Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (51 page)

“I transferred all my fortune to the unfortunate woman's name, and I became a monk in order to piece the fragments of myself back together and purge myself of filth. And that is my story.

“And now tell me, my sister, is there any forgiveness for my transgressions or not?”

POLINA ANDREEVNA WAS so shaken by this story that for a while she said nothing.

“That is known only to God …” she said, avoiding looking at the repentant sinner.

“God will forgive me. I know. Perhaps he has even forgiven me already,” Israel said slowly. “But you tell me, as a woman, can
you
forgive me? Only tell the truth!”

She tried to avoid an answer: “What would my forgiveness mean? You have not done me any harm.”

“It would mean a great deal,” the abbot said firmly, as if speaking of something he had decided a long time ago. “If you forgive me, then they would have forgiven me.”

Polina Andreevna wanted to speak words of consolation to him, but she could not. That is, it would have cost her no effort to speak them, but she knew the holy elder would sense her insincerity, and that would only make things worse.

The hermit's face darkened when there was no answer.

“I knew it …” he said in a quiet voice, and put his hand on the seated woman's shoulder. “Get up. Go. Back to the world. You should not be here. I have another confession to make. I deliberately lured you here, to the hermitage. Not because of Theognost, and not because of Ilarii. That is all idle vanity—who killed whom, and why they killed them. The Lord will render unto each according to his deeds, and not a single deed, either good or evil, shall be left unrewarded. And I spoke those mysterious, enticing words to you because before I die I wanted to see a Woman one last time and ask for her forgiveness … I have asked and I have not received. And that is how it must be. Go.”

And so impatient was he for his guest to go away and leave him alone that he began pushing her toward the door.

Stepping out into the gallery, Lisitsyna heard the faint, repulsive scraping sound again.

“What is that?” she asked with a shudder. “Bats?”

Israel replied indifferently: “There are no bats here. And what happens in the cave at night, I do not know. It is the kind of place where anything might happen. After all, it contains a piece of the sphere of heaven.”

“What?” Polina Andreevna asked in amazement. “A piece of the sphere of heaven?”

The holy elder frowned, seeming annoyed that he had said something he should not have. “You are not supposed to know about that. Go now. And tell no one what you have seen here. But you won't, you are an intelligent woman. Only do not lose your way. Go right to reach the way out.”

The door slammed shut, and Polina Andreevna was left alone in total darkness.

She lit a candle and listened closely to the mysterious sound. Then she set off, but not to the right. She went to the left.

Basilisk

THE GALLERY THAT the holy elder Israel had called the Approach gradually rose higher and higher as it led on. The walls on both sides were bare now, and Polina Andreevna saw that there would be enough room for many hundreds more dead bodies.

The sound was clearer now and harder to bear—an iron claw scraping, not against glass, but against a naked, defenseless heart. At one point, when Lisitsyna could stand it no longer, she set the traveling bag down on the ground and put her hands over her ears, despite the risk that her hair might catch fire from the burning candle clutched in her fingers.

Her hair did not catch fire, but a drop of wax fell onto her temple, and the sudden hot sensation settled Polina Andreevna's nerves.

She picked up the bag and went farther.

Thus far the gallery had been almost straight, or at least there had not been any visible bends, but now it suddenly turned a ninety-degree corner.

Mrs. Lisitsyna peeped around the corner and froze.

There was dull light glimmering up ahead. The explanation for the strange scraping sound must be very close now.

Polina Andreevna blew out her candle, pressed herself flat against the wall, and took a cautious step around the corner.

She crept forward on tiptoe, without making a sound.

The passage widened out into a round cave with its high ceiling lost in darkness.

But Polina Andreevna did not even glance upward—she was so stunned by the picture that opened up to her
eyes.

Lying in the middle of the cave was a perfectly round sphere, with its bottom third sunk into the ground. It was about the same size as one of those large balls of snow that children use as the base for a snowman. The surface of the sphere shimmered with shifting rainbow patterns in violet, green, and pink. The sight was so wonderful, so unexpected after wandering so long in the dark, that Lisitsyna gasped.

A lantern stood beside the sphere, illuminating the smooth, glittering surface, setting it flashing and sparkling, and she could see a black shadow hunched over between the lantern and the sphere, swaying in a steady rhythm, like a pendulum. The sickening scraping sounds matched its movements perfectly.

Polina Andreevna took another short step forward, but just at that moment the sound broke off, and in the sudden silence the gentle rustle made by the sole of her shoe sounded deafening.

The crouching figure froze, as if it were listening. It made a careful movement, as if stroking the sphere or gently sweeping something off it.

What should she do? Freeze stock-still and hope that it would be all right, or make a run for it?

Mrs. Lisitsyna was standing in a most uncomfortable position, with one foot extended in front of her and supporting all her weight, and the other foot poised on its toes.

And then she felt an irresistible tickling in her nose. She suppressed the sneeze by pressing a finger against the base of her nose, but she could not suppress the sudden intake of breath.

The black man (if, of course, it was a man) made a quick movement that puzzled Polina Andreevna at first, but when the rounded upper part of the silhouette suddenly became pointed, she realized he had pulled a cowl up over his head.

There was no point in hiding any longer. And Mrs. Lisitsyna did not try to run away. She walked straight toward the standing hermit (she could see now that it was a hermit) and he backed away.

When she had almost reached the slim black shadow, Polina Andreevna was halted by the terrible glint in the eyes behind those holes. That must be the way the eyes of a basilisk glinted. Not the righteous Saint Basilisk's eyes, but those of that appalling, nightmarish emissary of hell with the body of a toad, the tail of a snake, and the head of a cock. The monster whose death-dealing gaze cracked stones, withered flowers, and struck people dead on the spot.

“So this is what you are really like, Alexei Stepanovich,” Polina An-dreevna said with a shudder.

The Black Monk did not budge, and so she continued—in a low voice, without hurrying.

“Yes, it is you, I know it. There is nobody else it could be. At first I suspected Sergei Nikolaevich Lampier, but now, after walking through the Approach alone in the darkness, I have seen the light. That often happens: when the eyes are blind, the sight of the mind and the soul becomes keener; they are not distracted by false appearances. Sergei Nikolaevich could not have carried you all the way from the conservatory to the lake. He is not strong enough, he is too puny, and it is a long way. And then, I could not get that saying of Galileo's about measuring the immeasurable out of my head: I found it in the notebook with all the formulae, but where had I seen it before? I have remembered now, only a moment ago. It was in your third letter. So by that time you must already have been in Lampier's laboratory and looked at his notebook. After that everything fell into place very quickly. Everything became clear. It's just a shame I did not realize sooner.” Polina Andreevna paused to see if the hermit would reply to that, but he said nothing. “On the very first day you found the bench hidden under the water and hinted at this ‘piquant circumstance’ in your letter, promising to reveal all the next day and present a simple answer to the riddle. That night you went to track down the ‘Black Monk’—and you succeeded. You followed the hoaxer to the clinic to discover who he was. You saw the laboratory and you were intrigued. You pried into his notes … I could not understand a thing from those formulae, but you could. They were right at the university when they predicted you would be another Faraday. There was something written there about this cave and this sphere that changed all your plans and you began playing out your own nocturnal performance.” She glanced fearfully at the mysterious, glimmering sphere. “What is so special about this sphere that could make you do such terrible things and destroy so many people's lives?”

“Enough,” said the hermit, pulling off the cowl that was no longer needed and shaking his head of curly hair. “This sphere contains everything that I could ever desire. Absolute freedom, fame, riches, happiness! First, this object consists of at least a hundred thousand ounces of the most precious metal in the world, and every ounce is a month of life without any limitations. Second, and most important, that half-witted midget has given me the idea for a great project, a great idea! I am the only one who can appreciate it and understand it! When they threw me out of the university, I thought it was the end of everything. But no, behold, here is my future.” He gestured around the cave. “No need for degrees, no need to spend years as an assistant to some provincial luminary of science. I shall set up my own laboratory, in Switzerland. I shall develop the theory of emanation myself! No one can tell me what to do; I have no need to beg for money from anyone! Oh, the world shall know the name of Lentochkin!” Alexei Stepanovich leaned down and stroked the shimmering surface lovingly. “It is a shame that I have not managed to file off more platinum-iridium. But never mind—what I have already will suffice for my purposes.”

He turned to face Polina Andreevna, and the sunken cheeks wrinkled up into the semblance of a smile, with no trace of their former dimples.

“You tracked me down a bit too soon, Sister. But at least now I can speak out after mumbling to myself for so long. Much more of that and my brains might really have addled. You have a quick mind; you are able to appreciate my scheme. Well conceived, was it not? Especially the primordial nakedness? I had to maintain a foothold in Canaan somehow, while I prepared everything. During the day I relax in Eden, eating pineapples (ah, how sick I am of those damn things!), and at night I take my cassock out from under a bush and go striding off around the island to frighten the locals. And the best thing is that I am absolutely beyond suspicion. Mr. Lampier and I made an excellent pair of ‘Basilisks’—we frightened all the curious and pious pilgrims away from the shoreline. Ah, one more month and I would have filed off not five pounds, but fifty or a hundred. Then I could have set up an entire research center, not just a laboratory. The conditions in which the natural factor comes into effect have been determined and confirmed in Lampier's experiments,” he said in a low voice, no longer talking to Polina Andreevna, but to himself. “Now I can try to create an artificial factor—there will be enough money to make a start, and then the blockheads will shell out…”

“What is this factor?” Lisitsyna asked guardedly.

Alexei Stepanovich started and beamed another withered smile at her.

“You wouldn't understand that. But you can appreciate the elegance of my solution to the problem. I arranged everything quite beautifully, didn't I? A quiet idiot sitting in his glass palace and talking in riddles, luring the stupid carp to the right spot—that empty hut. Then hook them, bash them over the head, and into the bucket with them! I know that you, Mademoiselle Pelagia, could never stand the sight of me, but you must agree it was all wonderfully well planned.”

“Yes, it was ingenious,” Polina Andreevna conceded. “But absolutely ruthless. It was your cruelty that first made me dislike you so much. I did not like the hideous revenge you took on the vice-chancellor to settle your grudge.”

Alexei Stepanovich started walking around the cave, shaking his work-weary fingers.

“Oh, yes, of course. Prince Bolkonsky would not have acted like that. That's why he never became a Bonaparte. But I shall. There is my Toulon!” Lentochkin nodded at the miraculous sphere again. “With this fulcrum, I can overturn that other, far more voluminous sphere. Ah, I should have smacked you harder that time, with the stilt. I have had only six nights with the sphere, and now I shall have to leave. Never mind—what I already have will suffice for my idea.”

He slapped himself on the chest and halted beside the gaping black maw of the gallery. Raising one hand to his mouth, he licked the palm—it was covered with bloody, broken blisters. However, it was not the blisters that caught Mrs. Lisitsyna's attention, but the strange long blade glittering in Alexei Stepanovich's fingers.

“What's that you have there?”

“This?” He held up a narrow strip of metal covered with brilliant points of light. “A diamond grit file. It's the only thing that will touch platinum-iridium. I borrowed it from the good Mr. Lampier. Of course, he is an absolute blockhead, but I am grateful to him for his idea of a nuclear factor and his analysis of the material of the meteorite.”

Polina Andreevna did not understand about the idea, or about the “material of the meteorite” either, but she did not ask any questions— she had only just realized that after his apparently random movements around the cave, Lentochkin was now blocking her only route of escape.