Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (4 page)

The quick-witted Pelagia was the first to guess what was the matter. “He's talking about the statue, father. About Yermak Timofeich.”

At this point I ought to explain that two years before, on the orders of the governor, Anton Antonovich von Haggenau, a majestic monument entitled
Yermak Timofeich Bringing the Good News to the East
had been erected on the high bank of the river. This monument, the largest in the entire region of the river, is now an object of great pride in our town, which has nothing else to boast of to its distinguished neighbors Nizhni Novgorod, Kazan, and Samara. Every locality needs to have its own reason to feel proud, after all. And now we have ours.

There are some historians who believe that Yermak Timofeich began his famous Siberian campaign, to which the empire is indebted for the greater part of its vast landholdings, from our very own district. And the bronze giant was erected in order to commemorate this. This major commission was entrusted to a certain Zavolzhsk sculptor, perhaps not as gifted as some sculptors in the capital, but a true patriot of the region and a very good man in general, greatly loved by all Zavolzhians for his breadth of spirit and goodness of heart. The sculptor had given the conqueror of Siberia a helmet that looked rather like a
klobuk
, or monk's headgear, and it was this that had led poor Brother Antipa, who was not familiar with our latest innovations, into his superstitious error.

But that was nothing! The previous autumn, when the captain of a tug pulling along a string of barges full of Astrakhan watermelons had sailed out from around a bend and seen the goggle-eyed idol standing on top of the steep bank, he had taken such a fright that he ran his entire flotilla aground on a shoal, and for several weeks afterward green-striped spheres could be seen bobbing up and down in the river, hurrying back downstream to their native parts. And that, note, was a river captain, so what was to be expected from a wretched monk?

Having explained Antipa's mistake to him and more or less calmed him down, Mitrofanii sent the monk to the diocesan hotel to await a decision on his fate. It was clear that the fugitive could not be returned to the stern archimandrite of New Ararat and a place would have to be found for him in some other monastery.

When the bishop and his spiritual daughter were left alone together, His Grace asked, “Well, what do you think of this gibberish?”

“I believe him,” Pelagia replied without hesitation. “I looked in Brother Antipa's eyes and he's not lying. He described what he saw and didn't add anything.”

His Grace knitted his brows, suppressing his feeling of annoyance. He said guardedly, “You said that deliberately to tease me. You don't believe in any ghosts—I know you too well for that.”

But then he immediately realized that he had fallen into the trap set by his cunning assistant and wagged a finger at her in admonishment. “Ah, what you meant was that he himself believes in his own ravings. He thought he saw something, for which the scientific name is a hallucination, and he took it for something that really happened. Is that it?”

“No, Father, that's not it,” the nun sighed. “He's a straightforward man and not foolish, or, as it said in the letter, ‘not inclined to vain dreaming.’ People like that don't have hallucinations—they don't have enough imagination. I think that someone really did appear to him and speak to him. And then, Antipa is not the only one who has seen this Black Monk; there are other eyewitnesses too.”

Patience had never ranked high among the Primate's virtues, and to judge from the crimson color that flooded Mitrofanii's high forehead and cheeks, what little he had was now exhausted.

“And have you forgotten about mutual suggestion, examples of which are so common in monasteries?” he exploded. “Do you remember when the devil started appearing to the sisters in the Mariinsky Convent? First to one, then to another, and then to all the rest? They described him in fine detail and repeated words that honest nuns could not possibly have learned anywhere. You were the one who suggested sending a neuropsychological doctor to the convent that time!”

“That was quite different—ordinary female hysterics. But this time the testimony comes from experienced senior monks,” the nun objected. “There is unrest at New Ararat, and it will not end well. Rumors about the Black Monk have already reached Zavolzhsk. We ought to investigate.”

“Investigate what? What? Or do you really believe in ghosts? For shame, Pelagia, it's all superstition! It's eight hundred years now since Saint Basilisk passed on, and he has no reason to go cruising over the waves around the island and frightening empty-headed monks!”

Pelagia bowed humbly, as if acknowledging that the bishop had a perfect right to his wrath, but there was little humility in her voice, and even less in her words: “That is your limitation as a male speaking, Your Grace. In their judgments men rely too excessively on their sight and the other five senses.”

“Four,” Mitrofanii corrected her.

“No, Your Grace, five. Not everything that exists in the world can be detected by sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. There is another sense that has no name, which is given to us so that we might feel God's world not only with our bodies but with our souls. And it is strange that I, a plain nun weak in mind and spirit, am obliged to explain this to you. Have you not spoken of this sense numerous times in your sermons and in private conversations?”

“I had in mind faith and the moral measure that is given to every man from God! But what you are expounding to me is some kind of fairy mirage!”

“Then let it be a fairy mirage,” the nun said with a stubborn shake of her head. “Around and within our world there is another one, invisible, and perhaps even more than one. We women feel this more clearly than men, because we are not afraid to feel it. Surely, Your Grace, you would not deny that there are some places that cheer and illuminate the soul (God's churches are usually built there) and there are some that set it shuddering? There is no reason for it; you simply start walking more quickly and cross yourself. I always used to run past the Black Ravine, like that, with a chill shiver. And then what happened? That was the very spot where they found the cannon!”

This argument adduced by Pelagia as if it were quite irrefutable requires an explanation. Two years before, a treasure trove had been found under the Black Ravine, located half a mile from Zavolzhsk: an old bronze mortar stuffed with gold coins and semiprecious stones— evidently it had lain in the ground since the times when Pugachev's “general” Chika Zarubin, later raised by the pretender to the rank of count, used to roam these parts. Plenty of blood and tears must have been spilled in collecting such a treasure. (Let us note, by the way, that this was the very money that had been used to erect on that very same spot the magnificent monument that had frightened Brother Antipa half to death.)

But the argument about the cannon failed to convince His Grace. Mitrofanii merely flapped his hand dismissively: “Ah, your chill shiver was just imagination.”

The prelate and his spiritual daughter carried on arguing like this for a long time, until they almost had a serious quarrel. And therefore we shall omit the end of the argument about superstition and move on straightaway to its practical conclusion, which did not emerge in the court archives room, but in the episcopal residence, during the drinking of tea to celebrate a happy event.

THE TEA HAD been arranged for the following day in honor of the successful outcome of the court case. In addition to Pelagia, His Grace had invited another of his spiritual children, the assistant public prosecutor Matvei Bentsionovich Berdichevsky, who had also played a part in achieving the triumph of justice. A bottle of sweet Communion wine stood on the table beside the samovar, and in addition there was a genuine abundance of sweet things: spice cakes, and candied fruit, and all sorts of jam, and the inevitable apple marshmallows of which the bishop was so exceedingly fond.

They sat in the refectory, where copies of Mitrofanii's two favorite icons hung on the walls: the wonder-working
Softening of Vicious Hearts
and the little-known
Judas Kissing Christ the Savior
, both magnificently painted, with expensive silver settings. His Grace had not simply placed them here by chance, but for a purpose—to remind himself of the most important aspects of the Christian faith: forgiveness for all and the Lord's acceptance of any soul, even the most debased, because there are no souls that have absolutely no hope of salvation. Owing to his passionate character, the bishop was inclined to forget about these things, especially forgiveness for all: he acknowledged this sin in himself and strove to overcome it.

They spoke for a while about the trial that had just finished, recalling all of its twists and turns, and then about the imminent addition to Berdichevsky's family—the father-to-be was concerned that the child would be the thirteenth, and the bishop laughed at the lawyer, claiming that neophyte converts like him always made the very worst obscurantists, and he rebuked Matvei Bentsionovich for his superstition, which was so shameful for an enlightened man.

From the subject of superstition the conversation naturally turned to the Black Monk. It should be noted that the first to bring up the mysterious phenomenon was none other than the assistant public prosecutor, who, as we recall, had not been present at—and did not even know about—the explanation in the archive room.

It turned out that the entire town was already talking about the way the monk from New Ararat had raced along the streets. Everyone also knew about Basilisk's appearance and the menacing omens. As he whipped his horses on, Brother Antipa had very nearly run over a cat belonging to an influential member of Zavolzhsk society, Olympiada Savelievna Shestago, but he had just carried on shouting all sorts of alarming things: “Flee, Orthodox believers!” “Basilisk is coming!” and so forth, as well as demanding to be told where he could find the bishop.

It turned out that Sister Pelagia had been right the day before: after what had happened it was impossible not to take action. His Grace, having now cooled off after his annoyance of the previous day, no longer took issue with that, but there was disagreement among the three revelers concerning what measures should be taken.

Mitrofanii ascribed all of his numerous successes in the field of arch-pastoral endeavor to the Lord, humbly acknowledging that he was only the visible instrument of a Power that acted invisibly, and when he spoke he was an absolute fatalist who loved to repeat: “If it is pleasing to God, then it is certain to happen, but if it is not pleasing to God, then I have no need of it.” But in practice he was guided more by the maxim “Trust in God, but commit no blunders yourself;” and it must be admitted that he rarely blundered and did not trouble the Lord excessively.

It need hardly be said that the bishop was immediately fired with enthusiasm to go to New Ararat himself, in order to bring people to their senses and put an end to this business (he absolutely refused to allow the probability of anything genuinely mystical and saw the Basilisk phenomenon as either a case of mass insanity or a piece of chicanery perpetrated by someone or other).

The cautious Matvei Bentsionovich tried to persuade the bishop not to go. He expressed the opinion that rumors were dangerous and hard to lay to rest. You couldn't stop everyone's mouth. Administrative intervention in such cases was about as effective as dousing a fire with kerosene—it only made the fire blaze even more fiercely. Berdichevsky's proposal was as follows: under no circumstances should His Grace go to the islands or give the slightest impression that anything out of the ordinary was happening there, but he should secretly send to New Ararat a sensible and tactful official, who would get to the bottom of everything, find the source of the rumors, and present an exhaustive report. It was clear that by a “sensible official” Matvei Bentsionovich meant himself, and he was demonstrating yet again his constant readiness to forget about all current business and even his family responsibilities, if only he could be of service to his spiritual mentor.

As for Pelagia, while agreeing with Berdichevsky that an episcopal inspection would be inappropriate for the case, the nun could not see any point either in sending a lay person to the islands since, in the first place, he would not be able to understand the subtleties of monastery life and monkish psychology, and in the second place … But no, we had better quote this second argument verbatim, so that the polemicist's own conscience may bear its full weight.

“In matters concerning incomprehensible phenomena that cause trepidation to the soul, men are too categorical,” Pelagia declared, clicking away rapidly with her knitting needles—after her third glass of tea she had taken out her knitting without asking the bishop's permission. “Men have no curiosity about anything that they regard as unimportant, but the unimportant often conceals the most essential. When something has to be built or, even better, demolished, then men have no equals. But if patience, understanding, and possibly even compassion are required, then it is best to entrust the business to a woman.”