Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

by Boris Akunin

AS ALL HER journeys are wont to do, the tale of Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel begins in Russia—starting this time in St. Petersburg and Moscow before heading to the lush, mountainous Zavolzhsk landscape that Pelagia calls home.

  St. Petersburg

  ST. PETERSBURG IS a fitting start for this voyage, as its elaborately decorated ports are to this day centers of nautical travel and cruise-ship activity. The capital of the Russian Empire for more than two centuries, it is often considered Russia’s most Western city—with regard to both its geographic location and its European cultural influences. The “City of the Tsars” represents not only the brilliance of the Russian landscape but the nations intricate political history as well. From its founding by Peter the Great in 1703, its establishment as the Russian capital in 1712, its frequent renaming in the twentieth century, and its loss of capital status to Moscow following the Russian Revolution of 1917, St. Petersburg is a living testament to each of the nations revolutions, wars, and most significant cultural watershed moments.

  Moscow

  MOSCOW HAS THRIVED as Russia’s largest and most well-known city since its establishment as the seat of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality in the fourteenth century, though the city itself appears in the annals of Russian history as far back as 1147. The city is renowned for its spirit of strength and resilience, stemming from its fortitude against attacks from foreigners of all kinds, beginning with the Mongols, or Tatars, whom Ivan the Great (Ivan III) repelled for sole reign of the city in 1480. The Tatars would attack again over the years (famously during the sixteenth-century reign of Ivan the Terrible), and the city would be periodically besieged by fire and famine up through the twentieth century. The seventeenth-century defeat of the Poles, nineteenth-century rout of Napoleon’s famed French armies, and World War II victory over German forces have cemented Moscow’s reputation as the most powerful gem in the Russian crown. Through the establishment and dissolution of the Soviet Republic, Moscow has remained the Russian capital, and is a monument to the strength and solidarity of its people.

  Zavolzhsk

  IN CONTRAST TO these bastions of Russian power and wealth, modern-day Zavolzhsk, whose name means “behind the Volga,” is a bucolic and rural district set right against the famed Volga River. Less famous than neighboring cities Yaroslavl and Ivanovo, Zavolzhsk is a quieter but equally magnificent stop along Russia’s Golden Ring, an ancient route circling out from Moscow. The Golden Ring affords travelers and merchants alike easy access to centuries-old cultural outposts, religious sites, and trading centers.

  Like most Ring cities, Zavolzhsk’s Orthodox architecture, represented by Russia’s famed onion domes and white stone facades, pairs gorgeously with the region’s sprawling green countryside, its crystal-clear lakes, and dense forests—populated by a host of vegetation, fauna, and haunting spirits. Zavolzhsk offers all visitors and residents the same sense of serenity and inner peace that Pelagia relishes about her native soil.

  PELAGIA’S NEWEST EXCURSION takes her from her homeland to faraway lands she’s never seen before, lands across the sea with heritages even richer in mythology and history than her own, lands that both in her tale and in the chronicles of time have represented the best and worst of religious zealotry. With Manuila’s pilgrims, she voyages to Palestine, and as with many present-day visitors, her life and her faith will never be the same.

  Port of Jaffa

  FOUNDED BY THE Canaanites in the eighteenth century B.C.E., the town of Jaffa has enjoyed tremendous historical importance because of its port. The crowded, lively, and culturally dense city, whose name means “beautiful,” has not only earned recognition as an international marina, but has also played host to recognizable stories from many different cultures and religious traditions.

  According to legend, Jaffa was named after Noah’s son Yefet, who built the city after the Flood. This was also the city from which Jonah fled from God and was promptly engulfed by a whale, and in which some traditions place the Greek myth of Andromeda. Andromeda’s Rock still exists in Jaffa, to which, according to legend, King Cepheus and his wife, Cassiopeia, were forced to tie their virgin daughter, Andromeda, in an effort to appease the angry sea gods.

  Courtesy of Jillian Schiavi

  Today, Jaffa still thrives among the more advanced cities of the Near and Middle East, now as part of the thriving municipality of Tel Aviv–Yafo. Although the port has changed hands myriad times through various conquests and recaptures, it consistently retains a cosmopolitan population, and the neighborhoods of the port and the old city have become popular tourist attractions.

  Jaffa Gate

  ONE OF THE eleven gates in Jerusalem’s Old City walls, Jaffa Gate serves as the portal for Jaffa Road, leading from the marina at the port of Jaffa to the Holy City.

  Jerusalem is a city laid out in grid formation, quartered into four districts, each with its own distinct religious and racial identity. The northwest quadrant is the Christian Quarter, with the Armenian Quarter immediately to its south. The Muslim Quarter occupies the northeast quadrant, with the Jewish Quarter to its south. Just inside Jaffa Gate are the Arab Marketplace and the Citadel of Jerusalem, a revered and ancient landmark.

  Jaffa Gate is heavily used by pedestrians and vehicles, and has given way to expansion for the implementation of shopping stalls and markets. This entrance to Jerusalem is perhaps the most buoyant and lively of the gates situated around the walls of the Holy City.

  Gaza

  THE GAZA into which Pelagia travels is drastically different from the Gaza Strip of the present-day Palestinian territories. Its population has grown enormously since the nineteenth century, and political and religious discord permeates the streets and the daily lives of its inhabitants.

  According to the Old Testament, Gaza was given to the Jewish tribe of Judah roughly 3,700 years ago. One of the oldest cities in the world, it is perhaps most well known as the site of the famous biblical story of David and Goliath.

  From 332 B.C.E. to the eighteenth century, Gaza had been continually seized and occupied. It has both flourished and faltered during the Hellenistic Period, as a Roman city, under Arab rule after the Byzantines were vanquished, as a Templar stronghold, under Ottoman rule, and even today, as a hotbed of strife among Israelis, Palestinians, and the region’s small but significant Christian population. However, despite its dense history of multiple occupations, Gaza, whose name derives from the Canaanite/Hebrew term for “strong,” still maintains a diverse culture due to its strategic location on the Mediterranean coastal route between North Africa and the greener lands of the Levant.

  The area was once populated with markets, schools of philosophy and pagan temples tucked within its vast vegetation. Once called the Land of Treasures, Gaza’s verdant fertility can still be recognized today simply by studying names given to its individual districts, like Tuffah, meaning “apple,” and Zeitun, or “olive.”

  Canaan

  AS EARLY AS 1500 B.C.E., Canaan was a small country populated by many different societies. From the invasion of twelve Hebrew tribes led by Joshua in 1200 B.C.E. and the rebuilding of Canaanite towns by Roman Palestinians in the first century C.E., to the conquest by Turkish Muslims up through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Canaan has played host to warring ideals, cultures, and religious factions. Through all this conflict, however, the mythology of the land has remained intact, with each new inhabiting group adapting its own beliefs to the foundations upon which Canaan was born.

  In the “Land of Purple,” the early Canaanites were a people characterized by their sophisticated agriculture and their invention of an early form of the alphabet, which was ultimately passed on to many Western cultures by the Greeks and Romans. Because of the Canaanites’ preoccupation with agriculture, their religion teemed with abundant fertility motifs and references to the forces of nature upon which agriculture depended. Eventually, as more powerful neighboring regions became attracted to Canaan’s economic growth and success in trade, it was eventually ab
sorbed by and incorporated into the Greco-Roman world. As a result, only one of the two original Canaanite languages, Aramaic, is still spoken today in a handful of small Syrian villages; Phoenician Canaanite disappeared as a spoken language around 100 C.E.

  Sodom

  WHILE THERE IS still much speculation over whether Sodom actually existed, its mythology continues to influence present-day language, ethics, and human understanding.

  Located just south of the Dead Sea, Sodom is most notoriously known as being a hotbed of sin until God, infuriated by the wickedness of its inhabitants—infamous for their homosexual activity—destroyed Sodom and its sister city, Gomorrah, in a storm of fire and brimstone. Only Lot, Abrahams nephew, and his family were spared.

  Although it is unclear whether the Old Testament account considered all Sodomites homosexual, they were indeed, save Lot, pagan, and therefore accused of performing sinful, sadistic acts of violence and sex, both on themselves and more fervently on visitors.

  Wailing Wall

  ALSO KNOWN AS the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, as the sole remnant of the Holy Temple built by King Solomon, is a place of spiritual significance for Jews. It is the closest accessible site to the holiest spot in Jerusalem, the Foundation Stone, which lies on the Temple Mount. According to ancient Jewish midrashic texts, the western wall of the Temple would stand for eternity; hence the survival of the Wailing Wall and the reverence for it today.

  Many Jews make the pilgrimage to the Holy City for the opportunity to pray at the Wailing Wall. Jewish custom dictates that when praying the Silent Prayer, Jews face toward the Temple, the source of all God’s bounty and blessing. Through the ages, Jews have gathered at the Wall to express gratitude to God or to pray for divine mercy. The term “wailing” refers to the grief pilgrims are obligated to feel upon witnessing the Temple’s desolate ruins. One tradition states that when water starts trickling through the stones of the Wall—when the Wall itself begins to wail—it will signal the Messiah’s advent.

  There are many rules for visitors to the Wailing Wall. Although pilgrims are not required to rend their garments when approaching the Wall, many still discard their shoes and socks as a sign of respect and of their disassociation from material concern. It is also a common practice to bring notes containing written prayers to the Wall and press them into the cracks. And while this is accepted and even encouraged, placing one’s fingers into the cracks and removing pieces of the Wall is forbidden, as is any practice that involves desecrating the Wall in any way—an attempt to protect its sanctity and holiness for generations to come.

  Courtesy of Jillian Schiavi

  Garden of Gethsemane

  THE GARDEN OF Gethsemane is said to have been Jesus Christ’s favorite place to reflect and pray in Jerusalem. According to biblical texts, this is where he and his disciples spent the night before he was crucified—Jesus continually praying to the Holy Father for forgiveness and guidance, with his disciples, true to their frail human form, continually falling asleep until the fateful moment when Judas arrived and betrayed their leader.

  The name Gethsemane literally means “oil press” and refers to the abundance of olive trees that populate its groves and provide revenue for the surrounding villages. It remains a very holy place, just below the Mount of Olives and outside Jerusalem’s city walls.

  Mount of Olives

  THE MOUNT OF Olives is often mentioned as another of Jesus’s most cherished locales in Jerusalem. According to some historians, by late antiquity (300–600 C.E.), the holiest and most privileged site of Jewish prayer in Jerusalem was located here, and only towards the end of the Middle Ages did Jews gradually reconvene at the site of the Wailing Wall for their prayers.

  THE LANDS PELAGIA visits in this latest expedition are steeped in colorful mythology, history, and custom. From the forests of the Ural Mountains to the garden oases of Israel, adventurers and pilgrims, young and old, real and fictitious alike have much to explore and to experience along this path. Have rooster, will travel.

  BORIS AKUNIN is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who was born in the Republic of Georgia in 1956. A philologist, critic, essayist, and translator of Japanese, Akunin published his first detective stories in 1998 and has already become one of the most widely read authors in Russia. In addition to the Sister Pelagia series, he is also the author of eleven Fandorin novels, including The Winter Queen, The Turkish Gambit, Murder on the Leviathan, The Death of Achilles, and Special Assignments, available from Random House Trade Paperbacks. He lives in Moscow.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  ANDREW BROMFIELD was born in Hull in Yorkshire, England, and is the acclaimed translator of the stories and novels of Victor Pelevin. He also translated into English Boris Akunin’s first five Erast Fandorin mysteries, The Winter Queen, The Turkish Gambit, Murder on the Leviathan, The Death of Achilles, and Special Assignments.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead,

  is entirely coincidental.

  A Random House Trade Paperback Original

  Translation copyright © 2008 by Random House, Inc.

  Dossier copyright © 2009 Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks,

  an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of

  Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS, MORTALIS, and colophons

  are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This work was originally published in Russian as Pelagiya i krasnyi petukh

  by Zakharov Publishers, Moscow, in 2002, copyright © 2002 by Boris Akunin.

  This English translation was originally published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson,

  London, in 2008.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Akunin, B. (Boris)

  [Pelagiia i krasnyi petukh. English]

  Sister Pelagia and the red cockerel : a novel / Boris Akunin;

  translated by Andrew Bromfield.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-868-3

  I. Bromfield, Andrew. II. Title.

  PG3478.K78P4613 2009

  891.73′5—dc22 2008023897

  www.mortalis-books.com

  v3.0

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Other Books By This Author

  Title Page

  Part One - Here

  Chapter 1 - On the Sturgeon

  Chapter 2 - Solving Puzzles

  Chapter 3 - Struk

  Chapter 4 - Was It a Dream?

  Chapter 5 - Scrambled Brains

  Chapter 6 - Intellect and Feeling

  Part Two - Here and There

  Chapter 7 - Hurry, You’re Late

  Chapter 8 - The Oprichniks of Christ

  Chapter 9 - Shmulik, Ruler of the Universe

  Chapter 10 - The Spider’s Den

  Chapter 11 - The City of Happiness

  Chapter 12 - Castle Schwartzwinkel

  Chapter 13 - Sea of the Dead

  Chapter 14 - The Berdichevsky Étude

  Chapter 15 - Full Moon

  Part Three - There

  Chapter 16 - The Gospel According to Pelagia

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Copyright

 

 

 
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