Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel Read Online Free Page B

You’ll wake all the passengers .
    The nun seemed to have heard Muffin’s wish. She sighed and hung her head. “Your Reverence, I swear to you: I’ll never give way to temptation again. And I won’t tempt you either. Only don’t punish yourself.”
    The bishop wiggled his thick eyebrows (one was already almost gray the other still mostly black) and patted the nun on the head. “Never mind, Pelagia, God is merciful. Perhaps we can beat off the attack. And we’ll atone for our sins in prayer together.”
    A colorful pair, all right. In his own mind Muffin had already found names for them: Little Sister Fox (because of the lock of ginger hair that had escaped from under her wimple) and Ataman Kudeyar (the priest had a tough, bellicose look about him). It was like in the song:
His comrades true were left behind,
His plundering ways were now ignored,
Bold Kudeyar went for a monk
To serve the people and the Lord!
    At any other time Muffin would have been very interested to hear about a sin committed together by a bishop and a nun. But what time did he have for that now? They’d made up and stopped shouting, and praise be to Thee, Lord, for that.
    Down on his knees again, he crawled back under the prophet’s window. He took hold of the frame and lifted himself up a little bit.
    Still dozing, the darling. He hasn’t woken up .
    At the very last moment, when there was nothing he could do about it, Muffin heard a rustling sound behind him. He tried to turn around, but it was too late.
    Something crunched and exploded inside Muffin’s head. And for him there was no more spring evening or river mist—there was nothing at all.
    Two strong hands grabbed hold of the limp body by the feet and dragged it across to the edge of the deck—quickly, before a lot of blood could flow. The swag bag, that little underarm sack for Muffin’s loot, snagged on the leg of a table. A jerk, the string snapped, and the movement was continued. And then Muffin went flying through the air, sent up a fountain of spray in a final farewell to God’s world, and was united with Mother River.
    She welcomed her ne’er-do-well son into her loving embrace, rocked him a little, lulled him a little, and laid him down to sleep in her deepest, darkest little bedroom, on a soft downy mattress of silt.
    Troubles in the capital
    “BUT IT’S STILL amazing how Konstantin Petrovich could have found out,” His Eminence Mitrofanii repeated yet again, with a brief glance in the direction of a muffled sound from outside the window—as if someone had dropped a bundle or a bolt of cloth on the deck. “He truly does sit high and see far.”
    “That is what His Excellency’s duty of service requires of him,” Father Serafim Userdov put in from his corner. The conversation between His Eminence, his spiritual daughter Pelagia, and the bishop’s secretary always about one and the same subject, was already in its third day. It had begun in St. Petersburg, following an unpleasant interview with the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Petrovich Pobedin. This unpleasantness had been spoken of in the train, and in the Moscow hotel, and now on the steamer that was carrying the provincial prelate and his companions to their native Zavolzhsk.
    The Chief Procurator’s disagreements with the bishop were of long standing, but hitherto they had not reached the stage of direct confrontation. Konstantin Petrovich had seemed to be taking a close look, respectfully measuring up his venerable opponent, according his strength and his truth due respect, for he himself was a powerful man and he had his own truth, although it was clear that sooner or later these two truths would clash, for they were too different from each other.
    Mitrofanii had been prepared for absolutely anything after receiving the summons to appear before the Chief Procurator in the capital city; he had been ready for any pressure, but not on the flank from which the blow came.
    Konstantin Petrovich