Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog (16 page)

The young woman spoke tenderly to him: “Ah, dear Vladimir Lvovich, the best protection is love. That is where you should place your trust, not in the police.”

If Bubentsov’s refusal had upset her, she gave no sign of it.

“Well, as you wish.” With a meek smile she turned to the other men and announced in a different voice, imperious and demanding: “Let’s go into the park. But each of us on our own, to make it more frightening, and we’ll call out to one another.”

She ran down the steps and melted into the darkness. Shiryaev, Poggio, and Pyotr Georgievich followed her without saying a word. Except that the latter looked back and asked: “What about you, Sister Pelagia? Come on. It’s a truly wonderful evening.”

“No, Pyotr Georgievich, I shall also pay a visit to your grandmother.”

Pelagia set off after the formidable inspector, and the only person left behind on the terrace, which a moment ago had been full of people, was Spasyonny, heaping raspberry jam into a dish.

“TOMORROW MORNING YOU will be much better, aunty, and we shall go for a ride,” said Bubentsov in a tone of confidence that brooked no denial, holding Marya Afanasievna by the wrist and looking her straight in the eyes. “But first let us settle this little business with the attorney. It really is very good that you have summoned him, you did the right thing. Truly, it is a shameful kind of joke—to leave Drozdovka to a household retainer. It is just the same as if Elizabeth of England had left the throne to the court jester. That is not the way things are done, aunty.”

“But who should I leave it to? Petka and Nainka?” Tatishcheva objected in a barely audible voice. “They’ll fritter away the lot. They’ll sell the estate, and not to some decent person, because nowadays the nobles have no money, but to some moneybags. He’ll tear up the park and turn the house into a factory. But Janet won’t change anything, she’ll leave everything the way it is. She’ll give Pyotr and Naina money, they’re like family to her, but she won’t allow them to play the fool.”

“Queen Elizabeth acted differently—she made James Stuart her heir, although she had closer relatives than he. And all because she was concerned for the welfare of her realm. Stuart was a man of genuine stately intellect. The queen could be certain that he would not only preserve her realm, but also strengthen it several times over. She also knew that in his eternal gratitude to her, he would glorify her memory and would not mistreat the associates who were dear to her heart.”

What astounded Pelagia most of all was the fact that Vladimir Lvovich was not in the least embarrassed by the presence of outsiders. Tanya, of course, was dozing, draped across her chair, drained of all her strength—she had exhausted herself in the course of the day—but Pelagia was sitting close by, at the foot of the bed, and deliberately clicking her knitting needles as loudly as she could to bring the shameless villain to his senses.

Much chance there was of that!

Bubentsov leaned down closer, looking into Tatishcheva’s eyes again.

“I know how to perpetuate your memory. What you need is not a headstone of Carrara marble, or a chapel. All that is nothing but dead stone. What you need is a memorial of a different kind, one that will spread out from Drozdovka through the whole of Russia, and then through the whole world. Who will continue your noble labors in the effort to breed the white bulldog? For all of them it is no more than a foolish caprice, an absurd whim. Your Miss Wrigley cannot stand dogs.”

“That’s true,” squeaked Marya Afanasievna. “Last year she even dared to get herself a cat, but Zagulyai and Zakidai tore him in two.”

“There, you see. But I have been a dog-lover since my childhood. My father had excellent borzois. You could say that I was raised in the kennels. It will take another ten years for this sturdy chap”—Vladimir Lvovich fondled the ear of the puppy, who was snoring sweetly close beside the general’s widow—“to father a firm, stable breed. I shall call the breed the Tatishchev bulldog, so that a hundred and two hundred years from now…”

At that very moment Zakusai, awoken by this touch and closely observing the hand that was absentmindedly tousling his ear, took decisive action and snapped at the pampered finger with his sharp little teeth.

“Ah!” Bubentsov cried briefly in surprise and jerked his hand away, sending the puppy flying head over heels to the floor. Not offended in the slightest, Zakusai gave a joyful bark and suddenly darted straight for the door, which had not been completely shut, leaving just a crack open.

“Catch him!” cried Marya Afanasievna, started up from her pillow in a panic. “Tanya, Tanya, he’s gone again!”

The maid jumped up from her chair, still half asleep and totally bemused, and Vladimir Lvovich stood up as well.

The round white rump stuck in the narrow crack of the door, but not for long. The fat little legs scraped rapidly at the floor, the door opened just a little wider, Zakusai broke through and was free.

“Stop!” shouted Bubentsov. “Don’t worry, aunty, I’ll catch him soon enough.”

The three of them—Vladimir Lvovich, Pelagia, and Tanya—ran out into the corridor. The white pup was already at its far end. Seeing that the enormity of his daring had been duly appreciated, he yelped in triumph and disappeared around the corner.

“He’ll run out into the garden,” gasped Tanya. “The doors are wide open!”

Zakusai ran quicker than his pursuers—as she bounded out onto the veranda, Pelagia was barely in time to see the little white blob leap friskily from the step straight into the darkness.

“We have to catch him quickly, or aunty will go out of her mind,” Bubentsov said anxiously, and he began issuing commands in military style: “You, whatever your name is, to the left, the nun to the right, I go straight on. Shout to the others and tell them to search, too. Forward!”

A moment later the drowsy calm of the park was shattered by numerous voices calling to the fugitive.

“Zakusai! Here, boy, Zakusai!” called Pelagia.

“Zakusai, come here, you damned pest!” Tanya’s shrill voice called out somewhere behind the raspberry patch.

“Gentlemen, Zakusai has run off!” Bubentsov’s brisk cavalryman’s tenor informed the others who were wandering about the park.

And they were also quick to respond.

“Hey there!” Pyotr Georgievich responded from somewhere in the distance. “He won’t get away, the little tormentor! We’ll find him and punish him!”

“Tally-ho, tally-ho!” Kirill Nifontovich hallooed from the birch grove. “Miss Wrigley, I’ll go to the clearing, and you go over that way!”

And now on all sides there were branches cracking, merry voices calling, laughter rippling. The customary game, by now already a ritual, was beginning.

Sister Pelagia gazed hard into the darkness and listened for that familiar squealing coming from any direction. And only a little while later, after about ten minutes, when she was already close to the riverbank, she finally saw something small and white ahead of her. She quickened her stride—it was definitely Zakusai. Exhausted from all the running, he had laid down to rest under the withered aspen, two steps away from the Englishwoman’s lawn.

“So that’s where you are,” Pelagia sang quietly, thinking only of how to avoid startling the little scamp—then she would have to spend half the night searching all the thickets for him.

There was a rustling of rapid footsteps in the bushes at one side—evidently someone else was hurrying to the same spot.

The nun crept up to the puppy, bent down over him, and with a triumphant cry of “Got you!” seized hold of his plump white body with both hands.

Zakusai did not make a sound, he did not even stir.

Pelagia squatted down quickly. Her heart gave a tight shudder, as if refusing to pump any more blood, and she had a tight, hot feeling in her chest.

The puppy’s head was strangely flattened and lying beside him was a big flat stone, still with a lump of wet earth clinging to it and gleaming in the moonlight. And there was the hole out of which the stone had been tugged.

In death Zakusai’s little face had become long and sad. Now he really did look like a little angel.

The steps were still rustling through the bushes, but not moving closer, on the contrary, they were farther away and less distinct now. And then Pelagia finally realized: Whoever it was, they were not hurrying to the spot, but away from it.

CHAPTER 5

A Terrible Fright

MARYA AFANASIEVNA WAS dying. At the very beginning of the night, when she guessed what had happened from Tanya’s heartrending wailing, she lost the power of speech. She simply lay on her back, wheezing, her eyes gaping wildly up at the ceiling as her plump fingers fiddled and fidgeted with the edge of the blanket, shaking and shaking it, brushing at something that would not be shaken off.

The doctor was brought from the town in the very fastest carriage-and-three. He felt the patient here and there, kneaded her a little, listened to her through a stethoscope, gave her an injection so that she would not choke, and then came out into the corridor and said with a dismissive wave of his hand: “She’s going. She should be given the sacraments.”

Then he sat in the drawing room, drank tea with cognac, and talked in low voices with Stepan Trofimovich about the prospects for the harvest, glancing into the bedroom once every half-hour to see if she was still breathing. Marya Afanasievna was breathing, but ever more weakly as time passed, and she was oblivious to her surroundings for long periods at a time.

Long after midnight the rural dean was brought, having been roused from his bed. He arrived disheveled and not yet fully awake, but in full vestments and with all the gifts of the Holy Sacrament. However, when he entered the dying woman’s room, she opened her eyes and mumbled implacably: “I don’t want him.”

“Don’t you want the sacraments, granny?” Pyotr Georgievich asked in fright. He had been affected very powerfully by the dramatic events.

Tatishcheva nodded her head very weakly.

“What is it, then?” asked Sister Pelagia, leaning down to her. “You don’t want the holy father?”

The old woman slowly lowered her eyelids, then raised them again and pointed upward and off to one side.

Pelagia followed the line of her finger with her eyes. There was nothing special up there on the left: the wall, a lithograph with a view of St. Petersburg, a portrait of the deceased Apollon Nikolaevich, a photograph of His Grace Mitrofanii in full bishop’s vestments.

“You want the bishop to administer the sacraments?” the nun guessed. The general’s widow closed her eyelids again and lowered her finger. Apparently that was it.

They sent to Zavolzhsk again, to the episcopal see, and began waiting for Mitrofanii to arrive.

No one slept all night long, but everyone scattered throughout the house. Here and there groups of two or three talked quietly among themselves, while others, in contrast, sat in silent solitude. Pelagia had no opportunity to observe the way in which everyone behaved, which was unfortunate, for many things might have been revealed. Who knows, poor Zakusai’s killer might even have given himself away somehow or other. But Christian duty comes before worldly concerns, and the nun remained constantly at Marya Afanasievna’s side, reading prayers and whispering words of consolation that in all likelihood the sick woman could not even hear. It was not until dawn that Pelagia finally ventured out into the garden for some reason and returned after an absence of about half an hour in a state of great thoughtfulness.

The sun rose and began clambering higher and higher; it was already past noon, and still His Grace was not there. The doctor merely shook his head and said that the patient was clinging on out of sheer stubbornness: She had got it into her head that she must hold out until her nephew arrived, no matter what, and now there was no way she would go until she had seen him.

The attorney Korsh arrived. Bubentsov put Pelagia out of the room so that she would not interfere with the rewriting of the will. Spasyonny and Krasnov were summoned to be witnesses, because Naina Georgievna would not leave her room, Pyotr Georgievich asked to be excused, and Stepan Trofimovich merely frowned fastidiously. How could he think of wills at such a moment!

Pelagia found all this very unpleasant, but there was nothing that she could do. Donat Abramovich Sytnikov appeared, but did not wish to interfere in other people’s family affairs—let things take their own course, he said, from which it followed that he was not after all quite as interested in the Goryaev wilderness as the mistrustful Marya Afanasievna had fancied.

Bubentsov’s efforts over the dying woman were in vain; there was no rewriting of the will. An hour later Korsh emerged from the bedroom, wiping away the sweat with his handkerchief, and asked for some kvass.

“It is not customary to attempt to guess a person’s last wishes from inarticulate mumbling,” he explained angrily to Sister Pelagia. “I’m not some fairground clown, I am a member of the notary’s guild.” And he ordered the horses to be harnessed to his britzka, even refusing the offer of dinner.

Vladimir Lvovich darted out after him with a face darker than thunder. Overtaking the obdurate Korsh, he took him by the elbow and said something in a loud whisper. What he said is not known, but Korsh left in any case.

What was heard, however, was Bubentsov’s shout from the courtyard after the departing britzka: “You’ll be sorry!”