Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (9 page)

On the seventh day, just when Mitrofanii, haggard and tormented by insomnia, was on the verge of setting out for the Blue Lake in person (the bishop was so fearful for Alyosha that he was no longer concerned about the diplomatic complications), the letter finally arrived, but it wa: quite different in kind from the first. The bishop once again summoned his advisers and read them the epistle he had received, but, unlike the previous occasion, he seemed puzzled rather than pleased. On this occasion Alyosha went straight to the business at hand, without any introductory remarks or exhortations.

Alexei Stepanovich's Second Letter

I realize that I am quite impossibly late with this continuation, but there are
serious
grounds for that. Precisely
serious
grounds, not humorous ones. The Black Monk is no trick played by some adroit swindler, as I assumed at first; this is something different. But so far I have not been able to understand exactly what.

I had better tell you everything that has happened in the right order—first, to avoid any confusion, and second, because I need to clarify for myself how it all happened, what came first and what came later. Because my head is spinning.

After sending off my last letter to you and eating a hearty supper (was that really only a week ago? It feels like months or even years), I set out for Lenten Spit as if I were on my way to a jolly picnic, savoring in advance the cunning trap in which I would catch the presumptive hoaxer who had decided to frighten the peace-loving monks. I took up my position between two large boulders in a spot I had noted earlier, settling in with every possible comfort. I spread out the blanket I had brought with me from the hotel, and I had tea with rum splashing in my thermos flask and a bundle of small cakes from the remarkable local confectioner The Temptation of St. Anthony. I sat there, enjoying my snack and chuckling to myself as I waited for the moon to rise. The lake was as dark as could be—you couldn't have spotted a water sprite, if there had happened to be one—and Outskirts Island was no more than a vague outline.

But then a yellow stripe of moonlight appeared on the smooth surface of the water, the color of the night changed from an inky black monotone to a shimmering gleam, and the darkness shrank away to the edges of the sky, leaving the moon enthroned on high at its center. And at that very instant, right in front of me, a black silhouette appeared, partly blocking out the pale disk of the lamp of night. I am prepared to swear on anything at all that only a second before, it had not been there, and then suddenly there it was—elongated, with a pointed top, swaying slightly. And not exactly in the place I had been expecting it, where a flat rock protruded only slightly above the water, but a little to one side, where there were no rocks at all.

At first I was simply astounded. Where could he have come from? It had been dark before the moon rose, but not so dark that I could have failed to see a man only a dozen paces away!

According to my plan, the moment “Basilisk” appeared, I should have emerged from my hiding place, wearing a long cloak with a hood, very similar to the hermit's own robes, and howled in a sepulchral voice, “I am the blessed Saint Basilisk! Go to hell, you impostor!”—I imagined that in that way I would scare the scarecrow, so that he would tumble off his rock into the water.

But at the sight of the black figure that seemed to be hanging above the surface of the lake, something happened to me—an absolutely specific, physiological reaction. I felt an unaccountable cold sensation run across my skin, and while my arms and legs didn't exactly lose the power of movement (I remember quite clearly setting the thermos flask down on the ground and feeling my icy forehead with my hand), they moved slowly and reluctantly, as if I were underwater. I have never felt anything like it before in my life.

Light began streaming out from behind the silent silhouette, light far brighter than that of the moon. No, I can't describe it very well, because “streaming” is not the right expression, and I don't know how to explain it any better. A moment earlier there was nothing except the moonlight, and then it was as if the entire world had been lit up so brightly that I had to screw up my eyes and shield them with my hand.

I was almost deafened by the pounding of the blood in my ears, but I still heard four words very distinctly, even though they were spoken very quietly: “Not salvation, but decay”—and the black figure gestured toward Outskirts Island. And then, when it began moving straight toward me over the water, the numb torpor fell away and I took to my heels in a most shameful fashion—I believe I was even sobbing as I ran. See what a bold paladin you have chosen for yourself, oh short-sighted prince of the church!

Afterward, when I had run as far as the chapel, I felt ashamed. If this was, after all, some especially cunning hoax, I could not allow myself to be made a fool of, I told myself. And if it was not a hoax … Well, then the Lord God existed, the world was created in seven days, there were angels flying in the sky, and the lamps of heaven rotated around the earth. Since all of that was quite impossible, Basilisk could not exist either. Having reached this conclusion, I strode off with the utmost determination in the direction I had come from and arrived back at the spit, but there was no longer any mysterious glow or black silhouette to be seen. I walked up and down the shoreline, stamping my feet loudly to keep up my courage and whistling a song about a priest who had a dog. When I had finally convinced myself of the unshakably material nature of the world, I retrieved the thermos flask and hotel property and came back to the Ark.

But I decided not to write a report until I had seen Basilisk again and made absolutely certain either that he was a hoaxer's trick or that I had lost my mind and the best place for me was in Dr. Korovin's clinic.

As ill luck would have it, the next two nights were overcast. I strolled around the streets of Ararat, which now seemed so tedious, drank fizzy holy water and Jamaican coffee, and read all sorts of nonsense in the monastery's reading hall just to pass the time. During this period of enforced idleness my nerves were tormented so badly with the agonizing anticipation and my mental arguments with myself that on the eve of the expedition my courage almost deserted me completely. However, it was not possible to let such an opportunity slip, so I made a decision that seemed to me as wise as any of Solomon's.

I have already mentioned in my last letter the barrister from Moscow who is a devotee of smoked salmon and fresh air. His name is Kubovsky and he has been coming to Canaan every autumn for several years. They say that November is an especially fine month here. We had taken rooms in the same hotel and dined together a few times, when he had eaten and drunk about five times as much as I (and my appetite is far from poor, as your chef and my benefactor, Kuzma Savelievich, can testify). I thought Kubovsky to be a man of sober, even clinical cast of mind, without the slightest interest in the supernatural. For instance, he was inclined to explain absolutely all the manifestations of human psychology exclusively from the viewpoint of the ingestion, digestion, and evacuation of food. If he saw me, for instance, in a state of pensiveness while I was considering the mystery of the Black Monk, he would say, “Hey my dear fellow, what you need is a bit of something spicy, and then your melancholy will disappear.” Or if I pointed out from a distance the romantic lady who had almost distracted me from your mission (ah, Princess Lointaine, how can I think of you now?), Kubovsky would shake his head and say, “Ah, look how pale she is, the poor soul. No doubt she eats food that is not nutritious, and not enough of it, and that makes the stomach sluggish and causes constipation. A bit of sturgeon with cranberry syrup is good for that, and then, of course, a little glass of Italian grappa or French calvados. That will bring the bowels back to life.” Well, anyway, you can see the sort of man he is.

And so I had the idea of taking him with me under the guise of a nighttime promenade for the sake of the digestion. First, I thought that if I had company I would not be so frightened, and second, if Basilisk was a hallucination, the barrister would not see him. And third, if it was some kind of circus trick, a prosaic man like him would never fall for it. I deliberately did not warn my companion in advance, in order to maintain the purity of the experiment.

And that was clearly a mistake, for which I now feel guilty.

Everything happened exactly as it had the previous time. I deliberately seated Kubovsky with his face toward Outskirts Island and sat down with my own eyes glued to the same place. There was nobody there, nobody and nothing—there is absolutely no doubt about that. But no sooner did the moon break through the thin clouds than the familiar phantom appeared on the water and was almost immediately shrouded in a blinding radiance.

I didn't hear any voice this time because my cynic—who was just about to dispatch a chocolate bonbon into his mouth—began yelling loudly in a wild voice and went dashing away from the spot with the most surprising agility. I could not keep up with him (oh, yes, the very instant that repulsive, deathlike chill crept across my skin, all of my determination evaporated) and I probably would not have caught up with him before the outskirts of the town if halfway there Kubovsky had not suddenly fallen flat on his face. I squatted down beside him and saw that he was wheezing and rolling his eyes, showing no desire to leap up and run on …

He died. Not there on the road, but in the morning, in the monastery's infirmary. A cerebral hemorrhage. In other words, the Grim Reaper that the violet-eyed Faust warned him about had come calling after all.

What do you think, Your Reverence: Who was it that killed the poor glutton—I or the Black Monk? Even if it was the monk, I am still an accomplice.

When the infirmary monks (all wearing beards, with white coats over their black cassocks) had taken the dead man away to the ice room, I set out straightaway for Dr. Korovin's clinic and, although it was still early in the morning, I demanded an immediate meeting with this leading light of neuropsychological medicine. At first they absolutely refused to let me through without a recommendation from anyone, but you know me: if necessary, I will creep through the eye of a needle. I had two questions for the medical luminary. The first was, Is a group visual and auditory hallucination possible? The second was, Had I lost my mind?

Korovin dealt with the second question first, and it was an hour later before he answered it. He asked me questions about my daddy and mummy and various ancestors going all the way back to my great-grandfather Pantaleimon Lentochkin, who died of alcohol poisoning. Then he shone a light into my eyes, tapped on my joints with a little hammer, and made me draw geometrical shapes. Finally he declared, “You are perfectly well, only in a state of severe, almost hysteroid fright. Well then, now I can listen to what you have to say about the hallucination.” I told him. He listened to everything very closely, nodding, and then propounded the following explanation, which at the time I found entirely satisfactory.

“During the autumn nights here on the islands,” said Korovin, “the exceptionally high level of ozone in the air and the effect of light reflected from the surface of the water frequently give rise to various kinds of optical illusion. Sometimes, especially when the moon is shining, a black pillar can be seen moving across the lake, and a poetically or religiously inclined sensibility might well be reminded of a monk in hermit's dress. In actual fact it is merely a small waterspout.” “What?” I asked incredulously. “A waterspout, a small one, that is. It can be very localized: still air all around, but at one spot some whimsical trick of atmospheric pressure suddenly produces a flow of air, and a rather rapid one too. It can pick up fallen leaves and fine litter from the shore of the lake, swirl them around, twist them into a cone—and there you have your Black Monk. Especially if you were already expecting to see him.”

I left the doctor feeling completely reassured, apart from my regret for the ill-fated Kubovsky but the farther I moved away from the clinic, the louder the voice of inner doubt became. What about the unearthly light? And the words that I had heard so clearly? And it couldn't possibly have been a waterspout—it had moved slowly, no more than a few paces, and its outlines had really been very distinct.

Subsequent events confirmed that waterspouts and the ozone level in the air had nothing at all to do with the business.

Having destroyed one life, Basilisk seemed suddenly to cast off his shackles and break free of the bounds of Lenten Spit.

The following night he appeared to Brother Kleopa, the boatman who is the only person in New Ararat allowed to visit Basilisk's Hermitage: once a day he ferries necessities to the hermits and collects the rosary beads that they have made. That night, when Kleopa was making his way back to the monastery from some friend's house, Basilisk appeared before him just beside the monks’ graveyard. He gave the boatman a mighty shove in the chest that sent him tumbling to the ground and forbade him in a thunderous voice to take his boat to Outskirts Island, because “the place is cursed.”

The impact of this sensational news was lessened somewhat by the general knowledge of Brother Kleopa's intemperance with regard to wine—he had been walking back to his cell tipsy on that night too. Even the eyewitness himself could not swear that he had not imagined seeing the saint. But nonetheless the rumor immediately spread throughout the whole of Canaan.

And then, two nights after that, an event occurred that could not be doubted, one that had very grave, even tragic, consequences.