Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel Read online

  The skillful knitter had strange hands: broad, with little hairs on the fingers. Pelagia raised her eyes, saw an unfeminine face and a neck with a protruding Adam’s apple above the lace collar, and gasped out loud.

  Catching the nun’s gaze, the remarkable lady stopped and suddenly winked. Her family continued on its way, leaving the two knitting enthusiasts alone together.

  “Are you a man?” Pelagia asked in a whisper, opening her eyes wide in amazement.

  The other woman nodded and raised a finger to her lips: Sh-sh-sh.

  “But… who are they?” the nun asked, with a confused nod in the direction of the broad-shouldered gentleman and his charming offspring.

  “My family.” The voice of the man in woman’s clothes was high, with a slightly squeaky note, almost indistinguishable from a woman’s. “My husband, Lev Ivanovich. And our children, Antinous and Salome. We are sodomites.” The final words were pronounced in a perfectly normal tone of voice, as if the speaker had said “We are Oddesites” or “We are Mennonites.”

  “S-sodomites? You mean … pederasts?” Pelagia asked, stumbling over the shameful words. “But what about the young lady? And then … surely you can’t have children?”

  “Salome is no young lady—he used to work in a men’s bathhouse. That was where Lyova picked him up. So delicate, so delicate! And the way he sings! Antinous is a jolly one, naughty, he likes to get up to mischief sometimes, but little Salomeia is simply an angel. All three of us love Lev Ivanovich,” declared Pelagia’s amazing companion. “He’s a real man, not like the ordinary ones. Women are not enough for a real man; for him all other men are like women.”

  It was shameful to listen to this, but interesting too. Pelagia turned to see how far Mitrofanii had moved on. He mustn’t find out who it was he had blessed so benignly!

  His Reverence was not far away. He had stopped beside a group of Jews and was listening to something. That was good.

  “And how long have you … you know, been living like this?” the nun asked curiously.

  “Not long. Only for seven months.”

  “And before that?”

  “Before that I used to live like everyone else. I had a wife, a daughter. A job. I’m a teacher, from a classical grammar school, you know—Latin, ancient Greek. I reached the age of forty without ever realizing who or what I was. As if I’d been watching life through the dusty window of a railway carriage, and life just kept rolling on by. But when I met Lev Nikolaevich, the glass suddenly shattered and broke. You can’t imagine how happy I am! As if I had risen from the dead!”

  “But what about your family? I mean, your first family.”

  The classical grammar-school teacher sighed.

  “What could I do, when it was a matter of love and resurrection? I left them everything. The money in the bank, all that there was. The house. I feel sorry for my daughter, she’s a clever little girl. But she’s better off without a father like this. Let her remember me as I used to be.”

  Glancing at her resurrected companion’s mobcap and silk dress, Pelagia could not find it in herself to dispute this assertion.

  “Where are you heading now?”

  “Sodom,” came the reply. “As I said, we are sodomites.”

  Once again Pelagia completely failed to understand. “What Sodom? The one laid waste by the Lord together with Gomorrah?”

  “It was destroyed. But now it has been reborn. An American millionaire, Mr. George Sairus, the well-known philanthropist, discovered the spot where the biblical Sodom stood. And now a heavenly new city is being built there—for people like us. No persecution from the police, no disdain from society. And no women,” the speaker said with a sly smile. “You naturals will never make the kind of woman that a man can. Although, of course, you do have something worth looking at.” The former classicist cast an appraising glance over the nun’s figure. “The bust is no great feature, you can stuff that with cotton wool, but the shoulders now, the line of the thigh …”

  “Irodiada! Where have you disappeared to?” a stentorian voice called out of the fog. “The children want to go back to the cabin.”

  “Coming, darling, coming!” Irodiada called with a start and went hurrying after the call of her beloved.

  Is there no end to the variety of the Lord’s creatures? Pelagia thought in wonder, and set off after Mitrofanii.

  She saw that His Reverence had already moved from the passive state of listening to others to the active state of wagging his mighty finger and pronouncing on something to a gray-bearded rabbi who was surrounded by a huddle of juveniles.

  Sister Pelagia did not see how the argument had begun. No doubt the bishop, with his customary curiosity, had started questioning the Jews about where they were going and what their motives were—was it a matter of need, or faith, or were they perhaps fleeing from unjust persecution?—and he had clashed with his Judaic colleague over some point.

  “That is precisely why you are persecuted everywhere, because you have so much arrogance!” the bishop rumbled.

  The exponent of the Old Testament responded no less thunderously: “We do have our pride, it is true! Man cannot live without pride! He is the crown of creation!”

  “It is not pride that your people are so full of, but precisely arrogance! You despise all who do not live as you do, you are always afraid of being defiled! If you are so squeamish, then who will love you?”

  “It is not people we despise and shun, but people’s impurity! And as for love, King David said: ‘On all sides do they surround me with words of hate, they arm themselves against me without cause; for my love they make war on me, but I pray’”

  Provoked by this rebuff, Mitrofanii retorted: “Who is it that you love, apart from those of your own tribe? Even your prophets addressed themselves only to you, the Jews, but our saints feel for the whole of mankind!”

  Pelagia thought what a pity it was that the Chief Procurator could not hear the bishop fulminating against the infidels—how glad he would have been!

  The dispute made interesting listening, and even more interesting watching: for all their religious differences, the two opponents were extremely similar in both temperament and appearance.

  “We do not turn our backs on mankind!” the rabbi exclaimed, shaking his beard, “but we remember what a heavy burden has been laid upon us—to demonstrate to other nations an example of constancy and purity. And all who wish to be pure may join us. If you wish, we will accept even you!”

  “What you say is not true!” Mitrofanii rumbled triumphantly, and his beard began jerking. “Those lost sheep who are called ‘found lings’“—he pointed to the three vagabonds sitting a short distance away in their clowns’ costumes with the blue stripe—“have reached out to your faith and abjured Christ. And what has happened? Have you taken them in, Reverend Rabbi? No, you turn your noses up!”

  The rabbi began choking on his indignation. “Take them in? Pah and pah again, a plague on them and their false prophet! It is said in the Law of Moses: ‘Those who practice wizardry shall be put to death, they must be stoned, let their blood be on them.’ I know you churchmen have launched an intrigue against us, to hold our faith up to mockery through this marketplace clown Manuila! According to your vile priestly habit!”

  One of the accuser’s disciples, a little older than the others, grabbed the rabbi by the sleeve and whispered something in Yiddish in an alarmed voice. Pelagia could make out only one word—“police.” But the rabbi was not frightened.

  “I can see for myself from his cross and cap that he’s a bishop. Let him complain. Tell them—tell them that in your person Aron Shefarevich has insulted the Christian Church!”

  These words had a surprising effect on His Reverence. Instead of growing even more heated, he fell silent. No doubt he had recalled that as a provincial bishop he had the power of the state and the dominant church behind him. What real dispute could there be?

  He had noticed Pelagia, too, and he felt ashamed.

&
nbsp; “You are too wrathful, Rabbi, like your own Judaic God,” the bishop said after a pause. “That is why so few hear His voice. But our apostle Paul said: ‘Let all irritation and fury be far removed from you.’”

  And having fired this final salvo at the enemy, he withdrew with dignity, although Pelagia could see from the excessive straightness of his stance and the tight way he was clenching his fingers behind his back that Mitrofanii was seriously annoyed—not with the insolent rabbi, of course, but with himself, for entering into a pointless and unseemly squabble.

  Knowing perfectly well that when His Reverence was in this kind of mood it was best to keep away from him, the nun did not go hurrying after her spiritual father, but chose instead to linger where she was. And in any case, she had to reassure the poor Jews.

  “What’s your name?” she asked a skinny, hook-nosed youth, who was staring after the bishop in fright.

  “Shmulik,” he replied with a shudder, and began staring at the nun with the same fright in his eyes. “Why?”

  How pale he is, thought Pelagia, feeling sorry for the boy. He needs to eat better and spend more time playing outside, but he probably spends all day from morning till night poring over the Talmud.

  “You tell your teacher there’s no need to be afraid,” she said. “Bishop Mitrofanii won’t complain to anyone.”

  Shmulik tugged on the sidelock coiled around his ear and declared triumphantly.

  “Rabbi Shefarevich isn’t afraid of anything. He’s a great man. He’s been summoned to Erushalaim by the khakham-bashi himself, to help fortify the holy city against vacillation.” Pelagia had no idea who the khakham-bashi was, but she nodded respectfully. “To fortify Erushalaim!” Shmulik’s eyes glinted in ecstasy. “Eh? See how highly they think of our rabbi! He is firm in the faith, like a rock. Do you know who he is? He is the new Shamai, that’s who!”

  The nun had read about the intransigent Shamai, the founder of ancient Phariseeism. But of all the Pharisees she preferred a different religious teacher, the uncensorious Gillel. The same Gillel who, when asked about the essential core of God’s law, replied with the single sentence: “Do not do unto others what you yourself find hurtful—that is all the law, the rest is mere commentary on it.”

  Once again the deck was wreathed in tattered cotton wool, and the despondent figures of the Jews quivered and paled and became like ghosts. This made the sound of singing even more surprising: it came from the center of the deck, from somewhere below the captain’s bridge. The young voices launched into a very harmonious choral rendition of the student song “Dubinushka.”

  Not students, surely? Pelagia wanted to listen, but as she was walking through the milky white soup, the singing came to an end. The voices had just got into their stride, just passionately declared: “Of all songs, one is engraved in my memory, it is the song of the workers’ artel,” but they didn’t give the whoop that should have followed. The choir disintegrated, the song choked off, and the unison shattered into discordant hubbub. The nun, however, continued on her way, determined to see what kind of young people these were.

  They weren’t students, although at first glance they were similar: from their faces and clothes and the words that reached her ears, Pelagia could tell that they were settlers moving to Jewish Palestine.

  “You’re wrong, Magellan!” a youthful voice exclaimed. “Aryan civilization seeks to make the word beautiful, and Jewish civilization to make it moral, that’s where the main difference lies. Both tasks are important, but it’s difficult to combine them, and that’s why we need to build our state far away from Europe. We shall learn beauty from them, and they shall learn morals from us. We shall have neither exploitation nor repression of the female sex by the male, nor any vulgar bourgeois family! We shall become an example for the whole world!”

  Ah, how interesting, thought Pelagia, and she stood unobtrusively at one side. These must be the Zionists that everybody was writing and talking about. How likable they were, how young and how fragile, especially the young ladies.

  But then, that young man with the skippers beard (the Magellan whom the rhapsodic speaker was addressing) could hardly be called fragile. He was older than the others as well—probably about twenty-five. His calm blue eyes gazed at the passionate orator in a mocking sneer.

  “We’ll do well in Palestine if we don’t starve to death, or turn into sniveling ninnies, or end up squabbling among ourselves,” he said coolly. “We can think about moral ideals afterward.”

  Pelagia leaned toward a sweet girl in a pair of children’s trousers (she thought they were called “shorts,” after the British manner) and asked in a whisper: “You are all in a commune, are you?”

  The girl lifted up her round face and smiled. “Oi, a nun! Yes, we’re members of the Megiddo-Khadash commune.”

  “What does that mean?” asked the curious nun, squatting down on her haunches.

  “‘New Megiddo.’ In ancient Hebrew, Megiddo means ‘City of Happiness.’ There really was a city called that, in the Isreel Valley, but it was destroyed, by the Assyrians or the Egyptians, I’ve forgotten which. But we’re going to rebuild Megiddo. We’ve already bought the land from the Arabs.”

  “Is he your leader?” Pelagia asked, pointing at the bearded young man.

  “Who, Magellan? We don’t have any leaders, we’re all equal. It’s just that he has experience. He’s been to Palestine, and he’s sailed around the world—that’s why we call him Magellan. You know what he’s like?” the bare-legged young lady asked in a voice full of unfeigned admiration. “With him, you’re not afraid of anything! The Oprichniks in Poltava tried to kill him, because he organized self-defense for the Jews. He fired back at them and got away! And now the police are looking for him! Oi!” Afraid that she had let too much slip, the young lady pressed her fingers to her lips, but Pelagia pretended that she hadn’t heard or hadn’t understood—after all, everyone knew that nuns were not very bright and not really of this world. The girl immediately calmed down and carried on chattering rapidly, as if nothing had happened.

  “The City of Happiness was Magellan’s idea. And he gathered us all together, and got the money from somewhere. Thirty thousand! Can you imagine? He transferred it to Jaffa, to the bank, and all he left us for the journey was eight kopecks each a day!”

  “Why only eight? That’s very little!”

  “Coliseum—he’s a student in the history faculty”—the girl pointed to one of the young men, who was incredibly emaciated and stooped—“calculated that that was the precise sum—if you translated it into today’s money, of course—that a simple farmer had to live on in King Solomon’s times. So it has to be enough for us. We’re farmers now too. And we’ll need the money in Palestine. We have to buy livestock, drain swamps, build houses.”

  Pelagia looked at the starveling Coliseum. How would someone like that be able to swing a mattock or walk behind a plow?

  “But why is he called Coliseum? He’s not really very big.”

  “His name is Fira Glusky really. But Magellan nicknamed him Coliseum. It’s because everyone’s always talking about ‘the ruins of the Coliseum.’ Fira isn’t a real person at all, he’s a walking ruin—he has every malady in the world: a curved spine, and fallen arches, and sinusitis. But see, he’s coming, too.”

  The subject of discussion caught the nun’s compassionate gaze on himself and cried out merrily: “Hey, Sister, come along to Palestine with us!”

  “I’m not a Jew,” Pelagia replied, embarrassed to see that the entire company was looking at her. “And it’s hardly likely that I ever shall be.”

  “No need,” laughed one of the communards. “There are enough fake Jews without you. Just look at those over there!”

  Everyone turned their heads and started laughing as well. A little distance away, the three Foundlings had covered their heads with prayer shawls and were on their knees, bowing repeatedly right down to the deck. The fervent, resounding thumping of heads against the planks was clearly
audible.

  “Nothing funny about that, you fools,” Magellan hissed through his teeth. “You can smell the Okhranka off them a mile away. That Manuila of theirs draws his pay on Gorokhovaya Street, I’ve a keen nose for that. I’d like to take the rotten bastard by the feet and smash his brains out against the mooring post.”

  The Zionists fell silent, and Pelagia felt sorry for the Foundlings. The poor things, nobody loved them, everybody had a bad word for them. They weren’t really foundlings at all, they were more like orphans. And anyway, she wondered, where did they get such a strange name? She went across to ask, but suddenly felt shy—the people were praying, after all.

  And then she realized that she had spent too long promenading. The bishop would be displeased. She ought to call in to his cabin, show her face, and wish him a good evening, and then go to her own berth in the second class. To read a book for a while and prepare a lesson. They would be home tomorrow.

  She went down the steps to the cabin deck.

  Glass-Eye

  UP ABOVE THE River, above the overflooded banks and the fog, the sunset must be a blaze of color now—the gloom ahead was faintly tinged with pink. Drawn toward this magical glow, Pelagia walked to the bow of the steamer. What if, just for an instant, the wind were to blow a breach in the irksome curtain, and she could admire the evening coloring of the sky?

  At the bow the wind was indeed blowing, but not strongly enough to clear a path for the setting sun. Pelagia was about to turn back when she suddenly noticed that she was not alone.

  A man sat on a wickerwork chair in front of her. His long legs were clad in high boots, and he had his feet up on the railing. She could see a straight back, broad shoulders, a cap with a humped crown. The man took a pull at his papirosa and blew out a small cloud of smoke, which instantly melted into the mist.

  Then suddenly he turned around, with a startling, feline impetuosity. He must have heard her breathing or the rustling of her habit.