Read Online Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin - Free Book Online
Authors: Boris Akunin
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liberals, since they had already agreed among themselves that this agent of reaction had been sent because of them, in order to eradicate freethinking and sedition in Zavolzhsk society. On one hand, this was alarming, but on the other hand it was really rather agreeable (just imagine the chief procurator himself feeling concerned about the Carbonari of Zavolzhsk), though on the whole it was more alarming.
The “agent of reaction” proved not to be frightening at all, however. In the first place, he demonstrated a total absence of any obscurantism whatever and spoke quite freely about the latest literature—about Count Tolstoy and even about the French naturalist school, which was known in the town mostly from hearsay. The guest also produced quite an impression with his razor-sharp tongue. When the inspector of public schools, Ilya Nikolaevich Fedyakin, reputed among the progressives to be a notably acerbic wit, attempted to put the overconfident speaker in his place, it became clear that Vladimir Lvovich was a mouthful too large for the native-bred carper to chew.
“It is agreeable to hear such bold judgments from the lips of a servant of pious humility,” said Ilya Nikolaevich, squinting ironically and stroking his beard, which signaled his serious irritation. “I suppose you often discuss physiological love in Maupassant with the chief procurator?”
“‘Physiological love’ is a mere tautology,” Bubentsov interrupted his opponent sharply. “Or is the romantic view of relations between the sexes still predominant here in Zavolzhsk?”
Olympiada Savelievna even blushed, she felt so embarrassed that this intelligent man should see Fedyakin sitting at the head of the table, in the place of honor in her home, and she hastily expressed her opposition to all hypocrisy and dissembling in sexual partnership.
With the postmaster’s wife the expeditious Petersburgian acted even more decisively than with the governor’s. As he was leaving—earlier than all the other guests, as if giving them an opportunity to gossip about him—Olympiada Savelievna, by this time absolutely blinded by his metropolitan brilliance, came out to see her dear guest to the hallway. She extended her hand to be shaken (naturally, kissing was not the accepted manner among the progressives), and instead of her hand, Bubentsov took her elbow. With a gentle but astonishingly powerful movement, he pulled his hostess toward him and, without saying a word, kissed her full on the lips with such force that poor Olympiada Savelievna, who in all her twenty-nine years of life had never been kissed like that by anyone, felt her legs turn to cotton wool and began seeing stars. She returned to her guests quite pink and cut off the vengeful Ilya Nikolaevich’s attempts to denigrate the departed visitor in a most energetic fashion.
Thus on his very first day in the province, Konstantin Petrovich’s envoy had established friendly relations with both queens of Zavolzhsk, and his friendship with Olympiada Savelievna was especially agreeable, since this lady’s house directly adjoined the building of the post office, the director of which was her husband, with whom Bubentsov was very soon also on a friendly footing, so that he could enter his office without ceremony and had unlimited access to the only telegraph apparatus for the whole of Zavolzhie. Vladimir Lvovich made assiduous use of this privilege and even managed without the services of a telegrapher, since it turned out that he knew how to use the cunning Baudot apparatus quite splendidly. And so it sometimes happened that the synodical inspector would enter the post office after midnight, despatch something, receive something, and generally behave quite as if he was at home.
BUT WHILE THIS Baltic Varangian’s triumphs among the local ladies were overwhelming and undisputable, with the men things did not go so smoothly.
Bubentsov’s only clear conquest in this field (the postmaster Shestago
The “agent of reaction” proved not to be frightening at all, however. In the first place, he demonstrated a total absence of any obscurantism whatever and spoke quite freely about the latest literature—about Count Tolstoy and even about the French naturalist school, which was known in the town mostly from hearsay. The guest also produced quite an impression with his razor-sharp tongue. When the inspector of public schools, Ilya Nikolaevich Fedyakin, reputed among the progressives to be a notably acerbic wit, attempted to put the overconfident speaker in his place, it became clear that Vladimir Lvovich was a mouthful too large for the native-bred carper to chew.
“It is agreeable to hear such bold judgments from the lips of a servant of pious humility,” said Ilya Nikolaevich, squinting ironically and stroking his beard, which signaled his serious irritation. “I suppose you often discuss physiological love in Maupassant with the chief procurator?”
“‘Physiological love’ is a mere tautology,” Bubentsov interrupted his opponent sharply. “Or is the romantic view of relations between the sexes still predominant here in Zavolzhsk?”
Olympiada Savelievna even blushed, she felt so embarrassed that this intelligent man should see Fedyakin sitting at the head of the table, in the place of honor in her home, and she hastily expressed her opposition to all hypocrisy and dissembling in sexual partnership.
With the postmaster’s wife the expeditious Petersburgian acted even more decisively than with the governor’s. As he was leaving—earlier than all the other guests, as if giving them an opportunity to gossip about him—Olympiada Savelievna, by this time absolutely blinded by his metropolitan brilliance, came out to see her dear guest to the hallway. She extended her hand to be shaken (naturally, kissing was not the accepted manner among the progressives), and instead of her hand, Bubentsov took her elbow. With a gentle but astonishingly powerful movement, he pulled his hostess toward him and, without saying a word, kissed her full on the lips with such force that poor Olympiada Savelievna, who in all her twenty-nine years of life had never been kissed like that by anyone, felt her legs turn to cotton wool and began seeing stars. She returned to her guests quite pink and cut off the vengeful Ilya Nikolaevich’s attempts to denigrate the departed visitor in a most energetic fashion.
Thus on his very first day in the province, Konstantin Petrovich’s envoy had established friendly relations with both queens of Zavolzhsk, and his friendship with Olympiada Savelievna was especially agreeable, since this lady’s house directly adjoined the building of the post office, the director of which was her husband, with whom Bubentsov was very soon also on a friendly footing, so that he could enter his office without ceremony and had unlimited access to the only telegraph apparatus for the whole of Zavolzhie. Vladimir Lvovich made assiduous use of this privilege and even managed without the services of a telegrapher, since it turned out that he knew how to use the cunning Baudot apparatus quite splendidly. And so it sometimes happened that the synodical inspector would enter the post office after midnight, despatch something, receive something, and generally behave quite as if he was at home.
BUT WHILE THIS Baltic Varangian’s triumphs among the local ladies were overwhelming and undisputable, with the men things did not go so smoothly.
Bubentsov’s only clear conquest in this field (the postmaster Shestago
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