Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (5 page)

His Eminence’s secretary was a fine man in almost every respect—in deed, as far as industry and efficiency were concerned, he was above reproach—but in his heart Mitrofanii was not truly fond of him. Evidently this was the very reason why the bishop was especially charitable to Father Serafim, employing an affectionate attitude to subdue the sin of groundless irritation. Nonetheless sometimes he would burst out, and once he had even flung his episcopal hat at Userdov, but afterward he would always apologize. The mild-mannered secretary would take fright, and for a long time be unable to find the courage to pronounce the words of forgiveness, but eventually he would babble: “I forgive you—forgive me, too,” following which peace would be restored.

With her restless mind, Pelagia once expressed to Mitrofanii a seditious idea concerning Father Serafim: that the world has real live people in it, but there are also other creatures who only try to be like people, as if they have been planted among us from a different world, perhaps from a different planet, in order to observe us. Some of them are better at their pretense, so that you can hardly tell them apart from genuine people: others are not so skillful, and you can spot them right away. Userdov, now, was one of the less successful examples. If you took a look under his skin you were bound to find nuts, bolts, and gearwheels.

The bishop had roundly abused the nun for this theory. However, Pelagia was not infrequently visited by foolish thoughts, and His Reverence was accustomed to this; he rebuked her largely as a matter of form.

As for Father Serafim, the bishop knew that the secretary dreamed of a high clerical position. And why not? He was learned, of good conduct, and quite charmingly handsome. The secretary kept his hair and beard clean and well groomed, anointing them with sweet fragrances. He polished his nails with a brush. He wore only cassocks of fine woolen cloth.

There didn’t really seem to be anything reprehensible in all this—Mitrofanii himself appealed to the clergy to keep themselves neat and presentable—but even so he found his assistant irritating. Especially on this journey, when the heavenly spheres had rained down bolts of fiery lightning on His Reverence. He was unable to talk heart-to-heart with his spiritual daughter or to express his most intimate thoughts while this six-winged angel sat there, tending his thin little mustache with a small comb. He would say nothing for ages, and then he would put in something entirely out of place and ruin the entire conversation—like now, for instance.

In response to the appeal to apologize to the Chief Procurator, Pelagia said hastily: “I would, gladly. I would even swear on a holy icon: Never again, not for anything, will I ever stick my nose into a criminal investigation. Not even if it is absolutely the most mysterious mystery possible. I won’t even give it a sideways glance.”

But Mitrofanii merely cast a sideways glance at his secretary, without saying a word.

“Come, Pelagiushka, let us take a stroll around the ship. To stretch our legs … No, no, Serafim, you stay here. Get those documents on the consistory ready for me. I’ll read through them when I get back.”

And the two of them left the cabin with a sigh of relief, leaving Userdov alone with his briefcase.

Of every kind a pair

THEY DIDN’T WALK on the lower deck, because the fog made it quite impossible to distinguish the River or the sky (or even the deck). They went up higher, where the passengers of the very cheapest category were sitting around in small groups.

Glancing around through the semitransparent gloom at all this human variety, Mitrofanii said in a low voice: “Of the pure cattle, and of the impure cattle, and of all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth, of every kind a pair …”

He blessed the peasant pilgrims and let them kiss his hand, merely casting a sad glance over the others, who were leaving Russia forever and had no need of an Orthodox pastors blessing.

Speaking to his companion in a quiet voice, he said: “Behold, such a highly intelligent man, who truly wishes his fatherland well, and yet he is in such a state of spiritual error. Just look how much harm he causes.”

He did not mention anyone by name, but it was quite clear whom he had in mind—Konstantin Petrovich.

“Feast your eyes on the fruits of his struggle for good,” His Reverence continued bitterly as he walked past the members of dissenting sects and different faiths. “If anyone is not like the majority, if they are strange—out of the state with them! No need to drive them out by force, they will leave of their own accord, fleeing oppression and the hostile attitude of the state. He imagines that as a result Russia will be more firmly united, stronger. That may be so, but her colors will be the poorer for it, she will be impoverished. Our Procurator is convinced that he alone knows how the fatherland should be organized in order to save it. In the times we live in, prophets have become a fashion. We are surrounded by them. Some are laughable, like our neighbor here, Manuila. Others are more serious, like Count Tolstoy or Karl Marx. And even Konstantin Petrovich imagines that he is a messiah. Not on a global scale, though—a strictly local messiah, such as they had in Old Testament times, when a prophet was sent not to the whole of mankind, but only to a single people …”

The bishop’s dour complaints were interrupted by a respectable family who had also come up to the boat deck for a stroll: a thickset gentleman, a lady with her knitting, and two youngsters—a cute schoolboy and a pretty young lady with light hair.

The boy pulled off his cap and bowed, asking for a blessing.

“What is your name, young man?” Mitrofanii asked the charming lad, making the sign of the cross over the entire family.

“Antinous, Your Reverence.”

“That is a pagan name, for domestic use only. What is your baptismal name?”

“Antip, Your Reverence.”

“A fine name, a name of the people,” the bishop said approvingly.

The boy gently pressed his lips against the bishops hand, and Mitrofanii, touched, patted Antip-Antinous on the back of the head.

The bishop walked on unhurriedly, but Pelagia hung back—the pious schoolboy’s mother was knitting her stitches in such a very skillful manner. The nun, an enthusiastic knitter herself, always carried a little bag with her handiwork hanging around her neck, but her fingers were so stupid that she was always getting her rows confused and making a mess of her knots. “Tell me, madam, how do you manage to cast on so cleanly?” she was about to ask, but instead she suddenly blinked and pressed her spectacles back against the bridge of her nose.

The skillful knitter had strange hands: broad, with little hairs on the fingers. Pelagia raised her eyes, saw an unfeminine face and a neck with a protruding Adam’s apple above the lace collar, and gasped out loud.

Catching the nun’s gaze, the remarkable lady stopped and suddenly winked. Her family continued on its way, leaving the two knitting enthusiasts alone together.

“Are you a man?” Pelagia asked in a whisper, opening her eyes wide in amazement.

The other woman nodded and raised a finger to her lips:
Sh-sh-sh
.

“But… who are they?” the nun asked, with a confused nod in the direction of the broad-shouldered gentleman and his charming offspring.

“My family.” The voice of the man in woman’s clothes was high, with a slightly squeaky note, almost indistinguishable from a woman’s. “My husband, Lev Ivanovich. And our children, Antinous and Salome. We are sodomites.” The final words were pronounced in a perfectly normal tone of voice, as if the speaker had said “We are Oddesites” or “We are Mennonites.”

“S-sodomites? You mean … pederasts?” Pelagia asked, stumbling over the shameful words. “But what about the young lady? And then … surely you can’t have children?”

“Salome is no young lady—he used to work in a men’s bathhouse. That was where Lyova picked him up. So delicate, so delicate! And the way he sings! Antinous is a jolly one, naughty, he likes to get up to mischief sometimes, but little Salomeia is simply an angel. All three of us love Lev Ivanovich,” declared Pelagia’s amazing companion. “He’s a real man, not like the ordinary ones. Women are not enough for a real man; for him all other men are like women.”

It was shameful to listen to this, but interesting too. Pelagia turned to see how far Mitrofanii had moved on. He mustn’t find out who it was he had blessed so benignly!

His Reverence was not far away. He had stopped beside a group of Jews and was listening to something. That was good.

“And how long have you … you know, been living like this?” the nun asked curiously.

“Not long. Only for seven months.”

“And before that?”

“Before that I used to live like everyone else. I had a wife, a daughter. A job. I’m a teacher, from a classical grammar school, you know—Latin, ancient Greek. I reached the age of forty without ever realizing who or what I was. As if I’d been watching life through the dusty window of a railway carriage, and life just kept rolling on by. But when I met Lev Nikolaevich, the glass suddenly shattered and broke. You can’t imagine how happy I am! As if I had risen from the dead!”

“But what about your family? I mean, your first family.”

The classical grammar-school teacher sighed.

“What could I do, when it was a matter of love and resurrection? I left them everything. The money in the bank, all that there was. The house. I feel sorry for my daughter, she’s a clever little girl. But she’s better off without a father like this. Let her remember me as I used to be.”

Glancing at her resurrected companion’s mobcap and silk dress, Pelagia could not find it in herself to dispute this assertion.

“Where are you heading now?”

“Sodom,” came the reply. “As I said, we are sodomites.”

Once again Pelagia completely failed to understand. “What Sodom? The one laid waste by the Lord together with Gomorrah?”

“It was destroyed. But now it has been reborn. An American millionaire, Mr. George Sairus, the well-known philanthropist, discovered the spot where the biblical Sodom stood. And now a heavenly new city is being built there—for people like us. No persecution from the police, no disdain from society. And no women,” the speaker said with a sly smile. “You naturals will never make the kind of woman that a man can. Although, of course, you do have something worth looking at.” The former classicist cast an appraising glance over the nun’s figure. “The bust is no great feature, you can stuff that with cotton wool, but the shoulders now, the line of the thigh …”

“Irodiada! Where have you disappeared to?” a stentorian voice called out of the fog. “The children want to go back to the cabin.”

“Coming, darling, coming!” Irodiada called with a start and went hurrying after the call of her beloved.

Is there no end to the variety of the Lord’s creatures?
Pelagia thought in wonder, and set off after Mitrofanii.

She saw that His Reverence had already moved from the passive state of listening to others to the active state of wagging his mighty finger and pronouncing on something to a gray-bearded rabbi who was surrounded by a huddle of juveniles.

Sister Pelagia did not see how the argument had begun. No doubt the bishop, with his customary curiosity, had started questioning the Jews about where they were going and what their motives were—was it a matter of need, or faith, or were they perhaps fleeing from unjust persecution?—and he had clashed with his Judaic colleague over some point.

“That is precisely why you are persecuted everywhere, because you have so much arrogance!” the bishop rumbled.

The exponent of the Old Testament responded no less thunderously: “We do have our pride, it is true! Man cannot live without pride! He is the crown of creation!”

“It is not pride that your people are so full of, but precisely arrogance! You despise all who do not live as you do, you are always afraid of being defiled! If you are so squeamish, then who will love you?”

“It is not people we despise and shun, but people’s impurity! And as for love, King David said: ‘On all sides do they surround me with words of hate, they arm themselves against me without cause; for my love they make war on me, but I pray’”

Provoked by this rebuff, Mitrofanii retorted: “Who is it that you love, apart from those of your own tribe? Even your prophets addressed themselves only to you, the Jews, but our saints feel for the whole of mankind!”

Pelagia thought what a pity it was that the Chief Procurator could not hear the bishop fulminating against the infidels—how glad he would have been!

The dispute made interesting listening, and even more interesting watching: for all their religious differences, the two opponents were extremely similar in both temperament and appearance.

“We do not turn our backs on mankind!” the rabbi exclaimed, shaking his beard, “but we remember what a heavy burden has been laid upon us—to demonstrate to other nations an example of constancy and purity. And all who wish to be pure may join us. If you wish, we will accept even you!”

“What you say is not true!” Mitrofanii rumbled triumphantly, and his beard began jerking. “Those lost sheep who are called ‘found lings’“—he pointed to the three vagabonds sitting a short distance away in their clowns’ costumes with the blue stripe—“have reached out to your faith and abjured Christ. And what has happened? Have you taken them in, Reverend Rabbi? No, you turn your noses up!”