Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (64 page)

And then I suddenly remembered and said: “What does the rooster mean? Not the one in the Gospel, but the other one, the red one? What is its significance?”

He gaped at me, from which I concluded that he did not know anything about the magical properties of the red rooster, and I had been wasting my time racking my brains over ancient treatises and absurd hypotheses. What could a rooster have to do with anything?

But Emmanuel suddenly slapped his hands against his sides and cried out so loudly that some bird of the night flapped its wings and took flight: “The rooster! Why, of course!” And he added something in Hebrew or Aramaic.

“What? What?” I cried out in fright.

“It’s not the full moon that’s important,” he explained, stumbling over his words. “It’s the rooster. I completely forgot about him! That’s why the cave won’t let me through! Ah, I’m so grateful to you, woman! But how did you find out about the rooster?”

I was terribly agitated—an unfathomable secret that could change my entire view of the world was about to be revealed to me. I told him: “From a book in which it is written that if a red rooster crows at the hour of dawn in a Special Cave, the soul and body of a man will be suspended between worlds, and he can be cast out into a different time and place. Is that true?” I trembled inwardly as I asked.

But he shrugged and said, “I don’t know anything about that. But I have to find myself a rooster!”

“A red one?”

“Yes, yes, he was red. Do you have any money?”

I started at the unexpected question, and answered, “Yes.”

“Will you buy me a red rooster at the market? I haven’t got any money at all.”

“Of course I will. So the red rooster must be very important, then?”

“Of course it is!” he exclaimed. “Without it old Miriam won’t be able to survive.”

I was afraid that he was raving. “Who?” I asked.

“Miriam, the poor widow that this plot of land belongs to, or used to belong to in my time. Miriam keeps chickens there and lives by selling the eggs. And her rooster followed me into the burial chamber. Roosters are so inquisitive. I only found him after Kifa and Yehuda had already gone. The old woman can’t manage without a rooster! Who’s going to mate her chickens? Now I understand why God would not let me back through! He is so just and merciful!”

I asked him: “So there was a rooster in the cave with you, and he crowed before the earth shook?”

“Yes, I think so.”

I paused for a moment, trying to comprehend the significance of this incredible phenomenon. But I failed. I asked: “A red rooster, why, that seems absurd! How could that possibly be?”

Emmanuel smiled. “Is there any wise man who knows all the laws on which the world is founded? Then why be surprised if God teaches us a new lesson or reveals a new parable to us?”

“What could be the sense of such a strange parable?”

He thought for a moment and asked: “Tell me, is it stupid to believe in miracles?”

“No,” I replied. “That is, yes. I don’t know. It is stupid to hope that a miracle will intervene in your life and remove all your sorrow.”

“Yes, to hope for a miracle is stupid,” he agreed. “And senseless. As senseless as a red rooster crowing in a Special Cave.”

We did not talk about anything else, because I suddenly felt incredibly tired and could hardly stay on my feet. No doubt it was a reaction to all the shocks of that remarkable night. We went back down into the chamber and slept there until morning. The ground was hard, but I have never slept so soundly and peacefully. And when the first rays of sunlight peeped in through the opening, we went to the city market to buy a red rooster.

WE FOUND A bird of the right color without any trouble. The breed is very common here, it must have been established thousands of years ago.

We took the first red rooster that we came across. We bought it without haggling or examining it, and it turned out to be a bad bargain—the bird had a cantankerous character. Emmanuel had to hug it close the whole day long, and the nasty bird scratched his arms all over with its beak and spurs. But my companion bore it all without complaining and merely remonstrated with the red-feathered bandit. Alas, the bird proved less susceptible to the prophet’s wonder-working speech than hardened villains.

By the way, on the question of villains. Once I felt someone’s gaze on me in the crowded street. Swinging around sharply, I saw the round-faced bandit whom Emmanuel had called Yasha. He hid around a corner, but not before I got a look at him.

I wanted to grab Emmanuel by the sleeve and run, drag him away from the danger, but the round-faced man suddenly stuck his head back out and put a finger to his lips.

Then I remembered Trofim Dubenko and felt reassured.
All right
, I thought,
let Emmanuel have two bodyguards instead of one
.

Ah, Your Eminence, what a wonderful day that was. If only it weren’t for that dratted rooster, driving us crazy with its tricks! We ought to have bought a bird in the evening, not early in the morning, and we ought to have picked one with a more peaceable character.

We talked about all sorts of things, far too much to put into a letter. I can tell you just a few of the things he said that stuck in my memory.

Emmanuel is exceptionally interesting to listen to—many of his thoughts are fascinating and even paradoxical. Amazingly enough for a prophet, he has not a shred of sanctimonious hypocrisy. For instance, when he saw the street women who came out to ply their trade at the Zion Gate, he began talking to me about physical love, although he knew that I was a nun. He said: There is no sin in affections of the flesh—on the contrary, those who wither their flesh by abstinence commit a sin against God. The one thing you must not do is to debase and insult this joyful mystery by exchanging it for common coin. That is as bad as mocking the other two great mysteries—birth and death. And he went dashing over to persuade the harlots of Jerusalem not to defile God’s joy. It cost me an effort to drag him away from the furious girls, who were ready to give him a good slapping.

The one subject that I tried to avoid, in order not to provoke another maniacal fit, was Jesus Christ. But we happened to stop for a drink of water on the Via Dolorosa, beside a wooden sculpture of the Lord bowed under the weight of the cross. Emmanuel looked at the statue for a long time, as if he were measuring himself against some task, then suddenly turned around and said: “You know, you are not the first one to recognize me. There was someone else, a Procurator.”

It has started again, I thought with a helpless sigh and asked: “Two thousand years ago?”

“No,” he said, “three months ago, in St. Petersburg.”

I shall try to relate what he told me after that as accurately as possible, because you will undoubtedly recognize the person concerned.

“The Procurator summoned me to see him and spoke to me for a long time about God, the church, and various other things. The Procurator was an intelligent man and he knew how to listen. It was pleasant and interesting to talk to him. I didn’t identify myself in order not to upset him—his entire room (and it was a very large, beautiful room) was hung with images of the Crucified One.

“Concerning the church, I told him that it was quite unnecessary. Everyone should follow his or her own path, and any good person can be the guide, or even a bad person—that happens too. But what sort of trade is it to be a priest? How can you tell if a priest is a good person himself or not? And why can only men be priests? Are not women kinder and more self-sacrificing than men?

“And concerning God, I told the Procurator that He had been necessary before, in earlier times, in order to instill the fear of God into people. It’s like in a family: when a child is little and cannot tell good from bad for himself, the parent has to influence him with the threat of punishment. But in two thousand years mankind has grown and is no longer afraid of God’s wrath, and now something else is needed. Not glancing over your shoulder at the wrathful Almighty, but listening to your own soul. That is where God is, in the soul, not in heaven, and not on a cloud. I told the Procurator: I walk the earth, look at people, and see how much better they have become than they used to be: wiser, kinder, more compassionate. Still not grown up, but no longer foolish infants, as they were in the times of Moses or John the Baptist. Another covenant between God and man is needed now, a completely different one.

“Suddenly the old man waved his hand to shut me up. He knitted his thick gray eyebrows and looked into my face for a long time, one or two minutes, and then he asked in a shrill voice: ‘Is it you? You?’ And he answered himself: ‘It is you … ’ and I realized that he had understood.

“‘Why have you come to hinder me?’ he asked then. ‘It is hard enough for me without you. You are mistaken about people. You do not understand a single thing about them. They are still foolish infants, they cannot manage without a strict shepherd, they will perish. I swear to you that man is weaker and lower than you thought. He is weak and mean. You have come too soon.’

“I tried to explain to him that it had just happened, but he did not believe me. He went down on his knees, folded his hands like this, and wept. ‘Go back from whence you came. In the name of Christ the Lord … no, in the name of Your Heavenly Father, I implore you!’ I replied honestly that I would be glad to go back, but I could not.

“‘Yes, yes, I know,’ he said with a sigh.

“He got up and started walking around the room, talking to himself bitterly: ‘Ah, my soul, my soul… but not for my own sake, for my neighbor …’ Then he suddenly rang a bell and ordered me to be taken away, although I still had a lot of things to say to him.”

There you have it, Your Eminence, the complete solution to our “puzzle,” as Sergei Sergeevich Dolinin used to say. Only what are we to do with this solution now that we have it?

I already regret having written about this. With your fearless character, you will set about exposing the criminal, but you will get nowhere, you will merely earn a reputation as a madman.

I implore you, none of that is necessary. The Procurator thinks that he has struck a blow against the Son of God, and he is willing to pay for that with the immortality of his very soul. Let him pay. He will not pay to you and me, but to Him.

Ah, it is evening already. It is dark outside. I have sat over this letter the whole day long, and there is still so much I have not written!

Before I explain to you the most difficult part, which I hardly even understand myself, let me tell you a few more of the things that Emmanuel said, because I keep remembering them all the time.

He astounded me when he said that he did not know whether God existed, and that
it is not important
. “What if there is no God?” he said. “Does that mean that man can act like a beast? We are not children who only behave properly in the presence of adults.”

And he also said: “Do not strive to love the whole world; that way not many people will get much love. When you wish to build a tall tower, first sit down and work out if you have the funds to complete the building. There are many who promise to love the whole world and all people, although they have no idea what love is. They cannot even love themselves. Do not dilute your love, do not spread it in a thin layer, like a drop of oil on a large pancake. Rather love your family and friends, but with all your heart. If your strength is very little—love yourself, but truly and faithfully. Do not betray yourself. That is, do not betray God, for he is your true self. And if you are true to yourself, that will be your salvation.”

But we did not finish talking about the most interesting thing of all. I asked him if he believed in life beyond the grave. Is there anything after death? He was surprised and said, “How should I know? I’ll find out when I die. While you are living here, you should think about this life, not the next one. Although, of course, it is interesting to dream. It seems to me that there must be another life and that the death of the body is not the end of a man, but a kind of new birth.” Then he became embarrassed and said: “I even have an entire theory about that…”

“A theory?” I said, realizing that he had confused some learned words. “Please tell me about it, it’s very important for me to know!”

Emmanuel started to answer: “I think, that is, I am almost certain that at the moment of death, every soul …” And just then the wretched rooster broke free of his grasp and set off across an empty plot of land! We had to chase him and catch him. Just imagine it—the strident crowing, the idle onlookers whistling and hooting, feathers flying in all directions. So I never did learn what Emmanuel wanted to reveal to me about the afterlife.

NOW THAT I am alone, I can see that I wasted many of the precious hours when we were together. I chattered a lot myself, instead of listening. Sometimes I began talking about trivial matters, and there were times when we simply said nothing.

How different today is from yesterday. How
unnecessary
all the things have become that my gaze falls on! How lonely the world is! How empty.

Why did I let him go? Why did I not stop him? I thought he would come to my hotel in the morning, embarrassed and, perhaps, wiser. And we would laugh at that stupid rooster together.

I did not sleep at all last night. I smiled as I imagined how I would make fun of him. I thought what I would ask him about when he came back. But, of course, he did not come back.