Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (46 page)

The public prosecutor was still struggling to recover his wits. Was it really possible? And then he was struck by a sudden realization. Yes, yes! Pelagia had told him that there was a group of pederasts on the river steamer, settlers traveling to the rebuilt city of Sodom. But that sent the investigation off in a completely different direction!

The state counselor took a firm grip on the young man’s elbow. “You still haven’t told me who paid the money to get him out.”

“I don’t know for certain, but I’m sure it must have been Charnokutsky. It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“Who is this Charnokutsky?”

“You’ve never heard of the counts Charnokutsky?” Kesha asked incredulously.

“Yes, I have. A noble Polish family.”

“Noble! Never mind noble! The Charnokutskys are the richest family in the whole of Volynia. The Charnokutsky district is just fifteen miles from here, and the district town, Chyorny Kut, belongs entirely to the count.”

“The whole town? Do such things happen?” Matvei Bentsionovich asked in amazement. “This isn’t the Middle Ages.”

“It certainly is in Volynia. The city of Rovno belongs to Prince Liubomirsky Staro-Konstantinov belongs to Princess Abamelek, Dubno belongs to the Princess Bariatinskaya. And the Charnokutskys have been in Volynia for seven hundred years. Look, do you see that rock?” Kesha asked, pointing to a picturesque cliff overhanging the river in the distance. “One of the sights of Zhitomir. It’s called Chatsky’s Head.”

The cliff really did bear a certain resemblance to a proudly bowed head.

“What has it to do with Chatsky?”

“Absolutely nothing. The cliff used to be called Charnokutskys Head. In the sixteenth century the peasant rebels here beheaded the present counts ancestor. But after eighteen sixty-three, the order came down to change the cliffs name. And the reason was that several of the Charnokutskys were involved in the Polish rebellion, and one of them even paid for it with his head. So to avoid any ambiguity, they changed it to Chatsky.”

“So the count is one of the rebels of eighteen sixty-three?”

“No way! His Excellency has quite different interests. Pretty much the same as you and I do.” The clerk laughed. “It’s a pity he can’t stand Jews, or I would definitely introduce you to him.”

“But I’m not a Jew at all,” Berdichevsky declared. “I pretended to be, in order to win Golosovker’s trust.”

“You pretended very well,” Kesha remarked, examining the public prosecutor’s face skeptically.

“No, it’s true! My hair is dyed. I’m actually blond. If you’ll take me to the count, I’ll wash the dye out. And my name is not Mordechai Berdichevsky, but Matvei Berg-Dichevsky You guessed right when you said I wasn’t a moneylender. I’m … I’m a district marshal of the nobility,” Matvei Bentsionovich lied, unable to think of anything more aristocratic. “From the province of Zavolzhie.”

It was impossible to tell whether the young man believed him. But he thought for a moment and said, “Two hundred rubles.”

“You’re out of your mind!” the state counselor gasped, trying to work out if he had that much money with him.

“You can pay when we come back. If I’m wrong and the count didn’t buy him out, you don’t have to pay at all,” the sharp-witted youth quipped.

Matvei Bentsionovich readily agreed to these terms. If this was the right trail, and his trip proved fruitful, he could probably include the expenditure in the bill for the investigation.

“Where are you staying?” Kesha asked.

“At the Versailles.”

“I close the office at seven. Only don’t be cheap, hire a carriage with spring suspension or we’ll get battered black and blue. I can have a word with Semyon Pochtarenko, he has a good carriage. It’s a long drive …”

Traveling meditations on the sad future of mankind

ONCE AGAIN THE state counselor turned to the White-Haired Angel for help, but his blond hair color was not restored completely. The actual result was a kind of golden red. Never mind, it would be good enough for the evening light, Berdichevsky consoled himself.

Kesha arrived on time, in a most respectable-looking phaeton that cost the public prosecutor eight rubles. The clerk was quite unrecognizable. He had decked himself out in the very latest fashion and put on cologne, and his neatly parted hair gleamed like a mirror. Who would ever believe that this dandy earned an extra penny by taking care of a Jewish shop on the Sabbath?

“Where are we going?” Matvei Bentsionovich asked after making himself comfortable on the soft seat.

“To the count’s castle at Schwartzwinkel.”

“The Black Pit?” the public prosecutor asked, translating the name.

“Yes indeed. Chyorny Kut in the Volynian dialect, and in Great Russian it’s Chorny Zakut, or something of the kind. It was built by His Excellency’s grandfather, in the gothic style. He was very fond of novels about knights and chivalry.”

Berdichevsky had managed to ask the hotel receptionist about the count, but the absolutely incredible stories he had been told in reply had only served to inflame his curiosity. He had to check which of these fantastic tales were true and which were not.

“This magnate would appear to be an unusual man, then?” Matvei Bentsionovich asked casually.

Kesha chortled. “You and I couldn’t exactly be called ordinary, could we? But of course there’s no way we could be compared with His Excellency. He is absolutely one of a kind.”

Hungry for more details, the public prosecutor put on a thoughtful expression and remarked, “The scions of ancient families have the predilection for sodomy in their blood. It must come from being so spoiled. Or perhaps it’s the result of degeneracy.”

“Oh, the count hasn’t always been interested in boys. In his young days he was a real enthusiast of the female sex, it was like a madness, or as he puts it, an obsession. That’s a medical term, something like a bee in your bonnet.”

“I know.”

“After all, he’s a doctor by education. He was so interested in women that after the Corps of Pages he didn’t go into the Guards, or even into the diplomatic service; instead he went to the medical faculty to study gynecology. But not in order to earn money, of course. He says: ‘I wanted to know everything about women: how they’re made, what they have inside them, what little key turns them on. I learned every little detail.’” Kesha chuckled again. “Yes, obviously he must have had too much of it. When he graduated from the university, he opened a women’s hospital, but he soon gave it up. Now he can’t even look at a woman, they make him shudder.”

Matvei Bentsionovich’s information was rather different. The receptionist had told him: “Before the count went crazy, he ran a hospital and treated female ailments for free. First he killed one woman during an operation, then another, then another. The business got as far as the court. Any ordinary doctor would definitely have been convicted, but he was a Charnokutsky. But they shut the hospital down anyway.”

“Then His Excellency went traveling,” said Kesha, continuing his story. “He spent a long time traveling around the world. He went absolutely everywhere, to Amazonia, the Dutch East Indies, and Papua. He has an incredible collection—you’ll see for yourself.”

Berdichevsky had heard about the collection as well. Supposedly it included severed heads in glass jars. “They say he brought them back from savage countries, but who really knows?” the receptionist had said.

“Eventually the count even got tired of traveling around the world. And now he’s living in Schwartzwinkel and hasn’t left the place for years. He’s arranged his home in a quite original manner, you’ll see for yourself. You should consider yourself lucky. Not many people are allowed into the castle.
Exclusivité—
that’s a French word. It means …”

“I know what it means,” Berdichevsky interrupted. “You carry on with your story. The things I’ve heard about this count of yours …”

Kesha seemed offended at not being allowed to show off his erudition. He muttered: “You could never have got in there without me. And all this gossip is just from envy and ignorance.” He fell silent after that.

And so the public prosecutor did not discover if it was true that the castle was surrounded by a thick forest that it was strictly forbidden to enter. And to make sure that no one did go in, that forest was full of wolf pits, snares, and man traps. The state counselor had been told that several lads and lasses who had been tempted in by the mushrooms and berries growing there had disappeared without a trace. The police had searched the forest and the castle. They had seen the snares and the pits, but had found no clues. “In the moat under the walls,” the receptionist had whispered, “there’s an immense swamp snake, thirty feet long. It can swallow a man in a single gulp.” Well, after that Berdichevsky hadn’t bothered to listen to any more, because it was all such obvious make-believe. But now he regretted not having heard the man out.

The carriage rolled over hill and dale. It gradually got dark and stars appeared in the sky—pale at first, but growing brighter every minute.

What am I doing here?
Matvei Bentsionovich suddenly thought with a shudder, surveying this Gogolesque landscape.
What will I say to the count? What lies in wait for me there? Especially if the homosexual theory turns out to be right and this rich man really is linked with the murderers?
The excitement of the hunt was to blame, it had made a rational man, a respectable paterfamilias, throw all caution to the winds.
Perhaps I ought to turn back
, the public prosecutor wondered.
After all, if I disappear, no one will ever know what happened to me
.

But then he remembered Pelagia. The way she had walked up the gangplank and onto the deck, with her head lowered and the light from the lamp falling across her defenseless shoulders. The state counselor stuck out his chin and knitted his brows menacingly.
We’ll soon see who should be afraid, Berdichevsky or this Volynian magnate
.

“You have a very handsome profile,” said Kesha, breaking the silence. “Like on a Roman coin.” And he rubbed his knee against the other man’s leg. Matvei Bentsionovich glanced severely at the dissolute youth and pulled away.

“It’s all Ratsevich’s fault, is it?” the young man sighed. “You love him that much? Oh well, I respect men who are faithful to one love.”

“Yes, I am faithful to one love,” the public prosecutor declared and turned away.

Just what is homosexuality, and why do people need it?
Matvei Bentsionovich wondered. And the remarkable thing is that the higher the level of civilization, the greater the number of people who indulge in this vice condemned by society and all religions. But is it a vice? Perhaps it is a natural development resulting from mankind’s ever greater distance from the natural state as it moves from the primeval campfire to the bright glow of electricity. No matter what big city you go to—Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw—they are everywhere, and every year there are more of them, and they are more and more open in their behavior. This is no accident, this is a sign, and it is not a matter of declining morals or debauchery. There are certain important processes affecting the human being, and we do not yet understand their meaning. Culture brings sophistication, sophistication leads to unnaturalness. Men no longer have to be strong, that is becoming a relic of the past. Women can no longer understand why they ought to allow men precedence if men are no longer the strong sex. In another hundred years or so, society—or at least its cultured sector—will consist entirely of effeminate men like Kesha and masculine women like Fira Dorman. That will make a fine muddle of all the instincts and desires of the flesh! Matvei Bentsionovich’s thought wandered further and further, into the far distant future. Humankind would die out because in the end the difference between the two sexes would disappear altogether and people would cease to reproduce. Unless, of course, science were to invent a new means of reproducing human individuals, something like budding plants. Take a rib, for instance, as the Lord God did with Adam, and grow a new human being. All very passionless and proper. No wild frenzies, no fiery intermingling of the male and female energies.

How fortunate that I shall not see that heaven on earth
, the state counselor thought with a shudder.

“There it is—Schwartzwinkel,” said Kesha, pointing upward.

A unique collection

WHEN HE STUCK his head out of the carriage, Matvei Bentsionovich saw a large dark cone in the distance, with lights flickering on its summit.

“What are those—fires?” he asked in amazement.

“Torches on the towers. I told you, it’s a medieval castle.” The road that ran off from the rough, bumpy high road in the direction of the incomprehensible cone was narrow, but paved with smooth stone.

It was a large hill, covered with forest, Berdichevsky realized. And right on the top there was a castle. Now he could make out the battlements on the walls, illuminated by the dancing tongues of flame. A minute later the phaeton drove into the forest and the castle disappeared. It was completely dark.

“It’s a good thing there’s a lantern on the shaft,” the public prosecutor remarked as he felt the phaeton heel over to one side. “You can’t see a thing.” For a moment he imagined they were about to go rolling over down a steep slope, tumble into a thicket, and fall into some wolf pit studded with sharp stakes …