She Lover of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin (14 page)

Then Prospero glanced round at the assembled company, and everyone’s eyes lit up just as the candles had done a moment earlier. Columbine felt the usual effect of that hypnotic glance. She was suddenly feverish and found it hard to breathe; she felt that she was finally waking up at last, emerging from a hibernation that had lasted for three whole days while there had not been any evening meetings.

Columbine and also, she assumed, all the others, were swept away by the most magical and wonderful feeling that anyone can experience – the anticipation of a miracle.

The sorcerer halted by the table, and it was only then that most of those present noticed that all the chairs except one, the chairman’s, had disappeared, and there was something covered with a patterned shawl lying in the middle of the table: something large, high and round, like a wedding cake.

‘I used to be an engineer and, so they say, quite a good one,’ said the Doge, smiling slyly into his grey moustache. ‘But I assure you, none of my inventions can compare with the brilliant simplicity of this one. Ophelia has been united with the Eternal Bridegroom. We are glad for her, but now who will help us to maintain contact with the World Beyond? I have racked my brains over this problem and found an answer. What informs a man most clearly and unambiguously of the attitude that fate takes toward him?’

He waited a moment for an answer, but none of the eleven seekers spoke.

‘Come now!’ Prospero encouraged them. ‘It was one of you who gave me the idea of the solution – Prince Genji.’

Everybody looked at Genji. He was frowning at the Doge, as if suspecting some cunning trick.

‘Blind chance,’ Prospero declared triumphantly. ‘Nothing has keener sight than blind chance! It is the will of the Supreme Judge. A spiritualist seance is an unnecessary affectation, an entertainment for bored, hysterical ladies. But here everything will be simple and clear, without words.’

And, so saying, he jerked the shawl off the table. Something brightly coloured and round glinted with a hundred brilliant points of light. A roulette wheel! An ordinary roulette wheel, the kind to be seen in any casino.

However, when the seekers crowded round the table and examined the wheel more closely, it transpired that this wheel of fortune had one unusual feature: where the double zero ought to have been, there was a white skull and crossbones.

‘This invention is called the “Wheel of Death”. Now everyone will be able to ascertain his own relationship with the Eternal Bride,’ said Prospero. ‘And here is your new medium.’ He opened his hand, and there, glittering on his palm, was a small golden ball. ‘This whimsical piece of metal, which at first glance would not appear to be subject to anybody’s will, will become the messenger of love.’

‘But surely messages can be sent by other means too?’ the Lioness of Ecstasy asked in anxious alarm. ‘Or can it now only be through the roulette wheel?’

She’s worried about her Signs, Columbine guessed. After all, the Lioness and the Tsarevich have established their own secret relationship. I wonder what it is. What kind of Signs does he send her?

‘I am not Death’s personal interpreter,’ the Doge said in a stern, sad voice. ‘I do not have absolute mastery of her language. How would I know what means she might choose to inform her Chosen Ones that their feelings are reciprocated? But this means of communicating with fate appears irrefutable to me. It is similar to the means used by the ancients to elicit from the oracle the will of Morta, the Goddess of Death.’

The Lioness of Ecstasy seemed completely satisfied with this answer, and she walked away from the table with an air of superiority.

‘Every one of you will have an equal chance,’ Prospero continued. ‘Anyone who feels ready, whose spirit is sufficiently strong, may try his or her luck today. The lucky player who throws the ball so that it lands on the death’s head is the Chosen One.’

Cyrano asked: ‘What if everyone tries their luck and no one wins? Do we carry on spinning the wheel all night long?’

‘Indeed, the probability of success is not very high.’ Prospero agreed. ‘One chance out of thirty-eight. If no one is lucky, then Death has not yet made her choice and the game will be continued the next time. Agreed?’

The first to respond was Caliban.

‘An excellent idea, Teacher! At least everything will be fair, with no favourites. That Ophelia of yours couldn’t stand me. I’d have been waiting till the end of the century with her seances. And by the way, some people who arrived after me have already scooped the prize. But now everything will be fair. Fortune can’t be duped! Only you ought to let us keep on trying our luck until we get a result.’

‘It will be as I have said,’ the Doge interrupted him sternly. ‘Death is not a bride who can be dragged to the altar by force.’

‘But surely only someone who is morally prepared can throw the ball? Participation in the game is not compulsory?’ Kriton asked in a quiet voice. When the Doge nodded in agreement, he declared in relief: ‘I’d really had quite enough of all that spiritualist wailing. The roulette is quicker, and there are no doubts.’

‘I think the idea of this game of chance is vulgar,’ Gdlevsky said with a shrug. ‘Death is not a croupier in a white shirt-front. Her Signs must be more poetic and exalted. But we can spin the little ball round and round to titillate our nerves. Why not?’

Lorelei exclaimed passionately: ‘You are right, my radiant boy. This device does belittle the majesty of Death. But there is one thing you have not taken into account. Death is no snob, and he will talk to anyone who is in love with him in a language that she can understand. Let them spin their wheel, what does that matter to you and me?’

Columbine noticed that Caliban, who envied both of the poetical luminaries and was jealous of their relationship with the Doge, cringed at these words.

The anatomist Horatio cleared his throat, adjusted his pince-nez and enquired in a businesslike voice: ‘Very well, let us assume that one of us has landed on the skull. Then what? What action, so to speak, is taken after that? Does the lucky winner immediately go dashing off to hang himself or drown himself ? Surely you agree that performing this act requires a certain degree of preparation? But if it is postponed until the next morning, then weakness may stir in a person’s soul. Would it not be an insult to Death and all of us if her Chosen One were to . . . mmm . . . leave her standing at the altar? Pardon me for being so direct, but I am not entirely sure of all our members.’

‘Are you . . . Are you alluding to me?’ Petya cried out in a trembling voice. ‘How dare you! Just because I have been in the club for a long time and am still alive, it doesn’t mean that I am avoiding it or playing the coward. I have been waiting for a message from the spirits! And I’m willing to spin the roulette wheel first!’

Petya’s emotional outburst took Columbine by surprise – she had imagined that the anatomist’s thrust was directed against her. But if the cap fits . . . She had just that moment imagined that she would have to die today, and the thought had been so unbearable that she had started trembling in fear.

Prospero raised his hand to call for silence.

‘Do not be concerned, I have taken care of everything.’ He pointed to the door. ‘Through there, in the study, there is a glass of malmsey. And dissolved in the wine is cyanide, the most noble of poisons. The Chosen One will drain the wedding cup, then walk along the street to the boulevard, sit on a bench, and a quarter of an hour later he or she will fall into a quiet sleep. It is a good way to depart. With no pain and no regrets.’

‘That’s a different matter,’ said Horatio, chewing on his lips. ‘In that case I’m in favour.’

The twins exchanged glances and Guildenstern spoke for both of them: ‘Yes, we like this method better than spiritualism. Mathematical
Wahrscheinlichkeit
¹
is more serious than the voices of the spirits.’

Someone touched Columbine’s elbow. Turning round, she saw Genji.

‘How do you like Prospero’s invention?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘You’re the only one who hasn’t s-said anything.’

‘I don’t know. I feel like all the others.’

It was strange – never before had she felt so alive as during these moments that might be the last before her death.

‘Prospero is a genuine magician,’ Columbine whispered excitedly. ‘Who else could fill our souls with this tremulous, all-embracing rapture of existence? “All that threatens ruin is fraught with delight for the mortal heart.” Oh, how true that is! “Perhaps the pledge of immortality”!’

‘You mean to say that if your ball lands on the skull, you will d-dutifully drink that lousy muck?’

Columbine imagined the treacherous wine flowing in a rivulet of fire down her throat and into her body, and she shuddered. And the most terrible thing would be to get through those final fifteen minutes, with your heart still beating and your mind still wakeful, but with no way back, because you are already a living corpse. Who would find the dead body on the bench, and when? And what if it was sitting there slumped over with its eyes goggling and saliva dribbling from its open mouth?

She imagined it so vividly that it set her lips trembling and her eyelashes fluttering.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Genji whispered, squeezing her elbow to reassure her. ‘You won’t land on the skull.’

‘Why are you so sure?’ she asked, offended. ‘Do you think that Death could not choose me? That I am unworthy to be her lover?’

He sighed.

‘Ah indeed, our Russian soil is not yet ready for Mr Prospero’s teachings, that much is clear from basic grammar. What was that you just said? “
Her lover
”. That smacks of perversion.’

Columbine realised that he was trying to cheer her up and she attempted to smile, but it came out forced.

Genji repeated what he had said, speaking in a perfectly serious voice.

‘Don’t be afraid. You won’t have to drink poison, because
I
am certain to land on the p-precious skull.’

‘But you’re afraid yourself!’ she guessed, and her own fear immediately receded to make way for gloating. ‘So much for your desperate personality – you’re afraid too! You’re only playing the part of a superman, but actually you’re afraid of the end, just like everyone else.’

Genji shrugged.

‘I t-told you about my special relationship with Fortune.’

And he walked away.

Meanwhile everything was ready for the ritual.

The Doge raised one hand in the air, calling the aspirants to silence. He was holding the small ball between his fore-finger and thumb and it sparkled and flashed like a bright little golden star.

‘And so, ladies and gentlemen. Who feels ready? Who is the first?’

Genji immediately threw up his hand, but his rivals’ response was more energetic.

Caliban and Rosencrantz, Columbine’s timid admirer, exclaimed in chorus: ‘Me! Me!’

The bookkeeper glared at his rival as if he wanted to tear him to pieces. But Rosencrantz gave Columbine a haughty smile and was rewarded with a gentle smile of approval.

Neither they nor Prospero had noticed Genji’s reserved gesture.

‘Boy!’ Caliban fumed. ‘How dare you? I’m first! I’m older, and I’ve been a member of the club for longer!’

But the quiet little German lowered his head like a bull and was obviously not prepared to give way.

Then Caliban appealed to the Doge.

‘What is all this, Teacher? A Russian can’t breathe in his own country any longer! Whichever way you spit, there’s nothing but Germans and Polacks and Yids and Caucasians! And they not only prevent us from living, they even try to jump the queue to the next world! You decide for us!’

Prospero said sternly: ‘You should be ashamed, Caliban. Surely you do not think that the Eternal Beloved attaches any importance to nonsensical trifles such as nationality or creed? As punishment for your rudeness and impatience you shall be second, after Rosencrantz.’

The former ship’s bookkeeper stamped his foot angrily, but he didn’t dare to argue.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Genji put in, ‘but I raised my hand even before these gentlemen put in their bids.’

‘This is not an auction at which you can signal with gestures,’ the Doge snapped. ‘You should have stated your intention out loud. You will be third. If, that is, your turn comes.’

That was the end of the discussion. Columbine noticed that Genji was very annoyed and even slightly alarmed. She recalled the threat he had made the day before to disband the club of ‘Lovers of Death’ and wondered how he could do it. After all, the aspirants didn’t meet here under compulsion.

Rosencrantz took the ball from the Doge, looked at it closely and suddenly crossed himself. Columbine was so startled by this unexpected gesture that she gasped in compassion. The Baltic German span the roulette wheel and then played a trick that was entirely unlike him: looking straight at his young female sympathiser, he gave the ball a quick kiss before tossing it resolutely on to the rim of the wheel.

While it was spinning – and it went on for an eternity – Columbine moved her lips in a prayer to Death, Fate and God (she did not know whose) for the boy’s throw not to land in the fatal pocket.

‘Twenty-eight,’ Prospero announced dispassionately and everyone sighed in chorus.

Pale-faced Rosencrantz declared with dignity: ‘
Schade
.’
²

He walked away from the wheel. He didn’t look at Columbine any more, evidently feeing that he had already made enough of an impression. And in all honesty, he had. She thought that desperate kiss had made Rosencrantz look terribly sweet. But alas, Columbine’s heart belonged to another.

‘Come on, give me that,’ Caliban said impatiently, grabbing the ball. ‘I have a feeling I’m going to be lucky.’

He spat three times over his left shoulder, span the roulette wheel with all his strength and tossed the little ball so that it went skipping across the pockets and almost flew over the edge.

Everybody froze as they watched the spinning wheel gradually slow down. When its impetus was spent, the ball landed on the skull! A howl of triumph erupted from the bookkeeper’s chest, but the next moment the little golden sphere tumbled across the dividing line as if attracted by some strange force, and settled in the next pocket.