Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (52 page)

“Are you going to kill me too?” she asked quietly, gazing mesmerized at the glittering file. “Like Lagrange, like Theognost, like Ilarii?”

Alyosha pressed one hand to his chest, as if he were trying to justify his actions. “I do not kill anyone unnecessarily, only if I have to. It's La-grange's own fault that he had such a hard head—I couldn't stun him, so I had to shoot him. Theognost was preventing me from moving into the hermitage—he was occupying my place. And the monks had already held Ilarii's funeral, so he was already as good as dead anyway.”

His white teeth suddenly glinted in the light of the lantern, making it clear that the ingenious youth was not trying to justify himself at all; he was joking. But then his smile instantly disappeared and he spoke in a serious, puzzled voice.

“There's just one thing I don't understand. What were you counting on when you came in here? You already knew you would find me here, not that weakling Lampier! Were you hoping I would take a chivalrous attitude toward a lady? That was foolish! Really, Sister, I simply cannot let you live, no matter how much I might wish to. I need at least one day to get away from the archipelago.”

He sighed regretfully, then winked and bared his teeth—he had only been playing the fool again.

“To tell you the truth, regardless of that consideration, I would still kill you anyway. I don't feel any pity for you, you skulking little mouse. And why should I want a witness like you around when I am a world-famous scientist?”

Alexei Stepanovich lifted up the hand holding the file, and it flashed and sparkled with points of multicolored light, like a magic wand in some fairy tale.

“Just look, Mademoiselle Pelagia. It is a beautiful dream—to receive your death from a thing of such beauty; Cleopatra herself would envy you. And it is so sharp that it will quite easily run through your ginger head from one ear to the other. I'll put you in the pile, under some dried-out righteous holy man,” said Alyosha, screwing up his eyes dreamily. “The hermits won't notice you straightaway. Only when you start to rot. You're not a saint, are you—so you're not guaranteed incorruptibility.” He laughed. “And you'll enjoy it. At least when you're dead, you'll be lying under a man.”

Polina Andreevna backed away, covering her chest with the traveling bag like a shield. Her fingers fumbled in panic at the catch.

“Go away, Alexei Stepanovich. Do not take another sin on your soul; you have already committed more than enough atrocities. I swear to you in Christ's name that I will do nothing until tomorrow, until three o'clock in the afternoon. You will have time to leave the island on the morning ferry.”

She clicked the small, nickel-plated balls apart and thrust her hand into the traveling bag. Lagrange's revolver was in there, wrapped in her drawers. She would not shoot, of course, but it would be enough to frighten him. Then Alyosha would understand what she had been counting on when she entered the cave and put herself in danger.

Lentochkin took a few quick steps forward, and Polina Andreevna suddenly realized that she would not have enough time to unwrap the thin silk. She ought to have taken the gun out sooner, while she was walking along the gallery.

She pressed her back against the uneven wall. She could retreat no farther.

The false hermit was in no hurry. He stopped in front of the cringing woman as if he were contemplating where to strike—at the ear, as he had threatened, at the neck, or at the stomach.

The lantern had almost run out of oil and was hardly giving any light at all. The darkness behind Alyosha's back was impenetrable.

“Why have you got your head down like that?” Lentochkin laughed. “Would you like to butt, but God didn't give you any horns? If that's the case, you shouldn't have meddled in the corrida, my little hornless cow.” He suddenly raised the file above his head like a toreador's sword and sang a phrase from the latest fashionable opera:
‘Toréador, prends garde
ä
toi…”

The melody was suddenly choked off as he collapsed under the blow from the knotty staff that came smashing down on his curly head.

There, standing just behind the spot where Alyosha had been, was a black shadow in a pointed cowl. Polina Andreevna tried to scream, but her mouth would not draw in the air.

“I have violated the charter for you,” the holy elder Israel said in a peevish voice. “I have left my cell at night. Defiled myself with the sin of violence. And all because I knew that women like you are obstinate and curious to the point of foolhardiness. There was no way you would ever go back to the world until you had sniffed out every last detail with that freckled nose of yours. Well then, look, since you are already here.

There it is, the heavenly fragment that we hermits have guarded for hundreds of years. It is the sign sent down to our founding father, Saint Basilisk. Only be sure not to say a word of this to anyone. Agreed?”

Mrs. Lisitsyna nodded without speaking, for after all these horrors she had not yet recovered the gift of speech.

“And who is this boy?” the abbot asked, leaning on his staff as he bent down over the body on the ground.

Before she could answer, Alyosha suddenly lifted himself up and thrust the file deep into the center of the hermits chest. Then he pulled it out and struck again.

Israel fell on top of his murderer. His hands fumbled at the ground, but he could not get up, or even raise his head.

It took Lentochkin only a few moments to toss the holy elders body aside and get to his feet, but that was enough for Polina Andreevna to run from the wall to the middle of the cave, grab the revolver out of the traveling bag, and free it from the slippery silk. She threw the bag down on the ground, clutched the fluted handle of the revolver in both hands, and aimed it at Lentochkin.

He looked at her without any sign of fear. His mouth twisted into a crooked sneer as he rubbed the bruised back of his head and tugged the blade out of the hermit's chest without the slightest effort—like pulling a knife out of butter.

“Do you know how to use a firearm, Sister?” Lentochkin asked mockingly. “Do you know which little thingamajig to press?”

He walked casually straight toward her, waddling. The diamonds on the file were dull now—the blood had dimmed their sparkle.

“Yes! This is a Smith & Wesson forty-five six-shooter, central-firing with a double-action trigger,” Mrs. Lisitsyna replied, blurting out the information she had gleaned from the ballistics textbook. “The bullet weighs half an ounce, its initial velocity is seven hundred feet a second, and it can puncture a pine board three inches thick from a distance of twenty paces.”

It was a shame that her voice was so unsteady.

But even so the required effect was achieved.

Lentochkin stopped dead and looked at the black hole of the muzzle, perplexed.

“And where's the thirty-eight-caliber Colt?” Polina Andreevna asked, hoping to reinforce the impression she had made. “The one you used to shoot Lagrange? Give it to me, but slowly, with the handle first.”

When Alyosha failed to respond, she did not say anything else to him, but simply cocked the trigger. The click was not really all that loud, but in the silence of the cave it sounded most impressive.

The murderer shuddered, dropped the file on the ground, and held his hands out, palms upward. “I haven't got it! I threw it in the water that night! I couldn't hide it in the conservatory, could I? What if the gardener had found it?”

Emboldened now, the investigator jerked the long barrel menacingly: “You're lying! You weren't afraid to hide ‘Basilisk's’ clothing, were you?”

“Of course not—just an ordinary cassock and an old pair of boots. If anyone had found them, they wouldn't have taken any notice. Ah!” Lentochkin suddenly screeched, throwing his hands up in the air and gazing in horror at something behind Polina Andreevna's back. “Ba-Ba-Basilisk!”

Alas, Mrs. Lisitsyna fell into his childishly simple trap. Even wise men stumble. She swung around in confusion, peering into the darkness. What if the shade of the hermitage's holy founder really had appeared to protect his treasure?

But there was no shade, and meanwhile the crafty Alyosha had seized his chance to duck down and make a dash for the gallery.

“Stop!” Polina Andreevna shouted in a terrible voice. “Stop, or I'll fire!”

She was about to rush into the Approach after him when she heard a groan. A terrible groan, full of excruciating suffering.

She swung around and saw the holy elder Israel propping himself up on one elbow and reaching to her with a trembling, emaciated hand.

“Don't go, don't leave me like this …”

She only hesitated for a moment.

Let him get away. Compassion was more important than vengeance, even than justice. And what point was there in pursuing the villain anyway? What if he didn't stop? She couldn't shoot him for that. And then again, where could he go in Kleopa's little boat with its puny oars? Well, he could get as far as Canaan. But he would still never reach the mainland.

And so, casting aside all lesser considerations, Polina Andreevna walked across to the dying man, knelt down on the ground, and put the holy elder's head on her knees. Carefully removing his cowl, she saw his eyelids trembling feebly and his lips moving soundlessly.

The lantern gave one last bright flash of light and went out. She had to light a candle and stick it to a stone.

Meanwhile the holy elder had already prepared his soul to be set free and folded his hands across his chest.

Then suddenly he raised his eyebrows piteously and looked at Polina Andreevna with fear and entreaty in his eyes. His lips whispered a single, short word:

“Forgive …”

And this time she did forgive him—without the slightest strain, she simply forgave him because she could. And she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.

“Good,” the holy elder said with a smile and closed his eyes.

A few minutes later they opened again, but they were already empty and lifeless.

WHEN MRS. LISITSYNA went down to the shore to see if Lentochkin had already reached Canaan on Kleopa's boat, there were two surprises waiting for her. First, the boat was still where she had left it, completely undamaged. And second, she saw an entire flotilla of boats with their oars raking the water in unison, heading toward Outskirts Island from the opposite shore, rowlocks creaking, oarsmen gasping, torches blazing brightly.

And there, standing in the prow of the leading boat and shaking his crosier belligerently as his long beard fluttered in the fresh breeze, was His Grace Mitrofanii.

Epilogue

JOY TO ALL WHO SORROW AND GRIEVE

THAT SELFSAME BREEZE was blowing on the other side of Outskirts Island, not merely fresh, as it was in the gulf, but gusting powerfully.

A young man dressed in a cassock, with his cowl thrown behind his shoulders, pulled a boat out from its hiding place between two boulders, got into the rocker, and pushed off with an oar. When he had rowed a little way from the shore, he threw the oar into the bottom of the boat and raised a slim mast, on which he hoisted a white sail to catch the fair wind, and his light bark began skimming fleetly across the waves—perhaps moving even faster than the steamship, especially since the steamship had to follow the twisting fairway, but the rocker had nothing to fear from the shoals.

The traveler had a compass, which he checked occasionally, evidently afraid of running off course in the darkness. From time to time he turned the rudder or trimmed the sail, but when the scarlet rim of the rising sun appeared over the mist-wreathed lake, the young man stopped worrying.

And the reason for this was that as the first timid ray of sunlight traced out a line to the horizon, it lit up a golden spark at the edge of the sky that did not fade away again. It was the dome of the bell tower of the Church of Joy to All Who Sorrow and Grieve, the main church of the town of Sineozersk, which on a clear day could be seen from twenty-five miles away. So the boat had not gone astray in the night—it was still exactly on course.

The helmsman set the bow of his rocker direct in line with the Church of Joy and began humming a jolly little tune.

Things could not possibly have been going better. Two more hours, and the voyage would be over—the wind did not look likely to change. It was a shame, of course, that he had not managed to collect more of the precious filings, but in any case, he already had five pounds or so.

The small but heavy bag was hanging under his cassock, against his iliac bone. The string had chafed his neck a bit, but that was nothing. Five pounds—eighty ounces, each worth …

His calculations were cut short by a sudden attack of nausea. The young man leaned over the side, groaning and gurgling as the spasms shook his body. Then he slid down, exhausted, into the bottom of the boat, wiped the sweat from his brow, and smiled lightheartedly. The bouts of sickness and weakness had become frequent recently—no doubt because of the poor food and the nervous strain. All he needed was a rest and a few good meals, and it would pass.

He massaged his temples furiously to suppress the pounding of the blood. A lock of wavy hair came away in his fingers, and that upset the youth far more than the preceding fit. But not for long. I should think so, he told himself. I haven't washed my hair in a month. It's a miracle I'm not riddled with lice. Never mind. I'll travel third class to Vologda, in modest style, and then I'll get dressed up and book into a good hotel, with a bathroom and a restaurant and a hairdresser.