Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (15 page)

Felix Stanislavovich chuckled good-naturedly and shrugged, as if in acknowledgment of the doctor's perspicacity. Now he had to change tactics yet again.

“All right, Mr. Korovin. I can see there's no fooling you. I am not the clerk Chervyakov. I am Lagrange, the chief of police of Zavolzhsk. As you can understand, a man in my position would not become involved in trifling matters. I have come here on extremely important business, but in an unofficial capacity. This matter concerns—”

“A certain monk who goes strolling on the water at night and frightening foolish local inhabitants,” the shrewd doctor put in, blowing out a smoke ring. “Please be so good as to inform me how this phantom has attracted the attention of your ubiquitous department? Surely you have not decided that Saint Basilisk is the notorious specter with whom the Marxist gentlemen threaten the exploiters?”

Lagrange flushed scarlet, ready to put this jumped-up little doctor in his place, but just then something strange happened.

That day, unlike the one before, had turned out sunny and exceptionally warm, and the windows of the doctor's office were therefore open. The weather was quite splendid. Not a cloud in the sky, not a breath of wind—a vision of golden foliage and shimmering, trembling air. And yet one fold of the open blind suddenly swayed—only a tiny bit, but this anomaly did not escape the police chief's keen professional eye. Well, well, Felix Stanislavovich thought, making a mental note of it. Let's see what will happen next.

Keeping the interesting blind in sight out of the corner of his eye, he lowered his voice and said, “No, Donat Savvich, the Black Monk in no way resembles the specter of communism. But there is confusion and vacillation among the population, and that is already our concern.”

“So Lentochkin is a police agent?” Korovin asked with an astonished shake of his head. “I would never have thought it. He's obviously a very capable young man and would have gone far. But now, alas, that is unlikely. I feel sorry for the boy—he is in a very, very bad way. And the worst thing of all is that I can't find a single medical precedent that is in any way similar. I have no idea how to go about treating him. And time is passing, precious time. He won't last very long as he is.”

Finally the conversation had gotten around to the real point.

“What did he tell you about what happened that night?” the colonel asked, taking out his notebook.

The doctor shrugged. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. He was in no fit state to tell me anything.”

He finds me disagreeable, Lagrange noted to himself, so disagreeable that he feels no need to hide the fact. Never mind, my dear fellow—one way or another you will tell me; there's no escaping it.

He didn't say anything out loud, but merely tapped his pencil against the paper expressively, as if to say, Carry on, I'm listening.

“Last Tuesday, that is, exactly a week ago, the doorkeeper woke me at dawn. He thought your ‘nephew’ was trying to force his way into the house. He was disheveled and scratched, with wild, staring eyes, and entirely naked.”

“How's that?” Felix Stanislavovich said, unable to believe his ears. “Entirely naked. And he walked across the island like that?”

“As naked as it is possible to be. He kept repeating the same thing over and over again:
‘Credo, Domine, credo!’
Since he had already been to see me before, when …”

The colonel nodded impatiently: I know, I know, go on.

“Ah, so that's it?” the doctor said, scratching the bridge of his nose. “Hmm, so he had managed to report to you about his first … Anyway, seeing the state he was in, I ordered him to be let in. But it was quite impossible. He was shouting and struggling, and two orderlies couldn't drag him into the hallway. They tried putting a blanket over him—it was cold, after all—but the result was the same: he struggled and tore it off himself. In the heat of the moment they put a straitjacket on him, but he immediately started having such terrible convulsions that I ordered it to be taken off. I am opposed to forcible means of treatment in general. It took a while, quite a while, before I realized …” Donat Savvich removed his spectacles, wiped the lenses unhurriedly, and then continued with his story. “Well then. It took me a while to realize that I was dealing with an acute case of claustrophobia, when the patient is not only afraid of any enclosed spaces, but cannot even tolerate any clothing. I tell you, it's a very rare case—I have never come across one like it either in the textbooks or in articles. And so I kept your ‘nephew’ here for observation. In any case, it seems to me quite impossible to send him anywhere else. In the first place, he will catch cold. And from the point of view of public morality, how can you transport someone in a state of nakedness? The pilgrims would be shocked and outraged, and the archimandrite would be none too pleased with me either.”

Felix Stanislavovich wrinkled up his forehead as he digested this astonishing . The police chief had completely stopped thinking about the restless fold of the blind (which, in any case, was no longer moving).

“But wait, doctor … where are you keeping him? Outside in the open air, naked?”

Korovin gave a smug, condescending laugh and stood up. “Come with me, Mr. Senior Clerk, and you'll see for yourself.”

DR. KOROVIN'S CLINIC was located in the very best spot on the island of Canaan, on a gentle, forested hill that rose to the north of the town. From the very beginning Lagrange had been surprised by the absence of any fences and gates. A pathway paved with bright yellow brick wound between small meadows and groves of trees, where small houses built in a wide variety of styles stood with some distance between them; houses built of stone, of logs, of boards; black, white, and multicolored; with glass walls and completely without windows; with little towers and Mohammedan flat roofs—in short, a quite incredible sight. This peculiar settlement reminded the police chief somewhat of a picture from the book
The Town in the Snuffbox
, of which little Felix had been very fond in his childhood, but almost forty years had passed since then, and La-grange's tastes had changed greatly in the meantime.

His first impression, before he actually met Donat Savvich, was that the care of the insane had been entrusted to an even greater madman. What could the provincial guardians of order be thinking of?

But now, as he followed the doctor deeper into the hospital grounds, the colonel no longer paid any attention to the little dolls’ houses; he was too busy keeping an eye on the thick bushes of hawthorn that ran along both sides of the pathway. Someone was creeping along on the other side of them, and none too skillfully either, with a rustle of fallen leaves and crunching of twigs. In two bounds Lagrange could have been on the other side of that living wall and collared the heavy-footed fellow, but he decided not to hurry. They turned onto a narrow path flanked by glass hothouses containing vegetable beds, flowers, and fruit trees.

Now that is praiseworthy, the colonel thought in approval, looking through the glass walls at the strawberries and oranges and even pineapples. Apparently this Korovin knew how to live in style.

The doctor halted beside the central conservatory, which looked like an ocean mirage—a lush green tropical island soaring up above the dreary northern waters.

“There,” he said, pointing. “Forty-four thousand square feet of palms, banana trees, magnolias, and orchids. It cost me a hundred and forty thousand. But it's a genuine Garden of Eden.”

At this Lagrange's patience finally snapped.

“Listen here, you doctor-heal-thyself!” he exclaimed, rolling his eyes menacingly. “Do you think I came here to admire your pretty flowers? Enough of this beating around the bush! Where's Lentochkin?”

When he was furious, Felix Stanislavovich looked frightening. Even those hardened types, the port police constables, shivered in their shoes. But Donat Savvich didn't so much as turn a hair.

“Where is he? In there, under the glass sky, in paradise.” He pointed to the conservatory. “He hid in there himself, the very first day. It's the only possible place for him. It's warm, and you can't see any walls or roof. If he gets hungry, he can eat some fruit or other. And there's water too, a mains pipe. You wanted to see him? Please be my guest. Only, he avoids people and he might hide—it's a real jungle in there.”

“That's all right, we'll find him,” the police chief promised confidently, jerking open the door and striding into the damp, sticky heat that immediately soaked his collar through and sent a ticklish trickle of sweat running down his back.

He set off at a trot along the central passage, turning his head to the right and the left. Donat Savvich immediately fell behind.

Aha! Behind a plant with broad, spreading leaves, the name of which the colonel did not know—poisonous green, with predatory-looking red buds—he saw something flesh-colored move.

“Alexei Stepanich!” the chief of police called out. “Mr. Lentochkin! Wait!”

It was pointless. The broad shiny leaves swayed and he heard the light rustle of feet running away.

“Doctor, you go left, and I'll go right!” Lagrange commanded and went dashing in pursuit.

He stumbled over a thick stem trailing across the ground and fell full length. And that helped—from the ground Felix Stanislavovich caught sight of the tip of a foot, protruding from behind the hairy trunk of a palm tree—no more than twelve paces away. So that's where you're hiding, is it, my little darling?

The colonel stood up, dusted off his elbows and knees, and shouted, “All right, then, Donat Savvich. If he doesn't want to, then never mind.” He moved slowly through the undergrowth, then leapt to one side and caught hold of a naked man by the shoulders.

It was him, all right, the nobleman Alexei Stepanovich Lentochkin, twenty-three years of age, no doubt about it. Wavy chestnut hair, blue eyes (staring wildly just at the moment), oval face, slim build, height five feet ten inches.

“All right, all right, don't tremble like that,” the chief of police said reassuringly to the naked madman. “I've come from Bishop Mitrofanii to help you.”

The boy didn't struggle; he stood there quietly, but he was shuddering terribly.

“I'll just give him an injection so that he won't get violent,” Lagrange heard the doctor's voice say.

Donat Savvich turned out to have a flat metal box in his pocket. In thirty seconds the doctor had assembled a syringe and loaded it with colorless liquid, but Alyosha suddenly gave a pitiful groan and fell against the police chief's chest. He did not seem to be inclined to violence.

“I see I was mistaken and you really are his favorite uncle,” Korovin observed coolly, putting the loaded syringe away in his pocket.

“To hell with you,” said Lagrange, waving him away and stroking the curly back of the madman's head awkwardly. “Ai-ai-ai, what a nasty fright those bad bogeymen gave us; but we'll get them back. We'll show them what for. I'll catch that Basilisk in a couple of shakes—he won't pull any tricks on me. Just let him show his face and he's done for.”

Lentochkin was still sobbing, but no longer as convulsively as before.

The colonel moved away a little and asked in a cajoling voice, “What was it that happened, then? You know, that night? Tell me—don't be afraid.”

“Sh-sh-sh,” the youth hissed, pressing his finger to his lips. “He'll hear.”

“Who, the Black Monk? He won't hear a thing. He sleeps during the day,” Felix Stanislavovich told him, delighted at this articulate response. “You tell me quietly and he won't wake up.”

With a frightened glance at Korovin, the madman pressed himself up against Lagrange and whispered in his ear, “The cross—it isn't a cross, quite the opposite. Crrrr across the glass, the walls trrrr, the ceiling sssssh, and you can't run away. The door's too small, you can't get through, and the windows are all teeny-weeny, like this.” He demonstrated with his fingers. “Up jumps the house and hops about, the little hut on chicken legs.” Alexei Stepanovich gave a thin little laugh, but his face was immediately distorted in terror. “There's no air! No space! Aaagh!” He started trembling all over and began muttering,
“Credo, Domine, credo, credo, credo, credo, credo, credo, credo, credo, credo …”

He repeated the Latin word a hundred or even two hundred times, and it was clear that he was not going to stop soon.

Lagrange grabbed hold of the boy by the shoulders and gave him a good shaking. “That's enough! Tell me the rest!”

“There's nothing to tell,” Lentochkin suddenly declared in a calm, rational voice. “You go there, to the hut on chicken legs. At midnight. And you'll see it all for yourself. Only make sure you don't get squeezed, or your heart will burst. Bang—and splashes all over the place.”

He folded over double, burst into laughter, and started repeating a different word: “Bang! Bang! Bang!”

“That's enough,” Donat Savvich declared sternly. “You have an agitating effect on him, and he's weak enough as it is.”

Lagrange wiped the sweat off his neck with a handkerchief. “What hut is that? What is he talking about?”

“I have no idea. Perfectly ordinary ravings,” the doctor replied dryly, and deftly jabbed the needle into his patient's buttock.

Lentochkin almost immediately stopped laughing, squatted down, and yawned.

“That's all. Let's go,” said Korovin, tugging on the colonel's sleeve. “He'll go to sleep now.”