She Lover of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin (19 page)

‘No, dear young lady, she wasn’t born with it. She was a weak child, always ailing. The Lord didn’t grant me children for long. He gave them to me for a year or two, or four at the most, and then took them back again. I buried six of them, and Sashenka was the youngest. I was so happy that she stayed in this world. She was sickly, but she was still alive – at five, and six, and seven. Every extra day was like a holiday for me, I praised God for it. And on Whit Sunday, when Sashenka was just eight, God worked a genuine miracle . . .’

Serafima Kharitonovna stopped talking and wiped away a tear.

‘Miracuw? What sort of miracuw?’ asked Masa, who was listening closely – he even stopped slurping from his saucer and put down his honeycake with a bite taken out of it.

‘Lightning struck the tree where she and two of the neighbours’ children were sheltering from the rain. The people who saw it said there was a loud crack and blue smoke, and the little boys dropped down dead, but my Sashenka just stood there without moving, with her fingers stretched out and sparks flying off her fingertips. She was unconscious for three days, and then she suddenly came round. I sat by her bed and all that time I didn’t eat or drink a thing, all I did was pray for the Holy Virgin’s intervention. Sashenka opened her eyes, and they were as bright and clear as a holy angel’s. And she was all right, she got up and started walking. And she wasn’t just alive, she was never ill again, never. But even that gift wasn’t enough for the Lord. In His mercy he decided to make Sashenka someone really special. At first I was frightened, but then I got used to it. I knew that when my daughter’s eyes turned transparent, it meant she was in her special state – she was hearing and seeing things that ordinary people couldn’t. At moments like that she could do all sorts of things. The year before last a little three-year-old boy went missing from round here and no one could find him. But Sashenka just sat for a while, then she moved her lips and said: “Look in the old well”. And they found him, alive, only he had a broken arm. That’s what she was like. And always talking about miracles and mysteries. She has a whole cupboard full of books in her room. Fairytales and fortune-telling and novels about all sorts of fairies and enchantresses.’

Ophelia’s mother glanced at Columbine.

‘And you were her friend? Such a fine-looking girl. And you dress modestly, not like these modern girls. Don’t you cry. I cried a bit myself, but then I stopped. What’s the point of crying? Sasha’s in heaven now, no matter what Father Innokentii might say about suicides.’

At that Columbine started crying in earnest. She felt so sorry for Ophelia and her wonderful gift that had been lost, she just couldn’t stand it.

Never mind, the whimpering worshipper of death told herself, hiding her red eyes from Genji and blowing her nose into a handkerchief. I’ll describe everything differently in the diary. So as not to seem like a fool. Like this, for example: ‘A crystal teardrop glinted in Columbine’s eyes, but the giddy girl shook her head and the teardrop flew off. There is nothing in the world that is worth feeling sad over for more than a minute. Ophelia did what she thought was right. The crystal teardrop was not dedicated to her, but to the poor old woman.’ And she could write a poem too. The first line simply wrote itself:

She shook the crystal teardrop from her lashes

‘Tell me, what happened that night?’ Genji asked, tactfully turning away from Columbine. ‘Why d-did she suddenly run off and drown herself ?’

‘Why, it didn’t happen like that at all,’ said the widow, holding up her hands. ‘She came home late, later than usual. My Sashenka lived as she liked. I knew she wouldn’t get up to anything bad. She often came back late, almost every day, but I always waited up for her, and I never pestered her with questions about where she’d been and what she’d been doing. I knew she’d tell if she wanted to. She was special, not like the other girls. I used to sit here, with the samovar all ready. Sashenka didn’t eat much, she was like a bird, but she liked her tea, with lime flowers . . . Well, I heard a cab drive up, and then a minute later she came in. Her face was really glowing, I’d never seen her like that before. I couldn’t help myself, I just had to find out why: “What’s happened to you? Another miracle? Or have you fallen in love?” “Don’t ask, mama,” she said. But I know her, and I wasn’t born yesterday. I could tell she’d been meeting a lover. It made me feel afraid, but happy too.’

Columbine shuddered when she remembered that evening and the way Prospero had told Ophelia to stay after the seance. Oh, tormentor! Oh, tyrant of poor helpless puppets! But what point was there in feeling jealous of a dead woman? And in any case, jealousy was a banal and unworthy feeling. If you had a lot of rivals, it meant you had chosen a worthy object for your love, she told herself, and suddenly wondered who actually was the object of her love – Prospero or Death? It didn’t really matter. She tried to picture the Eternal Bridegroom, and he appeared to her, not as a young Tsarevich, but as a wise, hoary-haired old man with a stern face and black eyes.

‘She only drank one cup of tea,’ the provincial secretary’s widow continued. ‘Then she stood right here, in front of the mirror, which she’d never done before in her life. She turned round this way and that way, laughed quietly and went to her room. But she came back less than a minute later, she hadn’t even changed her shoes. And her face was still the same, special. But her eyes were transparent, like two pieces of ice. I was frightened. “What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?” She said: “Goodbye, mama, I’m leaving now.” She wasn’t here any more, she was far away, she wasn’t looking at me. “I’ve been given a Sign,” she said. I dashed over to her and held her hand, I couldn’t make sense of anything. “Where are you going in the middle of the night? And what sort of sign do you mean?” Sashenka smiled and said: “The kind of sign you can’t mistake. Like King Balthazar’s. It’s meant to be. It’s fate. I’m used to listening to fate. Let me go. There’s nothing to be done.” She turned towards me and gave me a sweet look. “It’s only goodbye until we meet again. We will definitely meet again.” She said it very calmly. And like a fool, I let go of her hand. Sashenka kissed me on the cheek, put on her shawl and walked out of the door. I should have kept her here, stopped her, but I wasn’t used to gainsaying her when she was in that special state . . . I didn’t follow her outside. Later I followed the tracks of her heels and I saw she’d gone straight into the orchard, down to the river and into the water . . . without even stopping once. As if someone was waiting for her there.’

Genji asked quickly: ‘When she went out, d-did you go into her room?’

‘No, I sat here until the morning, waiting.’

‘And in the morning?’

‘No, I didn’t go in there for two days. I kept running to the police station, or hanging about by the gate all the time. I never even thought of going down to the river. It was only later, when I came back here from the mortuary after the identification, that I tidied her room. And I don’t go in there any more. Let everything stay the way it was when she was here.’

‘May we take a look?’ Genji asked. ‘Just through the d-doorway? We won’t go in.’

Ophelia’s room was simple, but comfortable. A narrow bed with metal balls on the uprights and a heap of pillows. A dressing table with nothing but a comb and a hand mirror on it. An old bookshelf of dark wood, crammed full of books. A small writing desk with a candlestick under the window.

‘Candurs,’ said the Japanese.

Columbine raise her eyes to the ceiling, assuming that this simple-minded son of the Orient named every object that he saw – she had read somewhere that primitive peoples had that habit. Now he would say: ‘Table. Bed. Window.’ But Masa glanced sideways at his master and repeated: ‘Candurs.’

‘Yes, yes. I see,’ Genji said with a nod. ‘Well done. Tell me, Serafima Kharitonovna, did you put new candles in the candelabra?’

‘I didn’t put them in. They hadn’t been touched.’

‘So when your daughter came in here she d-didn’t light them?’

‘I suppose so. I’ve left everything just as it was, I haven’t disturbed anything. That book lying open on the windowsill – let it stay there. Her slippers under the bed. The glass of pear compote – she loved that. Perhaps her soul will look in every now and then to take a rest . . . Sashenka’s soul has no place of its own. Father Innokentii wouldn’t allow her to be buried in hallowed ground. They buried my daughter outside the fence, like a little dog. And he wouldn’t let me put up a cross. Your daughter’s sin is unforgivable, he said. But what sort of sinner is she? She was an angel. She stayed on earth for a little while and brought me joy, and then flew away again.’

As they walked back to the carriage and then drove along the streets shrouded in the shadows of early evening, Masa kept muttering angrily in his strange squawking language.

‘Why has he suddenly forgotten how to speak Russian?’ Columbine asked in a whisper.

Genji said: ‘He is being t-tactful. He does not wish to offend your religious sensibilities. He is roundly abusing the Christian Ch-church for its attitude to suicides and their families. And he is absolutely right.’

Black roses

At the entrance to the wing of a building on Povarskaya Street, where Lorelei Rubinstein had still lived only three days earlier, there were three heaps of flowers lying on the pavement. Most of them were black roses, which she had mentioned in a poem written shortly before her death – the one she had read for the first time one evening at Prospero’s apartment and then printed shortly afterwards in
The Refuge of the Muse
. There were notes, too – white spots against the background of the flowers. Columbine picked one out, opened it and read the inscription in small girlish handwriting:

Oh Lorelei, you have gone on before,
Pathfinder on the road into the night,
And, following the image I adore,
I too shall walk the dark path into light
.

T.R.

She picked up another: ‘Oh, how right you are, dear, dear one! Life is vulgar and unbearable! Olga Z.’

Genji also read it, looking over her shoulder. He knitted his elegant black eyebrows and sighed. Then he resolutely rang the bronze doorbell.

The door was opened by a rather wizened lady with an anxious, tearful face who kept dabbing at her red, wet little nose with a handkerchief. She introduced herself as Rosalia Maximovna, one of ‘poor Lyalechka’s’ relatives, although the subsequent conversation made it clear that she had lived with Lorelei as her housekeeper, or simply as a dependent.

Genji spoke to her quite differently from the way in which he had spoken to Ophelia’s mother. He was dry and businesslike. Masa didn’t open his mouth at all, he sat down at the table and didn’t move, staring straight at Rosalia Maximovna through narrowed eyes.

The pitiful creature gazed at the severe gentleman in the black tails and the taciturn Oriental with a mixture of fright and obsequiousness. She answered Genji’s questions at length, with masses of detail, and from time to time he was obliged to bring her back to the point. Every time Rosalia Maximovna became flustered and began batting her eyelids helplessly. The conversation was also seriously impeded by a lapdog – a vicious dwarf bulldog that kept yapping at Masa and snapping at his trouser leg.

‘Had you lived with Madam Rubinstein for a l-long time?’ was the first question that Genji asked.

It turned out that she had been there for seven years, ever since Lorelei (whom she also referred to as ‘Lyalechka’ and ‘Elena Semyonovna’) had been widowed.

When she was asked whether the deceased had ever attempted to take her own life before, the answer was very long and confused.

‘Lyalechka never used to be like this. She was cheerful, she used to laugh a lot. She loved her husband Matvei very much. They had an easy, happy life together. They didn’t have any children – they were always going to the theatre and at-homes, they often went to resorts and to Paris, and all sorts of places abroad. But when Matvei Natanovich died, it was as if she lost her mind, the poor thing. She even took poison,’ Rosalia told him in a whisper, ‘only not enough to kill her that time. But after that she was all right, she seemed to have got used to things. Only her character had changed, completely changed. She started writing poems and in general . . . she wasn’t quite herself, somehow. If not for me, she wouldn’t have eaten properly, she just drank coffee all the time. Do you think it was easy for me keeping house for Elena Semyonovna? She spent all the money that Matvei Natanovich left on the memorial for his grave. She was only paid a pittance for her poems at first, then it was more and more, but that was still no help. Lyalechka used to send tenrouble wreaths to the cemetery every single day, and sometimes there wasn’t a crust of bread in the house. The number of times I told her: “You should put something aside for a rainy day!” But would she listen? So now there isn’t anything. She’s dead, and what am I supposed to live on? And the flat’s only paid up until the first of the month. I have to move out, but where to?’ She buried her face in the handkerchief and started sobbing. ‘Zhu . . . Zhuzhechka is used to eating well – a bit of liver, marrow bones, cottage cheese . . . But who needs us now? Oh, I’m sorry, just a moment . . .’

And she ran out of the room in floods of tears.

‘Masa, how did you manage to m-make the dog shut up?’ Genji asked. ‘Thank you, it was bothering me rather badly.’

Columbine suddenly realised that the bulldog had not barked once, but only grunted malevolently under the table during the entire monologue, which had been extended to some considerable length by nose-blowing and sobbing.

Masa replied in a steady voice: ‘Dog sirent because eating my reg. Masta, have you arready asked everyfin you want? If not I can howd for ronger.’

Columbine glanced under the table and gasped. The mean little beast had grabbed poor Masa by the ankle and was growling viciously and shaking its round head from side to side! No wonder the Japanese looked a bit pale and he was smiling painfully. He was a real hero! Just like the Spartan boy with the fox cub!