The Diamond Chariot (92 page)

‘If human relations are nothing for you diamond riders and deception is no sin, why keep your word to someone who is no longer among the living? What does it matter if you did promise your daughter? Treachery is a virtue for you, is it not? Kill me, and it’s all over and done with. Why waste time on me, reading me sermons?’

Tamba said:

‘You are right and wrong at the same time. Right, because to break the promise given to my dead daughter would be to act correctly, it would raise me to a higher level of freedom. And wrong because Midori was more than a daughter to me. She was an Initiate, my companion in the Diamond Chariot. This chariot is cramped, those who ride in it must follow certain rules – but only in relation to each other. Otherwise we will start jostling each other with our elbows, and the Chariot will overturn. That is the only law by which we abide. It is much stricter than the ten commandments that the Buddha proclaimed for ordinary weak people. Our rules say: If a companion in the Chariot has asked you to die, then do it; even if he has asked you to jump out of the Chariot, do it – otherwise you will not reach the Destination to which you aspire. What is Midori’s little whim in comparison with this?’

‘I am a little whim,’ Erast Petrovich muttered.

Tamba said:

‘It is not important what you believe in and what you dedicate your life to. That does not matter to the Buddha. What is important is to be faithful to your calling – that is the essential thing, because then you are faithful to yourself, which means you are also faithful to the Buddha. We
shinobi
serve a client for money and, if necessary, we willingly give our lives – but not for the sake of money, and even less for the sake of the client, whom we often despise. We are faithful to Fidelity and we serve Service. Everyone around us is warm or hot, we alone are always cold, but our icy chill scorches more powerfully than fire.’

Tamba said:

‘I will tell you a true legend about something said by Buddha, one which is known only to a few initiates. The Supreme One once appeared to the bodhisattvas and told them: “If you kill living things, excel in falsehood, consume excrement and wash it down with urine – only then will you become Buddha. If you fornicate with your mother, sister and daughter and commit a thousand other atrocities, there is an exalted place in store for you in the kingdom of the Buddha”. The virtuous bodhisattvas were horrified by these words, they trembled and fell to the ground.’

‘And they did right!’ Fandorin observed.

‘No. They did not understand what the Supreme One was talking about.’

‘Well, what was he talking about?’

‘About the fact that Good and Evil do not really exist. The first commandment in both your religion and ours is: Do not kill. Tell me, is it good or bad to kill?’

‘Bad.’

‘And to kill a tigress that has attacked a child, is that good or bad?’

‘Good.’

‘Good for whom? For the child, or for the tigress and her cubs? This is what the Buddha was expounding to the holy beings. Surely, under a certain set of circumstances, the actions that He listed, which seemed so vile to the bodhisattvas, can be an expression of supreme nobility or self-sacrifice? Think before you answer.’

The titular counsellor thought.

‘Probably they can …’

Tamba said:

‘And if this is so, of what great value is a commandment that restrains Evil? There must be someone to possess complete mastery of the art of Evil, so that it will be transformed from a fearsome enemy into an obedient slave.’

Tamba said:

‘The Diamond Chariot is the Way for those who live by murder, theft and all the other mortal sins, but still do not lose hope of attaining Nirvana. There cannot be many of us, but
we must exist and we always do
. The world needs us, and the Buddha does not forget us. We are as much His servants as all the others. We are the knife with which He cuts the umbilical cord, and the nail with which He tears the scab off the body.’

‘No!’ Erast Petrovich exclaimed. ‘I don’t agree with you! You have chosen the way of Evil, because that is what you wanted for yourself. It is not what God wants!’

Tamba said:

‘I did not promise to persuade you, I promised to explain. I told my daughter: He is not one of the chosen. You will not attain the Greater knowledge, you will be confined to the Lesser. I shall do what I promised Midori. You will come to me and I shall teach you, little by little, all that you are capable of mastering. That will be enough for you to pass for a strong man in the world of people of the West. Are you willing to learn?’

‘The Lesser Knowledge, yes. But I do not want your Greater Knowledge.’

‘Well then, so be it … To begin with, forget everything you have ever learned. Including what I have taught you before. We are only starting our real studies now. Let us start with the great art of
kiai
: how to focus and direct the spiritual energy of
ki
while maintaining the quiescence of the
shin
, which Western people call the soul. Look into my eyes and listen.’

Forget your reading.
Learn to read all things anew.
Thus spake the
sensei

PS. THE LETTER WRITTEN AND BURNED BY THE PRISONER KNOWN AS THE ACROBAT 27 MAY 1905

Father,

It feels strange to call you that, for since I was a boy I have been used to addressing someone else, the man in whose house I grew up, as ‘father’.

Today I looked at you and recalled what I had been told about you by my grandfather, my mother and my adopted relatives.

My journey has reached its end. I have been faithful to my Way and walked it as I was taught, trying not to succumb to doubts. It is all the same to me how this war ends. I have not fought against your country. I have fought to overcome the obstacles which malicious Fate has raised up on the Path of my Chariot in order to test me. The most difficult test of all was the one at which the heart softens, but I have overcome even that.

I am not writing this letter out of sentimentality, but to fulfil a request from my late mother.

She once said to me: ‘In the world of Buddha there are many wonders, and it may happen that someday you will meet your father. Tell him that I wished to part from him beautifully, but your grandfather was adamant; “If you wish your
gaijin
to live, then do my bidding. He must see you dead and mutilated. Only then will he do what I require”. I did as he ordered, and it has tormented me for the rest of my life’.

I know this story, I have heard it many times – how my mother sheltered from the blast in a secret hiding place, how my grandfather dragged her out from under the rubble, how she lay on the funeral pyre with black clay daubed over half her face.

The only thing I do not know is the meaning of the phrase that my mother asked me to relay to you if a miracle were to happen and we should meet.

That phrase is this: YOU CAN LOVE.

By the same author

The Winter Queen

Leviathan

Turkish Gambit

The Death of Achilles

Special Assignments

The State Counsellor

The Coronation

She Lover of Death

He Lover of Death

Pelagia and the White Bulldog

Pelagia and the Black Monk

Pelagia and the Red Rooster

Copyright

A Weidenfeld & Nicolson ebook

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

This ebook first published in 2011 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Copyright © 2011

First published in Russian by Zakharov Publications, Moscow, Russia and Edizioni Frassinelli, Milan, Italy. All rights reserved.

Published by arrangement with Linda Michaels Limited, International Literary Agents

© Boris Akunin 2003
Translation © Andrew Bromfield 2011

The rights of Boris Akunin and Andrew Bromfield, to be identified as the author and translator of this text respectively, have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 0 297 86069 3

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