Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog (9 page)

The provincial secretary followed Bubentsov everywhere like a shadow, and yet despite this he also somehow managed to pop up in the most unexpected places, since he had familiarized himself with Zavolzhsk amazingly quickly. He was seen either in the cathedral, singing along in the choir, or in the market, haggling over the price of honey with the Old-Believer beekeepers, or in Olympiada Savelievna’s salon, conversing with the attorney Korsh, who is regarded as the leading expert on investigative matters in our province.

It is astonishing how a person like Spasyonny was able to associate and even be on friendly terms with Bubentsov’s beastlike driver. This Murad was a genuine Abrek, a true highway bandit. In Zavolzhsk he was dubbed “the Circassian,” although he had no Circassian blood and came from a quite different mountain tribe. But who can tell all these blackbeards apart? Murad was not only Vladimir Lvovich’s coachman, but also his valet and servant, and when occasion demanded his bodyguard. No one really knew for certain why he evinced such doglike devotion to his master. All that was known was that he had followed Bubentsov around since his childhood and been inherited by him from his father. A long time before that, Bubentsov senior, one of the Caucasian generals, had rescued the young Murad Djuraev from enemies seeking blood vengeance and carried him away to Russia. Perhaps there were some other special circumstances involved, but that was something the Zavolzhians had not been able to discover, and they lacked the courage to ask Murad about it. He looked far too frightening for that, with his shaved head and his face completely overgrown by a thick black beard that grew right up to his very eyes and those teeth—he could bite your arm off at the elbow and spit it out. Murad spoke little Russian and even that badly, although he had lived among the Orthodox for many years. He had also retained his Mohammedan faith, for which he was subjected to onslaughts of missionary zeal by Tikhon Ieremeevich, but so far without any result. He dressed in Caucasian fashion: in an old
beshmet
and patched soft-leather shoes, with an immense silver-bound dagger at his belt. Murad’s bandy-legged, swaying walk and broad shoulders signaled brute strength, and men felt themselves constrained in his presence, while women of the simpler classes experienced a swooning sense of fright. Strangely enough, among the cooks and the maids Murad had the reputation of a paramour, although he treated them roughly and even violently. During the second week of Bubentsov’s stay the firemen of Zavolzhsk conspired with the butchers of the town to teach the infidel a lesson and stop him from despoiling other people’s girls. But Murad scattered his dozen “teachers” and then pursued them through the streets for a long time. He overtook the butcher Fedka and would surely have beaten him to death had Tikhon Ieremeevich not come upon the scene in time.

Things did not go as far as murder, but in view of this scandal, and especially the fact that the police had not dared to halt the ruffian, several of the more far-seeing among the townsfolk began to take stock, sensing the approach of troubled times. And they were right, for there was a rumbling of thunder in the atmosphere above our province and the black sky was ominously illuminated by flashes of lightning.

HOWEVER, HAVE WE not perhaps deviated too far from the central theme of our tale? Sister Pelagia has long since passed in through the wide-open gates of the Drozdovka park, and now we shall have to catch up with her.

CHAPTER 3

Dear People

THE RAIN OVERTOOK Pelagia at a distance of fifty paces from the gates. It came in a concerted, copious, merry downpour, instantly making clear that it intended to soak every last thread, not only of the nun’s habit and headscarf, but also of her undershirt, and even of the knitting in the bag at her waist. Pelagia took fright. She glanced around to make sure that no one was coming, hoisted up her habit, and set off sprinting along the road with a quite remarkable alacrity, in which she was assisted by the English gymnastics that, as we have already said, the sister taught at the diocesan school.

Having attained the sanctuary of the avenue, Pelagia leaned back against the trunk of an old elm that offered her the secure protection of its dense crown, wiped the drops of water from her spectacles, and turned her gaze to the sky.

Her gaze was well rewarded. The nearer half of the high, arching firmament had turned a blackish hue of violet—not that murky, somber color of gloomy overcast days, but with an oleaginous shimmer, as if some mischievous heavenly schoolboy had overturned a bottle of purple ink onto a light-blue tablecloth. The stain had not yet spread to the firmament’s more distant half, where the sun still reigned unchallenged, but two rainbows had sprung up there, arching from one side of the sky to the other, one brighter and smaller, the other dimmer but larger.

A quarter of an hour later everything had changed: The nearer half of the sky had become bright and the more distant half dark, which indicated that the cloudburst was over. Pelagia offered up a prayer of thanks for her safe deliverance from the torrential downpour and set out along the interminably long avenue that led up to the manor house.

The first of the inhabitants of the estate to greet the traveler was a snow-white pup with a brown ear who came bounding out of the bushes and immediately, without the slightest hesitation, sank his teeth into the edge of the nun’s habit. The pup was still at an infantile age, but his character was already most determined. He tugged at the dense fabric, twisting his bulbous head this way and that and growling, and it was clear that he would not easily abandon this occupation.

Pelagia picked this bandit up and saw a pair of mischievous blue eyes, a pink nose speckled with black, and two little velvety cheeks drooping at the sides, which were for some strange reason smeared with earth, but she was unable to observe any other details, because the pup thrust out a long red tongue and licked her nose, forehead, and spectacles with quite exceptional dexterity.

Temporarily blinded, the nun heard someone forcing his way through the bushes. A breathless male voice said: “Aha, now you’re caught! You’ve been eating soil somewhere again, you devil’s spawn! Pardon me, sister, for mentioning the Evil One. It’s this foolish creature’s pa and grandpa as got him into that habit. Oof, thank you for catching the pest; I just can’t keep up with him. He’s cunning, the little devil. Oh, beg your pardon again.”

Pelagia pressed the warm, resilient body against herself with one hand and removed her slavered spectacles with the other. The bearded man she saw standing in front of her was dressed in a collarless cotton shirt, velveteen trousers, and a leather apron—he looked like the gardener.

“Take your Zakusai,” she said. “And hold him tight.”

“How do you know what he’s called?” the gardener asked, amazed. “Or have you been here before? Somehow I can’t recall.”

“Many things unknown to ordinary people are revealed through prayer to us persons of the monastic class,” Pelagia said in a didactic tone of voice.

Whether the unknown man believed her or not was not clear, but he took a fifteen-kopek coin out of his pocket and bowed as he thrust it into the nun’s bag.

“Take it, sister, it’s given with a pure heart.”

Pelagia did not attempt to refuse. She herself had no need of money, but even the smallest of gifts to God was a joyful thing if the intention was truly pure.

“Don’t you go on up to the house,” the gardener advised her, “don’t go wearing your legs out in vain. Our masters here don’t give charity to God’s people, ‘on prinsipul,’ they say.”

“I’m on my way to see Marya Afanasievna, with a letter from His Grace Mitrofanii,” said Pelagia, declaring her credentials, and the denizen of Drozdovka respectfully doffed the cap from his head, bowed, and switched from calling her “sister” to “mother.”

“You should have said straightaway, mother. And me pressing my money on you like a stupid fool. Follow me. I’ll take you there.”

He led the way, clutching Zakusai in both hands as the puppy wriggled and squealed in frustration.

To their right an odd-looking gentleman wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a cloak with a cape was strolling about on a grassy plot beside a pavilion of white stone. He was holding a small box of black lacquered wood under his arm and he had a long tripod with sharp, iron-tipped points in his hand. He thrust the tripod into the ground, then set the box on top of it, and it became clear that it was a photographic apparatus such as have ceased to be a rarity even in our remote province. The gentleman looked around, glanced briefly at the nun with no interest, and said to the gardener, “Well, Gerasim, so you’ve captured the fugitive, then? I’m just wandering through the park, photographing the way the steam rises from the ground. A rare optical effect.”

The gentleman was handsome, with a well-kempt beard and long wavy hair, and it was clear immediately that he was not from these parts. Pelagia liked the look of him.

“He’s an artist, makes photographic pictures,” Gerasim explained to his companion when they had walked on a little way. “All the way from Pettersburk. He’s staying here, a friend of Stepan Trofimovich, our manager. Arkadii Sergeevich his name is, Mr. Poggio.”

They walked on for another hundred paces, but there was still a lot of walking to do to reach that green roof. Suddenly there was a clopping of hooves against the dampened surface of the driveway behind them and, looking around, Pelagia saw a light gig and a rosy-cheeked gentleman in a fluffy white hat and linen frock coat sitting in it.

“Good health to you, Kirill Nifontovich,” said Gerasim, bowing. “Would you be hurrying on your way to supper?”

“And where else? Giddy-up, giddy-up!”

The small, faded eyes that radiated a childishly naïve curiosity lighted on Pelagia, the round cheeks set into the folds of a good-natured smile.

“Who’s this you’re escorting, Gerasim? Oho, and you have the royal infant, too.”

“The sister’s taking a letter from the bishop to the mistress.”

The man in the gig assumed a respectful expression and raised the hat off his steaming bald head.

“Allow me to introduce myself. Kirill Nifontovich Krasnov, local landowner and neighbor. Get in, mother, I’ll drive. Why should you have to be put to such trouble? And let’s take the little doggie along with us; I expect Marya Afanasievna’s missing him, all right. Peering from the porch on high for her dear herald drawing nigh.”

“Is that from Pushkin?” asked Pelagia, taking a seat beside this likeable chatterbox.

“I’m flattered,” he said with a bow and a crack of his whip. “No, I compose my own verse. The lines simply pour out of me of their own accord, whatever the occasion or even without any occasion at all. The only problem is that they don’t add up to poems, otherwise I’d be every bit as famous as Nekrasov and Nadson.”

Then he declaimed:

“My verses are as light as fleas.

Believe me when I say that these

Are poems not designed to tease,

But only to delight and please.”

A minute or two later they were already driving up to a large house adorned with all the attributes of magnificence in the style of the previous century—a Doric colonnade, disgruntled lions on pedestals, and even bronze Gross-Jägersdorf unicorns at the sides of the steps.

In the entrance hall Krasnov spoke in a whisper for some reason as he asked the pretty maid: “Well, Taniusha, how is she? You see, we’ve brought Zakusai back for her.”

The blue-eyed and plump-lipped Tanyusha only sighed.

“Very bad. She’s not eating or drinking anything. Keeps crying all the time. The doctor left not long ago. Didn’t say anything, just shook his head like that and left.”

THE SICK WOMAN’S bedroom was gloomy and smelled of lavender drops. Pelagia saw a wide bed, a corpulent old woman in a mobcap half-sitting and half-lying on a mound of fluffy pillows, and some other people whom it was awkward for her to study there and then, from the threshold, and it was a bit too dark anyway—her eyes would have to get used to the light first.

“My little Zakusai?” the old lady asked in a deep voice, half-rising and reaching out her plump, flabby hands. “So that’s where he is, my little droopy-cheeked love. Thank you, dear neighbor, for bringing him back.” (That was to Krasnov.) “Who’s this with you? A nun? I can’t see, come closer.” (This was to Pelagia.)

She moved closer to the bed and bowed.

“Marya Afanasievna, I bring you a pastoral blessing and wishes for a most speedy recovery from the bishop. That is why he has sent me, the nun Pelagia.”

“What do I want with his blessing!” the general’s widow Tatishcheva exclaimed angrily. “Why didn’t he come himself? Would you believe it, fobbed a nun off on me. I’ll strike out every damn thing I’ve left to the church in my will.”

The puppy was already in her hands, licking her old, wrinkled face without encountering the slightest resistance.

There was a loud bark at Pelagia’s feet, and a broad-chested, snub-nosed dog threw its front paws on the bed, wrinkling up its large forehead in annoyance.

“Don’t you be jealous, little Zakidai,” the sick woman said to him. “He’s your son, a little drop of your own blood. Come on then, let me pet you, too.”

She patted Zakusai’s parent on the broad nape of his neck and started scratching him behind the ear.