by Boris Akunin
And so I have decided to do everything in my power to assist your colleagues from the police. Having analysed the information that you provided about the circumstances of the crime, I was struck by the following.
It is not clear why anyone would wish to murder a person who intended in any case to kill himself only a minute or an hour later.
And if someone did resort to murder for some purpose or other, then why did they not disguise the crime as a voluntary death? Nobody would ever have thought of suspecting foul play when the farewell poem had already been written.
The first explanation that comes to mind is coincidence – just as Gdlevsky was preparing to commit suicide (you wrote that he had a loaded pistol ready in the drawer of his desk), a robber who knew nothing about the young man’s fatal intentions climbed in through his window and hit him over the head with a length of metal pipe. A cruel joke played by fate. You write that the police regard this account of events as the most likely and ask my opinion.
I do not know what answer to give.
I think it might well interest you to know how the members of the club regard what has happened. Naturally, the story has made a very grave impression on everyone. The predominant feeling is fear, and fear of a mystical nature. Everyone is terribly frightened. No one mentions the idea of a robber who happened to climb in through the window. The general opinion is that Gdlevsky angered the Goddess with his boundless presumption, and she smashed his arrogant head to pieces. ‘No one should dare try to lure the Eternal Bride to the altar by deceit,’ is how our chairman expressed his own response.
As you know, I am a materialist and refuse to believe in the work of the Devil or evil spirits. I would sooner believe in the coincidental burglar. Only, if it was a burglar, why was he carrying a piece of metal pipe? And furthermore, you write that nothing was taken from the flat. Of course, it is possible to find an explanation for everything. We could assume that he took the weapon with him just in case, simply for use as a threat. And he didn’t steal anything because he took fright at what he had done and fled. Well, that is certainly possible.
In any case, I am well aware that you asked for my opinion largely out of politeness, remembering my rebuke about airs and graces, and what you actually require are observations, not hypotheses. Well then, by all means.
I observed the behaviour of all the aspirants very carefully today, looking for anything suspicious or strange. Let me say straight away that I saw nothing suspicious, but I did make one astonishing discovery, which you will no doubt find interesting.
We did not play roulette today. Nobody did anything but discuss Gdlevsky’s death and what it might mean. Naturally, the general mood was alarm and agitation, everyone tried to talk louder than everyone else, and our Doge was like a captain struggling at the helm of ship that is out of control. I also made a few comments for the sake of appearances, but most of the time I observed the others’ faces keenly. Suddenly I saw Cyrano (the one whom I have referred to in previous reports as Big Nose) casually walk over to the bookshelves and run his eye over them – he seemed to do it quite absentmindedly, and yet I had the impression that he was looking for something very specific. He glanced round to make sure that no one was watching (which immediately made me even more curious), took out one of the volumes and started leafing through the pages. For some reason he looked up at the light, licked his finger and ran it over the edges of the pages. And then he even touched them with his tongue. I do not know the significance of these manipulations, but I was intrigued.
What happened next was remarkable. Cyrano put the book back in its place and turned round. I was astounded by the expression on his face – it was completely red, and his eyes were gleaming. He strolled slowly round the room, pretending to be bored, and when he reached the door, he slipped out into the hallway.
I cautiously left the room after him, expecting that now he would go out into the street and I would follow him – he really was behaving very strangely. However, Cyrano walked down the dark corridor leading into the apartment and darted into the study. I went after him without making a sound and put my ear to the door. The study can be reached by a different route – from the sitting room through the dining room, but that could have attracted attention, which Cyrano clearly wished to avoid, and I soon realised why. The reason for the entire manoeuvre was the telephone in Prospero’s study.
Cyrano twirled the handle, gave a number in a low voice – I remembered it, in case it was important: 3845. Then he put his hand across the opening of the mouthpiece and said: ‘Romuald Semyonovich? It’s me, Lavr Zhemailo. Have you put the edition to bed? Excellent! Hold it. Leave a column on the first page. About sixty lines. No, better make it ninety. I assure you, this will be a bombshell. Wait for me, I’m leaving straight away.’ His voice was trembling with excitement.
So much for Cyrano! A fine aspirant he is! And our smart alecks kept wondering how the reporter from the Courier could be so well-informed about the internal life of the club. But what a newspaperman! He has known for ages where the future suicides gather, but he carries on duping the public, pretending that he is searching incessantly, and meanwhile he has made a name for himself and also, no doubt, earned himself a tidy sum. Who had ever heard of Lavr Zhemailo even a month ago? But now he is the star of Russian journalism.
The reporter darted back out of the study so quickly that I barely managed to press myself against the wall in time. He did not notice me, because he hurried off towards the front door. The door into the study was left slightly ajar. And then something else strange happened. The opposite door – the one leading into the dining room, was also slightly ajar, but it suddenly squeaked and closed of its own accord! I swear to you that I am not making this up. There was no draught. That ominous creaking sound made me feel quiet unwell. My knees started trembling, my heart started pounding so rapidly that I was even obliged to swallow two tablets of cordinium. When I finally pulled myself together and ran out into the street after the journalist, he had already disappeared.
But then what point would there have been in following him, when it was already clear that he was going to his newspaper’s office?
I wonder what ‘bombshell’ he had in store for his readers. Never mind, we shall find that out from the morning edition of the Moscow Courier.
With every assurance of my heartfelt respect,
ZZ
17 September 1900
1. Pleasures of the flesh
2. What does twirling mean?
3. A drink made from berries, but also ‘Death’ in Latin
4. Most beloved
CHAPTER 5
I. From the Newspapers
Lavr Zhemailo is Dead
Active opponent of suicide takes his own life
The world of Moscow’s newspapers has been shaken by woeful news.
Our trade has lost one of its most brilliant pens. A bright star that only recently made its appearance in the journalistic firmament has been extinguished.
The police are conducting an investigation and following every possible line of enquiry, including the possibility of a ritual execution carried out by the ‘Lovers of Death’, although it is quite clear to all those who have read Lavr Zhemailo’s brilliant articles in the Moscow Courier that the members of that secret club are in the habit of ending their own lives, not those of others. No, what happened was not a murder, but a tragedy that is in some ways even more lamentable. Our colleague took too heavy a burden upon his own shoulders, a burden that was perhaps too onerous for any mortal to bear, and that burden broke him. Now he is on the far side of that fatal dividing line, he has joined the ‘majority’ of which he wrote in his visionary article that caused such a stir, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth . . .’
We knew Lavr Zhemailo as a tireless opponent of the terrible phenomenon which many of us call ‘the plague of the twentieth century’ – the epidemic of apparently motiveless suicides that is mowing down the ranks of our educated youth. The decease
d was a genuine crusader, who threw down the gauntlet to this insatiable, bloodthirsty dragon. How long is it since he came to conquer Moscow, this self-effacing reporter from Kovno who won his reputation at the provincial level and then, like many before him, moved to Russia’s Old Capital? He had to start again here, from the very bottom of the journalistic hierarchy – as a journeyman reporter, recording the petty chronicle of everyday life, describing house fires and other insignificant events. But talent always breaks through, and very soon the whole of Moscow was following with bated breath as the indefatigable journalist tracked the sinister ‘Lovers of Death’. In recent weeks Lavr Zhemailo appeared only rarely in the offices of the Courier. Our colleagues told us that his enthusiasm for the investigation was so great that he had virtually turned his entire life into a secret operation and submitted his reports only via the municipal post – no doubt he was afraid of being exposed by the ‘Lovers of Death’, or of attracting too much attention from the gentlemen of the police force. An outstanding example of a man’s genuine dedication to his profession!
Alas, the medic who seeks to treat epidemic illnesses runs the risk of contracting the plague himself. But perhaps a different comparison is appropriate here, with those devotees of the public health who quite deliberately inoculate themselves with the bacillus of some deadly ailment in order to study its infectious mechanism more closely, so that they can save others.
God only knows what turmoil ravaged our colleague’s soul on the final evening of his life. We know only one thing – he remained a journalist right up to the very last minute. The day before yesterday he phoned the makerup at the Moscow Courier, Mr Bozhovsky, and told him to hold the morning edition because he had ‘a bombshell’ for the front page.
Now we know what ‘bombshell’ the deceased had in mind – his own suicide. Well, the conclusion of Lavr Zhemailo’s career was certainly dramatic. It is only a pity that the horrific news failed to make the morning edition of the Moscow Courier. Fate played a final trick on the journalist – his body was only discovered at dawn, after the newspaper had already been printed, even though the spot he chose for his suicide was very visible – Rozhdestvensky Boulevard, which is only a stone’s throw from Trubnaya Square. The body hanging on an aspen tree really ought to have been noticed by some late passerby or the local constable, or a night cabby, especially since it was lit up by a nearby gas lamp, but it hung there until after five in the morning, when it was spotted by a street sweeper who came out to start clearing away the leaves.
Sleep well, passionate soul. We shall finish the job that you began. Our paper solemnly vows to raise the fallen banner anew and carry it forward. The demon of suicide will be banished from the streets of our Christian city. The Moscow Gazette will continue the journalistic investigation begun by our colleagues from the Courier. Watch out for our forthcoming articles.
The Editors
Moscow Gazette, 19
September (2 October) 1900,
front page
II. From Columbine’s Diary
Chosen!
After I discovered in my handbag a second card with the single word ‘Bald’1 written in the familiar Gothic letters, absolutely no doubt remained: I have been chosen, chosen!
Yesterday’s effusive outpourings on the subject of this realisation were laughable – the cluckings of a frightened hen. I have not simply crossed them out. I have torn out the two pages. I shall insert something more appropriate later.
Later? When later, if I have been told ‘Bald’?
The short word echoes inside my head, setting it ringing. When I go out I am not myself, I stumble into people on the pavement, I feel terrified and delighted by turns. But the main feeling I have is one of pride.
Columbine has changed completely. Perhaps she is no longer Columbine at all, but the alluring Distant Princess, far beyond the reach of any simple mortal.
All other interests and contingencies have been set aside, lost all meaning. Now I have a new ritual that sets my heart trembling: in the evening, when I get back from Prospero’s house, I take out the two small white rectangles, look at them, kiss them reverently and put them away in a drawer. I am loved!
The change that has taken place in me is so great that I feel no need to conceal it. Everyone in the club knows that Death is writing notes to me, but when I am asked to show these messages I always refuse. Genji is particularly persistent. As a man of intelligence, he realises that I am not fantasising, and he is very concerned – but I do not know if his concern is really for me or for the threat to his materialist views.
I cherish these messages and will not show them to anyone, they are mine and mine alone, addressed to me and meant for my eyes only.
I behave like a real queen at our meetings now. Or if not a queen, then at least the favourite or bride of the king. I am betrothed to the Royal Bridgroom. Iphigenia and Gorgon are green with envy, Caliban hisses in spite and the Doge looks at me with the melancholy eyes of a beaten dog. He is no Prospero, no master of the spirits of the earth and the air. He is not even Harlequin. He is the same kind of Pierrot as the mummy’s boy Petya, who once turned the head of a little fool in Irkutsk with his curly locks and bombastic versicles.
The evenings at the Doge’s apartment are my triumph, my benefit performance. But there are other times when I feel weakness creeping up on me. And then I am almost overcome by doubts.
No, no, I do not doubt the authenticity of the Signs. It is a different question that torments me: am I ready? Will I not feel regret, be unwilling to leave the light for the darkness?
The outcome is always the same. Perhaps I do feel regret, but the choice will be made with no hesitation. To fall into the abyss, into the dark embrace of my mysterious, ardently desired Beloved.
After all, it is now absolutely clear that death does not exist – at least, not the kind of death that I used to imagine: non-existence, absolute blackness, nothingness. There is no death, but there is Death. His kingdom is a magical land, great, mighty and beautiful, where such great bliss and wonderful new insights await me that the mere anticipation of it sets my heart aching sweetly. Ordinary people crawl into this magical land howling in terror, whimpering and afraid, broken by fatal disease or the ravages of age, with their physical and spiritual powers exhausted. But I shall enter the halls of Death, not as some pitiful dependent, but as a precious favourite, a long-awaited guest.
Fear hinders me. But what is fear? The sharp nails with which the foolish, pitiful, treacherous flesh clutches at life in order to wheedle a respite out of fate – for a year, a week, even a minute.
Yes, I am afraid. I am very afraid. Especially of pain at the final moment. And even more afraid of the pictures painted by my cowardly brain: a hole dug in the ground, the thud of dry lumps of earth against the lid of a coffin, death-worms in eye-sockets. And there is something from my childhood, from Gogol’s Horrific Revenge: ‘In the bottomless pit the dead gnaw on the dead man, and the dead man lying under the earth grows, gnawing on his own bones in terrible torment and shaking the ground horrifyingly.’
Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.
‘It’s time for me to go’
They argued heatedly, trying to shout each other down.
‘The place where the meetings are held is an open secret,’ the anatomist Horatio declared. ‘Cyrano must have given the address to his editors! I wouldn’t be surprised if we were being observed by newspaper hacks from the windows of nearby houses. And one day we’ll go out after a meeting and be met by flashing magnesium. We should stop the meetings temporarily.’
‘Shtupid nonsense!’ retorted Rosencrantz. ‘You haf no faith! Ve must trust in Schicksal!’
‘Destiny,’ his brother explained.
‘Yes, yes, destiny! Let things be as zey vill.’
‘It is not very likely that Cyrano gave the secret away,’ said Kriton, supporting the young man. ‘Why would he kill the chicken that was laying his golden eggs?’
Simple-minded Iphige
nia fluttered her eyelids and said what was on everybody’s mind: ‘Gentlemen, we’re better off together, aren’t we? You can see, Death plays by his own rules. He takes whoever he wants. It’s frightening to sit at home alone with no one to talk to, but here we can all keep each other company . . .’
The ‘lovers’ looked at each other and there was a pause. We are like accomplices in a crime or condemned prisoners awaiting execution, thought Columbine.
‘But where’s Prospero?’ Petya asked plaintively, glancing round at the door. ‘What does he think?’
Genji moved to a seat in the corner, to smoke a cigar. He calmly released thin streams of bluish smoke into the air, taking no part in the conversation. Caliban also remained silent, listening to the arguers with a condescending smile.
The bookkeeper had been behaving strangely in general this evening. What had happened to the habitual brash impatience with which he had always waited for the spiritualist seance or the ‘Wheel of Death’?
Caliban only spoke when the Doge entered the salon, dressed in a black judge’s robe. The most fanatical of Death’s champions walked out into the centre of the room and shouted: ‘Stop talking rubbish! Listen to me instead! It’s my turn to celebrate now! I’ve been chosen! I’ve been sent a message too!’ He waved a piece of paper in the air. ‘See, you can check for yourselves. I’m not hiding anything. It’s a fact, not some foolish fantasy.’
The last remark was accompanied by a contemptuous glance, directed at Columbine.
Everyone crowded round the bookkeeper. The small rectangle, one eighth of a standard sheet of writing paper, was passed from hand to hand. It bore three words written in block capitals: ‘TESTED, APPROVED, DRAFTED’.
