Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog (32 page)

But the birch grove was lit by one last flash, and Pelagia saw a black figure close by, standing among the bushes, gleaming wet with rain. And even worse than that was the fact that Pelagia had also been seen.

The steps came closer. The birch tree swayed as a foot was set on it.

Using her hands to help her along, the nun edged backward along the trunk on her buttocks. The trunk began to creak and sag. Now it no longer hung over the chasm at an angle, but level with the ground.

“You should leave, sir,” Pelagia shouted in a trembling voice, because she could no longer bear the silence. “I do not know who you are, I have not seen you. And so you have nothing to be afraid of. Do not take another sin on your soul; you have done enough already. And you will not get me here, or we shall both fall together.”

The black, silent figure seemed to have realized already that the tree would not support the double burden.

For about a minute there was silence. Then there were sounds that Pelagia could not understand at first. Squelching, champing, and knocking. The birch tree seemed to come alive; it started swaying and creaking.

He’s digging out the root, Pelagia suddenly realized. And once she knew that, it was as if her fear had never existed. Suddenly it was clear that fear was another name for hope. And if there was absolutely no hope, there was nothing to fear.

And then she remembered the prayer: “Zealous intercessor, beneficent Mother of God, unto you do I appeal in my sinfulness, greatest of all sinners as I am, hear the voice of my prayer and attend to my wailing and lament…”

At the words “like unto a ship in an abysm, I do founder in the sea of my sins,” the trunk began to fall in a rapidly accelerating movement and threw the nun off into the black, echoing space.

Throwing out her arms, Pelagia dived soundlessly and unhindered through the void toward the loud roaring and splashing.

“…now and ever and into ages of ages. Amen.”

The River accepted her with an unexpected, yielding softness. Pelagia did not feel any wetness, because she was already as soaked as she could possibly be, and she only guessed that she was no longer in the air but underwater because her downward movement was impeded and slowed.

The nun flapped her arms, pushed off with her legs and went darting upward, to where it was open and airy. But the water would not let her go; it kept pulling her away somewhere, spinning her around, and now there was absolutely no air left in her lungs. I’ll count to three before I open my mouth and then come what may, the drowning woman thought. But she did not have the strength to hold out any longer. She parted her lips wide, ready to fill her lungs with the River, and her mouth drew in not water but air and flying spray, because at that very moment Pelagia’s head surfaced among the foaming waves.

She drew in a breath greedily, and another, and another, forgetting to breathe out and making herself cough, but the underwater current was already drawing her back down, and the nun disappeared below the surface again.

This time it proved even harder to surface—her sodden, heavy shoes kept trying to straighten Pelagia’s body out into a vertical line, to make it easier for the River to drag her to the bottom. She hunched over tight and tugged the weights off her feet, and it became easier to fight against the water. As she began floundering in the enveloping embrace of the rushing torrent, she pushed off with her feet and shot up, up, up.

Again she began gulping in air, but the River was intent on bearing its booty on and away into the darkness, and seemed to find it amusing to spin her around, first clockwise and then counterclockwise. Nearby, too far away for her to touch it, but close enough to be seen, there was something light-colored sticking up out of the water and trembling as it moved in the same direction and at the same speed as herself. Pelagia could not so much see as guess at the outlines of the broken branches, and she realized that it was the birch tree, her companion in misfortune.

Crossing the gap of a mere eight feet that separated the nun from the tree proved very difficult. The River seemed to imagine that Pelagia wanted to play with it, and accepted the invitation gladly. The moment the nun came close enough to the birch tree to touch the slippery bark with her fingers, the current gently tossed the trunk aside with ease, as if it were a mere splinter of wood. Once it dragged it a long way from her and Pelagia lost sight of the outline that promised salvation. She herself could not remain afloat for very much longer—she was being tossed about too hard to the right and the left, spun around too fast, and from time to time a wave broke over her head, so that she could easily have choked on the water.

But when Pelagia had already resigned herself to the tree’s disappearance, it swam out of the gloom unseen and hit her on the back of her head with one of its branches.

At first the exhausted nun simply clung to the submerged trunk, delighted that she need no longer flounder and struggle. After resting for a moment, she began clambering onto the tree. She slipped off several times and scraped her shoulder, but she still managed to climb up and sit on the log, straddling it with her legs.

Once, a long time before, in a different life, Pelagia had been a capable horsewoman, and she loved to race through the meadow early in the morning at a speed that set everything inside her quivering. She felt something of the same kind now, but she could only guess at her own movement from the wind blowing in her face, for the River had suddenly stopped moving. Pelagia had become fused with it, a single particle of it. She was simply sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench that was no longer rushing anywhere, merely rotating slowly in one place.

Not only had time disappeared, so had space. But there was a chill cold that Pelagia had noticed before. She could feel the rain once again, beating heavily against her forehead and cheeks.

First her teeth began chattering, then her shoulders began shuddering, and things became really bad when she lost the feeling in her hands. She could tell quite clearly what would happen next: Her fingers would open, releasing their grasp on the trunk, and the unfortunate rider would be thrown into the River, but this time she would have no strength left to struggle against the current.

That was exactly the way things would happen, because no other outcome was possible.

There was only one decision she could take, a terrifying one. Throw herself into the water and try to reach the bank before her muscles stiffened completely. But which way should she swim—to the right or to the left? She had fallen into the River from the high left bank, but how much time had passed since then she could not tell. She could easily have been carried out into midstream, or all the way over close to the right bank. She would not be able to swim for long. If she chose the wrong direction, it was the end; her soul would join the saints in heaven. Well, then, if that was the way things were, the Lord must have decided to summon his handmaiden Pelagia. It was shameful for a nun to be afraid of death. If the grim reaper suddenly leapt out from around the corner like a thief in the night and blew his hot, stinking breath in one’s face—then it was forgivable to feel frightened. But if one had time to prepare oneself and gather one’s courage, then to be afraid of death was a foolish sin.

The nun slid resolutely into the water on the left side of the tree trunk and pushed off hard from it with her feet. The current here was not so furious—obviously the narrow channel had been left behind and the River had emerged onto the flat plain. Swimming in total darkness without knowing where she was going felt strange, and soon Pelagia could not tell if she was maintaining the correct direction or had gone astray. Her arms and legs performed their work rhythmically, but the long shirt was a terrible hindrance, clinging to her knees. Should she remove it? Pelagia imagined the River casting her body up on the bank: naked, with her hair loose. Oh no. If she was to drown, she would drown in her shirt.

All the signs were that she was going to drown. Her arms barely obeyed her any longer, and still there was no shore to be seen. Forgive me, Lord, Pelagia thought wearily. I honestly did everything that I could. She turned over on to her back and surrendered to the will of the current. Her only regret was that she could not look up at the sky—it would have been good to see at least one little star before she went, but that was impossible.

When her head and shoulders ran up against something unyielding, Pelagia did not immediately realize it was sand.

SHE COULD NOT see the bank, but she could touch it with her hands.

And that was what Pelagia did: She went down on her knees and stroked the cold, sodden ground with her palms. After praying in thanks for her miraculous deliverance, she wrung out her shirt and sat down, hugging her shoulders. It was still not clear where she was and which way she ought to walk. The rain continued for a while and then stopped. The nun wrung out her shirt again and in an attempt to get warm began jumping up and down on one leg and then on the other. She sat for a while, hopped about for a while, sat, hopped about—and her shirt was a vague white silhouette, stretched out on a snag embedded in the silt.

As she jumped up and down yet again, slapping her sides loudly, the nun suddenly noticed that the darkness had grown less dense. There was the edge of the water, and a dead seagull on the sand, and if everything beyond that was fused into a single mass, it was not because of the night but because of the tall cliff that towered up above the narrow strip of water. If she strained her eyes she could make out the top of the cliff and the gray sky above it.

Pelagia squatted down in fright. God forbid that some insomniac should come out for a stroll in the cool freshness before dawn, look down from the bank, and see this scene: a naked witch with her hair loose jumping up and down and waving her arms in the air. It would be absolutely dreadful.

As she pulled on her cold, wet shirt, she thought for the first time about her situation. First, she had no idea where the current had carried her—perhaps there was no human habitation here at all. And second, even if the area was inhabited, everything was still far from simple. It was hardly appropriate for a nun to appear in front of people like this.

She walked to and fro under the cliff and spied out a faintly visible path that led upward. The incline was steep and every now and then her feet trod on sharp stones, so that Pelagia looked down more than up, but when she did throw her head back to check whether she still had far to go, she gasped. There was a strange white object standing at the top of the cliff, something she had not been able to see from below: tall, elegant, static. The nun thought that the shape of this strange object seemed familiar. She walked a little higher, looking upward now instead of down at her feet.

A pavilion. With short white columns, decorative iron railings, and a rounded top. A familiar pavilion—the same one from which she had so enjoyed observing the River from the Drozdovka park.

Pelagia could not decide immediately if it was a good thing that the current had carried her to Drozdovka. Of course, people whom she knew would be more willing to help than strangers, but the shame she would feel in front of them would be even greater.

The trees standing in the park were soaking wet and dismal. There was a white mist floating up from the ground, still quite thin, but gradually thickening. It was chilly and damp. And there was still a long time left before the real dawn came. What should she do?

Pelagia ran, hopping and skipping, toward the house, her teeth chattering. She could wait it out somehow until the morning, and then Tanya or one of the other women servants would come out of the house, and she could call them quietly. There was nothing else that she could do. She couldn’t go bursting into the house of the general’s widow in the middle of the night in such a dreadful state, with her ginger hair all matted and tangled.

She squatted down beside the bathhouse. She tugged at the door—a pity, it was locked, it would have been a lot warmer inside. Out in the open air she had become completely chilled, and her jumping had not helped.

And then the nun remembered about the gardener’s hut. That definitely could not be locked.

She ran back along the alley. Her damp shirt clung repulsively to her legs.

There was the little house. And yes—the door was not locked.

Pelagia went into the dark shelter. Treading cautiously so as not to step on anything sharp, she made her way into a corner and sat down. At least it was dry; for that, many thanks, Lord.

Little by little it grew light. She could see the cracks in the planking walls, the tools: rakes, spades, hoes, an axe, mattocks.

Mattocks? What had Naina Georgievna said? A live aspen and a mattock?

What did it mean?

Since she had nothing else to do, Pelagia began turning the strange words over and over in her mind. It must mean that the photograph called “Rainy Morning” showed some kind of mattock and an aspen tree. Alive. But what other kinds of aspens were there—dead ones?

The young woman must have been raving as she died. But no—the words had been spoken in reply to a question asked by Pelagia.

There were plenty of aspens in the park, every one more alive than the last.

But again, no! The nun whistled out loud. One was certainly not alive—the one beside which poor innocent Zakusai was lying after he was murdered. Perhaps the princess had been talking about that little tree? Had she been saying that in the photograph it had still been alive? But what was so unusual about that, and what had the mattock to do with it?