Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk Read Online Free Page B

the archive room, and began looking out, muttering incoherently: “Oh Lord, how could I have forgotten! He's probably already here, in the town! Holy Mother of God, save us and protect us!” He turned to the bishop and began jabbering: “I came through the forest, hurrying to get to you. As soon as I got off the ship in Sineozersk the police officer gave me his carriage, so that I could get to Zavolzhsk as quickly as possible. They'd already heard about Basilisk's appearance in Sineozersk. And just as I was approaching your town, there he was, above the trees!”
“Who do you mean by he ?” Mitrofanii exclaimed angrily.
“Basilisk himself! He must have set out after me, taking seven-league strides or moving through the air! Black and huge, looking over the tops of the trees with his great goggling eyes! I drove the horses on hard. The branches were lashing my face, the wind was whistling, but I kept driving them on. I wanted to warn you that he was already close!”
The quick-witted Pelagia was the first to guess what was the matter. “He's talking about the statue, father. About Yermak Timofeich.”
At this point I ought to explain that two years before, on the orders of the governor, Anton Antonovich von Haggenau, a majestic monument entitled Yermak Timofeich Bringing the Good News to the East had been erected on the high bank of the river. This monument, the largest in the entire region of the river, is now an object of great pride in our town, which has nothing else to boast of to its distinguished neighbors Nizhni Novgorod, Kazan, and Samara. Every locality needs to have its own reason to feel proud, after all. And now we have ours.
There are some historians who believe that Yermak Timofeich began his famous Siberian campaign, to which the empire is indebted for the greater part of its vast landholdings, from our very own district. And the bronze giant was erected in order to commemorate this. This major commission was entrusted to a certain Zavolzhsk sculptor, perhaps not as gifted as some sculptors in the capital, but a true patriot of the region and a very good man in general, greatly loved by all Zavolzhians for his breadth of spirit and goodness of heart. The sculptor had given the conqueror of Siberia a helmet that looked rather like a klobuk , or monk's headgear, and it was this that had led poor Brother Antipa, who was not familiar with our latest innovations, into his superstitious error.
But that was nothing! The previous autumn, when the captain of a tug pulling along a string of barges full of Astrakhan watermelons had sailed out from around a bend and seen the goggle-eyed idol standing on top of the steep bank, he had taken such a fright that he ran his entire flotilla aground on a shoal, and for several weeks afterward green-striped spheres could be seen bobbing up and down in the river, hurrying back downstream to their native parts. And that, note, was a river captain, so what was to be expected from a wretched monk?
Having explained Antipa's mistake to him and more or less calmed him down, Mitrofanii sent the monk to the diocesan hotel to await a decision on his fate. It was clear that the fugitive could not be returned to the stern archimandrite of New Ararat and a place would have to be found for him in some other monastery.
When the bishop and his spiritual daughter were left alone together, His Grace asked, “Well, what do you think of this gibberish?”
“I believe him,” Pelagia replied without hesitation. “I looked in Brother Antipa's eyes and he's not lying. He described what he saw and didn't add anything.”
His Grace knitted his brows, suppressing his feeling of annoyance. He said guardedly, “You said that deliberately to tease me. You don't believe in any ghosts—I know you too well for that.”
But then he immediately realized that he had fallen into the trap set by his cunning assistant and wagged a finger at her in admonishment. “Ah, what you meant was that he himself