She Lover of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin (23 page)

‘What interesting things have you read?’ she asked in a perfunctory tone of voice. ‘I really don’t understand people who read the newspapers. All the really important things don’t happen to other people, they happen to you and inside you. They won’t write about that in any newspapers.’

He was dismayed by this judgement.

‘Oh c-come now! Lots of interesting things happen to other people.’

‘Oh yes?’ Columbine said with a derisive smile. ‘Well then, try to interest me in your news. What is going on in the world?’

‘By all means.’ He rustled the pages of his paper. ‘Right. News from the theatre of military operations in the Transvaal. That is not likely to interest you . . . Let us try the sports section.’ Genji turned the page. ‘ “Yesterday on Krestovsky Island in St Petersburg a match was held between the German and Petersburg f-football clubs. The Petersburg team was the attacking side and won a convincing victory over its opponents, putting the ball between the German posts for eighteen goals, while conceding only seven.” How about that?’

She winced eloquently.

‘What about the North Pole? A very curious article indeed. “Prince Ludwig d’Abruzzo has had to cut short his attempt to reach the North Pole using Siberian dogs and return to Spitsbergen. Three members of the expedition lost their lives amidst the hummocks of ice, while His Highness himself suffered severe frostbite and lost two fingers on his left hand. The failure of yet another attempt to reach the most northerly point on the planet has inspired Captain Johannesen to undertake a new project. The experienced arctic explorer intends to tame polar bears to replace the weak huskies. The captain claims that training young bears will take about three years, after which they will be ready to pull sleighs across the ice or a boat across the water with exceptional ease. Johannesen said that the preparations for his unusual expedition enjoy the p-patronage of Princess Xenia, wife of the heir to the throne, Prince Olaf.” ’

At that point Genji sighed for some reason and Columbine put her hand over her mouth as if she were yawning.

‘All right then,’ he conceded, realising that he would not succeed in interesting the lady in sport. ‘Let’s try the “Miscellaneous” section, there’s always something curious in there. Take this for instance. “Swindlers’ Original Trick. On 14 September the peasant Semyon Dutikov, newly arrived in Moscow, was walking along Sadovaya Street from the Kursk railway station and, not knowing how to get to Cherkassky Lane, he asked a man whom he did not know to show him the way. The man agreed and as they were walking along one of the more out-of-the-way lanes, the stranger pointed out a wallet lying in the middle of the pavement. It proved to contain seventy-five roubles. Dutikov agreed to split the money two ways, but just then a b-broad-shouldered gentleman came running out of a gateway, shouting that he had dropped the wallet, and there had been two hundred roubles in it . . .” Ah, the rogues! Poor peasant Dutikov!’

Taking the opportunity offered by Genji’s breaking off from reading, she said: ‘Why don’t you read out something from the “Art” section? Who cares about your swindlers anyway? It’s clear enough that your peasant was completely fleeced. Serves him right for hankering after someone else’s property.’

‘I hear and obey, Mademoiselle. “A New Play. The young writer Maxim Gorky has arrived in Moscow, bringing with him a new play that he has just written, which has not yet been submitted to the censor. He proposes to give the play the title
Philistines
. Gorky’s first attempt at d-drama attracted lively interest from the directors of the Accessible Arts Theatre.” ’

‘Phoo, phi-li-stines,’ Columbine drawled. ‘He might as well write a play about tramps or a flophouse. Our Russian writers are absolutely incorrigible. There’s little enough beauty in life already, without all this, but they just carry on scrabbling in the dirt. Read about something more glamorous.’

‘Here’s something glamorous. “Multi-Millionaires’ New Amusement. Newport, the most fashionable bathing resort of the American rich, has recently developed a genuine mania for automobile riding. The offspring of the most prominent American families can be seen hurtling along the highway and the seafront at
dizzying
speeds of up to thirty versts an hour. The police are recording a constant increase in the number of accidents caused by races between self-propelled carriages. The young Harold Vanderbilt was almost seriously injured recently when he crashed his Panhard-Levassor into a wagon of hay.” And thirty versts an hour is not the limit!’ Genji exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘And anyway, it’s not just a matter of speed! I’m certain that the automobile is m-more than just an amusement, you can t-travel immense distances in it. And I shall prove that I’m right just as soon as I have concluded my business in Moscow!’

Columbine had never seen the imperturbable Genji so excited. The late Lorelei had been right: men were absolute children.

But then the Japanese prince’s eye fell on the newspaper page again and his face darkened.

‘What is it?’ she asked cautiously.

‘Another article about the Khitrovka Blinder,’ he replied reluctantly, running his glance over the lines. ‘They just don’t seem able to catch him. It’s nothing new, just idle j-journalistic speculation.’

‘The Khitrovka Blinder?’ Columbine queried, wrinkling up her pretty nose. ‘Ah, that’s the criminal who gouges out his victim’s eyes? Yes, yes, I’ve heard about him. What a vulgar name for him! Why do crimes have to be so beastly boring? Where have the genuine artists of villainy gone? I would execute murderers, not because they kill, but because they make such a mediocre, vulgar job of their bloody deed!’ This thought had only just occurred to Columbine. She felt the sudden inspiration was quite brilliant and provocative, but her uninspired companion failed to respond and gloomily closed his newspaper.

After the café they went for a stroll along Kuznetsky Most Street and Theatre Passage, where they met a demonstration of shopkeepers from Hunter’s Row coming towards them, led by heralds from the municipal duma – they were marching in honour of another Russian military victory in China: General Rennenkampf had taken some place called Goujang and also Tsian-Gouan. They were carrying portraits of the tsar, icons and religious banners, and shouting in chorus: ‘Hoorah for Russia!’

The marchers were hot and sweaty, red in the face and happy, but at the same time angry, as if someone had offended them.

‘Look,’ said Columbine, ‘they are coarse, half-drunk and malicious, but they are patriots and they love their home-land. See how happy they all are, but what could Tsian-Gouan really mean to these shopkeepers? But you and I are educated, polite, dressed in clean clothes, and quite unconcerned about Russia.’

‘What kind of patriots are they?’ Genji said with a shrug. ‘Just loudmouths, nothing more. For them it’s just a legitimate excuse for b-bawling and shouting. True patriotism, like true love, never shouts itself out loud.’

She couldn’t immediately find anything to say to that, it set her thinking. Ah, but no! True love did shout itself out loud, most certainly it did. Imagine that she’d fallen in love with someone, and he’d been taken away from her, wouldn’t she shout out loud? She’d howl loud enough to deafen the entire world. But then, perhaps that’s a matter of temperament, Columbine thought with a sigh. The tight-buttoned Genji probably wouldn’t shout out even if you cut him to pieces – he’d consider it beneath his dignity.

She suddenly felt the urge to stir him into action, grab him by the shoulders and give him a really good shaking that would disturb that perfect parting in his hair.

‘Why are you always so calm?’ she asked.

Instead of shrugging the question off or changing the subject to something trivial in the way he usually did, he replied simply and seriously: ‘I was not always like this, Mademoiselle Columbine. In my young days any trivial n-nonsense was enough to excite me. However, life has tested my sensibilities so frequently and so cruelly that now it is very hard to get through my defences. And, in addition, Confucius wrote: “The reserved man commits fewer blunders”.’

She had no idea who Confucius was. Probably some ancient know-it-all, but she didn’t like the maxim.

‘Are you afraid of blunders?’ she laughed disdainfully. ‘Why, I want to build my whole life on blunders. I think nothing could be more beautiful.’

He shook his head: ‘Are you familiar with the Eastern doctrine of the reincarnation of souls? No? The Hindus, the Chinese and the Japanese believe that our soul lives not just once, but many times, repeatedly changing its corporeal integument. Depending on your actions, in the next life you may be promoted or, on the contrary, demoted to being a caterpillar or, say, a thistle. In this regard blunders are extremely dangerous, each one distances you further from a state of harmonious b-balance, thereby reducing your chances of being reborn as something more dignified.’

Columbine thought this final remark rather offensive, but she found this Eastern theory so astounding that she made no attempt to protest.

‘In the next life I would like to turn into a dragonfly with transparent wings. No, a swallow! Is it possible to decide in advance who you will be born as next time around?’

‘It is not possible to decide, but it is probably possible to guess – at least when life has almost been lived to the end. One of the Buddhist teachers asserts that with age the features of a man’s face change to suggest who or what he will be when he is reborn into the world again. Do you not find that our D-Doge, for instance, is remarkably like an eagle-owl? If, during your next birth, you are flitting above a dark forest on light swallow’s wings and you hear a hooting sound, then beware! It might well be the reincarnated Mr Prospero luring you into his snares again.’

She laughed. With his round, piercing eyes, hooked nose and disproportionately large cheeks, Prospero really did look like an eagle-owl.

All right, there was no need to write about the conversation with Genji, Columbine decided, but what she had to write about Prospero was important. She dipped her steel nib into the inkwell and carried on.

I have written here that, strangely enough, I am not at all jealous of the Doge’s relations with Iphigenia and Gorgon. But I think he is jealous of me! I can feel it, I know it for certain. Women are never mistaken about such things. He is annoyed that I no longer gaze at him with melancholy, sheepish eyes as I used to do. This evening he paid no attention to either of them, he looked only at me. Both of the little fools were absolutely furious, and I must confess I enjoyed that, but it did not set my heart beating any faster. He lauded my new poem to the heavens. Oh, what bliss that praise would have been for me only a short while ago! But today it brought no joy at all, because I know perfectly well that the poem is mediocre.

Playing roulette is beginning to pall. The main sign is the abundance of volunteers. Today, in addition to our perennial player, Caliban, whose howls of disappointment are simply comical, even Petya and Kriton found the courage to spin the wheel (the former deep-red in the face, the latter deadly pale; a curious psychological detail, that – following a safe outcome, Petya turned as white as a sheet and Kriton blushed). The industrious anatomist Horatio suppressed a yawn as he spun the ball – I saw it quite distinctly. Cyrano even indulged in a little amusing mischief: while the roulette wheel was spinning, he sang the chansonette ‘Spin, my darling girl’. The Doge observed this bravado in silence, with his forehead wrinkled into a frown. He must realise that the idea of the Wheel of Fortune has been a failure. Death clearly does not wish to abase herself by taking part in this cheap circus performance.

Only the German twins are still as diligent and serious as ever. Every time he throws the ball, Rosencrantz casts an expressive glance in my direction, but his attentions do not go any further than that. I notice that he and Guildenstern often exchange glances, as if they were talking to each other with their eyes. It seems to me that they understand each other perfectly well without words. I read somewhere that this happens with twins. One of them simply glances at the other, who hands him a cigarette case. And another thing: when the ball is skipping round the cells, the twin who has thrown it doesn’t look at the wheel, but only at his brother, trying to guess the result from the expression on the face that is so much like his own. Gdlevsky observes our games with ironical condescension. He is waiting for the great day – tomorrow is Friday. We all tease him, but he maintains a haughty silence and smiles with an air of confident superiority. It is easy to see that in his opinion all the other aspirants are nonentities and he is the only one worthy to become Death’s beloved. Caliban, infuriated by yet another failure on the wheel, called the schoolboy ‘an insolent pup’ and things almost went as far as a duel.

And at the end of the evening, Columbine played a trick that surprised even her. When the ‘lovers’ began going home, the Doge came over to her, his light-haired Bacchante, and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger.

‘Stay,’ he ordered her.

She responded with a long, intriguing glance. Then she gave his hand a glancing kiss with her pink lips and whispered: ‘Not today. I am going, dissolving into the night.’

She swung round lightly and walked away, and he was left standing there, perplexed, gazing beseechingly after the slim figure of the unpredictable and capricious enchantress.

And serve him right.

Friday is a special day

That Friday Columbine left her flat earlier than usual to go to the meeting of the club – it was that kind of evening; with a subtle, tremulous thrill, it held the promise of something either very good or, on the contrary, very terrible, or perhaps very good and very terrible at the same time.

She had already sensed the exciting savour of tragedy in the morning, when she saw the deceptively clear September sky covering the city like a semi-transparent porcelain chalice.