Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (29 page)

Noticing that his listener had tears in her eyes, Donat Savvich said cheerfully, “Come now. Not all of my patients are unhappy. There is one who is perfectly happy. Do you see the picture?”

The doctor pointed to the octopus that we have already mentioned. Polina Andreevna had been glancing at it throughout their conversation; there was something special about that canvas—it held her gaze in a firm grip, never releasing it for long.

“It is by Konon Yoshihin. Have you heard the name?”

“No. It is amazingly done!”

“Yoshihin is a genius,” Korovin said with a nod. “A quite genuine, unadulterated genius. You know, he is one of those artists who paint as if no painting had ever existed before them—no Raphael, no Goya, no Cézanne, nobody at all until Konon Yoshihin, the first artist on earth, was born and began bringing the canvas to life beneath his brush.”

“Yoshihin? No, I don't know him.”

“Naturally. Not many people know Yoshihin—only a few connoisseurs of art, and they are sure that he died a long time ago. Because Konon Petrovich is totally insane, he hasn't come out of cottage number three in more than five years, and before that he spent ten years in an ordinary insane asylum where the idiot doctors who wanted to restore Yoshihin to the ‘norm’ would not give him any paints or pencils.”

“What form does his insanity take?” asked Polina Andreevna, still looking at the octopus; the longer she looked at it, the more it mesmerized her with its strange gaze.

“Do you remember what Pushkin said about genius and villainy being incompatible? Yoshihin's example shows that they are in fact perfectly compatible. Konon Petrovich is a spontaneous natural villain. His passion for art obliterated every other feeling in his soul. Not straightaway, but gradually. The only living creature that Yoshihin loved, and loved with passion, was his daughter, a lovely, quiet girl who lost her mother early and was slowly dying of consumption. For months he hardly left her bedside at all, except perhaps to work on a painting for an hour or two in his studio. Eventually he even moved his canvas into the child's bedroom in order not to leave her at all. He didn't eat, drink, or sleep. People who saw Yoshihin in those days say that he looked absolutely awful: his hair was matted, he didn't shave, and his shirt was spattered all over with paint. He was painting his daughter's portrait, knowing that it would be the last. He wouldn't let anyone into the room; he did everything himself—he gave the girl a drink, or medicine, or food, and then grabbed his brush again. And when the child's death agony began, Yoshihin fell into an absolute frenzy, not from grief, but from delight—the play of light and shade was so wonderful on the emaciated little face contorted in agony. The people gathered in the next room heard pitiful groans from behind the locked door. The dying girl was weeping and begging for water, but in vain—Yoshihin could not tear himself away from his painting. When they finally broke the door down, the little girl had already passed away, but Yoshihin had not even looked at her, he was still correcting something on his canvas. They took the daughter away to the cemetery and the father to the insane asylum. And the picture, even though it was still unfinished, was exhibited in the Paris Salon under the title
La morte triomphante
and won the gold medal.”

“The father's reason broke down under the grief and he erected defenses in the form of art”—such was kindhearted Polina Andreevna's interpretation of the story she had just heard.

“Do you think so?” Donat Savvich took off his spectacles, wiped them, and put them back on again. “But when I study Yoshihin's case, I come to the conclusion that a truly gigantic genius cannot mature completely without the necrosis of certain regions of the soul. By destroying the final remnants of human feeling within himself, including his love for his daughter, Konon Petrovich liberated himself completely for art. The things he now creates for himself in cottage number three will one day adorn the finest galleries in the world. And then who among our grateful descendants will recall the little girl who cried and died without quenching her final thirst? I have absolutely no doubt that my clinic, I myself, and even the island of Canaan will only be remembered by the generations to come because a genius lived and worked here. By the way, would you like to take a look at Yoshihin and his pictures?”

Mrs. Lisitsyna hesitated for a moment before answering rather uncertainly: “Yes … I suppose I would.”

She thought a little longer, nodded to herself, and said in a firmer voice, “I definitely would. Take me there.”

‘Warm, Warmer, Hot

BEFORE SHE SET out to visit Dr. Korovin, Lisitsyna had called in at her hotel, where she had exchanged her light
talma
for a long black cloak with a hood—evidently in anticipation of the coolness of evening. However, even though the sun was not bright, in the course of the day it had warmed the air quite well, and there was no need to put on the cloak for a walk around the grounds of the clinic. Polina Andreevna limited herself to throwing a scarf across her shoulders, and Korovin went just as he was, in his waistcoat and frock coat.

Cottage number three stood on the very edge of the pine-forested hill that Korovin rented from the monastery. With its smoothly plastered white walls, the cottage did not strike Polina Andreevna as being in any way remarkable, especially in comparison with the other cottages, many of which were quite astounding in their quaint whimsicality.

“All the magic here is inside,” Donat Savvich explained. “Yoshihin is not concerned about what his dwelling looks like from the outside, and anyway, as I told you, he never comes out.”

They walked in without knocking. It became clear why a little later: the artist would not have heard them anyway, and if he had heard, he would not have answered.

Polina saw that the cottage consisted of one room with five large windows—one in each wall and another in the ceiling. There was no furniture at all to be seen in the studio: Yoshihin probably ate and slept right there on the floor.

However, before the visitor could take a good look at the contents of the room, her attention was captured by the walls and the ceiling of this peculiar dwelling. All the internal surfaces, apart from the floor and the windows, were covered with canvas, almost all of which had been painted with oil paints. The ceiling was a painting of the night sky, so precise and convincing that if it were not for the square of glass through which clouds tinted pink by the sunset could be seen, it would have been very easy to fall into the error of imagining that there was no roof at all. One of the walls, the north-facing one, depicted a pine grove; another, facing east, showed a shallow slope leading down to a small river and a farm; on the western-facing wall there was a meadow and two cottages standing side by side; and on the southern-facing one there were bushes. It was not hard to see that the artist had reproduced the views outside his windows with astounding precision. But the scenes in Yoshi-hin's landscapes had turned out far richer, with more palpable space, so the originals that could be seen outside looked like pale copies of the paintings.

“In his present period he is passionately enthusiastic about landscapes,” Donat Savvich explained in a low voice, indicating the artist, who was standing by the east-facing wall with his back to his visitors and working away intently with a little brush without even bothering to glance around. “At the moment he is painting a cycle entitled
Times of the Day.
Look: this is dawn, this is morning, this is afternoon, this is evening, and the painting on the ceiling is night. The important thing is to be sure to change the canvases in time, or he will start painting a new picture straight on top of the old one. Over the years I have accumulated a substantial collection—someday I shall recover all my outlays on the clinic,” Korovin joked. “Or if I don't, my heirs will.”

Lisitsyna cautiously approached the genius, who was working on the “evening” wall, from the side, in order to get a better look at him.

She saw the profile of a thin face that wore a constant grimace, with graying, dirty hair hanging down over the forehead, a greasy stained blouse, and a thread of spittle dangling from a drooping lower lip.

On closer inspection the picture itself produced an equally unpleasant, although decidedly powerful, impression on the visitor. Beyond the slightest doubt it was a work of genius: the brightly lit windows of the two cottages, the moon hanging above their roofs, and the dark silhouettes of the pines all emanated an air of mystery, horror, and death—it was not simply an evening but some all-encompassing Evening, the precursor of eternal darkness and silence. “Why is it that in art the repellent and the hideous are more compelling than the beautiful and the uplifting?” Polina Andreevna asked with a shudder. “It never happens in nature; the repellent is present there too, but it is created only to serve as a foil for the beautiful.”

“You speak of the creation of the Heavenly Artist, but art is produced by earthbound creators,” the doctor replied, following the movements of the brush. “Here you have yet another confirmation that artists can trace their family tree back to the rebellious angel Satan. Konon Petro-vich!” he said, suddenly raising his voice and slapping the painter on the shoulder. “What's that you've depicted there?”

Lisitsyna saw that something strange had been painted a little to one side of one of the cottages, at the level of its roof: an unnaturally elongated figure in a black robe with a pointed hood, with long, thin legs like a spider's. The young lady instinctively glanced out the window, but she did not see anything of the kind out there. “It's a monk,” she said in an emphatically naïve voice. “But he looks rather strange.”

“And not just a monk, but the Black Monk, Canaan's foremost attraction,” Donat Savvich said with a nod. “I'm sure you've heard about him already.” He slapped the artist on the shoulder again, harder this time. “Konon Petrovich!”

Yoshihin had no intention of turning around, but Mrs. Lisitsyna tensed up in anticipation. It seemed likely that a fortunate coincidence might render her task easier. She was getting warm now, very warm!

“The Black Monk?” she asked. “Is that the ghost of Basilisk, the one who is supposed to wander across the water, frightening everybody?”

Korovin frowned; he was beginning to lose his temper with the stubborn painter. “Not only frightening them. He has also managed to provide me with two new patients.”

Warmer and warmer!

“Konon Petrovich, I am talking to you, and once I have asked a question, I won't go away without an answer,” the doctor said sternly. “Is this Basilisk you have shown here? Who told you about him? You don't talk to anyone except me. How do you come to know about him?”

Without turning around, Yoshihin muttered, “I know only what I see with my own eyes.” He touched the black figure lightly with his brush, and Polina Andreevna thought she saw it sway, as if it were struggling to maintain its balance against the pressure of the wind.

“New patients?” the visitor asked with a sideways glance at Korovin. “I expect they are interesting too?”

“Yes, but very seriously ill. Especially one, little more than a boy. He sits in the conservatory, as naked as our ancestor Adam, so I would not dare to show him to you. Acute progressive traumatic idiotism—he is being consumed before my very eyes. He doesn't allow anyone to come near him and won't take any food from the attendants. He eats what grows on the trees, but how long can you survive on bananas and pineapples? Another week, or two at the most, and he'll be dead— unless I can come up with some form of treatment. So far, alas, nothing does any good.”

“And what about the other one?” the curious lady asked. “Another case of idiotism?”

“No, entroposis. It's a very rare sickness, similar to autism, except that it's not innate, but acquired. Science still knows no treatment for it. But he was a most intelligent man; I met him when he was still perfectly sane. Alas, in a single day—or rather a single night—he was reduced to a ruin.”

Now she was getting hot! Ah, how well everything was working out!

Mrs. Lisitsyna gasped. “From a highly intelligent man to a ruin in a single night? But what happened to him?”

Poor Berdichevsky

“THIS MAN IS the victim of a traumagenic hallucination induced by preceding events and a general morbidly susceptible nature. During the initial period the patient spoke frenziedly and at length, so I more or less know the nature of his vision. For some reason Berdichevsky (that is the man's name) decided to go to a certain abandoned house in the middle of the night, a place where a terrible catastrophe had recently occurred. Acutely sensitive people are affected in a special way by such places. I won't go into the fantastic details of that house's reputation—they are not really significant. But the substance of the hallucination is quite distinctive: Basilisk appeared to Berdichevsky, and then he had a hallucinatory vision of himself sealed inside a coffin alive. A classic case of the superimposition of a prepubic mystical psychosis—very common even among highly educated people—on thanatophobic depression. The stimulus for this delirious vision was obviously provided by certain real events. There actually was a coffin lying on a table in the hut—the former occupant had made it for himself, but it was never used. It was the combination of the darkness, strange creaking sounds, and moving shadows with this shocking object that pushed Berdichevsky into a state of raptus.”

Mrs. Lisitsyna listened most attentively to this abstruse lecture full of peculiar terminology. But the artist carried on working on his canvas, paying not the slightest attention to what the doctor was saying—it seemed unlikely that he even heard it.