Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog (5 page)

For the first mile Pelagia was lucky—a little old peasant gave her a seat in his wagon. The roads in our province are new and even, so riding over them feels as smooth as gliding across ice, and Pelagia rode on soft straw in perfect comfort as far as the turn from the Astrakhan highway toward Drozdovka.

But here, right beside a fork in the road, there was another omen, this time so bad that a worse one could not possibly be imagined. After she got down from the cart and thanked the old man, Pelagia spotted a small group of people off to one side, crowding around a dray and looking at something on it without speaking. Her innate curiosity would not permit the sister simply to walk past an event like this, and she went over to see what this wonder might be. Squeezing her way among the peasant men and wandering pilgrims, she peered shortsightedly through her spectacles: a perfectly ordinary accident on the road—the axle had broken. But for some reason a district police officer was loitering beside the dray, and two police constables were grunting as they mounted a wheel on a freshly cut and roughly trimmed young oak tree. The officer was an acquaintance of hers, Captain Nerushailo from the nearby Chernoyarsk district, and there was something long lying on the dray, covered with a tarpaulin.

“What is it, Pakhom Sergeevich, has someone drowned?” asked Pelagia after she said hello, and to be on the safe side she made the sign of the cross over the tarpaulin.

“No, mother, something more terrible than that,” the officer replied with a mysterious air, mopping at his crimson bald patch with a handkerchief. “The River’s cast up two corpses. With no heads. A man and a young boy. Lying there side by side on the sand, they were. What a thing to happen! There’ll be an investigation all right and proper. I’m just taking them to the provincial center so they can be identified. Though the devil only knows how. I beg your pardon, that just slipped out.”

Pelagia shrugged the devil off her shoulder so that he would not stick to her and crossed herself now, not the dead men.

“They’re not ours,” someone said in the crowd. “There’s never been any such murdering around these parts.”

“That’s right,” someone else agreed. “They must have floated down from Nizhny; there’s plenty of brigands up there.”

This opinion was greeted with universal approbation, because the Zavolzhians are not over-fond of the Nizhnegrodians, regarding them as thieving, good-for-nothing folk.

“Your Honor, why don’t you show us what they look like? We might recognize them,” asked a bearded man in a good knee-length coat—a respectable-looking man who was clearly not simply curious to gape at the dead bodies.

Many others supported this request and though the women gasped, that was mostly for appearances’ sake.

The police officer put on his peaked cap, thought for a moment, and acceded to the request.

“Very well, I will show you. What if you really—”

Pakhom Sergeevich pulled back the cover and Pelagia immediately turned away, because the corpses were completely naked, and it was not decent for a nun to look at such things. All she had time to see was that the left arm of the large, hairy body ended in a stump of raw meat where the wrist should have been.

“Oh, dear Lord, the boy’s only a little mite,” one of the women keened. “My Afonka’s just the same.”

Pelagia did not look any more after that, because a work of penance is a work of penance, and she strode off along the country road toward Drozdovka.

The air was getting rather muggy, and there were bright shimmers rippling up from the ground, as happens on a hot day before rain. Pelagia quickened her stride, glancing up every now and then at the sky, where a round, tightly stuffed storm cloud was swelling rapidly as it rolled along. Ahead of her she could see the railings of the park, and the green roof of the manor house rising up above the trees, but she still had a fair distance to cover to reach it. Sister Pelagia felt herself being overcome by an unworthy feeling—envy. “Now, that is really serious business,” she thought, remembering the consequential air with which Pakhom Sergeevich had pronounced the appetizing word “investigation.”

Some people had fearful mysteries to untangle, and others had to investigate how an old woman’s slack-lipped darling had died. A fine work of penance His Grace had given her!

CHAPTER 2

Storm Clouds Over Zavolzhsk

LET US LEAVE Sister Pelagia to continue on her way toward the gates of the Drozdovka park under a rapidly darkening sky while we digress briefly to explain certain mysteries of our provincial politics and also to introduce the individuals who are destined to play a key role in this somber and tangled tale.

As we have already said, the province of Zavolzhie is extensive, but it is located far from the seat of central government, and in recent times it had been, if not entirely abandoned to its own devices, then at least very little honored by attention from higher spheres. There was nothing that these spheres desired in Zavolzhie—for the province is nothing but forests and rivers and lakes and, in particular, a great many swamps, such huge ones that during the Time of Troubles an entire Polish wagon train perished somewhere in the quagmires around here when it was sent by the Pretender in search of the magical Golden Stone.

It is a back-of-beyond sort of place, fit for wolves and bears—and in some ways the local inhabitants themselves are not unlike bears, no less sluggish and shaggy. The lively Novgorodians and shrewd Kostromians have invented a stupid saying: “The Zavolzhians are born with lazy bones.” Well, indeed, the Zavolzhians are not fond of fuss and bustle, they are none too quick on the uptake, and they will probably never invent the
perpetuum mobile.
And yet who can tell? Several years ago in the village of Rychalovka, just a hundred and twenty miles from Zavolzhsk, there was a sexton who invented a hoist for getting up the bell tower. He was tired, you see, of running up and down eighty steep steps every day. He fixed a chair on long trace lines, stuck on some cogs and pinions and little levers, and what do you know? He could soar up into the heavens in just two minutes. His Grace himself came to take a look at this great wonder. He marveled, nodded his head, took a ride on the miracle chair, and then another one, and then he ordered the entire construction to be dismantled, because a church bell should be rung with humility, with reverent puffing and panting, and apart from that it was an unnecessary temptation to young boys. Mitrofanii sent the sexton to Moscow to study mechanics and sent another, with less supple wits, to replace him as sexton. But this glimmer of native genius is the exception rather than the rule. Let us admit quite frankly that as a group the Zavolzhians are slow-witted and suspicious of anything new.

Even our present governor, Anton Antonovich von Haggenau, was initially received with disapproval because, thoroughly imbued as he was with the spirit of beneficial reforms, he set about trying to stand the entire province entrusted to him on its head, while claiming that he was doing the very opposite and standing it on its feet. However, the Lord spared us Zavolzhians any excessive cataclysms. The young reformer fell under the influence of Mitrofanii, humbled his pride, and settled down, especially after he had married the most eligible bride in the entire locality with the bishop’s blessing. For this, of course, the baron had to convert from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy, and his new spiritual father was none other than His Grace himself. Von Haggenau put down such deep roots here that, for his exemplary administration of the province, he was summoned to manage a ministry in the capital. He refused, judging that he was better off where he was. Generally speaking, he used to be a German, but he completely recovered. It used to be that in the evenings he would drink mulled wine from a little china mug and play the cello by himself, but now he has become extremely fond of home-made cranberry vodka, and at Epiphany he bathes in a hole in the ice on the River and afterward stays in the steam room for three hours at a time without once coming out.

And just as a genuine Russian ought to be, the governor is under his wife’s thumb. But then, to be under the thumb of a lady like Ludmila Platonovna is both a joy and a pleasure; there are many people who would positively desire such enslavement. She was born one of the Cheremisovs, the very foremost family in Zavolzhie, elevated from merchant rank to the title of count by Peter the Great himself. As a girl Ludmila Platonovna had been slim and delicate, but after four little barons had been born, her constitution changed, and she acquired a most agreeable luxuriance, which only enhanced her beauty. Clear-eyed and rosy-cheeked, with plump hands, after she passed the age of thirty the baroness came to represent an absolutely perfect example of that genuinely Russian beauty for which skinny and bald Germans (among whom Anton Antonovich was numbered) have since time immemorial evinced an enthusiasm of both spirit and body. Ludmila Platonovna very quickly realized what power she held over her husband and began exploiting it entirely as she wished, but for the time being this did not result in any damage to the province because, as a woman of feeling and sensitivity, Madame von Haggenau devoted her inexhaustible energy to charitable and godly activities, so that even His Grace found her influence on her husband to be useful, in the sense that it softened the Prussian rigidity from which the baron suffered to some extent in his relations with other people. It is true, of course, that as a result of recent events Mitrofanii has been obliged to change his views on the subject of female dominance, but we shall come to that a little farther on.

Perhaps the only individual whose influence the governor’s wife had not been able to manipulate, despite all her efforts (not counting His Grace, naturally, whose authority Ludmila Platonovna never once thought of assailing), was the baron’s trusted adviser, Matvei Bentsionovich Berdichevsky, who held the post of assistant procurator at the Chamber of Justice. The story of this official is somewhat unusual and deserves to be related in some detail.

Matvei Bentsionovich was a former Jew and, like the governor, one of His Grace Mitrofanii’s godchildren. Before entering into the bosom of the Orthodox Church, he bore the inharmonious name of Mordka, which in Russian signifies “little snout,” and this is still used to this very day with gleeful malice by his enemies—behind his back, of course, because Matvei Bentsionovich’s intimacy with the authorities is no secret to anyone. The governor’s future confidential adviser made his appearance in the world in the poorest family one could possibly imagine. Then he was orphaned at an early age, as a result of which, according to the custom that has been in force in these parts for some time, he was accepted on a public scholarship at the four-year primary school, and then, in view of his exceptional abilities, for the grammar school as well. Mitrofanii kept an eye on the gifted youth from early on, and when he graduated from his studies at the grammar school sent him to St. Petersburg University. Berdichevsky did not disgrace himself in the capital, either, graduating with distinction, first in his year, and was granted the right to work anywhere he chose, even the Ministry of Justice, and yet he chose Zavolzhsk. And why not? He was a highly intelligent man, and he had not miscalculated in the least. Who would he have been in St. Petersburg? A provincial, a plebeian of the Jewish tribe, which, as everyone knows, is worse than having no tribe at all. But here we greeted him with affection. We gave him a good job and married him to a fine bride. Mitrofanii always used to say that the wife makes the man, and he illustrated his idea with a mathematical allegory. A man, he would say, is like the number one while a woman is like a zero. When they each live apart, his value is not great, and she has no value at all, but when they enter into a marriage, then a certain new number is created. If she is a good wife, she stands behind the one and multiplies its strength tenfold. If she is a bad wife, then she pushes her way in front of it and weakens the man by the same number of times, reducing him to a mere tenth part of a whole.

For Matvei Bentsionovich the bishop selected a good girl who could keep house from among the children of a subaltern. From the beginning their life together was one of love and harmony and they set about propagating with such dedication that during the first ten years of their marriage, which have just expired at the beginning of our narrative, they produced twelve offspring of both sexes (but primarily girls).

If he had so wished, Berdichevsky could have occupied some other, more prestigious position, including even the chairmanship of the Chamber of Justice, but by virtue of his character and innate reticence he preferred to remain in the shadows: He gave his advice to the authorities not in the office and not at public meetings, but for the most part
in camera,
over tea or a quiet game of preference, of which Anton Antonovich was very fond. Nor did Matvei Bentsionovich like to appear as prosecutor in court cases, for which his excuse was his nasal voice and unfortunate appearance. He was indeed far from handsome—he was nervous and twitchy, with a crooked nose and one shoulder noticeably higher than the other. His nominal superior, the provincial procurator Silezius, a man of impressive appearance but very stupid, frequently earned stormy ovations in court by reading speeches written by Berdichevsky, leaving Matvei Bentsionovich to merely sigh and feel envious.

The position of this latter-day
éminence grise
was founded on support from two of the pillars of Zavolzhsk society, His Grace and the governor, but the third, the beautiful Ludmila Platonovna, did not favor the crafty Jew. However, the tension between Berdichevsky and the baroness was not by its nature a violent enmity, but rather a jealous rivalry, so that on Forgiveness Sunday both parties would always confess to each other and forgive each other wholeheartedly—which did absolutely nothing to prevent the rivalry from continuing after Easter.