Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel Read Online Free PDF Page B

he used his other hand to turn the handle and press the earpiece to his ear.
    Secretary Userdov, sitting on the very edge of his chair with a briefcase containing a report on the affairs of the diocese, was the first to guess who was calling—he had jumped to his feet and stood to attention like a soldier. In the whole of Russia there was only one person for whom Konstantin Petrovich would have interrupted himself. And it was well known that a special line had been installed from the Palace to the Chief Procurator’s office.
    The visitors could not, of course, hear the monarch’s voice, but even so they had been greatly impressed, especially by the strict paternal tone in which Pobedin addressed God’s anointed: “Yes, Your Majesty, the text of the decree as received from you did not strike me as satisfactory. I shall draft a new one. And clemency for a state criminal is also absolutely out of the question. Some of your advisers have become so perverted in their thinking that they consider it possible to do away with capital punishment. I am a Russian and I live among Russians, I know what the people feel and what they demand. Let not the voice of flattery and dreams insinuate itself into your heart.” At that moment Father Userdov’s expression was a sight to behold: a compound of fear and awe, mingled with an awareness of complicity in the great mystery of the Supreme Power.
    His Eminence’s secretary was a fine man in almost every respect—in deed, as far as industry and efficiency were concerned, he was above reproach—but in his heart Mitrofanii was not truly fond of him. Evidently this was the very reason why the bishop was especially charitable to Father Serafim, employing an affectionate attitude to subdue the sin of groundless irritation. Nonetheless sometimes he would burst out, and once he had even flung his episcopal hat at Userdov, but afterward he would always apologize. The mild-mannered secretary would take fright, and for a long time be unable to find the courage to pronounce the words of forgiveness, but eventually he would babble: “I forgive you—forgive me, too,” following which peace would be restored.
    With her restless mind, Pelagia once expressed to Mitrofanii a seditious idea concerning Father Serafim: that the world has real live people in it, but there are also other creatures who only try to be like people, as if they have been planted among us from a different world, perhaps from a different planet, in order to observe us. Some of them are better at their pretense, so that you can hardly tell them apart from genuine people: others are not so skillful, and you can spot them right away. Userdov, now, was one of the less successful examples. If you took a look under his skin you were bound to find nuts, bolts, and gearwheels.
    The bishop had roundly abused the nun for this theory. However, Pelagia was not infrequently visited by foolish thoughts, and His Reverence was accustomed to this; he rebuked her largely as a matter of form.
    As for Father Serafim, the bishop knew that the secretary dreamed of a high clerical position. And why not? He was learned, of good conduct, and quite charmingly handsome. The secretary kept his hair and beard clean and well groomed, anointing them with sweet fragrances. He polished his nails with a brush. He wore only cassocks of fine woolen cloth.
    There didn’t really seem to be anything reprehensible in all this—Mitrofanii himself appealed to the clergy to keep themselves neat and presentable—but even so he found his assistant irritating. Especially on this journey, when the heavenly spheres had rained down bolts of fiery lightning on His Reverence. He was unable to talk heart-to-heart with his spiritual daughter or to express his most intimate thoughts while this six-winged angel sat there, tending his thin little mustache with a small comb. He would say nothing for ages, and then he would put in something entirely out of place and ruin the entire