Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog (12 page)

“Twenty’s not enough, put in thirty…”

Tatishcheva took the glass of heart drops with a trembling hand and drank.

“Give me Zakusai!” she demanded and took hold of the puppy, clutching the warm, sleepy little body to her breast.

Zakusai almost opened his little eyes, he gave a shrill yelp, but then thought better of waking up. He floundered about for a while, working his way in deeper under the old woman’s ponderous bust, and then lay still.

From beyond the trees came the sound of voices and laughter as the searchers called to one another after spreading out across the extensive park, and poor Marya Afanasievna sat there more dead than alive, talking on and on, as if she was trying to drive away her alarm with words: “Ah, holy mother, don’t you pay any attention to me having a house full of people here, when it comes right down to it I’m terrible lonely, nobody really loves me except for my little children.”

“Is that not enough?” Pelagia tried to comfort her. “Such fine young people.”

“You mean Pyotr and Naina? I meant my little dogs. As for Pyotr and Naina…I’m no more than a nuisance to them. The Lord has gathered in all my children. The youngest, Polina, lasted the longest of all, but even she had a short life. She died in childbirth, when Naina arrived. She was wonderful, so full of life, with a passionate heart, but a total fool of a woman, and Naina takes after her. Polina went and got married against Apollon Nikolaevich’s will and mine to a mangy little Georgian princeling who was good for nothing but cutting a dashing figure. I didn’t even want to know him, but when our Polina passed on, I felt sorry for the orphans. I bought them back and took them into my own home.”

Pelagia was astonished.

“How do you mean, you bought them?”

The general’s widow waved her hand in a disparaging gesture.

“It’s very simple. I promised that father of theirs that I’d pay his debts if he signed a paper promising never to come near his son and daughter again.”

“And he signed it?”

“What else could he do? He either signed or ended up in debtor’s prison.”

“And so he never showed up again?”

“Oh, yes, he did. About fifteen years ago he sent me a tearful pleading letter. Not pleading to be allowed to see his children, but looking for financial support. And after that, they say he left and went away to America. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. But he spoiled my grandchildren with his coxcomb’s blood. Petya’s grown up into a good-for-nothing, the clumsy oaf. He was thrown out of grammar school for his pranks and excluded from university for sedition. I barely managed to get the minister to agree to send him here and leave him in my care; they wanted to send him straight off to Siberia. He’s a kind-hearted boy, sensitive, but far too…stupid. He has no character and there’s nothing he’s any good at. He tries to help Stepan Trofimovich, but he’s about as good for that as a nun is for breeding.”

Pelagia coughed to indicate that she found this comparison infelicitous, but such subtleties were beyond Marya Afanasievna. She exclaimed in a voice filled with torment: “Lord, what can be taking them so long? What if something’s happened?”

“And what about Naina Georgievna?” Pelagia asked, wishing to distract Tatishcheva from her troubled thoughts.

“Takes after her mother,” her hostess snapped. “Just as capricious, only she inherited a passion for fashion from the prince as well. Wanton petulance, to use the good old Russian phrase. First she wanted to be an actress and kept declaiming monologues, then suddenly she was going to be an artist, and now there’s no telling what she’s jabbering about—she just rambles. And I’m to blame for it; I spoiled her far too much when she was a little girl. I felt sorry for her, being so young, and an orphan. And she was very like my little Polina…What’s that, are they bringing him?”

She half-rose out of her chair, listened, and sat back down again.

“No, I only imagined it…What’s going to happen to them when I die, God only knows. Stepan’s my only hope. He’s honest, devoted, decent. Now that’s the kind of husband Naina needs, and he loves her, I can see that, but what does she understand about a man’s value? Styopa’s our ward. He grew up here, went off to the academy to study to be an artist, and then Apollon Nikolaevich passed away. So even though he was only a boy then, Stepan gave up his studies, came back to Drozdovka, and took the estate in hand, and he manages the whole business so well that I’m the envy of the entire province. His heart’s not in the work, though, I can see that. But he sticks with it and doesn’t grumble, because he knows where his duty lies. I’m guilty before him, old sinner that I am. I quarreled with him the day before yesterday, and with my grandchildren, I was out of sorts after Zagulyai. I changed my will, and now my conscience is bothering me…”

Pelagia almost opened her mouth to ask what changes had been made in the will, but she bit her tongue and said nothing, for something peculiar was happening to Marya Afanasievna.

The general’s widow opened her mouth wide, her eyes bulged wildly, and the folds of flesh under her chin began shuddering rapidly.

A stroke, the nun thought in fright. It could easily be—in someone so stout, apoplexy was always a risk.

But Tatishcheva showed no signs of paralysis; on the contrary, she flung one hand up in the air and pointed her finger at something behind the nun’s back.

Turning around, Pelagia saw Zakidai come crawling out of the garden toward the steps, leaving a scarlet trail on the ground. Protruding from the white, bumpy head was the handle of a firmly embedded hatchet, which was painted blue, so that the red, white, and blue combination precisely repeated the colors of the Russian flag.

Zakidai was using his last ounces of strength to crawl along with his tongue lolling out and his eyes fixed on a single point—the spot where Marya Afanasievna was sitting, frozen in horror. He did not whine, he did not whimper, he simply crawled. At the edge of the veranda his strength deserted him; he thrust his head against the bottom step, twitched twice, and lay absolutely still.

Tatishcheva’s dress rustled as she heeled over sideways, and before Sister Pelagia could catch hold of her, the old woman had slumped to the floor and struck her head against the pine boards with a resounding smack. Ejected from his cradle, little Zakusai went tumbling across the veranda like a soft white ball and yelped plaintively, still half-asleep.

CHAPTER 4

A Nest of Vipers

THE DOCTOR FOUND no sign of a stroke, but neither did he hold out any great hope. A nervous fever, he said; there was nothing that medical science could do about it. It sometimes happened that a perfectly healthy person would be completely consumed in only a few days as a result of some shock, and this case involved advanced age, a bad heart, and a naturally hysterical temperament. When he was asked what could be done, how she should be treated, he gave a strange answer: “Distract her and cheer her up.”

But how were they to distract her when she only talked of one thing all the time? How were they to cheer her up when the tears were flowing unceasingly from her eyes? And she would not even allow any members of her family to come near her, shouting: “You’re all murderers!”

The doctor departed, taking the prescribed fee for his visit, and the family council decided to ask Sister Pelagia to assume responsibility for the spiritual care of the sick woman. Especially since Marya Afanasievna herself, while refusing to see her grandchildren or neighbors, or even her manager, kept asking after the nun all the time and demanding that she come to the bedroom almost every hour.

Pelagia came when she was summoned, sat at the head of the bed, and listened patiently to the widow’s feverish talk. The curtains in the room were drawn, a lamp was lit under a green shade on the side table, there was a smell of aniseed and mint lozenges. Tatishcheva either sobbed and pressed her face into the pillow in fright, or flew into a sudden fury, but that soon came to an end, because she no longer had the strength to remain angry for long. Zakusai lay close at her side almost constantly. Marya Afanasievna stroked him, called him her “orphan,” and fed him with chocolate. The poor creature was completely worn out with all this immobility and from time to time he rebelled, barking and squealing. Then Tanya would put him on his lead and take him out for a walk, but the lady of the house was ill at ease all the time they were absent and kept glancing constantly at the large clock on the wall.

Of course, Pelagia pitied the old woman for her suffering, but at the same time she was amazed that there could be so much spite in someone so weak that she could barely even control her tongue.

As she kissed Zakusai on his wrinkled little face, Marya Afanasievna said: “Dogs are so much better than people!”

She listened to the soft voices rising from somewhere in the depths of the house and whispered venomously: “This is no home, it’s a nest of vipers.”

Or she would simply fix her eyes on the nun’s hands as they clattered away nimbly with the knitting needles and make a horrified face: “What’s that you’re knitting, holy mother? It’s disgusting. Throw it away immediately.”

Most unpleasant of all, however, were the fits of suspicion that came over the general’s widow several times a day. Then the servants would go rushing off to seek out Sister Pelagia. They would find her in her room, or in the library, or in the park, and bring her to Marya Afanasievna, who would already be huddled up under the blanket so that only her frightened, glittering eyes could be seen, whispering:

“I know, it’s Petya, it couldn’t be anyone else! He hates me, he wants to do away with me! He’s being held here against his will, and I’m responsible for him to the police officer. He called me a ‘Benckendorf’ and all kinds of other names. It’s him, he’s the one, that spawn of Telianov’s! I’m always getting in his way. He wanted to teach the village children and I wouldn’t let him, because he wouldn’t teach them anything worthwhile. I don’t give him any money, either—he’d send it to those nihilists of his. And now he’s gone completely out of his mind and decided he wants to marry my Tanya. Marry the maid! ‘Don’t you dare be so dismissive of her, grandmother,’ he says, ‘you have to see the human being in her.’ That would be a fine thing now, eh? If my grandson marries the estate flirt! If only he was madly in love with her, anything’s possible, after all, but he isn’t. It’s an idea he has—to sacrifice himself on the altar, to turn a common, semiliterate girl into an educated woman. ‘Great works,’ he says, ‘are for great people, but I’m a small man, and my work will be small, but it will be good. If every one of us can make at least one other person happy, then his life has not been lived in vain.’ I said to him: ‘You won’t make the girl happy without love, not even if you shower her with gold, not even if you read every book in the world out loud to her. Why fill Tanya’s head with nonsense? I’ve already picked out a groom for her, a cattle dealer’s son, he’ll be a perfect match for her. But all you’re doing is giving her pointless ambition; you want her to suffer the rest of her life for things that could never be.’ And you know, the most shameful thing is that he’s not even sleeping with her, he’s such a sissy! I’ve no doubt if he was to go to her at night, he’d work it out of his system soon enough and start to see reason. Now why are you giving me that reproachful look, mother? I’ve seen life; I know what I’m talking about.”

But an hour later her head would be full of other ideas.

“No, it’s Nainka. The idleness has driven her mad. I know her kind, I was the same myself. I remember the way it is, you just can’t wait to get your fill of life, I could have strangled my parents with my own hands, I wanted my freedom so much. Especially when I was stupid enough to fall in love with the parish priest at the age of seventeen. He was so handsome and young, with such a velvety voice. I almost ran off with him—it was lucky my dear late papa caught me, gave me a sound beating, and locked me in the shed. Now Nainka’s fallen for somebody, just look how many of those men she has circling around her. Her granny’s in her way now, spoiling her happiness. She’s chosen someone or other for herself that I’ll never agree to while I’m alive and she’s decided to take what she wants over my dead body. She could, she has the character for it. Ah, Nainka, Nainka, didn’t I love you, didn’t I give you my heart and soul…Zakusai, my little love, my angel without wings, you’re the only one who won’t betray me. You won’t, will you, my sweet?”

And then, a little while later, Pelagia found Marya Afanasievna in a state of conciliatory self-reproach. Sobbing at her own nobility, the general’s widow said: “Sit down, mother, listen. I’ve had a revelation: It’s Stepan, and I don’t blame him. How long can I go on making his life a misery? He’s been stuck here with me for nigh on twenty years as it is. He gave up his dream, buried his talent in the ground, and at the age of forty he’s still single. All I do is just sponge off all his hard work. Without him I’d have frittered away my husband’s legacy long ago, with my foolish character, but he’s preserved it and increased it. But he’s a living human being, too. He must be thinking: ‘You’ve lived long enough already, old woman, time to do the right thing.’ That Poggio has turned his head by coming here, that’s as clear as day. Styopa got his easel down out of the attic, brought some paints from the town, and the look in his eyes completely changed. It’s all right, I understand, I don’t judge him…although he could have told me straight out. This is the way it is, Marya Afanasievna, I’ve done enough work for you, now I’m asking you to let me go. But he won’t say it, he’s not like that. He feels ashamed. It’s easier to do away with the old woman than appear ungrateful to her. I know that breed well enough, it has its fair share of pride and passion…Ah, no, how could I be so blind! It’s not Stepan, it’s Poggio!” She reached upward, struggling to raise herself up off the pillows. “Perhaps in secret Stepan wishes I would croak soon, but he wouldn’t poison the poor defenseless dogs. But Poggio would! Just for amusement’s sake, or out of friendship, to free his friend from slavery! He’s depraved, a devil! He tried to seduce Naina, making drawings of her and photographing her. And he’s leading Stepan astray…I noticed him looking daggers at me a long time ago. It’s him! Look how long he’s stayed, over two months already. And at first he said, ‘Just for a month or so.’ He won’t go away now until he’s driven me into my grave!”