Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk by Boris Akunin

that he was going too far. He blessed the youth with the sign of the cross and said quietly, “Go. And may the Lord watch over you.”

PART ONE

The First Expedition
    THE ADVENTURES OF THE COMIC
    ALEXEI STEPANOVICH'S PREPARATIONS did not take long and he left on his secret expedition two days after the conversation with His Grace, after having received strict instructions to send reports on his progress at least once every three days.
    Taking into account the wait for the steamer in Sineozersk and the subsequent voyage across the lake, the journey to New Ararat took four days, and the first letter arrived after exactly one week; in other words it appeared that for all his nihilistic attitude, Alyosha was a reliable envoy who carried out his instructions to the letter.
    His Grace was very pleased with the report's punctual arrival and the report itself, but pleased most of all because he had not been mistaken in the boy. He summoned Berdichevsky and Sister Pelagia and read out the report to them, although he occasionally frowned at the insufferably rollicking freedom of the style.
    Alexei Stepanovich's First Letter
    To Roland's most glorious Archbishop Turpin from his faithful paladin, sent to do battle with enchanters and Saracens,
    Oh pastor of great wisdom and sternness,
Terror of deep-rooted superstitions,
Luminary of faith and loving-kindness,
Defender of orphans and lash of the proud!
At your feet do I humbly cast down
My simple and artless tale.
Ah-oo!
    As, shaking on a creaking wagon,

I struggled through the kingdom of Zavolzhsk,

And on that mournful road did count

Fifteen thousand, one hundred and one

Ruts and also potholes deep,

Many a time there came to me

Bad thoughts about Your Grace's person

And I did utter sacrilegious words.

Ah-oo!
    But when the Blue Sea's sacred waters
Did glitter brightly in the distance far,
Conquered by this captivating landscape,
Straightaway did I forget my hardships,
And prayed as I was borne across
On the smoke-puffing, snow white vessel
Named for the good Saint Basilisk.
Ah-oo!
    Through the long, moonlit, chilly night

I shivered 'neath my meager blanket

And when I tried to close my eyes in sleep,

My fragile dreams were forthwith interrupted

By the captain's wild swearing rant,

The devout chanting of the sailors’ prayers,

And the bell's booming hourly chime.
    And so, to switch from exhausting versification to delightfully welcome prose, I disembarked on the quayside in New Ararat short of sleep and as bad-tempered as the devil. Oh, forgive me, Father—it just slipped out, and if I cross it out now, it will look untidy, and you don't like that, so to hell with the devil, let him be.
    To tell the truth, in addition to the sounds of the ship, I was also prevented from sleeping by the book that you placed in my basket, together with the incomparable episcopal curd rolls, as you saw me off, adding in a most innocent voice, “Pay no attention to the title, Alyosha, and don't worry, it's not religious reading, just a little novel—to help you pass the time on the journey.” Oh most perfidious of the priests of Babylon!
    The title —The Possessed— and the substantial thickness of the “little novel” really did frighten me at first, and I only started reading it on the steamer, to the sound of the waves splashing and the seagulls calling. In one night I read it halfway through, and I think I have understood why you slipped me this inarticulate but inspired treatise masquerading as belles lettres. Not, of course, because of that senseless rogue Petrusha Verkhovensky and those caricatured Carbonari who are his comrades, but for the sake of Stavrogin, in whose example you no doubt perceive my own fatal danger: to play the Übermensch and end up as a buffoon or, in your terminology, “to doom my immortal soul.”
    A shot wide of the mark, Eminence. There is a fundamental difference between the Byronic Mr. Stavrogin and me. He acts outrageously