Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (28 page)

Then Berdichevsky disappeared from the town, supposedly summoned by the ministry. He was gone for a week.

When he returned he hurried from the quayside straight to the bishop, without even going home first.

Well, what a rogue!

THE MOMENT THE door of the study closed behind him, he blurted out:

“She was right. But then, she always is! No, no, I won’t start getting ahead of myself.

“As you recall, we decided to base our search for the bandits on their initial crime, the theft of Manuila’s ‘treasury’ That event marked the beginning of the grim trail. The Warsaw bandits were assumed to have picked out their victim in advance and ‘shadowed’ him in their usual way, waiting for a convenient moment. I was intending to reconstruct the route followed by the Foundlings and follow it, searching for witnesses.”

“I remember, I remember all that,” said the bishop, trying to hurry his spiritual son, since he could tell from the narrator’s face that he had not come back empty-handed. “You were hoping to establish who gave the bandits their … what do you call it…”

“Lead,” Berdichevsky prompted. “Who pointed them toward the sect’s ‘treasury’ And from there to reach the bandits themselves. One of the most important rules of detective work is that the shortest path to the criminal is from the victim’s own social circle.”

“Yes, yes! Just get on with it. Did you find the person who did the pointing?”

“There wasn’t one! And all this has nothing at all to do with the case! Ah, Your Eminence, don’t interrupt, let me tell you everything in the right order.”

The bishop threw his hands up apologetically, then put one of them to his lips, as if to say: I won’t say a word. And the story finally got under way, although His Eminence was unable to maintain a complete silence—that was simply not in his character.

“Shelukhin and his entourage boarded the steamer at Nizhni, where, as I ascertained, they had arrived by train from Moscow,” the public prosecutor reported. “The conductor remembered the false Manuila, a rather colorful character for first class. He traveled in his compartment alone, and the other ragamuffins, who had places in the standard open carriage, took turns to visit him. The reason for the first class compartment is clear enough—to make the whole thing more convincing: Look, there really is a prophet on this train! And it is also clear why there was always someone with Shelukhin—because of the casket… The Foundlings have something like a gathering place in Moscow, a basement in Khitrovka, beside the synagogue. We can assume they deliberately stay as close as possible to their fellow believers, but the genuine Jews won’t allow these people in fancy costume into the synagogue and they want nothing to do with them. Manuila’s flock prays outside in the street. It’s an amusing sight: they cover their heads with the edges of their robes and mumble in broken Hebrew. The idle onlookers poke fun at them, the Jews spit at them. A real fairground show. You should also bear in mind that most of the Foundlings are extremely unattractive in appearance. Ugly, damaged by drink, with noses eaten away by syphilis … It’s curious that the Khitrovka ragamuffins leave these holy fools alone—they pity them, I suppose. I observed the Foundlings for a while and spoke to a few of them. Do you know what struck me most of all? They ask for alms, but they don’t take money—only things that they can eat. They say they don’t need kopecks, because money belongs to the tsar, while food comes from God.”

“You say they don’t take money? Then where did the ‘treasury’ come from?”

“That’s the whole point! Where was it from? You and I assumed that the contents of the stolen casket were alms collected by the Foundlings. That Manuila had changed all those countless kopecks and half-kopecks for banknotes and put them away neatly in a little box. And then I discover, no—he did nothing of the kind! I was even distracted from the Warsaw theory, because I was so curious about where the money had come from. I began inquiring cautiously whether the false Jews had heard anything about Manuila’s treasury. I must say that for the most part they are very open, trusting people—exactly the kind who usually fall victim to scoundrels. They said: We know, we’ve heard about it. Some merchant in the town of Borovsk gave Manuila ‘a huge amount of money’ for projects in the Holy Land. Naturally, I went to Borovsk and had a word with the merchant.”

“But how did you find him?” Mitrofanii gasped, astounded at the depths of persistence and energy that apparently resided within his spiritual son.

“It wasn’t difficult at all. Borovsk is a small town. Wealthy, clean, sober—Old Believers live there. Everyone knows everything about everyone else. They won’t forget the appearance of such an impressive character as the prophet Manuila in a hurry. It happened like this: The Borovsk merchant (his name is Pafnutiev) was sitting in his grocery shop and trading—it was a market day. He was approached by a skinny tramp wearing a loose robe with a belt of blue rope, with tangled hair, no hat, and holding a staff. The tramp asked for bread. Pafnutiev is not fond of beggars and started shaming him, calling him a ‘sponger’ and a ‘cadger.’ The other man answered him: I’m a beggar, but you’re poor, and being poor is a lot worse than being a beggar. ‘I’m poor?’ Pafnutiev exclaimed, offended because he is known as one of the richest men in Borovsk. Manuila said to him: ‘Of course you are! You’ve lived to the age of forty-seven and still not realized that a beggar is far more blessed than a moneybags like you.’ The merchant was astounded—how did this stranger know how old he was?—and the best he could manage was to babble in reply: ‘How is he more blessed?’ ‘In spirit,’ the tramp replied.”

Mitrofanii could not resist snorting at that. “So Manuila doesn’t recognize Christ? But it was very smart the way he slipped in that piece from the Gospel about the blessed in spirit.”

“And it wasn’t the only piece like that. The prophet also informed Pafnutiev that the gate leading to God is narrow, not everyone can get through it. You just think, he said, who will get through more easily—a beggar, or you? And he slapped his own skinny sides. Pafnutiev weighs at least three hundred pounds, if not three-fifty—just the way a successful merchant is supposed to look. Well, everyone there started laughing, the lesson was so clear. Pafnutiev didn’t take offense, though. In his own words, he ‘fell into a rather thoughtful state,’ closed the shop, and took the ‘strange man’ home with him, to talk.”

“There’s something I don’t understand. He was supposed to be dumb, this Manuila. Or at least inarticulate. I was actually thinking what an original prophet he was—managing without words.”

“He is tremendously articulate. He has some kind of speech defect, he lisps or something of the kind, but that doesn’t limit the effect he has. Pafnutiev said, ‘He explains things unintelligibly, but clearly’ Allow me to draw your special attention to the ‘rather thoughtful state’ into which Pafnutiev fell and which made him behave in a manner quite untypical of such a man.”

“Hypnotic abilities?” His Eminence guessed.

“And apparently quite exceptional ones. You remember how he cured the girl Durka of her dumbness? He is a most cunning character and very—how shall I put it?—thorough. Do you know how he got around Pafnutiev when they sat down to drink tea? He told the merchant the entire story of his life, with details that not many people know.”

“Perhaps it was no accident that he approached Pafnutiev at the market!”

Matvei Bentsionovich nodded. “He had gathered his information, prepared in advance. And certainly not, I make so bold as to assure you, for the sake of a crust of bread. Pafnutiev was unable to tell me what they talked about. He mumbled and snapped his fingers, without adducing anything substantial from what Manuila had said.” The public prosecutor paused for effect. “The ‘man of God’ tried to persuade the merchant to give all his riches to those in need, for only then could he find true freedom and discover the path to God. A rich man’s conscience, Manuila told him, is overgrown with fur, otherwise he could not dine on fine white rolls when others do not have so much as a crust of black bread. ‘If you become poor, your conscience will be laid bare and the gates of heaven will open. But whether these gates are worth your fancy bread—you must make up your own mind about that.’”

“Well then, did his arguments persuade the moneybags?” the bishop asked with a smile.

Berdichevsky raised one finger as if to say: Listen and you will find out.

“In part. ‘I was terribly frightened,’ Pafnutiev told me. ‘The Devil got into me and wouldn’t let me give away all my wealth.’ He had a bundle of ‘unclean’ money in an icon case, behind the icon. As far as I understand it, this is a habit the Borovsk merchants have—if they make a sinful profit by selling rotten goods or cheating someone, they put the dishonest earnings behind an icon to ‘purify’ them. So that was the money that Pafnutiev gave this opponent of riches—all that he had hidden there. At first Manuila hesitated—he didn’t want to take it, said he had no use for it. But in the end, naturally, he took it gladly. He said it would come in useful for the naked and hungry in Palestine. The land there was poor, not like in Russia.” Matvei Bentsionovich could not resist laughing—the cunning rogue apparently inspired his admiration.

“And now what?” Mitrofanii inquired. “Does Pafnutiev regret giving away his money? Does he understand that he was duped?”

“Believe it or not, he doesn’t. At the end of our conversation he turned sulky and hung his head. Ah,’ he said, ‘I feel so ashamed. It wasn’t Manuila, it was God I tried to buy off with that rag full of bank notes. I should have given away everything I had, and then I would have saved my soul.’ Ah, well, never mind Pafnutiev and his woes. That’s not the most important thing here.”

“Then what is?”

“Guess how much money the merchant contributed.”

“How should I know? It must have been quite a lot.”

“One and a half thousand rubles. That’s how much there was in the rag.”

Mitrofanii was disappointed. “Is that all?”

“That’s the whole point!” Matvei Bentsionovich exclaimed. “Why would the Warsaw gangs be interested in going after small change like that, and even committing murder for it? And we can’t even be sure that Manuila handed over the entire sum to his ‘little brother.’ He probably kept the lion’s share for himself. What was that I said at the beginning? Pelagia was right. It has nothing to do with the casket, and everything to do with Manuila himself. So the robbery theory is eliminated. The people we are looking for are definitely not bandits.”

“But then who are they?” asked Mitrofanii, knitting his brows. “Who hates Pelagia so much that they want to bury her alive or poison her?”

“As far as the poisoner is concerned, we know absolutely nothing. But we do know quite a lot about the first attacker. So we shall start with him,” the public prosecutor declared with an assurance that indicated he had already drawn up a plan of further action. “What, in your opinion, is the most remarkable thing in Ratsevich’s story?”

“The fact that he was a gendarme. And that he was dismissed from the service.”

“I think it is something else: the fact that he managed to pay off his debts. Ratsevich had no funds of his own to do that, otherwise he would never have let the whole business get as far as prison and expulsion from the gendarmes corps. Ergo, the money to buy himself out of debtor’s prison was given to him by someone else.”

“But who?” His Eminence exclaimed.

“There are two possible explanations, which in some ways are diametrical opposites, mirror images. I find the first extremely unpleasant on a personal level.” Berdichevsky frowned painfully. “It is possible that the debt was not paid off, but forgiven—by the creditors themselves. And as we know, the staff captains creditors were Jewish moneylenders.”

“Moneylenders forgive a debt? Why, that’s unheard of. Why would they?”

“That’s the question. What did Ratsevich do, or promise to do, in exchange for his freedom? What would Jews need with a specialist in detective work and violence? Alas, the answer is obvious. The Jews hate the prophet Manuila, they think he insults them and disgraces their faith. You should have seen how frantically they drive the unfortunate Foundlings away from the synagogue.” Matvei Bentsionovich clearly found it hard to say such things about his own compatriots, but in the interests of the investigation he had to be impartial.

“Ah, Your Eminence, our Jewry, until recently the most placid of all the social communities, has recently been stirred to a state of frenzy. Within its general body the most varied forces and movements have sprung to life, each striving to be more furious and fanatical than the others. The mass of the Jewish people has begun to move, it is prepared to rush to Palestine, or Argentina, or even, God forbid, Uganda (as you know, the English have proposed the establishment of a new Israel there). And the Jews of the Russian Empire have become even more agitated than the rest, because they are oppressed and disenfranchised. The youngest and best educated among them, earnestly seeking to make Russia their genuine homeland, have encountered the hatred and mistrust of the authorities. It is hard, in fact, almost impossible, for a Jew to become a Russian—there is always someone waiting to bring up the saying that ‘a baptized Jew is a thief forgiven.’ Or have you heard the joke: When you baptize a Yid, stick his head under the water and hold it there for five minutes? Many who have failed in their efforts to assimilate have become disillusioned with Russia and wish to build their own state in the Holy Land, a kind of earthly paradise. But the building of heaven on earth is a cruel business, it can’t be done without blood being spilled. But even I, if I had not had the good fortune to meet you, would most probably have found myself in the camp of the so-called Zionists. They, at least, are people with a sense of their own dignity and purpose, nothing like the old-fashioned Jews. But then even the old-fashioned Jews are no longer what they once were. They seem somehow to have sensed that the curse that has hung over Jewry for two thousand years is coming to an end, that the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem is already nigh. This merely renders the animosity between the various groups and factions all the more bitter—the Lithuanian Jews and the Little Russian Jews, the traditionalists and the reformers. All sorts of Judeophobic rabble have begun to stir, spreading rumors about ritual killings, secret Sanhedrins, and the blood of Christian infants. Of course there are no ritual killings, and there could not possibly be—what would Jews want with goys and their non -kosher blood? But it’s a different matter where their own kind is concerned. We could see bloodshed at any moment. Especially over matters in Palestine. There is something worth dividing up in the Holy Land now. Never before have donations flowed there in such abundance.