Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (12 page)

“What plan?” Pelagia asked, guessing from his tone of voice that this plan would be something very wicked.

“A most excellent one,” Dolinin chuckled. “Actually quite unique in its own way. The point is that the happy lovers had set the date for a wedding. Well, of course, not an entirely legitimate one, because there couldn’t be any marriage, but nonetheless something in the nature of a wedding feast. After all, morals in the capital are different from in the provinces, even a wedding with someone else’s wife is no great rarity there. ‘Civil marriage’ is what they call it. They had planned for everything on a grand scale. In the modern style, with no hypocrisy. If there’s to be a feast, let the whole world come. Meaning that true love is higher than human laws and scandal. And I pretended that I had reconciled myself to the inevitable. Several well-wishers had long been trying to persuade me to ‘take a broader view of things,’ and so I did.” Sergei Sergeevich gave a dry laugh, more like a cough. “I made myself out to be such a gentle lamb, such a Tolstoyan, that I was even—believe it or not—honored with an invitation to this festival of love, along with the other members of the select company. That was when the plan came to me … First I thought I would follow the example of the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun, by slitting my belly open with a knife in public and spilling my insides straight onto the wedding table—help yourselves to that, so to speak. But then I thought of something even better.”

Pelagia gaped at him and put her hand over her mouth. Dolinin continued implacably with his agonizing tale: “I’ll arrive, I thought, with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of her very favorite white wine, the one I could previously only afford to buy twice a year—on her saint’s day and on our wedding anniversary. At the very height of the feasting, I was going to request the floor, saying that I wished to make a toast. Of course, everyone would prick up their ears and fix their eyes on me. How poignant: the abandoned husband congratulating the young couple. Some would be touched, others would grin maliciously to themselves. And I would make a speech, a very short one. I would say: ‘Love is a force that conquers all. May its smile always shine on you as mine does now.’ I would open the bottle, fill a goblet to the very brim, raise it above my head, and hold it there for a while—that was to be specially for my son, who, of course, would also be present at the feast. So that he would remember everything clearly. And then I would pour the contents of the goblet here.” Dolinin jabbed one finger against his forehead. “Only my bottle would contain not wine, but sulfuric acid.”

Pelagia cried out, but once again Sergei Sergeevich appeared not to hear. “Not long before that I had been investigating a case—a crime of passion. A certain street woman splashed acid in her pimp’s face out of jealousy. I saw his corpse in the morgue: the skin had all come off, the lips were completely eaten away, and the bare teeth were set in an evil grin … So my idea was to show the young couple exactly the same ‘smile of all-conquering love.’ I wasn’t afraid of the pain, I even yearned for the gratification of it. Only that kind of pain could possibly compare with the fire that had been consuming me from the inside all those months … I would have expired on the spot, of course, because the shock is too much for the heart when a large area of the skin is burned away. And then let them carry on with their lives and revel in their happiness. Let them dream at night… And let my son remember for the rest of his life … That is the broad outline of the plan that took shape in my head.”

“And what prevented you from putting it into effect?” the nun asked in a whisper.

This time Dolinin heard her, and nodded. “On the very eve of the red-letter day, I suddenly received a summons to the very pinnacle of power. A miracle had occurred; somewhere up on high, individuals capable of thinking like statesmen had been found. They treated me kindly, exalted me, gave a new meaning to my life. And I, of course, still not being right in the head, took this as a sign. Here was the chance to prove to my wife that I was a great man, bigger than her little nobleman. I was going to have a position, and wealth, and power. I was going to exceed him in every respect. Then she would be sorry, and she would repent. Of course, she would never have repented of anything, because she is not that kind of woman, but as I told you—I was not in my right mind.”

After saying nothing for a while, Sergei Sergeevich went on to conclude his story in an entirely different tone of voice, without any trace of bitterness. “That, however, was not the meaning of the sign at all. A certain individual explained it to me later—it doesn’t matter who, you don’t know him. He said: ‘God took pity on you. He took pity on you and saved your soul.’ As simple as that. God took pity on me. And when I understood that, I began to believe. With no sophistry or speculation. I simply began to believe, that’s all. And my real life began from that moment.”

“Verily, that is the truth!” Pelagia exclaimed, and then, surrendering to an unaccountable impulse, she blurted out: “You know what, let me tell you about myself too …”

But the investigator tugged on his reins, halting his bay, and the wagon rolled on.

The nun jumped down to the ground and walked back to Dolinin—no longer in order to tell him about herself (she realized that Sergei Sergeevich was in no mood for other peoples intimate outpourings just at the moment), but in order to finish saying the most important thing of all:

“God saved your life and your soul. And He will not limit Himself to these mercies. Time will pass, the wound will heal, and you will stop feeling angry with your former wife. Understand—she is not to blame. She is simply not the one whom the Lord intended for you. And perhaps you will still meet your true match.”

Dolinin’s smile seemed derisive, but there was no sarcasm in it.

“No, begging your pardon, I’ve had enough. Unless perhaps I should meet someone else like you? But I suspect there is no one else in the world like you, and unfortunately there is no way in the world to marry a nun.”

He lashed at the horse with his heels and galloped off to the head of the caravan, leaving Pelagia in a state of total confusion.

Forest horrors

FOR A LONG time after that the holy sister rode on in silence. God only knows where the nun’s thoughts were straying, but her expression was strange—both sad and dreamy at the same time. Pelagia smiled several times, and the tears ran down her cheeks and she wiped them away, unawares, with her open hand.

And then suddenly the mood was gone, her thoughts were scattered. Pelagia did not immediately understand what was hindering and distracting her. Then she realized: it was the same sensation again. She could quite distinctly feel someone’s intent gaze on her neck and the back of her head.

It was not the first time this had happened. Only a short time before, during the afternoon stop, it had been exactly the same: Pelagia had swung around sharply and seen—actually seen—a branch sway at the far edge of the clearing.

This time, too, the nun could not restrain herself, and she looked around. She clutched at her heart: there was a large gray bird sitting on a fir tree and staring at the nun with round yellow eyes. The holy sister laughed quietly. Lord, Lord, an eagle-owl! Nothing but an eagle-owl …

But that evening when they set up camp for the night, something happened that she could not laugh away.

While the men were building the huts and collecting brushwood, the nun walked off to answer the call of nature. In her shyness of the men, she went quite a long way; since the twilight had not fully condensed into darkness, she wouldn’t get lost.

Suddenly she caught the faint odor of smoke from somewhere, not from the clearing, but from the opposite direction. Immediately she remembered stories about forest fires. The great Forest burned only rarely; the swamps rescued it. But once it began to blaze, there was no escape for anything or anyone from the fiery inferno.

Drawing the smoke in through her nose, Pelagia walked toward the suspicious smell. Up ahead there really was a flickering light. Perhaps it was touchwood?

When she was already very close to the light, she heard a sudden crack. The sound was not really all that loud, but it was clearly made by some living thing, and the nun froze.

Something moved behind the fir tree.

Not something—someone!

Frozen in fear, the nun noticed something swaying rhythmically. On looking more closely, she saw that it was a tail—a wolf’s tail! And the most incredible thing was that the tail was not dangling close to the ground, but quite high up, as if the beast were sitting on a branch!

Pelagia made the sign of the cross and began walking backward, muttering, “God is our refuge and our strength …”

From out of the twilight there came a low growling with a strange sound like someone smacking his lips, not so much ferocious as—or so it seemed to the poor nun—sneering.

Recovering her wits, she turned and ran back as fast as her legs would carry her.

She ran so hard that she stumbled over a tree stump, fell down, tore her habit, and didn’t even notice: she jumped up right away and set off even faster.

She ran out into the clearing as white as a sheet, with her lower lip bitten between her teeth in terror.

“What is it? A bear?” said Dolinin, snatching his revolver out of its holster as he dashed toward her. The policemen reached for their rifles.

“No … no,” Pelagia babbled, grasping at the air with her lips. “It’s nothing.”

The sight of her traveling companions sitting having a peaceful smoke around the campfire made her feel ashamed. A wolf sitting on a branch, and smacking his lips, too? You could imagine seeing anything in the Forest.

“Come on now, come on,” Sergei Sergeevich said in a quiet voice, leading her aside. “You’re not a timid sort of woman, but right now you look absolutely terrible. What’s happened?”

“There’s a wolf there … a strange one … it’s like it’s sitting in a tree. And there’s a little light shining… I remembered about Struk. You know, the Forest monster,” Pelagia admitted, somehow managing to force a smile.

But Dolinin did not smile. He looked over his shoulder into the blue evening thickets.

“Well, then, let’s go and see if it is Struk or not. Will you show me?”

He went ahead, lighting the way with a torch. He walked confidently, without trying to hide, the branches crunching loudly under his feet, and her fear shrank and released her.

“Over there,” said the nun, pointing as she led the investigator up to the terrible spot. “That’s it, the fir tree.”

Sergei Sergeevich parted the prickly green branches intrepidly and leaned over.

“A twig, broken,” he said. “Someone stepped on it, and only just recently. A pity about the moss, or there would be tracks.”

“He … it growled,” Pelagia said. “And it was mocking somehow, not like an animal. And the most important thing—the tail was at this level, here.” She went up on tiptoe to point. “Honest to God! But the light disappeared. And it doesn’t smell of smoke anymore …”

She suddenly felt ashamed of talking such rubbish. But even at this point Dolinin did not think of making fun of her. He sniffed at the air.

“No, no, there’s still a slight smell… You know, Mademoiselle, I am a man of a rational inclinations, I subscribe to a scientific view of the world. But I am by no means of the opinion that science knows all the secrets of the earth, let alone those of the heavens. It would be naïve to assume that the nature of things is exhausted by the laws of physics and chemistry. Only very limited people can be materialists. You’re not a materialist, are you?”

“No.”

“Then why are you so surprised? Well, you got a fright, that’s understandable, but what is there to be surprised at? You can see for yourself what kind of place this is.” He gestured around at the gloom in which the Forest had swathed itself with the approach of night. “Where should evil spirits dwell, if not in deep waters and forest thickets?”

“Are you joking?” Pelagia asked in a quiet voice.

Sergei Sergeevich sighed.

“Tell me, nun, do God and angels exist?”

“Yes.”

“That means the Devil and his cohorts do too. That is the only possible logical conclusion. If white exists, then black must exist, too,” the astonishing investigator snapped. “All right, let’s go and have some tea.”

The wild Tartar

THEY REACHED STROGANOVKA early in the evening of the fourth day.