She Lover Of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin

by Boris Akunin

  ‘What is it?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘Another article about the Khitrovka Blinder,’ he replied reluctantly, running his glance over the lines. ‘They just don’t seem able to catch him. It’s nothing new, just idle j-journalistic speculation.’

  ‘The Khitrovka Blinder?’ Columbine queried, wrinkling up her pretty nose. ‘Ah, that’s the criminal who gouges out his victim’s eyes? Yes, yes, I’ve heard about him. What a vulgar name for him! Why do crimes have to be so beastly boring? Where have the genuine artists of villainy gone? I would execute murderers, not because they kill, but because they make such a mediocre, vulgar job of their bloody deed!’ This thought had only just occurred to Columbine. She felt the sudden inspiration was quite brilliant and provocative, but her uninspired companion failed to respond and gloomily closed his newspaper.

  After the café they went for a stroll along Kuznetsky Most Street and Theatre Passage, where they met a demonstration of shopkeepers from Hunter’s Row coming towards them, led by heralds from the municipal duma – they were marching in honour of another Russian military victory in China: General Rennenkampf had taken some place called Goujang and also Tsian-Gouan. They were carrying portraits of the tsar, icons and religious banners, and shouting in chorus: ‘Hoorah for Russia!’

  The marchers were hot and sweaty, red in the face and happy, but at the same time angry, as if someone had offended them.

  ‘Look,’ said Columbine, ‘they are coarse, half-drunk and malicious, but they are patriots and they love their home-land. See how happy they all are, but what could Tsian-Gouan really mean to these shopkeepers? But you and I are educated, polite, dressed in clean clothes, and quite unconcerned about Russia.’

  ‘What kind of patriots are they?’ Genji said with a shrug. ‘Just loudmouths, nothing more. For them it’s just a legitimate excuse for b-bawling and shouting. True patriotism, like true love, never shouts itself out loud.’

  She couldn’t immediately find anything to say to that, it set her thinking. Ah, but no! True love did shout itself out loud, most certainly it did. Imagine that she’d fallen in love with someone, and he’d been taken away from her, wouldn’t she shout out loud? She’d howl loud enough to deafen the entire world. But then, perhaps that’s a matter of temperament, Columbine thought with a sigh. The tight-buttoned Genji probably wouldn’t shout out even if you cut him to pieces – he’d consider it beneath his dignity.

  She suddenly felt the urge to stir him into action, grab him by the shoulders and give him a really good shaking that would disturb that perfect parting in his hair.

  ‘Why are you always so calm?’ she asked.

  Instead of shrugging the question off or changing the subject to something trivial in the way he usually did, he replied simply and seriously: ‘I was not always like this, Mademoiselle Columbine. In my young days any trivial n-nonsense was enough to excite me. However, life has tested my sensibilities so frequently and so cruelly that now it is very hard to get through my defences. And, in addition, Confucius wrote: “The reserved man commits fewer blunders”.’

  She had no idea who Confucius was. Probably some ancient know-it-all, but she didn’t like the maxim.

  ‘Are you afraid of blunders?’ she laughed disdainfully. ‘Why, I want to build my whole life on blunders. I think nothing could be more beautiful.’

  He shook his head: ‘Are you familiar with the Eastern doctrine of the reincarnation of souls? No? The Hindus, the Chinese and the Japanese believe that our soul lives not just once, but many times, repeatedly changing its corporeal integument. Depending on your actions, in the next life you may be promoted or, on the contrary, demoted to being a caterpillar or, say, a thistle. In this regard blunders are extremely dangerous, each one distances you further from a state of harmonious b-balance, thereby reducing your chances of being reborn as something more dignified.’

  Columbine thought this final remark rather offensive, but she found this Eastern theory so astounding that she made no attempt to protest.

  ‘In the next life I would like to turn into a dragonfly with transparent wings. No, a swallow! Is it possible to decide in advance who you will be born as next time around?’

  ‘It is not possible to decide, but it is probably possible to guess – at least when life has almost been lived to the end. One of the Buddhist teachers asserts that with age the features of a man’s face change to suggest who or what he will be when he is reborn into the world again. Do you not find that our D-Doge, for instance, is remarkably like an eagle-owl? If, during your next birth, you are flitting above a dark forest on light swallow’s wings and you hear a hooting sound, then beware! It might well be the reincarnated Mr Prospero luring you into his snares again.’

  She laughed. With his round, piercing eyes, hooked nose and disproportionately large cheeks, Prospero really did look like an eagle-owl.

  All right, there was no need to write about the conversation with Genji, Columbine decided, but what she had to write about Prospero was important. She dipped her steel nib into the inkwell and carried on.

  I have written here that, strangely enough, I am not at all jealous of the Doge’s relations with Iphigenia and Gorgon. But I think he is jealous of me! I can feel it, I know it for certain. Women are never mistaken about such things. He is annoyed that I no longer gaze at him with melancholy, sheepish eyes as I used to do. This evening he paid no attention to either of them, he looked only at me. Both of the little fools were absolutely furious, and I must confess I enjoyed that, but it did not set my heart beating any faster. He lauded my new poem to the heavens. Oh, what bliss that praise would have been for me only a short while ago! But today it brought no joy at all, because I know perfectly well that the poem is mediocre.

  Playing roulette is beginning to pall. The main sign is the abundance of volunteers. Today, in addition to our perennial player, Caliban, whose howls of disappointment are simply comical, even Petya and Kriton found the courage to spin the wheel (the former deep-red in the face, the latter deadly pale; a curious psychological detail, that – following a safe outcome, Petya turned as white as a sheet and Kriton blushed). The industrious anatomist Horatio suppressed a yawn as he spun the ball – I saw it quite distinctly. Cyrano even indulged in a little amusing mischief: while the roulette wheel was spinning, he sang the chansonette ‘Spin, my darling girl’. The Doge observed this bravado in silence, with his forehead wrinkled into a frown. He must realise that the idea of the Wheel of Fortune has been a failure. Death clearly does not wish to abase herself by taking part in this cheap circus performance.

  Only the German twins are still as diligent and serious as ever. Every time he throws the ball, Rosencrantz casts an expressive glance in my direction, but his attentions do not go any further than that. I notice that he and Guildenstern often exchange glances, as if they were talking to each other with their eyes. It seems to me that they understand each other perfectly well without words. I read somewhere that this happens with twins. One of them simply glances at the other, who hands him a cigarette case. And another thing: when the ball is skipping round the cells, the twin who has thrown it doesn’t look at the wheel, but only at his brother, trying to guess the result from the expression on the face that is so much like his own. Gdlevsky observes our games with ironical condescension. He is waiting for the great day – tomorrow is Friday. We all tease him, but he maintains a haughty silence and smiles with an air of confident superiority. It is easy to see that in his opinion all the other aspirants are nonentities and he is the only one worthy to become Death’s beloved. Caliban, infuriated by yet another failure on the wheel, called the schoolboy ‘an insolent pup’ and things almost went as far as a duel.

  And at the end of the evening, Columbine played a trick that surprised even her. When the ‘lovers’ began going home, the Doge came over to her, his light-haired Bacchante, and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Stay,’ he ordered her.

  She responded with a lon
g, intriguing glance. Then she gave his hand a glancing kiss with her pink lips and whispered: ‘Not today. I am going, dissolving into the night.’

  She swung round lightly and walked away, and he was left standing there, perplexed, gazing beseechingly after the slim figure of the unpredictable and capricious enchantress.

  And serve him right.

  Friday is a special day

  That Friday Columbine left her flat earlier than usual to go to the meeting of the club – it was that kind of evening; with a subtle, tremulous thrill, it held the promise of something either very good or, on the contrary, very terrible, or perhaps very good and very terrible at the same time.

  She had already sensed the exciting savour of tragedy in the morning, when she saw the deceptively clear September sky covering the city like a semi-transparent porcelain chalice.

  Before breakfast she performed her usual morning exercise to teach her soul not to be afraid of death. She went out on to the balcony, opened the cast-iron gate that led into emptiness and stood right on the very edge, listening to the rapid beating of her heart. The sounds coming up from the street had an eloquently hollow echo, the windows opposite her shimmered with tremulous patches of light, and below her the angel captured by Möbius and Sons stood with its wings spread wide.

  Then came the day, empty and meaningless – a pause, a drawing-in of breath, the silence before the velvet curtains of the night parted. But in the early evening Columbine’s keen hearing caught the distant sounds of a mystical orchestra, discordant as yet, but already magical, and she simply could not stay at home any longer.

  As she walked along the purple streets with her heels clattering, the sweetly alarming sounds of the overture came drifting towards her and with every step the thunderous melody became clearer and clearer.

  Columbine was prepared for anything, and as a sign of her resolution she had dressed herself in the colours of mourning. The meek schoolgirl, seeking to comprehend the secrets of death, had put on a modest black dress with a narrow white collar and a lilac apron with a mourning border, she had woven her hair into two vestal plaits and drawn them together with a crimson ribbon.

  She walked unhurriedly, thinking about beautiful things. About how Friday was a special day, forever soaked in the blood of the dreamy and starry-eyed Pierrot, whom the cruel Harlequins had nailed to planks of wood nineteen centuries before. Because the scarlet drops would not dry up, but kept oozing out and dribbling down the cross, shimmering and glittering in the sun, the fifth day of the week was filled with a deceptive, flickering gleam of calamity.

  From the boulevard Columbine turned into a sidestreet, and there the overture came to an end, and she heard the first solo aria of this ominous opera – an aria so absurdly comical that the dreamer very nearly laughed out loud. For a moment she imagined that the night had played a joke on her by inviting her to a tragedy and instead staging a farce.

  Standing there on the pavement under a streetlamp, about ten steps away from Prospero’s house, was a shabby old organ grinder wearing a red fez and spectacles with blue lenses. He was furiously turning the handle of his squeaky instrument and bawling out a stupid little song at the top of his tuneless voice – it must have been his own composition.

  Oh, barrel-barrel organ,

  The road leads ever on.

  Who can tell this poor boy

  Where his happiness has gone?

  There were many couplets, but most of the song consisted of a repeated refrain, uncouth doggerel, like all the other verses. The tin-plated throat repeated it over and over again:

  Spin the lacquered handle

  But it won’t bring happiness.

  No amount of twirling will give me back my Beth!

  No amount of twirling will give me back my Beth!

  No amount of twirling will give me back my Beth!

  Columbine stood and listened for a minute or two, then burst into loud laughter, tossed the amusing old man a coin and thought: a pessimist like that – and a poet too – really ought to join us ‘lovers’.

  ‘Today we shall spin the Wheel of Death for the last time,’ the Doge announced to the assembled company. ‘And if a Chosen One is not named yet again, I shall invent a new ritual.’

  First Caliban and then Rosencrantz threw the little gold ball, and both were rejected by Death.

  ‘I know what the trouble is,’ said Cyrano, wrinkling up his monumental nose. ‘The ambulance carriage that brought Prince Genji back to life is to blame for everything. It stole Death’s betrothed from under the very wedding wreath, so to speak. And now the Great Lady has taken offence at our roulette wheel. So help me, Genji, you ought to drink poison again. You’re the reason the roulette wheel is being stubborn.’

  Someone laughed at this audacious joke. Genji smiled politely, but Prospero looked so unhappy that Columbine felt sorry for him.

  ‘No, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘Let me try my luck! If Death is offended with men, then perhaps a woman will be lucky? After all, the Tsarevich summoned the Lioness of Ecstasy!’

  Once she said it, she felt frightened. What if she did land on the skull? Her presentiment, and her funeral garb both pointed to the same thing.

  She strode up to the table very quickly, to give herself no time to imagine the possible consequences, grabbed the little ball and prepared to throw it.

  At that very moment the last of the ‘lovers’, Gdlevsky, who was late, walked, or rather, came rushing into the room like a tornado. His ruddy face with the first timid fluff of a moustache was glowing with happiness and delight.

  ‘I have it!’ he shouted from the doorway. ‘I have the third Sign! And precisely on a Friday! The third Friday in a row! Do you hear, do you hear what he is singing?’ Gdlevksy pointed triumphantly at the window, through which only a minute earlier they could hear the wheezing of the barrel organ and the hoarse howling of the old man. ‘Did you hear what he was singing? “No amount of twirling will give me back my Beth”! And over and over again!’

  But now, as if to spite him, the organ grinder had fallen silent. And apart from Columbine, none of the aspirants seemed to have bothered to listen to the refrain of the idiotic little song, so Gdlevsky’s announcement caused general bewilderment.

  ‘What Beth? What is she spinning?’ Kriton asked in amazement. ‘What are you talking about, young man?’

  ‘The barrel organ,’ Gdlevsky explained agitatedly. ‘But that’s not important at all. The important thing is the rhyme: Beth – death. It’s the Sign! No doubt about it! The third Sign! I’ve been chosen, chosen!’

  ‘Wait, wait!’ the Doge asked with a frown. ‘You’re imagining things! Where is this organ grinder?’

  Everyone dashed to the window, but the street was deserted, with not a soul to be seen. The old man had dissolved into the thickening darkness.

  Without saying a word, Genji turned and walked quickly out into the hallway.

  Everyone turned to look at the schoolboy again. Rosencrantz, who did not understand Russian very well, asked his brother: ‘Was bedeutet twirling?’2

  There was obvious envy in the glance that he cast at Gdlevsky.

  ‘Why him? Why this young pup?’ Caliban groaned. ‘What makes him any better than me? How can you call this fair! Doge, you promised!’

  The Doge flung up one hand angrily.

  ‘Quiet everyone! Boy, Death does not tolerate cheating. You are not playing fair! Yes, there was a barrel organ here for a long time, but naturally I did not listen to the song. Perhaps he did sing a word that rhymes with “death”, but there are many words in a song, not just one. Why did you decide to pick out “Beth”. You’re as bad as Rosencrantz with his fruit drink.’

  Rosencrantz flushed. A few days earlier he had also come running in beaming with pride and said he was now Death’s Chosen One, because he had been sent a clear and unmistakable Sign. When he was eating supper in Alyabev’s restaurant on Petrovka Street, just before he finished his meal, he had been given a carafe of something blo
ody red ‘on the house’. When he asked what it was, the waiter had ‘smiled mysteriously’ and said: ‘You know, it’s Mors.’3 Rosencrantz had darted out of the room without finishing his supper and run all the way to Prospero’s house.

  The mention of the Mors was greeted with laughter, but Gdlevsky was not even slightly disconcerted.

  ‘No cheating. It’s a Friday again, gentlemen, the third in a row. I didn’t sleep all night, I knew it would happen! I didn’t go to my lessons. I’ve been walking the streets since this morning, waiting for the Sign. Listening to conversations that I came across by chance, reading posters and signboards. I have played entirely fair, been absolutely honest! On the Arbat I saw a signboard that said “Aron Speth, Hardware and Ironmongery”. I’ve walked past there a hundred times and never noticed that shop before. It simply took my breath away. That’s it, I thought! What sort of absurd name is that? Names like that don’t even exist. Speth – death, it’s so obvious! But I wanted to make certain, so that there couldn’t possibly be any doubt. If it had ended on Speth, that would have been it, but the last word was “ironmongery”. Iron-mongery – what on earth rhymes with that? So it was no good, and I walked on by. And I had such a desolate feeling. No, I thought, I’m not a Chosen One, I’m the same as all the rest. On my way here I was almost crying. Then suddenly I turn the corner and I hear “give me back my Beth, give me back my Beth, give me back my Beth”. Three times, gentlemen, three times on the third Friday. First I hit on the word “breath” by sheer chance, and then I opened a book at Macbeth, and now this name, “Beth”. What could possibly be any clearer? And even if it is a proper name, what does that matter! What are you all staring at?’ the schoolboy asked with a sardonic laugh. ‘Do you envy me? I’m the Chosen One, not you! It’s me, the very youngest! So what if I am young? I’m a genius, I could have been a new Lermontov. Death chooses the best, not the worst. First Lorelei, and then me. And anyway, I couldn’t give a damn for Lermontov! Or for the whole world, or for all of you! Spin your roulette wheel, titillate your wretched nerves. The only thing I have to say to you is “adieu”. The Princess has chosen me! Me, not you!’