Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (45 page)

Donat Savvich took one look at the expression on his patient's face and dashed toward him.

“Permit me, if you will.” He squatted down by the bed, took Matvei Bentsionovich's pulse with one hand, and began pulling his eyelids up with the other. “What miracle is this! What did you do to him, Bishop? Hey, Mr. Berdichevsky! This way! Look at me!”

“Why are you shouting like that, Doctor?” the new state counselor asked, frowning and moving away. “I don't believe I'm deaf. And by the way, I've been meaning to tell you for a long time: you are mistaken if you believe that the patients don't hear those ‘asides’ of yours when you and the doctors, nurses, or visitors are talking to each other. You're not on a stage in a theater.”

Korovin's jaw dropped, which looked rather strange in combination with the mask of supercilious self-confidence that the doctor had firmly adopted as his own.

“Donat Savvich, do you serve supper here?” His Grace asked. “I haven't had a bite since this morning. How about you, Matvei, aren't you hungry?”

Berdichevsky replied rather uncertainly, but without a trace of his former dreariness: “I suppose something to eat would be quite nice. But where is Mrs. Lisitsyna? I don't remember very clearly what happened here, but she visited me—I didn't dream it, did I?”

“Supper later! Afterward!” Korovin shouted in great agitation. “You must tell me immediately what exactly you remember about the events of the last two weeks! Every last detail! And you, dear colleague, take down every word in shorthand! This is of great importance for science!

And you, Your Grace, you must reveal your method of treatment to me. You employed shock, didn't you? But of what kind exactly?”

“Oh, no,” Mitrofanii snapped. “First supper. And send for Pela … for Polina Andreevna. Where has she disappeared to?”

“Mrs. Lisitsyna went away,” Donat Savvich replied absentmindedly and began shaking his head again. “No, I have definitely never heard or read about anything like it! Not even in the
Jahrbuch für Psychopatholo-gie und Psychotherapie.”

“Where did she go to? When?”

“When it was still light. She asked to be taken to her hotel. She wanted to tell you something, but you would not let her in. Oh, yes. Before that she wrote something in my study. And she asked me to give you an envelope and a bag of some kind. I have the envelope here—I put it in my pocket. But which one? And the bag is outside the door, in the hall.”

Without waiting to be asked, the assistant carried in the bag, which was large and made of oilcloth, but obviously not heavy.

While Donat Savvich was patting all of the numerous pockets of his white doctor's coat and frock coat, the bishop looked into the bag.

He took out a pair of tall rubber boots, an electric torch of unusual design (screened with sheets of tin to produce a small aperture), and a piece of black cloth rolled into a bundle. When he unrolled it, it proved to be a cassock with a cowl, the edges of which had been crudely sewn together with coarse thread. There was a slit in the chest, so that it could be thrown back over the head of the person wearing it, and there were two holes in it for the eyes. Puzzled, Mitrofanii stuck his finger first into one hole and then the other.

“Well, Doctor, have you found the letter? Give it to me.”

He put on his pince-nez and muttered as he opened the sealed envelope, “We've been doing nothing all day but reading letters from a certain individual… Look at that scrawl—like a chicken writing with its claw. She was clearly in a great hurry.”

Another Letter

I came dashing to you but realized it was not the right time. I have important news, but your business is a hundred times more important. May God assist you to return Matvei Bentsionovich's lost reason to him. If you succeed, then you are a genuine magician and miracle worker.

Forgive me for not waiting and for acting willfully once again, but I do not know how long your cure will take. You said it could be a whole week, and it is quite definitely not possible to wait that long. Indeed, I believe I cannot wait at all, for God alone knows what is on this man's mind.

I am writing in haste, but nonetheless I shall try not to deviate from the correct order of exposition.

While I was waiting for you and trembling for the outcome of your difficult (perhaps even impossible?) task, I could not think what to do with myself. I began wandering around the house— at first the laboratory, and then the other rooms, which, of course, was improper on my part, but I could not get out of my head what Donat Savvich had said about not having seen Lampier for several days. Of course, the patients in the clinic are free to come and go, but even so it is rather strange. And at the same time I realized that in concentrating too much on Father Israel and Outskirts Island, I had almost completely neglected the clinic—that is, the theory that the criminal might be one of its inhabitants, whereas when I recall the night when the Black Monk attacked me, my attention is directed to precisely that line of inquiry.

In the first place, who could have known about the stilts belonging to the patient who is obsessed with cleanliness and where they could be found? Only someone well informed on the habits of the clinic's residents and the arrangement of the buildings.

In the second place, who could have known where exactly Matvei Bentsionovich was being kept, so that they could frighten him at night? The answer is the same.

And the third thing: Yet again, only someone involved with the clinic could have repeatedly visited Lentochkin in the conservatory without hindrance (it is clear from what Alexei Stepanovich told me that the Black Monk used to appear to him), and then killed the poor boy and carried away the body.

That is, to be absolutely precise, an outsider could have done this—after all, I was able to get into the conservatory without anyone noticing—but it would have been easier for one of the inmates.

I began to worry that something might have happened to the physicist. What if he had seen something he should not have seen and now he was also lying on the bottom of the lake? I recalled disjointed statements by Lampier in which he had spoken passionately about a mystical emanation of death and some terrible danger.

And so I decided to look into the cloakroom to see if his outer clothing was there, after first asking an attendant what Mr. Lampier usually wore. Apparently it was always the same: a black beret, a checked cloak with a hood, galoshes, and, without exception, a large umbrella, no matter what the weather.

Imagine my alarm when I discovered all of these items together in the cloakroom! I squatted down to take a closer look at the galoshes—sometimes dried lumps of mud can tell you a great deal: how long it is since the person was last outside, what kind of soil they walked across, and so forth. And then my eye was caught by the oilcloth bag, squeezed into a dark recess behind the galosh stand.

If you have not yet had time to look inside the bag, then do so now. There you will find a full set of material evidence: the Black Monk's cassock; boots suitable for “walking on water;” a special torch with its beam directed sideways and upward. As you no doubt recall, I had suspected something of the kind.

For a moment I thought the things had been left there deliberately, that the criminal had planted them. But then I measured Lampier's galosh against the sole of a rubber boot and saw that they were the same size. The physicist has small feet, almost like a woman's, so there could be no mistake about it. It was as if my eyes had suddenly been opened. Everything fitted perfectly!

Well, of course, the Black Monk is Lampier, the insane physicist. There is not really anyone else it could be. I ought to have guessed a lot sooner.

I suspect that what happened was this.

Obsessed by a maniacal idea about some “emanation of death” supposedly emitted by Outskirts Island, Lampier decided to scare everyone away from the “accursed” place. We know that frequently it is only madmen's basic ideas that are insane, while in putting them into practice they are capable of truly miraculous skill and cunning.

First the physicist invented the trick with “Basilisk” walking on water—the bench hidden under the water, the cowl, the cunning torch, the sepulchral voice telling the frightened witness: “Go and tell everyone. This place shall be cursed,” and other things in the same vein. This device was effective, but not effective enough.

Then Lampier moved his performance onto dry land and even committed an act of undiluted villainy in the death of the buoy keeper's wife and then of the buoy keeper himself. Insanity of this kind is prone to grow worse, impelling the maniac to ever more monstrous actions.

I have already described to you how the attacks on Alyosha, Felix Stanislavovich, and Matvei Bentsionovich were carried out. I am sure that is precisely how everything happened.

However, Lampier was afraid that Lentochkin or Berdichevsky might recover from their terrible shock and remember some detail or other that could lead back to the criminal. And so he continued to frighten them even in the clinic.

Lentochkin was in a truly pitiful state—it did not require much to deal with him. But Lampier paid especial attention to Berdichevsky, who had retained the rudiments of memory and coherence. He arranged for Matvei Bentsionovich to be moved into his cottage, where “Basilisk's” victim would be under constant surveillance by the Black Monk himself. Nothing could have been easier for the physicist than to frighten Berdichevsky at night. All he had to do was go outside, get up on the stilts, and knock on the second-floor window.

And I also remembered that when I stole into Matvei Ben-tsionovich's bedroom, Lampier s bed was empty. I thought that he was working in the laboratory, but in fact he was outside, dressed as Basilisk and preparing for another performance. When I surprised him by suddenly climbing out through the window and jumping down to the ground, he had no choice but to stun me with a blow from a wooden stilt.

This is what I wanted to tell you when I dared to glance into the room. You drove me away, and you were right to do so. It has worked out for the best.

I began thinking again. Where had Lampier gone? And why had he not taken his outer clothing? He had not been seen for several days—did that perhaps mean since the very night that Alexei Stepanovich was killed?

I recalled that appalling scene: the boat, the silhouette of the Black Monk, the naked, emaciated body thrown overboard. And I suddenly realized—a boat! Lampier had a boat!

What for? Could it have been for making secret visits to Outskirts Island?

I sat down at the desk and quickly wrote down all of the holy elder Israel's utterances, six in all. In my previous letter, I informed you I had sensed that these words contained some secret message, but I simply could not decipher its meaning.

Here are these brief phrases as they were spoken day by day:

“Today dost Thou release Thy servant—the death.”
“Thine are the most glorious heavens—of Theognost.”
“And then David's heart did tremble—is obscure.”
“Let him who has ears hear—cuckoo loose.”
“Thus the leach creates a mixture—nonfat sit.”
“Mourn not, for he is well—mona koom.”

I have separated off the final words of each phrase, because they were added to Holy Scripture by the abbot himself. What if the secret message is contained only in the conclusion of each utterance? I thought.

I wrote out the final words in a single line, and this is what was produced:

“The death—of Theognost—is obscure—cuckoo loose— nonfat sit—mona koom.”

At first I thought it was nonsense, but I read it a second time and the light dawned.

There is not one message here, but two, each in three parts! And the meaning of the first is perfectly clear—The death of Theognost is obscure.

This is what the holy elder wished to communicate to the senior brothers in the monastery!—that the circumstances of the death of the hermit Theognost, whose place became free six days ago, were suspicious. Then after that he added this from the Apocalypse: “Let him who has ears hear”—the monks had not heard; they had not understood.

What exactly does “his death is obscure” mean? Could it possibly be a reference to murder? And if so, then who killed the holy elder and for what end?

The answer was given in the second message, which I puzzled over for a long time. Then I realized “mona koom” was
monachum
, the Latin for
monk.
It was in Latin! “Cuckoo loose” was
cucullus—
a cowl. And “nonfat sit” was
non facit.
The complete phrase was:
“Cucullus non facit monachum,”
or “Not everyone in a cowl is a monk”!

But why in Latin? I asked myself, before I realized the full meaning of these words. The father steward, to whom all the abbots utterances were reported, was hardly likely to understand a foreign language, and the ignorant Brother Kleopa would only mangle gibberish of that kind. The holy elder Israel must have understood that.

And so the Latin message was addressed not to the brother monks, but to me. On the last three days the hermit had looked only at me, as if he wished to emphasize that.