Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk

by Boris Akunin

  He sat down on the ground and covered his face with his hands.

  Oh, disaster!

  Gulliver and the Lilliputians

  “WILL YOU COME again? Do come. Or else he'll come to take me soon. Will you come?” Alyosha Lentochkin's childish voice and the intonation in which he had spoken those words, so full of timid hope, had imprinted themselves indelibly in Pelagiuss memory, and now, when it was already too late to change anything, they tormented his very soul. Pelagius put his hands over his ears, but it didn't help.

  He ought not to have been tracking the criminal, but trying to save poor Alexei Stepanovich; he ought to have been beside him all the time, protecting him, reassuring him. It had been clear (and the letter to Mitrofanii had said so) that the malefactor would not leave his victims in peace, that he would hound them to death. How could Pelagius have failed to hear a plea for help in Alyosha's pitiful babble?

  After grieving for a while to ease his remorse, Pelagius got up off the ground with a sigh, shook off the crumbs of glass that had stuck to his cassock, and set off back the way he had come.

  Korovin could find out about his patient's disappearance in the morning—from his gardener. There was no time to waste on unnecessary explanations now, and it was still not clear what role the doctor was playing in this whole business. And there was no point in Pelagiuss racking his brains over what had happened either, his poor head was already bursting. He needed to go to bed and sleep on things. Or try to.

  Sighing and sobbing, the novice made his way along the dark road to the town and stole into the pavilion to make the reverse transition from a male state to a female one.

  He had just removed his skullcap and cassock and taken the folded dress out of the traveling bag, when suddenly something incredible happened.

  One of the cumbersome iron cupboards magically detached itself from the wall and moved straight toward Polina Andreevna. Squatting down on her haunches, she gazed up at this miracle, so dumbfounded that she quite forgot to feel frightened.

  But there was good reason to be frightened. The automatic dispenser had blocked off the light patch of the door, and now Mrs. Lisitsyna could see that it was not a cupboard at all, but an immense silhouette in a black monk's cassock.

  Pressing her hands against her chemise (at that moment Polina Andreevna was not wearing anything else apart from her underwear and drawers), she said in a trembling voice, “I'm not afraid of you! I know you're not a ghost, but a man!”

  And she did something that she would hardly have dared to do if she had been wearing a humble monk's garb—she drew herself up to her full height, stood on tiptoe, and struck the nightmarish vision with her fist at the point where its face should have been, and then again and again.

  Although Mrs. Lisitsyna's fist was not large, it was firm and sharp, but the blows produced no effect whatever. Polina Andreevna merely scratched her knuckles against something rough and prickly.

  A gigantic pair of hands seized the female warrior's slim wrists and pressed them together. One hand clutched them both while the other wound string around them with incredible dexterity.

  Even without her hands, Polina Andreevna did not surrender—she began lashing out with her feet, endeavoring to catch her enemy on the knee or, if possible, even higher.

  The attacker squatted down, which made him much lower than the standing lady, and with a few swift movements he hobbled her ankles. Lisitsyna tried to jump back, but she could not move her feet and fell over onto the floor.

  Now she was obliged to resort to a woman's ultimate weapon— screaming. Perhaps that is what she should have done at the very beginning, instead of lashing out with her fists.

  She opened her mouth wide to call for help—in case there might be a detachment of peacekeepers patrolling the waterfront or simply someone out late walking by, but an invisible hand thrust a coarse, repulsive, sour-tasting rag between her teeth, and then tied her own scarf around her mouth to prevent her from spitting the gag out.

  Then the strongman picked up his helpless captive with an easy movement, holding her by the neck and her bound feet, as if she were a sheep, and threw her onto a sheet of sackcloth spread out on the floor, which Polina Andreevna had failed to notice. The well-prepared villain rolled her body over and over, wrapping the sackcloth around it at the same time, and in a second Mrs. Lisitsyna was transformed from a half-dressed lady into a shapeless bundle.

  Mumbling and wriggling, the bundle was raised into the air and thrown across the nape of a neck as broad as a horse's back, and Polina Andreevna felt herself being carried along. Swaying in rhythm to the long, even strides, at first she carried on struggling and uttering sounds of protest, but a tightly bound bundle does not allow much scope for movement, and it was unlikely that anyone could hear her groans, muffled as they were by the gag and the coarse sackcloth.

  Soon she began feeing unwell. From the rush of blood to her dangling head, from the sickening swaying, and, most of all, from the cursed sackcloth that prevented her from getting her breath properly and which was impregnated with dust. Polina Andreevna wanted to sneeze, but she could not—it is not so easy with a gag in your mouth!

  The worst thing of all was that her abductor seemed determined to carry his victim away to the very ends of the earth. He kept walking and walking without stopping or pausing for breath even once, and the agonizing journey seemed to go on forever. The semiconscious captive was sure that the island of Canaan must have been left behind long ago, because it was not big enough to accommodate such vast distances, and the giant was already marching across the waters of the Blue Lake.

  Just as Mrs. Lisitsyna, exhausted by nausea and the lack of air, was on the point of losing consciousness completely, the hollow thud of the villain's footsteps was replaced by creaking and a new swing was added to the sway of his walk, as if the very ground itself had begun to heave. Could it really be water, Polina Andreevna wondered fleetingly, her reason fading. But then why the creaking?

  Here the oppressive journey finally came to an end. The sackcloth bundle was dumped unceremoniously onto a hard surface—not the ground, but more likely a wooden floor. There was a clang and the creak of rusty hinges. Then the captive was lifted up again, not horizontally this time, but vertically, with her head downward, and lowered into some kind of hole or pit—in short, into someplace much lower than the level of the floor. The top of Polina Andreevna's head struck something hard, and then the bundle was dropped with a crash onto another flat surface. There was more creaking and grating from above and the sound of a door slamming, followed by the hollow echo of receding footsteps, as if someone were walking across the ceiling, and then silence.

  Lisitsyna lay there for a while, listening. Somewhere nearby there was water splashing, an awful lot of it. What else could she tell about her place of incarceration (for, to judge from the clang of the door, the captive had surely been incarcerated)? Probably that she was not on dry land, but on a ship of some sort, and the water was splashing against its side, or perhaps against the dockside. Straining her ears again, Polina Andreevna caught a quiet squeaking that she did not like the sound of at all.

  Having assembled her initial impressions, she began to act.

  The very first thing she had to do was to free herself from the disgusting sackcloth. Lisitsyna turned over from her back onto her side, then onto her stomach, again onto her back and—alas—came up against a wall before she had managed to free herself completely. Polina Andreevna was still tightly swaddled, but the outer layer of sackcloth had unrolled, giving her the opportunity to use another two senses: smell and vision. Unfortunately, the latter was of little use to the captive, for her eyes could not make anything out in the pitch darkness. As for the former, her dungeon smelled of stagnant water, old wood, and fish scales. And perhaps rusty iron as well. All in all, things had not become very much clearer.

  But ten minutes later her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and she discovered it was not so impenetrable after al
l. There was scanty light of a kind, little better than the darkness, seeping in through long, narrow cracks in the ceiling, and after a while this dark gray illumination allowed Polina Andreevna to grasp that she was lying in a narrow, cramped space with walls of wooden boards—most likely the hold of a small fishing vessel (otherwise what explanation could there be for the pervasive smell of fish scales?).

  The old tub appeared to be completely decrepit. There was light coming in not only through the ceiling, but also in places at the top of the sides. In a high sea a proud vessel like this would probably take on water by the ton and perhaps even sink.

  However, just at the moment Mrs. Lisitsyna was more concerned with her own lot than with the decrepit vessel's navigational prospects. And meanwhile the situation, already desperate, was taking an unexpected and extremely unpleasant turn.

  The squeaking that she had heard earlier grew louder and a little dark shadow moved up onto the sackcloth, followed by a second, and a third.

  With her eyes wide in terror, the captive watched as a procession of mice crept across her chest toward her chin.

  These denizens of the hold must have hidden at first, but now they had decided to come out and reconnoiter: they wanted to know what this gigantic object was that had come tumbling out of nowhere into their mouse universe.

  Polina Andreevna was by no means a coward, but the small, nimble, rustling inhabitants of this twilight underworld filled her with revulsion and a strange, inexplicable, mystical horror. If not for her bonds, she would have leapt up with a shriek and been out of this loathsome hole in an instant. But she had only two possible choices: either to lie there moaning in shameful fear, shaking her head pointlessly, or to call on the assistance of her reason.

  They're only mice, Mrs. Lisitsyna told herself. Perfectly harmless little beasts. They'll just take a sniff and go away. She comforted herself with the thought that mice were not rats—they didn't attack people, and they didn't bite. It was really rather funny—she could see that they were desperately afraid too, barely even crawling along, like Lilliputians on Gulliver's bound body.

  A drop of cold sweat slithered down her temple. The boldest of the mice had crawled very close now. Polina Andreevna's eyes had grown so used to the darkness that she could make out every detail of her visitor, right down to its stumpy little tail with the end gnawed off. The abominable creature tickled the rationalist's chin with its whiskers, and reason immediately capitulated.

  Choking on her own shriek, the prisoner tensed her entire body and rolled back into the middle of the hold. This rid her of the mice, but it wrapped the sackcloth around her again. But it was better that way, Lisitsyna told herself as she listened to the wild pounding of her own heart.

  Alas, no more than five minutes had passed before those prehensile little claws were rustling across the sackcloth again, this time directly above her face. Polina Andreevna imagined what would happen when the one with the short tail crept inside the bundle; she rolled quickly back to the wall again.

  She lay there, drawing in the air through her nostrils and waiting.

  Soon it happened all over again: first the squeaking, then the cautious expedition across her chest. Then another roll across the floor.

  After a while it developed into a routine, with the prisoner alternately wrapping and unwrapping the sackcloth as she threw off her uninvited guests. The mice seemed to take to this amusing game and the interludes between their visits gradually grew shorter. Polina Andreevna began feeling as if she had been transformed into a train in some mathematical puzzle, moving from point A to point B and back with ever shorter halts.

  When Lisitsyna heard footsteps above her (presumably on the deck), she was not frightened, but delighted. She was glad of anything that might bring this nightmarish waltz to an end!

  There were two people: the heavy, bearlike tread that Polina Andreevna had heard earlier had been joined by a lighter, clattering stride.

  The trapdoor clanged open, and the prisoner screwed up her eyes, so bright did the blue gray night seem to her.

  The Empress of Canaan

  AN IMPERIOUS FEMALE voice spoke: “All right, show her to me!”

  Polina Andreevna was just making a stop at point B, by the wall, so her face was uncovered, and she saw a ladder being lowered down into the hold.

  A huge pair of boots came clattering down the rungs, heels first, with the hem of a black cassock swaying above them.

  The blinding light of a kerosene lamp flooded across the ceiling and the walls. The gigantic figure, which occupied almost half of the hold, turned around, and Lisitsyna recognized her abductor.

  Brother Jonah, the captain of the steamship St. Basilisk!

  The monk put the lamp on the floor and stood beside his prone captive, clasping his hands across his stomach.

  The woman, whose face Polina Andreevna could not see, squatted down beside the open trapdoor. There was a rustle of fine fabric, and a voice that now seemed terribly familiar ordered: “Unwrap her—I can't see a thing.”

  Lidia Evgenievna Boreiko, Dr. Korovin's hysterical guest!

  Mrs. Lisitsyna had no time to understand anything or make sense of what was happening. With a single jerk, rough hands shook the prisoner out of her sackcloth shroud onto the floor.

  Polina Andreevna struggled to her knees and then moved across onto the low wooden shelf surrounding the entire cramped space. That was what she had kept running into, not the wall, when she was rolling to and fro across the floor. It was a hard seat, but still more dignified than lying on the floor. But then, what talk could there be of dignity, when you were dressed in nothing but your underwear, with your hands and feet tied and your mouth stopped with a dirty rag?

  Miss Boreiko came down the rungs of the ladder, but not all the way to the bottom, halting in an elevated position. Under her black cloak she was wearing a silk dress, also black, and there was a string of large pearls gleaming on her neck. Polina Andreevna noticed that Korovin's acquaintance was dressed far more spectacularly today than when they had met the previous evening: she had rings with precious stones sparkling on her fingers and bracelets on her wrists; even her veil was not the usual one, but a golden cobweb—in short, Lidia Evgenievna looked like a real queen. The captain gazed at her in rapture—no, not in rapture, in reverential awe, the way the pagans of old must have gazed at the golden-faced goddess Ishtar.

  Mademoiselle Boreiko surveyed her contemptible captive with a disdainful eye and said, “Take a look at yourself and at me. You are a pitiful, filthy slave trembling with fear. And I am a queen. This island belongs to me—it is mine! I rule over this kingdom of men, and my rule is absolute! Every man who lives here and every man who sets foot here becomes mine. Will become mine, if I wish it. I am Calypso and the Northern Semiramis and the Empress of Canaan! How dare a common ginger cat like you try to steal my crown? Usurper! False pretender! You came here deliberately to take my throne from me! I realized that immediately, the first time I saw you there on the landing stage. Women like you don't come to this place—only quiet, pious little mice come here, but you are a fiery red vixen, and you wanted my henhouse!”

  At the mention of mice, Polina Andreevna squinted briefly down at the floor, but the little partners in her recent nightmarish game had obviously taken refuge from the light and noise in their dark nooks and crannies.

  “You are not here to see Ararat's holy shrines!” said Lidia Evgenievna, continuing her astounding speech in a ferocious voice. “My slave”— here she pointed at Jonah—“has been following you. You have not visited a single church, not a single chapel! Of course not, since that is not what you came here for!”

  So this was what it was all about—this was the answer to the riddle, the bold investigator realized too late. All the theories, both plausible and incredible, were wrong. The truth was fantastic, quite unbelievable! Who could ever have imagined that one of the island's female inhabitants would want to declare herself “Empress of Canaan”! So this was why the
brilliant Miss Boreiko had settled on this remote island—this was why she stayed here! It was certainly true that she was lovely, elegant, even majestic in her own way. But in St. Petersburg she would have been one among many; in a provincial city, one of a few; even in a remote district town, she might have had a rival. But here, in this little male world, there was no one to compete with her. There was no local female society at all—women of the common classes did not count. And the female pilgrims who came here were of a special kind: pious women who walked around with glum faces, wrapped themselves in black shawls, and did not look at the men—and why should they, when they had more than enough admirers in the place they had left behind in order to come here and atone for their sins in prayer.

  Boreiko had established her very own state here on the island. And she had her own genie, her faithful slave Captain Jonah. There he was, the Black Monk in person! Standing there with an idiotic smile of bliss on his weathered face. A man like that would carry out any whim of his sovereign without a murmur, no matter how criminal it might be. If she ordered him to frighten her subjects and strike mystical terror into their hearts, Jonah would do it. If she ordered him to kill someone, drive them mad, abduct them, he would do that too, without a moment's hesitation.

  Just at that moment the astounded Polina Andreevna had no time to untangle all the possible motives behind this monstrous idea, but she knew one thing quite certainly: female ambition is more extreme and more absolute than its male equivalent; if it senses a threat from someone, it is capable of any perfidious and cruel act. The infuriated empress had to be disabused concerning the false pilgrim's intentions (for Polina Andreevna certainly had no interest in the men of New Ararat, or any men at all, come to that), or in her spite Lidia Evgenievna would commit another heinous crime. What would it matter to her, after all the others that had gone before!

  Mrs. Lisitsyna tried to reach the gag with her hands that were tied together at the wrist, but she could not: the sailor's deft fingers had fastened the bonds on her hands to those on her feet, making it impossible for her to reach the tight knot at the back of her head.