Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (42 page)

Har-Megiddo—Armageddon. This boggy field would be the site of the final battle on earth, when the forces of the Devil would fight against the angels, Polina Andreevna knew, but she did not feel the appropriate thrill of awe. And even when she saw in the distance the geometrically regular form of Mount Tabor, the site of the Transfiguration of the Lord, she was not really moved: although she muttered a prayer, it was mechanical, it had no soul. Her thoughts were too far away from the divine.

There were only a few miles left to the dwelling of the “Sadducees,” and the nun still had not decided how she ought to behave with their iron-eyed leader, Magellan.

Stupid, stupid Manuila. What was it that was drawing him here, like a moth to a candle flame? On the steamer, Magellan had threatened to take the prophet by the legs and smash his head against a chain locker. Perhaps that was what he had done, and Glass-Eye had nothing do with the case?

It would certainly be like Magellan—the Byronic type, the superman. For a man of that kind, a principle or a grand pose was more important than his own life, not to mention the lives of others. He had told his boys and girls that Manuila was an agent of the Okhranka. But why would he do that? Perhaps what he had in mind was killing the supposed police spy in order to bind the members of the commune together with blood? After all, didn’t another superman, Nechaev, do the same with the student Ivanov?

But regardless of whether Magellan had been involved in the murder of the peasant Shelukhin, when the genuine Manuila turned up at the commune, the Zionists were sure to imagine that the ubiquitous Okhranka had tracked them down even in Palestine. What if they did away with the importunate prophet? The police would never find out, and anyway, what police was there in this Turkish backwater?

Salakh distracted the traveler from her alarming thoughts with his chatter.

“The Jews were wrong to decide to live here,” he sighed, wafting away the mosquitoes. “In summer they’ll all die of malaria. What do they want land for? The Jews are an urban people. They should have stayed in the city. They’ve gone completely insane, it’s Allah’s punishment. I even pity them.”

As became clear later, what made him pity the Jews most was that they could only marry female Jews, and they were the most unbearable women in the whole world. Devious and deceitful, sticking their hooked noses into everything. “Sleep with Jewish woman is like stick your manhood into a scorpion’s burrow,” observed Salakh, making Pelagia wince at the crude force of his metaphor.

Her driver dwelt on the theme of the guile of Jewish women for a long time. Naturally, he mentioned the villainous Judith, who murdered Holofernes in his sleep, but he was most incensed by Jahel, who had violated the sacred law of hospitality. The general Sisara, whom Salakh called “the ancestor of the Arabs,” asked for sanctuary in Jahel’s tent after he was routed in battle. And what did this perfidious woman do? According to the Book of Judges, she said to him: Come in to me, my lord; come in, fear not. He went into her tent, and being covered by her with a cloak, said to her: Give me, I beseech thee, a little water, for I am very thirsty. She opened a bottle of milk, and gave him to drink, and covered him. And Sisara said to her: Stand before the door of the tent, and when any shall come and inquire of thee, saying: Is there any man here? thou shalt say: There is none. So Jahel, Haber’s wife, took a nail of the tent, and taking also a hammer: and going in softly, and with silence, she put the nail upon the temples of his head, and striking it with the hammer, drove it through his brain fast into the ground: and so passing from deep sleep to death, he fainted away and died.

Listening to Salakh retelling this biblical story and adorning it with heartrending details, Pelagia felt sorry for the man—not Sisara, who had lived God knows how long ago and in the end received no more than his just deserts, but the narrator. The simple soul did not know that his fate had been decided, and his own next wife would be Jewish.

“The man was very tired, he was really weak. So he lay down, and straightaway
—crrrunch
.” Salakh snored to illustrate the point and rested his cheek on his folded hands.

Then suddenly he started and pulled on the reins. Two horsemen slowly rode out of the bushes onto the road ahead.

When she saw the rifles sticking up over their shoulders, Polina Andreevna cried out, “Are they bandits?”

“I don’t know,” Salakh replied, and dropped the reins.

“What are you doing? Turn back!”

“We can’t. They’ll see we’re afraid and come after us. We have to drive straight on and ask them something. That’s the best thing.”

“What should we ask?”

“The way. How to get to el-Lejun. I’ll say you’re on your way to see the chief of police. You’re his mother-in-law.”

“Why his mother-in-law?” Polina Andreevna asked, surprised and a little offended.

“You can’t take a ransom for a mother-in-law.”

“Because that’s the custom, is it?”

“Because nobody pays ransom for a mother-in-law,” Salakh explained abruptly, preparing for his conversation with the armed men.

He started jabbering to them from a distance, bowing and pointing vaguely in the direction of the hills.

The horsemen examined the cart and its passengers without speaking. Their appearance was very strange for Palestine: both in Circassian jackets, one wearing a hood and the other a Cossack hat.
Just like our Kuban Cossacks
, Polina Andreevna thought, and her spirits rose slightly.

“They not understand Arabic,” said Salakh, turning toward her. He was pale and frightened. “They Circass. Very bad Circass. Now I speak Turkish to them …”

One of the horsemen rode up and leaned down toward Pelagia, and she caught a smell of garlic and mutton fat.

“Muskubi?” he asked. “Ruska?”

“Yes, I am Russian.”

The Circassians held a guttural conversation. There was no way to tell whether they were arguing or plotting.

“What are they talking about?” Pelagia asked nervously.

Salakh merely gulped.

The same bandit leaned down again and grabbed the hem of Polina Andreevna’s dress. She squealed, but the villain did not try to tear her clothes, he merely rubbed the silk with his fingers, demonstrating something to his comrade. Then he picked up the parasol from the seat and showed his comrade the ivory handle.

“What is he saying?” the nun exclaimed in fright.

“He say, you rich and important. Russians will give much money for you.”

Salakh joined in the discussion. He started babbling in a pitiful voice and waving his hands about. Polina Andreevna did not like the look of those gesticulations: first the Palestinian flapped one hand toward his female passenger as if he were disowning her, then he jabbed himself in the chest and pointed back the way they had come. He seemed to be saying that they should just take her and let him go. The scoundrel! Jahel would be too good for him!

But the Circassians did not take his advice. They replied curtly and rode on down the road.

Salakh hesitated. But then one of the bandits looked back and threatened him with his whip, and Salakh drove on.

“I told her, I told her,” he wailed. “Must not go to Megiddo, bad place. No, take me. What happen now? What happen now?”

Soon it got dark, and Polina Andreevna could not really see what the road to the Circassian
aul was
like: some hills, followed by a hollow, and then a steep climb.

All she saw of the village was some low, flat roofs and dimly lit windows. The hantur halted on a small triangular open space, and two mute women in white headscarves led the nun into a small house set at the back of a yard. The hut turned out to be special, with tightly shuttered windows and a lock on the outside of the door. No doubt it was kept for “rich and important” prisoners, Pelagia thought.

Her guess was soon confirmed when the master of the house, who also looked like the master of the entire village, arrived—an old man with a long beard, wearing an astrakhan Cossack hat with a turban wound around it. For some reason he was fully armed—surely he didn’t walk around at home wearing a sword, a dagger, and a revolver in a holster?

The chief Circassian said that his name was Daniel and the “princess” would be given a bread cake and goat’s milk for her supper. He spoke surprisingly clear and correct Russian, with only the slightest accent.

Polina Andreevna was very frightened to hear that she was a princess. “I am not a princess!” she exclaimed. “You are mistaken!”

The old man was upset. “Musa said you are a princess. A silk dress, a white face. Who are you then? What is your name?”

“I’m a pilgrim. Pelagia … that is, Polina Lisitsyna.”

Daniel-bek bowed respectfully, but stopped short of scraping his foot on the ground and kissing her hand.

“Who is your husband?”

“I have no husband.”

She almost added “I am a nun,” but how could she prove that?

“That is bad,” said the
bek
, with a click of his tongue. “Already an old maid, and no husband. That is because you are so skinny. But you should get married anyway. Your father should find you a husband.”

“I have no father.”

“Then let your brother find one.”

“I have no brother either.”

Her host rolled his eyes up to the ceiling—his patience was almost exhausted.

“No husband, no father, no brother. Then who is going to pay your ransom—your uncle?”

For a moment Pelagia was taken aback and did not realize that he really did mean her uncle.

Was there actually anyone in the world who would be willing to pay a ransom for her? Apart from His Eminence Mitrofanii, that is. But he was far away.

“I have no uncle either,” she replied despondently, almost sobbing, she was feeling so sorry for herself. “Perhaps you can simply let me go, without any ransom? Taking hostages is a sin in our religion and in yours.”

Daniel-bek was amazed. “Why is it a sin? When I was a boy, my papa”—he pronounced this word in the French fashion, with the stress on the second syllable—“was an important
nahib
with Shamil. The Russians took Shamil’s son Djemal-ad-din and me as hostages. Djemal-ad-din went into the Corps of Pages, and I went into the Cadet Corps. I learned Russian there, as well as many other things. But my papa was brave. He took a Russian princess and her son hostage and exchanged them for me. But Shamil’s son was a prisoner of the Tsar Nicholas for a long time. So you see, the Russians take hostages. And so do I. How else am I to live? I have to feed my wives and children, don’t I?” He sighed heavily. “If you do not have a husband, or father, or even a brother, it is not good to take a big ransom. Let the Russian consul send ten thousand francs, and you can go wherever you want. You will write the consul a letter tomorrow: ‘Ai-ai-ai, send ten thousand francs quickly, or the evil
bashi-bazouk
will cut off my finger, then my ear, then my nose.’”

“Will you really do that?” Pelagia asked, cowering away from him.

“No, only the finger. The smallest one.” He held up the little finger of his left hand. “There are lots of fingers, you won’t miss one. In two weeks, if the consul doesn’t send the money, I’ll send him your little finger. Hey, hey, why have you turned white? Are you afraid of cutting off a finger? Buy one from one of our people, they won’t take much for a little finger.”

“What do you mean, buy?” the unfortunate captive babbled.

“Has the consul kissed your fingers?” the
bek
asked.

“N-no …”

“Good. He will not recognize it. A woman or a boy will cut off their own finger, and the consul will not realize, he will think it is yours. If it is a woman—give her your dress, and she will be happy. If it is a boy, buy him a good saddle or a silver dagger.”

“But what if the consul won’t give the money anyway? We’re not even acquainted.”

The old man spread his hands in a broad gesture.

“If he does not take pity on you after the finger, I will marry you off. To Kurban, his wife has died. Or to Eldar, his wife is in a bad way, she is sick and he needs another one. Calm down, woman, what do you have to be afraid of?”

But Polina Andreevna did not calm down. In the first place, it was absolutely impossible for her to get married. And in the second place, getting stuck for a long time in this bandits’ lair did not enter into her plans at all. Time was passing, precious time!

“You will write the letter tomorrow,” Daniel-bek said in farewell. “I have no time now. We are going to rob the
uliad-el-mot
.”

“To rob whom?”

But he walked out without answering her. A few minutes later she heard the stamping of a large number of hooves, and then all was quiet. Pelagia was left alone to languish in her despair until dawn, but when the pale light began percolating through the crack in the shutters, there was the loud crack of a shot somewhere in the village and women began shouting on all sides.

What had happened out there? Polina Andreevna pressed her ear to the door, but it was hard to make sense of anything. There were several more shots, and the sound seemed to be coming from somewhere above her. The women carried on shouting for a while and stopped. Then there was total silence, broken occasionally by isolated shots.