by Boris Akunin
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE
The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin
BORIS AKUNIN
Translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
CONTENTS
Title Page
Eight 1s Until the Benefit Performance
A Harmonious Man
Oh, How Very Awkward!
Elizaveta’s Day of Remembrance
A Strange World
Initial Acquaintance
The Dwellers in the Ark
The Desecration of the Tablets
There Are No Problems that Cannot Be Solved
Seven 1s Until the Benefit Performance
The Vengeance of Genghis Khan
Terrifying
The Theory of Rupture
To Hell with The Cherry Orchard!
Unforgivable Weakness
A Heart on a Chain
Across the Pyrenees
Five 1s Until the Benefit Performance
Fishing with Live Bait
The Judgement of Fate
A Million Torments
The Course of the Illness
The Premiere
A Ruined Banquet
Specialists at Work
Back to the Good Old Days
A True Friend
The Deer Grove Operation
The Return
Four 1s Until the Benefit Performance
What a Fool!
The Daily Round
Life Is Over
The Battle with the Dragon
Two 1s Until the Benefit Performance
New and Old Theories
Fandorin’s Work of Deduction Is Hindered
The Benefit Performance
Eleven 1s and the Figure 9
Twice Eleven
After the Benefit Performance
Reconstruction
On Love and Marriage
Appendix
Also by Boris Akunin
More on W&N
Copyright
Eight 1s
UNTIL THE BENEFIT PERFORMANCE
A HARMONIOUS MAN
Erast Petrovich Fandorin began regarding himself as a harmonious man from the moment when he mounted the first rung on the ladder of wisdom. This event occurred neither too late nor too soon, but at precisely the right moment – at an age when it is already time to draw conclusions, but it is still possible to change one’s plans.
The most substantial conclusion drawn from the years he had already lived resolved itself into a supremely brief maxim that was worth all the philosophical teachings of the world taken together: growing older is good. ‘Growing older’ signified ‘maturing’, that is, not deteriorating, but improving – becoming stronger, wiser, more complete. If, as a man grew older, he had a feeling of impoverishment instead of enrichment, then his ship had wandered off course.
To continue the maritime metaphor, one might say that Fandorin had cruised past the reefs of the fifties, where men so often suffer shipwreck, under full sail and with his standard fluttering aloft in the breeze. The crew had very nearly mutinied, to be sure, but disaster had been avoided.
The attempted mutiny actually took place on his fiftieth birthday, which, of course, was no accident. There is an indisputable magic in the combination of figures that is not felt only by those who are totally devoid of imagination.
Having celebrated his birthday with a walk along the seabed in a diving suit (at that time Erast Petrovich was a passionate enthusiast of deep-sea diving), in the evening he sat on the veranda, watching the public stroll along the esplanade, sipping on his rum punch and mentally repeating to himself: ‘I am fifty, I am fifty’ – as if he were trying to get the taste of an unfamiliar drink. Suddenly his gaze fell on a decrepit little old man in a white panama hat, a desiccated, trembling mummy, who was being pushed along in a wheelchair by a mulatto servant. The gaze of this Methuselah was clouded and there was a thread of saliva dangling from his chin.
I hope I shall not live to that age, Fandorin thought – and suddenly realised that he was frightened. And then he felt even more frightened by the fact that the thought of old age had frightened him.
His mood was ruined. He went back to his hotel room – to tell his jade beads and paint the hieroglyph for ‘old age’ on a sheet of paper. When the sheet had been covered with renderings of the symbol in every possible style, the problem had resolved itself, a concept had been elaborated. The shipboard mutiny had been suppressed. Erast Petrovich had mastered the first stage of wisdom.
Life could not be a descent, only an ascent – right to the very final moment. That was one.
That much-quoted line by Pushkin – ‘Days follow days in flight, each day bearing off particles of being’ – contained an error of logic. The poet had probably been in a melancholic mood, or it was simply a slip of the pen. The verse should have read: ‘Days follow days in flight, each day bringing new particles of being’. If a man lived correctly, the flow of time rendered him richer, not poorer. That was two.
Ageing should be a profitable transaction, a natural exchange of physical and mental strength for spiritual strength, of outward beauty for inner. That was three.
Everything depended on the quality of your wine. If it was cheap, age would sour it. If it was noble, it would only improve. The conclusion from this was: The older a man becomes, the more his quality must improve. That was four.
Oh, and there was a fifth point as well. Erast Petrovich had no intention of renouncing his physical and mental strength. And he devised a special programme to ensure that he wouldn’t.
In each succeeding year of his life he had to conquer a new frontier. Actually two frontiers: a physical, sporting one and an intellectual one. Then growing old would not be frightening, but interesting.
A long-term plan for the prospective territorial expansion was drawn up quite rapidly – a plan so ambitious that the next fifty years might not suffice.
Of his as yet unfulfilled goals in the intellectual line, Fandorin intended to achieve the following: at long last, learn the German language properly, since war with Germany and Austro-Hungary was obviously inevitable; master Chinese (one year was not enough for this, two would be required – it would have been longer, but he already knew the hieroglyphs); fill a shameful lacuna in his knowledge of the world by familiarising himself thoroughly with the Moslem culture, for which he would have to learn Arabic and make a thorough study of the Koran in the original (set aside three years); read his way through classical and modern literature (Erast Petrovich had always found himself chronically short of time for this) – and so on, and so forth.
His sporting goals, for the immediate future, included the following: learning to fly an aeroplane; devoting a year or so to an intriguing Olympic pastime useful for improving motor coordination – pole-vaulting; taking up mountain-climbing; and, quite definitely, mastering skin-diving, using the new type of rebreather, in which the improved oxygen-supply regulator made it possible to dive to a significant depth for long periods. Agh, there was far too much to list everything!
In the five years that had passed since Fandorin had taken fright at his fright, the methodology of correct ageing had already produced quite decent results. Every year he had ascended one step higher – or rather, two steps – so that now he looked down on his former, fifty-year-old self.
By his fifty-first birthday, as an intellectual accomplishment, Erast Petrovich had learned the Spanish language, the lack of which he had felt so badly while cruising in the Caribbean. The ‘step up’ for his body had been trick riding. Of course, he had ridden before, but not brilliantly, and this was a useful ability and in addition highly entertaining – far more enjoyable than the automobile races of which he had grown
so weary.
By the age of fifty-two Fandorin had learned to speak Italian and significantly improved his level of skill in kenjutsu – Japanese swordsmanship. He had been taught this splendid science by the Japanese consul, Baron Shigeyama, a holder of the highest dan. By the end of the assigned period Erast Petrovich was winning two out of every three contests with the baron (and conceding one, but only in order not to offend his sensei).
The fifty-third year of Fandorin’s life was devoted, on the one hand, to classical and modern philosophy (unfortunately, his education had been limited to the grammar school); and on the other, to motorcycle riding, which, in terms of thrills, was in every way a match for equestrianism.
During the previous year of 1910, Erast Petrovich’s mind had been occupied with chemistry, the most rapidly developing of modern sciences, and he had occupied his body with juggling (at first sight a trivial matter, mere foolish nonsense, but it fine-hones the synchronisation of movements and precise motor skills).
In the current season it had seemed logical to him to move on from juggling to tightrope walking – an excellent means for consolidating one’s physical and nervous equilibrium.
His intellectual exercises this year were also in part a continuation of the previous year’s enthusiasm for chemistry. Fandorin decided to devote this period of twelve months to an old passion – criminalistic science. The appointed term had already expired, but the research continued, since it had taken an unexpected and highly promising direction, a line that apparently no one apart from Erast Petrovich was pursuing seriously.
This development involved new methods for dealing with witnesses and suspects: how could one induce them to be entirely candid? In barbaric times a means that was both cruel and unreliable had been employed – torture. Now, however, it had emerged that the most complete and veracious results could be achieved by using a combination of three methods – psychological, chemical and hypnotic. If a person who possessed the required information, but did not wish to part with it, was first of all assigned to the correct psychological type and appropriately prepared, and his will to resist was weakened with certain specific compounds, and he was then hypnotised, his candour would be absolute and complete.
The experimental results had appeared impressive. However, serious doubts had arisen concerning their practical value. The problem was not even that Fandorin would never, for anything in the world, have shared his discoveries with the state (it was terrible to think what use could be made of such a weapon by the unscrupulous gentlemen of the Okhrana or the gendarmerie). And in the course of an investigation, Erast Petrovich would scarcely have permitted himself to transform another person, even a bad person, into an object of chemical manipulation. Immanuel Kant, who asserted that human beings must not be treated as a means for the achievement of a goal, would not have approved – and after a year of philosophical studies Fandorin regarded the sage of Königsberg as the supreme moral authority. Therefore Erast Petrovich’s research into the criminalistic ‘problem of candour’ was rather abstractly scientific in nature.
Of course, it remained an open question whether it was ethical to use the new method in investigating especially monstrous atrocities, as well as crimes fraught with serious danger for society and the state.
Fandorin had been pondering intently on precisely this subject for more than three days now – since the moment when news had broken of an attempt on the life of the chairman of the council of ministers, Stolypin. On the evening of 1 September in Kiev a certain young man had fired two shots at the most important figure in the political life of Russia.
Many aspects of this event appeared phantasmagorical. Firstly, the bloody drama had unfolded not just anywhere, but in a theatre, before the eyes of a large audience. Secondly, the show had been an extremely jolly one – an adaptation of Pushkin’s Tale of Tsar Saltan. Thirdly, the audience had included a real tsar, not of the fairytale kind, whom the killer had left untouched. Fourthly, the theatre had been so well guarded that no one could possibly have infiltrated it, not even Pushkin’s hero Gvidon when he transformed himself into a mosquito. Viewers had only been admitted on the basis of individual passes issued by the Department for the Defence of Public Security – the Okhrana. Fifthly, and most fantastically of all, the terrorist had actually been in possession of such a pass, and not a counterfeit, but the genuine article. Sixthly, the killer had not only managed to enter the theatre, but also to carry in a firearm …
To judge from the information that had reached Erast Petrovich (and his sources of information were reliable), the arrested man had not yet given any answers that provided a solution to this riddle. Now this was a case where the new means of interrogation would have been useful!
While the head of the government was dying (the injury, alas, was fatal), while the incompetent investigators simply wasted their time with fatuous nonsense, an immense empire, already overburdened with multitudinous problems, was trembling and swaying – it could topple over at any moment now, like an overloaded cart after the wagoner has tumbled out of it on a steep bend. Pyotr Stolypin had been altogether too important to the stability of the nation.
Fandorin’s feelings about this man, who had governed Russia singlehandedly for five years, were complicated. While respecting Stolypin’s courage and resolute spirit, Erast Petrovich regarded many items on the premier’s policy agenda as mistaken or even dangerous. However, there could be no doubt whatever that Stolypin’s death would strike a terrible blow at the state and threaten to plunge the country into fresh chaos. A very great deal now depended on the speed and efficiency of the investigation.
There could also be no doubt that Fandorin would be invited to take part in this effort as an independent expert. This had happened repeatedly in the past when the investigation of some exceptional case ran into a dead end, and it was impossible to imagine any case more exceptional and important than the assassination attempt in Kiev. Especially since Erast Petrovich had been acquainted in person with the chairman of the council of ministers – on several occasions he had participated, at Stolypin’s request, in investigating puzzling or especially delicate cases of national importance.
The times were long over when a quarrel with the authorities had obliged Fandorin to leave his native country and home city for many long years. Erast Petrovich’s personal foe had once been the most powerful man in the old capital, but now he (or rather, the little that remained of his most illustrious body) had long been reclining in a grandiose sepulchre, mourned but little by his fellow Muscovites. There was nothing to prevent Fandorin from spending as much time as he wished in Moscow. Nothing, that is, except an addiction to adventures and new impressions.
When he was in town, Erast Petrovich lived in a rented wing of a house on Little Assumption Lane, known in popular parlance as Cricket Lane. A very, very long time ago, about two hundred years in fact, a certain merchant by the name of Cricketinov had built his stone mansion here. The merchant had passed on, the palatial dwelling had changed hands many times over, but the cosy name had been retained in the tenacious grip of Moscow’s memory. When resting from his wanderings or investigations, Fandorin lived a steady, quiet life here – like a cricket behind the stove.
The accommodation was comfortable and rather spacious for two: six rooms, a bathroom, plumbing, electricity, a telephone – for 135 roubles a month, including coal for the Dutch stove heating. It was within these walls that the greater part of the intellectual and sporting programme devised by the retired councillor of state was put into effect. Sometimes he enjoyed imagining how, surfeited with travelling and adventures, he would settle down permanently in Cricket Lane, devoting himself completely to the enthralling process of growing old.
Some day. Not just yet. Not soon. Probably after seventy.
Erast Petrovich was very far from surfeited as yet. Beyond the bounds of the cricket world behind the stove, there still remained too many fantastically interesting places, occurrences and phenomena of all kinds. Som
e were separated from him by thousands of kilometres, some by centuries.
About ten years previously Fandorin had developed a serious fascination with the underwater world. He had even built a submarine according to his own design, which was registered at the distant island of Aruba, and had constantly improved its construction. This had involved immense expenditure, but after he had successfully used his own submarine to raise a precious cargo from the seabed, his hobby had not merely paid for its own costs with plenty to spare, it had freed Erast Petrovich from the need to charge a fee for working as a detective on investigations or as a consultant on criminalistic matters.
Now he could take on only the most interesting cases, or those which, for one reason or another, it was impossible to decline. In any case, the status of an individual acting out of benevolence or kindness was very much more pleasant than the position of a hired functionary, no matter how authoritative.
Fandorin was rarely left in peace for long, because of the reputation that he had acquired in international professional circles over the last twenty years. Since the ill-starred war with Japan, the independent expert’s own state had often turned to him for help. There had been times when Erast Petrovich refused – his concepts of good and evil did not always coincide with those of the government. It was only with extreme reluctance, for instance, that he accepted cases involving internal politics, unless it was a matter of some especially heinous villainy.
This business of the attempt on the prime minister’s life had a whiff of precisely that kind of villainy about it. There were too many strange, unexplained aspects. According to confidential information received, someone in St Petersburg was of the same opinion. Fandorin’s friends in the capital had informed him by telephone that yesterday the minister of justice had set out for Kiev, in order to head up the investigation in person. That meant that he had no confidence in the Department of Police and the Okhrana. If not today, then tomorrow the ‘independent expert’ Fandorin would also be invited to join the investigation. And if he was not invited, it would mean that the rot in the apparatus of state had spread to the very top …
