All the World's a Stage

RECONSTRUCTION

A woman in love spoke beautiful words to the man who had almost blown up the theatre. Then an ambulance carriage arrived and orderlies led away the madman, carefully supporting him from both sides. Soft-hearted Vasilisa Prokofievna, forgetting the terror she had suffered, threw a coat over the shoulders of the wilted assistant director and also made the sign of the cross over the sick man.

People are compassionate with the insane, thought Fandorin, and that is probably right. But at the same time, the type of psychological disorder known as manic obsession gives rise to the most dangerous criminals in the world. They typically possess steely determination, absolute fearlessness and brilliant inventiveness. The greatest threat is represented by manic obsession on a grand scale. Those who are not possessed by the petty demon of lust, but by the demon of global transformation. And if they cannot manage to transform the world in accordance with their ideal, they are willing to kill everything that lives. Fortunately, as yet it is not possible for any Herostratus to incinerate the temple of life, that is beyond their reach. But progress is creating ever more powerful means of destruction. The imminent war – which is clearly, unfortunately, inevitable – will be unprecedentedly bloody. It will break out not only on the land and the surface of the sea, but also in the air and in the depths of the waters, everywhere. And the century has only just begun, technical progress is unstoppable. The tragicomic Georges Nonarikin is not simply a theatre director driven insane by his artistic vanity. He is the prototype of a new kind of villain. They will not be satisfied with just a theatre as a model of existence: they will want to transform the entire world into a gigantic stage and present on it the plays that they themselves have penned, to allocate to mankind the role of obedient extras, and if the production is a flop – to die together with the Universal Theatre. That is exactly how everything will end. Madmen obsessed by the grandeur and beauty of their conceptions will blow up the Earth. The only hope is that people will be found to stop them in time. Such people are essential. Without them the world is doomed.

But these people are not all-powerful, they are vulnerable and prone to weaknesses. For instance, a certain Erast Petrovich Fandorin, faced with a catastrophe not on the scale of the universe, but on the scale of a doll’s house, almost allowed the model of existence to be destroyed. It must be admitted that in this absurd story his behaviour has been pitiful.

Of course, there are extenuating circumstances.

Firstly, he was not himself. Blinded and deafened, he forfeited his clarity of thought and lost his self-control. In this case both parties – the criminal and the investigator – were in a state of insanity, each in his own way.

Secondly, it is hard not to lose one’s way in the labyrinths of an unnatural world where play is more genuine than reality, the reflection is more interesting that the essence, the articulation replaces the underlying feelings and the face under the make-up cannot be discerned. Only in the theatre, and among people of the theatre, could a crime take place with such motives and in such a setting.

The little officer from the distant edge of the empire would have dragged out a dreary army career, like Chekhov’s Solyony, acting out demonic poses for the garrison ladies. But the swirling tornado of the theatre flew down to the Asiatic backwoods, swooped down on the lieutenant, tore his feet off the ground, swirled him round and bore him off.

The little man wished to become a big artist, and in order to satisfy this unassuageable hunger, he was prepared to sacrifice absolutely anything and absolutely anyone, including himself.

His love for Eliza was a desperate attempt to take a grip on life, to move away from the self-destruction to which his obsession with art was leading. And in his love Nonarikin behaved exactly like Lieutenant Solyony: he conducted an absurd siege of the object of his passion, suffered fierce jealousy and exerted cruel revenge on his unfortunate Tuzenbach rivals.

What could possibly be more absurd than the trick with the viper? Georges was there beside Eliza and was the only one out of all of them who did not lose his head, because he was the one who put the snake in the basket. In the steppes of Central Asia Nonarikin had probably learned to handle reptiles – a hobby of that kind would suit the demon lieutenant. (Let us not forget that Nonarikin kept a phial of cobra venom, with which he smeared the tip of a rapier.) He knew that the bite of a viper in September is not particularly dangerous and deliberately offered it his hand. He was counting on arousing in his Fair Lady a passionate gratitude that would subsequently grow into love. Georges certainly did arouse her gratitude, but was unaware that in women gratitude and love are administered by different departments.

Simultaneous with this disappointment there was another, an artistic one. Nonarikin was not given the role of Lopakhin for which he had been hoping so badly. It went to Hippolyte Emeraldov. Devastated by the ingratitude of Stern, his adored teacher, the assistant director rebelled – as another assistant, the angel Satan, once rebelled against the Eternal Teacher. Any personality with a maniacal bent, teetering on the edge of insanity, can undergo a sudden qualitative shift. Something clicks in the brain, a certain idée fixe arises and takes shape, and its false irrefutability is absolutely blinding, it takes over the mind and that’s it, there is no way back.

For Georges it was the crazy idea of eleven 1s and one figure 9 that became such an epiphany. Apparently it arose suddenly, in a moment of total despair, and Nonarikin was spellbound by its brilliance. And yet at the beginning he was still prepared to spare the world and not destroy it. The first entry in the Tablets says: ‘Take thought!’

The future benefit performance artist gave the theatre world a chance to do that. He killed Emeraldov, who had not only ‘stolen’ his role, but was also pressing his attentions on Eliza in a way that was provocative and insolent. Nonarikin’s calculation was obvious and at first seemed to have proved correct. The director instructed his assistant to play the part of Lopakhin at rehearsals, until a worthy replacement could be found for Emeraldov. There can be no doubt that if Stern had done as he intended and invited in a celebrity from outside – Leonidov or someone else – then Russian theatre would have suffered another loss. On the eve of the premiere, some accident would have happened to Lopakhin, and Nonarikin would have had to be allowed out onto the stage. But Fandorin had appeared with his Japanese drama and the plan, composed with the thoroughness of an engineer, collapsed.

And when it became clear to the assistant director that it was pointless to hope that his feelings for Eliza might be requited, he gave himself over completely to his apocalyptic idea. In the subsequent entries, which were made as a new 1 appeared in the calendar, there was no ‘Take thought!’ The sentence had been pronounced and confirmed. The theatre world would be sent flying to kingdom come and Eliza, having failed to become his bride on earth, would become his Heavenly Bride.

A bride must maintain her chastity until the wedding. Therefore the ‘bridegroom’ killed those whom he suspected of endangering her virtue.

And so the young fool Limbach died. Of course, the cornet received his pass to the actors’ floor from the assistant director. The boy must have been tremendously pleased by the idea of waiting for Eliza in her own changing room – in order to congratulate her on the premiere tête-à-tête.

The scene was set skilfully. It is well known that maniacal personalities in the grip of their overarching idea can manifest incredible ingenuity. The blow with the knife across the stomach was intended as a reminder of the hussar’s threat to commit hara-kiri. In case that trick didn’t work (and by this time Nonarikin already knew that Fandorin was conducting an investigation and that he was a man of experience) the criminal took precautionary measures. Firstly, he acquired a clasp knife – the preferred weapon of Moscow’s bandits. Secondly, he wrote the letters ‘Li’ in blood on the door. This was a cunning trick, and it achieved its purpose. If the investigation or Fandorin did not believe in the ‘hara-kiri’, a different interpretation of the incomplete name could be hinted at – which Nonarikin did very deftly. Apparently by chance he turned the conversation to the subject of Mr Whistle’s past, and before the former policeman’s real name – Lipkov – could be pronounced, the maniac immediately withdrew into the shadows – he knew that the bait would be swallowed.

It was painful for Erast Petrovich to realise how many mistakes he had made. How long he had allowed the murderer to lead him around by the nose!

The most annoying thing of all was that his very first theory, the most obvious of all, had led him directly to Nonarikin, but the assistant director had managed to wriggle his way out of things and even gain Fandorin’s trust… How shameful, how very shameful!

The initial miscalculation had been that Erast Petrovich thought the poisoning of the leading man to be a cold-blooded, carefully planned murder, but in actual fact it was the action of an artist who unhesitatingly laid his own life on the line. Unfortunately, Fandorin failed to guess that the poisoner had played a game of equals with Emeraldov, tempting his own fate. Strictly speaking, it had not been a murder, but a dual. Only poor Hippolyte had not been aware of that, he had not known that in selecting a goblet he was deciding his own fate. It is quite possible that the drinking companions clinked goblets and both drank – the ‘demonic personality’ also wanted to test Fate, to confirm his own chosen status.

Nonarikin decided to proceed in exactly the same way with Fandorin after he picked up the trail – only using a poisoned sword instead of wine. What a great directorial innovation these striking interludes with a fatal outcome must have seemed to Georges! But Erast Petrovich’s perennial good luck did not let him down. The hunter almost fell into his own trap, but he managed to scramble out of it – thanks to the remarkable ingenuity and false testimony of Comedina, the woman who was in love with him and was certain (he had no doubt) to shield him.

This risky episode did not bring the ‘artist of Evil’ to his senses. The morbid idea of a benefit performance had taken too strong a hold of his inflamed brain. It was easier to abandon his faith in Fate. ‘Fate is blind,’ said Nonarikin, as we recall. ‘Only the artist is sighted.’

He was undoubtedly a very gifted artist. Stern underestimated this ‘player of third-level roles’. Georges played the part of a stupid but noble blockhead with great talent.

The Sokolniki operation was quite dangerous for him. His entire, painstakingly constructed story could have collapsed if Fandorin had backed the Tsar up against the wall and forced him to talk frankly. Probably, as he walked through the park with Erast Petrovich that night, the maniac had hesitated – would it not be safer to shoot the overzealous investigator in the back? However, intuition whispered to the schemer that it would be best not to do that. Fandorin’s very gait (the tiger’s stride of a sinobi keyed up for action) indicated that it was impossible to take a man like this by surprise.

Nonarikin acted more cunningly than that. He led the pinschers away from the house and came back himself in order to eavesdrop. As soon as the conversation with the Tsar took an undesirable turn, Georges put in an appearance – once again displaying a total lack of fear in the face of danger. Like a total blockhead, Erast Petrovich raced halfway across Europe, following a false trail. It was a good thing that he didn’t go sailing off to America. On the day after his arrival, the twelfth of November, he would have read in the New York Times about a mysterious explosion in the theatre.

In killing Shustrov, yet another pretender to the hand of the Bride, Nonarikin did not try very hard to disguise his work. He permitted himself the incautious artistic gesture of decorating the throat of his rival with eleven 1s. But even with this hint, Fandorin failed to guess the criminal’s concept in time and avert the psychopathological ‘benefit performance’. Because of the conflict between his reason and feelings, Erast Petrovich very nearly allowed the theatre company, this molecular model of humankind, to be annihilated.

When he reread The Apocalypse, Fandorin often paused over the line that speaks of how ‘those watching over the house will tremble’, and he thought that those who watch over a house have no right to tremble. They must be firm, keep their eyes wide open to avert danger in good time. All his life he had numbered himself as a member of this army. And now look – he had trembled, manifested weakness. In the house that he had undertaken to protect, the apocalypse had very nearly come about. No more trembling, Erast Petrovich told himself, when the sick man was led away by the orderlies and the hysterical tension in the hall dissipated somewhat. I am a mature individual. I am a man. No more playing the child.

He lowered himself into a chair beside Eliza, who was the only one not screaming or waving her arms about in terror, but was simply sitting there, looking dully straight ahead.

‘That’s it, the nightmare is over, the chimera has been dissipated. I have a suggestion.’ He took hold of her cold, feeble fingers. ‘Let us not play at life, but live.’

She did not seem to have heard his concluding words.

‘Over?’ Eliza repeated, and shook her head. ‘Only not for me. My personal nightmare has not gone away.’

‘You mean your ex-husband? Khan Altairsky? It is him that you call Genghis Khan, is it not?’

She shuddered and looked at him in horror.

‘My God, Erast Petrovich, you promised to forget… It is my psychosis, you said so yourself… I didn’t mean at all…’

‘Now then. You got it into your head that Emeraldov, Limbach and Shustrov were murdered by your ex-husband, out of jealousy. And they certainly were murdered. Only it was not Altairsky who did it, but Nonarikin. He is no longer dangerous. So don’t worry any further.’

Erast Petrovich wanted to move on as quickly as possible to the most important thing – to the reason why he had sat down beside Eliza. To talk to her at long last without leaving anything unspoken, without any stupidities, in a manner that befitted adults.

But Eliza did not believe him. He could still read only fear in her eyes.

‘Very well,’ Fandorin said with a gentle smile. ‘I shall meet with your husband and have a talk with him. I shall get him to leave you alone.’

‘No! Don’t even think of doing that!’

The others turned round at her shout.

‘It’s all over and done with,’ Stern said nervously. ‘Get a grip on yourself, Eliza. The other ladies have already calmed down, don’t start up all over again.’

‘I implore you, I implore you,’ she whispered, holding Fandorin’s hand. ‘Don’t get involved with him. He’s not like poor, crazy Georges. The khan is a fiend from hell! You are mistaken if you think that Nonarikin killed everyone. Of course, after the “benefit performance”, it is possible to believe absolutely anything, but it is coincidence! Georges is not capable of cold-blooded murder. Since I have let it slip, you may as well know everything! Genghis Khan is the most dangerous man in the world!’

Erast Petrovich could see that she was on the verge of breaking down, so he tried to talk to her as judiciously as possible.

‘Believe me, the most dangerous people in the world are madmen with the ambitions of an artist.’

‘The khan is absolutely insane! He lost his mind from jealousy!’

‘And does he have any artistic ambitions?’

Eliza was flustered slightly by that.

‘No…’

‘So he and I will c-come to some sort of arrangement,’ Fandorin concluded, getting to his feet.

The conversation about the most important thing would in any case have to be postponed until a later time, when Eliza had stopped worrying about her Caucasian Othello.

‘My God, aren’t you even listening to me? Emeraldov was killed in exactly the same way as Furshtatsky! Shustrov’s throat was slit with a razor – just like Astralov’s. All of it was done by Genghis Khan. He told me: “The wife of the Khan Altairsky cannot have lovers and cannot marry anyone else!” What has Nonarikin got to do with anything? When Furshtatsky was killed (he was an entrepreneur, he got engaged to me in St Petersburg), I wasn’t acting with the Ark yet and I didn’t even know Georges!’

‘Astralov, the tenor?’ Erast Petrovich asked with a frown, recalling that the famous St Petersburg singer really had slit his throat with a razor several months earlier.

‘Yes, yes! When Furshtatsky died, the khan telephoned me and confessed that he had done it. And at Astralov’s funeral, he did this!’

She ran one finger across her throat and started shuddering.

‘There’s nowhere I can hide from him! He knows every step I take! I have found notes from him everywhere. Even in my dressing room! Even in the room in the Metropole! As soon as I moved in, I found a note in the bathroom: “Anyone who dares to become close to you will die”. At that time no one but Stern even knew which room I was going to be in! And Nonarikin didn’t know!’

‘Really?’ Fandorin sank back down into the chair. ‘In the entire company only Noah Noaevich knew exactly where you were staying?’

‘Yes, he was the only one! Vasya and Sima took me there. Vasya opened the suitcases and Sima hung up my dresses and set out my toiletries…’

‘Where, in the bathroom? Please excuse me,’ Erast Petrovich interrupted her. ‘I have to leave you. We will definitely talk again. Later.’

‘Where are you going?’ Eliza sobbed. ‘I implore you, do not try to do anything!’

He gestured reassuringly as he looked around for Masa.

He was sitting sulking in a chair.

‘Don’t be offended with me,’ Erast Petrovich said to him. ‘I have treated you quite terribly. Forgive me. Tell me, what do you think about your lady friend Aphrodisina?’

The Japanese replied sadly.

‘I’m not offended with you, master. What point is there in being offended with someone who is unwell? I am offended with Sima-san. How did you know that I was thinking about her now?’

The subject of discussion was close by, only about ten steps away. Flushed after all the turmoil and agitation, Sima was telling Shiftsky something heatedly, holding one hand on her breast.

‘…My poor heart almost burst with the terror of it! It’s still fluttering now!’

Kostya looked at the spot where Aphrodisina’s heart was fluttering and couldn’t tear his eyes away.

‘It needs someone to blow on it, then it will settle down. Just give the word,’ the ‘scamp’ suggested mischievously.

Masa complained.

‘That empty-headed girl only loved me for my beauty. Now that a bullet has mutilated my features, she does not even want to look at me. I walked over to her and she said to me: “Masik, you’re a rear hero, of course, but you smerr singed.” And she wrinkled up her nose. And she turned away from my wound in disgust! Kind Reginina-san bandaged me up. She’s still quite good looking, by the way. And in a good body…’

‘I’m interested in whether Aphrodisina is fond of money?’

‘That’s all she ever talks about. How much everything costs and what things she would buy herself if she had a bigger salary. The only time she doesn’t talk about money is when she makes love, but immediately after the love she starts asking for presents. I was wounded and bleeding to death, and she turned away from me!’

Sensing that she was being watched, Aphrodisina looked round, folded her lips into a rose bud and blew Masa a kiss.

‘Master, tell her that I do not want to know her any more!’

‘Straight away.’

Fandorin walked across to Sima and gave Shiftsky an eloquent glance – he immediately disappeared.

‘Mademoiselle,’ Erast Petrovich asked in a quiet voice, ‘how much does Khan Altairsky pay you?’

‘What?’ Aphrodisina squealed, fluttering her long eyelashes.

‘You spy on Eliza, you report everything about her to her husband, you plant notes, and so on. Do not dare to lie to me, or else I shall announce this to everyone, out loud. You will be thrown out of the c-company in disgrace… Very well, I shall amend the question. I am not interested in the amount of your remuneration. I need to know where I can find this g-gentleman.’

‘I beg your pardon! How could you!’ Sima’s eyes filled up with pure tears of the highest quality. ‘Eliza is my very best friend! The two of us are like sisters!’

Fandorin twitched the corner of his mouth.

‘I shall count t-to three. One, two…’

‘He rents an apartment in Abrikosov’s tenement building on Kuznetsky Most Street,’ Aphrodisina said rapidly. She blinked and the tears dried up. ‘You won’t give me away now, will you? Remember now, you promised!’

‘How long have you been in the khan’s pay?’

‘Since St Petersburg… Oh, dear, darling man! Don’t destroy me. Noah Noaevich will blacken my name in the world of theatre! I’ll never get work with any decent company! Believe me, I know how to be grateful!’

She started breathing rapidly and moved closer to Erast Petrovich. He squinted into her décolleté, winced and moved back.

Once again, with fantastic ease, the tears started flowing down Sima’s face.

‘Don’t look at me with such contempt! It’s unbearable! I’ll lay hands on myself!’

‘Don’t venture beyond the bounds of the “coquette”, mademoiselle.’

He bowed slightly and set off quickly towards the exit, simply gesturing for Masa to follow.

ON LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Before all the other business, he had to take the Japanese to a specialist in cerebral traumas. Erast Petrovich was concerned by the way that Masa was swaying from side to side and the greenish tinge of his complexion. His unusual loquacity was also suspicious. Fandorin knew from experience that when his servant chattered continuously, he was concealing the fact that he felt terrible.

On the way to Virgin’s Field the concussed man no longer spoke about Sima and inconstant women, but about himself and heroic men.

It began with Fandorin apologising for his unsuccessful leap and praising his assistant for the alacrity he had displayed.

‘Yes,’ Masa replied solemnly. ‘I’m a hero.’

Erast Petrovich remarked guardedly:‘Quite possibly. But let others decide whether you are a hero or not.’

‘You are mistaken, master. Every man decides whether he is a hero or not. You have to make the choice and then not betray it afterwards. A man who has first decided to be a hero, but then changed his mind, is a pitiful sight. And a man who, in the middle of his life, has suddenly changed from being a non-hero to being a hero risks damaging his karma.’

Raising his automobile goggles onto his forehead, Erast Petrovich squinted at his passenger in alarm to see whether he was delirious.

‘Can you clarify that?’

‘A man who is a hero devotes his life to the service of some idea. It is not important what or whom he serves. A hero can have a wife and children, but it is better to do without that. The lot of a woman who has bound her destiny to a hero is a sad one. The children are even more to be pitied. It is terrible to grow up, feeling that your father is always ready to sacrifice you for the sake of his service.’ Masa sighed bitterly. ‘It is a different matter if you are a non-hero. A man like that chooses his family and serves that. He must not play the hero. That is the same as if a samurai betrays his lord in order to show off to the crowd.’

Fandorin listened carefully. Masa’s philosophising could sometimes be intriguing.

‘And what do you serve?’

The Japanese looked at him in resentful amazement.

‘Can you still ask? Thirty-two years ago, I chose you, master. One choice for the rest of my life. Women sometimes – quite often – bring solace to my life, but I do not promise them much and I never become involved with those who expect me to be faithful. I already have someone to serve, I tell them.’

And Erast Fandorin suddenly felt ashamed. He coughed in embarrassment, trying to clear away the lump that had risen in his throat. Masa saw that his master was embarrassed, but he misunderstood the reason for it.

‘Are you reproaching yourself for your love for Eliza-san? There is no need. My rule does not apply to you. If you wish to love a woman with all your heart and do not feel that it hinders your service, then go ahead.’

‘And… what, in your opinion, does my service consist of?’ Fandorin asked cautiously, recalling that only a quarter of an hour ago he had been thinking about those who ‘watch over the house’.

The Japanese shrugged nonchalantly.

‘I have no idea. That is all the same to me. It is enough that you have some idea and you serve it. But my idea is you, and I serve you. It is all very simple and harmonious. Of course, to love with all your heart is a very great risk. But if you wish to know the opinion of a man who knows women well, one like Eliza-san would suit us best of all.’

‘Us?’

Erast Petrovich gave his servant a severe look, but Masa’s expression was clear and open. And it was immediately obvious that there had never been anything between Eliza and the Japanese, that there never could have been. Only with his reason clouded could Fandorin have imagined that Masa was capable of regarding his master’s chosen one as an ordinary woman.

‘Surely you don’t want a jealous woman to come between us, who will hate me because you and I are bound together by so many things? That is the way any normal wife would act. But an actress is a different matter. In addition to her husband, she has the theatre. She doesn’t need a hundred per cent of your shares, she’s happy with forty-nine.’

The automobile crossed the Garden Ring Road, skipping over the tramlines.

‘Have you seriously decided to marry me off?’ Fandorin asked. ‘But what f-for?’

‘So there will be chirdren and I will teach them,’ Masa replied. After a moment’s thought he added: ‘I probably can’t teach a little girl anything useful.’

‘And what would you teach my son?’

‘The most important thing. What you cannot teach him, master.’

‘Interesting. What is that I can’t teach my own son?’

‘How to be happy.’

Fandorin was so terribly surprised, he couldn’t think of anything to say at first; he had never thought that from the outside his life could seem unhappy. Surely happiness was the absence of unhappiness?

‘There is no happiness, but there is peace and freedom,’ he said, recalling Pushkin’s famous formula, which he had always liked so much.

Masa thought for a few moments and disagreed.

‘That is the mistaken reasoning of a man who is afraid to be happy,’ he said, switching back to his own language. ‘It is probably the only thing that you are afraid of, master.’

His condescending tone of voice infuriated Fandorin. ‘Go to hell, you home-grown philosopher! That’s a line from Pushkin, and the poet is always right!’

‘Pushkin? Oooo!’

Masa put on a reverential face and even bowed. He respected the opinions of authorities.

In the reception room of the university clinic, as the Japanese was being led away for examination, he suddenly looked at Erast Petrovich with his piercing little eyes.

‘Master, I can see from your face that you are going out on business again without me. Please do not punish me like this. My ears are ringing and my thoughts are a little confused, but that does not make any difference. You will do the thinking, and I will only act. For a genuine samurai, a concussion is a mere trifle.’

Fandorin prodded him in the back.

‘Go on, go on, let the professor-sensei cure you. A genuine samurai should be yellow, and not green. And anyway, my business is quite trivial, there’s nothing to talk about.’

However, Erast Petrovich did not set out on his business immediately. First he called into the telegraph office, and the long-distance telephone station. It was twilight before the Isotta drove up to Abrikosov’s tenement building on Kuznetsky Most Street.

Khan Altairsky lived in the bel étage, occupying the entire left half of it.

‘How shall I announce you?’ Fandorin was asked by the doorman, a sturdy black-haired young fellow with a black moustache wearing a long-waisted Circassian coat with a massive dagger in the belt. He looked Fandorin up and down suspiciously and announced: ‘His High Dignity is busy. He is dining.’

‘I’ll announce m-myself,’ Erast Petrovich replied good-naturedly.

He took the young fellow by the neck, pressed simultaneously on the sui point with his thumb and the min point with his index finger and supported the limp body so that it wouldn’t make too much noise. This manipulation guaranteed an unhealthy but deep sleep lasting from fifteen to thirty minutes, depending on the strength of the organism.

Fandorin left his top hat and coat in the entrance hall, and checked in the mirror to make sure that his parting was straight. Then he set off along the corridor towards the melodic jingling of silver.

His High Dignity was indeed dining.

A balding man with dark hair and bushy eyebrows, with puffy facial features that seemed vaguely familiar to Fandorin, was chewing food and sipping on red wine. To judge from the beverage, and also from the carved piglet and Dutch ham, the khan did not adhere to the sharia law in his diet.

At the sight of the stranger the khan forgot to close his mouth and froze with a piece of the bread that he had just bitten off between his teeth. A manservant, who looked like the twin brother of the sleeping doorman, also froze, holding a jug in his hands.

‘Who are you? Why did they let you in?’ the khan rumbled menacingly, spitting the bread out onto the tablecloth. ‘Musa, fling him out!’

Fandorin shook his head. How was it possible to marry a crude oaf like his, even if only for a short while? This woman quite definitely had to be saved – not from her enemies, but from herself.

The servant put down the wine and dashed at Fandorin, hissing like a goose. The visitor gave Musa the same treatment as his presumptive brother: he put him to sleep and gently laid him out on the floor.

The blood drained away from the abandoned husband’s bald patch. Expecting the uninvited guest to be bundled out immediately, the khan had taken a gulp of wine, but had not yet swallowed it, and now it flowed down over his chin onto his starched napkin. It was an appalling sight – as if the man had suffered a stroke with haemhorraging from the throat.

‘Who are you?’ he repeated, but in a quite different tone of voice. Not with outrage, but in fear.

‘My name is Fandorin. But perhaps for you I shall be Azrail,’ said Erast Petrovich, naming the Muslim archangel of death. ‘Everything will depend on the outcome of our c-conversation.’

‘Fandorin? Then I know who you are. You’re the author of that idiotic play and also an amateur detective with big contacts. I have made enquiries about you.’

The khan tore off his stained napkin and grandly folded his hands, glittering with rings, together on his chest.

‘I see you have calmed down a little.’ Fandorin sat down beside him and toyed absent-mindedly with a dessert fork. ‘That’s a mistake. I’ll be b-brief… You stop persecuting Madam Lointaine. That is one. You immediately grant her a divorce. That is two. Otherwise something nasty will happen to you.’ Erast Petrovich considered it unnecessary to specify the meaning of the threat. His opponent was clearly not worthy of having pearls scattered before him, and the tone of the voice and glance of the eye are always more eloquent than words.

The khan was mortally afraid, that was clear. A little more of this and he would keel over in a faint.

‘I have already decided that I shall never go near that madwoman again,’ His Most High Dignity exclaimed. ‘She tried to shoot me with a pistol!’

This was the first time Fandorin had heard about the pistol, but the news did not surprise him. It is dangerous to drive a woman of artistic temperament to extremes.

‘You have only yourself to blame. You should not have pretended to be a murderer. So on the first point we are agreed. That leaves the second.’

Altairsky thrust out his chest.

‘I shall never give her a divorce. It is out of the question.’

‘I know,’ said Fandorin, screwing up his eyes thoughtfully, ‘that you told Eliza that the wife of a khan cannot have lovers and cannot marry anyone else. But the widow of a khan is a different matter.’

The other man was perhaps not really frightened enough. Erast Petrovich took him firmly by the scruff of the neck and set the silver fork against his throat.

‘I could kill you in a d-duel, but I won’t fight a scoundrel who frightens helpless women. I’ll simply kill you. Like this p-piglet here.’

The khan’s bloodshot eye squinted at the dish.

‘You won’t kill me,’ the stubborn man hissed in a choking voice. ‘That’s not your line of business, rather exactly the opposite. I told you. I’ve made enquiries about you. I make enquiries about everyone who hangs around Eliza… But then, kill me if you like. I still won’t give her a divorce.’

Such firmness aroused distinct respect. Evidently Erast Petrovich’s first impression of His High Dignity had not been entirely accurate. He took the fork away and moved back.

‘Do you love you wife so very much?’ he asked in surprise.

‘What the hell has love got to do with it!’ Altairsky slammed his fists down on the table and started choking on his hate. ‘Eliza, that bi…’

Fandorin’s face twitched furiously and the khan bit off the swear word.

‘…That lady destroyed my life! My father deprived me of the rights of the firstborn! And if I get divorced, he’ll leave me without any support! A hundred and twenty thousand a year! And what would I do then – go and get a job? Khan Altairsky will never blacken his hands with labour. It would be better if you killed me.’

This was a weighty argument. Erast Petrovich pondered it. Perhaps he really should kill this weak potentate and cunning, balding fop.

‘As far as I understand it, you wish to marry Eliza. And does a civil marriage not suit you?’ the husband asked ingratiatingly. He evidently also wanted very much to find a compromise. ‘It’s fashionable now. She would like it. And you would never hear anything about me again. I swear it! Do you want me to go away to Nice, for ever? Only don’t demand the impossible from me.’

Fandorin went back from Kuznetsky Most Street on foot. He had to gather his thoughts and prepare for the conversation with Eliza. The November evening attempted to tear the hat off his head and he had to hold it on.

Something trivial has happened to me, Erast Petrovich told himself. Probably every second man goes through it. Where did I get the idea that this cup would pass me by? Of course, in other men this sickness that is commonly referred to as ‘no fool like an old fool’ seems to occur for other reasons. I’ve read about it. Some suddenly get the feeling that they do not have much time left to be a man, and so they start panicking. Some suddenly realise that they didn’t sow enough wild oats in their young days. Neither the former nor the latter would appear to have anything to do with my case. What has happened to me is not a sickness, it is more like a trauma. It is well known that a bone breaks more easily at the site of a previous break. In the same way, owing to a chance confluence of circumstances, the old break in my heart snapped again.

But does it really matter what whim of fate is responsible when love overwhelms you? It comes and it swings the door wide open. Your usual dwelling place is suddenly illuminated with unbearably bright light. You see yourself and your life differently, and you don’t like what you see. You can pretend to be an experienced gallant and turn the whole thing into a courtly adventure; but at any moment the glow might fade. You can shove the uninvited guest back out of the door and turn the key; in a little while the dwelling will once again be immersed in its customary gloom. You can turn frantic, jump out of the window, go running off to the ends of the earth. I have actually tried to do both of those things. But now I have to try another method – simply take a step forward and not turn my eyes away. This requires courage.

Such was the rational monologue that Erast Petrovich rehearsed to himself, but the closer he approached to the hotel, the more agonisingly nervous he felt. In the foyer a cowardly thought even occurred to him: ‘Perhaps Eliza is not in her room?’

But the porter sad that Madam Lointaine was in and politely telephoned upstairs and enquired:

‘How shall I introduce you?’

‘Fandorin…’

His throat turned dry. Was this the puerility starting all over again?

‘She says to go up.’

In any case I am obliged to tell her that her husband offers her complete freedom! Erast Petrovich shouted at himself. And as for everything else… That is her business.

In this same angry mood he began the conversation.

He said that there was nothing more to be afraid of.

That Khan Altairsky was a villain and a petty wretch, but not a murderer. That in any case from henceforth he would disappear from her life. He would not give her a divorce, but he offered her complete freedom.

He told her that the matter of the two deaths in St Petersburg had been clarified. Following the death of the Kiev entrepreneur Boleslav Ignatievich Furshtatsky, as always in such cases, an autopsy had been carried out on the body. From the telegrams sent by the coroner’s office, it followed that the cause of death had been heart failure, and no traces of poison had been discovered. Khan Altairsky had only exploited the sad event for his own purposes.

The case of the tenor Astralov was different. In a telephone conversation with the investigator who had conducted the case, it had transpired that the marks of the razor were almost identical to the wounds that had broken off the life of Mr Shustrov. A sliding blow with a light inclination from left to right. A blow like that could be struck either by someone sitting in a chair, or by someone who was standing behind the victim. On 11 February, the day Astralov died, Eliza was already a member of the Noah’s Ark theatre company; she was acquainted with Nonarikin and, as was not in the least surprising (Fandorin felt it possible to put that in), he had immediately conceived a passionate love for her. Exactly how the murderer had managed to approach first Astralov and then Shustrov with a razor was not yet entirely clear, but the maniac himself could be asked about that. After everything that had happened, he had no reason to conceal anything; and in addition people of a certain kind adored boasting of their great feats. Nonarikin would be glad to tell them everything.

Eliza listened to his report without interrupting, with her hands folded on the table in front of her, like a diligent grammar school girl. She kept her eyes fixed on Erast Petrovich, but he preferred to look away. He was afraid of losing the thread.

‘I believe you,’ Eliza said in a quiet voice. ‘I believe you. But the fact remains that all these men were killed because of me! It’s appalling!’

‘Read Dostoyevsky, my lady. “Beauty is a terrible and appalling thing”.’ Fandorin deliberately started talking more drily. ‘It makes some strive for the heights and drives others down into the depths of hell. Megalomania led Nonarikin implacably along the path to self-destruction. However, if the madman had found his feelings for you to be requited, he would have stopped wishing to r-rule the world. He would have been willing to settle for your love. As I am…’

The final phrase slipped out involuntarily. Fandorin finally looked into Eliza’s eyes – and what he had been intending to come round to only after a thorough introduction simply spoke itself. It was too late to retreat. And in any case, it was actually better without any diplomacy and tactical preludes.

Erast Petrovich gave a deep sigh and started speaking, not like a boy, but like a potential husband (even if only a civil law one).

‘You remember I said that I was in love, enamoured with you? Well, I was mistaken, I love you,’ he began in a gloomy, almost accusatory voice, and then paused in order to give her a chance to react.

‘I know, I know!’ she exclaimed.

Having once assumed a morose tone, Fandorin could no longer abandon it.

‘It is splendid that you know everything. But I had hoped to hear something else. For instance: “I love you too”.’

‘I have loved you all this time,’ Eliza exclaimed immediately with tears in her eyes. ‘I love you madly and desperately.’

She reached her arms out to him, but Erast Petrovich did not yield to temptation. He had to tell her everything that he had been intending to.

‘You are an actress, you cannot manage without exaggerations, I accept you as you are, I hope that you will take the same attitude to me. Please listen to everything I have to say and then decide.’

Until this moment Erast Petrovich had been standing, Now he sat down at the opposite side of the table, as if establishing a barrier between them, and now the conditions for crossing would have to be negotiated.

‘I have lived in this world for a long time. I behaved with you like an absolute idiot… Don’t object, just listen,’ he said when she shook her head and threw her hands up in the air. ‘I knew from the very beginning what I could expect and what I could not. You see, it is always written on a woman’s face whether she is capable of a great love or she is not. The way she will behave if life forces her to choose between her beloved and herself, between her beloved and children, between her beloved and an idea.’

‘What choice do you think I will make?’ Eliza asked timidly.

‘You will choose a role. That part of you suits me. We are cut from the same cloth, you and I. I will also choose a role. My role is not a theatrical one, certainly, but that does not matter. Therefore I suggest an honest alliance, without any lies or self-deception. You and I shall have a marriage of convenience.’

‘That is the same thing that Shustrov offered me,’ she said with a shudder.

‘Possibly. But our convenience will not be one of commerce, but of love. To put it in entrepreneurial terms, I propose a love with limited liability. Don’t frown. We love each other, we want to be together. But at the same time, we are both invalids of love. I am not willing to abandon my manner of life for your sake. You will not sacrifice the stage for me. Or if you do, you will soon regret it and become unhappy.’

He thought he had managed to break through her habit of affectation. Eliza listened to him seriously and attentively – without wringing her hands, without assuming an air of glowing love.

‘You know, I think we are ideally suited for each other,’ said Fandorin, moving on to the second point, which was no less delicate. ‘I am a mature man and you are a mature woman. There is an ancient formula that can be used to calculate the correct combination of a man’s and a woman’s ages at the moment of their alliance. The number of years that the bride has lived should be equal to half of the bridegroom’s years, plus seven. So according to the Chinese rule you are slightly younger than the ideal age for my chosen one. You are thirty, and according to the formula you should be thirty-four and a half. This is not a great difference.’

As he had expected, Eliza was interested by this dubious Chinese wisdom. She wrinkled up her forehead and worked her lips.

‘Wait… I can’t count it up. How old are you, then? Thirty-four and a half minus seven, multiply by two…’

‘Fifty-five.’

She was upset.

‘As old as that. I didn’t think you were more than forty-five!’

This was a painful subject for Erast Petrovich, but he had prepared well for it.

‘A man has three ages, and their link to the number of years he has lived is only relative. The first is the age of the mind. There are old men with the intellectual development of a ten-year-old child, but some youths have a mature intellect. The older a man’s mind is, the better. The second age is spiritual. The supreme achievement on this path of life is to reach wisdom. It can only descend on a man in old age, when the vain commotion has receded and the passions are exhausted. As I see now, I still have a long way to go to get there. In the spiritual sense, I am younger than I would like to be. And finally, there is physical age. Everything here depends on the correct use of the body. The human organism is an apparatus that is amenable to endless improvement. The wear and tear is more than made up for by acquired skills. I assure you that now I have much better control of my body than I did in my youth.’

‘Oh, I saw how in just two minutes you ran up onto the gallery gangway and climbed down the cable!’ Eliza lowered her eyes demurely. ‘And I have had other opportunities to appreciate how well you control your body…’

Erast Petrovich, however, did not allow the conversation to be diverted from its serious vein.

‘What do you say, Eliza?’ He felt his voice breaking and coughed. ‘What do you think of my p-proposal?’

Now everything depended, not so much on her words, as on the way she pronounced them.

If his sincerity had not broken though the actress’s defensive guise, nothing worthwhile would come of their union.

Eliza turned pale and then blushed. Then she turned pale again. And a terrible thing – her eyes seemed to have rid themselves of their perpetual squint, and they were both looking straight at Fandorin.

‘One condition.’ She also seemed to have suddenly turned hoarse. ‘No children. May God allow me not to be torn apart between you and the stage. If we cannot get along with each other, it will be painful for us, but we will manage somehow. But I would feel sad for the children.’

This is not a mask speaking, Erast Petrovich thought with immense relief. This is a real, live woman. The way she speaks to me is already an answer. And he also thought that there was a disappointment in store for Masa. It was not the Japanese servant’s destiny to teach a little Fandorin how to be happy.

‘That’s reasonable,’ Erast Petrovich said out loud. ‘I wanted to ask you about that myself.’

Here, however, Eliza’s reserves of reason and restraint ran out. She jumped up, knocking over her chair, dashed to Fandorin, huddled up against him and murmured devotedly.

‘Hold me tight, never let me go! Otherwise I shall be torn off the earth, blown away, up into the sky. I shall be lost without you! God sent you to me to be my salvation! You are my only hope, you are my anchor, my guardian angel. Love me, love me, as much as you can! And I shall love you as well as I know how and with all the strength I have.’

And now he couldn’t tell whether she was being genuine just at that moment or whether, without even noticing, she had slipped into some role. If she had, then how magnificently it had been played, how magnificently.

But Eliza’s face was wet with tears, her lips were trembling and her shoulders were shaking, and Fandorin felt ashamed of his scepticism.

Essentially, whether she was acting or not was not really important. Erast Petrovich was happy, unconditionally happy. And now come what may.