Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

by Boris Akunin

  “When was this? Where? And who is this man?”

  “You ask me when? Four months ago. You ask me where? In the city of Odessa, zol dos farhapt vern*4 I went there on business.”

  Matvei Bentsionovich reminded him of the third question. “I also asked you who this thug was.”

  “You used the word, not me,” the moneylender said, glancing at the door, although Odessa was a good three hundred miles away. “Many Jews regard him as a hero. If you ask me, I’ll tell you that heroes and thugs are baked from the same flour, but that’s not important. The polite young man who came to visit me was called Magellan. I made inquiries, spoke to respectable people. And what they told me about this Magellan made me think it was best to let those swamps be, or rather, let them not be any longer. Twenty thousand is very big money, but what good is it to a dead man?”

  “Oh, really?” laughed Berdichevsky, amused by the story. Who would have thought that a Zhitomir pawnbroker could be so impressionable?

  “I won’t tell you everything those respectable people told me about the Jew called Magellan, because it would take a long time, and it would be sure to give you nightmares, and who needs nightmares on the Sabbath? What I will tell you is what I saw with my own eyes, and then you can say ‘oh, really?’ and laugh—all right?” Golosovker shuddered at the hideous memory. “You think I’m mishuginer, to go throwing away twenty thousand on some lousy swamps, even if I was seriously frightened? Two days is two days, I thought. In two days the Lord God divided the light from the darkness and the water from the dry land—since we happen to be talking about swamps. I read in an Odessa newspaper that the next day the ‘Megiddo-Khadash was holding a meeting, and I decided to see what kind of people they were. If they were really frightening, I was going to dash back to Zhitomir the same day, let Monsieur Magellan try to catch the wind in the meadow. And if they weren’t very frightening, I was going to finish my business in Odessa first, and then take off.

  “So I went to see. Well, it was a typical meeting. One Jew shouting a lot of loud words and others listening. Then another Jew came out and started shouting too. Then a third one. They shouted for a long time at the tops of their voices, but they didn’t listen too well, because Jews like to do the talking themselves, they don’t like to listen to anyone else. And then Magellan came out. He spoke quietly and not for long, but they listened to him the way they listen to the cantor Zeevson in our synagogue when he comes from Kiev with his choir of eighteen singers. And when he finished speaking and said ‘If you’re with us, sign the Charter’ (they had a Charter, something like an oath of loyalty or allegiance), a long line of young men and women formed. They all wanted to drain swamps and fight Arab bandits. And I thought to myself, never mind my business in Odessa, I’m leaving for Zhitomir today. Then suddenly Fira Dorman pushed her way through the crowd and started giving a speech herself. You know who Fira Dorman is, of course?”

  “Isn’t she the American socialist and suffragette? I read about her in the newspapers.”

  “I don’t know what a ‘suffragette’ is, but if it’s someone who claims a woman is just as good as a man, then Fira’s the one they mean. She was taken to America as a little girl, picked up all sorts of stupid ideas there, and came back to stir up confusion in poor Jewish heads that are already topsy-turvy …

  “So anyway, Fira comes out with her cropped hair and papirosa, wearing some kind of riding breeches, and she starts yelling in this hard voice—just like a sergeant major on the parade ground: ‘Don’t you believe this shmuk, girls! He’s lying to you about equal rights and the new brotherhood. And I ask you, what kind of word is that—“brotherhood”? If we’re talking equality, then why not “sisterhood”? And why is the leader of the commune a man? Because this glib speechifier wants to lead you into a new slavery! People like him came to us in America too, to set up communes! I can tell how it all ended! The poor girls did the same work as the men, but they also did their laundry, and fed them, and bore their children, and then, when they grew old prematurely and lost their looks, their “brothers” of yesterday brought in new wives, young ones, and they didn’t tell them anything about equal rights!’

  “Firka shouted some more about the same sort of thing, and then she grabbed hold of their Charter with the signatures and tore it into little pieces. There was an uproar. And she stood face to face with Magellan, with her hands on her hips, and said: ‘Well, exploiter, cat got your tongue?’ And he answered, even quieter than usual: ‘I’m for equality of the sexes. I think woman are people, just like men. And now I’ll prove it.’ And she said to him: ‘Words, just more words!’ Magellan said: ‘No, deeds. If any man dared to tear up our sacred text, I’d break his lousy arms, and I’m going to do the same to you.’ Before anyone realized what was going on, he grabbed hold of her sleeve and yanked so hard that she sat down on the ground. And then the nice young man broke Fira’s arm across his knee. And then he grabbed her other arm and did the same to that. Well, I tell, that was some sight! A crack and a crunch! Fira’s mouth hanging wide open, her eyes right up on her forehead, and her arms dangling from the elbows down like ropes: one sleeve was pulled up and you could see the blood pouring out and the bone sticking through the skin!”

  “Mm, yes indeed, a fine fellow,” said Berdichevsky, wincing at the naturalism of the description. “Then what, did they arrest him? According to the Penal Code, that’s aggravated bodily harm, up to five years of prison or three years of hard labor.”

  After he said it he felt embarrassed—it sounded altogether too much like a public prosecutor speaking. But Golosovker was too agitated by his terrible memories, and the legal reference went straight over his head.

  “Are you kidding? Fira didn’t complain to the police. The next day she went to this Magellan, put her plastered arms around his neck, and kissed him—for acknowledging the equal rights of women. Only I didn’t see that for myself, because I was already halfway back to Zhitomir.”

  “You did take off, then?”

  “I was in a hurry to get the money together,” Efraim Leibovich replied sadly.

  “That’s a fascinating story, of course, but it has nothing to do with my problem,” Berdichevsky said slowly. “If the rabbi didn’t buy Ratsevich out of jail, then who did?”

  The moneylender shrugged.

  “The money was transferred to my account from the Kiev branch of the Russian Bank for Trade, Industry, and Commerce.”

  “And you don’t know who paid it?” Matvei Bentsionovich asked in a trembling voice.

  “No, I don’t. Of course I tried to find out, but the Russian Trade and Industry is a goy bank, I don’t know anyone there. Ah!” said Efraim Leibovich with a philosophical shrug of his shoulders. “What business is it of mine? Kesha, have you finished that at last?”

  A secret sign

  THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR emerged onto Malaya Vilenskaya Street in a state of total frustration. His trip to Zhitomir had proved to be an absolute fiasco, nothing but a waste of precious time.

  Both of his plausible theories had come to nothing. There was still a tiny little clue in the bank in Kiev, but that was poor consolation to him. As a legal specialist, Berdichevsky knew all about the confidentiality of banking, an institution that he respected. Of course, he could send an official inquiry from the public prosecutor’s office, but paperwork like that would take weeks, and it still might produce nothing. If whoever sent the money wanted to remain anonymous, there were plenty of ways for them to do it.

  Matvei Bentsionovich stopped, perplexed as to what he should do and where he should go now. Was this really the end of the investigation? Then what about Pelagia?

  Suddenly he heard a gentle tenor voice behind his back: “Mr…. what is your name … Mr. Berdichevsky!”

  Turning, the state counselor saw the good-looking young clerk Kesha.

  “How can you leave the shop like that?” the public prosecutor asked in surprise. “Has Mr. Golosovker already gone?”

  “He’s loc
king the safe, in person,” the blond-haired young man said with a subtle smile. “At times like that I’m expected to stay outside.”

  “What can I do for you? Did you want to tell me something?”

  Kesha inclined his head to one side ambiguously and asked hesitantly, “Tell me, you don’t really own a credit and loan company, do you?”

  “Where did you get that idea?” asked Berdichevsky, looking at the office boy with growing interest.

  “What you’re really interested in is Ratsevich, I guessed. And I think I know why.”

  “Why?”

  Then the young man did something very odd: he took hold of Matvei Bentsionovich’s left hand and tickled the palm with his little finger. The public prosecutor shuddered at the unexpectedness of it and was about to protest at such outrageous familiarity, but he restrained himself. The outlandish tickling was like some kind of secret sign.

  “Aha, I knew it,” Kesha said with a nod. “Now it’s clear why you want to know who bought Ratsevich out. I have a very definite hunch on the subject that interests you. Only I’m not a Jew, so I don’t give free advice.”

  “How much?” Berdichevsky asked in a voice hoarse with excitement.

  *1 “a Jewish heart” (Yiddish)

  *2 “a hole in the head to him” (Yiddish)

  *3 nonsense (Yiddish)

  *4 “may it rot” (Yiddish)

  The luck of the Jews, part 1

  THEY DIDN’T MAKE any speeches over the grave. Or weep over it. The communards had an understanding that they would not do that. And before the deathbed delirium set in, Rokhele herself had told them, “Don’t cry.”

  Malaria turned out to be quite different from what Malke had thought. That morning Rokhele had got up as usual and milked the cows. Then they had sat down together to sort the seeds and sung “Awaken not the memories” in two-part harmony, and suddenly Rokhele had said: “Everything’s gone dark—never mind, it will pass in a moment.” But half an hour later she was already burning up with fever.

  Malke had led her back to their house, the han, but Rokhele had kept saying: “I can manage, I can manage, you go, or the boys will come back from the field and their dinner won’t be ready.”

  Magellan had come running, felt her forehead, and gone galloping to Zikhron-Yaakov for Dr. Sherman. But by nightfall, when the doctor arrived, Rokhele had already passed away. Apparently there was a galloping form of malaria, too.

  They buried the best and most beautiful of the group in the dark, by torchlight. Malke washed the body that had not grown stiff yet—it was a pure, clear white, without a single mole anywhere—and dressed up the departed in the silk dress and the town shoes that Rokhele had never worn.

  The members of the commune dug a hole near the edge of the little river, under the eucalyptus tree that they had planted only a week earlier. The tree was still very small, but some day it would grow tall and mighty.

  A group of Arabs from the nearby village stood a little way off, watching to see how the Jews buried their dead. The Arabs didn’t see anything particularly interesting.

  Magellan walked out to the front and said: “This is the first death; there will be others. We must not weaken.” Then they sprinkled earth on the body, which was wrapped in a sheet, and went back to the han. There was no wake at all, because drink was prohibited and anyway, as Magellan said, there was no point.

  Malke controlled herself for as long as she could, but when she felt she could hold out no longer, she grabbed a bucket and went outside, as if she were going for water. She ran out through the wall of the han, and once out there, of course, she burst into tears.

  As she was walking back, she heard someone else sighing and sobbing in the bushes. Who could it be? Probably Senya Levin—he had always looked at Rokhele in a special kind of way. Although it could have been anyone at all of the remaining twenty-five. Even Magellan himself.

  Malke slipped past the bushes as quietly as a mouse.

  THE NEW MEGIDDO commune had just celebrated a month since the day of its birth. In that short time they had not managed to do very much.

  First they had repaired and painted the abandoned han that they had acquired together with the land. The han was a fortress-house, a faceless rectangular block with only a single gate. The living quarters were set along the first inner wall, the cowshed along the second, the storehouse for tools and equipment along the third, and the barn along the fourth.

  Misha the agronomist had shown them the best place to sow the wheat, the best places to plant the orange trees and the maize, the best place to lay out a pasture. The land they had bought along the banks of the Kisson River was good, rich.

  Magellan had done well, anticipated everything. He had even bought eucalyptus saplings to suck the excess moisture out of the swampy ground. And he had managed to collect so much money for the commune! He was a real magician. There had been enough to buy a large plot of land and all the equipment and stores they needed, including two carts, four horses, two cows, and a prefabricated mechanical mill.

  According to the Charter, the property was held in common and indivisible. All the members of the commune were equal, and they shared in everything equally. At the very first meeting they had decided there would be no flirting and no love affairs. Not out of sanctimonious hypocrisy, but because there were only two girls to twenty-five young men, and the very last thing they needed was quarreling and dramas of the heart. And then, a family meant children, and it was still too soon to start having children in the City of Happiness. And so they had deferred love until later, when they would be settled more comfortably and more women would come from Russia. They had curtained off a corner for Malke and Rokhele, and that was their only element of segregation. The women dressed in the same way as the men; they did not ask for any special indulgences and did not receive any.

  It had proved harder to implement the other resolution: to speak to one another only in Hebrew. The only commune member who knew the ancient Jewish language well was Izya, a former yeshiva student. He gave the others lessons every evening, and everybody tried hard, but during the day they still spoke to one another in Russian. How could you say “matches” or “rifle” in Hebrew? Izya had invented some new words, such as “fire splinters” and “thunder stick,” but whatever they might be, they certainly weren’t the ancient language of the Jews.

  What other decisions had been made?

  For one thing, not to accept any help from Baron Rothschild, as other settlers had done. In the first place, Rothschild was a capitalist and an exploiter, and in the second place, they had to get used to relying on their own efforts in everything.

  And no hired laborers—they would work the land only with their own hands. They hadn’t founded a commune to live like parasites on the labor of the indigenous proletarians, had they? (This had immediately soured relations between the communards and the local Arab village—the fellahs had been hoping that the Jews would give them work.)

  But the riskiest decision had been to do without “protection,” since the Circassians, the Bedouins, and the settled Arabs had long ago grown accustomed to this source of income and even fought among themselves for the right to play guardian to each Jewish settlement.

  New Megiddo had been visited by ambassadors from the Bedouin camp and from the Circassian aul, and also by the local sheikh, but Magellan had turned them all away, saying, “We have weapons, we will defend ourselves.” And that meant they had to live as if they were in a fortress under siege.

  The Arabs mostly just pilfered things, but the Bedouins and Circassians had proved to be genuine bandits. One night there had been shouting out in the darkness and shots had been fired at the walls. The way the bullets slammed into the clay had been very frightening. But Magellan had given out the rifles and told them to fire a volley. And it had worked—the shouting and firing had stopped.

  In the morning, though, they discovered that the three draft horses that had been grazing outside the gate had disappeared. The Bed
ouin camp had disappeared, too. The nomads had just folded up their tents and left. Magellan had wanted to pursue them on the only remaining horse, and they had barely managed to dissuade him.

  The Bedouins had gone, but the Arabs and Circassians were still there, just waiting for their chance.

  Dr. Sherman, who lived in the Rothschild settlement of Zikhron-Yaakov, had told Magellan: “Do not be like the biblical king Josiah, young man. He refused to submit to Pharaoh and was killed, and in this way he destroyed the entire kingdom of Judea. And you know, the fateful battle took place in the very same Valley of Megiddo where you and I are now standing.” But Magellan had told him, “This is the place our kingdom was destroyed, and this is the place from which it will be reborn.” It was a good answer, a beautiful answer.

  Today, after they had buried Rokhele in the silty soil, the doctor had started remonstrating with Magellan again, and this time the young man had no answer for him, because there was nothing he could say.

  Dr. Sherman had said: “You can shoot at bandits, and sometimes it works. But you can’t shoot at malaria. How could you buy land in this pernicious place without consulting the old-timers like us? And this is only the beginning—the worst disaster will come in summer, at the peak of the fever season. As well as the lowland pasture, you ought to have bought a plot on a hill. Surely you can see that the locals only ever settle on high ground? The wind disperses the swamp vapors up there. But then, the Arabs would never have sold you a plot on a hill. The cunning rogues will wait until the malaria season begins and most of you die, and then buy the land back for a song. Or just take it back. It’s the Jews’ own fault, we have spoiled them. They used to live by their own labor—meagerly, but honestly. But we’ve driven them crazy with our European money. Why should they cultivate their own land if they can earn more by cultivating ours? Why should they bother to exert themselves if there are fools like you around?”