtor’s prison was given to him by someone else.”

  “But who?” His Eminence exclaimed.

  “There are two possible explanations, which in some ways are diametrical opposites, mirror images. I find the first extremely unpleasant on a personal level.” Berdichevsky frowned painfully. “It is possible that the debt was not paid off, but forgiven—by the creditors themselves. And as we know, the staff captains creditors were Jewish moneylenders.”