by Boris Akunin
‘ “What is that you have there?” he asked, taking no notice of my harsh words and pointing to my coat pocket. “What is m-making that bulge? A revolver? Give it to me.”
‘You know that I never leave home without my Bulldog. The stranger’s behaviour was beginning to intrigue me. Without further words I took the weapon out and handed it to him – to see what would happen.’
At this point Lorelei exclaimed: ‘But he is obviously insane! He could have shot you! How reckless you are!’
‘I am used to trusting in Death,’ Prospero said with a shrug. ‘She is wiser and kinder than we are. And then, tell me, good Lioness, what would I have lost if the mad stranger had put a bullet through my forehead? It would been an elegant conclusion . . . But listen to the rest.’
And he went on with his story: ‘The stranger opened the revolver and shook out four bullets into the palm of his hand, leaving the fifth in the gun. I observed his actions with curiosity.
‘He spun the drum hard, then suddenly put the barrel against his temple and pressed the trigger. The hammer clicked loudly against an empty chamber, and not a single muscle twitched in the amazing gentleman’s face.
‘ “Now will you talk to me seriously?” he asked.
‘I didn’t answer, I was rather shaken by this performance. Then he spun the barrel again and set the gun against his temple again. I tried to stop him, but I was too late. The trigger clicked again – and again he was lucky.
‘ “Enough,” I explained. “What is it that you want?”
‘He said: “I want to be with you. You are the person I t-take you to be, are you not?”
‘Apparently he had been searching for the “Lovers of Death” for a long time in order to become one of them. Naturally, he had not guessed who I was from my face – that had been said simply for the sake of effect, in order to make an impression on me. In actual fact, he had pursued a cunning investigation that had led him to me. What do you make of that? He is an extremely interesting individual – I know people. He composes poetry, in the Japanese style. You will hear it, it is quite unlike anything else. I told him to come today. After all, Avaddon’s place is still free.’
I envied this unknown gentleman who had managed to make such an impression on our impassive Doge, although I was not listening to the story very carefully, because something else was bothering me. I was going to read a new poem that I had worked on throughout the previous night and I was hoping that I had finally managed to get it right, and that Prospero would criticise this cry from the soul less severely than my previous efforts, which . . . Never mind, I have already written about that more than once, I will not repeat myself here.
When my turn came, I read out:
You’ll forget her, won’t you,
This doll with hempen curls
And eyes of misty blue
Enchanted by your spells?
‘It’s clear you do not care
That she is a martyr
To the doting worship
Of her celluloid heart.
‘Then should I pray to God,
Offer up this drama?
The former touch-me-not
Weeps quietly: ma-ma!
There was another stanza, which I particularly liked (I even shed a few teardrops over it) – about how a puppet has no god but the puppet-master.
But heartless Prospero waved his hand dismissively for me to stop, and frowned as he said: ‘Stodgy semolina!’
My poems do not interest him at all!
Afterwards Gdlevsky, whom Prospero always praises exorbitantly, read his verse, and I quietly left the room. I stood in front of the mirror in the hallway and started to cry. Or rather, I started howling. ‘Stodgy semolina!’
It was dark in the hallway, and all I could see in the mirror was my own stooped figure with a stupid bow in my hair, which had slipped right over to the left. Lord, how unhappy I felt! I remember I thought: If only the spirits would summon me today, I would gladly leave you all and go to the Eternal Bridegroom. But there was not much hope. Firstly, just recently the spirits had either not appeared at all or had simply babbled some sort of nonsense. And secondly, why would Death choose such a worthless, untalented woodlouse for a bride?
Then there was a ring at the door. I hurriedly straightened my bow, dried my eyes and went to open it.
There was a surprise in store for me.
Standing on the doorstep was the same gentleman I had seen when I took the forget-me-nots to Avaddon.
The appearance of Prince Genji
On that day when the tearful Petya-Cherubino had shown up at the small flat under the roof and frightened its occupant with the news of Avaddon’s death, and then with the Chosen One’s final poem, Columbine had sat in the armchair for a long time, reading the mysterious lines over and over again.
She had cried a little bit, of course. She felt sorry for Avaddon, even if he was a Chosen One. But then she had stopped crying, because what point was there in crying if someone had been granted what he was yearning for? His wedding with his Eternal Betrothed had been celebrated. In such cases one should not sob and weep, but feel glad.
And Columbine had set out to the newly-wed’s flat to congratulate him. She had put on her very smartest dress (white and airy, with two silver streaks of light sewn along the bodice), bought a bouquet of delicate forget-me-nots and gone to Basmannaya Street. She had taken Lucifer with her, only not on her neck, like a necklace (black would not have been appropriate on a day like this) but in her handbag – so that he would not be bored at home alone.
She found the Giant company’s building – a new, five-storey stone structure – with no difficulty. She had been planning simply to leave the flowers at the door of the flat, but the door was not sealed, in fact it was even half-open. She could hear muffled voices inside. If other people can go inside, then why can’t I, the bearer of congratulations, she reasoned, and walked in.
It was a small flat, no larger than her own in Kitaigorod, but quite remarkably neat and tidy and far from squalid, as she would have expected it to be from the late Avaddon’s shabby clothes.
Columbine stopped in the hallway, trying to guess where the room in which the Bridegroom had met his Bride would be.
The kitchen seemed to be on the left. She heard a man speaking in it, with a slight stammer.
‘And what d-door is this? The rear entrance?’
‘Precisely so, Your Excellency,’ replied another voice, husky and obsequious. ‘Only the gentleman student never used it. The back door is for servants, and he managed for himself. Because he was dog-poor, if you’ll pardon the expression.’
She heard a bump and a clang of metal.
‘So he d-didn’t use it, you say? Then why are the hinges oiled? And very thoroughly too?’
‘I couldn’t say. I suppose someone must have oiled them.’
The man with a stammer sighed and said: ‘A reasonable s-supposition.’ There was a pause in the conversation.
He must be a police investigator, Columbine guessed and started back towards the door to avoid trouble – he might start pestering her with questions: who was she, why was she here, what did the forget-me-nots mean? But before she could withdraw, three men walked out of the short corridor into the hall.
The first, ambling along and occasionally glancing round, was a bearded yard keeper in an apron, with his metal badge on his chest. Following him at a leisurely pace and tapping his cane on the floor, came a tall lean gentleman in a beautifully tailored frock-coat, snow-white shirt with immaculate cuffs and even a top hat – a perfect Count of Monte Cristo – and the yard keeper had called him ‘Excellency’, hadn’t he? The similarity to the former prisoner of the Château d’If was reinforced by the pale well-groomed face (which, she had to admit, was most impressive) and romantic black moustache. And the dandy was about the same age as the Parisian millionaire – she could see grey temples under the top hat.
Bringing up the rear was a squat, solidly built Orienta
l in a three-piece suit and a bowler hat pulled so far forward that it almost covered his eyes. But they weren’t really eyes – he stared out at Columbine from under the black felt through two narrow slits.
The yard keeper waved his arms at the young lady as if he were shooing away a cat.
‘You can’t come in here, get out! Go away!’
But Monte Cristo looked keenly at the smartly dressed girl and said laconically: ‘Never mind, it’s all right. Here, take this as well.’
He handed the yard keeper a banknote, and the bearded man doubled over in delight and called his benefactor ‘Your Highness’ instead of ‘Your Excellency’, from which she concluded that the handsome man with the stammer was not a count and most definitely not a policeman. Who had ever heard of policemen flinging rouble notes at yard keepers? Another curious outsider, Columbine decided. He must have read about the ‘Lovers of Death’ in the newspapers, and now he’d come to gape at the lodgings of the latest suicide.
The handsome gentleman doffed his top hat (in the process revealing that only his temples were grey, and the rest of his coiffure was still quite black), but he didn’t introduce himself, he merely asked: ‘Are you an acquaintance of Mr Sipyaga’s?’
Columbine refused to favour the Count of Monte Cristo with a glance, let alone a reply. The feeling of excitement and exultation had returned, she was not in the mood for idle conversation.
Then the persistent dark-haired gentleman lowered his voice and asked: ‘You must b-be from the “Lovers of Death”, I suppose?’
‘What makes you think so?’ she asked with a start, glancing at him in fright.
‘Why, it’s quite clear.’ He leaned on his cane and started bending down the fingers of one hand in a close-fitting grey glove. ‘You walked in without ringing or kn-knocking. So you must have come to see someone you know. That is one. You see strangers here, but you don’t ask after the occupant of the flat. So you already know that he is dead. That is two. But that didn’t stop you coming here in an extravagant dress with a f-frivolous bouquet. That is three. Who could regard a suicide as cause for congratulation? Only the “Lovers of Death”. That is four.’
The Oriental joined in the conversation. He spoke Russian rather briskly, but with an appalling accent.
‘Not onry ruvers,’ he protested energetically. ‘When Prince Asano’s nobur samurai receive permission commit hara-kiri, everyone congraturate them too.’
‘Masa, we can d-discuss the story of the forty-seven faithful vassals some other time,’ said Monte Cristo, interrupting the short Oriental. ‘At the moment, as you can see, I am talking to a lady.’
‘You may be talking to the lady,’ Columbine snapped. ‘But the lady is not talking to you.’
‘His Highness’ shrugged, discouraged, and she turned into the doorway that led to the right, beyond which there were two small rooms. The first one contained nothing but a cheap writing desk and the one beyond it was the bedroom. Her eye was caught by the divan bed, one of the new-fangled kind, with a central section that folded out, but it was very shabby and crooked. The top section didn’t fit properly against the bottom and the divan seemed to be grinning with a dark mouth.
Columbine remembered a line from Avaddon’s final poem, and muttered: ‘The bed clatters its teeth.’
‘What’s that?’ She heard Monte Cristo say behind her. ‘Poetry?’
Without turning round, she recited the entire quatrain in a whisper.
A nervous night, a hostile night,
The bed clatters its teeth,
Arching its back in wolfish spite.
I dare not sleep.
There really was something wolfish about the divan’s curved back.
The windowpane trembled (it was windy, like the evening before), Columbine gave a chill shudder and recited the final lines of the poem:
The wind, knowing the Beast is near,
Taps on the pane.
‘The sated Beast will still be here,
The wind will sob and sigh
But I shall not be in this world.
Oh where am I?
And she sighed. Where are you now, Chosen One Avaddon? Are you happy in the World Beyond?
‘That is Nikifor Sipyaga’s d-death poem?’ the quick-witted dandy stated rather than asked. ‘Interesting. Very interesting.’
The yard keeper told them: ‘There was a beast howling, really. The tenant on the other side of the wall told me. The walls here are flimsy, Your Excellency, nothing to them really. When the police left, the tenant next door came down to see me, out of curiosity. And he told me: at night, he says, someone started howling, eerie it was, going up and down, like he was calling someone or threatening them. And it went on right until dawn. He even banged on the wall – he couldn’t sleep. Thought as Mr Sipyaga had got a dog. Only there wasn’t any dog here.’
‘An interesting little flat,’ said the man with dark hair. ‘I can hear some k-kind of sound too. Only not howling, it’s more like hissing. And this intriguing sound is coming from your handbag, Mademoiselle.’
He turned to Columbine and looked at her with his blue eyes – she couldn’t tell if their expression was sad or happy.
Never mind, they’ll be frightened in a moment, Columbine thought mischievously.
‘From my handbag? Are you sure?’ she asked, feigning surprise. ‘But I can’t hear anything. Well now, let’s take a look.’
She deliberately lifted up her bag so that it was right under the arrogant stranger’s nose and clicked open the little lock.
Lucifer didn’t let her down. He stuck out his narrow little head just like a jack-in-a-box, opened his jaws and gave such a hiss! He’d obviously got bored in his dark, cramped lair.
‘Holy Mother of God!’ the yard keeper howled, banging the back of his head against the doorpost. ‘A snake! It’s black! And I haven’t drunk a drop!’
But what a pity – the handsome gentleman wasn’t in the least bit frightened. He inclined his head to one side to take a good look at the snake and said approvingly: ‘A fine little g-grass snake. You’re fond of animals, Mademoiselle? Very laudable.’
And then he turned back to the yard keeper, as if nothing had happened.
‘So, you say the unknown b-beast was howling until dawn. That’s the most interesting thing of all. What’s the neighbour’s name? The one who lives on the other side of the wall. What does he d-do for a living?’
‘Stakhovich. He’s an artist.’ The yard keeper kept glancing warily at Lucifer and rubbing the bruise on the back of his head. ‘Young Miss, is he safe? He won’t bite?’
‘Of course he will!’ Columbine replied haughtily. ‘Not half he will.’ And she told the Count of Monte Cristo. ‘You’re a grass snake. This is an Egyptian cobra.’
‘A Co-bra, very well,’ he drawled absentmindedly, not really listening.
He stopped by the wall where there was clothing hanging on nails – evidently Avaddon’s entire wardrobe: a pitiful, patched greatcoat and a worn student’s uniform jacket, obviously second-hand.
‘So Mr Sipyaga was very p-poor?’
‘As poor as a church mouse. Never even tipped a kopeck, not like Your Grace.’
‘And yet the flat is not at all bad. Probably thirty roubles a month?’
‘Twenty-five. Only it wasn’t him that rented it, how could he have? It was Mr Blagovolsky, Sergei Irinarkhovich, who paid.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘I couldn’t say. That’s what it says in the accounts book.’
As she listened to this conversation, Columbine turned her head this way and that, trying to guess exactly where the wedding with Death had taken place. And eventually she found it. There was a severed rope-end hanging from the hook of the curtain rod.
She gazed at the crude piece of metal and the tattered piece of hemp in awe. Lord, how pitiful, how wretched are the gates through which the soul escapes from the hell of life into the heaven of Death!
‘Be happy, Avaddon!’ she thought to
herself and put the bouquet down on top of the skirting board.
The Oriental came across and clicked his tongue disapprovingly: ‘Brue frowers no good! Brue for when drowned. When hanged, should be daisy.’
‘Masa, you ought to give the “Lovers of Death” lectures on how to honour suicides,’ Monte Cristo remarked with a serious air. Tell me now, what colour should the bouquet be, for instance, when someone has shot himself ?’
‘Red,’ Masa replied just as seriously. ‘Roses or poppies.’
‘And if he poisoned himself ?’
The Oriental didn’t hesitate for a second.
‘Yerrow chrysanthemums. If no chrysanthemums, can be buttercups.’
‘And what if his stomach was slit open?’
‘White frowers – because white corow most nobur.’
The Oriental folded his short-fingered hands as if in prayer and his friend nodded in approval.
‘A pair of clowns,’ Columbine exclaimed scornfully. She cast a final glance at the hook and walked towards the door.
Who could have imagined that she would see the dandy from Avaddon’s flat again and, of all places, at Prospero’s house!
He looked almost exactly the same as he had at their previous meeting: elegant, with a cane, only the frock-coat and the top hat were ash-grey instead of black.
‘Good evening, m-madam,’ he said with his characteristic slight stammer. ‘I’m here to see Mr Blagovolsky.’
‘Who? There’s no one here by that name.’
In the semi-darkness he couldn’t make out Columbine’s face, but she recognised him immediately – there was a gas lamp burning under the canopy of the door. She was terribly surprised. Had he got the wrong address? What a very strange coincidence that would be!
