Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (36 page)

Nonsense, Pelagius told himself. The weapon would be of no use. He could not fire at a living soul in order to save his own life, could he? The young monk stopped thinking about the revolver, and now the only thing that concerned him was the moon, which had hidden behind a cloud.

Any longtime resident of Canaan would have told Pelagius that when the wind was from the north the moon was doomed and it would never peep out again now, except perhaps for a few brief moments, and even then not at full strength, but only shining through some thin cloud. However, the novice had not had occasion to discuss the caprices of the moon over the Blue Lake with individuals more experienced than he, and so he continued to gaze up at the silver-shrouded vault of heaven with a certain hope.

At the beginning of the spit Pelagius bent over, pressing himself against the surface of the earth. Further along he settled down beside a large rock and sat quietly, looking toward the spot where the murderer had concealed his bench so cunningly.

With every minute that passed the night grew darker. At first the surface of the lake was still visible, its wrinkled surface frowning up at the violent rage of the north wind, but soon the gleams of light on its surface disappeared and the only indication of a large body of water was the sound of splashing and a fresh, damp smell, as if somewhere close by someone had sliced up an immense number of cucumbers.

The young monk sat there, hugging himself around the shoulders and sighing in disappointment. A fine chance there was of seeing “Basilisk” now! How could he go walking on the water, if it wasn't lying smoothly, but splashing about—the entire effect would be destroyed.

The sensible thing would have been to leave and go back to the guesthouse. But Pelagius lingered on and couldn't bring himself to go. Perhaps it was sheer obstinacy, or perhaps he had intuitively sensed something.

Because just when the boy was chilled right through to the marrow and was on the point of giving up, his patience was rewarded. A rent appeared in the curtain over the sky as the moon finally found a thin cloud and lit up the lake for a few instants—only dimly, but still brightly enough to reveal a sinister vision to the observers gaze.

In the middle of the narrow gulf separating the large island from the small one, Pelagius saw the narrow form of a boat swaying among the waves, with a black figure in a pointed cowl standing upright in it. The figure bent down, picked up something soft and light-colored, and tumbled it over the edge of the boat.

The novice cried out, for he had quite clearly seen two naked, emaciated legs dangling lifelessly. The water closed over the body, and a moment later the rent in the sky also closed.

Pelagius himself could not tell if he had imagined this hellish scene. It would have been easy, with the uncertain light and the surrounding darkness.

But then the young monk was struck by an idea that made him shriek out loud.

He picked up the hem of his cassock, revealing the white frills of a pair of lady's drawers, and set off at a trot away from the shore toward the center of the island.

As he ran, he muttered the words of a confused, hastily composed prayer: “Preserve, Oh Lord, Thy lamb from the teeth of the wolf and men of blood. God shall arise and scatter all before Him, and His enemies shall flee from His face!”

Soon the young monk's shoes were clattering on the bricks of a paved road, but it was no easier to run—the ground was gradually rising upward, and the farther he went, the steeper it became.

At the edge of the pine grove where Korovin's land began, the runner slowed to a walk, for he was completely exhausted. The windows of the little houses were dark—the mentally ill patients were sleeping.

Sensing rather than seeing the glass roof of the conservatory above the dense wall of bushes, Pelagius again set off at a run.

He burst in and shouted in a despairing, faltering voice, “Alexei Stepanich! Alyosha!”

Silence.

He rushed this way and that through the luxuriant thickets, breathing the intoxicating tropical aromas through his open mouth. “Alyoshenka! Answer! It's me, Pelagia!”

There was a cold draft coming from the corner. The young monk turned in that direction, peering into the darkness.

First there were shards of glass crunching under his feet, and then Pelagius made out the immense hole broken in the transparent wall of the conservatory.

He sat down on the ground and covered his face with his hands.

Oh, disaster!

Gulliver and the Lilliputians

“WILL YOU COME again? Do come. Or else he'll come to take me soon. Will you come?” Alyosha Lentochkin's childish voice and the intonation in which he had spoken those words, so full of timid hope, had imprinted themselves indelibly in Pelagiuss memory, and now, when it was already too late to change anything, they tormented his very soul. Pelagius put his hands over his ears, but it didn't help.

He ought not to have been tracking the criminal, but trying to save poor Alexei Stepanovich; he ought to have been beside him all the time, protecting him, reassuring him. It had been clear (and the letter to Mitrofanii had said so) that the malefactor would not leave his victims in peace, that he would hound them to death. How could Pelagius have failed to hear a plea for help in Alyosha's pitiful babble?

After grieving for a while to ease his remorse, Pelagius got up off the ground with a sigh, shook off the crumbs of glass that had stuck to his cassock, and set off back the way he had come.

Korovin could find out about his patient's disappearance in the morning—from his gardener. There was no time to waste on unnecessary explanations now, and it was still not clear what role the doctor was playing in this whole business. And there was no point in Pelagiuss racking his brains over what had happened either, his poor head was already bursting. He needed to go to bed and sleep on things. Or try to.

Sighing and sobbing, the novice made his way along the dark road to the town and stole into the pavilion to make the reverse transition from a male state to a female one.

He had just removed his skullcap and cassock and taken the folded dress out of the traveling bag, when suddenly something incredible happened.

One of the cumbersome iron cupboards magically detached itself from the wall and moved straight toward Polina Andreevna. Squatting down on her haunches, she gazed up at this miracle, so dumbfounded that she quite forgot to feel frightened.

But there was good reason to be frightened. The automatic dispenser had blocked off the light patch of the door, and now Mrs. Lisitsyna could see that it was not a cupboard at all, but an immense silhouette in a black monk's cassock.

Pressing her hands against her chemise (at that moment Polina Andreevna was not wearing anything else apart from her underwear and drawers), she said in a trembling voice, “I'm not afraid of you! I know you're not a ghost, but a man!”

And she did something that she would hardly have dared to do if she had been wearing a humble monk's garb—she drew herself up to her full height, stood on tiptoe, and struck the nightmarish vision with her fist at the point where its face should have been, and then again and again.

Although Mrs. Lisitsyna's fist was not large, it was firm and sharp, but the blows produced no effect whatever. Polina Andreevna merely scratched her knuckles against something rough and prickly.

A gigantic pair of hands seized the female warrior's slim wrists and pressed them together. One hand clutched them both while the other wound string around them with incredible dexterity.

Even without her hands, Polina Andreevna did not surrender—she began lashing out with her feet, endeavoring to catch her enemy on the knee or, if possible, even higher.

The attacker squatted down, which made him much lower than the standing lady, and with a few swift movements he hobbled her ankles. Lisitsyna tried to jump back, but she could not move her feet and fell over onto the floor.

Now she was obliged to resort to a woman's ultimate weapon— screaming. Perhaps that is what she should have done at the very beginning, instead of lashing out with her fists.

She opened her mouth wide to call for help—in case there might be a detachment of peacekeepers patrolling the waterfront or simply someone out late walking by, but an invisible hand thrust a coarse, repulsive, sour-tasting rag between her teeth, and then tied her own scarf around her mouth to prevent her from spitting the gag out.

Then the strongman picked up his helpless captive with an easy movement, holding her by the neck and her bound feet, as if she were a sheep, and threw her onto a sheet of sackcloth spread out on the floor, which Polina Andreevna had failed to notice. The well-prepared villain rolled her body over and over, wrapping the sackcloth around it at the same time, and in a second Mrs. Lisitsyna was transformed from a half-dressed lady into a shapeless bundle.

Mumbling and wriggling, the bundle was raised into the air and thrown across the nape of a neck as broad as a horse's back, and Polina Andreevna felt herself being carried along. Swaying in rhythm to the long, even strides, at first she carried on struggling and uttering sounds of protest, but a tightly bound bundle does not allow much scope for movement, and it was unlikely that anyone could hear her groans, muffled as they were by the gag and the coarse sackcloth.

Soon she began feeing unwell. From the rush of blood to her dangling head, from the sickening swaying, and, most of all, from the cursed sackcloth that prevented her from getting her breath properly and which was impregnated with dust. Polina Andreevna wanted to sneeze, but she could not—it is not so easy with a gag in your mouth!

The worst thing of all was that her abductor seemed determined to carry his victim away to the very ends of the earth. He kept walking and walking without stopping or pausing for breath even once, and the agonizing journey seemed to go on forever. The semiconscious captive was sure that the island of Canaan must have been left behind long ago, because it was not big enough to accommodate such vast distances, and the giant was already marching across the waters of the Blue Lake.

Just as Mrs. Lisitsyna, exhausted by nausea and the lack of air, was on the point of losing consciousness completely, the hollow thud of the villain's footsteps was replaced by creaking and a new swing was added to the sway of his walk, as if the very ground itself had begun to heave. Could it really be water, Polina Andreevna wondered fleetingly, her reason fading. But then why the creaking?

Here the oppressive journey finally came to an end. The sackcloth bundle was dumped unceremoniously onto a hard surface—not the ground, but more likely a wooden floor. There was a clang and the creak of rusty hinges. Then the captive was lifted up again, not horizontally this time, but vertically, with her head downward, and lowered into some kind of hole or pit—in short, into someplace much lower than the level of the floor. The top of Polina Andreevna's head struck something hard, and then the bundle was dropped with a crash onto another flat surface. There was more creaking and grating from above and the sound of a door slamming, followed by the hollow echo of receding footsteps, as if someone were walking across the ceiling, and then silence.

Lisitsyna lay there for a while, listening. Somewhere nearby there was water splashing, an awful lot of it. What else could she tell about her place of incarceration (for, to judge from the clang of the door, the captive had surely been incarcerated)? Probably that she was not on dry land, but on a ship of some sort, and the water was splashing against its side, or perhaps against the dockside. Straining her ears again, Polina Andreevna caught a quiet squeaking that she did not like the sound of at all.

Having assembled her initial impressions, she began to act.

The very first thing she had to do was to free herself from the disgusting sackcloth. Lisitsyna turned over from her back onto her side, then onto her stomach, again onto her back and—alas—came up against a wall before she had managed to free herself completely. Polina Andreevna was still tightly swaddled, but the outer layer of sackcloth had unrolled, giving her the opportunity to use another two senses: smell and vision. Unfortunately, the latter was of little use to the captive, for her eyes could not make anything out in the pitch darkness. As for the former, her dungeon smelled of stagnant water, old wood, and fish scales. And perhaps rusty iron as well. All in all, things had not become very much clearer.

But ten minutes later her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and she discovered it was not so impenetrable after all. There was scanty light of a kind, little better than the darkness, seeping in through long, narrow cracks in the ceiling, and after a while this dark gray illumination allowed Polina Andreevna to grasp that she was lying in a narrow, cramped space with walls of wooden boards—most likely the hold of a small fishing vessel (otherwise what explanation could there be for the pervasive smell of fish scales?).

The old tub appeared to be completely decrepit. There was light coming in not only through the ceiling, but also in places at the top of the sides. In a high sea a proud vessel like this would probably take on water by the ton and perhaps even sink.

However, just at the moment Mrs. Lisitsyna was more concerned with her own lot than with the decrepit vessel's navigational prospects. And meanwhile the situation, already desperate, was taking an unexpected and extremely unpleasant turn.