Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog (4 page)

He walked across to the window and delivered the following explanation, gazing all the while out into the orchard, from time to time drumming on the window frame with his fingers.

“Not far from here, about eight miles away, is the estate of my great aunt, Marya Afanasievna Tatishcheva. She is extremely old now, but there was a time, long ago, when she was considered one of the greatest beauties in St. Petersburg. I remember her coming to visit us when I was a boy. She was fun-loving then, young, and she used to play checkers with me…. She married an officer, a regimental commander, and made the rounds of various remote garrisons with him, then he retired and they settled at Drozdovka. Her husband, Apollon Nikolaevich, who is now deceased, was passionately fond of dogs. He kept the finest kennels in the entire province. He had racing dogs and hunting dogs and gundogs. He once bought a puppy for a thousand rubles, that’s the kind of reckless man he was. But he still felt that all this was not enough, and he began to dream of producing some special new breed, something absolutely new. He frittered away all the rest of his life on this project. He called the breed the ‘white Russian bulldog.’ It is a different color from an ordinary bulldog, as white as milk all over, and has a very distinct flatness of profile (I have forgotten the special term that dog-lovers use for it), and it is quite exceptionally slack-lipped—that is, its lips are droopy. But the most important feature, the real point of all this, is that while it is white all over, its right ear has to be brown. I don’t recall what the meaning of that is—something to do with a helmet…I think that when Apollon Nikolaevich served in the Horse Guards, it was the custom in his squadron to wear one’s helmet cocked slightly to one side. So the ear represents that daredevil attitude. Ah, yes, I forgot, they also have to be extremely slobbery—I don’t know what practical purpose that serves. All in all, as ugly a monster as you are likely to find anywhere. Apollon Nikolaevich proceeded as follows. He requested every bulldog-owning noble house in Russia not to drown the degenerate albino pups as they usually do, but send them immediately to Major-General Tatishchev, and he would pay good money for the rejects. White bulldog pups, especially pups with a brown right ear, are very rare. I don’t remember how rare, although I heard it many times from my uncle, and from my aunt…perhaps one in every hundred litters. Well, anyway, Apollon Nikolaevich collected these little freaks and bred them. The pups mostly came out as usual, reddish-brown, but sometimes there were white ones, too, with brown ears, and now they were more frequent—say, one in every ten litters. Again he selected those and bred them, and took care that they were as slack-lipped and slobbery as possible. A particular difficulty arose, of course, with that thrice-cursed ear. A very large number of pups had to be culled. And so on and on, generation after generation. By the time my uncle passed away, he had made a great deal of progress toward his dream, but even so he was still only halfway there, so to speak. As he was dying, he entrusted the completion of the work that he had begun to his wife. And Marya Afanasievna was an absolute treasure as a wife. She had made the change from high-society charmer to mother and commander’s wife and later to lady of the manor in stride. All with absolute sincerity and with a willing heart. Such was the womanly talent granted to her by God. If her husband had not given her any instructions to carry out on his deathbed, she would probably have withered away; she would never have coped with her grief. But as it is she has been a widow for twenty years now and is still strong, active, and cheerful. She talks about dogs all the time and thinks about absolutely nothing else. I have reproached her for her excessive passion and enthusiasm, upbraided her—but she does not listen. One day, as a joke, I teased her: ‘Aunty, what if Lucifer himself should suddenly appear and demand your Christian soul in exchange for a pure white breed, would you give it to him?’ ‘Lord bless you, Misha,’ she replied, ‘what nonsense is that you’re talking?’ And then she suddenly fell silent and started thinking about it. I tell you, Pelagia, this is no joking matter. But in any case, she continued her deceased husband’s work breeding the Russian white bulldog and was actually rather successful at it, especially along the lines of droopiness, slobberiness, and flatness of profile. But things did not go so well for her with the ear. Until just recently she had only accumulated three absolutely ideal male dogs. An old grandfather by the name of Zagulyai, already over eight years old. Then his son Zakidai, a four-year-old. And two or three months ago the old woman was delighted when Zagulyai’s grandson was born. They called him Zakusai. He turned out so exemplary in all points that my aunt ordered all the other dogs who were not perfect enough to be drowned, in order not to spoil the breed, and kept only those three for breeding. Oh, I forgot another important point: They have bandy legs and their noses are pink with black spots. That is also an important feature…”

At this point the reverend bishop began feeling completely silly, and he cast an awkward sideways glance at his listener. She was moving her lips silently as she counted her stitches, showing no sign of astonishment.

“Well, anyway, here, read this letter. It came yesterday. If you tell me that the old woman is raving, that she has lost her mind, I’ll write something to reassure her, and that will be the end of the matter.”

Mitrofanii took the letter out of the sleeve of his cassock and handed it to Pelagia.

The sister pressed her spectacles up against the bridge of her nose with one finger and began reading. Having read the letter, she asked in alarm: “Who could have wanted to poison the dogs? And why?”

Reassured by the serious tone of her question, His Grace immediately stopped feeling embarrassed.

“That is the very point—why? Just consider. Marya Afanasievna is a rich old woman and she has no shortage of heirs. Her children have died, but she has a grandson and granddaughter—the prince and princess Telianov. In addition there are countless distant relatives, some hangers-on, all sorts of friends. She is a kind woman, but foolish. And she has one tyrannical habit—almost every week she summons the attorney from the town and changes her will. If she gets angry with someone, she disinherits them; if she feels pleased with someone, she increases their share. So this is what I was thinking, Pelagia: We need to check who benefited from the last time she changed her will. Or, on the contrary, who she was angry with and threatened to cut off. I cannot see any point to this barbaric poisoning of the dogs unless someone was doing it in order to send the old woman to her grave. You see how ill she has become because of this dog. And if both of them had died, they would have had to bury Marya Afanasievna there and then. What do you make of my suppositions?” the bishop asked his perceptive pupil anxiously. “They do not seem too unlikely?”

“Your suspicion is reasonable and highly probable; no other reason comes to mind,” the novice nun said approvingly, adding, however: “But of course, someone really needs to visit the scene. Some other reason might perhaps come to light. Is your aunt’s fortune very large?”

“It is. A large estate, maintained in exemplary order. Forests, meadows, mills, flax meadows, fields of top-grade oats. And capital as well, securities in the bank. I should not be surprised if altogether she had a million.”

“And do you know her heirs, Your Grace? It requires a very low individual to undertake something of this kind. Killing someone outright would hardly be a more grievous sin.”

“You are judging from the standpoint of God, and you are right to do so. But man’s laws are very far removed from those of God. Kill someone outright, and the police will attempt to discover who did it and why. Do things that way and you end up serving hard labor. But from the human viewpoint, poisoning dogs is no great sin, and from the legal standpoint it is none at all, even though it is a surer way of killing the old woman than a knife or a bullet.”

Pelagia threw her hands up in the air and her knitting went flying to the floor.

“It is a great sin in the human sense, very great! Even if your Marya Afanasievna were the devil incarnate and someone she had offended wished to settle accounts with her, what could these innocent creatures be guilty of? A dog is a trusting creature, affectionate, so generously endowed by God with faithfulness and the gift of love that it would do people no harm to learn from it. I believe, Your Grace, that it is even worse to kill a dog than a man.”

“Now, just you stop that pagan talk!” the bishop cried. “I do not wish to hear any more of that. Comparing a living soul with a dumb creature!”

“What does it matter that it is dumb,” the stubborn nun persisted. “Have you ever looked into a dog’s eyes? Even your own Zhuk, who is chained at your gate? You should try it. Zhuk’s eyes have more feeling and life in them than your precious Userdov’s dull saucers!”

The bishop was on the point of opening his mouth to vent his righteous anger, but he stopped himself. In recent times he had been waging a struggle against the sin of wrath of the heart, and occasionally he was victorious.

“I have no time to waste looking into the eyes of yard dogs,” the bishop said in a stiff, dignified tone of voice. “Leave Userdov alone; he is thorough and conscientious, and as for his soul being buried so deep—that is his character. And I shall not argue with you, especially over the obvious. Tell me one thing: Will you do as I ask?”

“I will, father,” the nun said with a bow.

“Then this is your task. Go to Drozdovka this very day. Give Marya Afanasievna my blessing and the letter that I shall give you. Reassure the old woman. And most important of all, find out what is going on there. If you uncover malicious intent—nip it in the bud. But I do not need to tell you; you know what to do. And do not return until you have resolved this business.”

“Your Grace,” Pelagia began anxiously. “On Saturday I have lessons in the school.”

“Well, you can come back for the lessons and then return to Drozdovka. That is all, off you go. But first, approach me and I will give you my blessing.”

BEFORE SISTER PELAGIA sets out for the estate of the widow Tatishcheva, we need to offer certain explanations concerning the local geography, without which anyone who has never been to Zavolzhsk will find it a little difficult to believe everything that occurred subsequently, or even to understand how it possibly could have occurred.

The central character in this tale is the River, the greatest and most glorious not only in Russia, but in the whole of Europe. The provincial capital is built on its left bank, atop a steep ravine. Here the flow of the waters is restricted by cliffs on both sides, and therefore the current that is so famous for its stately grandeur temporarily abandons its placid humor, absentmindedly and unhurriedly accelerating to a gallop, its waves foaming into white crests and swirling in dark whirlpools as it maintains its centuries-old siege of the sheer cliff at Zavolzhsk, undercutting the high precipice with its insidious thrusts. About five miles farther downstream the steep slope of the left bank gradually starts to level out until it is eventually replaced by sandy shoals, so that the River, now allowed greater freedom, breathes more easily after its enforced sprint and expands to a width of almost a mile.

But this respite is merely temporary—at the very point where Drozdovka stands, the obstinate bank rears sharply upward once again; the manor house and the garden are elevated high above the watery expanse, and the view presented to the eye from that spot is rightly regarded as the most beautiful in the entire district.

And so Sister Pelagia’s route lay in a southerly direction, out through the Kazan Gates and onto the Astrakhan highway, which extends along the River, obediently following all its capricious curves and never departing from it by more than five miles.

Before she left her little room in the episcopal see, referred to in convent fashion as a cell, Pelagia followed her old superstitious habit of opening the Gospels and setting her finger on a line at random. On this occasion the work of penance she had been set was not frightening, one might even call it trivial, but this was the young nun’s normal ritual. However, the line of text that she hit on (from Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians) was clearly not fortuitous, for it contained either an admonition or a warning: “Beware of dogs and beware of evildoers.”

Apparently it
was
a warning, because as she was leaving the town, after she had already walked past the turnpike, Pelagia was granted a sign that was unambiguously menacing. Glancing around and seeing that no one seemed to be nearby, the novice took a little mirror out from the same waist bag in which she kept her knitting and began examining her nose to see whether the brazen freckles had faded at all after being treated with the dandelion milk. And then there was a sudden rustling in the bushes beside the road as two women emerged, having left the highway for some unknown reason. Sister Pelagia tried to hide her hand behind her back, but was so clumsy that she dropped the mirror. When she picked it up she saw the bad omen: two cracks set in a cross, and everyone knows what that sign means. It bodes nothing good.

In defiance of convent rules, Pelagia took bad omens seriously, not out of ignorance, but because she had been convinced by numerous instances that people had had good reason for identifying and enumerating them over the centuries. She did what is required in such a case—scooped up a handful of earth, threw it over her left shoulder, crossed herself (which she never did idly), recited a prayer to the Holy Trinity, and went on her way.

She did not wish to think of alarming matters (and in any case, she had no reason to do so). She had in prospect a small but nonetheless rather intriguing adventure, and so the nun’s mood, briefly clouded by the mirror’s demise, was rapidly restored, especially since this was one of those magical summer days when the mature sun turns the air as gold as honey, the sky is high and the earth is wide and everything is filled with bounteous life and sweet languor. But what point is there in description, since after all, everyone knows what a fine August day looks like when the month has only recently passed its midpoint.