Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

by Boris Akunin

  So there was a telegraph in this medieval castle? Somehow the public prosecutor did not find this discovery to his liking.

  After running his eyes over the rather long message, Charnokutsky suddenly said to Kesha, “Innocent, you foolish little boy, I’ll have to give you a good whipping. Who is this you have brought?”

  The handsome boy with blond hair choked on a segment of orange and Berdichevsky’s heart skipped a beat. He exclaimed in a trembling voice, “What do you mean by that, Count?”

  “What an insolent breed you Yids are,” the magnate said, shaking his head, and then spoke no more to Berdichevsky, only to Kesha. “Listen to what Mickey writes: ‘ The provincial marshal of the nobility in Zavolzhsk is Count Rostovsky. The district marshals are Prince Bekbulatov, Baron Stakel-berg Selyaninov, Kotko-Kotkovsky, Lazutin, Prince Vachnadze, Barkhatov, and Count Beznosov, and there are also three districts that do not have a marshal because of the small numbers of nobles there. The individual about whom you inquire does indeed reside in Zavolzhsk, but the name has been confused and the position is incorrect. He is not Matvei Berg-Dichevsky but Matvei Berdichevsky, the district public prosecutor. A state counselor, forty years of age, a baptized Jew.

  The color of Kesha’s cheeks suddenly changed from pink to green. He collapsed onto his knees and sobbed, “I didn’t know a thing about it, I swear!”

  The count pushed the boy’s forehead with the toe of his shoe, and Kesha collapsed onto the carpet, sniveling.

  “Who sent you this nonsense?” asked Matvei Bentsionovich, who had not yet adjusted to the catastrophic change in the situation. After all, until this moment everything had been going so smoothly!

  The count blew out a stream of cigar smoke. He looked the public prosecutor up and down with an expression of curious loathing, as if he were some peculiar insect or a squashed frog. But even so, he condescended to reply, “Mickey, one of ours. An important figure. Any day now he’ll be a minister, and so he should be, he’s a brilliant worker. The kind of man you can send a telegram to at midnight and be sure of finding him in his office.”

  This called for an urgent change of tactics—Matvei Bentsionovich had to abandon blunt denial and lay all his cards on the table, as they say. “Well, since you now know that I am a public prosecutor, you should understand that I didn’t come here to play foolish games,” Berdichevsky declared sternly, actually feeling a certain relief that he no longer needed to continue acting out this comedy. “Answer me immediately—was it you who paid off Ratsevich’s debt?”

  And then something quite unthinkable happened. Someone seized the state counselor’s elbows from behind and twisted his arms painfully.

  “Leave him, Filip,” the count said with a frown. “No need. Let the little Jew crow for a while.”

  “There’s something heavy in his pocket,” the lackey explained. “Here.”

  Easily clutching both of his prisoner’s wrists in one huge mitt, he took the Lefaucheux out of the public prosecutor’s pocket and handed it to the count.

  His master took hold of the revolver with his finger and a thumb, gave it a single quick glance, and tossed it aside with the words, “Cheap garbage!”

  Berdichevsky wriggled helplessly in a grip of steel. “Let me go, you villain! I’m a state counselor! I’ll send you to Siberia for this!”

  “Let him go,” said Charnokutsky. “The poisoned fang has been drawn, and Yids are not known for their skill in fisticuffs. Do you know, Mr. Jewish Counselor, why I dislike your breed so much? Not because you crucified Christ. He got what he deserved, the Yid. But because you are like women, caricatures of human beings. You only pretend to be men.”

  “I am a representative of the authorities!” Matvei Bentsionovich shouted, clutching a numb wrist. “Don’t you dare treat me like—”

  “No!” the count interrupted with sudden ferocity. “You are a rat, who has entered my home like a thief. If you weren’t a Yid, I would simply have you thrown out of the gate. But for making me, Charnokutsky, flatter and amuse you for the best part of an hour and feed you thirty-year-old cognac, you will pay with your life. And no one will ever find out. You are not the first, and you will not be the last.”

  “You are involved in a criminal case!” Berdichevsky exclaimed, trying to talk some sense into the madman. “I may have come here clandestinely, but I am conducting an important investigation! You are the main suspect! If I don’t go back, the police will be here tomorrow!”

  “He’s lying about the investigation,” squeaked Kesha, still not daring to get up off the carpet. “He found out about you from me—he didn’t even know your name before that!”

  “What about the coachman?” the public prosecutor reminded him. “He brought me here and went back to town! If I disappear, the coachman will tell the whole story.”

  “Who brought you, Innocent?” Charnokutsky asked.

  “Semyon. You don’t think I’d use an outsider, do you?”

  The count crushed his cigar into an ashtray. Speaking to Matvei Bentsionovich in a respectful tone again, clearly to mock him, he declared merrily, “Our Volynian peasants, who have twelve languages mingled together in their dialect, say, ‘Drive a wolf into a kut, and then the creature is kaput.’ Do not be downhearted, Mr. Berdichevsky, do not let that crooked nose of yours droop. There is a long night ahead, and many interesting things in store for you. Now we will go down into the basement, and I will show you the secret part of my collection, the most interesting part. I did not buy the exhibits down there, I made them myself. I cannot add you to the collection—as you saw, I only have women. Although, perhaps, some small piece, by way of an exception?”

  An intensive interrogation

  GAZING AT HIS prisoner’s expression of horror, the count burst into a fit of his stiff, cackling laughter. “No, not the part that you thought of. That would be a blasphemy against the male body. Innocent, my friend, what do you think of the exhibit ‘a Jewish heart’? In a jar of spirit alcohol, eh?” Charnokutsky walked up to the table, took a peach out of a bowl, and stroked its velvety cheek lovingly.

  “No!” he exclaimed, continuing with his jest. “I have a better idea than that! A pound of Jewish flesh!” And he declaimed in English, with an immaculate Eton accent: “An equal pound of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me.’ I will even let you make the choice, which is more than Shylock did for poor Antonio. Where would you prefer?”

  Matvei Bentsionovich could not speak English as beautifully, and so he replied in Russian.

  “I don’t want your charity, let it be as it is in your Judeophobic play—‘as close as possible to the heart.’

  He unbuttoned his jacket and slapped his left side, where the “present from the firm”—that single-shot trinket with a barrel slightly thicker than a straw—lay in his waistcoat pocket. Well, they say that a drowning man will clutch at a straw. And that is exactly what the public prosecutor did—he grabbed the pistol, and so furiously that he broke his thumbnail against the hammer.

  “What’s that, an enema tube?” asked the count, not frightened in the least. “It seems a little on the small side.”

  At that very moment Berdichevsky underwent a remarkable metamorphosis—suddenly he was completely free of fear and fell into a monstrous rage, of a kind he had never experienced before. And there was a reason for this.

  We have already mentioned the change that had taken place in the character of this peaceful and even rather timid man as a result of his unexpectedly falling in love, but in this particular case the spark that detonated the explosion was a far less romantic circumstance. Matvei Bentsionovich had always been obsessively concerned with his nails. A microscopic hangnail or—God forbid—a small crack could completely unbalance him, and the sound of a nail scraped across glass set him shuddering convulsively. The essential hygienic procedure that the civilized part of humanity performs on its nails once every four days was a torment for Berdichevsky, especially its final phase, wh
ich involves working with a file. But now a whole piece had broken off his nail and was dangling from it in a most repulsive fashion! This minor unpleasantness, a mere trifle in the context of the situation as a whole, was the last straw: the whole world darkened in front of the state counselors eyes, and fear gave way to frenzy.

  “It’s a waistcoat pistol!” Matvei Bentsionovich growled, his face flushing bright red. “An indispensable item when you are attacked by a robber in the night! It possesses incredible firepower for its caliber!”

  The count frowned ever so slightly.

  “Filip, take that abominable thing away from him.”

  How the public prosecutor would have liked to fire at the dastardly aristocrat, to demonstrate to him the remarkable qualities of the pistol he had insulted, but Matvei Bentsionovich recalled the warning he had been given by the salesman in the gun shop: “Of course, at a distance of more than ten feet the firepower weakens a bit, and at ten yards there’s no point at all in wasting the bullet.”

  The distance to the magnate was not as much as ten yards, but alas it was not as little as ten feet either. And therefore Berdichevsky leaped abruptly to one side and trained the barrel on the oxlike Filip. Wasting no time on stupid warnings (“Stop, or I’ll fire!” and so on), he simply raised the hammer and immediately released it again.

  The pop was not very loud, quieter than a champagne cork. His hand felt hardly any recoil at all. The smoke that poured out of the tiny gun barrel was like cotton wool, although not really the kind you might stick up your nostril.

  However, the result was quite remarkable—the huge thug doubled over and clutched at his stomach with both hands.

  “Your Excell—” Filip gasped. “He got me in the belly! It hurts—I can’t stand it!”

  For several moments the dining room was transformed into something like a pantomime or pas de quatre. The count’s face was a picture of extreme astonishment that threatened the appearance of two or three wrinkles at the very least; His Excellency’s arms rose smoothly out to both sides. Kesha froze on the floor in the pose of a dying, or perhaps already dead, swan. The wounded servant swayed back on his heels, completely doubled over. And even Berdichevsky, who in his heart of hearts had not really believed in the effectiveness of his weapon, froze rigid for an instant.

  But the state counselor was the first to recover his wits. Tossing the now useless little pistol aside, he made a dash for the Lefaucheux lying on the floor, grabbed it, and began jerking his finger in search of a trigger. Ah, yes, it had a folding trigger!

  He raised the hammer, transferred the revolver to his left hand, and stuck his broken nail into his mouth, to feel it with his tongue.

  The Lefaucheux might be “cheap garbage,” as the count had put it, but even so, it had six bullets, not one. And it was effective at a distance of more than ten feet.

  “Oh, it hurts!” Filip howled at the top of his voice. “He shot right through my insides! Mummy, it burns! I’m dying!”

  He stopped swaying, tumbled to the floor, and pulled up his legs.

  “Quiet!” Berdichevsky yelled at him in a repulsive, shrill voice. The public prosecutor was white with fury. “Lie quietly, or I’ll shoot you again!”

  The big brute immediately fell silent and didn’t make another sound: he just bit his lips and wiped away the tears that looked so odd on his coarse, bearded face.

  Berdichevsky licked at his nail as he gave Kesha an order: “You fifthy svine, get under ve table, and don’t wet me heawa sound out ovyou!”

  The young man immediately repositioned himself as indicated, performing the maneuver on all fours.

  Now Matvei Bentsionovich could turn his attention to the main target.

  The target had not yet recovered from his stupefaction—he was still standing on the same spot, holding a bitten peach in one hand.

  “And you and I, Your Exewency, are going to have a wittle talk,” Matvei Bentsionovich said, still not removing the finger from his mouth and smiling as he had never smiled in his life.

  The state counselor did not understand what was happening to him, but it was exhilarating. All his life, Berdichevsky had thought of himself as a coward. He had occasionally managed to perform brave actions (sometimes a public prosecutor has to), but every time, he had needed to strain his inner resources to the utmost, and it had left him with a weakened heart and fluttering nerves. But this time Matvei Bentsionovich experienced no strain at all; as he waved the revolver about, he felt simply magnificent.

  In his childhood, when he was a cobbler’s son and the only little Yid in the entire artisans’ settlement, there had been times when he sniffled with his bloody nose and imagined how he would run away from the city, join the army, and come back as an officer, with epaulets and a sword. Then he would get even with Vaska Prachkin and that rotten Chukha. They would crawl on their knees and beg him: “Mordka, dear Mordka, don’t kill us.” He would wave his sword and say: “Don’t call me Mordka, I’m Lieutenant Mordechai Berdichevsky!” And then he would forgive them anyway.

  Now it had all almost come true, except that in the years that had passed, Matvei Bentsionovich had evidently grown more hard-hearted—he did not feel like forgiving Count Charnokutsky, he wanted to kill the repulsive reptile then and there, and preferably not outright, but in a way that would make him squirm and howl.

  This desire must have been only too easy to read in the frenzied public prosecutor’s eyes, because His Excellency suddenly dropped his peach and clutched at the edge of the table, as if he were finding it hard to stay on his feet.

  “If you shoot me, you’ll never get out of the castle alive,” the magnate said hastily.

  Berdichevsky glanced at his wet finger and winced. “I don’t intend to go anywhere, with the night coming on. First of all I’ll finish you off, because I find your very existence an insult to the universe. Then, if your Filip doesn’t want another bullet, he’ll go with me to the telegraph room and tap out a message to the chief of police. How about it, Filya, will you tap out that telegram?”

  The servant nodded—he was afraid to answer out loud.

  “There you are. I’ll barricade myself in there and wait for the police to arrive.”

  “For the murder of Count Charnokutsky they’ll give you hard labor!”

  “After the police find your secret collection in the basement? They’ll give me a medal, not hard labor! Right, then!”

  Matvei Bentsionovich aimed at the center of His Excellency’s body then changed his mind and trained the barrel on his forehead.

  Charnokutsky’s face, already white, turned absolutely chalky. One side of his blue-black mustache had drooped in some incomprehensible manner, while the other was still swaggeringly erect.

  “What… what do you want?” the master of the castle stammered.

  “Now I’m going to put you through an intensive interrogation,” Berdichevsky informed him. “Oh, my feelings about you are very intense! It’s going to be very difficult to stop myself from putting a bullet though your rotten head.”

  The count kept glancing from the state counselor’s contorted face to the barrel of the gun twitching in his unsteady hand. He said hastily, “I will answer all your questions. Only keep a grip on yourself. Is that trigger stiff enough? Have some Moselle, it calms the nerves.”

  That seemed like quite a good idea to Matvei Bentsionovich. He moved closer to the table. Without taking his eyes off the count, he groped and found a bottle (Moselle or not Moselle—it made no difference), raised it to his lips, and drank greedily.

  It was the first time in his life that Berdichevsky had drunk wine straight from the bottle. It turned out to taste much better than from a glass. The state counselor really was having a night full of remarkable discoveries.

  He put the bottle down and wiped his lips—not with his handkerchief, but on his sleeve. That was good!

  “What is your connection with staff captain Ratsevich?”

  “He is my lover,” the count replied
without a moment’s hesitation. “That is, he was my lover—I have not seen him for six months and I have had no news—until you appeared.”

  “Why should I believe that? So it was you who paid his debt for him!”

  “Not at all. Why would I? If I were to pay fifteen thousand for every one of my lovers, the entire Charnokutsky fortune would not be enough.”

  “It wasn’t you?” The public prosecutor’s bravado instantly deserted him. “If not you … then who?”

  Theory number three, that had emerged so brilliantly from the debris of its two predecessors, had collapsed. His time had been wasted! Yet another damp squib!

  “You look terrible,” the owner of the castle said nervously. “Drink some more wine. On my word of honor, I do not know who bought Ratsevich out of jail. Bronek didn’t tell me.”

  When the public prosecutor realized the implications of the last phrase, he asked, “So, you and he saw each other after he was released?”

  “Only once. He acted mysterious and said things I couldn’t understand. He was very pompous. He said: ‘They threw Ratsevich out like an old shoe. Never mind, gentlemen, just give me time.’ I had the feeling that by ‘gentlemen’ he meant his superiors.”

  “What else? Come on, remember, damn you!”

  The shout made Charnokutsky cringe, pulling his head down into his shoulders and blinking rapidly. “All right, all right. His explanations were very vague. Supposedly some very important individual had visited him in prison. That was what he said: ‘An important individual, very important.’ And after that the money was paid for him. That is all I know…”

  Not like Pelagia

  BERDICHEVSKY HEARD A noise behind him.

  He swung around and saw that the servant he had shot had taken advantage of the fact that they had forgotten about him to get to his feet and was running on bent legs in the direction of the drawing room.

  “Stop!” the public prosecutor yelled, running after him. “I’ll kill you!”