Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog (21 page)

Some said that it was Bubentsov who had driven them to it by the disgraceful way in which he shackled their venerable elders and tossed them into a dirty cart, but there were many, very many, who thought differently: The perspicacious inspector had been proved right—something sinister had begun to stir in the depths of those still waters.

The province of Zavolzhie was uneasy. No one traveled the forest roads alone any longer, only in groups—and this in our quiet province, where nobody had even given a thought to such precautions in recent years!

Vladimir Lvovich rode about with an armed guard, paid visits to the various districts as and when he chose, demanding explanations from town governors and military commanders and district police officers, and they all submitted to his authority.

Thus dual power was established in these parts. And after all, what was so surprising about that? In the eyes of the church authorities the bishop had been discredited by all these pagan outrages, and many respectable folk who liked to trim their sails to the wind took up the habit of calling to pay their respects not at the episcopal see, but at the Grand Duke, where Bubentsov lived. The administrative authorities became less conscientious than formerly. The chief of police, Lagrange, for instance, did not actually stop taking orders from the governor completely, but he went running to the synodical inspector for approval of every instruction he received from Anton Antonovich, even the most petty, such as the introduction of numbers for horse cabs. Felix Stanislavovich told everyone that the baron was simply serving out his final days as governor, and in the company of his friends and subordinates he even expressed the expectation that the person appointed as the next governor of Zavolzhsk would be none other than himself, Colonel Lagrange.

In the course of this month the entire edifice of our province’s life had been twisted awry, although it had appeared to be soundly and intelligently constructed, not having been built from the roof down, as in the other Russian provinces, but from the foundation up. Perhaps, though, this image is overly abstruse and requires some clarification.

Some twenty years or so ago, ours was a province like any other: poverty, drunkenness, ignorance, arbitrary rule, brigands on the roads. In a word, we had the ordinary Russian life, more or less the same as in every part of the vast empire. In Zavolzhie it was perhaps somewhat smoother and calmer than in other regions, where people are led astray by the prospect of easy money. In these parts everything was sedate and patriarchal, life following a set of rules that been established once and for all.

Let us say a merchant wanted to float his goods down the River or transport them through the forest. The first thing he did was go to the right man (he already knew who that was, every district and every
volost
had its own), pay his respects, and offer him a tenth of everything, and then he carried blithely on about his business, nobody would touch him or bother him—neither evildoers, nor the police, nor excise agents. But if you didn’t pay your respects and placed your trust in reliable guards or simply trusted to luck in the slapdash Russian fashion, you only had yourself to blame if anything happened. You might get through the forest or you might not. And on the River, too, anything could happen, especially at nighttime, somewhere on the rapids.

If someone wanted to open a shop or a tavern in the town, it was the same thing. Have a word with the right man, show him some respect, promise him a tenth, and may God grant you every possible success. The public health inspector would not bother you because there were flies on the counter, or rats in the basement, and the tax inspector would be satisfied with a small bribe.

Everybody knew about the right man—the district police officer, the procurator, and the bailiff—but nobody hindered him in going about his business, because the right man was everybody’s friend; he might even be your relative or your godfather.

There were times when honest senior officials were appointed from the capital, or they might even send someone who was not just honest but also took a determined and workmanlike approach, who firmly intended to unmask everyone and immediately establish the rule of justice and order—even that kind of eagle soon found his wings clipped in Zavolzhie. If possible it was done through kindness, by means of presents or favors of other kinds, or, if he was absolutely incorruptible, then by means of calumny and slander. Fortunately there would be no shortage of witnesses; the right man only had to whistle and they would slander anyone at all.

But thirty years or so ago a new chief of police arrived in our town, before the late Gulko. He was a real terror, absolutely inflexible. He raked the entire police force over the coals: Some he sacked, some he sent to trial, and the rest he reduced to a state of constant trepidation. The unrest that this stirred up disrupted certain long-established, tried-and-true relations between serious people. And in the meantime this Robespierre was recklessly edging closer to the right people. That was when his outrageous activities were terminated. One day he went duck-hunting with his own colleagues, and all of a sudden the boat overturned. Everybody else managed to swim to safety; only the chief was unlucky. He had been creating uproar in these parts for only six months or so. And that was the chief of police, an important man! But if it was some ordinary district police officer or investigator who proved stubborn, he was dealt with far more simply, bludgeoned over the head or shot from the bushes in the night, and that was the end of the matter. It was put down to the bandits who roamed our forests in such abundance. For the sake of appearances the police would search for a while and then close the case because it was impossible to solve. But what point is there in telling you all this? It is a sheer waste of time. Every province has a plentiful store of such stories.

And then Mitrofanii was appointed from St. Petersburg to be our bishop, for the second and final time. That was very nearly twenty years ago. He already knew the local ways and customs, and so he didn’t go running at things pell-mell. He began with his own quiet area of jurisdiction: He took the priests in hand, so that they would not practice extortion; he introduced a strict regimen in the monasteries. He removed some of the rural deans and pricked the consciences of others, and he also brought with him from the capital clergy and monks who were young graduates of the ecclesiastical academy.

In the churches and parishes, things also changed. The priests and deacons were sober, they led the services in a dignified manner, their sermons were moral and comprehensible, they did not accept any offerings over and above what was prescribed. But, of course, all this was not achieved immediately. Rather, it took two or three years. And at first no one was alarmed by this quite unprecedented novelty, neither the right people nor the light-fingered high officials. If the priests no longer wished to eat well and sleep soft, that was their business. They had started talking a lot about honesty and the love of virtue from the pulpits, but that was what they were supposed to do. And anyway, who was going to take what the longhairs said seriously? But meanwhile the authority of men of the church increased gradually and imperceptibly, and the churches were far more crowded than they had been.

And at this point, through Mitrofanii’s still-reliable connections in the capital, the old governor, with whom the bishop had fallen out seriously more than once, was retired. The new one sent to replace him was Anton Antonovich von Haggenau, who was barely thirty years old at the time. He was energetic, indefatigable, European, and quite ferociously devoted to justice.

The baron struggled for a while with the local mores, butting his head against this stone wall and breaking his horns, and in his despair he began seeking refuge in administrative severity, which, as everyone knows, only aggravates all manner of misfortune. But, thank God, he proved to be a sensible man, even though he was a German—he had the wits to turn to His Grace for advice and guidance. What sort of miracle was this, he asked? How did Mitrofanii manage his spiritual domain so that everything in it was decorous and sedate, not like the other provincial bishops?

His Grace replied that it was very simple: What was needed was less management, and then things would manage themselves. One needed only to lay a firm foundation and everything else would follow of its own accord.

How would it follow, the young Anton Antonovich protested passionately, if the local folk were such worthless villains?

People are different, there are good ones and bad ones, His Grace taught him, but for the most part they are neither one thing nor the other, like frogs that take on the temperature of the air around them. If it was warm, they were warm. If it was cold, they were cold. What was needed was to act so as to make the climate in our province warmer, then the people would become warmer and better. That was the authorities’ only responsibility—to create the correct climate—and as for the rest, the Lord would concern Himself with that, and people would do the right thing.

“But just how is it kept warm, this climate of yours?” the governor asked, struggling to understand.

“One has to cultivate and foster the dignity in people. So that people will respect themselves and other people. A man who understands dignity will not steal, act meanly, or live by deceit—that will seem dishonorable to him.”

This almost made the baron feel disillusioned in the bishop and dismiss him as a hopeless case.

“Ah, but you are an idealist, Your Grace. We are in Russia, not Switzerland. How long is it since peasants were sold here by the head, like cattle? Where are you going to find dignity here? It takes centuries for such a tender plant to grow.”

Mitrofanii, who was younger at the time and therefore had a weakness for verbal theatrics, replied with a curt, didactic phrase, in the manner of the ancients.

“Legality, satiety, education. And nothing more, my good sir” (at that time he would still occasionally employ such apostrophes for rhetoric purposes).

“Ah, Your Grace, look how hard I struggle in the cause of legality, and what comes of it! No one, high or low, wishes to live according to the law.”

“And they will not want to. People only follow those laws that are rational and beneficial to the majority. A wise legislator is like an experienced gardener in a public park. When he has sown the lawns, he does not lay the paths immediately; he waits first to see which route people find it most convenient to follow—and that is the one he paves. So that afterward people will not trample their own paths through the grass.”

“Those are the wise laws,” said Anton Antonovich, lowering his voice in order to speak sedition. “But here in Russia we have all sorts of laws. You and I do not invent them; there are higher authorities for that. But I am the one charged with ensuring the observance of these laws.”

The bishop smiled.

“There is the law of God and the law of man. And only those human laws should be observed that do not contradict the laws of God.”

The governor only shrugged.

“I beg your pardon, but that I cannot understand. As you know, I am German. For me the law is the law.”

“That is why I am appointed to guide you,” Mitrofanii told the uncomprehending governor amiably. “You ask me, my dear sir, which law is from God and which from the devil. I will explain.”

And he did explain, only this explanation took not just an hour, or even two, but a great deal longer, and in time long conversations with His Grace became something of a habit for the young official….

THE CONVERSATIONS OF HIS GRACE MITROFANII

A brief interpolation

For those who are following our tale only in order to discover how it concludes, and who have no interest in the history of our region, it is permissible to omit this brief section completely. No damage will be caused to the elegant line of the narrative as a result. Here we adduce no more than brief excerpts from some of the intellectual dialogues between the bishop and the governor (only three, in fact, although there were many more than that), for these conversations had the most decisive consequences for Zavolzhie. At the same time, in the commentaries that follow each of the conversations, we shall indicate in brief which of these idealistic teachings were put into effect, and which were not.

On the pecuniary greed of officials

“Do you agree, my son, that no ruler, no matter how well-intentioned, can implement his beneficial ideas unless he possesses a sound and reliable set of tools in the form of capable and honest assistants, those self-same tools that in your bureaucratic dialect are referred to as ‘personnel’?”

“I entirely agree.”

“And what is to be done if this personnel is mired in base greed?”

“I do not know, father, that is why I have come to you. But the main problem is that all the officials are like that and there is nowhere to get any others from.”

“What do you mean, nowhere? In part you can invite high-minded individuals from St. Petersburg, and they will come, because they wish to apply their knowledge and convictions in practice. And honest officials can be found here; it is simply that at present they have no chance of advancement.”

“How am I to identify these honest men if they are not in open view?”

“I have been here for several years now, I know which men are worth something, and I will name them. But that is only a quarter of the job, because any man is corrupted by power if the wrong practices are established. And for the most part bureaucrats take to extorting money from people, not out of their own innate viciousness, but because that is the established practice, and if anyone does not extort, then he is regarded with suspicion by his superiors and his subordinates.”