Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

by Boris Akunin

  The old man spread his hands in a broad gesture.

  “If he does not take pity on you after the finger, I will marry you off. To Kurban, his wife has died. Or to Eldar, his wife is in a bad way, she is sick and he needs another one. Calm down, woman, what do you have to be afraid of?”

  But Polina Andreevna did not calm down. In the first place, it was absolutely impossible for her to get married. And in the second place, getting stuck for a long time in this bandits’ lair did not enter into her plans at all. Time was passing, precious time!

  “You will write the letter tomorrow,” Daniel-bek said in farewell. “I have no time now. We are going to rob the uliad-el-mot.”

  “To rob whom?”

  But he walked out without answering her. A few minutes later she heard the stamping of a large number of hooves, and then all was quiet. Pelagia was left alone to languish in her despair until dawn, but when the pale light began percolating through the crack in the shutters, there was the loud crack of a shot somewhere in the village and women began shouting on all sides.

  What had happened out there? Polina Andreevna pressed her ear to the door, but it was hard to make sense of anything. There were several more shots, and the sound seemed to be coming from somewhere above her. The women carried on shouting for a while and stopped. Then there was total silence, broken occasionally by isolated shots.

  An hour and a half later she heard steps in the yard. The bolt clanged.

  She had expected to see Daniel-bek, but the person in the doorway was Salakh, with one of the women from the previous day beside him.

  “Come on,” the Palestinian said with a nervous sniff. “I exchanged you.”

  “For what?”

  “The Jews let the bek go into his house, for that the bek lets you go.”

  Pelagia was totally bemused, but the Palestinian took hold of her hand and pulled her along.

  THE SITUATION IN the aul was what the chess-playing Berdichevsky would have called a stalemate.

  The communards were ensconced in the stone tower. From there they had a clear view and a clear line of fire at the yards and the streets and all the approaches to the village, so the women and children had all hidden in the saklyas, while the dzighits had taken cover around the hill. They had made several attempts to creep closer, but then Magellan started firing with his optical sight, placing the bullets close, just as a warning.

  When it became clear that the Circassians could not enter the village and the Jews could not leave it, Salakh emerged from the tower as a truce envoy. He had been instructed to deliver an ultimatum: the Circassians must return everything they had stolen and pay a fine, and then the Jews would leave.

  Daniel-bek said that he would not talk with a man who had a metal collar around his neck, he would only talk with the Jews’ bek, and for that he had to go into his own house, because it was not seemly for honorable men to conduct negotiations in the bushes like a pair of jackals.

  “I realized straightaway that he wanted to see if his wives and children were alive or not,” Salakh told the nun proudly. “And I said, very well, bek, but for that let the Russian princess go.”

  “Oh, why ‘princess’?” Polina Andreevna groaned. “If the Circassians win, we won’t get away with ten thousand francs now.”

  They were sitting in Daniel-bek’s house, waiting for the owner to arrive.

  Then he appeared, riding slowly up the street, holding both hands in full view. The old bandit’s face was absolutely rigid, his white beard fluttering slightly in the wind.

  At the porch he jumped down lightly, like a young man, and handed the reins to a woman. He asked her something in a low voice, she replied, and the bek’s face became a little less stony. He must have been told that no one has been hurt, thought Pelagia.

  She and Salakh walked out of the door to go across to the tower, but Daniel-bek suddenly grabbed hold of Polina Andreevna’s arm and dragged her back into the house.

  “Hey, hey,” Salakh cried. “That’s not what we agreed!”

  The old man bared his teeth.

  “The princess will stay with me! Daniel is no fool, he has lived in this world for a long time. Now the Jews will come running out and kill me. That is what I would do! Go to them and say: The princess will die with me! Let Magellan-bek come here alone, we will talk.”

  He sat Pelagia down beside him at the table and took a firm grip on her arm. Squinting sideways, the nun could see that his other hand was on the handle of his dagger.

  “If the Jew comes in and starts shooting at me, I will cut your throat,” said Daniel-bek. “It is not your fault, it is not my fault. It is just fate.”

  “Why me and not him?” she said, asking the logical but entirely unchristian question.

  “I am already old, but he is young and agile. I will not be fast enough to kill him,” the bek replied sadly.

  The dialogue broke off at that point, because Magellan came in. Pelagia recognized him immediately, although the leader of the commune had changed. He was tanned, his mustache had grown longer and was curled up at the ends, and the Jewish warrior’s head was crowned with a huge comic-opera sombrero.

  The new arrival did not even glance at the woman, he was not interested in her. He set one hand on his open gun holster and declared, “Right, then, you old bandit. First, you’re going to give us everything back. Second, you’re going to take back from the Arabs what they stole during the night. And third, you’re going to pay a fine—twenty sheep. Then we’ll leave.”

  “Give you our sheep?” Daniel-bek said through his teeth. “No, Jew. You will give me all your guns, and then we will let you go. What do Jews need guns for? You will pay us five hundred francs every moon, and nobody will bother you anymore. I heard about the clothes stolen from the dead Jewish woman. I will tell Sheikh Yusuf, he will give them back. Think, Jew, my dzighits will not stand up to be shot by your bullets. There is no water in the tower. Tomorrow or the next day you will come creeping out, and then we will kill you.”

  Magellan said nothing for a moment, twitching the muscles in his jaws. His light-colored eyes narrowed. “Circassian, your saklyas are made of clay and camel dung. A bullet will go straight through them. I will order my men to fire in salvoes, and soon the houses will be nothing but piles of rubbish, red with blood.”

  The bek also paused before he answered.

  “You are not like the uliad-el-mot. Perhaps you are not real Jews? Or are the ones who came here before you not real Jews?”

  “We are absolutely genuine Jews. And there will be more and more just like us.”

  “Then we ought to kill you. Even if our women and children will die,” Daniel-bek said in a flat voice. The knuckles of the fingers gripping the hilt of the dagger had turned white. “Otherwise you will seize all this land and leave no Arabs or Circassians here.”

  “You are the bek. You must decide.”

  The two men stared at each other with intense, stony expressions. Pelagia saw the dagger slip silently out of its sheath. Magellan’s hand gradually crept into his holster.

  “What do you think you’re doing!” the nun exclaimed indignantly, slapping her hand down on the table.

  The two enemies had forgotten that she was there. They started and turned their gaze on her.

  “Whenever you men have the slightest problem, you start talking about killing! And as usual, the first to die will be the women and children! Only a fool breaks down a door with his head because he hasn’t got the wits to turn the key! Intelligent people find a different use for their heads! Later they’ll say you were two fools who couldn’t come to an agreement, and because of that the Jews and Circassians started killing each other all over Palestine! Give him back what you stole,” she said, turning to Daniel-bek. “And you, Mr. Magellan, forget about your fine. What do you want sheep for? You don’t even know how to shear them!”

  There was no obvious change in the room after these words—the bek was still holding his dagger, and Magellan was still
clutching his revolver—but the tension had eased imperceptibly. The men looked each other in the eye again, this time with less menace and more inquiry.

  “I’ve seen you before somewhere,” Magellan said, without looking at Pelagia. “I can’t remember where, but I’ve definitely seen you …”

  From his tone of voice it was quite clear that he was not really very interested just at the moment. Which was not surprising.

  The bek, as the more mature individual who possessed the wisdom of experience, was the first to take a half-step toward reconciliation. He put both his hands on the table and said, “The princess speaks the truth. One dzighit can always reach an understanding with another.”

  Magellan also took his hand away from his holster and folded his arms. “Very well, we’ll forget about the fine. But what about the sheikh?”

  “Yusuf is no dzighit, he is a dog. I have wanted to teach him a lesson for a long time. Moslems do not rob graves and undress the dead. Sit down, let us be friends.”

  The Circassian gestured in invitation and Magellan sat down, putting his sombrero on a bench.

  “We’ll go straightaway, together,” he demanded. “Rokhele cannot lie there naked in a grave that has been dug up.”

  The bek nodded. “Straightaway. We will surround the Arab village completely.”

  “No,” the Jew interrupted. “We will leave one way out.”

  Daniel-bek’s eye glittered youthfully.

  “Yes, yes! We will leave a passage to the ford! Let them run that way!”

  They both leaned over the table and began drawing on it with their fingers, speaking at the same time and interrupting each other. An anti-Arab league began taking shape before Polina Andreevna’s very eyes.

  She did not really understand what was going on, but she did not like it at all. This business about a grave that had been dug up, stolen clothes …

  “Wait,” the nun exclaimed. “Listen to me! I don’t know who Sheikh Yusuf is, but if he’s a sheikh, I suppose he must be quite rich?”

  “He has five hundred sheep,” Daniel-bek replied, glancing around. “His fellahs are paupers, but Yusuf himself is rich.”

  “If he is rich, why would he steal a dead woman’s dress? That was the work of cheap scoundrels, and the sheikh himself will probably punish them when he finds out about it. You must not surround the village and leave a passage to the ford! Or later people will say: Three fools were unable to come to an agreement, and …”

  “Woman,” the bek roared, “that is the second time you have called me a fool!”

  “She’s right,” Magellan put in. “There are more Arabs in these parts than Jews and Circassians put together. It would start a war. We ought to invite the sheikh to negotiations. That would be more intelligent.”

  “You are not only brave, Magellan-bek, but wise too,” said the Circassian, pressing his hand to his heart. And the men bowed ceremonially to each other, once again completely ignoring the woman.

  Girls’ talk

  THE JOINT MISSION to Yusuf-bek was led by the Circassians riding at the front with the Jews following on foot. In order to impress their allies, the communards formed a column, set their guns on their left shoulders, and tried to march in step.

  Shrouded in dust, the united forces set off down the road. The Circassian women watched them go. They did not shout or wave their hands—evidently that was not the custom.

  The bek had told Polina Andreevna that she was free to go anywhere she liked, but there was only one place she wanted to go. She had waited for her chance to have a word with Magellan alone. She complained that after what had happened she was afraid to travel without protection, and asked permission to spend the night in the commune.

  He magnanimously gave his consent and asked once again, “But where was it that I saw you before? It must have been in Russia, but where?”

  Pelagia thought it best to say nothing, and he had no time just then to go delving into his memory.

  She waited in the aul until noon for the goods stolen from the commune to be delivered from the small Arab town of el-Lejun. The trophies were received by the young woman called Malke, with whom the nun had exchanged a few words on the river steamer.

  Women being the way they are, Malke recognized Pelagia immediately, even with her secular clothes and freckles. And she was as pleased to see her as if they were old friends. The nun’s appearance in the Isreel Valley did not rouse the fat girl’s suspicion at all. She immediately began talking to Polina Andreevna in a familiar manner and told her a lot of details about herself, and the commune, and everything else that came to mind. And of course, she asked questions too, but for the most part she answered them herself. For instance, she asked, “How did you come to be here? Ah, yes, you were on the steamer with us. Going to Palestine, right? On pilgrimage? And you took your nun’s habit off so you wouldn’t feel so hot? Of course, in this kind of heat a silk dress is far better. I expect you’re not a nun, still a novice, right?”

  All Pelagia had to do was nod.

  WHEN THEY SET out for New Megiddo, the sun had already moved into the western half of the sky.

  Malke harnessed the recovered horse to a Circassian cart and hitched the two cows on at the back. They put the harrow and the safe—battered, but not opened—in the bottom of the cart and set the sacks of seeds on top of them. Then the two women sat down beside each other and set off.

  Salakh trundled along behind on his hantur, singing shrill, whining songs at the top of his voice. He was happy to have got his horse and cart back without having to pay any ransom.

  Polina Andreevna admired the way her newfound friend handled their heavily loaded cart. Malke sat with her legs crossed under her, Turkish style (her tanned knees were as brown as two crispy-roasted piglets), set her gun across them, and cracked the whip, without stopping talking for a single moment. It was light conversation, girls’ talk.

  “Polina, I just can’t understand why you want to be a nun. I could understand if you were some kind of ugly freak, but you’re really beautiful, honestly you are. I suppose it’s all because of an unhappy love, right? Well, even so, even if it is, it’s still not worth it. Why lock yourself away in a convent, in a tiny little world, when the big world is so interesting? I could have stayed in Borisovo until I got old and never discovered who I really am. I used to think I was a coward, but you’ve no idea just how brave I turned out to be! Perhaps you think Magellan didn’t take me to the Arab village because I’m a woman? Nothing of the sort! There won’t be any shooting there, or else I would definitely have gone with them. What he said to me was: Malyutka, you’re the most sensible helper I have, the only one I can ask to do this. He does that sometimes—calls me Malish or Malyutka instead of Malke. Get it all back safe and sound, he said, and make sure those two blockheads, Coliseum and Shlomo, don’t water my horse straightaway, but walk it a bit first. And lay out the seeds to dry—they’re damp from the night dew.”

  Pelagia felt a little guilty about exploiting this nice girl’s openness, but at the first opportunity—when Malke started telling her about how isolated the commune was—she asked casually, “Do you ever see any strangers?”

  “Rarely. The Rothschild Jews think we’re insane atheists. Relations with the Arabs are bad. And as for the Circassians—you’ve seen for yourself!”

  “Well, what about wandering pilgrims? And I’ve been told Palestine is absolutely full of itinerant preachers,” the nun said, rather clumsily turning the conversation in the required direction.

  Malke broke into loud laughter. “There was one prophet. He was funny. And from Russia, as it happens. You remember Manuila, who was killed on the steamer? Or, as it turned it, it wasn’t him who was killed, but someone else—I’ll tell you all about that later. As soon as he got to the Holy Land, this Manuila started calling himself Emmanuel, to make himself sound grander.” She laughed again.

  If she was laughing, it meant that nothing bad had happened to him. Pelagia’s heart suddenly felt less
heavy. “Is it a long time since he was here?”

  The girl began counting, bending down her short fingers. “Seven, no, eight days ago. Ah, yes, that was the night Polkan was killed.” Her merry laughter was suddenly replaced by a sob, then she sniffed and smiled again. “He died for Erets Israel too, Polkan did.”

  “For whom?”

  “For the Jewish state. Polkan was a dog who attached himself to us in Jaffa. He was terribly clever and brave, like a regimental dog. He was wonderful at keeping watch at night, we didn’t need any sentries. We could just tie him to the outside of the gate and no one would come anywhere near. He was long-haired, black and yellow, a little bit lame in one leg, and on his side …”

  “And what about this prophet?” Polina Andreevna interrupted. She was not interested in a portrait of the deceased Polkan. “Where did he come from?”

  “He knocked at the gate in the evening. We’d already finished work and we were sitting there singing songs. We opened up and saw this bearded peasant, wearing birch-bark sandals, with a stick. He was just standing there fondling Polkan’s ear, and the dog was wagging his tail. He didn’t even bark once, I couldn’t believe it. I suppose the prophet must have converted him to his own faith,” Malke laughed. “‘Good evening, good people,’ he said, ‘you sing well. Are you Russian, then?’ And we asked him: Who are you? One of Manuila’s Foundlings? Because he was wearing a loose robe with a blue belt, the same as they all wear. He said, ‘I am Emmanuel himself. I’m walking about, looking. I’ve been in Judea, and Samaria, and now I’ve come to Galilee. Will you let me in for the night?’ Well, why wouldn’t we? We let him in. I asked him: What’s going on, you were killed on the steamer. Have you risen from the dead, then? And he answered, ‘It wasn’t me they killed, but one of my shelukhin.

  Polina Andreevna started. “What was that?”

  “In ancient Aramaic, shelukhin means ‘apostles.’ When there are many, it’s shelukhin; when there’s only one, it’s sheluakh. Magellan told us that—he knows everything about Jewish history.”