Read Online Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk by Boris Akunin - Free Book Online
Authors: Boris Akunin
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art, previously unheard of in Russia, of making money out of everything and even out of nothing. It is usually entirely the other way around here: the more gold ore or diamonds there are lying around under our feet, the more ruinous the losses. But here, no sooner did Vitalii decide to put the useless stony ground on the Cape of Righteousness to good use than it was discovered that the stones there are not ordinary, but holy, for they were watered with the blood of the holy martyrs who were put to the sword three hundred years ago by the cutthroats of the Swedish Count De la Gardie. The stones really do have a reddish-brownish color, only I suspect it is not from blood, but because they are impregnated with iron oxide. But then, that is not important; what is important is that now the pilgrims themselves chip pieces off the boulders and carry them away. There is a special monk standing there with a mattock and a pair of scales. If you want to use the mattock, pay fifteen kopecks. If you want to take the sacred stone away with you, weigh it and take it—it costs ninety-nine kopecks a pound. And so Vitalii's useless plot of land is gradually cleared, and the monastery coffers profit in the process. What a splendid arrangement!
Or take the water. An entire regiment of monks pours the local well water into bottles, seals the bottles with caps, and glues on labels that say NEW ARARAT HOLY WATER, BLESSED BY THE REVEREND FATHER VITALII, after which this H 2 O is shipped wholesale to the mainland—to Peter and especially to devout Moscow. Meanwhile, in Ararat, for the convenience of the pilgrims, they have constructed a wonder of wonders, a miracle of miracles: the Automatic Holy Water Dispensers. These cunning machines, the invention of local Kulibins, are located in a wooden pavilion. When someone drops a five-kopeck coin into the slot, it falls on a valve, a shutter opens, and the holy water pours out into a mug. There is also a more expensive version, for ten kopecks, in which raspberry syrup is added to the water in a kind of special “triple blessing.” They say that in summer there is a queue for this place, but I have come at a bad time—from mid-autumn the pavilion is closed so that this cunning technology will not be damaged by the night frosts. But never mind; sooner or later Vitalii will come up with the idea of installing a steam generator inside the dispensers to warm them, and then they will bring forth fruit in winter too.
But that is nothing when one considers that the archimandrite has leased out several desyatines of the finest land outside the town for use as a private psychiatric clinic, for which he receives fifty or perhaps even seventy thousand rubles a year. This doleful establishment is owned by a certain Donat Savvich Korovin, from the same Korovin family that owns half the mines and factories in the Urals. And so the good doctor's cousins drink the blood and sweat of the brothers in Christ, but Donat Savvich Korovin, on the contrary, heals wounded souls. They do say, though, that he accepts only a select few into his miraculous hospital, only those patients whose insanity this millionaire Aesculapius finds interesting from the scientific point of view.
I have seen his clinic. No walls, no locks, nothing but grassy meadows, little groves of trees, little dolls’ houses, pagodas and pergolas, ponds and streams, conservatories—a heavenly spot. I wouldn't mind a week or two of that kind of treatment myself. Korovin's method is extremely advanced, even revolutionary for the field of psychiatry. They come to him from Switzerland and even—oh, horribile dictul— from Vienna itself to learn. Well, perhaps not to learn, rather simply out of curiosity, but it is still flattering even so.
Korovin's method is revolutionary in that he does not keep his patients under lock and key, as has been the custom in civilized countries since olden times: they are entirely at liberty to go where they will. This lends
Or take the water. An entire regiment of monks pours the local well water into bottles, seals the bottles with caps, and glues on labels that say NEW ARARAT HOLY WATER, BLESSED BY THE REVEREND FATHER VITALII, after which this H 2 O is shipped wholesale to the mainland—to Peter and especially to devout Moscow. Meanwhile, in Ararat, for the convenience of the pilgrims, they have constructed a wonder of wonders, a miracle of miracles: the Automatic Holy Water Dispensers. These cunning machines, the invention of local Kulibins, are located in a wooden pavilion. When someone drops a five-kopeck coin into the slot, it falls on a valve, a shutter opens, and the holy water pours out into a mug. There is also a more expensive version, for ten kopecks, in which raspberry syrup is added to the water in a kind of special “triple blessing.” They say that in summer there is a queue for this place, but I have come at a bad time—from mid-autumn the pavilion is closed so that this cunning technology will not be damaged by the night frosts. But never mind; sooner or later Vitalii will come up with the idea of installing a steam generator inside the dispensers to warm them, and then they will bring forth fruit in winter too.
But that is nothing when one considers that the archimandrite has leased out several desyatines of the finest land outside the town for use as a private psychiatric clinic, for which he receives fifty or perhaps even seventy thousand rubles a year. This doleful establishment is owned by a certain Donat Savvich Korovin, from the same Korovin family that owns half the mines and factories in the Urals. And so the good doctor's cousins drink the blood and sweat of the brothers in Christ, but Donat Savvich Korovin, on the contrary, heals wounded souls. They do say, though, that he accepts only a select few into his miraculous hospital, only those patients whose insanity this millionaire Aesculapius finds interesting from the scientific point of view.
I have seen his clinic. No walls, no locks, nothing but grassy meadows, little groves of trees, little dolls’ houses, pagodas and pergolas, ponds and streams, conservatories—a heavenly spot. I wouldn't mind a week or two of that kind of treatment myself. Korovin's method is extremely advanced, even revolutionary for the field of psychiatry. They come to him from Switzerland and even—oh, horribile dictul— from Vienna itself to learn. Well, perhaps not to learn, rather simply out of curiosity, but it is still flattering even so.
Korovin's method is revolutionary in that he does not keep his patients under lock and key, as has been the custom in civilized countries since olden times: they are entirely at liberty to go where they will. This lends
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