Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (37 page)

The squeaking that she had heard earlier grew louder and a little dark shadow moved up onto the sackcloth, followed by a second, and a third.

With her eyes wide in terror, the captive watched as a procession of mice crept across her chest toward her chin.

These denizens of the hold must have hidden at first, but now they had decided to come out and reconnoiter: they wanted to know what this gigantic object was that had come tumbling out of nowhere into their mouse universe.

Polina Andreevna was by no means a coward, but the small, nimble, rustling inhabitants of this twilight underworld filled her with revulsion and a strange, inexplicable, mystical horror. If not for her bonds, she would have leapt up with a shriek and been out of this loathsome hole in an instant. But she had only two possible choices: either to lie there moaning in shameful fear, shaking her head pointlessly, or to call on the assistance of her reason.

They're only mice, Mrs. Lisitsyna told herself. Perfectly harmless little beasts. They'll just take a sniff and go away. She comforted herself with the thought that mice were not rats—they didn't attack people, and they didn't bite. It was really rather funny—she could see that they were desperately afraid too, barely even crawling along, like Lilliputians on Gulliver's bound body.

A drop of cold sweat slithered down her temple. The boldest of the mice had crawled very close now. Polina Andreevna's eyes had grown so used to the darkness that she could make out every detail of her visitor, right down to its stumpy little tail with the end gnawed off. The abominable creature tickled the rationalist's chin with its whiskers, and reason immediately capitulated.

Choking on her own shriek, the prisoner tensed her entire body and rolled back into the middle of the hold. This rid her of the mice, but it wrapped the sackcloth around her again. But it was better that way, Lisitsyna told herself as she listened to the wild pounding of her own heart.

Alas, no more than five minutes had passed before those prehensile little claws were rustling across the sackcloth again, this time directly above her face. Polina Andreevna imagined what would happen when the one with the short tail crept inside the bundle; she rolled quickly back to the wall again.

She lay there, drawing in the air through her nostrils and waiting.

Soon it happened all over again: first the squeaking, then the cautious expedition across her chest. Then another roll across the floor.

After a while it developed into a routine, with the prisoner alternately wrapping and unwrapping the sackcloth as she threw off her uninvited guests. The mice seemed to take to this amusing game and the interludes between their visits gradually grew shorter. Polina Andreevna began feeling as if she had been transformed into a train in some mathematical puzzle, moving from point A to point B and back with ever shorter halts.

When Lisitsyna heard footsteps above her (presumably on the deck), she was not frightened, but delighted. She was glad of anything that might bring this nightmarish waltz to an end!

There were two people: the heavy, bearlike tread that Polina Andreevna had heard earlier had been joined by a lighter, clattering stride.

The trapdoor clanged open, and the prisoner screwed up her eyes, so bright did the blue gray night seem to her.

The Empress of Canaan

AN IMPERIOUS FEMALE voice spoke: “All right, show her to me!”

Polina Andreevna was just making a stop at point B, by the wall, so her face was uncovered, and she saw a ladder being lowered down into the hold.

A huge pair of boots came clattering down the rungs, heels first, with the hem of a black cassock swaying above them.

The blinding light of a kerosene lamp flooded across the ceiling and the walls. The gigantic figure, which occupied almost half of the hold, turned around, and Lisitsyna recognized her abductor.

Brother Jonah, the captain of the steamship
St. Basilisk!

The monk put the lamp on the floor and stood beside his prone captive, clasping his hands across his stomach.

The woman, whose face Polina Andreevna could not see, squatted down beside the open trapdoor. There was a rustle of fine fabric, and a voice that now seemed terribly familiar ordered: “Unwrap her—I can't see a thing.”

Lidia Evgenievna Boreiko, Dr. Korovin's hysterical guest!

Mrs. Lisitsyna had no time to understand anything or make sense of what was happening. With a single jerk, rough hands shook the prisoner out of her sackcloth shroud onto the floor.

Polina Andreevna struggled to her knees and then moved across onto the low wooden shelf surrounding the entire cramped space. That was what she had kept running into, not the wall, when she was rolling to and fro across the floor. It was a hard seat, but still more dignified than lying on the floor. But then, what talk could there be of dignity, when you were dressed in nothing but your underwear, with your hands and feet tied and your mouth stopped with a dirty rag?

Miss Boreiko came down the rungs of the ladder, but not all the way to the bottom, halting in an elevated position. Under her black cloak she was wearing a silk dress, also black, and there was a string of large pearls gleaming on her neck. Polina Andreevna noticed that Korovin's acquaintance was dressed far more spectacularly today than when they had met the previous evening: she had rings with precious stones sparkling on her fingers and bracelets on her wrists; even her veil was not the usual one, but a golden cobweb—in short, Lidia Evgenievna looked like a real queen. The captain gazed at her in rapture—no, not in rapture, in reverential awe, the way the pagans of old must have gazed at the golden-faced goddess Ishtar.

Mademoiselle Boreiko surveyed her contemptible captive with a disdainful eye and said, “Take a look at yourself and at me. You are a pitiful, filthy slave trembling with fear. And I am a queen. This island belongs to me—it is mine! I rule over this kingdom of men, and my rule is absolute! Every man who lives here and every man who sets foot here becomes mine.
Will
become mine, if I wish it. I am Calypso and the Northern Semiramis and the Empress of Canaan! How dare a common ginger cat like you try to steal my crown? Usurper! False pretender! You came here deliberately to take my throne from me! I realized that immediately, the first time I saw you there on the landing stage. Women like you don't come to this place—only quiet, pious little mice come here, but you are a fiery red vixen, and you wanted my henhouse!”

At the mention of mice, Polina Andreevna squinted briefly down at the floor, but the little partners in her recent nightmarish game had obviously taken refuge from the light and noise in their dark nooks and crannies.

“You are not here to see Ararat's holy shrines!” said Lidia Evgenievna, continuing her astounding speech in a ferocious voice. “My slave”— here she pointed at Jonah—“has been following you. You have not visited a single church, not a single chapel! Of course not, since that is not what you came here for!”

So this was what it was all about—this was the answer to the riddle, the bold investigator realized too late. All the theories, both plausible and incredible, were wrong. The truth was fantastic, quite unbelievable! Who could ever have imagined that one of the island's female inhabitants would want to declare herself “Empress of Canaan”! So this was why the brilliant Miss Boreiko had settled on this remote island—this was why she stayed here! It was certainly true that she was lovely, elegant, even majestic in her own way. But in St. Petersburg she would have been one among many; in a provincial city, one of a few; even in a remote district town, she might have had a rival. But here, in this little male world, there was no one to compete with her. There was no local female society at all—women of the common classes did not count. And the female pilgrims who came here were of a special kind: pious women who walked around with glum faces, wrapped themselves in black shawls, and did not look at the men—and why should they, when they had more than enough admirers in the place they had left behind in order to come here and atone for their sins in prayer.

Boreiko had established her very own state here on the island. And she had her own genie, her faithful slave Captain Jonah. There he was, the Black Monk in person! Standing there with an idiotic smile of bliss on his weathered face. A man like that would carry out any whim of his sovereign without a murmur, no matter how criminal it might be. If she ordered him to frighten her subjects and strike mystical terror into their hearts, Jonah would do it. If she ordered him to kill someone, drive them mad, abduct them, he would do that too, without a moment's hesitation.

Just at that moment the astounded Polina Andreevna had no time to untangle all the possible motives behind this monstrous idea, but she knew one thing quite certainly: female ambition is more extreme and more absolute than its male equivalent; if it senses a threat from someone, it is capable of any perfidious and cruel act. The infuriated empress had to be disabused concerning the false pilgrim's intentions (for Polina Andreevna certainly had no interest in the men of New Ararat, or any men at all, come to that), or in her spite Lidia Evgenievna would commit another heinous crime. What would it matter to her, after all the others that had gone before!

Mrs. Lisitsyna tried to reach the gag with her hands that were tied together at the wrist, but she could not: the sailor's deft fingers had fastened the bonds on her hands to those on her feet, making it impossible for her to reach the tight knot at the back of her head.

The prisoner began moaning plaintively, making it clear that she wanted to say something. The effect was pitiful, but Lidia Evgenievna's heart was not softened.

“You wish to provoke my pity? Too late! I would have forgiven you for the others, but for
him
—never!” Her eyes glinted with such fierce hatred that Polina Andreevna realized she would not have listened anyway—she had already decided everything.

Lisitsyna never did learn who was the man for whom Lidia Evge-nievna would not forgive her: her accuser haughtily set one hand on her hip, extended the other downward in the gesture of a Roman empress condemning a gladiator to death, and declared: “Your sentence has already been pronounced and now it will be carried out. Jonah, will you be true to your oath?”

“Yes, my queen,” the captain replied in a hoarse voice. “For you, anything you desire!”

“Then get to work.”

Jonah rummaged in a dark corner and pulled out an iron crowbar from somewhere. He spat on his hands and took a firm grip on it.

Was he really going to beat her brains out? Polina Andreevna screwed her eyes shut.

There was a crunch and the crack of breaking boards.

Opening her eyes, she saw that with a single blow the giant of a man had smashed a hole in the side of the vessel, and it was below the water-line—water was gushing into the hold. The captain took a swing and struck again. Then again and again.

And now there were four streams of black, oily, glistening water running in through holes in the wall and splashing down onto the floor.

“Enough,” said Lidia Evgenievna, halting the demolition. “I want this to last as long as possible. Let her howl in terror and curse the day and the hour when she dared intrude into my realm!”

And having pronounced her terrible verdict, Miss Boreiko climbed up the ladder and out onto the deck. Jonah clattered up after her.

Polina Andreevna could not see the floor anymore—it was completely covered with water. She lifted her feet up onto her seat and then straightened up with difficulty, pressing her back against the side of the boat.

How disgusting! The water had driven the mice out of their holes, and they were squeaking in fright as they clambered up the condemned woman's drawers.

Lisitsyna heard a malevolent laugh from above her head: “Behold a genuine Princess Tarakanova! Close it!”

The ladder rose up through the trapdoor, the door slammed shut, and the hold was suddenly dark.

She could hear the murderers’ conversation through the boards. The woman said, “Wait on the shore until it sinks. Then come. Perhaps you will receive a reward.”

The answer was a roar of ecstasy.

“I said perhaps,” said Lidia Evgenievna, cutting short Jonah's triumph.

Receding footsteps. Silence.

In Mrs. Lisitsyna's world, now shrunk to the dimensions of a wooden cage, there was nothing but darkness and the splashing of water. The thing that Polina Andreevna found most annoying as she prepared to die was that her letter to the bishop—which she now knew to be mistaken in its deductions—would drown together with her, and no one would ever know that “Basilisk” was not a phantom or a chimera, but a malevolent game played by a criminal mind.

And yet she must not give in—not until the very final moment. Only when every last human resource had been exhausted was it permissible to accept the inevitable and entrust herself to the Providence of the Lord.

But Polina Andreevna was bound and shut in a trap, and the resources available to her were precious few. She could not remove the gag, nor could she untie her hands. So I have to try to free my feet, she told herself. She squatted down and found her fingers could feel the string on her ankles. But alas, the knots were complicated, and some especially cunning—no doubt sailors’ knots—and they were pulled so tight that her nails could get no purchase on them.