by Boris Akunin
‘No, I didn’t go in there for two days. I kept running to the police station, or hanging about by the gate all the time. I never even thought of going down to the river. It was only later, when I came back here from the mortuary after the identification, that I tidied her room. And I don’t go in there any more. Let everything stay the way it was when she was here.’
‘May we take a look?’ Genji asked. ‘Just through the d-doorway? We won’t go in.’
Ophelia’s room was simple, but comfortable. A narrow bed with metal balls on the uprights and a heap of pillows. A dressing table with nothing but a comb and a hand mirror on it. An old bookshelf of dark wood, crammed full of books. A small writing desk with a candlestick under the window.
‘Candurs,’ said the Japanese.
Columbine raise her eyes to the ceiling, assuming that this simple-minded son of the Orient named every object that he saw – she had read somewhere that primitive peoples had that habit. Now he would say: ‘Table. Bed. Window.’ But Masa glanced sideways at his master and repeated: ‘Candurs.’
‘Yes, yes. I see,’ Genji said with a nod. ‘Well done. Tell me, Serafima Kharitonovna, did you put new candles in the candelabra?’
‘I didn’t put them in. They hadn’t been touched.’
‘So when your daughter came in here she d-didn’t light them?’
‘I suppose so. I’ve left everything just as it was, I haven’t disturbed anything. That book lying open on the windowsill – let it stay there. Her slippers under the bed. The glass of pear compote – she loved that. Perhaps her soul will look in every now and then to take a rest . . . Sashenka’s soul has no place of its own. Father Innokentii wouldn’t allow her to be buried in hallowed ground. They buried my daughter outside the fence, like a little dog. And he wouldn’t let me put up a cross. Your daughter’s sin is unforgivable, he said. But what sort of sinner is she? She was an angel. She stayed on earth for a little while and brought me joy, and then flew away again.’
As they walked back to the carriage and then drove along the streets shrouded in the shadows of early evening, Masa kept muttering angrily in his strange squawking language.
‘Why has he suddenly forgotten how to speak Russian?’ Columbine asked in a whisper.
Genji said: ‘He is being t-tactful. He does not wish to offend your religious sensibilities. He is roundly abusing the Christian Ch-church for its attitude to suicides and their families. And he is absolutely right.’
Black roses
At the entrance to the wing of a building on Povarskaya Street, where Lorelei Rubinstein had still lived only three days earlier, there were three heaps of flowers lying on the pavement. Most of them were black roses, which she had mentioned in a poem written shortly before her death – the one she had read for the first time one evening at Prospero’s apartment and then printed shortly afterwards in The Refuge of the Muse. There were notes, too – white spots against the background of the flowers. Columbine picked one out, opened it and read the inscription in small girlish handwriting:
Oh Lorelei, you have gone on before,
Pathfinder on the road into the night,
And, following the image I adore,
I too shall walk the dark path into light.
T.R.
She picked up another: ‘Oh, how right you are, dear, dear one! Life is vulgar and unbearable! Olga Z.’
Genji also read it, looking over her shoulder. He knitted his elegant black eyebrows and sighed. Then he resolutely rang the bronze doorbell.
The door was opened by a rather wizened lady with an anxious, tearful face who kept dabbing at her red, wet little nose with a handkerchief. She introduced herself as Rosalia Maximovna, one of ‘poor Lyalechka’s’ relatives, although the subsequent conversation made it clear that she had lived with Lorelei as her housekeeper, or simply as a dependent.
Genji spoke to her quite differently from the way in which he had spoken to Ophelia’s mother. He was dry and businesslike. Masa didn’t open his mouth at all, he sat down at the table and didn’t move, staring straight at Rosalia Maximovna through narrowed eyes.
The pitiful creature gazed at the severe gentleman in the black tails and the taciturn Oriental with a mixture of fright and obsequiousness. She answered Genji’s questions at length, with masses of detail, and from time to time he was obliged to bring her back to the point. Every time Rosalia Maximovna became flustered and began batting her eyelids helplessly. The conversation was also seriously impeded by a lapdog – a vicious dwarf bulldog that kept yapping at Masa and snapping at his trouser leg.
‘Had you lived with Madam Rubinstein for a l-long time?’ was the first question that Genji asked.
It turned out that she had been there for seven years, ever since Lorelei (whom she also referred to as ‘Lyalechka’ and ‘Elena Semyonovna’) had been widowed.
When she was asked whether the deceased had ever attempted to take her own life before, the answer was very long and confused.
‘Lyalechka never used to be like this. She was cheerful, she used to laugh a lot. She loved her husband Matvei very much. They had an easy, happy life together. They didn’t have any children – they were always going to the theatre and at-homes, they often went to resorts and to Paris, and all sorts of places abroad. But when Matvei Natanovich died, it was as if she lost her mind, the poor thing. She even took poison,’ Rosalia told him in a whisper, ‘only not enough to kill her that time. But after that she was all right, she seemed to have got used to things. Only her character had changed, completely changed. She started writing poems and in general . . . she wasn’t quite herself, somehow. If not for me, she wouldn’t have eaten properly, she just drank coffee all the time. Do you think it was easy for me keeping house for Elena Semyonovna? She spent all the money that Matvei Natanovich left on the memorial for his grave. She was only paid a pittance for her poems at first, then it was more and more, but that was still no help. Lyalechka used to send tenrouble wreaths to the cemetery every single day, and sometimes there wasn’t a crust of bread in the house. The number of times I told her: “You should put something aside for a rainy day!” But would she listen? So now there isn’t anything. She’s dead, and what am I supposed to live on? And the flat’s only paid up until the first of the month. I have to move out, but where to?’ She buried her face in the handkerchief and started sobbing. ‘Zhu . . . Zhuzhechka is used to eating well – a bit of liver, marrow bones, cottage cheese . . . But who needs us now? Oh, I’m sorry, just a moment . . .’
And she ran out of the room in floods of tears.
‘Masa, how did you manage to m-make the dog shut up?’ Genji asked. ‘Thank you, it was bothering me rather badly.’
Columbine suddenly realised that the bulldog had not barked once, but only grunted malevolently under the table during the entire monologue, which had been extended to some considerable length by nose-blowing and sobbing.
Masa replied in a steady voice: ‘Dog sirent because eating my reg. Masta, have you arready asked everyfin you want? If not I can howd for ronger.’
Columbine glanced under the table and gasped. The mean little beast had grabbed poor Masa by the ankle and was growling viciously and shaking its round head from side to side! No wonder the Japanese looked a bit pale and he was smiling painfully. He was a real hero! Just like the Spartan boy with the fox cub!
‘Oh, Lord, Masa,’ Genji sighed. ‘That’s g-going too far.’
He leaned down swiftly and squeezed the dog’s nose between his finger and thumb. The little beast snorted and immediately opened its jaws. Then Genji took it by the scruff of the neck and tossed it into the hallway with a remarkably accurate throw. There was a squeal, followed by hysterical barking, but Masa’s tormentor didn’t dare come back into the room.
And at that point Rosalia Maximovna returned, a little calmer, but Genji had already assumed a relaxed pose, leaning back slightly in his chair, with his fingers clasped across his stomach in a most innocent fashion.
‘
Where’s Zhuzhechka?’ Rosalia Maximovna asked in a voice hoarse from sobbing.
‘You still have not told us what happened that evening,’ Genji reminded her sternly, and Lorelei’s aunt started blinking in fright.
‘I was sitting in the drawing room, reading the Home Doctor, Lyalechka subscribes to it for me. She’d just got back from somewhere or other and gone into her boudoir. Then suddenly she came running into the room with her eyes blazing and her cheeks bright red. “Aunty Rosa!” she cried. I was frightened, I thought it must be a fire or a mouse. But Lyalechka shouted: “The last Sign, the third one! He loves me! He loves me! There is no more doubt. I must go to him, to the Tsarevich! My Matvei has waited too long”. Then she put her hand over her eyes and said in a quiet voice: “No more, my torment is over. Now dost Thou release Thy servant, oh Lord. No more playing the jester for me.” I didn’t understand anything. You can never tell with Elena Semyonovna if something has really happened or she’s just fantasising. “Who is it who loves you?” I asked her. “Ferdinand Karlovich, Sergei Poluektovich or that one with the moustache, who arrived with the bouquet yesterday?” She had lots of admirers, you couldn’t remember them all. Only she didn’t care a brass farthing for any of them, so her raptures seemed strange to me. “Or has someone else turned up?” I asked her, “Someone completely new?” But Lyalechka laughed, and she looked so happy, for the first time in all those years. “Someone else, Aunty Rosa,” she said. “Someone quite different. The genuine one and only. I’m going to go to bed now. Don’t come into my room until the morning, whatever happens.” And she walked out. In the morning I went in, and she was lying on the bed in her white dress, and she was all white too . . .’
The aunt burst into tears again, but this time she didn’t go running out of the room.
‘How am I going to live now? Lyalechka didn’t think about me, she didn’t leave a single kopeck. And I can’t sell the furniture – it’s the landlord’s . . .’
‘Show me where Elena Semyonovna’s b-boudoir is,’ said Genji, getting to his feet.
Lorelei’s bedroom was startlingly different from Ophelia’s simple little room. It had Chinese vases as tall as a man, and painted Japanese screens, and a magnificent dressing table with a myriad bottles, jars and tubes standing in front of a triple mirror, and all sorts of other things too.
There were two portraits hanging above the luxurious bed. One was a perfectly ordinary photograph of a bearded man in a pince-nez (obviously the deceased husband Matvei himself), but Columbine found the second one intriguing: a swarthy, handsome man dressed in blood-red robes, with immense half-closed eyes, sitting astride a black buffalo and holding a club and a noose in his hands, and there were two terrifying four-eyed dogs huddling against the buffalo’s legs.
Genji walked up to the lithograph, but it was not the image that interested him, it was the three black roses on the top of the frame. One had not completely wilted yet, another was badly wrinkled, and the third was absolutely dry.
‘My God, who is that?’ Columbine asked, looking at the picture.
‘The Indian god of death, Yama, also known as the King of the Dead,’ Genji replied absentmindedly, staring hard at the gilded frame. ‘The dogs with four eyes are searching for p-prey among the living, and Yama uses the noose to pull their souls out.’
‘Tsarevich Death, come in your bloody-red apparel, give me your hand, lead me into the light,’ said Columbine, reciting two lines from Lorelei’s last poem. ‘So that was who she meant!’
But Genji failed to appreciate her astuteness.
‘What roses are these?’ he asked, turning to the aunt. ‘From whom?’
‘They . . .’ she said, and started blinking very, very fast. ‘How can I remember, when so many people used to give Lyalechka flowers? Ah yes, I do remember. She brought the bouquet home on that last evening.’
‘Are you sure?’
Columbine thought Genji was being too severe with the poor old woman. Rosalia Maximovna pulled her head down into her shoulders and babbled: ‘She brought them, she brought them herself.’
There seemed to be something else he wanted to ask her, but glancing at Columbine, he obviously realised that she disapproved of his manner and, taking pity on the unfortunate woman, left her in peace.
‘Thank you madam. You have been a g-great help.’
The Japanese gave a ceremonial bow, from the waist.
Columbine noticed that as Genji walked past the table he inconspicuously placed a banknote on the tablecloth. Was he feeling ashamed then? Yes, that must be it.
The expedition was over. Columbine had still not found out if Genji was in love with her, but that was not what she thought about on the way back. She suddenly felt quite unbearably sad.
She imagined how her mother and father would feel when they found out that she was gone. They would probably cry and feel sorry for their daughter, and then, like Ophelia’s mother, they would say: ‘She stayed in the world for a short time, and then she flew away.’ But it would be easier for them than for Serafima Kharitonovna, they would still have their sons, Seryozha and Misha. They’re not like me, Columbine comforted herself. They won’t get picked up by the wild east wind and carried away into the sunset to meet their doom.
She felt so moved that the tears started pouring down her cheeks.
‘Well, how did you like our excursion?’ Genji asked, looking into his companion’s wet face. ‘Perhaps you will l-live for a little longer after all?’
She rubbed her eyes, turned towards him and laughed in his face.
‘Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t,’ she said
In front of her house she jumped out of the carriage, gave a careless wave and ran into the entrance with a light clatter of heels.
Sitting down at the table without even taking off her beret, she dipped a pen in the inkwell and wrote a poem that came out in blank verse, like Lorelei’s. And for some reason it was in traditional folk style – could that be because of Ophelia’s mother, the old provincial secretary’s widow?
Not with white linen, but black velvet
Was my wedding couch arrayed,
A narrow bed, and all of wood,
Covered with lilies and chrysanthemums.
Dearest guests, why look you so sad,
Wiping teardrops from your cheeks?
Feast your eyes in joy on the bright glow
Of my slim face below the plaited wreath.
Ah, you poor and wretched, sightless souls,
Look closely now and you will see
That on this bed ringed with candles bright
My own true love lies here along with me.
Oh, how divine the beauty of his face!
Oh, how bright the twinkling of his eye!
How sweetly do his gentle fingers play!
How happy you have made me, bridegroom mine.
She wondered what Prospero would say about the poem.
III. From the ‘Agents’ Reports’ File
To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov
(Private and confidential)
Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,
I always knew that helping you was a risky and dangerous business – both for my reputation as a decent individual and, possibly, for my very life. Today my very worst fears have been confirmed. I really do not know what causes me greater torment, the physical suffering or the bitter realisation of how little you value my self-sacrificing efforts.
I indignantly reject your repeated offer to ‘pay my expenses generously’, although it is unlikely that any of your highly paid ‘collaborators’ demonstrates as much zeal and devotion to the cause as does your humble servant. However, my unselfish scrupulousness does not change the essence of the matter – you have in any case effectively transformed me from a principled opponent of nihilism and devilry into a vulgar spy!
Have you never entertained the thought, dearest Vissarion Vissarionovich, that perhaps you underestimate me? You regard me as a pawn in your game, whereas perh
aps I am a piece of an entirely different calibre!
I am joking, only joking. How can we grains who have fallen between the millstones ever grow up to the heavens above? But even so, you should be more tactful with me, a little more formal. After all, I am a cultured man and also of European stock. Do not take this as an attack on yourself or an out-burst of Lutheran arrogance. I only wish to remind you that the fancy social graces mean more to a ‘pepper-and-sausage German’ than they do to a ‘Russak’. As it happens, you are not a Russak, you are a Caucasian, but that does not change the essence of the matter.
I have re-read what I have written and I feel sick with myself. How amusing you must find my rapid transitions from voluptuous self-abasement to unbending pride.
Ah, but it is not important, really it is not. The important thing is to remember that what is good for the Russian is death for the German.
And apropos of death.
From the latest instructions that I have received from you it is clear to me that you are no longer much concerned about the fate of the poor ‘Lovers of Death’, who dwell on the very edge of the precipice. You demonstrated far more interest in one of the members of the club, whom in previous reports I have dubbed the Stammerer. I have the feeling that you know far more about this man than I do. Why do you find him so intriguing? Do you really believe in the existence of a secret organisation called ‘Lovers of Life’? And who is this ‘very highly placed individual’ whose personal request you are carrying out? Which of your superiors has taken an interest in this man?
Whatever the answer might be, I have dutifully performed the strange assignment you set me, although you did not even condescend to tell me the reasons for it. I followed the Stammerer, and although I was not able to establish his place of residence, it was not, as you shall see, due to my own fault.
No, this really is absolutely outrageous! Why can you not set your own police agents to follow the Stammerer? You write that he is not a criminal ‘in the strict sense of the word’, but when has that circumstance ever been an obstacle for you and your kind? Or is your reluctance to attach official agents to the Stammerer explained by the fact that he has, as you informed me rather vaguely, ‘too many well-wishers in the most surprising places’? Surely not in the Department of Gendarmes too? Are you concerned that one of your colleagues might inform the Stammerer that he is being followed? Then who is this man after all, if even you are being so cautious? Why must I be left to wander in the dark? I absolutely demand explanations! Especially after the monstrous incident of which I, through your good services, have been the victim.
