Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (24 page)

The precautions were thought through in detail.

In the morning Pelagia was taken away in an ambulance carriage—there were many witnesses. When her pupils came running to the hospital, they were told the headmistress was very ill and orders had been given not to allow anyone in to see her. But that night the nun slipped out through the back door, and Berdichevsky drove her more than ten miles away from the town to a small landing stage where a launch was waiting. The conspirators sailed another five miles away and stopped in the middle of the River.

Half an hour later there hove into view a steamer, aglow with lights, sailing downstream from Zavolzhsk. The lamp on the cutter blinked and the riverboat captain, forewarned by secret telegram, halted his engine—quietly, with no shouting through megaphones and no whistling, in order not to wake the sleeping passengers.

Matvei Bentsionovich helped Pelagia climb the gangplank. It was the first time he had seen her not as a nun, but as a lady—in a traveling dress and a hat with a veil. Ever since they left the hospital, he had been tormented by the most outrageous fantasies at the sight of this outfit. He had kept repeating to himself: “A woman, she is just a woman.” The public prosecutor’s soul was all atremble with insane hopes. But Pelagia was preoccupied, her thoughts soaring somewhere far away.

When they stepped onboard the steamer, Berdichevsky’s heart was suddenly wrung when he heard a voice in his head saying sadly: “Say good-bye. You will never see her again.”

“Don’t go away …” the public prosecutor began, talking confused nonsense in his panic. “I’ll be completely …” And then he started, struck by an idea that seemed heaven-sent. “You know, why don’t you go to the Angara after all? The bishop can’t go, but I could accompany you. And then I could start on the investigation afterward. Eh?”

He imagined how the two of them would travel across the whole of Siberia together. He gulped.

“No, I’m going to Palestine,” the traveler murmured, as preoccupied as ever. “But I have to be in time. Or they’ll kill…”

Matvei Bentsionovich didn’t really understand the part about “being in time,” but the ending sobered him up and made him feel ashamed. The life of a being dear to him was in danger. And his duty was not to go traipsing across the Siberian expanses with the lady of his heart, but to find the villains responsible, and as soon as possible. “I swear to you that I will find these bandits,” the state counselor said in a quiet voice.

“I believe you will,” Pelagia replied affectionately, but once again seemingly with no great interest. “Only it seems to me that they aren’t bandits, and the stolen money has nothing at all to do with the case … but you will work all that out for yourself.”

The captain, who had come to meet his extraordinary passenger in person, hurried them along: “Madam, we are drifting with the current, and there are shoals to starboard here. We need to start the engine.”

Taking advantage of the fact that Pelagia was not in a habit, but a dress, Berdichevsky kissed her hand—on the strip of bare skin above the lace glove.

She touched her lips to his forehead and made the sign of the cross over him, then the public prosecutor walked down the gangplank, looking back with every step.

The slim silhouette was first veiled in twilight, then it merged completely into the darkness.

PELAGIA FOLLOWED THE sailor who was carrying her suitcase. The deck was empty, except for some lover of the night air dozing, wrapped in a woolen rug, under the window of the saloon.

When the lady in the hat with the veil had walked past, the man in the rug stirred and flexed his fingers slightly, producing a dry, unpleasant cracking sound:
Cra-ack, cra-ack
.

Mysterious and beautiful

FEW ARE GRANTED the good fortune, at their first sight of the Holy Land, to see it as it is in reality—mysterious and beautiful. Polina Andreevna Lisitsyna was fortunate. The port of Jaffa, Palestine’s gateway to the sea, presented itself to her view in the guise, not of a yellowish-gray heap of dust and stones, but of a shiny round Christmas tree decoration. It was like those times in your childhood when you stole up to the doors of the parlor in the middle of the night to peep in through the crack, and at first you could see nothing, but then suddenly something round shimmered and sparkled in the darkness, and your heart skipped a beat in anticipation of a miracle.

That is exactly how it was with Jaffa.

For all the steamships puffing and panting and slapping at the water with its wheels, it had failed to reach its destined shore before sunset. Black sky fused with black water, and disappointed passengers wandered off dejectedly to pack their things. The only people left on deck were Mrs. Lisitsyna and some peasant pilgrims, whose entire baggage consisted of canvas knapsacks, copper kettles, and pilgrims’ staffs.

But shortly thereafter the doors of darkness opened slightly. First a solitary light appeared, like a pale star, then another beside it, and a third, and a fourth, and soon the cliff city came tumbling out onto the sea, a golden apple dappled with paler specks of light.

The peasants went down on their knees and began intoning a prayer. Their foreheads beat so fervently against the deck that Polina Andreevna, who was savoring the solemnity of the moment, put her hands over her ears. The breeze carried the sweet aroma of oranges from the land.

“Ioppia,” said the traveler, speaking the port’s biblical name out loud.

Three thousand years earlier, cedar trees from Phoenicia had been floated to this place to build the temple of Solomon. It was amid these very waves that the Lord had ordered the whale to swallow the obstinate Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights.

The steamship slowed and stopped, its anchor chain clanged, and its whistle gave a long-drawn-out blast. The passengers came running out onto the deck, clamoring excitedly in various tongues.

The spell was broken.

IN THE MORNING it became clear that the vessel had dropped anchor half a mile from land—it could not go any closer because of the shoals. They stood there for half a day without moving, because there was a stiff breeze blowing, but after lunch, as soon as the rough sea calmed a little, an entire flotilla of longboats set out from the shore, oars flailing like grim death. The men sitting in these boats looked terribly like pirates, swarthy-faced, with tattered rags wound around their heads.

The steamer was boarded in the blink of an eye. The pirates scrambled in single file up the gangplank lowered to the surface of the water and scattered in various directions with startling speed. Some grabbed hold of passengers’ hands and dragged them to the side, while others ignored the people completely and deftly swung the bundles and suitcases up onto their shoulders.

The navigator, Prokofii Sergeevich, whom Lisitsyna had befriended during the voyage, explained that this was how things were done in Jaffa. Two clans of Arab porters held a monopoly on unloading ships: one of them handled the people, the other the baggage, a division that was strictly observed.

The women pilgrims, seized around the waist by muscular arms, squealed desperately, and some even tried to struggle, pummeling the insolent fellows with considerable force, but the porters were accustomed to this and merely grinned.

In less than two minutes, the first longboat, crammed full of astounded pilgrims, pushed off from the side and was immediately followed by a skiff loaded with bundles, teapots, and staffs.

The second boat was filled just as quickly And then a hot, sweaty aboriginal came running up to Polina Andreevna and grabbed hold of her waist.

“Thank you, I can …”

She never finished the sentence. The intrepid fellow playfully flung her over his shoulder and went trotting down the gangplank. Lisitsyna could only gasp. Down below her the water swayed and glittered. The porter’s hands were rough and at the same time astonishingly gentle, so that she was obliged to suppress an agreeable inner stirring that was distinctly sinful.

A quarter of an hour later the pilgrim from Zavolzhsk set foot on the land of Palestine and began fluttering her arms about in an attempt to keep her balance—in two weeks at sea she had become unaccustomed to solid ground. She put her hand over her eyes to shield them from the blinding sun, and looked around.

Foul and fetid

WHAT AN AWFUL place this was!

Of course, small Russian towns could also be really dreadful—squalid and dirty with the poverty on every side enough to make you feel sick, but at least there the puddles reflected the sky, there were green trees soaring up over the sagging roofs, and in late May the air was scented with bird-cherry blossom. And it was so quiet! Close your eyes, and there was nothing but the rustling of the leaves, the buzzing of the bees, and the chiming of bells from the church nearby.

But in Jaffa every single sense organ brought our pilgrim nothing but distress.

Her eyes—because whichever way they looked they encountered heaps of decaying refuse, piles of fish offal, tattered and disheveled rags that were anything but picturesque; and besides that, the dust made them water and they kept screwing themselves up against the unbearably bright sun.

Her tongue—because the ubiquitous dust instantly began grating between her teeth, and her mouth felt as if it was packed full of emery paper.

Her nose—because the aroma of oranges that Polina Andreevna had recently found so alluring proved to be an absolute chimera; either she had completely imagined it, or it was quite unable to compete with the vapors of putrefaction and excrement that assaulted her from all sides.

We hardly need mention her ears. Nobody in the port made conversation, they all yelled, and at the tops of their voices. The multitudinous choir was led by the asses and camels, and drifting above this overwhelming cacophony was the despairing baritone of the muezzin, who had apparently abandoned all hope of reminding this Babylon of the existence of God.

But the sense that caused Polina Andreevna the greatest irritation of all was touch, for from the moment she had passed through the Turkish customs, the nun in lady’s clothes was grabbed at by beggars, hotel agents, and cab drivers, and it was quite impossible to tell who was who.

A wretched little Russian town is like a consumptive drunkard—you would like to give him a kopeck and sigh over his lamentable fate—but to Polina Andreevna, Jaffa seemed like a man possessed by demons or a leper, against whom your only defense is to close your eyes tight and run as fast as your legs will carry you.

Gathering her courage, Mrs. Lisitsyna told herself strictly: a nun should not run away, even from a leper. In order to distract herself from the terrible filth and stench, she directed her glance higher, at the yellow walls of the city’s buildings, but they also failed to offer her eyes any comfort. The anonymous builders of these unassuming structures had clearly not suffered from any vain aspiration to make their mark on posterity.

Polina-Pelagia picked up her suitcase and squeezed her traveling bag under her arm, then made her way through the crush toward a narrow little terraced lane—there, at least, it would be possible to find shade and decide how to proceed.

However, she never left the square.

An unshaven little man, wearing a small waistcoat and trousers in combination with a Turkish fez and Arab slippers, jabbed one finger at her triumphantly:

“Ir zend a idishke!”
(“You are a Jew!”) he cried in Yiddish. “Come quick, I’ll take you to an excellent kosher hotel! You’ll feel just like at home with momma!”