Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog Read Free Page B

and undignified in her movements. But you are just the same yourself, you old fool, the reverend bishop rebuked himself, and he sighed again even more ruefully.
    When the nuns lined up to receive an apple each from His Grace, he greeted each of them in a distinctive manner—some he allowed to kiss his hand, some he patted gently on the head, at some he simply smiled, but with the last of them, Pelagia, there was a mishap. The clumsy girl stepped on the father subdeacon’s foot, started back, apologizing, threw her arms out, and knocked the bowl over with her elbow. A loud rumbling, the ring of silver against the stone floor, red apples tumbling merrily in all directions, and the boys from the seminary, who were not supposed to have any apples because they were mischief-makers and scamps, had already grabbed up the precious king-pineapples and left nothing for the worthy and deserving people waiting their turn behind Pelagia. And so it always was with her—she was not a nun, but a walking disaster with freckles.
    Mitrofanii gnawed his lips, but he refrained from rebuking her, because this was the house of God and it was a holiday.
    He merely said as he blessed her: “Tuck away that lock of hair; it’s shameful. And get along to the library. I have something to say to you.”
             
    “A CERTAIN ASS once imagined himself to be a racehorse and began flaring his nostrils and stamping his hoof on the ground.” (This was how His Grace began the conversation.) “‘I’ll beat you all!’ he shouted. ‘I’m the swiftest and the fleetest!’ And he shouted so convincingly that everyone believed him and began repeating what he said: ‘Our ass is no ass at all; he is the purest possible thoroughbred. Now we must run him in the races so that he can win every last prize.’ And from that time on the ass knew no peace; whenever there was a race anywhere, they immediately bridled him and dragged him off to it, saying: ‘Come on, long-ears, don’t let us down.’ And so the ass now led a quite wonderful life.”
    The nun, long since accustomed to the bishop’s allegories, listened intently. At first glance she seemed a young girl: the clear, sweet, oval face was winsome and naïve, but this deceptive impression was created by the snub nose and the astonished look of the raised eyebrows, while the round brown eyes gazed out keenly through equally round spectacles with a look that was far from simple, and from the eyes one could tell that this was certainly no young innocent—she had already known suffering, seen something of life, and had time to reflect on her experiences. The air of youthful freshness came from the white skin that often complements ginger hair, and from its speckling of ineradicable orange freckles.
    “Tell me then, Pelagia, what is the point of this fable?”
    The nun pondered, taking her time before she answered. Her small white hands reached involuntarily for the canvas bag hanging at her belt, and the reverend bishop, knowing that Pelagia found it easier to think with her knitting in her hands, told her, “You may knit.”
    The pointed steel needles began clacking furiously and Mitrofanii frowned as he recalled what dreadful creations those deceptively deft hands brought into the world. At Eastertide the sister had presented the bishop with a white scarf adorned with the letters CA for “Christ is Arisen,” rendered so crookedly that they seemed already to have celebrated the ending of the fast with some gusto.
    “Who is this for?” His Grace inquired cautiously.
    “Sister Emilia. A belt; I shall run a pattern of skulls and crossbones along it.”
    “Very good,” he said, relieved. “Well, what about the fable?”
    “I think,” sighed Pelagia, “that it is about me, sinner that I am. With this allegory, father, you were trying to say that I make as good a nun as an ass makes a racehorse. And you have reached this uncharitable judgment about me because I spilled the apples in the