Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (46 page)

How could he know that a modest novice with a black eye knew Latin? It is a mystery! But one thing is certainly clear: Israel wanted me alone to understand him. He evidently did not trust the father steward's acumen.

Then my thoughts turned back again to the most important point and I discovered the meaning of the Latin riddle. I realized what the holy elder had wanted to say! The new wearer of a hermit's cowl was not father Ilarii! It was the criminal, Lampier! That was where he had disappeared to; that was why he was nowhere to be seen; that was why all his clothes were still at the house!

The physicist had crossed over to Outskirts Island! And in that case, on that night he must have committed not one murder, but two. And there must have been two dead bodies! It was simply that the moon had peeped out from behind the clouds too briefly and I had only seen half of the terrible ritual. The villain has stopped Lentochkin's mouth forever, but God only knows why he has spared Berdichevsky Perhaps not all feelings die, even in a heart that is hardened by insanity, and Lampier had become attached to Matvei Bentsionovich during the days he spent together with him under the same roof.

That night the maniac crept into the Farewell Chapel, where Father Ilarii was preparing alone for his heroic feat of asceticism, praying and sewing up his cowl. A murder was committed. And in the morning the person who came out to the boat in a black shroud was not the holy elder, but the criminal.

I do not know and I cannot even guess what monstrous fantasies govern this clouded reason. Perhaps he intends to kill the other two hermits as well?

Having arrived at this idea, I almost came dashing to your room again. After all, it was a matter of people's lives—you would have forgiven me! We had to go to the hermitage immediately and unmask the pretender!

I already had my hand on the door handle, but then I was overcome by doubt.

What if I were mistaken? What if Lampier was not on Outskirts Island, and I induced you to violate the seclusion of the holy hermitage? The consequences of such an act would be appalling. No outsider had set foot there for eight centuries! A bishop would not be forgiven for such sacrilege. You would be trampled into the dirt, hounded and defiled—Father Vitalii would do his best to make sure of that. What a loss that would be for the province! And not only the province—for the whole of the Orthodox Church!

But what could they do to a stupid, curious woman? The worst they could do to her would be to send her away in disgrace on the next sailing of the steamer.

And so I decided to act as follows. I shall go into the town and change into my novice s clothes. Then I shall make my way to Lenten Spit, where Brother Kleopa's boat is moored. As soon as it is dark (and it gets dark early these days), I shall row across to Outskirts Island—God grant that no one sees me from the shore.

I shall verify my assumptions in the hermitage and come back. If I am mistaken, there will be no harm done. The holy elder Israel would need to recite the entire Bible to expose my unprecedented audacity—at a rate of one or two words a day. And those slow-witted monks in Ararat will never understand anyway.

It is very possible that I might return before you have left Matvei Bentsionovich's room. I hope to find him resurrected to life through the grace of God and the wisdom of your heart.

Do not be angry with me.

Your daughter Pelagia

The Final Day: Evening

MITROFANII READ THE final lines of the letter with his beard clutched in his hand, and when he finished reading, he began rushing around the room. He dashed to the door, stopped, and turned to Berdichevsky.

“Disaster, Matvei, disaster! Ah, that wild hothead has gone to the hermitage! She was afraid for me! Afraid they would accuse me of sacrilege! It's not sacrilege we need to be afraid of, its that he will kill her!”

“Who will kill whom?” Matvei Bentsionovich asked in amazement, still not thinking too clearly for lack of practice—and indeed, how could he think clearly, when he had not read the latest letter?

His Grace thrust the letter into his hand and went running to the doctor. “Quickly, quickly, we must go! What is one more murder to him!”

“And just who is ‘he’?” asked Korovin, also unable to understand.

“That physicist of yours, Lampier! He is the Black Monk—it has been definitely proved now! And he is a murderer too! He has hidden on Outskirts Island! And Pelagia, I mean Lisitsyna, has taken a boat there! Straight into the wolf's jaws!”

Meanwhile the assistant public prosecutor shook his head doubtfully before he had even read very much of the letter.

“Lampier on Outskirts Island! What do you mean, Father, that's not where he is!”

“Where, then?” asked Mitrofanii, swinging around.

“There,” said Berdichevsky, gesturing downward with his hand. “Under the ground.”

The bishop froze. Had his cure not been complete? Or had the ravings begun again?

“I mean to say, he's in the basement,” Matvei Bentsionovich explained. “He set up another laboratory for himself some time ago, and he's working there now. I helped him to carry some sheets of metal down there—he tore them off the roof. Sergei Nikolaevich told me something about some emanation and some dangerous experiments of his, but I didn't understand a thing—I was still in a trance. And the instruments are all in the basement now. He hardly ever comes out of there. He might just pop out once a day, eat a piece of bread, and then go back down.”

The assistant public prosecutor spoke slowly, choosing his words with difficulty—he had clearly not yet recovered completely, but he did not seem like a madman.

“Where is this basement?” the bishop asked the doctor, not knowing if he should believe what he had just heard. Perhaps the basement did not even exist.

“Over this way—follow me.” Donat Savvich led the others out into the hallway and into a closet, and from there down a stone stairway. It was dark, and his assistant struck a match.

“There is the door. But it was empty, and there was no laboratory …”

Without finishing what he was saying, Korovin pulled the handle of the door toward him, and an unearthly reddish light streamed out through the opening. They could hear a quiet clicking and the tinkling of glass vessels.

Mitrofanii glanced inside and saw a small figure in a loose blouse, leaning over a long table crowded with instruments and tools. The lamp glowing on the ceiling was shrouded in a red scarf—hence the strange light.

The man hunched over the table was looking through some complicated kind of microscope at a small vise holding a black plate of metal in a vertical position. There was an empty flask standing on a special stand behind the plate. But no, it was not empty—a tiny pile of some kind of powder, or perhaps fine sand, glittered inside it.

The researcher was so absorbed in his observations that he did not hear the sound of footsteps. His appearance was strange: he had a fireman's helmet on his head and a zinc basin tied to his chest—the ordinary kind that is used for washing laundry.

“So that's where the helmet from the fire panel got to,” the assistant said in a low voice. “Frolov came to me and complained, but I didn't want to bother you over such a trifle, Donat Savvich.”

Without answering his assistant, Korovin stepped forward and said in a loud voice, “Mr. Lampier! Sergei Nikolaevich! What are all these underground mysteries?”

The little man glanced around and waved his arms at his visitors: “Out, out! You mustn't! Nothing can stop it! Nothing! Tried iron, tried copper, steel. Not zinc—like a knife through butter. Going to try tin plate.” He gestured toward a piece of roofing metal lying on the edge of the table. “Then lead, then silver! Something must contain it!”

Lying beside the tin plate was another sheet of metal with a dull sheen and a much brighter silver tray.

“I see,” Korovin said. “The tray was stolen from my pantry. Lampier, I see that in addition to all your other pathological conditions you are a kleptomaniac too! Shame on you, Sergei Nikolaevich. And you such an apologist for morality.”

The physicist was embarrassed and he began muttering inarticulately: “Yes, not good. But where? Time! No one, not anyone! All myself! And gold as well. Very hopeful. And noble metals! Or straight to platinum, like with like? But where, where?”

Mitrofanii moved forward and looked down at Lampier's puny frame. “Sir, I am going to ask you some questions. And you answer me clearly, with no concealment.”

The scientist looked the bishop up and down with his head on one side. Then he suddenly jumped up on the chair and tugged the red material off the lamp, and the light in the room became normal.

Even standing on the chair, Lampier was not much taller than the bishop. The strange man put his hand into the pocket of his blouse, took out a large pair of spectacles with violet lenses, set them on his nose, and began inspecting the bishop again, this time more thoroughly.

“Ah, ah,” he cackled, “so much light blue! And orange, orange! Never so much!

“A wonderful spectrum! Ah, if only sooner! You can! Tell them! They're such! Even this one!” he said, pointing to Donat Savvich. “I tell, and he jabs me! Others are worse! Crimson, all crimson! Must do something! Quick! Can't stop it!”

The bishop frowned, waiting for Lampier to calm down. “Don't play the holy fool. I know everything. Are these yours?”

He gestured to Berdichevsky, and the assistant public prosecutor, who had positioned himself under the lamp in order to read Pelagia's letter, took the cassock, boots, and torch out of the bag, then stuck his nose back in the sheets of paper again. He seemed entirely uninterested in the interrogation.

At the sight of the incontrovertible proof, Lampier started blinking and sniffing loudly—in short, he was embarrassed, but not as greatly as before, when the doctor had discovered his theft.

“Mine, yes. How else? No one! Invented. All crimson. Don't understand, then not interfere. Shame.”

“Why did you act out this sacrilegious performance?” asked the bishop, raising his voice. “Why did you frighten people?”

Lampier pressed his hands to his chest and began jabbering even more rapidly. It was clear that he was struggling as hard as he could to explain something very important to him, and he simply could not understand why they refused to understand him: “Ah, yes, me! All crimson, impenetrable. I tried. That faceless one! Not a word! Told him!” he said, pointing at Korovin again. “Injected me! Rubbish! My head two days! Don't hear! Voice in wilderness!”

“He's talking about the soporific injection that I was obliged to prescribe for him,” the doctor explained. “Well, he really bears a grudge— that was three months ago. He was seriously overexcited at the time. Worse than now. But after he slept for twenty-four hours, he was calmer. He kept trying to give me a notebook so that I could read his notes. How could I—there was nothing in it but formulae. And crooked scrib-blings in the margins with thousands of exclamation marks, about the ‘emanation of death.’

“Make clearer!” Lampier shouted despairingly, with saliva spraying from his mouth. “Need other way. Thought! Not matter of death! Can't be stopped! Perhaps ‘penetration’? Goes through everything! But ‘penetrating emanation’ is unpronounceable!”

“So you don't deny that you dressed up as Basilisk and walked on the water, shining this complicated torch from behind your back?” the bishop interrupted.

“Yes, superstition with superstition. Since they don't hear. Oh, I'm very cunning.”

“And you threatened the buoy keeper through the window and scratched the glass with a nail? And then you attacked Lentochkin in the hut, and Lagrange, and Matvei Bentsionovich?”

“What hut?” Sergei Nikolaevich muttered. “A nail on glass—brrrr, repulsive!” He shuddered. “To hell with the hut! Most important thing! Everything else nonsense!”

“And you didn't knock on Matvei Bentsionovich's window, wearing stilts?”

The physicist was astonished: “Why stilts? Why knock?”

The assistant public prosecutor finished reading the letter and said in a quiet voice, “Bishop, it could not have been Sergei Nikolaevich. She is mistaken. Judge for yourself. Sergei Nikolaevich knew that I had been moved from the second floor down to the first floor that night. Why would he have needed the stilts? No, it was someone else. Someone who was not aware that I had been moved to the ground floor bedroom.”

Berdichevsky's capacity for logical thought had apparently been restored, and His Grace was glad of it. But this meant…

“Then there was another ‘Basilisk’?” The bishop shook his head sharply so that he could think clearly. “A violent one? Who struck Pela-gia, and before that attacked you, Alyosha, and Lagrange in the same way? But that is absurd!”

Matvei Bentsionovich remarked cautiously: “I am not prepared to draw any conclusions as yet. But take a look at Sergei Nikolaevich. Would he have had the strength to lift up an unconscious body and put it in a coffin, while standing on a chair? He might have managed Alexei Stepanovich, although it's doubtful, but he definitely could not have lifted me. I have heavy bones, I weigh more than two hundred pounds.”

Mitrofanii looked at Berdichevsky as if he were assessing his weight, and then at the skinny physicist. He sighed.

“Very well, Mr. Lampier. But where were you that night? When Matvei Bentsionovich was moved into your bedroom?”