Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

by Boris Akunin

  A route was marked on the map in red pencil.

  “Bet-Kebir,” Yakov Mikhailovich read. That was the point at which the red line stopped.

  He crossed himself with broad sweeps of his hand. God does exist, he definitely does.

  Theory number three

  “A HUNDRED,” THE handsome young man whispered, looking around.

  “A hundred rubles?” Matvei Bentsionovich asked indignantly, but mostly for form’s sake, because just at that moment he was willing to pay any amount of money, even a sum like that—a quarter of his monthly salary. Of course, life was cheaper in Zavolzhsk than in many other places, not to mention the two capital cities, but when you have fifteen people in the family, you can’t help getting into the habit of economizing. The main problem is that I can’t take a receipt, Berdichevsky thought in passing, and that means I can’t put it through as an official expense.

  “Come on, come on,” said Kesha, holding out a slim, well-manicured hand. “If my advice turns out to be no good, you’ll get it back.”

  That was fair. The public prosecutor took out his wallet with the picture of Catherine the Great and paid up. The young man with the blond hair was in no hurry to hide his fee—he held the banknote lightly between his finger and thumb, as if demonstrating his willingness to return it at a moment’s notice.

  “So, who was it that bought Ratsevich out of jail?” Matvei Bentsionovich asked hoarsely.

  “I believe it was the man who loved him.”

  A romantic story? The public prosecutor started. This was an entirely new twist, and he could not tell in which direction it would lead.

  “You mean ‘the woman who loved him’?”

  “No, I don’t,” Kesha said with a smile.

  Matvei Bentsionovich took hold of his nose.

  “I don’t quite …”

  “Do you think Ratsevich was thrown out of the gendarmes for his debts? Stuff and nonsense. If they threw everyone out for little trifles like that, there’d hardly be anyone left. And the top brass wouldn’t have allowed an experienced officer to be put in a debtor’s prison. No, that was just an excuse.”

  “And what was the real reason?

  “Nobody knows that—except for the local gendarmes bosses, and our people.”

  “Our people?”

  The clerk took hold of Berdichevsky’s left hand again and repeated the strange manipulation—tickling the palm with his finger. Seeing the look of absolute amazement on the other man’s face, Kesha snorted, “What, do you find that hard to believe? Well, just imagine, there are people in the gendarmes who like men too.”

  Matvei Bentsionovich’s mouth fell open in astonishment.

  “I can see I’ve earned my hundred rubles,” the young man observed with satisfaction, putting the banknote away in his wallet.

  The public prosecutor was still struggling to recover his wits. Was it really possible? And then he was struck by a sudden realization. Yes, yes! Pelagia had told him that there was a group of pederasts on the river steamer, settlers traveling to the rebuilt city of Sodom. But that sent the investigation off in a completely different direction!

  The state counselor took a firm grip on the young man’s elbow. “You still haven’t told me who paid the money to get him out.”

  “I don’t know for certain, but I’m sure it must have been Charnokutsky. It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

  “Who is this Charnokutsky?”

  “You’ve never heard of the counts Charnokutsky?” Kesha asked incredulously.

  “Yes, I have. A noble Polish family.”

  “Noble! Never mind noble! The Charnokutskys are the richest family in the whole of Volynia. The Charnokutsky district is just fifteen miles from here, and the district town, Chyorny Kut, belongs entirely to the count.”

  “The whole town? Do such things happen?” Matvei Bentsionovich asked in amazement. “This isn’t the Middle Ages.”

  “It certainly is in Volynia. The city of Rovno belongs to Prince Liubomirsky Staro-Konstantinov belongs to Princess Abamelek, Dubno belongs to the Princess Bariatinskaya. And the Charnokutskys have been in Volynia for seven hundred years. Look, do you see that rock?” Kesha asked, pointing to a picturesque cliff overhanging the river in the distance. “One of the sights of Zhitomir. It’s called Chatsky’s Head.”

  The cliff really did bear a certain resemblance to a proudly bowed head.

  “What has it to do with Chatsky?”

  “Absolutely nothing. The cliff used to be called Charnokutskys Head. In the sixteenth century the peasant rebels here beheaded the present counts ancestor. But after eighteen sixty-three, the order came down to change the cliffs name. And the reason was that several of the Charnokutskys were involved in the Polish rebellion, and one of them even paid for it with his head. So to avoid any ambiguity, they changed it to Chatsky.”

  “So the count is one of the rebels of eighteen sixty-three?”

  “No way! His Excellency has quite different interests. Pretty much the same as you and I do.” The clerk laughed. “It’s a pity he can’t stand Jews, or I would definitely introduce you to him.”

  “But I’m not a Jew at all,” Berdichevsky declared. “I pretended to be, in order to win Golosovker’s trust.”

  “You pretended very well,” Kesha remarked, examining the public prosecutor’s face skeptically.

  “No, it’s true! My hair is dyed. I’m actually blond. If you’ll take me to the count, I’ll wash the dye out. And my name is not Mordechai Berdichevsky, but Matvei Berg-Dichevsky You guessed right when you said I wasn’t a moneylender. I’m … I’m a district marshal of the nobility,” Matvei Bentsionovich lied, unable to think of anything more aristocratic. “From the province of Zavolzhie.”

  It was impossible to tell whether the young man believed him. But he thought for a moment and said, “Two hundred rubles.”

  “You’re out of your mind!” the state counselor gasped, trying to work out if he had that much money with him.

  “You can pay when we come back. If I’m wrong and the count didn’t buy him out, you don’t have to pay at all,” the sharp-witted youth quipped.

  Matvei Bentsionovich readily agreed to these terms. If this was the right trail, and his trip proved fruitful, he could probably include the expenditure in the bill for the investigation.

  “Where are you staying?” Kesha asked.

  “At the Versailles.”

  “I close the office at seven. Only don’t be cheap, hire a carriage with spring suspension or we’ll get battered black and blue. I can have a word with Semyon Pochtarenko, he has a good carriage. It’s a long drive …”

  Traveling meditations on the sad future of mankind

  ONCE AGAIN THE state counselor turned to the White-Haired Angel for help, but his blond hair color was not restored completely. The actual result was a kind of golden red. Never mind, it would be good enough for the evening light, Berdichevsky consoled himself.

  Kesha arrived on time, in a most respectable-looking phaeton that cost the public prosecutor eight rubles. The clerk was quite unrecognizable. He had decked himself out in the very latest fashion and put on cologne, and his neatly parted hair gleamed like a mirror. Who would ever believe that this dandy earned an extra penny by taking care of a Jewish shop on the Sabbath?

  “Where are we going?” Matvei Bentsionovich asked after making himself comfortable on the soft seat.

  “To the count’s castle at Schwartzwinkel.”

  “The Black Pit?” the public prosecutor asked, translating the name.

  “Yes indeed. Chyorny Kut in the Volynian dialect, and in Great Russian it’s Chorny Zakut, or something of the kind. It was built by His Excellency’s grandfather, in the gothic style. He was very fond of novels about knights and chivalry.”

  Berdichevsky had managed to ask the hotel receptionist about the count, but the absolutely incredible stories he had been told in reply had only served to inflame his curiosity. He had to check which of these fantasti
c tales were true and which were not.

  “This magnate would appear to be an unusual man, then?” Matvei Bentsionovich asked casually.

  Kesha chortled. “You and I couldn’t exactly be called ordinary, could we? But of course there’s no way we could be compared with His Excellency. He is absolutely one of a kind.”

  Hungry for more details, the public prosecutor put on a thoughtful expression and remarked, “The scions of ancient families have the predilection for sodomy in their blood. It must come from being so spoiled. Or perhaps it’s the result of degeneracy.”

  “Oh, the count hasn’t always been interested in boys. In his young days he was a real enthusiast of the female sex, it was like a madness, or as he puts it, an obsession. That’s a medical term, something like a bee in your bonnet.”

  “I know.”

  “After all, he’s a doctor by education. He was so interested in women that after the Corps of Pages he didn’t go into the Guards, or even into the diplomatic service; instead he went to the medical faculty to study gynecology. But not in order to earn money, of course. He says: ‘I wanted to know everything about women: how they’re made, what they have inside them, what little key turns them on. I learned every little detail.’” Kesha chuckled again. “Yes, obviously he must have had too much of it. When he graduated from the university, he opened a women’s hospital, but he soon gave it up. Now he can’t even look at a woman, they make him shudder.”

  Matvei Bentsionovich’s information was rather different. The receptionist had told him: “Before the count went crazy, he ran a hospital and treated female ailments for free. First he killed one woman during an operation, then another, then another. The business got as far as the court. Any ordinary doctor would definitely have been convicted, but he was a Charnokutsky. But they shut the hospital down anyway.”

  “Then His Excellency went traveling,” said Kesha, continuing his story. “He spent a long time traveling around the world. He went absolutely everywhere, to Amazonia, the Dutch East Indies, and Papua. He has an incredible collection—you’ll see for yourself.”

  Berdichevsky had heard about the collection as well. Supposedly it included severed heads in glass jars. “They say he brought them back from savage countries, but who really knows?” the receptionist had said.

  “Eventually the count even got tired of traveling around the world. And now he’s living in Schwartzwinkel and hasn’t left the place for years. He’s arranged his home in a quite original manner, you’ll see for yourself. You should consider yourself lucky. Not many people are allowed into the castle. Exclusivité—that’s a French word. It means …”

  “I know what it means,” Berdichevsky interrupted. “You carry on with your story. The things I’ve heard about this count of yours …”

  Kesha seemed offended at not being allowed to show off his erudition. He muttered: “You could never have got in there without me. And all this gossip is just from envy and ignorance.” He fell silent after that.

  And so the public prosecutor did not discover if it was true that the castle was surrounded by a thick forest that it was strictly forbidden to enter. And to make sure that no one did go in, that forest was full of wolf pits, snares, and man traps. The state counselor had been told that several lads and lasses who had been tempted in by the mushrooms and berries growing there had disappeared without a trace. The police had searched the forest and the castle. They had seen the snares and the pits, but had found no clues. “In the moat under the walls,” the receptionist had whispered, “there’s an immense swamp snake, thirty feet long. It can swallow a man in a single gulp.” Well, after that Berdichevsky hadn’t bothered to listen to any more, because it was all such obvious make-believe. But now he regretted not having heard the man out.

  The carriage rolled over hill and dale. It gradually got dark and stars appeared in the sky—pale at first, but growing brighter every minute.

  What am I doing here? Matvei Bentsionovich suddenly thought with a shudder, surveying this Gogolesque landscape. What will I say to the count? What lies in wait for me there? Especially if the homosexual theory turns out to be right and this rich man really is linked with the murderers? The excitement of the hunt was to blame, it had made a rational man, a respectable paterfamilias, throw all caution to the winds. Perhaps I ought to turn back, the public prosecutor wondered. After all, if I disappear, no one will ever know what happened to me.

  But then he remembered Pelagia. The way she had walked up the gangplank and onto the deck, with her head lowered and the light from the lamp falling across her defenseless shoulders. The state counselor stuck out his chin and knitted his brows menacingly. We’ll soon see who should be afraid, Berdichevsky or this Volynian magnate.

  “You have a very handsome profile,” said Kesha, breaking the silence. “Like on a Roman coin.” And he rubbed his knee against the other man’s leg. Matvei Bentsionovich glanced severely at the dissolute youth and pulled away.

  “It’s all Ratsevich’s fault, is it?” the young man sighed. “You love him that much? Oh well, I respect men who are faithful to one love.”

  “Yes, I am faithful to one love,” the public prosecutor declared and turned away.

  Just what is homosexuality, and why do people need it? Matvei Bentsionovich wondered. And the remarkable thing is that the higher the level of civilization, the greater the number of people who indulge in this vice condemned by society and all religions. But is it a vice? Perhaps it is a natural development resulting from mankind’s ever greater distance from the natural state as it moves from the primeval campfire to the bright glow of electricity. No matter what big city you go to—Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw—they are everywhere, and every year there are more of them, and they are more and more open in their behavior. This is no accident, this is a sign, and it is not a matter of declining morals or debauchery. There are certain important processes affecting the human being, and we do not yet understand their meaning. Culture brings sophistication, sophistication leads to unnaturalness. Men no longer have to be strong, that is becoming a relic of the past. Women can no longer understand why they ought to allow men precedence if men are no longer the strong sex. In another hundred years or so, society—or at least its cultured sector—will consist entirely of effeminate men like Kesha and masculine women like Fira Dorman. That will make a fine muddle of all the instincts and desires of the flesh! Matvei Bentsionovich’s thought wandered further and further, into the far distant future. Humankind would die out because in the end the difference between the two sexes would disappear altogether and people would cease to reproduce. Unless, of course, science were to invent a new means of reproducing human individuals, something like budding plants. Take a rib, for instance, as the Lord God did with Adam, and grow a new human being. All very passionless and proper. No wild frenzies, no fiery intermingling of the male and female energies.

  How fortunate that I shall not see that heaven on earth, the state counselor thought with a shudder.

  “There it is—Schwartzwinkel,” said Kesha, pointing upward.

  A unique collection

  WHEN HE STUCK his head out of the carriage, Matvei Bentsionovich saw a large dark cone in the distance, with lights flickering on its summit.

  “What are those—fires?” he asked in amazement.

  “Torches on the towers. I told you, it’s a medieval castle.” The road that ran off from the rough, bumpy high road in the direction of the incomprehensible cone was narrow, but paved with smooth stone.

  It was a large hill, covered with forest, Berdichevsky realized. And right on the top there was a castle. Now he could make out the battlements on the walls, illuminated by the dancing tongues of flame. A minute later the phaeton drove into the forest and the castle disappeared. It was completely dark.

  “It’s a good thing there’s a lantern on the shaft,” the public prosecutor remarked as he felt the phaeton heel over to one side. “You can’t see a thing.” For a moment he imagined they were about to g
o rolling over down a steep slope, tumble into a thicket, and fall into some wolf pit studded with sharp stakes …

  “It’s all right, Semyon knows the road.”

  The forest road spiraled around the hill, gradually climbing higher. On both sides the trees pressed right up against it, like a stockade fence, and it was hard to believe that close by, only a hundred paces away, there was light and living people. And as ill luck would have it, Kesha said nothing.

  “We seem to be driving for a long time,” said Matvei Bentsionovich, feeling anxious. “Will it still be long?” The question was asked without any particular purpose in mind, simply in order to hear the sound of a human voice, but the young man who had been so talkative before did not answer now.

  The carriage straightened up and began rolling along a horizontal surface. After one final bend, the road led them out onto a large square paved with cobblestones. A massive tower loomed up straight ahead, with gates flanked by two flaming torches. In front of the gates there was a drawbridge, and below the drawbridge a moat—the same one that the hotel receptionist had claimed was home to a swamp monster.

  “Br-rr-rr, a gothic novel,” the state counselor said with a chilly shudder.

  From somewhere above them a loud, coarse voice called out, “Whossere?”

  Kesha opened the door on his side and stuck his head out. “Foma? It’s me, Innokentii! Open up. And switch on the lights, I can’t see a damn thing.”

  Two lamps, the very latest word in electrical illumination, lit up the square. Time ceased its vacillation, returning from the middle of the second millennium to its end. Berdichevsky noted with delight the pillars and the wires, the mailbox on the gates. Medieval horrors and swamp snakes be damned!

  A narrow little door opened and a heftily built man came out, dressed completely in black leather. The shirt with a low neck that showed his hairy, muscular chest was made of leather, and so were the high boots, and the tight-fitting trousers with a leather pouch at the crotch, as in sixteenth-century paintings. A codpiece, thought Berdichevsky, recalling the name of this absurd item of the medieval wardrobe. Only this was no codpiece, it was an entire, huge cod.