dame, and her a nun too! It’s a sin, Holy Mother, to turn your nose up at a wretched cripple.”
What an unpleasant man , the sister thought, turning away and beating a hasty retreat. If he didn’t want anyone to interrupt his solitude he could have made it clear in some more delicate way. She walked along the edge of the deck, fighting a battle against the devil of resentment. She subdued her horned foe quickly, with no great effort—a skill she had acquired in her years as a nun.
Ahead of her, at about the spot where Mitrofanii’s cabin ought to be, something white fluttered in the air.
When she walked closer, she saw it was curtains flapping—not in the bishop’s cabin, but the next one, in which the notorious prophet was traveling. He must have opened the window and forgotten about it, and then gone out or fallen asleep.
She really wanted to take a look at the charlatan’s quarters. If she simply walked by and glanced sideways just a tiny bit, surely that was all right? To be on the safe side, she looked around and made sure there was nobody anywhere nearby, then started walking more slowly, so that there would be time to take a more thorough peek.
Manuila’s lamp was lit—that was very opportune. Pelagia proceeded decorously as far as the small window, directed her peripheral vision to the right, and almost tripped over her own feet.
The prophet was in, and he seemed to be asleep, only not on the divan, but on the floor, with his arms extended in the form of a cross. Was that one of the practices these Foundlings had? Or did Manuila have a special dispensation?
The nun took another little step toward the window and stood up on tiptoe.
That was very strange, now—there were two white eggs lying on the sleepers face, in the hollows of his eyes. Pelagia pressed the bridge of her spectacles back against her nose and then screwed her eyes up to get a better look at this oddity.
A second later her vision adjusted to the dim light in the cabin and she saw that the objects weren’t eggs at all, but something so terrible that Pelagia’s mouth simply dropped open of its own accord, with the intention of uttering a brief exclamation appropriate for a nun—“Oh, Lord!”—but giving vent instead to a shameful, womanish screech.
The correct way to photograph corpses
“THE RIGHT HAND in close-up,” Investigator Dolinin ordered the police photographer, at the same time beckoning to Pelagia with one finger. “Look, Sister, how do you like our modern-day prophets? The soul was already out of his body, but he still clung to the money.”
Pelagia walked over to him and crossed herself. Manuila’s death could not possibly have been more hideous. Someone had stove in the back of the pitiful prophet’s head with a blow of such force that it had jolted his eyeballs out of their sockets. They were what the nun had seen in the semidarkness and taken for chickens eggs. There were particles of brain and crumbs of bone on the pillow and on the carpet. And another thing that made it a torment for her to look at the body was the fact that the dead man’s nightshirt had ridden up, revealing a pale, hairy stomach and private parts; but the nun tried not to let her gaze wander that far. Clutched tight in Manuila’s clenched fingers was a fragment of a hundred-ruble note.
There was a blinding flash of magnesium, but the investigator was still not satisfied. “No, no, my dear fellow. You have to spread the magnesium on both sides of the camera, or you’ll get shadows. And not in a heap, not in a heap—in a line. It will burn longer that way. I suppose you don’t have a tripod for taking vertical shots? Oh, the wonderful Russian provinces!”
The forensic doctor twisted the lifeless head, holding it by the hair. “What a blow!” he said, poking his finger into a neat hole the size of a silver ruble. “Such strength, such crisp impact! Like the hole made by a bullet. Penetration almost as far as the third
What an unpleasant man , the sister thought, turning away and beating a hasty retreat. If he didn’t want anyone to interrupt his solitude he could have made it clear in some more delicate way. She walked along the edge of the deck, fighting a battle against the devil of resentment. She subdued her horned foe quickly, with no great effort—a skill she had acquired in her years as a nun.
Ahead of her, at about the spot where Mitrofanii’s cabin ought to be, something white fluttered in the air.
When she walked closer, she saw it was curtains flapping—not in the bishop’s cabin, but the next one, in which the notorious prophet was traveling. He must have opened the window and forgotten about it, and then gone out or fallen asleep.
She really wanted to take a look at the charlatan’s quarters. If she simply walked by and glanced sideways just a tiny bit, surely that was all right? To be on the safe side, she looked around and made sure there was nobody anywhere nearby, then started walking more slowly, so that there would be time to take a more thorough peek.
Manuila’s lamp was lit—that was very opportune. Pelagia proceeded decorously as far as the small window, directed her peripheral vision to the right, and almost tripped over her own feet.
The prophet was in, and he seemed to be asleep, only not on the divan, but on the floor, with his arms extended in the form of a cross. Was that one of the practices these Foundlings had? Or did Manuila have a special dispensation?
The nun took another little step toward the window and stood up on tiptoe.
That was very strange, now—there were two white eggs lying on the sleepers face, in the hollows of his eyes. Pelagia pressed the bridge of her spectacles back against her nose and then screwed her eyes up to get a better look at this oddity.
A second later her vision adjusted to the dim light in the cabin and she saw that the objects weren’t eggs at all, but something so terrible that Pelagia’s mouth simply dropped open of its own accord, with the intention of uttering a brief exclamation appropriate for a nun—“Oh, Lord!”—but giving vent instead to a shameful, womanish screech.
The correct way to photograph corpses
“THE RIGHT HAND in close-up,” Investigator Dolinin ordered the police photographer, at the same time beckoning to Pelagia with one finger. “Look, Sister, how do you like our modern-day prophets? The soul was already out of his body, but he still clung to the money.”
Pelagia walked over to him and crossed herself. Manuila’s death could not possibly have been more hideous. Someone had stove in the back of the pitiful prophet’s head with a blow of such force that it had jolted his eyeballs out of their sockets. They were what the nun had seen in the semidarkness and taken for chickens eggs. There were particles of brain and crumbs of bone on the pillow and on the carpet. And another thing that made it a torment for her to look at the body was the fact that the dead man’s nightshirt had ridden up, revealing a pale, hairy stomach and private parts; but the nun tried not to let her gaze wander that far. Clutched tight in Manuila’s clenched fingers was a fragment of a hundred-ruble note.
There was a blinding flash of magnesium, but the investigator was still not satisfied. “No, no, my dear fellow. You have to spread the magnesium on both sides of the camera, or you’ll get shadows. And not in a heap, not in a heap—in a line. It will burn longer that way. I suppose you don’t have a tripod for taking vertical shots? Oh, the wonderful Russian provinces!”
The forensic doctor twisted the lifeless head, holding it by the hair. “What a blow!” he said, poking his finger into a neat hole the size of a silver ruble. “Such strength, such crisp impact! Like the hole made by a bullet. Penetration almost as far as the third
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