He Lover of Death (4 page)

Anyway, it turned out it was possible to live in Khitrovka, and even better than in some other places. Of course, the place had its own laws and customs, like anywhere else, you had to have those, to make it easier for people to live together and understand what they could and couldn’t do. There were lots of laws, and you needed to live in Khitrovka a long time to remember them all. Mostly the way of things was clear and simple, you could figure it out for yourself: treat outsiders anyway you like, but don’t touch your own; live your own life, cause your neighbour no strife. But there were some laws you couldn’t make any sense of, no matter how hard you racked your brains.

For instance, if someone crowed like a cock any earlier than two in the morning – out of mischief, or drunkenness, or just playing the fool – you were supposed to thrash him within an inch of his life. But no one in Khitrovka could explain to Senka why. There must have been some point to it at some time, only now even the oldest old men couldn’t remember what that was. But even so, you still couldn’t crow like a cock in the middle of the night.

Or take this, for instance. If any of the mamselles started putting on airs and cleaning her teeth with shop powder, and her client caught her out, then he had the right to knock all her teeth out, and the mamselle’s pimp had to accept the loss. Clean them with crushed chalk if you want to be posh, but stay clear of that powder, that was invented by the Germans.

There were two kinds of laws in Khitrovka: those from times gone by, the way things used to be in the olden days, and new ones – those were announced by the Council when they were needed. Say, for instance, a horse-tram sets off down the street. Who ought to work it – the ‘twitchers’, who dip their fingers in all the pockets, or the ‘slicers’, who cut them open with a sharpened coin? The Council deliberated, and decided it wasn’t a job for the slicers, because the same crowd rode the horse-tram all the time, and soon they wouldn’t have any pockets left.

The Council was made up of ‘grandfathers’, the most respected thieves and tricksters, those who had come back from doing hard labour, or were so old and feeble they didn’t work any more. The grandfathers could untangle any kind of tricky knot, and if anyone offended against the Council’s rules, they meted out the punishment.

If someone made everybody else’s life a misery, they threw him out of Khitrovka. If he really fouled things up, they could even take his life. Sometimes they might give someone up to the law, but not for what the Council really thought he was guilty of – they ordered him to take the rap for someone else’s crimes, one of the ‘businessmen’s’. That way things worked out fairer all round. If you tried to cheat Khitrovka, you had to answer for it: purge your crime, bleach yourself white and help the good people, and they’d put in a good word for you in the jailhouse or in Siberia.

And they didn’t hand over a rogue they’d convicted to just anyone in the police, only to their own man, Boxman, the senior constable in the Khitrovka precinct.

This Boxman had served more than twenty years around here; Khitrovka wouldn’t be Khitrovka without him. If Khitrovka was a world, then he was like the whale it rested on, because Boxman was authority, and people can’t live without any authority at all, otherwise they start forgetting who they are. There has to be a little bit of authority, a tiny little bit, and not according to some rules on a piece of paper, thought up by some outsider in some place no one had ever seen, but according to justice – so that every man could understood why his face was getting blacked.

Tough but fair, that was what everybody said about Boxman, and Boxman really was his surname. He wouldn’t deliberately do you wrong. Everyone called him ‘Ivan Fedotovich’ to his face, as a mark of respect. Only Senka couldn’t tell if it was just a nickname that he’d got from his surname, or if it was because in olden times, so they said, all the constables in Moscow were called ‘boxmen’, because of the kiosks they used to stand in. Or maybe it was because he lived in the official police box on the edge of the Khitrovka market. Any time when he wasn’t pounding his beat, he sat at home in front of an open window, keeping a watch on the square, reading books and newspapers and drinking tea from his famous silver samovar with medallions that were worth a thousand roubles. And there weren’t any locks on the box. What would Boxman want locks for? In the first place, what good were they, when the place was surrounded by top-class lock-pickers and window-men? They could open any lock, easy as falling off a log. And in the second place, no one would go trying to filch anything from Boxman – not unless he was tired of living, that is.

From his window the constable could hear everything and see everything, and what he couldn’t see or hear was whispered to him by his loyal informers. That was above board, it wasn’t forbidden by the Council, because Boxman was part of Khitrovka. If he’d lived by the written laws and not the laws of Khitrovka, they’d have knifed him ages back. No, when he took someone into the station, it was all done with the proper understanding: he had to do it, to show his bosse she was doing
something
. Only Boxman didn’t put anyone away very often – not unless he absolutely had to – mostly he taught people their lesson with his own hands, and they kowtowed to him and said thank you very much. In all the years he’d been there, only one pair of shysters had ever gone for him with a knife – escaped convicts, they were, not from Khitrovka. He beat the two of them to death with his massive great fists, and the police superintendent gave him a medal. Everyone respected him for it, and the Council gave him a gold watch for the inconvenience.

So once Senka had settled in a bit, it was clear enough that Khitrovka wasn’t such a terrible place. It was more cheerful there, and freer, and it goes without saying that he ate better. In winter, when it got cold, it would probably be tough, but then winter was still a long way off.

HOW SENKA GOT TO
KNOW DEATH

It happened about ten days after Senka saw Death that first time.

He was hanging about on the Yauza Boulevard, in front of her house, spitting at the bollard they tied the horses to and staring at the half-open windows.

He already knew where she lived, the lads had shown him and, to tell the truth, this wasn’t the first day he’d spent cooling his heels here. Twice he’d been lucky and caught glimpses of her from the distance. One time, four days before, Death had come out of the house wearing a black shawl on her head and a black dress, got into the fancy gig that was waiting for her and driven off to church for mass. And just yesterday he’d seen her arm in arm with the Prince: dressed up like a lady, wearing a hat with a feather in it. Her beau was taking her somewhere – to a restaurant, maybe, or the theatre.

He took a gander at the Prince at the same time. Well, what was there to say, a superb figure of a man. After all, he was the most important hold-up artist in all of Moscow, and that’s no small potatoes. The governor-general, Simeon Alexandrovich, had it easy, he was born the tsar’s uncle, no wonder he was a governor and a general, but just you try climbing up to the top of the heap and making yourself mister big, number one, out of all the crooks in Moscow. It was a real rags-to-riches story. And his sidekicks were all really grand lads, everyone said so. They said some of them were really young too, not much older than Senka. Would you believe some people’s luck, ending up in the Prince’s gang straight off like that, when you were still green and sappy! They had respect, any girls they wanted, more money than they could ever count, and they dressed up like real fancy dandies.

When Senka saw him, the famous bandit was wearing a red silk shirt, a lemon satin waistcoat, and a crimson velvet frock coat. He had a boater perched on the back of his head, gold rings with precious stones on his fingers and calf boots that shone like mirrors. A real sight for sore eyes! A dashing light-brown forelock, blue eyes with a bold stare to them, a gold crown glinting in his red teeth, and a chin like chiselled stone, with a dimple right in the middle of it.
They’re not just a couple – a real picture, that’s what they are,
Senka thought, and sighed.

Not that he had any stupid dreams in his head that should give him reason to sigh, God forbid. He wasn’t trying to get Death to notice him either. He just wanted to get another look at her, so he could properly make out what was so unusual about her and why his insides clenched up tight, like a fist, the moment he laid eyes on her. So he’d been wearing down his soles here on the boulevard for days now. As soon as he finished thieving with the lads, he went straight to the Yauza.

He’d examined the house thoroughly from the outside. And he knew what it was like on the inside too. The plumber Parkhom, who fixed Death’s washbasin, told him the Prince had set up his lady love in real classy style, even laid in water pipes. If Parkhom wasn’t lying, then Death had a special room with a big china tub that was called a bath, and the hot water flowed into it straight out of a pipe, from this boiler up on the wall – gas-heated, it was. Death got washed in that tub almost every day that God sent. Senka imagined her sitting there all pink and steamy, scrubbing her shoulders with the sponge, and the fantasy made him feel all hot and steamy too.

The house was pretty impressive from the outside too. There used to be some general’s manor house here, but it burned down, and just this wing was left. It was pretty small, with only four windows along the boulevard. But this was a special spot, right smack on the boundary line between the Khitrovka slums and the well-heeled Serebryaniki district. On the other side of the Yauza, the houses were taller and cleaner, with fancier plastering, but here on the Khitrovka side, they weren’t so smart. Like the horses they sold at the horse market: look at it from the rump, and it seems like a horse all right, but from any other angle it’s definitely an ass.

And so the front of Death’s house that overlooked the boulevard was neat and dignified, like, but the back led out into a really rotten passage, and a gateway only spitting distance from Rumyantsev’s flophouse. You could see what a handy home the Prince had found for his girl – if anything happened, if he was ambushed at her place, he could dash out the back way, or even jump out of a window and make a beeline for the flophouse, and there was no way anyone could ever find him in all the underground collidors and passages there.

But from the boulevard, where the well-bred people strolled about between the trees, you couldn’t see the back passage, let alone Rumyantsev’s place. Khitrovkans couldn’t go out past the fancy railings – the coppers would sweep them up with their broom in a flash and stick them in their rubbish cart. Even here, on the Khitrovka waterside, Senka tried not to make himself too obvious, he stuck close to the wall of the house. He was behaving himself proper too, not like some kind of riff-raff, but even so, Boxman spotted him with his eagle eye as he was walking past and stopped.

‘What are you doing skulking over there?’ he asked. ‘You better watch yourself, Speedy, I’m warning you.’

Now that was him all over! He already knew who Senka was and what his moniker was, even though Senka was still new in Khitrovka. That was Boxman for you.

‘Don’t you dare nick a thing,’ he said, ‘you’re out of your jurisdiction, because this ain’t Khitrovka, it’s a civil promenade. You look out, young Speedy, you sly little monkey, I’ve got you under special observation until the first contravention of legality, and if I catch you, or even suspect you, I’ll issue you a reprimand across that ugly mug of yours, fine you a clout round the ear and sanction you round the ribs with my belt.’

‘I’m not up to nothing, Uncle Boxman,’ Senka whined, pulling a face. ‘I just, you know, wanted to take the air.’

And for that he got a cast-iron mitt across the back of his head, smack crunch between the ears.

‘I’ll teach you what for, snarling “Boxman” like that. What a damned liberty! I’m Ivan Fedotovich to you, all right?’

And Senka said meekly:

‘All right, Uncle Ivan Fedotovich.’

Boxman stopped scowling then. ‘That’s right, you snot-nosed little monkey.’ And he walked on – big, solemn and slow, like a barge floating off down the Moscow river.

So Boxman went and Senka stayed right where he was, looking. But now he wanted more so he tried to figure out how to get Death to come to the window.

He had nothing better to do, so he took the green beads out of his pocket, the ones he’d snaffled just that morning, and started studying them.

What happened with the beads was this.

As Senka was walking away from Sukharevka through the little lanes around Sretenka Street. . .

No, first you need to be told why he went to Sukharevka. Now that was really something to be proud of. . .

Senka didn’t just go off to Sukharevka for no reason, he went on good honest business – to get even with his Uncle Zot. He lived according to the laws of Khitrovka now, and those laws said you should never let a bad man get away with anything. You had to settle every score, and it was best to pay it back with interest, otherwise you weren’t really one of the lads – just some wet-tailed little minnow.

So Senka set out, and Mikheika the Night-Owl tagged along as well, to keep him company. If not for Mikheika, he probably wouldn’t have dared try anything like that in broad daylight, he would have done the job at night, but now he had no choice, he had to play the hard man.

And it all turned out fine, really grand in fact.

They hid in the attic of the Möbius pawnshop, opposite his uncle’s shop. Mikheika just sat and gawped, it was Senka that did everything, with his own two hands.

He took out a lead pellet, aimed his catapult and shot it right into the middle of the shop window – crash! Uncle Zot had three of those huge glass windowpanes with ‘Haberdashery’ written across them in silver letters. And he was very proud of them. Sometimes he would send Senka to scrub those rotten panes as many as four times a day, so Senka had a score to settle with the windows as well.