Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog

by Boris Akunin

  Bubentsov leaned down closer, looking into Tatishcheva’s eyes again.

  “I know how to perpetuate your memory. What you need is not a headstone of Carrara marble, or a chapel. All that is nothing but dead stone. What you need is a memorial of a different kind, one that will spread out from Drozdovka through the whole of Russia, and then through the whole world. Who will continue your noble labors in the effort to breed the white bulldog? For all of them it is no more than a foolish caprice, an absurd whim. Your Miss Wrigley cannot stand dogs.”

  “That’s true,” squeaked Marya Afanasievna. “Last year she even dared to get herself a cat, but Zagulyai and Zakidai tore him in two.”

  “There, you see. But I have been a dog-lover since my childhood. My father had excellent borzois. You could say that I was raised in the kennels. It will take another ten years for this sturdy chap”—Vladimir Lvovich fondled the ear of the puppy, who was snoring sweetly close beside the general’s widow—“to father a firm, stable breed. I shall call the breed the Tatishchev bulldog, so that a hundred and two hundred years from now…”

  At that very moment Zakusai, awoken by this touch and closely observing the hand that was absentmindedly tousling his ear, took decisive action and snapped at the pampered finger with his sharp little teeth.

  “Ah!” Bubentsov cried briefly in surprise and jerked his hand away, sending the puppy flying head over heels to the floor. Not offended in the slightest, Zakusai gave a joyful bark and suddenly darted straight for the door, which had not been completely shut, leaving just a crack open.

  “Catch him!” cried Marya Afanasievna, started up from her pillow in a panic. “Tanya, Tanya, he’s gone again!”

  The maid jumped up from her chair, still half asleep and totally bemused, and Vladimir Lvovich stood up as well.

  The round white rump stuck in the narrow crack of the door, but not for long. The fat little legs scraped rapidly at the floor, the door opened just a little wider, Zakusai broke through and was free.

  “Stop!” shouted Bubentsov. “Don’t worry, aunty, I’ll catch him soon enough.”

  The three of them—Vladimir Lvovich, Pelagia, and Tanya—ran out into the corridor. The white pup was already at its far end. Seeing that the enormity of his daring had been duly appreciated, he yelped in triumph and disappeared around the corner.

  “He’ll run out into the garden,” gasped Tanya. “The doors are wide open!”

  Zakusai ran quicker than his pursuers—as she bounded out onto the veranda, Pelagia was barely in time to see the little white blob leap friskily from the step straight into the darkness.

  “We have to catch him quickly, or aunty will go out of her mind,” Bubentsov said anxiously, and he began issuing commands in military style: “You, whatever your name is, to the left, the nun to the right, I go straight on. Shout to the others and tell them to search, too. Forward!”

  A moment later the drowsy calm of the park was shattered by numerous voices calling to the fugitive.

  “Zakusai! Here, boy, Zakusai!” called Pelagia.

  “Zakusai, come here, you damned pest!” Tanya’s shrill voice called out somewhere behind the raspberry patch.

  “Gentlemen, Zakusai has run off!” Bubentsov’s brisk cavalryman’s tenor informed the others who were wandering about the park.

  And they were also quick to respond.

  “Hey there!” Pyotr Georgievich responded from somewhere in the distance. “He won’t get away, the little tormentor! We’ll find him and punish him!”

  “Tally-ho, tally-ho!” Kirill Nifontovich hallooed from the birch grove. “Miss Wrigley, I’ll go to the clearing, and you go over that way!”

  And now on all sides there were branches cracking, merry voices calling, laughter rippling. The customary game, by now already a ritual, was beginning.

  Sister Pelagia gazed hard into the darkness and listened for that familiar squealing coming from any direction. And only a little while later, after about ten minutes, when she was already close to the riverbank, she finally saw something small and white ahead of her. She quickened her stride—it was definitely Zakusai. Exhausted from all the running, he had laid down to rest under the withered aspen, two steps away from the Englishwoman’s lawn.

  “So that’s where you are,” Pelagia sang quietly, thinking only of how to avoid startling the little scamp—then she would have to spend half the night searching all the thickets for him.

  There was a rustling of rapid footsteps in the bushes at one side—evidently someone else was hurrying to the same spot.

  The nun crept up to the puppy, bent down over him, and with a triumphant cry of “Got you!” seized hold of his plump white body with both hands.

  Zakusai did not make a sound, he did not even stir.

  Pelagia squatted down quickly. Her heart gave a tight shudder, as if refusing to pump any more blood, and she had a tight, hot feeling in her chest.

  The puppy’s head was strangely flattened and lying beside him was a big flat stone, still with a lump of wet earth clinging to it and gleaming in the moonlight. And there was the hole out of which the stone had been tugged.

  In death Zakusai’s little face had become long and sad. Now he really did look like a little angel.

  The steps were still rustling through the bushes, but not moving closer, on the contrary, they were farther away and less distinct now. And then Pelagia finally realized: Whoever it was, they were not hurrying to the spot, but away from it.

  CHAPTER 5

  A Terrible Fright

  MARYA AFANASIEVNA WAS dying. At the very beginning of the night, when she guessed what had happened from Tanya’s heartrending wailing, she lost the power of speech. She simply lay on her back, wheezing, her eyes gaping wildly up at the ceiling as her plump fingers fiddled and fidgeted with the edge of the blanket, shaking and shaking it, brushing at something that would not be shaken off.

  The doctor was brought from the town in the very fastest carriage-and-three. He felt the patient here and there, kneaded her a little, listened to her through a stethoscope, gave her an injection so that she would not choke, and then came out into the corridor and said with a dismissive wave of his hand: “She’s going. She should be given the sacraments.”

  Then he sat in the drawing room, drank tea with cognac, and talked in low voices with Stepan Trofimovich about the prospects for the harvest, glancing into the bedroom once every half-hour to see if she was still breathing. Marya Afanasievna was breathing, but ever more weakly as time passed, and she was oblivious to her surroundings for long periods at a time.

  Long after midnight the rural dean was brought, having been roused from his bed. He arrived disheveled and not yet fully awake, but in full vestments and with all the gifts of the Holy Sacrament. However, when he entered the dying woman’s room, she opened her eyes and mumbled implacably: “I don’t want him.”

  “Don’t you want the sacraments, granny?” Pyotr Georgievich asked in fright. He had been affected very powerfully by the dramatic events.

  Tatishcheva nodded her head very weakly.

  “What is it, then?” asked Sister Pelagia, leaning down to her. “You don’t want the holy father?”

  The old woman slowly lowered her eyelids, then raised them again and pointed upward and off to one side.

  Pelagia followed the line of her finger with her eyes. There was nothing special up there on the left: the wall, a lithograph with a view of St. Petersburg, a portrait of the deceased Apollon Nikolaevich, a photograph of His Grace Mitrofanii in full bishop’s vestments.

  “You want the bishop to administer the sacraments?” the nun guessed. The general’s widow closed her eyelids again and lowered her finger. Apparently that was it.

  They sent to Zavolzhsk again, to the episcopal see, and began waiting for Mitrofanii to arrive.

  No one slept all night long, but everyone scattered throughout the house. Here and there groups of two or three talked quietly among themselves, while others, in contrast, sat in
silent solitude. Pelagia had no opportunity to observe the way in which everyone behaved, which was unfortunate, for many things might have been revealed. Who knows, poor Zakusai’s killer might even have given himself away somehow or other. But Christian duty comes before worldly concerns, and the nun remained constantly at Marya Afanasievna’s side, reading prayers and whispering words of consolation that in all likelihood the sick woman could not even hear. It was not until dawn that Pelagia finally ventured out into the garden for some reason and returned after an absence of about half an hour in a state of great thoughtfulness.

  The sun rose and began clambering higher and higher; it was already past noon, and still His Grace was not there. The doctor merely shook his head and said that the patient was clinging on out of sheer stubbornness: She had got it into her head that she must hold out until her nephew arrived, no matter what, and now there was no way she would go until she had seen him.

  The attorney Korsh arrived. Bubentsov put Pelagia out of the room so that she would not interfere with the rewriting of the will. Spasyonny and Krasnov were summoned to be witnesses, because Naina Georgievna would not leave her room, Pyotr Georgievich asked to be excused, and Stepan Trofimovich merely frowned fastidiously. How could he think of wills at such a moment!

  Pelagia found all this very unpleasant, but there was nothing that she could do. Donat Abramovich Sytnikov appeared, but did not wish to interfere in other people’s family affairs—let things take their own course, he said, from which it followed that he was not after all quite as interested in the Goryaev wilderness as the mistrustful Marya Afanasievna had fancied.

  Bubentsov’s efforts over the dying woman were in vain; there was no rewriting of the will. An hour later Korsh emerged from the bedroom, wiping away the sweat with his handkerchief, and asked for some kvass.

  “It is not customary to attempt to guess a person’s last wishes from inarticulate mumbling,” he explained angrily to Sister Pelagia. “I’m not some fairground clown, I am a member of the notary’s guild.” And he ordered the horses to be harnessed to his britzka, even refusing the offer of dinner.

  Vladimir Lvovich darted out after him with a face darker than thunder. Overtaking the obdurate Korsh, he took him by the elbow and said something in a loud whisper. What he said is not known, but Korsh left in any case.

  What was heard, however, was Bubentsov’s shout from the courtyard after the departing britzka: “You’ll be sorry!”

  The attorney drove away, but a stream of new guests kept arriving, having learned of the sad event. There were neighboring landowners, and many of the province’s notables, including even the marshal of the nobility. It is unlikely that so great a crowd would have come to bid farewell to the general’s widow Tatishcheva if not for the rumors that had spread rapidly through the territory of Zavolzhie. The faces of those gathered together expressed, in addition to the mournful anticipation appropriate to the occasion, a strange excitement, and the words “will” and “puppy” were spoken frequently in low, hissing whispers.

  Miss Wrigley was enveloped in a strange agitation that became ever more noticeable as things went on. When it finally became clear that the will remained in force, the Englishwoman was entirely engulfed in something very much like a whirlpool. Ladies and gentlemen whom she scarcely knew, or did not know at all, approached her and spoke words filled with the most fervid sympathy, glancing curiously into her eyes. Others, in contrast, demonstratively avoided the heiress, their entire demeanor expressive of condemnation and even contempt. Poor Miss Wrigley lost her bearings completely and every now and then went dashing impulsively to seek out Pyotr Georgievich and Naina Georgievna, desperate to explain herself to them.

  However, Naina Georgievna still did not come out of her room, and Pyotr Georgievich had been appropriated by Bubentsov. When she went out into the courtyard to see if the bishop was coming at last, Pelagia saw Vladimir Lvovich rapidly leading the confused Petya as far away as possible from the general crowd, holding him by the shoulder with one hand and gesticulating with the other. She caught a brief snatch of a phrase: “…investigate the circumstances and appeal, you absolutely must appeal.”

  Moreover, the public servant had plenty of other business in hand as well. In the morning an express courier came galloping out to him from the town at breakneck speed, and in the afternoon there was another. On both occasions Vladimir Lvovich shut himself away in the library with the messengers for a long time, after which the mysterious riders hurtled off no less recklessly in the opposite direction. The investigation into the case of the missing heads was clearly being conducted in earnest.

  MITROFANII ARRIVED WHEN it was almost evening, after they had already given up hope.

  Approaching to be blessed, Pelagia said reproachfully: “Marya Afanasievna will be happy now. She is worn out with waiting, poor woman.”

  “Never mind,” replied His Grace, absentmindedly crossing everyone who had come out into the yard to meet him. “It is not her, but death who is tired of waiting. And there is no harm in taunting the grim reaper a little.”

  He seemed somehow brisk and businesslike, not solemn at all. As if he had not come to give a dying woman the last sacraments but to inspect the local deanery or on some other important but routine matter.

  “Air the carriage, it’s rather stuffy in there,” he said for some reason to the lay brother who was sitting beside the driver on the coachbox.

  To Pelagia he said: “Come on, then, take me to her.”

  “Your Grace, what about the gifts of the Holy Sacrament?” she reminded him. “You have to administer extreme unction.”

  “Extreme unction? Why not, I can give the last rites; unction is good for the health too. Father Alexii!”

  A subdeacon in a brocade surplice clambered ponderously out of the carriage, carrying a portable tabernacle.

  They walked along the dark corridor where the walls were lined with people bowing as their voices rustled: “Bless me, Your Grace.” Mitrofanii gave his blessing, but he did not seem to recognize anyone and he had an abstracted air. He turned everybody out of the bedroom, allowing only Father Alexii and Pelagia to enter with him.

  “What’s this, handmaid of the Lord, have you decided to die?” he asked the woman in the bed severely, and it was clear that this was not the nephew Mishenka talking, but the strict pastor. “Are you yearning so greatly to join our Heavenly Father? Has He called you, or are you imposing yourself on His hospitality? If it is your will, then it is a sin.”

  But the stern words produced no effect on Marya Afanasievna. She gazed fixedly at the bishop with a severe look in her eyes and waited.

  “Very well,” sighed Mitrofanii, and he pulled his black traveling cassock up over his head, revealing the gold chasuble beneath it, with the precious episcopal panagion on the chest. “Make ready, father.”

  The deacon placed a small silver dish on the bedside table and sprinkled grains of wheat onto it. He set an empty censer at its center and laid out seven candles. Mitrofanii blessed the unction and the wine, poured them into the censer, and lit the candles himself. As he anointed the dying woman’s forehead, nostrils, cheeks, lips, breast, and hands, he began reciting a prayer with quiet feeling: “Holy Father, Healer of spirit and of body, Who didst send Thine only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who does heal all ills and free us from death: Heal likewise this Thy handmaiden Marya of the bodily and spiritual ailments that do oppress her and return her to life through the grace of Thy Christ and the prayers of Mary, Most Glorious Ever Virgin, Mother of Christ our God….”

  Seven times the bishop performed the appointed rite and prayer, each time extinguishing one of the candles. Marya Afanasievna lay quietly, gazing meekly at the flames of the candles and moving her lips soundlessly, as if she was pronouncing the words: “Lord have mercy.”

  When the supplication concluded, Mitrofanii moved a chair up to the bed, sat down, and said in an everyday voice: “We’ll wait a little while to administer Holy Communion. I think t
he anointing will be enough for now.”

  Tatishcheva twitched the corner of her mouth in annoyance and gave a pitiful groan, but the bishop merely held up his hand.

  “Lie still and listen. You didn’t pass on yesterday evening, so now you can wait a little longer while your prelate talks to you. And if you decide to die it will be out of sheer obstinacy.”

  After this preamble His Grace fell silent for a moment and then he began speaking differently, less loudly but with an earnest sadness.

  “You often hear people say, even those who do not believe blindly, but with open eyes, that life is a precious gift from God. But it seems to me that it is not a gift at all, for a gift is intended to bring only pleasure to the heart and the body, while the life of mortal men contains little that is pleasurable. Bodily and spiritual torment, sin and vice, the loss of loved ones—that is our life. A fine gift, is it not? Therefore it seems to me that life should not be understood as a gift, but as a certain work of penance, such as is given to monks, and always his own work to each man, to the limit of his strength, no more but also no less. Each of us possesses a different spiritual strength, and so the severity of the work of penance is different. And likewise each of us has his own appointed term. Those on whom God takes pity He gathers to himself when they are children. For others He appoints a middling term, and those He wishes to test most of all He burdens with long years. The gift will come later, after life. Foolish sinners that we are, we fear it and call it death, but this death is the long-awaited meeting with our All-Merciful Father. The Lord tests each one of us in our own way and in His infinite ingenuity will never repeat Himself. However, it is a great sin and a grievous offense to our Heavenly Father if anyone should seek to shorten the appointed term of his work of penance illegitimately. It is not man who appoints this meeting, but God alone. Therefore is the church set so adamantly against suicide, regarding it as the worst of all sins. Though you may be suffering, in pain and despair, endure it. The Lord knows how much strength each of us has in his soul, and He will not lay an excessive burden on His offspring. What is required is to endure all things with patience so that through this your soul will be cleansed and you will be exalted. But what you are doing is straightforward suicide,” said Mitrofanii, growing angry and departing from his tone of confidential intimacy. “A strong, healthy old woman! What are you doing playing out this comedy? Offending the Lord for the sake of some white bulldog, trying to destroy your very soul! You shall not have deathbed absolution from me, I tell you, because the holy church does not connive with suicides! And if you remain stubborn, I shall have you buried outside the cemetery wall, in unhallowed ground. And I shall lodge objections against your will with the secular authorities, because under the law of Russia the wills of suicides have no validity!”