Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (45 page)

That evening he installed himself near the Circassians’ hill and observed the Jews’ entire operation.
My, my
, he thought,
they’re really fighting seriously now. What if they turn that audacious in old Mother Russia?

As the old saying has it, “less haste, more speed,” and Yakov Mikhailovich did not try to hurry things. He waited until the Circassians and the Jews had reached their agreement and gone away, and a little while later everything was arranged in the most convenient way possible when the nun left the
aul
in the company of a plump little Jewess and her faithful Arab. The proper order of things was restored.

The surrounding area was level and smooth, and he had to drop farther back—you can see a man a long way off in open country. But then, thank God, he could see well too. They wouldn’t get away.

When the carts started climbing up a hill, Yakov Mikhailovich allowed himself a little indulgence. He could see that after the hill the road ran down into a hollow, and he thought:
The clever man doesn’t climb a hill, the clever man goes around it
.

Why get himself soaking in sweat when he could walk around the hill on the low ground? Sometimes your own two feet were handier than a set of wheels.

And that way he would save enough time to give his feet a quick rinse in the stream. Then he could hide in the willow thicket and wait for the mark to drive by.

So that was what he did. He had a quick wash, and drank some fresh water, and even had a bite to eat.

Just as soon as he had brushed off the crumbs, he heard creaking and rumbling. They were coming.

Come on now, come on now
.

He poked his head out of the bushes and froze in confusion.

Instead of two carts, there was only one.
You’re not such a clever man after all, are you, Yakov Mikhailovich, you’re an idiot! Now you’ll have to run back up the hill!

He hunched down to let the cart pass. It drove on a little farther and turned toward the stream—the Jewish girl obviously wanted to cool off too.

Yakov Mikhailovich trotted up the incline of the road with the sweat streaming across his face and pouring down his back. In five minutes he had run all the way to the top.

Things were getting worse by the minute!

There was a crossroads up there: one road led to the right, the other to the left. And if you looked closely, there was a little overgrown track too. The coarse grass on it was dead and hard, he couldn’t see if a cart had passed that way recently or not.

What should he do? Which way should he run?

He appealed to his intellect, and as always it came up with the answer.

Yakov Mikhailovich went dashing back to the stream. It was easier running downhill.

The little Jewess had already washed her horse and was leading it back to the cart by the reins.

She heard the tramping of feet and swung around, pulling the shotgun off her shoulder.

“Disaster, girl! Disaster!” Yakov Mikhailovich yelled in Russian from a distance.

Her jaw dropped: What was this—an Arab shouting in Russian?

She completely forgot about her gun. “Who are you?” she shouted. “What disaster?”

He stopped in front of her, caught his breath, and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

“I’ve lost her, that’s the disaster.”

“Who have you lost? Who are you?”

“Let me have that. Or else, you never know …”

He took hold of the barrel of the shotgun. The girl did not want to let the weapon go, but Yakov Mikhailovich gave her a gentle tap under the ribs with his fist, and the little Jewess doubled over and started flapping her lips like a fish hoisted out of the water.

He tossed the gun into the bushes and slapped the fat girl across the back of the head. She plumped down onto her backside.

“Bastard!” she said, and gave him a searing look from those dark, fearless eyes.

Ai-ai-ai, I’m going to have a bit of bother here
, the man of experience realized. He didn’t waste any time on idle conversation. First he had to reduce this “little cow” to a state of reason, eliminate her stubbornness. “Little cow” was a special term that Yakov Mikhailovich used. A little cow had to be milked for various kinds of useful information and then, depending on the circumstances, either let back out into the meadow or slaughtered for beefsteak.

Of course, the stubborn little Jewess would go for beefsteak, that was clear; but first let her give some milk.

He beat her with his feet for while—without swinging too hard, because it was hot. He kicked her on the anklebones, then twice on the kidneys, and when she curled up in pain, on the coccyx. When she unfolded again, he kicked her female parts.

It didn’t matter how loudly she yelled, there was no one around to hear her in any case.

He decided that was enough for now. He sat on the girl’s breasts and squeezed her throat in his fingers to make her think the end had already come.

But when she turned blue and her eyes started popping out of her head, Yakov Mikhailovich let go of her and allowed her to breathe, get a taste of life. And only then did he start talking to her.

“Where did she go? Which road did she take?”

“Bastard,” repeated the little cow. “Magellan will put you in the ground …”

He had to squeeze her throat again.

Yakov Mikhailovich was disappointed—he was always upset by stupid stubbornness, that very worst of human sins. One way or another, she was going to tell him everything anyway; she was only putting herself and a busy man through unnecessary anguish.

He glanced around, picked up a branch lying nearby, and broke off a piece.

“You stupid fool, now I’m going to poke your eye out with this stick,” said Yakov Mikhailovich, showing her the jagged end. “And then the other one. If that’s not enough, I’ll shove this thing all the way up through your back entrance. Understand me, girl, I’m not an animal—I just have a very important job to do. Talk, my little sweetheart, talk. Which way did the redhead go?”

He released the pressure on her throat a little again. But the ungrateful bitch spat at him. The gob of spit didn’t reach Yakov Mikhailovich, it fell back onto her own chin. But it wouldn’t have bothered him if it had.

Well, what could he do with her?

“Who is she to you—your sister, your friend?” he complained. “All right, then, it’s your own fault.”

He adjusted his sitting position, pinned the little Jewess’s arms down with his knees, and pressed her neck against the ground with his elbow. Then he took hold of the stick close to the pointed end and held it right up to the little fool’s nose.

“Well?”

From the way her eyes glinted, he could tell she wasn’t going to say anything.

He thrust the stick into her eyeball and the blood bubbled out and ran across her round cheek. A shriek broke out of the little cow’s throat and she bared her white, even teeth.

And then the little Jewess did something quite outlandish. Yakov Mikhailovich was prepared for her to press her head back against the ground, but she suddenly jerked it up against the stick, with a strength that he couldn’t possibly have expected from such a plump little thing. The stick sank into her eye as far as his fist. Yakov Mikhailovich jerked it back out, of course, but too late—the girl’s head thudded lifelessly against the ground. Where one eye should have been there was a disgusting crimson pit, and there was something gray dripping off the end of the stick—it had pierced all the way through to her brain.

What a bitch!

For a moment Yakov Mikhailovich simply could not believe his own bad luck.
Ah, disaster! This was a real disaster! Lord God, why do you punish me so? Help me, show me the way! What should I do now to find Ginger?

Yakov was suffering, but he didn’t just sit there and do nothing. You never knew who might happen along the road! He shoved the dead Jewess under the water beside the bank, washing the blood off his hands at the same time. He walked across to the cart and wondered what to do with it. Perhaps he could ride it himself? It would be easier than walking. First he could try one road—drive until he met someone and ask if a woman and an Arab in a hantur had passed that way. If he had no luck, he could come back and try the same thing on the other road. If that was no good either, then he could go along that overgrown track.

He realized that it was a lousy plan. You could travel for an hour, even two around here without meeting anyone. And then how would he explain what he wanted? And what if there were more forks in the road?

He dropped the sacks of grain into the stream, followed by the harrow and the safe. He hesitated for a moment over the safe, though. Ah, if only he had a stick of dynamite, he could take a look inside. But there was no way these ragamuffins could have really big money, and there was no point in carrying excess weight.

He just lashed the cows across their backsides with the whip.

As he was climbing onto the seat, to go try his luck, he noticed a folded sheet of paper in the bottom of the cart. He unfolded it and saw that it was a small map of Palestine, like the ones they put in guidebooks. Ginger had a book like that—he’d seen it. Had she dropped this?

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.