Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

by Boris Akunin

  He tried to figure out how much money they might give him and what he ought to do with it. Buy himself a little house somewhere on the Okhta? Or should he invest it in interest-bearing bonds? And it was too early to retire. Now that the “little business” would be completely forgotten, he could work for the pleasure of it—meaning for proper compensation. If they got stingy, then he could always show them the door. A high-class specialist in delicate matters would never be short of clients. For instance, if he had charged for his efforts in Palestine at the full rate, including all that sailing across the sea, roaming around in the desert, and other adventures—how much could he have taken them for then?

  The zeros began crowding into Yakov Mikhailovich’s brain, but before they could arrange themselves into a single long row, the nun’s hantur turned off the wide road, crossed a bridge, and disappeared into a narrow side street.

  He had to get a bit closer.

  And once again Yakov Mikhailovich didn’t put a foot wrong—he didn’t go barging into the side street, but drove on a bit farther along the road. He guessed that this was the end of the horse-drawn excursion and all further movements would be on foot.

  He jumped down onto the ground and slapped the mare from Bet-Kebir on the crupper: Off you go now, lady, wherever your fancy takes you. Thanks for your help, you’re no longer needed.

  He took a cautious peep around the corner. The Arab was standing with the horses; the nun wasn’t there. But a minute or two later she appeared, too, coming out of a small gate and heading toward that Salakh of hers. They exchanged a few words about something and then went down the slope and put the hantur in a shadow where it was almost invisible.

  Aha, Yakov Mikhailovich twigged. Now this looks like an ambush!

  Come on now, come on now.

  His hand was itching—he really needed to crack his joints, but he couldn’t afford to make a sound right now.

  He spotted the wayfarer before the other two did. The tall, gaunt man was walking along the moonlit roadway, tapping with his staff.

  It’s him, Yakov Mikhailovich realized, and that very moment he was transformed from Nifontov into Ksenofontov. Now everything that still had to happen was a purely technical matter, in other words no problem at all.

  He pressed back against the fence, waiting for Manuila to turn into the side street. But then another circumstance emerged, one that could really only be categorized as an unpleasant surprise. Someone was stealthily pursuing the main mark, at a distance of about fifty paces. Unfortunately the moon hid behind a cloud, so he couldn’t get a good look at this second individual straightaway. All he could see was that he was a real bear of a man and he walked like a bear too, waddling along without a sound.

  So what kind of news was this? A competitor?

  Yakov Mikhailovich could creep along just as quietly as the Bear. He fell in behind him and inched along close to the wall.

  He couldn’t hear what Ginger and the Bear were talking about, but it was a heated conversation. The Arab and the nun both came in for rough treatment. But then they all seemed to come to some understanding. Ginger slipped away through a small gate, while the hulk stayed with the driver and the two of them talked about something or other.

  Yakov Mikhailovich crept a bit closer.

  They were speaking Russian! Would you believe it?

  “He’d be done for without someone to protect him,” said a muffled voice. “He’s just like a little child! How can you let someone like that wander around on his own?”

  “I guard, too,” the Arab replied grandly. “I take care of her. Woman! Without me she done for a hundred times.”

  “That’s for sure. A woman’s a woman,” the Bear agreed.

  Ah, so that’s who we are. Yakov Mikhailovich had not been informed that Manuila had a bodyguard, and that made him feel a little offended with his bosses. This is no joking matter, gentlemen, you ought to warn me.

  He crept up close and huddled down. The technical problem was more complicated than he had thought at first.

  He peered into the darkness, trying to assess his opponent’s strength. The opponent looked very strong and rather dangerous. Yakov Mikhailovich was well acquainted with this solid, thickset breed; you couldn’t put them away with a single blow, they had too much life in them. And you had to deal with this one precisely, without making any noise.

  The Arab didn’t need to be taken into account. A feeble kind of man, a bit of a coward, all you had to do was hiss at him. During his wanderings, Yakov Mikhailovich had grown quite accustomed to this Salakh. You might even say he had grown attached to him. So cheerful, with that white-toothed smile always stretching right back to his ears. When they stopped and camped for the night, Yakov Mikhailovich had sometimes crept closer to the hantur in order to hear the Arab singing his songs.

  He had decided in advance that he wouldn’t do away with Salakh. He felt sorry for him. Of course, if the job required it, he would polish him off without even thinking about it. But the science of psychology said that this trembling hare would never snitch, and Yakov Mikhailovich had a great respect for psychology.

  The only thing he needed from the Arab was for him not to yell. That was already tricky enough. But this was a problem with two unknowns: how to shut the Arab’s mouth and fell this big Bruin at the same time—naturally, without making a sound.

  He thought hard for half a minute and came up with the answer.

  He backed away to the corner. On the road there he picked up a stick—it looked like a spoke from a large wagon wheel, three feet long. The end had split, so it had been thrown away. Just the ticket.

  Yakov Mikhailovich limped back into the side street with his shoulders rounded, muttering something incomprehensible to himself. He barely crept along, leaning on the stick. Who would ever be scared of a cripple like that? But even so, Bruin and the Arab turned and looked suspiciously at this wanderer in the night.

  Yakov Mikhailovich hobbled closer and pretended that he had only just noticed them. He gasped in fright, as if to say: I hope these are not wicked people!

  He limped right up close to them and bowed, supporting himself on the stick with his left hand and pressing his right hand to his heart and his forehead in the appropriate manner. He spoke to the Arab in a squeaky, pitiful voice: “Djamal li vallakhi ibn khurtum?”

  He himself had no idea what he was asking, because the words meant absolutely nothing—they were simply meant to sound like Arabic to the great Russian Bear.

  Hearing this gibberish, the massive man let his shoulders slump—he didn’t see any threat or danger in this local invalid wandering in the night.

  But Salakh was astounded by the nonsense. “Eish?”

  Yakov Mikhailovich bowed to him again, slowly, and then sprang erect briskly and hit the Arab with his knuckles under the base of the nose—crunch! He struck hard, but not too hard, otherwise the nose bone would penetrate the brain and the man would be done for.

  The blood spurted out of Salakh’s nose in a fountain and he fell flat on his back, out cold. Silently, without a single sound, just the way it should be.

  Without halting his corkscrew movement for a moment, Yakov Mikhailovich turned to face the Bear.

  The Russians jaw was still dropping. Mother Nature had endowed the Bruins with heroic stature, but they were a little slow on the uptake—the scientific term for it was retarded reactions. But that was only for the first split second, so it was best not to rely too much on their retardation. Once, during his days in settled exile, after the hard labor, Yakov Mikhailovich had seen a bear catching fish by the river. A fisherman with a spear was no match at all. You couldn’t afford to dawdle with a Bruin. He wouldn’t give you time to sneeze.

  But Yakov Mikhailovich didn’t dawdle. He thrust the end of the stick into that mouth hanging wide open in astonishment—drove it in so hard that he could hear the teeth crunch. That was so he wouldn’t yell.

  In his left hand Yakov Mikhailovich had a handy little knife, Fi
nnish-made, with a special spring mechanism. He clicked out the blade and struck, not at the heart, because a stab to the heart wouldn’t settle a big brute like this, and not at the throat, because he would just bubble and gurgle. He struck at the ileum, the point in the belly where a shout is born.

  He did the job and jumped back five paces, to avoid the death grip of those massive outstretched arms.

  Bruin pulled the stick out of his mouth and blood gushed over his beard. He opened his mouth, but he couldn’t shout, the blade stuck in his ileum wouldn’t let him. Then what was supposed to happen, happened. The Bear finished himself off. Every hunter knows that a bear stuck with a pitchfork will pull it out of himself and open up the wound. And this bear did the same. If he’d left the knife sticking into him, then his life wouldn’t have drained away so quickly But the great fool grabbed hold of the handle, grunted, and tugged it out. Then he charged at Yakov Mikhailovich, swaying on his feet as he came. Yakov Mikhailovich took a step backward, a second, a third, and that was all that was needed. The Bruin’s legs folded underneath him and he collapsed onto his knees. He knelt there, swaying backward and forward, as if he was praying to his bear god—and then fell flat on his face.

  O off!

  Meanwhile the Arab had come around. He was trying to lift himself up on one elbow, feeling at his smashed and bloody nose with his hand, sniffling.

  Yakov Mikhailovich, feeling mellow after a job so well done, leaned down over him and told him in a quiet voice, “I’m going to go and kill the other two now. How about you, do you want to live?”

  Salakh nodded, and the whites of his goggling eyes glowed in the dark.

  “Live, then, I don’t mind,” Yakov Mikhailovich said magnanimously. “Clear out while the going’s good. And not a word to a soul. Understand?”

  The Arab quickly scrambled up onto his hands and knees.

  “Come on, then,” the magnanimous man said, slapping him on the shoulder.

  “She my bride!” the Arab suddenly said.

  “What?” Yakov Mikhailovich thought he must have misheard.

  But the Arab whined and grabbed his benefactor around the knees, trying to knock him over. It was so absolutely unexpected that Yakov Mikhailovich very nearly did go tumbling to the ground.

  So he had been mistaken about the man. His psychological assessment had been inaccurate. If the Arab was such a great hero, he would have done better to yell at the top of his voice—that might really have caused a problem; but what good was a grab around the knees?

  Yakov Mikhailovich punched the ungrateful fool on the top of his head, and when the Arab slumped over and buried his nose in the ground, he stamped on his neck just below the back of his head, and there was loud crunch.

  He made himself a promise for the future: no more charitable psychology. He was no Doctor Gaaz.

  THE GATE LED into a kind of waste lot with a few crooked trees growing in it. Whose stupid idea was that, to waste a good fence on enclosing such a useless piece of land?

  Yakov Mikhailovich could see right away that there was no one there, but he wasn’t discouraged. He ran around the inside of the fence, looking for another way out. He didn’t find another gate or a door, but he did find a plank that had been moved aside. This had to be where the little darlings had climbed through, there wasn’t anywhere else.

  He ran through the monastery courtyard and found himself on a little street that ran up the hill. He dropped down and pressed his ear to the ground. The sound of steps was coming from the right. He dashed after it.

  There they were, the precious sweethearts. A tall shadow—that was Manuila—and the other one beside him was a woman, with her hem brushing the ground.

  And here am I, my dear marks, your Ksenofontov.

  His hand drew the revolver out of his pocket. No point in getting too fancy, this was an ideal spot—not a soul around, not a single light. And there was no need to take too much care. Who was going to launch an investigation around here?

  Catch up with them, bang! in the back of his head, and then hers. Then one more time, just to make sure.

  And yet Yakov Mikhailovich did not hurry.

  First, this long moment was beautiful, as the great writer put it.

  And second, he suddenly felt curious about where they were climbing to. What were they after on the top of the Mount of Olives?

  The prophet and the nun turned in to some kind of yard. Watching through the fence, Yakov Mikhailovich saw Manuila rake away the heap of rubbish, and he started getting excited: Could it be buried treasure? He actually broke into a sweat at the thought.

  Then Scatty and Ginger went down into the pit.

  Very kind of you, Yakov Mikhailovich thought approvingly. Just cover the pit with rubbish afterward, and everything’s tied up very neatly.

  He went down into the hole, following the light burning inside it. He had his gun at the ready.

  Manuila spotted Yakov Mikhailovich emerging from the darkness and stared at him over Gingers shoulder. But the nun just stood with her back to him, the same as before.

  She ran her fingers nervously across her neck below her ear and asked in a trembling voice: “Were you … there?”

  A letter from the next world

  NOTIFICATION CAME FIRST by telegram, and then the letter arrived.

  The official message, sent to the chancellery of the Governor of Zavolzhie from the Ministry of Justice, stated with true telegraphic laconicism that Full State Counselor Berdichevsky had died suddenly of a heart attack in St. Petersburg.

  For a brief moment there remained a faint hope that this was a misunderstanding, for Matvei Bentsionovich was only a state counselor, not yet “full,” but the first telegram was followed by a second, which said that the body had been forwarded on such-and-such a train at state expense and would arrive at the railway station nearest to Zavolzhsk at such-and-such a time.

  Well, there were groans of horror and dismay, and many people even wept, because the deceased had had a great many well-wishers in Zavolzhsk, not to mention his extensive family.

  Marya Gavrilovna, who did not cry but simply repeated over and over again “No, it’s not true, no, no, no!” and shook her head like a clockwork doll, was given the very best doctor to care for her. The governors wife took the thirteen orphans into her temporary care, and the town began preparing for the formal reception of the body and the even more formal farewell to it.

  His Eminence Mitrofanii seemed numbed by grief. At first, like the widow, he was not granted the release of tears by the Lord. The bishop strode around his study with his hands clasped behind his back, the knuckles white. Any servants who peered in through the crack in the door immediately backed away at the sight of the expression on his face. The grief-stricken prelate strode on for half the night, and just before dawn he sat down at his desk, laid his head on his crossed hands, and finally broke into sobs. It was the right time, dark and desolate, so there was no one to see his weakness.

  In the morning His Eminence felt unwell. He gasped for breath and clutched at his heart. They were frightened that he might suffer the same fate as his favorite godson: a ruptured cardiac muscle. His secretary, Father Userdov, went running to consult the vicar on whether they ought to administer the last sacraments, but that evening a letter arrived from the steamer, and when Mitrofanii read it he stopped panting for breath, sat up in the bed, and put his feet down on the floor.

  He read it again. And then again.

  The crooked scrawl on the envelope, full of mistakes, said: “To Bishop Mitrofanii, Citty of Zavolsk in Zavolzhie provins, urjent, for him to reed and no one els.”

  Inside there was a crumpled sheet of paper with Berdichevsky’s handwriting on it: “48-36, send this note by post, at the extra-urgent rate, to: His Eminence Bishop Mitrofanii, Zavolzhsk, Zavolzhie Province, for personal delivery.” What the meaning of this mysterious missive could be, why it was traced out in capital letters, and what the figures “48-36” meant, Mitrofanii did not understand,
but it was clear that the message was of extreme importance and might possibly contain the key to the disaster in St. Petersburg.

  The bishop studied the uninformative note so intently that he didn’t immediately realize that he should turn the sheet of paper over.

  When he did, there was the actual message, not written in capitals but in feverish, higgledy-piggledy running script:

  The letters are jumping about, I’m writing this in a cab. It’s a good thing it’s raining—I’ve put up the top and no one can see. Pelagia is in danger. Save her. I know who the culprit is, but you must not know, and do not try to find out. Go to her and take her as far away as possible, to the ends of the earth. I myself will not be able to do any more. They are following me and of course they will keep following me. Let them. I have thought up an excellent maneuver—“The Berdichevsky Étude”—to sacrifice one piece in the hope of saving a hopeless game. I do not ask anything for my family. I know you will not abandon them. Good-bye. Your son Matvei.

  This time one reading was enough for the bishop. He did not construct any hypotheses or try to analyze the meaning of this cryptic letter, but accepted it as a clear and direct instruction to act. The former cavalry officer awoke within His Eminence: when the bugle is sounding charge and the saber slashing has begun, there is no time to think—you have to follow your instincts and the wild rush of your blood.

  The bishop’s weakness had disappeared as if by magic. He leaped off the bed and roared for the lay servants and his secretary.

  A minute later the Episcopal Residence had been transformed into a newly active volcano. One servant was already galloping off to the quayside to book a steam launch to Nizhni. Another was running pell-mell to the telegraph office to book a railway ticket from Nizhni to Odessa and a cabin in a fast maritime steamship. A third had been dispatched to the governor with a hastily written note in which Mitrofanii informed him that he had been called away urgently and the vicar would conduct Berdichevsky’s funeral. God only knew what His Excellency and the whole of Zavolzhsk society would think, but that did not concern His Excellency in the least.