by Boris Akunin
“Take your Zakusai,” she said. “And hold him tight.”
“How do you know what he’s called?” the gardener asked, amazed. “Or have you been here before? Somehow I can’t recall.”
“Many things unknown to ordinary people are revealed through prayer to us persons of the monastic class,” Pelagia said in a didactic tone of voice.
Whether the unknown man believed her or not was not clear, but he took a fifteen-kopek coin out of his pocket and bowed as he thrust it into the nun’s bag.
“Take it, sister, it’s given with a pure heart.”
Pelagia did not attempt to refuse. She herself had no need of money, but even the smallest of gifts to God was a joyful thing if the intention was truly pure.
“Don’t you go on up to the house,” the gardener advised her, “don’t go wearing your legs out in vain. Our masters here don’t give charity to God’s people, ‘on prinsipul,’ they say.”
“I’m on my way to see Marya Afanasievna, with a letter from His Grace Mitrofanii,” said Pelagia, declaring her credentials, and the denizen of Drozdovka respectfully doffed the cap from his head, bowed, and switched from calling her “sister” to “mother.”
“You should have said straightaway, mother. And me pressing my money on you like a stupid fool. Follow me. I’ll take you there.”
He led the way, clutching Zakusai in both hands as the puppy wriggled and squealed in frustration.
To their right an odd-looking gentleman wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a cloak with a cape was strolling about on a grassy plot beside a pavilion of white stone. He was holding a small box of black lacquered wood under his arm and he had a long tripod with sharp, iron-tipped points in his hand. He thrust the tripod into the ground, then set the box on top of it, and it became clear that it was a photographic apparatus such as have ceased to be a rarity even in our remote province. The gentleman looked around, glanced briefly at the nun with no interest, and said to the gardener, “Well, Gerasim, so you’ve captured the fugitive, then? I’m just wandering through the park, photographing the way the steam rises from the ground. A rare optical effect.”
The gentleman was handsome, with a well-kempt beard and long wavy hair, and it was clear immediately that he was not from these parts. Pelagia liked the look of him.
“He’s an artist, makes photographic pictures,” Gerasim explained to his companion when they had walked on a little way. “All the way from Pettersburk. He’s staying here, a friend of Stepan Trofimovich, our manager. Arkadii Sergeevich his name is, Mr. Poggio.”
They walked on for another hundred paces, but there was still a lot of walking to do to reach that green roof. Suddenly there was a clopping of hooves against the dampened surface of the driveway behind them and, looking around, Pelagia saw a light gig and a rosy-cheeked gentleman in a fluffy white hat and linen frock coat sitting in it.
“Good health to you, Kirill Nifontovich,” said Gerasim, bowing. “Would you be hurrying on your way to supper?”
“And where else? Giddy-up, giddy-up!”
The small, faded eyes that radiated a childishly naïve curiosity lighted on Pelagia, the round cheeks set into the folds of a good-natured smile.
“Who’s this you’re escorting, Gerasim? Oho, and you have the royal infant, too.”
“The sister’s taking a letter from the bishop to the mistress.”
The man in the gig assumed a respectful expression and raised the hat off his steaming bald head.
“Allow me to introduce myself. Kirill Nifontovich Krasnov, local landowner and neighbor. Get in, mother, I’ll drive. Why should you have to be put to such trouble? And let’s take the little doggie along with us; I expect Marya Afanasievna’s missing him, all right. Peering from the porch on high for her dear herald drawing nigh.”
“Is that from Pushkin?” asked Pelagia, taking a seat beside this likeable chatterbox.
“I’m flattered,” he said with a bow and a crack of his whip. “No, I compose my own verse. The lines simply pour out of me of their own accord, whatever the occasion or even without any occasion at all. The only problem is that they don’t add up to poems, otherwise I’d be every bit as famous as Nekrasov and Nadson.”
Then he declaimed:
“My verses are as light as fleas.
Believe me when I say that these
Are poems not designed to tease,
But only to delight and please.”
A minute or two later they were already driving up to a large house adorned with all the attributes of magnificence in the style of the previous century—a Doric colonnade, disgruntled lions on pedestals, and even bronze Gross-Jägersdorf unicorns at the sides of the steps.
In the entrance hall Krasnov spoke in a whisper for some reason as he asked the pretty maid: “Well, Taniusha, how is she? You see, we’ve brought Zakusai back for her.”
The blue-eyed and plump-lipped Tanyusha only sighed.
“Very bad. She’s not eating or drinking anything. Keeps crying all the time. The doctor left not long ago. Didn’t say anything, just shook his head like that and left.”
THE SICK WOMAN’S bedroom was gloomy and smelled of lavender drops. Pelagia saw a wide bed, a corpulent old woman in a mobcap half-sitting and half-lying on a mound of fluffy pillows, and some other people whom it was awkward for her to study there and then, from the threshold, and it was a bit too dark anyway—her eyes would have to get used to the light first.
“My little Zakusai?” the old lady asked in a deep voice, half-rising and reaching out her plump, flabby hands. “So that’s where he is, my little droopy-cheeked love. Thank you, dear neighbor, for bringing him back.” (That was to Krasnov.) “Who’s this with you? A nun? I can’t see, come closer.” (This was to Pelagia.)
She moved closer to the bed and bowed.
“Marya Afanasievna, I bring you a pastoral blessing and wishes for a most speedy recovery from the bishop. That is why he has sent me, the nun Pelagia.”
“What do I want with his blessing!” the general’s widow Tatishcheva exclaimed angrily. “Why didn’t he come himself? Would you believe it, fobbed a nun off on me. I’ll strike out every damn thing I’ve left to the church in my will.”
The puppy was already in her hands, licking her old, wrinkled face without encountering the slightest resistance.
There was a loud bark at Pelagia’s feet, and a broad-chested, snub-nosed dog threw its front paws on the bed, wrinkling up its large forehead in annoyance.
“Don’t you be jealous, little Zakidai,” the sick woman said to him. “He’s your son, a little drop of your own blood. Come on then, let me pet you, too.”
She patted Zakusai’s parent on the broad nape of his neck and started scratching him behind the ear.
Meanwhile Pelagia examined the other people who were in the bedroom with a surreptitious sideways glance.
The young man and young woman were probably the widow’s grandson and granddaughter. His name was Pyotr Georgievich, and she was Naina Georgievna, both with the surname Telianov, from their father. They were surely the ones who would benefit most from the will.
Pelagia tried to imagine this man with clear eyes and dark hair, who was shifting from one foot to the other, in the act of sprinkling poison into the poor dogs’ food. She failed. Nor did she wish to think evil of the young woman, who was a striking beauty—tall and haughtily majestic, with the corners of her mouth turned down capriciously.
There was also a man in a jacket and Russian shirt, with a simple, open face, whose pince-nez and short little reddish-brown beard suited him remarkably badly. It was not clear who he was.
“His Grace has sent you a letter,” said Pelagia, holding the missive out to Tatishcheva.
“Why didn’t you say so? Give it to me.”
Marya Afanasievna took a closer look at the nun. Evidently taking note of her spectacles and her composed demeanor, she rephrased her request.
“Let me have it, mother, I’ll read it. And you all go and have
supper. Stop hanging around me pretending to be concerned. Let the holy mother have supper, too. Tanya, you make up a room for her, the corner room where that Spasyonny stayed just recently. That will be quite neat, his name meaning ‘saved’ and her being saved too because she’s a bride of Christ. If Vladimir Lvovich comes as he threatened to, put that Spasyonny in the empty wing. He won’t be missed, the repulsive man.”
AS SHE SETTLED Pelagia into the bright, tidy room on the ground floor with a window looking out onto the garden, the garrulous Tanya told the guest about this person Spasyonny who had stayed here earlier. Pelagia knew about Spasyonny (how could she not have known about him, when in recent weeks all the talk in the episcopal see had been of nothing but the synodical inspector and his associates?), but she listened attentively. Then Tanya moved on almost immediately to talk about Bubentsov’s Circassian—how frightening he looked, but how he was still a human being after all and really all he wanted was a kind word.
“When I met him in the yard that evening, it made me shudder. And he looked at me with those black eyes of his, and suddenly grabbed me right here. I went weak all over, and he…” Tanya said, holding a half-fluffed pillow in her hands and speaking in a half-whisper, then she suddenly recollected who she was talking to. “Oh, holy mother, what am I saying! You can’t listen to such things, you’re a nun.”
Pelagia smiled at the sweet girl. She washed after her journey and cleaned her habit with a damp brush to remove the dust of the road. Then she stood at the window for a while, gazing out into the garden. It was quite wonderfully lovely, even though it was neglected. Or perhaps it was lovely because it was neglected?
Suddenly she heard voices somewhere nearby. First a man’s voice, muffled and choking with powerful emotion: “I swear I will do it! After this it will be impossible for you to live here in any case! I shall make you go away!”
The number of amorous speeches that Sister Pelagia had heard in her life was very few, but still it was enough for her to tell immediately that this was the voice of a man madly in love.
“If I do go away, then it won’t be with you,” said a girl’s voice, even nearer than the first one. “And we’ll see whether I go away at all.”
You poor thing, Pelagia thought about the man, she doesn’t love you.
Beginning to feel curious, she gently pushed the window frame open and cautiously stuck her head out.
Her room was at the end, and the corner of the house was just to the right of the window. The girl was standing right on the very corner, only half-visible from the back. From the pink dress Pelagia realized immediately that it was Naina Georgievna. But it was a pity that the man was out of sight around the corner.
Just at that moment she heard a bell ring—the summons to supper.
THE TABLE WAS laid on the spacious veranda, with a balustrade and steps leading down into the garden with its trees, beyond which she could divine the wide expanse of the River, bearing its waters past the high bank at Drozdovka.
Pelagia saw quite a number of new faces and could not immediately make out who was who, but the meal and the tea-drinking that followed it lasted for a long time, so that little by little everything became clear.
In addition to those already known to the nun (the brother and sister, the photographic artist Arkadii Sergeevich Poggio, and the neighboring landowner Kirill Nifontovich Krasnov), also sitting at the table were the man in a Russian shirt she had seen earlier (that same one, with the plain yet somehow attractive appearance), another bearded man with a face like a peasant’s, but wearing a tweed suit, and a shriveled creature of the female sex in a clumsy hat decorated with imitation paradise apples.
The plain-looking man turned to be the manager of the estate, Stepan Trofimovich Shiryaev. The bearded man in tweed was Donat Abramovich Sytnikov, a well-known rich businessman from a long line of Zavolzhie Old Believers, who had recently bought a summer house quite nearby. In total contrast, not only was the shriveled creature not from Zavolzhie, she was not even Russian, and her name was Miss Wrigley. What role she filled at Drozdovka was not entirely clear, but it seemed most likely that Miss Wrigley belonged to that extensive estate of French, English, and German women who have raised their Russian charges, taught them what they were able, and become permanent residents under their masters’ roofs because it has simply become impossible to imagine the family without them.
At the beginning of supper an unpleasant shock awaited Sister Pelagia.
Marya Afanasievna came out to dine, leading Zakidai and Zakusai on a leash and leaning on Tanya’s shoulder. The bishop’s letter had evidently brought the general’s widow some relief, but her mood was not in the least improved. His Grace always said that what some sick people needed was not to have medicines stuffed into them, but to be made thoroughly angry. We must assume that this was the method he had applied in this particular case.
Father and son were led off to one side, where a bowl of marrow bones stood waiting for the former and a bowl of goose liver for the latter. There was a sound of crunching and champing and the two rumps, large and small, began rhythmically wagging their white stumpy tails.
“Tell me, Miss Wrigley, why are you wearing a conservatory on your hat?” Tatishcheva asked, looking around the table, clearly in search of someone with whom to find fault. “A fine ingénue she makes. But then she’s a rich heiress now, isn’t she? Time to be thinking of fiancés.”
Pelagia pricked up her ears and examined the Englishwoman more closely than before. She noted the vivacity of her expression, the thinness of her lips, the cunning wrinkles around her eyes.
Miss Wrigley was not at all cowed by this sudden attack and parried the thrust without the slightest servility, speaking Russian with hardly any accent at all.
“It is never too late to be thinking of fiancés. Even at your age, Marya Afanasievna. You spend so much time kissing that Zakidai of yours, you really ought to have legitimized your relations long ago. What kind of example is that to set little Naina?”
From the laugh that ran rapidly around the table, Pelagia realized that their hostess’s bark was worse than her bite and her tyranny more appearance than substance.
Having been rebuffed by the Englishwoman, the general’s widow turned her wrathful gaze on the nun.
“A fine bishop you have, and I a fine nephew. I could die here; the whole thing’s no more than a joke to him. Why are you gaping like that, mother?” she asked Pelagia furiously, speaking once more in a familiar tone. “Allow me to introduce you, gentlemen. You see before you a latter-day Vidoq in a nun’s habit. She’s the one who is going to save me, she is going to unmask the criminal. My thanks to my nephew Misha for going to so much trouble, I’m so grateful. Just listen to what he writes here.”
Marya Afanasievna took out the ill-starred letter, put on her spectacles, and began reading out loud: “…And in order that you, dear aunt, might feel completely reassured, I am sending to you my trusted assistant, Sister Pelagia. She is an individual of acute intellect and will quickly discover the truth concerning whoever it is that finds your dear dogs a hindrance. If any of those close to you truly wish you harm, which I should prefer not to believe, then Pelagia will expose and denounce the wretch.”
The table fell quiet, but Pelagia did not see whose face bore what expression, for she was sitting there utterly mortified and bright red, with her nose stuck into her plate of burbot soufflé.
She continued to feel embarrassed for a long time, and tried to attract as little attention as possible. But in any case, no one attempted to strike up a conversation with her. Her only confidant in the ostracism to which she was subjected, either deliberately or by chance, was the impudent Zakidai, who crept under the table and stuck his wrinkled nose out from under the tablecloth straight onto Pelagia’s knees. Zakidai had already emptied his bowl of marrow bones and now he had determined with unerring precision who among the diners at the table was the most vulnerable to extortion.
The eldest of the breed of wh
ite bulldogs gazed up unblinkingly at the nun, inclining his round head slightly to one side and wrinkling his Socratic brow. Although Pelagia was hungry, she felt guilty eating while facing this stare that pierced her very soul. She slyly removed a piece of soufflé from her fork and lowered her hand under the tablecloth. Her fingers were enveloped in a mist of hot breath and tickled by a rough tongue. The fish disappeared.
Meanwhile the conversation around the table had moved on to an interesting topic, the subject of talent and genius.
“Ever since I was little, what people have always said about me is ‘he is a talent, a talent,’” Poggio said, narrowing his eyes wryly. “When I was still young and foolish, it used to make me feel proud, but when I grew wiser, I started thinking it over: Only a talent? Why is Raphael a genius and I am only a talent? What is the difference between him and me? I went to Italy and saw Raphael’s Madonna—he is obviously a genius. But then I look at my canvases, and everything seems to be as it should. Original, and subtle, more subtle than Raphael’s work, far more subtle. And you can see straight off that it’s very talented, begging your pardon for my immodesty, but not work of a ge-ni-us,” he said, pronouncing the syllables separately, and he made a sound with his lips, as if he had let the air out of a balloon. “That is why I gave up painting, because I had talent but not genius. I make photographic pictures now, and they say that they are good ones, talented. But that is all right. There are no geniuses in photographic art as yet, and Raphael will not be standing in my light.” Arkadii Sergeevich gave an ironic laugh. “But take Styopa here, when we were at the academy together, I should say that he showed signs of genius. You ought not to have given up painting, Stepan. I saw you make a quick watercolor sketch only recently. The technique was rusty, of course, but such boldness of attack. Little pieces like that go for big money in the Parisian salons now, and you saw the way things were going twenty years ago. Tell me, when you took up the brush again after all those years—did it not make your heart sing?”