Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (33 page)

Mrs. Lisitsyna decided to wait for her eyes to adjust to the gloom and leaned against the wall with one hand. But there was nothing wrong with Polina Andreevna's hearing, and when she heard a rustling sound behind her she swung around abruptly.

Very close, only a few feet away, a slim black figure emerged from the darkness. The stupefied woman clearly saw a pointed hood with holes for the eyes and noticed the way the strange silhouette turned around its own axis, and then suddenly there was the whistle of something slicing through the air, and Lisitsyna felt a blow of appalling power strike her on the side of the head.

Polina Andreevna collapsed backward and fell across Lagrange's traveling bag.

New Sins

THE VICTIM WAS only able to
assess
the full extent of the damage that had been inflicted the following morning.

She did not know how long she had lain unconscious beside the wall of cottage number seven, until the cold had brought her around. She could barely even remember staggering back to the hotel, clutching her head in her hands. She had slumped straight onto the bed without getting undressed and instantly fallen into a state of oblivion bordering on a faint. She woke late, just before noon, and sat down at the dressing table to look at herself in the mirror.

It was a sight worth looking at. Polina Andreevna did not know how an incorporeal phantom had managed to knock her down from a distance of six or seven feet away, but the blow that had struck her temple and cheekbone had certainly been material in its effect: there was an immense dark crimson bruise beside her left eye, stretching upward and downward across almost half her face. Even the memory of the appalling mystical event paled beside her distress at the sight of her own disfigurement.

Mrs. Lisitsyna turned her undamaged profile toward the mirror and squinted sideways at it faintheartedly—it looked perfectly respectable. But then she turned back to look at her full face and groaned. If she looked at the left side, her face would probably look like an eggplant.

Such is the beauty of the flesh—dust and decay: a single heavy blow is enough to destroy it, Polina Andreevna said to herself, recalling her temporarily abandoned vocation. It was a correct thought, a praiseworthy thought, but it brought her no consolation.

The main problem was: How could she go outside looking like this? She couldn't possibly just stay in her room for a week, waiting for the bruise to disappear! She had to think of something.

With a heavy sigh and a guilty feeling, Lisitsyna opened her suitcase and took out a set of makeup—another complimentary gift from the Cook and Kantorovich travel agency, received at the same time as the handiwork bag already mentioned. Naturally, the pilgrim had not intended to use the makeup—unlike the bag, which was very useful. She had intended to make a present of it to some laywoman, but this was an emergency!

A fine nun I am, Polina Andreevna thought mournfully as she powdered the hideous mark. She felt envious of brunettes—they had thick, dark skin that healed quickly; but for the white skin of a redhead a bruise was an absolute catastrophe.

Even with the makeup it still looked awful. In debauched St. Petersburg or frivolous Moscow she could perhaps have gone out looking like that, especially if she hid behind a veil, but in pious Ararat she could not even think of it—they would probably stone her, like the loose woman in the Gospels.

What could she do? She couldn't go out wearing powder and she couldn't go out without it, displaying the bruise. And she couldn't afford to waste any time, either.

She thought very hard, and eventually she thought of something.

She put on a very simple black wool dress, then tied her pilgrim's head scarf around her head, pulling it tight right down to the corners of her eyes. She covered the visible part of the bruise with white powder. If you didn't look too closely, it was all right, almost unnoticeable.

Covering the cheek with her handkerchief, she slipped through to the exit, taking the yellow traveling bag with her—she couldn't risk leaving it in her room. Everyone knew what the staff in hotels were like, always poking their noses into everything and rummaging in people's things. God forbid that they should find the revolver or the minutes. It was not such a heavy burden—her arms could manage it.

Once out in the street the pilgrim lowered her eyes meekly and walked along like that until she reached the main square, where the day before she had noticed a shop selling monks’ garments.

For three rubles and seventy-five kopecks she bought a novice's outfit from the monk minding the shop: a skullcap, a moiré cassock, and a fabric belt. To avoid arousing any suspicion, she said that she was buying them as a donation to the monastery, but the shop monk was not at all surprised. Pilgrims often made gifts of vestments to the brethren— that was what the shop was for.

And now she had to embark on a new masquerade, even more indecent and blasphemous than the first. What else could she do?

But then again, walking about in the guise of a modest young monk promised a certain additional advantage that Polina Andreevna had only just thought of. She pondered this new idea while she searched for a suitable place to change her clothes, looking around as she walked along the streets where there were fewer passersby.

Perhaps as a consequence of the blow, or perhaps because she was upset about the disfigurement of her appearance, Mrs. Lisitsyna was in a strange state of nervous agitation that day. From the moment she left her guesthouse, she was haunted by a strange feeling that was hard to put into words, as if she were
not alone
, as if there were someone else there beside her, invisible, either watching her or following her. And this attention was clearly malevolent and hostile. Though she rebuked herself all the while for being such a superstitious and impressionable female, Polina Andreevna glanced around several times, but she did not notice anything unusual: nothing but some monks going about their business, someone standing beside a stone post reading a newspaper, someone else bending down to pick up the matches they had dropped. People in the street, doing perfectly normal things.

But after a while Lisitsyna forgot this disturbing feeling, because she found an excellent place to change her appearance, and what was more, it was only five minutes’ walk from the Immaculate Virgin. Standing on a corner at the waterfront was a closed and shuttered pavilion with a sign that read: HOLY WATER. AUTOMATIC DISPENSERS. Its façade overlooked the promenade, and its back wall faced a blank fence.

Polina Andreevna walked around to the back of the large wooden booth, ducked into the gap, and saw that she was in luck—the door was only secured with the very simplest of padlocks. After poking and prodding it for a while with a knitting needle (Oh Lord, forgive this transgression also!) the enterprising lady slipped inside.

There were bulky metal boxes with little taps standing along the walls, but the space in the center was empty. Light percolated through the gaps between the boards, and she could hear the voices of the public strolling along the waterfront. It really was an absolutely perfect spot.

Lisitsyna quickly pulled off her dress. She hesitated, wondering what to do about her drawers. She left them on—the cassock was long, they wouldn't be visible, and it would be warmer that way. This was not July, after all.

Her shoes were rather masculine, with blunt toes, as the latest fashion required, but they were still a bit too foppish for a novice. Polina Andreevna sprinkled them with dust and decided they would do. Women knew nothing about the peculiarities of monks’ garments, and monks were men—which meant they were not very observant of such details and would probably not notice anything.

She left the bag with her knitting hanging around her neck. What if she had to wait somewhere or spend hours in surveillance? Many of the monks consoled themselves by knitting, so it would not look suspicious, and the regular clickety-clack of the needles made it easier to think.

She stuck the little bag inside her cassock. Let it hang there.

Then she hid the traveling bag between two of the automatic dispensers, pulled her hair out from under her cap, tugged down the cassock, and wiped the powder off her face with her sleeve.

In short, she entered the holy water pavilion as a modest young lady and ten minutes later emerged as a skinny, redheaded young monk with nothing unusual about him—unless, of course, you took note of the massive bruise on the left side of his face.

‘Nothing but Riddles

UP TO THIS point the actions of the female investigator had been more or less comprehensible, but now, if some stranger had decided to follow Lisitsyna's movements, he would have been thrown into a state of total bewilderment, since the pilgrims further behavior seemed to lack any logic whatsoever.

And at this point, in order to avoid any ambiguity, we shall be obliged once again to bring our heroine's name into conformity with her new appearance, as we have already done once. Otherwise it will be impossible to avoid ambivalent phrases such as “Polina Andreevna called into the brothers’ cells”—for it is well known that women are strictly forbidden to enter the monks’ inner chambers. And therefore, from this point on we shall not follow Sister Pelagia or the widow Lisitsyna, but a certain novice monk who, as we have already said, was behaving very strangely on that day.

For about two or two and a half hours, beginning at midday, the young monk could be seen in various parts of the town, within the confines of the monastery itself, and even—alas—in the aforementioned brothers’ cells. His lazy gait suggested that he was simply wandering about without anything particular to do, apparently out of pure boredom, stopping here for a moment and listening, stopping there for a moment and looking. Several times the idly wandering youth was stopped by senior monks, and once even by the peacekeepers, who asked him sternly who he was and how he had come by the bruise—had it been a drunken incident or some bout of fisticuffs? The youth humbly replied in a thin voice that his name was Pelagius, that he had come to Ararat from holy Valaam as a work of penance, and the bruise on his face had been given to him by the father cellarer for his carelessness. This explanation satisfied everyone, for the harsh manners of the father cellarer were well known and young monks who had been “taught a lesson”—some with bruises, some with bumps, some with a red, swollen ear—were a common sight on the streets and in the monastery. And so the young monk bowed and carried on along his way.

Shortly before three in the afternoon Pelagius wandered out of the town and found himself close to Lenten Spit, opposite Outskirts Island. In recent weeks this place had acquired a disquieting reputation among the pilgrims and local residents, and so the shore was completely deserted.

The novice walked along the spit until he reached its very end and then began skipping from one boulder to another, moving ever closer to the island. Here and there, for some incomprehensible reason, he thrust a stick that he had picked up into the water. Beside one of the boulders he squatted down on his haunches for a long time and fumbled in the cold water with his hands—as if he were catching fish. Although he lifted nothing out of the water, he seemed quite delighted about something and even clapped his chilly hands together.

He came back to the beginning of the spit, sat down on a rock beside an old boat that was moored there, and began working away with a pair of knitting needles, looking around him every now and then. And quite soon the person for whom the youth had apparently been waiting put in an appearance.

The monk walking along the path leading from the old chapel did not appear particularly meek and mild: a matted beard, bushy eyebrows, and a bluish nose with open pores, set in a large, crumpled face.

Pelagius jumped up and greeted him with a low bow. “Would you perhaps be the venerable holy elder Kleopa?”

“Indeed I am,” said the monk, squinting gloomily at the young lad. He scooped up some water out of the lake with his broad palm and drank it. “What do you want?” Heaving a sigh full of suffering that scalded the novices nostril with the sour smell of stale alcohol, he began taking his oars out of the bushes.

“I have come to implore your holy blessing,” Pelagius chirped in a shrill tenor.

Brother Kleopa was surprised at first, but his spiritual and bodily state at that moment were more conducive to irritability than astonishment, and he raised his massive, heavy fist as if to strike the boy. “Come here to play jokes, have you? I'll give you a blessing, you red-haired pup! I'll blacken your other eye for you!”

The young monk moved back a few steps, but did not run away. “But I was thinking of offering you fifty kopecks,” he said, and then he took the silver coin out of his sleeve and showed it to Kleopa.

“Give that here.” The boatman took the coin, bit on it with teeth yellow from smoke, and seemed satisfied. “Well, what do you want, tell me.”

The novice babbled shyly, “I have a dream. I want to be a holy elder.”

“A holy elder? You will be,” said Kleopa, mellowed by the silver. “In about fifty years for certain, you will be, you can't avoid it. Unless, of course, you die before then. And as for holiness, you're already standing there in a cassock, even though you're no more than a spring chicken. What's your name?”

“Pelagius, Holy Father.”

Kleopa pondered for a moment, obviously trying to recall his saints. “After Saint Pelagius of Laodicea, who persuaded his faithful wife to honor brotherly love above the love of a husband? Why, Saint Pelagius was getting well on, and you still haven't seen anything at all of life. What made a brainless young thing like you become a monk? Live a bit, sin to your heart's content, then atone for it all by prayer, that's the way the wise ones do it. The holy elder Israel, over there in the hermitage”— he nodded in the direction of the island—“now there's a prudent man for you. He had his fun and plucked plenty of young chicks, and now he's the abbot. He lived well here on earth, and now he's prepared a fine little place for himself in Heaven, close to the Father and the Son. That's the way to do it.”