Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk Read Online Free PDF Page A

believes in his own ravings. He thought he saw something, for which the scientific name is a hallucination, and he took it for something that really happened. Is that it?”
“No, Father, that's not it,” the nun sighed. “He's a straightforward man and not foolish, or, as it said in the letter, ‘not inclined to vain dreaming.’ People like that don't have hallucinations—they don't have enough imagination. I think that someone really did appear to him and speak to him. And then, Antipa is not the only one who has seen this Black Monk; there are other eyewitnesses too.”
Patience had never ranked high among the Primate's virtues, and to judge from the crimson color that flooded Mitrofanii's high forehead and cheeks, what little he had was now exhausted.
“And have you forgotten about mutual suggestion, examples of which are so common in monasteries?” he exploded. “Do you remember when the devil started appearing to the sisters in the Mariinsky Convent? First to one, then to another, and then to all the rest? They described him in fine detail and repeated words that honest nuns could not possibly have learned anywhere. You were the one who suggested sending a neuropsychological doctor to the convent that time!”
“That was quite different—ordinary female hysterics. But this time the testimony comes from experienced senior monks,” the nun objected. “There is unrest at New Ararat, and it will not end well. Rumors about the Black Monk have already reached Zavolzhsk. We ought to investigate.”
“Investigate what? What? Or do you really believe in ghosts? For shame, Pelagia, it's all superstition! It's eight hundred years now since Saint Basilisk passed on, and he has no reason to go cruising over the waves around the island and frightening empty-headed monks!”
Pelagia bowed humbly, as if acknowledging that the bishop had a perfect right to his wrath, but there was little humility in her voice, and even less in her words: “That is your limitation as a male speaking, Your Grace. In their judgments men rely too excessively on their sight and the other five senses.”
“Four,” Mitrofanii corrected her.
“No, Your Grace, five. Not everything that exists in the world can be detected by sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. There is another sense that has no name, which is given to us so that we might feel God's world not only with our bodies but with our souls. And it is strange that I, a plain nun weak in mind and spirit, am obliged to explain this to you. Have you not spoken of this sense numerous times in your sermons and in private conversations?”
“I had in mind faith and the moral measure that is given to every man from God! But what you are expounding to me is some kind of fairy mirage!”
“Then let it be a fairy mirage,” the nun said with a stubborn shake of her head. “Around and within our world there is another one, invisible, and perhaps even more than one. We women feel this more clearly than men, because we are not afraid to feel it. Surely, Your Grace, you would not deny that there are some places that cheer and illuminate the soul (God's churches are usually built there) and there are some that set it shuddering? There is no reason for it; you simply start walking more quickly and cross yourself. I always used to run past the Black Ravine, like that, with a chill shiver. And then what happened? That was the very spot where they found the cannon!”
This argument adduced by Pelagia as if it were quite irrefutable requires an explanation. Two years before, a treasure trove had been found under the Black Ravine, located half a mile from Zavolzhsk: an old bronze mortar stuffed with gold coins and semiprecious stones— evidently it had lain in the ground since the times when Pugachev's “general” Chika Zarubin, later raised by the pretender to the rank of count, used to roam these parts. Plenty of blood and tears must have been spilled in collecting such a treasure. (Let us note,