Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

by Boris Akunin

Filip fell flat on his face and put his hands over his head, crying, “I’m bleeding to death! I can’t bear it! I’m dying!”

  And then there was the sound of running feet again—but from the other direction.

  This time Matvei Bentsionovich was too slow. He only caught a glimpse of the figure in a black dressing gown with a silver dragon glinting on its back as it slipped out through a door. A bolt shot home, and the most important prisoner was gone.

  “Lie there, you brute!” the state counselor barked and went dashing after the count.

  He tugged at the door, but it was no use. Then he ran over to the table and dragged Kesha out from under it.

  “What’s behind that door?”

  “The study.”

  “Can the servants be summoned from there?”

  “Yes. There’s an electric bell. And an internal telephone …”

  Berdichevsky could already hear the bell trilling piercingly and the hysterical voice of the magnate shouting something into the telephone, or perhaps simply out the window.

  “Are there many servants in the building?”

  “About ten … No, more.”

  And I have only six bullets, Matvei Bentsionovich thought, but calmly, without panicking.

  He ran to a window, looked out, and saw the inner courtyard. There were shadows running from the far end. He dashed to the other side of the room and saw black water glinting down below.

  He swung the window frame open and stuck his head out.

  Yes, there was the moat. The window was a bit high. But then he had no choice.

  He had already scrambled halfway up onto the windowsill when he remembered something and jumped back down again.

  First he ran to the door of the drawing room and locked it. Then he grabbed Kesha by the lapels of his jacket.

  “All right, young man, give back the money—your hypothesis was not confirmed.”

  The blond-haired clerk held out his entire wallet with a trembling hand. Matvei Bentsionovich took out his hundred-ruble note.

  There was a tramping of feet and the door shook as someone charged it with heavy shoulders.

  Casting a final glance around the room, Berdichevsky snatched the unfinished bottle off the table and only then went back to the window.

  They were pounding regularly on the door with something heavy. A gilded flourish came flying off one panel.

  Moving quickly so that there would be no time to get frightened, the public prosecutor stepped into empty space.

  “Eeeh-eeh!”—the desperate cry was torn from his throat, but a second later the state counselor had to close his mouth, because his head was submerged in smelly black water.

  His feet hit the soft bottom. He pushed off and surfaced.

  Spitting out the slimy scum, Berdichevsky began jumping toward the bank. It was impossible to swim, because in one hand he was holding the bottle aloft and in the other the Lefaucheux. He had to bound along like a grasshopper: pushing off with his feet, taking a gulp of air, and sinking back under again. The water was not very deep, though, and his hands remained above the surface.

  After five or six bounds he reached a shallow spot. His knuckles encountered something slippery, round, and yielding, and he yelled for all he was worth, remembering the swamp monster. But he didn’t drop the bottle or the revolver.

  But thank God, it wasn’t a snake, it was one of the old water-softened logs with which the walls of the moat were lined.

  Berdichevsky managed to find a foothold, climb out of the water, and creep into the bushes. Then he looked around at the castle for the first time.

  He saw two heads in the brightly lit window (which wasn’t nearly as high as it had seemed from above), and then they were joined by a third.

  “Catch him!” he heard the count’s voice say. “I’ll give a thousand rubles reward!”

  The public prosecutor did not have the strength to run through the dark forest—the flight from the window and the bounding through the water had seriously reduced his enthusiasm for physical exercise. He needed to cool the servants’ ardor and make them realize that life was worth more than a thousand rubles.

  Matvei Bentsionovich lifted the revolver and fired twice at the wall.

  The heads immediately disappeared from the rectangle of light. “Turn the lamps off!” someone wailed. “He can see us! He’ll kill us!” The light went out in the drawing room, and then on the entire second floor.

  That’s the way.

  Soaking wet and filthy, the public prosecutor forced his way through the bushes and walked down onto the stone surface of the road. He took a swig from the bottle and set off at a trot, in order to get warm.

  Running downhill was easy and pleasant. Take about fifty paces, and then a swig. Another fifty paces—another swig.

  The state counselor was in a simply wonderful mood.

  HE FINALLY REACHED Zhitomir at dawn, in a peasant cart.

  He washed and changed in his hotel room. He bought a bottle of port from under the receptionist’s counter, thereby criminally aiding and abetting a violator of the law concerning the regulations governing the trade in alcoholic beverages.

  He downed half of it straightaway—in his new manner, straight from the bottle. But it did not make him drunk—on the contrary, it helped him to gather his thoughts.

  The day was dawning outside the window. The public prosecutor sat on the bed in his suspenders, swigging from his bottle of port and working out the sequence of his further actions.

  There was no point in seeking police action against the count. During the night Charnokutsky would have hidden, or even destroyed, the secret part of his collection. Berdichevsky wondered what kind of foul items it contained. That degenerate would have to be dealt with in a more thorough manner, working via Kiev and the governor general’s chancellery. It would be a long business, and where it would end was clear in advance: not with hard labor, but in a comfortable psychiatric clinic.

  All right, that could wait. There were far more urgent things to be done.

  What time did the government offices open here on a Saturday?

  AT PRECISELY NINE o’clock, Berdichevsky was in the prison committee office, where his acquaintance the inspector provided him with a note for the warden of the provincial lockup.

  At the prison he did not enter into long discussions, but simply asked, “Do you keep a register of visits to prisoners?”

  “Yes, sir, Your Honor. We’re very strict on that. When anyone comes, even the provincial governor himself, we make a note of it,” the duty warder replied.

  This is where I ought to have started, Matvei Bentsionovich reproached himself, instead of scrambling about in filthy drains. I’m a lousy detective. Not like Pelagia.

  He opened the register at the nineteenth of November the previous year (that was the day Ratsevich was released) and ran his finger along the lines, moving up from the bottom.

  On the eighteenth of November no one had visited the prisoner in “noble” cell number eleven, although twenty-six people had come to the prison.

  On the seventeenth of November there had been thirty-two visits, but again no one had come to see Ratsevich.

  On the sixteenth of November … Yes, there it was!

  In the “Visited” column there was an entry in neat clerk’s handwriting: “No. 11, the bankrupt debtor Ratsevich.” And in the facing column, “Visitor’s signature: first name, surname, title,” there was a series of indecipherable squiggles.

  The public prosecutor carried the register across to the window, where there was more light, and began deciphering the carelessly written letters.

  When the letters finally formed themselves into a name, Berdichevsky dropped the register on the windowsill and started blinking rapidly.

  And there shall be a Newer Testament

  THE JOURNEY TO Bet-Kebir was exhausting and monotonous.

  The river Jordan was a cruel disappointment to the female pilgrim because it was so anemic and unpicturesque. Polin
a Andreevna even felt a little offended that Providence had decided in its wisdom to locate the greatest events in the history of mankind beside this pitiful stream instead, for instance, of the magnificent banks of her own native River, where the sky and the earth did not squint through the dust and the heat but looked at each other with their eyes wide open.

  But when the Jordan flowed into the Dead Sea, also known as the Asphalt Sea, the landscape became even more dreary.

  To the right were the bald humps of the Judea Desert’s hills; to the left, the smooth surface of the water, wreathed in mist, extended into the distance. At first it seemed to Pelagia that the water was covered with a shell of silvery ice, which was quite absurd in this kind of heat. The nun went down to the shoreline and reached her hand out toward the water. Even at close quarters the illusion of a covering of ice was absolute. However, instead of encountering a cold, hard crust, her fingers sank into warm, completely transparent liquid, with an unbroken layer of white salt lying below it. Polina Andreevna licked her wet hand and tasted tears.

  The unbearable glare made her eyes hurt. It was not only the sea that glittered, but also the jagged cliffs, the desert, the road. And the silence was like none that Pelagia had ever encountered anywhere. No rustling of sand, no splashing of water; and when Salakh stopped the horses to give them a rest, the silence of the world around them became intolerable.

  “Dead silence at the Dead Sea,” Pelagia said to herself, entirely without intending any pun.

  As they approached the southern extremity of the salty lake, their surroundings became even more lifeless and unnatural. Sharp bluffs broke up through the ground, looking like gigantic splinters, or the bared teeth of the earth. The mountains approached almost to the very water’s edge, as if they wanted to shove the cart into the acrid, salty water. Polina Andreevna began to feel afraid—not because of the menace of the landscape, but at the thought of the monstrous deed that had been committed here many centuries earlier.

  This had been a blossoming land, which “was watered all the way to Sigor with water, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt.” But an enraged God had rained fire and brimstone down from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah, and this immense funnel filled with bitter tears had been formed. Lying on the bottom, covered with a thick layer of salt, were thousands of dead evildoers, and possibly a few righteous men. For before the terrible punishment took place, God had bargained with Abraham:

  And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD, which am but dust and ashes: Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it. And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty’s sake. And he said unto him, O let not the LORD be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there. And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty’s sake. And he said, O let not the LORD be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake. And the LORD went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place.

  With all her heart, Pelagia was on the side of Abraham, who had trembled with fear as he struggled with the Almighty to save the land of Sodom, but the divine prerogative had overridden the human. So while a single child’s tear would prevent Dostoevsky from rejoicing in the salvation of the world, the Almighty had not thought nine righteous men enough, and he had even grown angry and gone away—stopped talking! In those distant times God must have been young, and His youth made him uncompromising and cruel. He had not learned the tolerance and compassion manifested in the New Testament.

  God changes, Pelagia realized with sudden insight. Like mankind. As the centuries pass he grows more mature, gentler and wiser. And if that is so, then we can hope that in time a Newer Testament and covenant will be granted to us to replace the New Testament that we have. The theme of the Old Testament was that a Jew must treat other Jews kindly. The theme of the New Testament was that all people should love one another. And the Newer Testament will probably extend love to the animals. Does a horse or a dog not have a soul? Of course they do!

  How wonderful it would be if the Newer Testament gave people the hope of happiness in this life, and not only after death, in the Kingdom of Heaven.

  And again … But at this point Pelagia pulled herself up short. What Newer Testament? These matters were beyond her reach! And were not these very thoughts, about the obsolescence of the former Testament, a satanic delusion, induced by the dead desert?

  They made camp at a small oasis, where several trees grew beside a stream. It was the travelers’ third overnight halt since they left the Isreel Valley.

  And in the morning, when the hantur had only just moved away from their campsite, a miracle happened. Salakh, who had last driven through these parts two years earlier, was even more astounded than Pelagia.

  A smooth, paved highway, as straight as an arrow, crept out of the Desert of Judea, swallowed up the wretched road along the lake, and turned to the south. Salakh’s emaciated horses took heart and started clopping their hooves over the asphalt in a rapid rhythm. All the rattling and shaking disappeared completely, and the hantur began moving twice as fast. Polina Andreevna was amazed and delighted.

  The world was suddenly no longer abandoned and deserted. Every so often they encountered identical white wagons coming toward them, pulled by sturdy shaggy-legged Percheron horses. The eloquent emblem on their tarpaulin covers was a picture of the Acropolis and the letters “S&G Ltd.” Pelagia racked her brains, trying to think what it could mean, and she guessed: “Sodom and Gomorrah Limited”—that was what it was. She even shuddered at such an unfortunate name.

  Shortly after midday they reached the Arab settlement of Bet-Kebir. During her travels, Pelagia had seen more than enough of the local villages, as like one another as two drops of water: windowless little wattle-and-daub houses barely taller than the height of a man; walls and roofs always plastered with cakes of dried camel dung, which was used as fuel; narrow, dirty streets; a crowd of naked children that always came rushing out to any passersby shouting “Baksheesh! Baksheesh!;” and a stench that made you want to hold your nose.

  And suddenly here were new little white houses with verandas, paved streets, freshly planted bushes! No beggars, ragamuffins, or lepers. And to Pelagia, exhausted by her journey, the inn into which Salakh turned to ask directions for the road ahead seemed like a palace.

  She washed under a genuine shower, drank strong tea, brushed her hair, changed her underclothes. Meanwhile, Salakh was conducting important negotiations with the owner. He had to drink seven or eight cups of coffee before finding out everything Pelagia wanted to know.

  It turned out that the newly built city of Usdum (that was how Sodom was pronounced in Arabic) was not far from Bet-Kebir, only ten miles away, but women were forbidden to enter it. The Luti were good people, they paid generously for work and goods, but they had their own rules.

  “Who are the Luti?” Polina Andreevna asked.

  “The Luti are the people of Lut. The same Lut who left Usdum, and the city was consumed by fire.”

  Ah, the people of Lot, Pelagia realiz
ed—that is, the pederasts.

  Salakh explained that the workers from Bet-Kebir entered Usdum with a special pass, and women could not go beyond a guardpost that was three miles from the town. There was only one road, squeezed between the lake and the long mountain of Jebel-Usdum. There were Turkish soldiers at the guardpost; their officer was called Said-bey The Turks guarded the road very well—they didn’t even sleep at night, which was quite amazing for Turkish soldiers. And they didn’t take baksheesh, which was twice as amazing. And all because the Luti paid them very well. Previously Said-bey and his soldiers had sheltered in tents in the middle of the desert. They used to catch smugglers and had a very, very hard life, but now the Luti had asked the respected yuzbashi to move his post to the road and the Turks had started living very, very well.

  This information was not reassuring. Pelagia began feeling nervous. “But is it not possible to get around the guardpost through the desert, from the other side of the mountain?”

  Salakh went to drink more coffee with the owner. “No, impossible,” he said when he came back. “In day soldiers will see from mountain, they have tower there. And at night can’t travel through desert: pits, rocks—break leg, break neck.”

  “Tell the owner I will give twenty francs to anyone who gets me past the guardpost.”

  Her faithful helper set out for more negotiations. Four cups of coffee later he came back with a mysteriously satisfied air. “Possible. Jebel-Usdum mountain has holes. In spring, stream flows, finds hole. Water flow for thousands of years, make cave. Owner knows how to get through mountain, but twenty francs not enough. Cave is frightening, djinns of fire live there.”

  Salakh interpreted her grimace in his own way. He thought for a moment and scratched the back of his head.

  “Yes, fifty francs very much. Give me twenty-five, I take you without cave.”

  “But how?”

  “My business,” the Palestinian replied with a cunning air.

  And so now they were riding along beside the low mountain crest that was probably the only one of its kind: a mountain located below sea level. Up ahead they could see a large canvas tent and a boom across the road—the Turkish guardpost.