The Coronation (31 page)

I was able to examine the pose in which my companion in misfortune was sleeping because our prison cell was no longer pitch black: therewas a feeble grey light entering the cell through the small window. I got up and limped closer. The windowturned out to be barred and I was not able to see anything through it. It obviously opened into a niche that was a lot lower than street level. But there could be no doubt that the niche did look out towards the street – I could hear the muted clattering of wheels, horses neighing and a police constable’s whistle. All of which meant that the morning was well advanced. I took my watch out of my pocket. It was almost nine o’clock. What were they thinking about our absence in the Hermitage? Ah yes, their Highnesses would be too busy to be concerned about us – it was coronation day. And then afterwards, when Pavel Georgievich told them about our mission, it would not make any difference. After all, Banville and Carr were not to blame for what had happened to us. Were we really going to die in this stone cell?

I looked around. Ahigh, gloomy ceiling. Barewalls, absolutely empty. But suddenly I noticed that the walls were not bare at all – therewere strange objects hanging on them. Iwalked closer and shuddered in horror. For the first time in my life I realised that cold sweat was not just a figure of speech but a genuine natural phenomenon: I automatically raised a hand to my forehead, and it was sticky, wet and cold.

Hanging on thewalls in a strict geometrical arrangementwere rusty chains with shackles, enormous spiked whips, seven-tailed lashes and other instruments intended for infernal torture.

We really had been confined in a torture chamber!

I do not normally think of myself as a coward, but Iwas unable to contain a howl of genuine horror.

Endlung lifted his head up off his elbow, blinking sleepily and looking around. Yawning, he said: ‘Good morning, Afanasii Stepanovich. Only don’t tell me that it isn’t good. I can see that for myself from that twisted expression on your face.’

I pointed a trembling finger at the instruments of torture. The lieutenant froze just as he was, with his mouth open in an unfinished yawn. He whistled, got lightly to his feet and took the shackles down off the wall, then the terrible whip. He turned them over this way and that in his hands and shook his head.

‘Oh, the jokers. Take a look at this . . .’

I timidly took hold of the whip and saw that it was not leather at all. It was light and soft, made of silk. The shackles proved to be dummies too – the iron hoops for wrists and ankles were lined with thick quilted material.

‘What are these for?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘We must assume that this chamber is intended for sadomasochistic fun and games,’ Endlung explained with the air of a connoisseur. ‘All people can be divided into two categories . . .’ He raised one finger didactically. ‘Those who like to make others suffer, and those who like to be made to suffer. The first group are called sadists, and the second masochists, I don’t remember why. You, for instance, are definitely a masochist. I read somewhere that it is mostly masochists who go into service. And I am probably a sadist, because I really hate it when people batter me in the face, like yesterday. The best marriages and friendships are formed between a sadist and a masochist – each provides what the other needs. To put it simply, I hurt and abuse you in everyway I can, and you lap it up like honey. Understand?’

No, I did not understand this at all, but I remembered the mysterious words spoken by my nymph the previous day and suspected that there might just be a grain of truth in Endlung’s strange theory.

I felt better about the whips and the chains, but I had enough reasons to feel distressed even without them.

Firstly, there was my own fate. Were they really going to leave us here to die of hunger and thirst?

We went over to the outside wall and the lieutenant stood on my shoulders and shouted out of the window in a stentorian voice for a long time, but we clearly could not be heard from the street. Then we started hammering on the door. It was covered with felt on the inside, and our blows sounded muted. We could not hear a single sound from the outside.

Secondly, I was depressed by the stupidity of the situation in which we found ourselves. Yesterday Mademoiselle Declique was supposed to have identified Lind’s location; today Fandorin would carry out his operation to rescue Mikhail Georgievich; and I was sitting here like a mouse in a trap, all thanks to my own stupidity.

And thirdly, I was very hungry. After all, we had not eaten supper the day before.

I sighed involuntarily.

‘You, Ziukin, are a fine fellow,’ Endlung said in a voice hoarse from shouting. ‘That’s what I’ve always said about people like you – still waters run deep. A man for the lovely ladies, a smart comrade and no sniveller. Why the hell are you a menial servant? Join us on the
Retvizan
as a senior quartermaster. Our lads will give you a hearty welcome – I should think so, grand ducal butler. We’d bring all the other ships down a peg or two. Really, I mean it. You could transfer from court service to the navy – that can be arranged. You’d be accepted as an equal in the mess. Just how much longer can you carrying on pouring coffee into other people’s cups? We’d have great fun, by God we would. I remember you have no trouble with the ship rolling and pitching. Ah, Ziukin, you haven’t been to Alexandria!’ The lieutenant rolled his eyes up and back. ‘
Himmeldonnerwetter
, the brothels they have there! You’d be sure to like it, with your taste for petite ladies – they serve up little dolls that you can sit on the palm of your hand, but they still have the full set of tackle. I tell you, a tiny little waist like that, but up here they’re like this, and like that!’ He demonstrated with rounded gestures. ‘I myself have always adored well-built women, but I can understand you too – the petite ones have their own special attraction. Tell me about Snezhnevskaya, as one comrade to another.’ Endlung put his hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. ‘What has that Polish girl got that that gives them all such a thrill? Is it truewhat they say, that at moments of passion she makes special sounds that drive men insane, the same way the sirens’ song affected Odysseus’ companions? Comeon!’Henudgedmewith his elbow and winked at me. ‘Paulie says he didn’t hear any special kind of chanting during their only date, but Paulie’s still a pup – he probably wasn’t able to arouse genuine passion in that little Polish piece of yours – and you’re a man of experience. Come on, tell me. What is it to you? We’re not going to get out of here alive anyway. I’d really like to know what kind of sounds they are.’ And the lieutenant broke into song: ‘I hear the sounds of a Polish girl, the heavenly sounds of the beautiful Pole.’

Of course I did not know anything about any passionate sounds supposedly produced by Izabella Felitsianovna, and even if I had, I would not have revealed what I knew about such matters. I tried to indicate this by assuming the appropriate expression.

Endlung sighed in disappointment.

‘So it’s a lie? Or are you just being cagey? All right, don’t tell me if you don’t want to, although that’s not the way good comrades behave. Sailors don’t play cagey like that. You know, when you don’t see dry land for months at a time, it’s good to sit in the mess, telling each other all sorts of stories . . .’

There was a mighty rumbling of bells from somewhere far away, as if it was coming from the very bowels of the earth.

‘Half past nine,’ I said excitedly, interrupting the lieutenant. ‘It has begun!’

‘I’mso unlucky,’ Endlung complained bitterly. ‘I’mnever going to see a tsar crowned, even though I am a gentleman of the bedchamber. I was still in the Corps at the last coronation, and I won’t live until the next one – the tsar’s younger than I am. I really wanted to see it! I even have a ticket for a good spot put away. Right opposite the porch of the cathedral. I expect they’re coming out of the Cathedral of the Assumption right now, aren’t they?’

‘No,’ I answered, ‘they’ll be coming out of the cathedral later. I know the entire ceremony off by heart. Would you like me to tell you about it?’

‘I should say so!’ the lieutenant exclaimed, pulling his legs up under him, Turkish style.

‘Well then,’ I began, trying to recall the schedule of the coronation. ‘At the present moment Sergii, the Metropolitan of Moscow, is addressing His Majesty and explaining to him the heavy burden of serving as the tsar, and also the great mystery of anointment. In fact he has probably already finished. In the place of honour, by the royal gates, among the gold-embroidered court uniforms and pearl-trimmed ceremonial dresses, there are simple white peasant shirts and modest crimson
kokoshnik
head-dresses – these are the descendants of the heroic Ivan Susanin, saviour of the Romanov dynasty, who have been brought here from the province of Kostroma. And now the emperor and empress proceed along the scarlet carpet towards the thrones, set high up facing the altar, and a special throne has been installed for Her Majesty the dowager empress. Today the emperor is wearing his Preobrazhensky Regiment uniform with a red sash over his shoulder. The empress is wearing silver-white brocade and a necklace of pink pearls, and her train is carried by four pages of the bedchamber. The tsar’s throne is an ancient piece of work, made for Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and it is known as the Diamond Throne because there are eight hundred and seventy diamonds embedded in it, as well as rubies and pearls. The foremost dignitaries of the empire hold the state regalia on velvet cushions: a sword, a crown, a shield and a sceptre surmounted by the illustrious Orlov diamond.’ I sighed, closed my eyes and saw the sacred stone there in front of me, as large as life. ‘It is absolutely clear, as transparent as a teardrop, with a very slight greenish-blue tinge, like seawater in sunlight. Weighing almost two hundred carats and shaped like half an egg, only larger, there is no more beautiful diamond in the entire world.’

Endlung listened as if he were spellbound. I must confess that I also got carried away and went on for a long time describing to my appreciative listener the entire great ceremony, occasionally checking my watch in order not to get ahead of events. And just at the very moment when I said ‘And now the emperor and empress have come out onto the porch and are performing the low triple bow to the ground before the entire people; and now there will be an artillery salute,’ there really was a rumble of thunder in the distance, and it lasted for several minutes for, according to the ceremonial, the cannon had to fire one hundred and one times.

‘How wonderfully you described it all,’ Endlung said with feeling. ‘As if I had seen it all with my own eyes. I just didn’t understand about the lacquered box and the man turning the handle.’

‘I don’t understand that toowell myself,’ I admitted.’ However, I have seen with my own eyes the announcement in the
Court Gazette
that the coronation will be recorded using the very latest cinematographic apparatus, for which a special handler has been hired. He will turn the handle, and that will produce something like moving pictures.’

‘What will they think of next?’ said the lieutenant, squinting wistfully at the grey window. ‘Well, now they’ve stopped their clattering, I can hear the gurgling in my belly.’

I remarked guardedly: ‘Yes, indeed. I feel really hungry. Are we really going to die of hunger?’

‘Oh, come on, Ziukin,’ my fellow prisoner protested. ‘We won’t die of hunger; we’ll die of thirst. A man can live two or even three weeks without food. Without water we won’t even last three days.’

Mythroatwas indeed feeling dry, and meanwhile itwas getting rather stuffy in our little cell. Endlung had taken off his woman’s dress a long time ago, leaving himself in nothing but his drawers and a close-fitting undershirt with blue and white stripes – what is known as a singlet. Now he even took off his singlet, and I saw a tattoo on his powerful shoulder – an entirely natural representation of a man’s privates with varicoloured dragonfly wings.

‘They drew that for me in a Singapore brothel,’ the lieutenant explained when he noticed my embarrassed glance. ‘I was still a warrant officer at the time. I did it for a bet, to show off. Now I can never marry a respectable woman. It looks as though I’m going to die a bachelor.’

This last sentence, however, was spoken without the slightest trace of regret.

I spent the entire second half of the day walking around the cell, with the torments of hunger, thirst and inactivity becoming worse and worse all the time. From time to time I tried shouting out of the window or banging on the door, but with no result.

In his gratitude for my description of the coronation, Endlung entertained me with endless stories of shipwrecks and uninhabited islands where sailors of various nationalities had died slow deaths without food or water. It had been dark for a long timewhen he started a heart-rending story about a French officer who was forced to eat his companion in misfortune, the ship’s quarter-master.

‘And what do you think?’ the half-naked gentleman of the bedchamber said brightly. ‘Afterwards Lieutenant Du Bellet testified in court that the quartermaster’s meat was wonderfully tender, with a fine layer of fat, and tasted like young pork. The court acquitted the lieutenant, of course, taking into account the extreme circumstances and also the fact that Du Bellet was the only son of an aged mother.’

At that point the instructive tale was broken off because the door of the cell suddenly opened without a sound, and we both blinked in the bright light of a torch. The blurred shadow that appeared in the doorway spoke in the voice of Foma Anikeevich: ‘I beg your pardon, Afanasii Stepanovich. Yesterday, of course, I recognised you under the ginger beard, but it never even entered my head that things could end so badly. Just nowat the reception in the Faceted Chamber I happened to hear two habitués of this establishment whispering to each other and laughing as they recalled the lesson they had given to two “Guardians”, and I wondered if they could be talking about you.’ He came into the dungeon and asked solicitously: ‘How have you managed here, gentlemen, with no water, food or light?’