Free Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk by Boris Akunin Page B

howled in a sepulchral voice, “I am the blessed Saint Basilisk! Go to hell, you impostor!”—I imagined that in that way I would scare the scarecrow, so that he would tumble off his rock into the water.
    But at the sight of the black figure that seemed to be hanging above the surface of the lake, something happened to me—an absolutely specific, physiological reaction. I felt an unaccountable cold sensation run across my skin, and while my arms and legs didn't exactly lose the power of movement (I remember quite clearly setting the thermos flask down on the ground and feeling my icy forehead with my hand), they moved slowly and reluctantly, as if I were underwater. I have never felt anything like it before in my life.
    Light began streaming out from behind the silent silhouette, light far brighter than that of the moon. No, I can't describe it very well, because “streaming” is not the right expression, and I don't know how to explain it any better. A moment earlier there was nothing except the moonlight, and then it was as if the entire world had been lit up so brightly that I had to screw up my eyes and shield them with my hand.
    I was almost deafened by the pounding of the blood in my ears, but I still heard four words very distinctly, even though they were spoken very quietly: “Not salvation, but decay”—and the black figure gestured toward Outskirts Island. And then, when it began moving straight toward me over the water, the numb torpor fell away and I took to my heels in a most shameful fashion—I believe I was even sobbing as I ran. See what a bold paladin you have chosen for yourself, oh short-sighted prince of the church!
    Afterward, when I had run as far as the chapel, I felt ashamed. If this was, after all, some especially cunning hoax, I could not allow myself to be made a fool of, I told myself. And if it was not a hoax … Well, then the Lord God existed, the world was created in seven days, there were angels flying in the sky, and the lamps of heaven rotated around the earth. Since all of that was quite impossible, Basilisk could not exist either. Having reached this conclusion, I strode off with the utmost determination in the direction I had come from and arrived back at the spit, but there was no longer any mysterious glow or black silhouette to be seen. I walked up and down the shoreline, stamping my feet loudly to keep up my courage and whistling a song about a priest who had a dog. When I had finally convinced myself of the unshakably material nature of the world, I retrieved the thermos flask and hotel property and came back to the Ark.
    But I decided not to write a report until I had seen Basilisk again and made absolutely certain either that he was a hoaxer's trick or that I had lost my mind and the best place for me was in Dr. Korovin's clinic.
    As ill luck would have it, the next two nights were overcast. I strolled around the streets of Ararat, which now seemed so tedious, drank fizzy holy water and Jamaican coffee, and read all sorts of nonsense in the monastery's reading hall just to pass the time. During this period of enforced idleness my nerves were tormented so badly with the agonizing anticipation and my mental arguments with myself that on the eve of the expedition my courage almost deserted me completely. However, it was not possible to let such an opportunity slip, so I made a decision that seemed to me as wise as any of Solomon's.
    I have already mentioned in my last letter the barrister from Moscow who is a devotee of smoked salmon and fresh air. His name is Kubovsky and he has been coming to Canaan every autumn for several years. They say that November is an especially fine month here. We had taken rooms in the same hotel and dined together a few times, when he had eaten and drunk about five times as much as I (and my appetite is far from poor, as your chef and my benefactor, Kuzma Savelievich, can testify). I thought Kubovsky to be a man of sober, even clinical cast of