Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (23 page)

And then, on a certain especially clear day, after the holy sister’s return from Stroganovka, the insignificant trifle had occurred. That moment was etched so firmly in the public prosecutor’s memory that he had only to close his eyes and he was back at the scene again.

Pelagia was trimming roses that had been brought to the bishop from the conservatory, and she had dropped the scissors into the crystal vase full of water. She had pulled up her sleeve in order to lower her hand into the liquid, and Matvei Bentsionovich’s heart had suddenly stood still. Never in his life had he seen anything more sensuous than that slim, naked arm emerging from the black sleeve of the habit and plunging into the sparkling water. The state counselor had licked his dry lips and gazed at the nun’s face as if he were seeing it for the first time: the white skin that seemed to be dusted with golden pollen, those eyes glowing with a gentle light. The features of this face were not regular—it could not be called beautiful—but it was manifestly, indubitably lovely.

On that day Berdichevsky had left the bishop’s chambers early, citing the pressure of work. He felt stunned, he was actually swaying on his feet. On arriving home, he looked at his wife with terror in his heart—what if he had stopped loving her? Then he would see his Mashenka, not with the charitable eyes of love, but as she really was: swollen and persnickety, with a hard edge to her voice. But in fact it was worse than that. His love for his wife had not gone away, only she no longer occupied the most important place in his life.

As a meticulously fair-minded individual, Matvei Bentsionovich suffered terrible torment over the sheer depravity and dishonesty involved in this most trivial of conflicts: a forty-year-old husband had grown cold toward his wife, who had lost her youthful charms, and he had fallen in love with another woman. As if his wife were to blame for having withered while bearing him children and providing him with a peaceful, happy life! For two days after the appalling discovery, the public prosecutor stopped going to the bishop’s chambers in the evening, because he might meet Pelagia there.

On the third day he could stand it no longer. He told himself: I shall never, ever leave Masha or betray her, but the heart cannot be coerced. Fortunately, she is a nun, and so “anything of the sort” is doubly impossible, in fact impossible to the second power. And in this way he appeased his conscience. And he started visiting His Eminence again.

He watched Pelagia and listened to her. He was bitterly, deliriously happy. He believed so completely in the impossibility of “anything of the sort” that he made it a rule to drive the nun back to the school in his carriage. These journeys became the most important event of Matvei Bentsionovich’s day, the secret pleasure to which he looked forward from first thing in the morning.

Ten minutes of riding together on a narrow seat. And sometimes, on the bends, their elbows touched. Pelagia, of course, never noticed this, but every time, the public prosecutor felt a sweet surge of pleasure sweep downward from his solar plexus.

And then there was the crowning touch: offering her his hand when she got down out of the carriage. After all, nuns don’t wear gloves. To touch her skin—gently, gently, not prolonging the contact for even a second. What were all the delights of sensual gratification compared with this brief instant?

For most of the journey they didn’t speak. Pelagia looked around; Berdichevsky’s entire demeanor indicated that he was concentrating on controlling the horse. But in reality, all the time he was dreaming that they were husband and wife, driving home after visiting friends. Now they would go into the room, she would kiss him absentmindedly on the cheek and go into the bathroom to prepare for bed …

At such moments, Matvei Bentsionovich’s dreams were at their most magical, especially when the spring evening turned out as fine as today. In order to prolong the illusion, the prosecutor took an unusual liberty—instead of saying good night at the carriage, as usual, he escorted her all the way onto the porch.

He indulged in an absolute orgy: not only did he squeeze her wrist very gently as he helped her out of the carriage, afterward he even offered her his elbow.

Pelagia showed no surprise at the change in the ritual—she didn’t think it of any significance. She leaned on the support of his arm and smiled. “What an evening—it’s wonderful.”

Berdichevsky was immediately struck by a bold idea: to promote this escorted walk from the carriage to the porch to the rank of habit. And, in addition, could he not perhaps introduce a farewell handshake? Well, why not? Nuns’ hands could not be kissed, but a handshake—that was very restrained, chaste, comradely.

On the porch the public prosecutor doffed his cap—with his left hand, so that his right hand was free, but nonetheless he couldn’t bring himself to proffer it, and the idea never entered Pelagia’s head. “Good night,” she said.

She took hold of the door handle and suddenly cried out—in a sweet, defenseless voice, like a girl. She pulled her hand away, and Berdichevsky saw a small drop of blood on her middle finger.

“There’s a nail sticking out!” the nun said in annoyance. “It’s high time this handle was changed for a brass one.”

She began taking out her handkerchief.

“Allow me, allow me!” Matvei Bentsionovich exclaimed, hardly able to believe his good luck. “You can’t use a handkerchief, come now! What if, God forbid, it has lockjaw on it! What if there are microbes? It has to be sucked clean, I know that from … a certain article I read.” Then he completely lost his head—he seized hold of Pelagia’s hand and raised the pricked finger to his lips.

She was so astonished that she never even thought of pulling away. She merely gave the public prosecutor a curious look, as if she were seeing him for the first time.

Had she guessed?

But at this stage Berdichevsky no longer cared. The warmth of her hand and the taste of her blood had set his head spinning—as if he were some kind of starving vampire. He sucked in the salty liquid as hard as he could. The only thing he regretted was that this was not a bite from a deadly poisonous snake.

Pelagia came to her senses and jerked her finger away. “Spit it out!” she ordered him. “Who knows what sort of filth there was on it!”

Matvei Bentsionovich spat delicately into his handkerchief—although, of course, he would have preferred to swallow. He muttered in embarrassment, already regretting his spontaneous impulse, “I’ll pull that detestable nail out right away.”

Oh, disaster! She had guessed, she must have guessed! With her astute mind. It was all over, now she would shun him, avoid his company!

He removed the lantern from the shaft of the carriage and took a pair of pincers out of a box under the seat (an essential item for any horse-drawn vehicle—in order to remove a splinter from a hoof if a horse went lame).

He walked back up onto the porch, brisk and businesslike. He pulled out the sly nail and displayed it. “Strange,” said Pelagia. “The end is rusty, but the head is still shiny. As if it had only just been hammered in.”

Berdichevsky shone the lantern on it and saw that the point had a dull glint to it. From the blood? Yes, there was blood. But it was glinting higher up than that, from some other, oily substance, lighter in color. The public prosecutor caught his breath, but this time the reason was not amorous languor.

“Quick! To the hospital!” he shouted at the top of his voice.

Cra-ack, cra-ack

PROFESSOR ZASEKIN, THE senior physician at the Martha and Mary Hospital and a celebrity famous throughout the whole of Russia, paid no attention to the scratch on Pelagia’s finger. He just looked at it, shrugged his shoulders, and didn’t even bother to wipe it with iodine. But he paid extremely serious attention to the nail. He took it to the laboratory, spent an hour or so conjuring with it, and returned perplexed.

“A curious composition,” he told the public prosecutor and his companion. “It will take time to determine the complete formula, but it includes both
Agaricus muscarus
and
Strychnos toxifera
, and the concentration of
Escherichia coli
is simply phenomenal. Someone mixed up an absolutely devastating cocktail. If you, my dear fellow, had not sucked that rubbish out immediately after the trauma was sustained …” The doctor shook his head expressively. “It’s remarkable that the wound is absolutely clean. You must have put your heart and soul into it and sucked with real passion. Well done!”

Matvei Bentsionovich blushed, afraid even to glance at Pelagia. But she asked, “Someone ‘mixed it up’? Do you mean to say, doctor, that this poison was concocted artificially?”

Berdichevsky felt ashamed for being so concerned with trivialities when the matter was so serious.

“Beyond the slightest doubt,” said the professor. “There’s no mixture of that kind to be found anywhere in nature. This is a master’s handiwork. And he’s not local, either—there are no laboratories in Zavolzhsk that could do this.”

The public prosecutor turned cold when he realized the full implications of this statement. And Pelagia’s face changed, too. At that moment Matvei Bentsionovich loved her so much that the inside of his nose began to itch. If someone were to have said to him just then: This is the individual who attempted to kill the being so dear to your heart—the state counselor would have thrown himself on the fiend, seized him by the throat, and … At that moment Berdichevsky, a man of peace and a paterfamilias, was afflicted with a dark mist before his eyes and difficulty in breathing. He had never before suspected himself capable of such fury.

An emergency council was called immediately, in the middle of the night, in the bishops chambers. Matvei Bentsionovich was pale and resolute. Outwardly he maintained his composure, except that he tugged on his nose more frequently than usual. “It is obvious now that this is not a solitary maniac, but an entire gang. And that makes the ‘Warsaw bandits’ scenario the most likely. Those people regard it as a matter of honor to get even for one of their own. Once they’ve got it into their head that Sister Pelagia was responsible for the death of one of their henchmen, they won’t rest until they kill her. I’ll abandon all my other cases and go to Warsaw if necessary, or Moscow, or even Zhitomir, but I’ll find the blackguards. Only there is no way of telling how long the investigation will take. And in the meantime, our dear Sister is in mortal danger, and we cannot even speculate from which direction the blow will come next time. You are now our only hope, Your Grace.”

His Eminence, who had been roused from his bed, was wearing his dressing gown and felt slippers. His fingers trembled as they tugged agitatedly at the cross hanging around his neck. “We must keep her safe—that’s the first thing,” Mitrofanii said in a hoarse voice. “That’s all I care about. I’ll send her as far away as possible, to some quiet hermitage. And let no one know a thing. And I won’t even ask you!” he shouted at his spiritual daughter, expecting her to resist.

But the nun didn’t say anything. Clearly, the cunning trick with the nail had seriously scared her. Berdichevsky felt so sorry for the poor thing that he started blinking rapidly, and the bishop frowned and grunted: “In the Znamensky Convent on the Angara River, the mother superior is a former pupil of mine—I have told you about her. It is an isolated place, and quiet,” said His Eminence, bending down one finger. And then he bent down a second: “There is also a good hermitage on the Ussuri. You can see strangers coming from ten miles away. The elder there is a friend of mine. I’ll take you there myself—all the way to the Angara or the Ussuri, whichever you wish.”

“No!” the public prosecutor and the nun exclaimed in a single voice.

“You can’t go,” Berdichevsky explained. “You are too noticeable. And it’s already clear that they are watching us day and night. It has to be done quietly and secretly.”

Pelagia added, “It would be best if I go alone.”

“And not in nun’s robes, of course. You’d better change,” Berdichevsky suggested, although he was sure the idea would be rejected.

At that Mitrofanii and the nun exchanged glances, but said nothing.

“I swore an oath,” Pelagia said in an uncertain voice, which mystified Berdichevsky (the public prosecutor was unaware of the existence of Mrs. Lisitsyna).

“In a case like this I release you from your promise. Temporarily. You’ll travel to Siberia as Lisitsyna, and then change your garments. Now tell me, where do you want to go?”

“Instead of Siberia, I’d rather go to Palestine,” the holy sister suddenly announced. “I have always dreamed of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.”

The men liked this unexpected idea.

“Yes, indeed!” Matvei Bentsionovich exclaimed. “Abroad is the safest place.”

“And it is educational,” the bishop declared with a nod. “I, too, have dreamed of it all my life, but there has never been enough time. And I am a member of the Palestine Society. Go, my daughter. You will find it dreary in the hermitage, I know your restless nature. But there you can travel and gather new impressions. You won’t notice the time flying by. I’ll write to the father archimandrite at the mission and the mother superior at the Gornensky Convent. Travel in Palestine as a pilgrim and live in the convent, while Matvei catches these villains.” And the bishop sat down that very moment to write the letters of recommendation—on special paper, with the episcopal monogram.