by Boris Akunin
‘Horatio’s a doctor,’ Petya told Columbine. ‘That is, he’s a dissector – he cuts up bodies in the anatomy room. He took Lancelot’s place.’
‘And what happened to Lancelot?’
‘He departed. And he took some companions with him,’ Petya replied obscurely, but this was no time to ask questions – Horatio was ready to recite.
‘This is actually the first time I have tried my hand at poetry . . . I studied a manual on versification, made a great effort. And this, mmm, as it were, is the result.’
He cleared his throat in an embarrassed manner, straightened his tie and took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. When he was just about to begin, he evidently decided that he had not explained enough: ‘The poem is about my professional, so to speak, line of work . . . there are even a few special terms in it. The rhyme has been simplified, just the second and fourth lines, it’s very hard when you’re not used to it . . . After our esteemed, mmm . . . Lioness of Ecstasy, of course, my efforts in verse will seem even less accomplished . . . But anyway, I offer them up for your strict judgement. The poem is called “Epicrisis”.
The girl swallowed a hundred needles
To still her heart’s torment and pain.
Slicing neatly into her abdomen
The scalpel brings them to the light again.
‘You do not know if you should laugh or cry,
It’s like a hedgehog in the rain,
The way the human stomach shudders,
Flabbily trembling over and again.
‘The young cadet condemned himself to death
After his visit to a whore.
You neatly open up his brain pan
To find what you are looking for.
‘And you will find the piece of lead you seek
Among the grey necrotic mush,
Glinting dully like some precious pearl
Lodged in the epithalimus.
The reader broke off, crumpled up the sheet of paper and put it back in his pocket.
‘I wanted to describe the lungs of a woman who has drowned as well, but I couldn’t manage it. I only made up one line: “Among the dove-grey spongy mass”, but I just couldn’t carry on . . . Well gentlemen, was it very bad?’
Nobody spoke, waiting for the verdict of the chairman (he was the only one there still sitting in his original pose).
‘ “Epicrisis” – I believe that is the conclusion of a medical diagnosis,’ Prospero said, slowly and thoughtfully.
‘Yes indeed,’ Horatio agreed eagerly.
‘A-ha,’ Prospero drawled. ‘Well, this is my epicrisis for you: you cannot write poetry. But you are genuinely entranced by the multiplicity of the faces of death. Who is next?’
‘Teacher, let me!’ said a large strapping fellow with broad shoulders, raising his hand. He had childlike, naive blue eyes that looked strange in his coarse face. What does he want with the Eternal Bride? Columbine thought in surprise. He should be floating rafts of timber down the Angara river.
‘The Doge dubbed him Caliban,’ Petya whispered, and then felt it necessary to explain. ‘That’s from Shakespeare.’ Columbine nodded: so it was from Shakespeare. ‘Nowadays he works as an accountant in some loan company or other. He used to be a bookkeeper in a merchant-shipping line, sailing the oceans, but he was shipwrecked and only survived by a miracle, so he doesn’t go to sea any more.’
She smiled, pleased with her skill in reading faces – she hadn’t been so very far wrong with those rafts of timber.
‘As far as intellect goes, he’s a complete nonentity, an amoeba,’ Petya gossiped and then added enviously, ‘but Prospero gives him special treatment.’
Stamping loudly, Caliban walked out into the centre of the room, cocked his hip and started bawling out extremely strange verse in a stentorian voice:
The Island of Death
Where blue waves murmur to the sky
And seabirds ride the ocean swell
There is a solitary isle
Where only ghosts and phantoms dwell.
‘Some of them lie there on the sand
And over them the crabs do crawl
Others in mournful sorrow wander,
Bare skeletons, no flesh at all.
‘The rattling of their bones I hear,
I see them walk, oh horrid sight!
It fills me with such dreadful fear,
I cannot get to sleep at night.
‘My teeth do knock, my hands do shake
Even by the bright light of day.
I long to be there with the wraiths
On that dread island far away.
‘Then we shall blithe and merry be,
Rejoicing as we did before,
Luring the vessels from the sea
On to the jagged cliffy shore.
At the beginning Columbine almost snorted out loud, but Caliban declaimed his ungainly doggerel with such feeling that she soon stopped wanting to laugh, and the final verse sent cold shivers down her spine.
She glanced at Prospero without the slightest doubt that the severe judge who had dared to criticise Lorelei Rubinstein herself would demolish these shoddy efforts utterly.
But he didn’t!
‘Very good,’ the Doge declared. ‘Such expression! You can hear the sound of the ocean waves and see their foaming crests. Powerful. Impressive.’
Caliban’s face lit up in a smile of happiness that completely transformed his square-cut features.
‘I told you, he’s the favourite,’ Petya muttered in her ear. ‘What on earth does he see in this primitive amoeba? Aha, this is Avaddon, he’s at university with me. He’s the one who brought me here.’
Now it was the turn of the ill-favoured youth with blackheads who had been talking to Petya earlier.
The Doge nodded patronisingly.
‘Very well, Avaddon, we are listening.’
‘He’s going to read “Angel of the Abyss”,’ Petya told her. ‘I’ve already heard it. It’s his best poem. I wonder what Prospero will say.’
This was the poem:
Angel of the Abyss
The abyss has been unsealed,
Releasing its hot dry gloom.
See the locust horde set free
Spreading pain and doom.
‘See them flourish their sharp barbs
And those they choose to sting
Never knew the Grief Divine,
Living this life of sin.
‘Silver hooves trample the ground
And with their tortured breath
All those who are smitten down
Invoke their own swift death.
‘But all that was just a dream.
There is no death, no hope.
The dark angel Avaddon
Gazes through the smoke.
Columbine liked the poem very much, but she was no longer sure what she ought to think about it. What if Prospero thought it was mediocre?
Their host paused for a moment and then said: ‘Not bad, not bad at all. The last stanza is good. But “flourish their sharp barbs” is no good at all. And the rhyme “death” and “breath” is very hackneyed.’
‘Nonsense,’ a clear, angry voice exclaimed. ‘There are almost no rhymes for the word “death”, and they can no more be hackneyed than can Death itself ! It is the rhymes for the word “love” that have been mauled by sticky hands until they are banal, but no dross can stick to Death!’
The person who had called the opinion of the master ‘nonsense’ was a pretty-looking youth who seemed hardly more than a boy – tall and slim, with a capriciously curved mouth and a feverish bloom on his smooth cheeks.
‘It is not a matter of the freshness of the rhyme, but of its precision,’ he continued somewhat incoherently. ‘Rhyme is the most mysterious thing in the world. Rhymes are like the reverse side of a coin! They can make the exalted seem ludicrous and the ludicrous seem exalted! Hiding behind the swaggering word “king” we have the banal “thing” and behind the gentle �
��flower” we have “power”! There is a special connection between phenomena and the sounds that denote them. The person who can penetrate to the heart of these meanings will be the very greatest of discoverers.’
‘Gdlevsky,’ Petya sighed with a shrug. ‘He’s eighteen, hasn’t even finished grammar school yet. Prospero says he’s as talented as Rimbaud.’
‘Really?’ Columbine took a closer look at the irascible boy, but failed to see anything special about him. Except that he was good-looking. ‘And what’s his alias?’
‘He doesn’t have one. Just “Gdlevsky”. He doesn’t want to be called anything else.’
The Doge was not at all angry with the troublemaker – on the contrary, he smiled paternally as he looked at him.
‘All right, all right. You’re not really very strong on theorising. Since you got so steamed up over the rhyme, I expect you have “breath” and “death” too?’
The boy’s eyes flashed, but he said nothing, from which it was possible to conclude that the perspicacious Doge was not mistaken.
‘Well then, recite for us.’
Gdlevsky tossed his head, sending a strand of light hair tumbling down across his eyes and declared:
Untitled
I am a shadow of shadows, one of the reflections,
Wandering blindly through this earthly maze,
But midnight with its sacred incantations
Unfurls the starry scrolls before my gaze.
‘The time will come when I draw my last breath,
And summon the disastrous heavenly fire –
Go soaring upwards with my sister Death,
My premonitions leading ever higher.
‘The Poet is not ruled by happenstance
His destiny is the prophetic rhyme.
Mysterious and magic circumstance
Compose the link of prophecy with time.
This was Prospero’s commentary. ‘Your writing gets better and better. You should think less with your head, listen more to the voice sounding within you.’
After Gdlevsky no one else volunteered to recite a poem. The aspirants began discussing what they had heard in low voices, while Petya told his protégée about the other ‘aspirants’.
‘They are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz,’ he said, pointing to a pair of rosy-cheeked twins who kept together. ‘Their father is a confectioner from Revel and they are studying at the Commercial College. Their poems are never any good – nothing but “herz” and “schmerz”. They’re both very serious and thoroughgoing, they joined the aspirants out of some complicated philosophical considerations and they are sure to get what they want.’
Columbine shuddered as she imagined what a tragedy this Teutonic single-mindedness would produce for their poor ‘mutti’, but then immediately felt ashamed of this philistine thought. After all, only recently she had written a poem which asserted the following:
Only the reckless and impetuous
Can drain life’s goblet till it’s dry
Our home, our parents, what are these to us?
Give us the glitter of the sparkling wine!
One of the other people there was a short, stout man with dark hair and a long nose that looked completely out of place on his plump face. He was called Cyrano.
‘He’s not particularly subtle,’ said Petya, pulling a face. All he does is copy the manner of Rostand’s Bergerac: “Into the embraces of she who is dear to me I shall fall at the end of this missive.” An inveterate joker, a buffoon. Absolutely desperate to get to the next world just as soon as possible.’
This last remark made Columbine look closely at the follower of the famous Gascon wit. While Caliban was declaiming his terrifying work about skeletons in a thundering bass, Cyrano had listened with an exaggeratedly serious expression, but when he caught the new visitor’s glance, he made a skull-face by sucking in his cheeks, opening his eyes in a wide stare and moving his eyes together towards his impressive nose. Taken by surprise, Columbine tittered slightly and the prankster bowed to her and resumed his air of intent concentration. Absolutely desperate to get to the next world? This jolly, tubby man was obviously not so very simple after all.
‘And that is Ophelia, she holds a special position here. Prospero’s main assistant. When we’re all dead, she’ll still be here.’
Columbine had not noticed the young girl until Petya mentioned her, but now she found her more interesting than the other members of the club. She took envious note of the clear white skin, the fresh little face, the long wavy hair which was so blonde that in the semi-darkness it appeared white. A perfect angel from an Easter card. Lorelei Rubinstein didn’t count – she was old and fat, and an Olympian figure in any case, but in Columbine’s opinion, this nymph was clearly superfluous. Ophelia had not uttered a single word the whole time. She just stood there as if she couldn’t hear the poems or the conversations and was listening to something completely different; her wide-open eyes seemed to look straight through the other people there. What sort of ‘special position’ could she have? the new visitor thought jealously.
‘She’s strange, somehow,’ said Columbine, delivering her verdict. ‘What does he see in her?’
‘Who, the Doge?’
Petya was about to explain, but Prospero raised his hand imperiously and all talking ceased immediately.
‘Now the mystery will begin, but there is a stranger among us,’ he said, without looking at Columbine (her heart skipped a beat). ‘Who brought her?’
‘I did, Teacher,’ Petya replied anxiously. ‘She is Columbine. I vouch for her. She told me several months ago that she is weary of life and definitely wishes to die young.’
Now the Doge turned his magnetic gaze to the swooning damsel and from feeling cold, Columbine turned feverish. Oh, how his stern eyes glittered!
‘Do you write poetry?’ Prospero asked.
She nodded without speaking, afraid that her voice would tremble.
‘Recite one verse, any will do. And then I shall say if you can stay.’
I’ll muff it straight away, I know I will, Columbine thought mournfully, batting her eyelids rapidly. What shall I recite? She feverishly ran through all of her poems that she could remember and chose the one she was most proud of – ‘The Pale Prince’. It was written on the night when Masha read Rostand’s Distant Princesses and then sobbed until the morning.
The Pale Prince seared me with the gaze
Of his eyes of effulgent green
And now we shall never see the day
Of the wedding that might have been.
The ‘Pale Prince’ was Petya, the way he had seemed to her in Irkutsk. At that time she had still been a little bit in love with Kostya Levonidi, who had been planning to propose to her (how funny it was to remember that now!) and then Petya, her dazzling Moscow Harlequin, had appeared. The poem about the ‘pale prince’ had been written to make Kostya understand that everything was over between them, that Masha Mironova would never be the same again.
Columbine hesitated, afraid that one quatrain was not enough. Perhaps she should recite a little more, to make the meaning clearer? The poem went on like this:
We shall never stand at the altar
To make our wedding vows
The Pale Prince came riding to me
And called me to Moscow town.
But thank God that she didn’t recite that part, or she would have spoiled everything. Prospero gestured for her to stop.
‘The Pale Prince, of course, is Death?’ he asked.
She nodded hastily.
‘A pale prince with green eyes . . .’ the Doge repeated. ‘An interesting image.’
He shook his head sadly and said in a quiet voice: ‘Well now, Columbine. Fate has brought you here, and fate will not be gainsaid. Stay, and do not be afraid of anything. “Death is the key that opens the doors to true happiness.” Guess who said that.’
She glanced in bewilderment at Petya, who shrugged.
‘It was a composer, the very great
est all composers,’ Prospero prompted her.
Bach was the gloomiest of all the composers that Columbine knew, and so she whispered uncertainly: ‘Is it Bach?’ And then, remembering her unfortunate gaffe with Goethe, she explained: ‘Johann-Sebastian, wasn’t it?’
‘No, it was the radiant Mozart who said it, the creator of the Requiem,’ the Doge replied and turned away.
‘That’s it, now you’re one of us,’ Petya murmured behind her back. ‘I was so nervous for you!’
He looked just as if it was his birthday. Obviously he thought that now the candidate he had proposed had passed the examination, his own status among the ‘lovers’ would be enhanced.
‘Well then,’ said Prospero, gesturing invitingly towards the table. ‘Please be seated. Let us listen to what the spirits will tell us today.’
Ophelia took the seat to the right of the Doge. The others also sat down, placing their hands on the tablecloth so that their little fingers touched each other.
‘This is a spiritualist figure,’ Petya explained. ‘It’s called “the magic wheel”.’
Spiritualist seances were known even in Irkutsk. Columbine had done a little table-spinning herself, but that had been more like a jolly game of Yuletide fortune-telling: there was always someone tittering, gasping or giggling, and Kostya always tried to squeeze her elbow or kiss her cheek under the cover of darkness.
But here everything was deadly serious. The Doge extinguished the candles, leaving only the dull glow of the brazier, so that the faces of everyone sitting there were red below and black above – as if they had no eyes.
‘Ophelia, your time has come,’ their chairman said in a deep, resonant voice. ‘Give us a sign when you hear the Beyond.’
