Fandorin in English 1-10

Everyone was wearing mourning armbands as on that day it had been announced that His Highness Mikhail Georgievich had died in a suburban palace from a sudden attack of measles. Since it was known that all the younger Georgieviches were suffering from this dangerous illness, the news seemed credible, although of course certain dark fantastic rumours had already begun to spread. However, the truth was far too unlikely for anyone to believe.

Xenia Georgievna and Pavel Georgievich stood there with their eyes wet with tears, but Georgii Alexandrovich kept himself in hand. Kirill Alexandrovich looked impassive. One could only assume that from his point of view a most wretched story had concluded in a fashion that was not the most catastrophic possible. From time to time Simeon Alexandrovich dabbed his red eyes with a scented handkerchief, however I suspect that he was not sighing for the little prince so much as for a certain Englishman with straw-yellow hair.

Having regained control of his voice, His Majesty continued: ‘However, it would be unjust to thank the Almighty without rewarding the individual whom the Lord chose as His own good instrument, our faithful House Master Afanasii Ziukin. Our eternal gratitude to you, our precious Afanasii Stepanovich, for your fidelity to duty and devotion to the tsarist house.’

‘Yes, dear Afanasii, we are most pleased indeed at you,’ Her Imperial Majesty echoed, smiling at me and as usual confusing the difficult Russian words.

I noticed that despite the period of mourning the small diamond bouquet was glimmering radiantly on the tsarina’s breast.

‘Approach, Afanasii Stepanovich,’ the sovereign said in a solemn voice. ‘I wish you to be aware that the Romanovs know how to value and reward selfless service.’

I took three steps forward, inclined my head respectfully and fixed my eyes on His Majesty’s gleaming lacquered boots.

‘For the first time in the history of the tsarist house and in contravention of an ancient rule, we are elevating you to the high rank of master of the chamber and appointing you to manage the entire staff of court servants,’ the tsar declared.

I bowed even lower. Only yesterday such incredible advancement would have set my head spinning and I would have thought myself the very happiest of mortals, but now my numbed feelings did not respond at all to the joyful news.

And the outpouring of imperial grace and favour was not yet over.

‘In exchange for the contents of a certain casket, which, thanks to you, have been returned to the tsarina –’ I thought I detected a crafty note in the emperor’s voice at this point ‘– we confer on you a diamond snuffbox with our monogram and a gratuity from our personal fund of ten thousand roubles.’

I bowed again. ‘I thank you most humbly, Your Imperial Majesty.’

That completed the ceremony and I backed away behind the members of the royal family. Endlung gave me a secret wink and pulled a respectful face as if to say: such an important individual will not wish to know me now. I tried to smile at him, but I could not.

But the sovereign was already addressing the members of the Green House. ‘Poor little Mika,’ he said and knitted his brows mournfully. ‘A bright angel fiendishly done to death by heinous criminals. We grieve together with you, Uncle Georgie. But while not forgetting kindred feeling for one moment, let us also remember that we are not simple members of society but members of the imperial house, and for us the authority of the monarchy stands above all other things. I will say words now that might possibly seem monstrous to you, but nonetheless I am obliged to say them. Mika died and now he dwells in heaven. We were not able to save him. But the honour and reputation of the Romanovs has been saved. This appalling event has not become public, and that is the most important thing. I am certain, Uncle Georgie, that this thought will help you to cope with your grief as a father. Despite all the shocks and disturbances, the coronation was completed without disruption . . . Almost without disruption,’ the sovereign added and frowned, obviously recalling the trouble at Khodynsk Field. This qualification rather spoiled the impression of a little speech imbued with true majesty.

Georgii Alexandrovich weakened the effect still further when he said in a low voice: ‘We’ll see what you say about paternal feelings, Nicky, when you have children of your own . . .’

Xenia Georgievna came up to me in the corridor, put her arms round me without saying anything, rested her head on my shoulder and let her tears flow. I stood quite still, only stroking Her Highness’s hair cautiously.

Eventually the grand princess straightened up, looked up at me and asked in surprise: ‘Afanasii, why aren’t you crying? Good Lord, what has happened to your face?’

I did not understand what she meant and turned my head to glance in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall.

It was a perfectly normal face, except that it was rather stiff.

‘Did you tell him what I said?’ Xenia Georgievna whispered, sobbing. ‘Did you say that I love him?’

‘Yes,’ I replied after hesitating for a moment. I had not immediately realised what she meant.

‘And what did he say?’ Her Highness’s eyes, wet with tears, gazed at me with hope and fear. ‘Did he send me anything?’

I shook my head. ‘No, only this.’ I took the opal earrings and diamond brooch out of my pocket. ‘He said he did not want them.’

Xenia Georgievna squeezed her eyes shut for a moment but no longer. After all, Her Highness had been taught self-control since she was a child. And now there were no more tears running down her delicate cheeks.

‘Thank you, Afanasii,’ she said in a quiet voice.

Her Highness’s voice sounded as weary as if she were not nineteen but at least forty.

I went out onto the veranda. I was suddenly having difficulty breathing. Clouds had settled over Moscow earlier in the evening. There was clearly going to be a thunderstorm that night.

I had a strange feeling. Fate and monarchal favour had showered fabulous gifts on me and elevated me to a height of which I had never even dreamed, but I felt as if I had lost everything I possessed, and lost it forever. The wind rustled across the treetops in the Neskuchny Park, setting the leaves trembling, and for some reason I suddenly remembered Endlung’s suggestion that I should join the navy. I imagined the clear horizon, the foaming crests of the waves, the fresh breath of the sea breeze. Sheer nonsense, of course.

Mr Freyby came out through the glass doors. He had not had an easy time of it during the last few days either. He had been left alone without any masters. He had been held under serious suspicion, subjected to hours of interrogation, and now, together with the luggage, he would take back to England a lead coffin containing the body of Mr Carr.

However, none of these ordeals had left any mark at all on the English butler. He looked as phlegmatic and benign as ever.

He gave me an affable nod and stood beside me, leaning on the railings. He lit his pipe. This was company that suited me perfectly, since with Mr Freyby it was entirely possible to remain silent without the slightest feeling of awkwardness.

A line of carriages drew up at the entrance. Everyone would start going home now.

Their Majesties began walking down from the porch, accompanied by members of the imperial family. On the final step the sovereign stumbled and almost fell. Kirill Alexandrovich just managed to grab his nephew in time.

Beside his tall stately uncles, His Majesty looked entirely unimpressive, like a Scottish pony among a herd of thoroughbred racehorses. Of all the Romanovs, for some reason the Lord had chosen this one to lay on his feeble shoulders the heavy burden of responsibility for the fate of the monarchy.

The regal couple climbed into their carriage. The grand dukes saluted and Xenia Georgievna sank into a curtsey. Her Highness looked proud and haughty, as befits a princess.

For the sake of the imperial audience I had decked myself out in the green livery with gold braid. For the last time, as it turned out. Something was weighing down the side pocket. I absentmindedly stuck my hand in and felt a book. Ah yes, the Russian– English lexicon, a present from Mr Freyby.

I wondered what the perspicacious Englishman thought of the Russian tsar.

I leafed though the pages and put together a question: ‘Vot yu sink ebaut nyu tsar?’

Mr Freyby watched the gilded landau with footmen of the chamber on the monkey boards as it drove away. He shook his head and said: ‘The last of the Romanovs, I’m afraid.’

He also took out a dictionary – English–Russian – and muttered to himself: ‘The article is out . . . “Last” is posledny. Right . . . “of” is iz . . .’ And with unassailable confidence he declared, clearly enunciating each word: ‘Posledny – iz – Romanov.’

¹Emotional paralysis.

SHE LOVER OF DEATH

CHAPTER 1 I. From the Newspapers

The Selfless Devotion of a Four-Legged Friend

Yesterday at shortly after two in the morning the inhabitants of the Goliath company’s apartment building on Semyonovskaya Street were awoken by the sound of a heavy object falling to the ground, which was immediately followed by the protracted howling of a pointer dog belonging to the photographer S., who rented a studio in the attic. On hearing the noise, the yard keeper went outside and, looking up, he saw a lighted window with a dog standing on the window ledge and wailing in a most mournful, harrowing manner. A moment later the yard keeper noticed the motionless body of S. himself lying on the ground below the window. It was evidently the object that had made so much noise in falling. Suddenly, before the astounded yard keeper’s very eyes, the pointer jumped down, landing close beside the body of its master and smashing itself to death against the cobblestones of the street.

Legends concerning canine fidelity are numerous, but selfless devotion that overcomes the very instinct of self-preservation and scorns death itself is extremely rare among animals, and cases of obvious suicide are encountered even less often among our four-legged friends.

The police initially proceeded on the assumption that S., who led a disorderly and not entirely sober life, had fallen from the window by accident: however, a note in verse discovered in the apartment indicated that the photographer had laid hands on himself. The motives underlying this act of desperation are unclear. S.’s neighbours and acquaintances assert that he had no reasons for settling his accounts with life: quite the contrary, in fact; in recent days S. had been in very high spirits.

L. Zh.

Moscow Courier, 4 (17) August

1900, p.6

Mystery of Fatal Junket Solved

Incredible details of the tragic events on Furmanny Lane

As we informed our readers two days ago, the name-day party to which grammar school teacher Soimonov invited four of his colleagues concluded in the most lamentable fashion possible, with the host and his guests all discovered seated, lifeless, around the well-laid table. An autopsy of the bodies revealed that the deaths of all five victims had been caused by a bottle of Castello port wine, which contained an immense dose of arsenic. This sensational news spread to every part of the city, and at the wine merchants’ shops demand for the abovementioned brand of port, formerly a great favourite with Muscovites, dried up completely. The police launched an inquiry at the Stamm Brothers’ bottling plant, which supplies Castello to the wine merchants.

Today, however, we can state with absolutely certainty that the estimable beverage was not to blame. A sheet of paper bearing the following lines of verse was discovered in the pocket of Soimonov’s frock-coat:

Song of Farewell

Loveless life is mere vexation!

Wary stealth, deliberation,

Hollow mirth, dissatisfaction

Blight and thwart my every action.

Deriders, you have had your fun,

Your time for mockery is done.

Help this valiant fellow now

Set the crown upon his brow.

To her who did reveal to me

The fearsome love that sets one free

I shall cry in that sweet hour:

‘Pluck me like a pining flower!’

The meaning of this farewell missive is vague, but it is entirely clear that Soimonov intended to take his leave of this life and put the poison in the bottle himself. However, the motives for this insane act are not clear. The suicide was a reserved and eccentric individual, although he showed no signs of any mental illness. Your humble servant was able to ascertain that he was not much liked at the grammar school: among the pupils he had the reputation of a strict and boring teacher, while his colleagues decried his acrimonious and arrogant temperament, and several of them mocked his idiosyncratic behaviour and morbid meanness. However, all of this can hardly be considered adequate grounds for such an outrageous atrocity.

Soimonov had no family or servants. According to his landlady, Madam G., he often went out in the evenings and came back long after midnight. Numerous rough drafts for poems of an extremely sombre complexion were discovered among Soimonov’s papers. None of his colleagues were aware that the deceased was in the habit of composing verse, and when some of those questioned were informed of the poetic efforts of this Chekhovian ‘man in a case’, they actually refused to believe it.

The invitation to the name-day party which ended in such a grisly fashion came as a complete surprise to Soimonov’s colleagues at the grammar school. He had never invited anyone to visit him before, and those he did invite were the four people with whom he was on the very worst of terms and who, according to numerous witnesses, mocked him more than anyone else. The unfortunate victims accepted the invitation in the belief that Soimonov had finally determined to improve relations with his colleagues and also (as the grammar school superintendent, Mr Serdobolin, put it) ‘out of understandable curiosity’, since no one had ever been to the misanthrope’s house before. Now we know only too well what their curiosity led to.

It is perfectly clear that the poisoner had decided, not only to draw a line under his own miserable life, but also to take with him those who had affronted him the most, those same ‘deriders’ who are mentioned in the poem.

But what might be the meaning of the words about ‘her who revealed the fearsome love’? Could there possibly be a woman behind this macabre story?

L. Zhemailo

Moscow Courier, 11 (24)

August 1900, p.2

Is a Suicide Club Active in Moscow?

Our correspondent conducts his own investigation and proposes a grim hypothesis!

The circumstances of an event that shook the whole of Moscow – the double suicide of latter-day Romeo and Juliet, 22-year-old Sergei Shutov and 19-year-old girl student Evdokia Lamm (see, inter alia, our article ‘No sadder story in the world’ of the 16th of August) – have been clarified. Newspapers reported that the lovers shot each other in the chest with two pistols simultaneously – evidently at some signal. Miss Lamm was killed outright and Shutov was seriously wounded in the region of the heart and taken to the Mariinskaya Hospital. It is known that he was fully conscious, but would not answer questions and only kept repeating, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ A minute before he gave up the ghost, Shutov suddenly smiled and said, ‘I’m going. That means she loves me.’ Sentimental reporters have discerned in this bloody story a romantic drama of love, however on closer consideration it appears that love had nothing at all to do with this business. At least, not love between the two people involved in this tragedy.

Your humble servant has ascertained that should the supposed lovers have wished to unite in the bonds of matrimony there were no obstacles in their path. Miss Lamm’s parents are entirely modern people. Her father – a full professor at Moscow University – is well known in student circles for his progressive views. He is quoted as saying that he would never have stood in the way of his beloved daughter’s happiness. Shutov had reached the age of consent and possessed a sum of capital that was not large, but nonetheless perfectly adequate for a comfortable life. And so it turns out that if they had wished, this couple could easily have married! Why, then, would they shoot each other in the chest?

Tormented by this question day and by night, we decided to make certain enquiries, which led to an extremely strange discovery. People who knew both of the suicides well are unanimous in declaring that the relationship between Lamm and Shutov was one of ordinary friendship and they did not entertain any ardent passion for each other.

Well now, we pondered, acquaintances can often be blind. Perhaps this young man and woman had grounds for carefully concealing their passion from everyone else?

Today, however, we came into possession (do not ask in what way – that is a professional journalist’s secret) of a poem written by the two suicides shortly before the fatal volley was fired. It is a poetical work of a highly unusual nature and even, perhaps, without precedent. It is written in two hands – evidently Shutov and Lamm took it in turns to write one line each. What we have, therefore, is the fruit of a collective creative endeavour. The content of this poem casts an entirely different light, not only on the deaths of the strange Romeo and Juliet, but also on the string of suicides that have taken place in the old Russian capital during recent weeks.

He wore a white cloak. He

stood on the threshold.

He wore a white cloak. He

glanced in the window.

‘I am love’s emissary, sent to

you from Her.’

‘You are His bride and I am sent for you.’

Thus spoke he, reaching out

his hand to me.

Thus spoke he. How pure and

deep was his voice

And his eyes were dark and

stern

And his eyes were light and

gentle.

I said: ‘I am ready. I have

waited very long.’

I said: ‘I am coming. Say that I am coming.’

Nothing but riddles from beginning to end. What does the ‘white cloak’ mean? Who has sent this emissary – She or He? Where was he actually standing, in the doorway or outside the window? And what kind of eyes did this intriguing gentleman actually have – dark and stern or light and gentle?

At this point we recalled the recent and, at first glance, equally motiveless suicides of the photographer Sviridov (see our article of the 4th of August) and the teacher Soimonov (see our articles of the 8th and 11th of August). In each case a poem was left as a suicide note, something which, you must admit, is a rather rare event in this prosaic Russia of ours!

It is a pity that the police did not keep the note written by the photographer Sviridov, but even without it there is certainly more than enough food for thought.

Soimonov’s farewell poem mentions a mysterious female individual who revealed to the poisoner ‘the fearsome love that sets one free’ and later plucked him ‘like a pining flower’. Shutov was visited by an emissary of love from ‘Her’ – an unnamed female individual; Lamm’s emissary was from a certain bridegroom, who for some reason also has to be mentioned with a capital letter.

Is it not, therefore, reasonable to assume that the face filled with love that figures in the poems of the suicides and sets their hearts trembling so reverently is the face of death itself ? Many things then become clear: passion urges the enamoured individual, not towards life, but towards the grave – this is the love of death.

Your humble servant is no longer in any doubt that a secret society of death-worshippers has been established in Moscow, following the example of several other European cities: a society of madmen – and women – who are in love with death. The spirit of disbelief and nihilism, the crisis of morality and art and, even more significantly, that dangerous demon who goes by the name of fin de siиcle – these are the bacilli of the contagion that has produced this dangerous ulcer.

We set ourselves the goal of discovering as much as possible about the story of those mysterious secret societies known as ‘suicide clubs’, and this is the information that we have managed to glean.

Suicide clubs are not a purely Russian phenomenon, in fact they are not Russian at all. There have never previously been any of these monstrous organisations within the bounds of our empire. But apparently, as we follow Europe along the path of ‘progress’, we are also fated to suffer this malign pestilence.

The first mention in the historical annals of a voluntary association of death-worshippers dates back to the first century bc, when the legendary lovers, Antony and Cleopatra, established an ‘academy of those who are not parted in death’ for lovers ‘who wish to die together: quietly, radiantly and when they choose’. As we know, this romantic undertaking concluded in less than idyllic fashion, since at the decisive moment the great queen actually preferred to be parted from her conquered Antony and tried to save herself. When it became clear that her much vaunted charms had no effect on the cold Octavian, Cleopatra eventually did take her own life, demonstrating a thoughtfulness and good taste truly worthy of antiquity: she deliberated at length over the best means of suicide, testing various different poisons on slaves and criminals, and eventually settled on the bite of the Egyptian cobra, which causes almost no disagreeable sensations apart from a slight headache, which is, in any case, rapidly replaced by ‘an irresistible desire for death’.

But this is legend, you will object, or at least, these are events of days long past. Modern man has his feet too firmly set on the ground, he is too materialistic and clings to life too tightly to set up any ‘academy’ of this sort.

Well then – let us turn to the enlightened nineteenth century, a period when suicide clubs flourished to an unprecedented degree: groups of people organised themselves into secret societies with one single goal: to depart from this life without publicity or scandal.

As early as 1802 in godless post-revolutionary Paris, a club was founded with a membership of twelve, which for obvious reasons, was constantly renewed. According to the club’s charter, the sequence in which members left this life was determined by a game of cards. At the beginning of each new year a chairman was elected, and he was obliged to do away with himself when his term of office expired.

In 1816 a ‘Circle of Death’ appeared in Berlin. Its six members made no secret of their intentions – on the contrary, they attempted to attract new members by every possible means. According to the rules, the only ‘legitimate’ way to commit suicide was with a pistol. The ‘Circle of Death’ eventually ceased to exist, because all those who wished to join had shot themselves.

Later on, clubs whose members sought death ceased to be something exotic and became almost de rigueur for large European cities. Although, of course, persecution by the forces of law and order obliged these associations to maintain strict conspiratorial secrecy. According to information in our possession, ‘suicide clubs’ existed (and perhaps still exist to this day) in London, Vienna and Brussels, as well as in Paris and Berlin, as already mentioned, and even in the backwater of Bucharest, where the ultimate temptation of destiny was a fashionable amusement among rich young officers.

The most sensational reputation was earned by the London club, which was eventually exposed and disbanded by the police, but before that happened it had facilitated the despatch of about twenty of its members to the next world. These worshippers of death were only tracked down as a result of betrayal from within their own close-knit ranks. One of the aspirants was incautious enough to fall in love, as a result of which he became inspired with a rather poignant attachment to life and a violent aversion to death. This apostate agreed to testify. It emerged that this top-secret club only accepted as members those who could prove the seriousness of their intentions. The sequence of departure was determined by chance: the winner of a game of cards acquired the right to die first. The ‘lucky man’ was eagerly congratulated by everyone, and a banquet was arranged in his honour. In order to avoid any undesirable consequences, the death itself was arranged to look like an accident, with the other members of the brotherhood helping to organise it: they dropped bricks from roofs, overturned the chosen one’s carriage and so on.

Something similar happened in Sarajevo in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but there the outcome was more sombre. The suicide club in question called itself ‘The Club of the Aware’ and its membership numbered at least fifty. They gathered in the evenings to draw lots, each of them selecting a card from the pack until someone drew the death’s head. The person who received the fateful card had to die within twenty-four hours. One young Hungarian told his comrades that he was leaving the club, because he had fallen in love and wanted to get married. They agreed to let him out on condition that he take part in the drawing of lots for one last time. In the first round the young man drew the ace of hearts – the symbol of love – and in the second round the death’s head. As a man of his word, he shot himself. The inconsolable fiancйe denounced ‘The Aware’ to the police, and as a result the whole business became public knowledge.

To judge from what has been happening in Moscow in recent weeks, our death-worshippers have no fear of public opinion and are not too concerned about publicity – at least, they do not take any measures to conceal the fruits of their activities.

I promise the Courier’s readers that the investigation will be continued. If a secret league of madmen who toy with death really has appeared in Russia’s old capital, society must know of it.

Lavr Zhemailo

Moscow Courier, 22 August

(4 September) 1900, p.1,

continued on p.4

II. From Columbine’s Diary

She arrived in the City of Dreams on a quiet lilac evening

Everything had been thought through in advance, down to the smallest detail.

After alighting from the Irkutsk train at the platform of Moscow’s Ryazan station, Masha stood there for half a minute with her eyes squeezed shut, breathing in the smell of the city – the mingled scent of flowers, fuel oil and bagels. Then she opened her eyes and in a voice loud enough for the whole platform to hear, proclaimed the quatrain that she had composed two days earlier, on crossing the border between Asia and Europe.

Like a shipwrecked vessel foundering

While the billows rage and roar

No words or tears, regretting nothing,

To fall, to soar aloft and fall once more!

People glanced round over their shoulders at the young lady with the clear voice and thick plait – some in curiosity, some in disapproval, and one tradeswoman even twirled a finger beside her temple. Generally speaking, the first public act of Masha’s life could be considered a success – and just you wait!

It was a symbolic step, marking the beginning of a new era, adventurous and uninhibited.

She had left quietly, without any public display. Left a long, long letter for papa and mama on the table in the drawing room. Tried to explain about the new age, and how unbearable the tedium of Irkutsk was, and about poetry. She had dropped tears all over every page, but how could they really understand? If it had happened a month earlier, before her birthday, they would have gone running to the police – to bring back their runaway daughter by force. But now, I beg your pardon, Marya Mironova has reached the age of majority and may arrange her life as she herself thinks fit. And she was also free to use the inheritance from her aunt as she thought best. The capital sum was not very large, but it would suffice for half a year, even with Moscow’s famously high prices, and trying to see further than that was common and prosaic.

She told the cabby to drive to the Hotel Elysium. She had heard about it even in Irkutsk, and been captivated by the name that flowed like silvery mercury.

As she rode along in the carriage, she constantly looked round at the large stone buildings and signboards and felt desperately afraid. A huge city, with an entire million people, and not one of them, not one, had anything to do with Marya Mironova.

Just you wait, she threatened the city, you’re going to hear about me. I’ll make you gasp in delight and indignation, but I don’t need your love. And even if you crush me in your stone jaws, it doesn’t matter. There is no road back.

But her attempt to lift her spirits only made her feel even more timid.

And her heart fell completely when she walked into the vestibule of the Elysium, with its bronze and crystal all aglow with electric light. Masha shamefully inscribed herself in the register as ‘Marya Mironova, company officer’s daughter’, although the plan had been to call herself by some special name: ‘Annabel Gray’ or simply ‘Columbine’.

Never mind, she would become Columbine starting from tomorrow, when she would be transformed from a grey provincial moth to a bright-winged butterfly. At least she had taken an expensive room, with a view of the Kremlin and the river. What if a night in this gilded candy-box did cost a whole fifteen roubles! She would remember what was going to happen here for the rest of her life. And tomorrow she could find simpler lodgings. Definitely on the top floor, or even in an attic, so that no one would be shuffling their feet across the floor over her head; let there be nothing above her but the roof with cats gliding gracefully across it, and above that only the black sky and the indifferent stars.

Having gazed her fill through the window at the Kremlin and unpacked her suitcase, Masha sat down at the table, and opened a small notebook bound in morocco leather. She thought for a while, chewing on the end of her pencil, and started writing.

Everybody keeps a diary now, everybody wants to appear more important than they really are and, even more than that, they want to overcome their own death and carry on living after it, if only in the form of a notebook bound in Moroccan leather. This alone should have deterred me from the idea of keeping a diary for, after all, I decided a long time ago, on the very first day of the new twentieth century, not to be like everyone else. And yet here I am sitting and writing. But this will not be a case of sentimental sighs with dried forget-me-nots between the pages, it will be a genuine work of art such as there has never been before in literature. I am writing a diary, not because I am afraid of death or, let us say, because I wish to be liked by strangers I do not know, who will some day read these lines. What do I want with people? I know them only too well and despise them thoroughly. And perhaps I am not even slightly afraid of death either. Why be afraid of it, when it is a natural law of existence? Everything that is born, that is, which has a beginning, will come to an end sooner or later. If I, Masha Mironova, appeared in the world twenty-one years and one month ago, then the day is bound to come when I shall leave this world, and there is nothing unusual about that. I only hope that it happens before my face is covered in wrinkles.

She read it through, frowned and tore out the page.

What kind of work of art was that? Too vapid, boring, run-of-the-mill. She had to learn to express her thoughts (for a start, at least on paper) elegantly, fragrantly, intoxicatingly. Her arrival in Moscow ought to be described in a quite different fashion.

Masha thought again, this time chewing on the tail of her golden plait instead of the pencil. She leaned her head to one side like a grammar-school girl and started scribbling.

Columbine arrived in the City of Dreams on a lilac evening, on the final sigh of a long, lazy day that she had spent at the window of an express train as light as an arrow, which had rushed her past dark forests and bright lakes to her encounter with destiny. A following wind, favourable to those who slide across the silvery ice of life, had caught Columbine up and carried her on: long-awaited freedom beckoned to the frivolous seeker of adventures, rustling its lacy wings above her head.

The train delivered the blue-eyed traveller, not to pompous St Petersburg, but to sad and mysterious Moscow – the City of Dreams, resembling a queen who has been shut away in a convent to while away the years of her life, a queen whose empty-headed and capricious lord has bartered her for a cold, snake-eyed rival. Let the new queen hold sway in her marble halls with mirrors that reflect the waters of the Baltic. The old queen wept clear, transparent tears, and when her tears dried up, she was reconciled to her simple life. She passes her days in spinning yarn and her nights in prayer. My place is with her, abandoned and unloved, and not with the one who turns her pampered face to the wan sun of the north.

I am Columbine, frivolous and unpredictable, subject only to the caprices of my own whimsical fantasy and the fey wafting of the wind. Pity the poor Pierrot who will have the misfortune to fall in love with my candy-box looks, for my destiny is to become a plaything in the hands of the scheming deceiver Harlequin and be left lying on the floor like a broken doll with a carefree smile on my little porcelain face . . .

She read it through again and was satisfied, but did not carry on writing for the time being, because she started thinking about Harlequin – Petya Lileiko (Li-lei-ko – what a light, jolly name, like the sound of a sleigh bell or drops of meltwater in spring!). And he really had appeared in the spring, come crashing into the dreary life of Irkutsk like a red fox into a sleepy henhouse. He had cast a spell on her with the halo of fiery-red curls scattering across his shoulders, his loose-fitting blouse and intoxicating poems. Before then, Masha had only sighed over the fact that life was an empty, stupid joke, but he had commented casually – as if it were perfectly obvious – that the only true beauty is in fading, wilting and dying. And the provincial dreamer had realised how true that was! Where else could Beauty be? Not in life! What was there in life that could be beautiful? Marry a tax assessor, have a crowd of children and sit by the samovar in your mob-cap for sixty years?

Beside the arbour on the high riverbank, the Moscow Harlequin had kissed the swooning young lady and whispered, ‘Out of pale and accidental life I have made a single endless thrill.’ And then poor Masha really was completely lost, because she realised that was the whole point. To become a weightless butterfly fluttering your rainbow wings and giving no thought to autumn.

After the kiss beside the arbour (there had been nothing else) she had stood in front of the mirror for a long time, looking at her reflection and hating it: a ruddy, round face with a stupid thick plait. And those terrible pink ears that flamed up like poppies when she was even slightly flustered!

And then, when Petya’s visit to his great-aunt, the deputy-governor’s widow, was over, he had ridden away again on the Transcontinental and Masha had started counting the days until she came of age – it turned out to be exactly one hundred, just like Napoleon after the Elbe. She remembered she had felt terribly sorry for the emperor in history lessons – it was hard, to return to fame and glory for only a hundred days, but now she realised just how long a hundred days really was.

However, everything comes to an end sooner or later. When her parents handed their daughter her birthday present – a set of silver teaspoons for her future family home – they did not even suspect that the hour of their Waterloo was upon them. Masha had already cut out the patterns for unbelievably bold outfits of her own design. Another month of secret nights spent hunched over the sewing-machine (the time passed quickly then) and the Siberian captive was absolutely ready for her transformation into Columbine.

Through all that long week on the railway she imagined how astounded Petya would be when he opened the door and saw her there on the threshold – not the timid goose from Irkutsk in a boring little dress of white muslin, but the bold Columbine in a scarlet cape that fluttered in the breeze and a pearl-embroidered cap with an ostrich feather. Then she would give him a devil-may-care smile and say, ‘A sudden blizzard from Siberia! Do with me what you will.’ Petya of course, would choke in surprise at such audacious directness and the sensation of his own boundless power over this creature who seemed to be woven out of the very ether. He would put his arms round her shoulders, plant a passionate kiss on her soft, submissive lips and lead his uninvited guest into a boudoir enveloped in mysterious twilight. Or perhaps he would take her with all the passion of a rampant young satyr, right there on the floor of the hallway.

Her lively imagination had immediately painted for her a scene of passion in the company of umbrellas stands and galoshes. The traveller had frowned and trained her unseeing gaze on the spurs of the Ural mountains. She realised that she would have to prepare the altar for the forthcoming sacrifice herself, she could not rely on the whim of chance. And that was when the miraculous word ‘Elysium’ had surfaced in her memory.

Well, she thought, the fifteen-rouble stage-setting was adequate for the sacred rites.

Masha – no, Masha no longer, Columbine – ran a caressing glance over the walls hung with lilac moirй satin, the deep-piled, bright-patterned carpet on the floor, the ethereally light furniture on curved legs, and frowned at the naked nymph in the sumptuous gold frame (that was going a bit too far).

Then she noticed an object of even greater luxury on the table beside the mirror – an absolutely genuine telephone! Her own personal apparatus, standing right there in her room! Just imagine!

And immediately an idea occurred to her that was even more dramatic than the first one of simply appearing in the doorway. Appearing was no problem, but what if he was not in when she did it? There was a whiff of provincial offhandedness about it too. And again, why make the journey if the fall (which was simultaneously a vertiginous flight) was to take place here, on this bed like a catafalque, with its carved columns and heavy canopy? But to telephone – that was modern, elegant, metropolitan.

Petya’s father was a doctor, he was absolutely certain to have a telephone at home.

Columbine picked the stylish brochure entitled Moscow Telephone Subscribers up off the table and – would you believe it – she opened it straight away at the letter ‘L’. There it was, now: ‘Terentii Savelievich Lileiko, Dr of Medicine – 3128’. Surely this was the finger of fate?

She stood for a moment, facing the gleaming lacquered box with its metal circles and caps and focusing her will. She twirled the handle with desperate speed and when a brassy voice squeaked ‘Central exchange’ into her earpiece, she recited the four figures rapidly.

While she was waiting, she suddenly realised that the phrase she had prepared would not do for a telephone conversation. ‘What sudden blizzard from Siberia?’ Petya would ask. ‘What sort of way is that to talk? And why should I do anything with you, madam?’

To bolster her courage, she opened the Japanese ivory cigarette case that she had bought at the station and lit the first papirosa of her life (the pakhitoska that Masha Mironova had once lit up in fifth class at school didn’t count – back then she hadn’t had the slightest idea that you were supposed to inhale the tobacco smoke). She propped her elbow on the little table, turned slightly sideways-on to the mirror and narrowed her eyes. Not bad, not bad at all, interesting and even rather enigmatic.

‘Doctor Lileiko’s apartment,’ a woman’s voice said in the earpiece. ‘With whom do you wish to speak?’

The smoker was rather disconcerted – for some reason she had been certain that Petya would answer. She rebuked herself sternly. How stupid! Of course, he didn’t live alone. His parents were there, and the servants, and possibly even some brothers and sisters. In fact, she didn’t really know very much about him: only that he was a student, he wrote poems and spoke wonderfully well about the beauty of tragic death. And also that he kissed a lot better than Kostya Levonidi, her former future-fiancй, who had been decisively dismissed for being so tediously positive, reliable and humdrum.

‘I’m a friend of Petya, Pyotr Terentsievich,’ Columbine babbled in a highly trivial manner. ‘A certain Mironova.’

A minute later she heard the familiar baritone voice with that enchanting Moscow drawl in the earpiece.

‘Hello? Is that Mrs Mironova? Professor Zimin’s assistant?’

By this time the inhabitant of the stylish hotel room had pulled herself together. She breathed a stream of dove-grey smoke into the bell mouth of the telephone apparatus and whispered: ‘It is I, Columbine.’

‘Who did you say?’ Petya asked in surprise. ‘So you’re not Mrs Mironova from the faculty of Roman Law?’

She had to explain to the dimwit.

‘Remember the arbour above the Angara. Remember how you called me “Columbine”?’ and straight after that the phrase she had prepared on the way fitted in perfectly. ‘It is I. Like a sudden blizzard from Siberia I have come to you. Do with me what you wish. Do you know the Hotel Elysium?’ After that resounding word she paused. ‘Come. I’m waiting.’

That got through to him! Petya started breathing rapidly and speaking in a thick voice – he must have put his hand over the mouthpiece.

‘Masha, that is, Columbine, I am absolutely delighted that you have come . . .’ he said rather formally. It was true that they had been on formal terms in Irkutsk, but now this way of talking seemed inappropriate, insulting even, to the seeker of adventures. ‘Yes, indeed, just like a sudden blizzard out of nowhere . . . No, that is, it’s simply marvellous! Only there’s no way I can come to you now. I’m resitting an exam tomorrow. And it’s late, mama will pester me with questions . . .’

And he went on to babble something absolutely pitiful about a failed examination and the word of honour he had given to his father.

The reflection in the mirror batted its eyelids and the corners of its mouth turned slowly downwards. Who could have imagined that the guileful seducer Harlequin had to ask leave from his mummy before setting out on an amorous escapade? And she suddenly regretted terribly the fifteen roubles that she had spent.

‘Why are you here in Moscow?’ Petya whispered. ‘Surely not especially to see me?’

She laughed – it turned out very well, with a slightly husky note. She supposed that was because of the papirosa. So that he wouldn’t get above himself, she said enigmatically, ‘The meeting with you is no more than a prelude to another meeting. Do you understand?’

And she declaimed two lines from one of Petya’s own poems:

To live life like a line of ringing verse

And write its full stop with no hesitation.

That time back at the arbour, foolish little Masha had whispered with a happy smile (it was shameful to recall it now): ‘This must be true happiness.’ The visitor from Moscow had smiled condescendingly and said: ‘Happiness, Masha, is something quite different. Happiness is not a fleeting moment, but eternity. Not a comma, but a full stop.’ And then he had recited the poem about the line and the full stop. Masha had flushed, torn herself out of his arms and stood at the very top of the cliff, with the dark water sighing down below. ‘Do you want me to write that full stop right now?’ she had exclaimed. ‘Do you think I’ll be too frightened?’

‘You . . . Are you serious?’ the voice in the telephone asked very quietly. ‘Don’t think that I’ve forgotten . . .’

‘I’ll say I’m serious,’ she laughed, intrigued by the peculiar inflection that had crept into Petya’s voice.

‘A perfect fit . . .’ Petya whispered incomprehensibly. ‘Just when there’s a vacancy . . . Fate. Destiny . . . All right, here goes. I tell you what, let’s meet tomorrow evening at a quarter past eight . . . Yes, at a quarter past . . . Only where?’

Columbine’s heart began beating very, very fast as she tried to guess what spot he would choose for the tryst. A park? A bridge? A boulevard? And at the same time she tried to calculate whether she could afford to keep the room in the Elysium for one more night. That would make thirty roubles, an entire month of living! Sheer folly!

But Petya said: ‘Beside the Berry Market on the Marsh.’

‘What marsh?’ Columbine asked in astonishment.

‘Marsh Square, it’s near the Elysium. And from there I’ll take you to an absolutely special place, where you’ll meet some absolutely special people.’

The way he said it sounded so mysterious and solemn that Columbine didn’t feel even a shred of disappointment. On the contrary, she felt that same ‘endless thrill’ again very clearly and realised that the adventures were beginning. Perhaps not exactly as she had imagined, but even so, coming to the City of Dreams had not been a waste of time.

She sat in the armchair by the open window until late at night, snuggled up in a warm rug, and watched the dark barges with their swaying lanterns floating down the Moscow river.

She was terribly curious about what these ‘absolutely special’ people could be like.

Roll on tomorrow evening!

Cleopatra’s final moment

When Columbine woke up on the vast bed that had not, after all, become the altar of love, the evening still seemed a long way off. She lounged on the downy mattress for a while, phoned down to the ground floor to have coffee sent up, and in celebration of her new sophisticated life, drank it without cream or sugar. It was bitter and unpalatable, but it was bohemian.

In the foyer, after paying for the room and leaving her suitcase in the baggage closet, she leafed through the pages of announcements in the Moscow Provincial Gazette. She wrote out several addresses, selecting houses with at least three storeys, in which the flat on offer had to be at the very top.

She haggled for a while with the cabby: he wanted three roubles, she wanted to give him one, and they struck a deal for a rouble and forty kopecks. It was a good price, taking into account that for this sum the driver had agreed to drive the young lady round all four addresses, but the newcomer in town still paid too much anyway – she was so taken by the very first flat, right in the centre, in Kitaigorod, that there was no point in going any further. She tried to buy the driver off with a rouble (even that was a lot, for only fifteen minutes), but he was a good psychologist and he crushed the young provincial’s resistance with the words: ‘Here in Moscow a man might be a thief, but he still keeps his word.’ She blushed and paid, but insisted that he had to bring her baggage from the Elysium and she stuck firmly to that.

The flat was a real sight for sore eyes. And the monthly rent wasn’t high by Moscow standards – the same as one night at the Elysium. Of course, in Irkutsk you could rent an entire house with a garden and servant for that money, but then this wasn’t the back of beyond in Siberia, it was Russia’s Old Capital.

And then, who had ever seen buildings like this in Irkutsk? Six entire storeys high! The courtyard was all stone, not a blade of grass anywhere. It was obvious straight away that you were living in a real city and not a village. The side street that the windows of the room overlooked was as narrow as could be. If you stood on a stool in the kitchen and looked out through the small upper window frame, you could see the Kremlin towers and the spires of the Historical Museum.

The living space was not actually located in a garret or attic, as Columbine had been dreaming it would be, but it was on the top floor. Add to this that it was fully furnished, with gas lighting and an American stove. And the flat itself ! Columbine had never in her life seen anything so delightfully absurd.

When you entered from the stairs there was a short corridor. The door on the right led into the living room (the only one), from that room you turned left and found yourself in the little kitchen, and there was another passage on the left, where there was a water-closet with a washbasin and a bath, and then the corridor led back out into the hallway. It was a kind of ludicrous circle, and it was impossible to understand what purpose anyone could have designed it for.

The room had a balcony, and the brand-new Muscovite fell in love with it immediately. It was wide, with fancy cast-iron railings and what’s more – a point that was especially captivating because it was so fatuous – there was a gate in the railings. She couldn’t guess what on earth it was for. Perhaps the architect had been thinking of attaching a fire ladder to the outside of the balcony and then changed his mind?

Columbine drew back the stiff bolt, swung the heavy little gate open and glanced down. Far, far away, below the toes of her shoes, there were little carriages driving and little toy people creeping along. It was so wonderful that the new resident of the heavens actually burst into song.

On the opposite side of the street, but lower down, there was a gleaming metal figure: a well-fed angel with white wings, with a sign board swaying under his feet: ‘MЦBIUS AND SONS INSURANCE COMPANY. With us there is almost nothing to fear.’ How delightful!

There were also a few minuses, but they were insignificant.

It was all right that there was no elevator – it didn’t take long to run up to the sixth floor.

But there was something else that had alarmed her. The landlord had warned her quite frankly that the appearance of mice or, as he called them, ‘domestic rodents’ was not entirely out of the question. For a minute or two Columbine had been quite upset – she had been afraid of mice ever since she was a child. Sometimes, when she heard the patter of those tiny little feet on the floor, she used to screw her eyes up so tight that she saw fiery circles behind her eyelids. But that was all in her past, unreal life now, she told herself straight away. Columbine was far too frivolous and reckless a creature to be frightened by anything. If the worst came to the worst, she could always buy some of that Antirattin Salami that was advertised in the Gazette.

That afternoon, when Columbine went to the market for provisions (oh, these Moscow prices!), she acquired another ally from the world of the night and the moon. She bought a young grass snake from some boys for eight kopecks. He was small and iridescent, and once in her basket he immediately curled up into a tight ring and lay there quiet.

Why did she buy him? Why, to drive Masha Mironova out of herself as quickly as possible. That big ninny was even more afraid of snakes than of mice. Whenever she saw one anywhere on a forest path, she used to started screaming and squealing like a fool.

At home Columbine resolutely bit her lip and took the reptile into her hand. The little snake turned out not to be wet and slippery as you might have thought from looking at him, but dry, rough and cool. His tiny little eyes gazed up at the giantess in horror.

The boys had said: ‘Put the snake in milk so it won’t go sour, and when it grows a bit, it’ll be good for catching mice.’ Columbine, however, had a different idea, far more interesting.

First of all she fed the grass snake with curdled milk (after eating he immediately settled down to sleep); then she gave him a name – Lucifer; and after that she painted over the yellow spots on the side of his head with Chinese ink, so that what she had was not a grass snake, but some weird and mysterious reptile that might very well be deadly poisonous.

She undressed to the waist in front of the mirror, set the snake, still drowsy after feeding, on her bare breasts and admired herself. It was ‘Cleopatra’s final moment’ to a tee.

A lucky ticket

She spent several hours preparing for her meeting with Harlequin and left the house in good time, in order to make her first gala promenade through the streets of Moscow without hurrying and give the city a chance to admire its new inhabitant.

The two of them – Moscow and Columbine – made a great impression on each other. On this overcast August evening the former was jaded, bored and blasй; the latter was wary and nervous, ready for any surprises.

For the Moscow premiere Columbine had chosen an outfit the like of which no one here could possibly have seen before. She didn’t put on a hat, because that was a bourgeois prejudice; she let down her thick hair and tied it with a broad black ribbon, gathering it together at the side, below her right ear, with a magnificent bow. She put on a crimson waistcoat with silver stars over her lemon-yellow silk blouse with Spanish sleeves and a frilly jabot; her immense skirt of opalescent blue with countless pleats swayed like the waves of the ocean. An important detail of this daring costume was an orange sash with a wooden buckle. All in all, there was plenty for the Muscovites to look at. And certain individuals who looked really closely were in for yet another shock: on closer inspection, the black glittering ribbon on the neck of this breathtakingly spectacular stroller proved to be a live snake, which would occasionally turn its narrow head this way and that.

Accompanied by gasps and squeals, Columbine strode haughtily across Red Square and across the Moskvoretsky Bridge, and turned on to the Sofiiskaya Embankment, where the respectable public was out strolling. And here, in addition to showing herself off, she gazed around wide-eyed, gathering new impressions.

For the most part the Moscow ladies were dressed rather boringly: a straight skirt and white blouse with a necktie, or silk dresses in dreary dark tones. She was impressed by the size of the hats, which this season seemed especially luxuriant. She encountered hardly any extravagant ladies of any age, except for one, with a gauze scarf fluttering over her shoulder. And there was a horsewoman with pearly ash-grey hair under a veil, who rode past, holding a long amber cigarette holder with a papirosa. Stylish, Columbine thought, as she watched the woman ride away.

There proved to be no small number of young men in Moscow with smocks and berets and long hair, and a large bow on their chests: she even called out to one after mistaking him for Petya.

She deliberately arrived at the rendezvous twenty minutes late, for which she had to walk back and forth along the entire length of the embankment twice. Harlequin was waiting beside a fountain where the cabdrivers watered their horses and he looked exactly the same as in Irkutsk, but here among the granite embankments and closely crowded houses, Columbine felt that this was not enough. Why had he not changed in all these months? Why had he not become something bigger, or something new, or something else?

And somehow the way Petya behaved wasn’t quite right either. He blushed and faltered. He was about to kiss her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it – instead he held his hand out in an absolutely fatuous manner. Columbine stared at his hand in jaunty incomprehension, as if she had never seen anything funnier in her life. Then he became even more embarrassed and thrust a bunch of violets at her.

‘Why would I want these corpses of flowers?’ she asked with a capricious shrug of her shoulders. She walked over to a cabby’s horse and held the little bouquet out to her. The roan mare indifferently extended her large flabby lip over the violets and chewed them up in an instant.

‘Quick, we’re late,’ said Petya. ‘They don’t like that in our set. The horse-tram stops over there, just before the bridge. Let’s go!’

He glanced nervously at his companion and whispered.

‘Everybody’s looking at you. In Irkutsk you dressed differently.’

‘Do I alarm you?’ Columbine asked provocatively.

‘What do you . . .’ he exclaimed in fright. ‘I’m a poet and I despise the opinion of the crowd. It’s just really very unusual . . . Anyway, that’s not important.’

Could he really be embarrassed by me? she wondered in amazement. Did harlequins even know how to be embarrassed? She glanced round at her reflection in a brightly lit shop window and flinched inwardly – it was a very impressive outfit indeed – but the attack of shyness was dismissed as disgraceful. That pitiful feeling had been left behind for ever beyond the branching Ural mountains.

In the tram, Petya told her in a low voice about the place where they were going.

‘There isn’t another club like it in the whole of Russia, even in St Petersburg,’ he said, tickling her ear with his breath. ‘Such people, you’ve never seen anyone like them in Irkutsk! We use special names, everyone invents his own. And some are given their names by the Doge. For instance, he christened me Cherubino.’

‘Cherubino?’ Columbine echoed in a disappointed voice, thinking that Petya really was more like a curly-haired page-boy than a self-confident, imperious Harlequin.

Petya misinterpreted the intonation of her voice and drew himself upright haughtily.

‘That’s nothing. We have more bizarre aliases than that. Avaddon, Ophelia, Caliban, Horatio. And Lorelei Rubinstein . . .’

‘What, you mean Lorelei Rubinstein herself goes there?’ the young provincial gasped. ‘The poetess?’

There was good reason to gasp. Lorelei’s sultry, shamelessly sensual poems had only reached Irkutsk after a considerable delay. Progressive young ladies who understood modern poetry knew them off by heart.

‘Yes,’ said Cherubino-Petya, nodding portentously. ‘Her alias in our group is the Lioness of Ecstasy. Or simply Lioness. Although, of course, everyone knows who she really is.’

Ah, what a sweet tightness she felt in her chest! Liberal-handed Fortune had flung open before her the doors into the most select possible society, and she looked at Petya far more affectionately now.

He continued. ‘The leader of the club is Prospero. There aren’t many men like him – not one in a thousand, or even a million. He’s already getting on, his hair is completely grey. But you forget that straight away, he has such strength in him, such energy and magnetism. In biblical times the prophets were probably like him. And he is a kind of prophet, if you think about it. He’s one of the old prisoners from the Schliesselburg Fortress; he spent a long time in a cell for revolutionary activity, but he never talks about his former views, because he has abandoned politics completely. He says politics is for the masses, and nothing of a mass nature can be beautiful, for beauty is always unique and inimitable. Prospero looks rather severe and he is often abrupt, but in actual fact he is kind and magnanimous, everybody knows that. He secretly helps those aspirants who need money. He used to be a chemical engineer before he was in the fortress, but now he has been left an inheritance and is rich, so he can afford it.’

‘Who are these “aspirants”?’ she asked.

‘That’s what the members of the club are called. We’re all poets. There are twelve of us, always twelve. And Prospero is our Doge. That’s the same thing as a chairman, only a chairman is elected, and in this case it’s the other way round: the Doge himself chooses who to accept as a member and who not.’

Columbine was alarmed.

‘But if there always have to be twelve of you, what about me? That makes me superfluous.’

Petya replied mysteriously: ‘When one of the aspirants marries, we can fill the place that is vacated with someone new. Naturally, the final decision is taken by Prospero. But before I take you into his home, you must swear that you will never tell anyone else what I have told you.’

Married? Vacated place? Columbine didn’t understand a thing but, of course, she immediately exclaimed: ‘I swear by sky, earth, water and fire that I shall say nothing!’

People on the seats nearby half-turned to look at her and Petya put one finger to his lips.

‘But what do you do there?’ asked Columbine, dying of curiosity.

The reply was triumphant.

‘We serve the Eternal Bride and dedicate poems to her. And some fortunate Chosen Ones offer up to her the supreme gift – their own life.’

‘And who is the Eternal Bride?’

His reply was a single short word, at the sound of which Columbine’s mouth immediately went dry.

‘Death.’

‘But . . . but why is death a bride? After all, some of the aspirants are women – Lorelei Rubinstein, for instance. Why should she want a bride?’

‘We just say that because in Russian “death” is a feminine noun. It goes without saying that for women Death is the Eternal Bridegroom. In general everything about the club is highly poetic. For the male aspirants Death is like La Belle Dame sans Merci, or the Beautiful Lady to whom we dedicate our poems and, if necessary our very lives. For the female aspirants Death is a Handsome Prince or an Enchanted Tsarevich, it’s a matter of taste.’

Columbine wrinkled up her brow in concentration.

‘And how is the rite of marriage performed?’

At that Petya glanced at her as if he were gazing at some wild savage with a bone through her nose. He narrowed his eyes incredulously.

‘You mean to say you’ve never heard of the “Lovers of Death”? Why, all the newspapers write about it!’

‘I don’t read the newspapers,’ she declared haughtily, ‘It’s too ordinary.’

‘Good Lord! So you don’t know anything about the Moscow suicides?’

Columbine shook her head cautiously.

‘Four of our people have already become wedded to Death,’ said Petya, moving closer, with his eyes gleaming. ‘And a replacement was found for each of them straight away! And I should think so – the whole city’s talking about us! Only no one knows where we are and who we are! If you came to Moscow to “write a full stop”, then you really have been incredibly lucky. You’ve drawn the lucky ticket, so to speak. Gone straight to the person who can really help you. We have a chance to leave this life without any vulgar provincialism, not to die like a sheep in slaughterhouse, but poetically, meaningfully, beautifully! Perhaps we might even depart together, like Moretta and Lycanthrope.’ His voice rang with inspiration. ‘It’s Moretta’s place that I want to propose you for!’

‘But who is this Moretta?’ Columbine exclaimed rapturously, affected by his agitation, but still not understanding a thing.

She was aware of this shortcoming in herself – a certain slowness of wit. No, she did not think of herself as stupid (she was cleverer than many, thank God), it was just that her mind worked rather slowly – sometimes even she found it irritating.

‘Moretta and Lycanthrope are the latest Chosen Ones,’ Petya explained in a whisper. ‘They received a Sign and shot themselves straight away, eleven days ago. Lycanthrope’s place is already taken. Moretta’s vacancy is the last one.’

Poor Columbine’s head was spinning. She grabbed hold of Petya’s arm.

‘Sign? What sign?’

‘Death gives his Chosen One a Sign. You must not kill yourself without the Sign – it’s strictly forbidden.’

‘But what is this Sign? What is it like?’

‘It’s different every time. There’s no way to guess in advance, but it’s quite impossible to mistake it . . .’

Petya looked keenly at his pale-faced companion. He frowned.

‘Are you frightened? You should be, we’re not playing games. Look, it’s still not too late to go. Only remember the oath that you swore.’

She really was frightened. Not of death, of course, only that now he might change his mind and not take her with him. Appropriately enough, she recalled the signboard for the Mцbius insurance company.

‘I’m not afraid of anything with you,’ Columbine said, and Petya beamed.

Taking advantage of the fact that she herself had taken him by the arm, he started stroking her palm with his finger, and Columbine was overwhelmed by the infallible presentiment that it would definitely happen today. She responded to his grip. And they rode on like that through the squares, streets and boulevards. After a while their hands started sweating and Columbine, who regarded this natural phenomenon as vulgar, freed her fingers. However, Petya had grown bolder now and he triumphantly placed his hand on her shoulder and stroked her neck.

‘A snakeskin collar?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Very bon ton.’

He suddenly gave a quiet cry.

Columbine turned her head and saw Petya’s pupils rapidly expanding.

‘There . . . there . . .’ he whispered, unable to move a muscle. ‘What is it?’

‘An Egyptian cobra,’ she explained. ‘Live. You know, Cleopatra killed herself with one like that.’

He shuddered and pressed himself back against the window, clasping his hands against his chest.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Columbine. ‘Lucifer doesn’t bite my friends.’

Petya nodded, with his eyes fixed on the moving black collar, but he didn’t come close again.

They got off on a green street running up a steep incline, which Petya said was Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. Then they turned into a side street.

It was after nine and dark already, the streetlamps had been lit.

‘There, that’s Prospero’s house,’ Petya said in a quiet voice, pointing to a single-storey detached building.

All that Columbine could really make out in the darkness were six curtained windows filled with a mysterious reddish glow.

‘What have you stopped for?’ asked Petya, trying to hurry his companion along. ‘Everyone’s supposed to arrive exactly at nine, we’re late.’

But at that precise moment Columbine was overcome by an irresistible urge to run back on to the boulevard, and then down to the broad, dimly lit square, and on, and on. Not to that cramped little flat in Kitaigorod, to hell with it, but straight to the station and straight on to a train. The wheels would start to hammer, reeling the stretched thread of the rails back up into a ball, and everything would just be like it was before . . .

‘You were the one who stopped,’ Columbine said angrily. ‘Come on, take me to these “lovers” of yours.’

Columbine hears the voices of the spirits

Petya opened the street door without knocking and explained: ‘Prospero doesn’t hold with having servants. He does everything himself – it’s a habit from his time in exile.’

It was completely dark in the hallway, and Columbine couldn’t make anything out properly, apart from a corridor that led on into the house and a white door. The spacious salon located behind the door proved to be not much brighter. There were no lamps lit, only a few candles on the table and, a little to one side, a cast-iron brazier with coals glowing scarlet. Crooked shadows writhed on the walls, the gilded spines of books gleamed on shelves, and the pendants of an unlit chandelier twinkled up under the ceiling.

It was only after Columbine’s eyes had adjusted a little to the dim lighting that she realised there were quite a few people in the room – probably about ten, or even more.

The aspirants did not seem to regard Petya as a very significant individual. Some nodded in response to his timid greeting, but others simply carried on talking to each other. Columbine found this cool reception offensive, and she decided to maintain an independent line. She walked up to the table, lit a papirosa from a candle and, projecting a loud voice right across the room, asked her companion: ‘Well, which one here is Prospero?’

Petya pulled his head down into his shoulders. It went very quiet. But, noticing that the glances directed at her were curious, Columbine immediately stopped being afraid. She set one hand on her hip, just like in the advertisement for Carmen papiroses, and blew a stream of blue smoke up into the air.

‘Oh come now, lovely stranger,’ said a pasty-looking gentleman in a shantung cotton morning coat, with his hair combed across a bald spot in true virtuoso fashion. ‘The Doge will arrive later, when everything’s ready.’

He walked closer, stopped two paces away from her and began unceremoniously examining Columbine from top to bottom. She replied by looking at him in precisely the same way.

‘This is Columbine, I’ve brought her as a candidate,’ Petya bleated guiltily, for which he was immediately punished.

‘Cherubino,’ the new candidate said in a sweet voice. ‘Surely your mama must have taught you that you should introduce the man to the lady, and not the other way round?’

The man in the morning coat immediately pressed his hand to his chest, bowed and introduced himself: ‘I am Kriton. You have a quite insane face, Mademoiselle Columbine. It possesses a ravishing amalgam of innocence and depravity.’

The tone of his voice indicated that this was a compliment, but Columbine felt offended by the ‘innocence’.

‘Kriton – that’s something chemical, isn’t it?’ It was an attempt to mock, to show this shabby, well-worn individual that he was not dealing with some kind of ingйnue, but a mature, self-confident woman. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, it was even worse than that time in the literature exam when she called Goethe Johann-Sebastian instead of Johann-Wolfgang.

‘It is from “Egyptian Nights”, the man in shantung cotton replied with a condescending smile. ‘Do you remember this?’

Tra-ta-ta-ta, the sapient youth,

Who life’s sweet blandishments embraces,

Kriton, the bard of pleasure’s truth,

Singer of Cupid and the Graces.

No, Columbine didn’t remember that at all. She couldn’t even remember who the Graces were.

‘Do you like to make wild, abandoned love in the night, on the roof, to the hurricane’s roar, with the teeming rain lashing your naked body?’ Kriton enquired without lowering his voice, ‘I truly love it.’

The poor Irkutsk girl was unable to find an answer to that. She looked round at Petya, but the rotten traitor moved away with a preoccupied air, striking up a conversation with a poorly dressed young man of very unattractive appearance: bright, bulging eyes, a wide, mobile mouth and blackheads scattered across his face.

‘You must have a fine taut body,’ Kriton surmised. ‘Whiplash-lean, like a young predator. I can just see you in the pose of a panther prepared to pounce.’

What should she do? How should she answer?

According to the Irkutsk code of conduct, she ought to slap the impudent fellow across the face, but here, in this club of the elect, that was unthinkable – they would think her a hypocrite or, even worse, a prim and proper provincial. And what was so insulting anyway, Columbine thought to herself. After all, this man said what he thought, and that was more honest than striking up a conversation about music or the various ills of society with a woman who had taken your fancy. Kriton looked absolutely nothing like a ‘young sage’, but even so the audacious things he said made Columbine quite feverish – no one had ever spoken to her like that before. However, on looking more closely at the outspoken gentleman, she decided that he probably did bear a certain resemblance to the god Pan.

‘I wish to teach you the terrible art of love, young Columbine,’ the goat-hoofed seducer cooed and squeezed her hand – the same one that Petya had recently squeezed. Columbine stood there woodenly and submissively allowed him to knead her fingers. A long stub of ash fell from her papirosa on to the carpet.

But just then a rapid whispering ran across the salon, and everybody turned towards a tall leather-upholstered double door.

It went absolutely quiet and she heard measured footsteps approaching. Then the door swung open without a sound and a figure – improbably broad, almost square – appeared on the threshold. But the next moment the man stepped into the room, and it was clear that his build was absolutely normal, he was simply wearing a wide gown like those worn by European university professors or doctors of philosophy.

No greetings were pronounced, but it seemed to Columbine that the moment those leather doors opened soundlessly, everything around her changed in some elusive manner: the shadows became blacker, the fire became brighter, sounds were suddenly more subdued.

At first she thought the man who had come in was really old: he had grey hair, cut in an old-fashioned style, the same length all round. Turgenev, Columbine thought. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. He looks just like him. Exactly like the portrait in the grammar-school library.

However, when the man in the gown halted beside the brazier and the crimson glow lit up his face from below, the eyes were not those of an old man at all – they were a refulgent black, and they glowed even brighter than the coals. Columbine made out a thoroughbred aquiline nose, thick white eyebrows and fleshy cheeks. Venerable – that’s what he is, she said to herself. Like in Lermontov: ‘The venerable grey-haired sage’, Or was it really Lermontov? Well, it didn’t matter.

The venerable sage ran his gaze slowly round the assembled company and it was clear immediately that not a single detail or, perhaps, secret thought could possibly escape those eyes. The calm gaze rested on Columbine for just a moment, no longer, and she suddenly swayed and trembled all over.

Without even realising it, she pulled her hand away from the ‘teacher of terrible love’ and pressed it to her breast.

Kriton whispered in her ear in a derisive tone: ‘And this is from Pushkin.

Not only in youth’s downy cheek

And curly locks of tender brown

Will passion its true object seek.

The furrowed brow and elder’s frown

May fire beauty’s imagination

With a consuming conflagration.

‘Those “curly locks of tender brown” are yours, are they?’ the young lady snapped back, stung. ‘And anyway, who needs you and your Pushkin!’

She stomped off ostentatiously and stood beside Petya.

‘That’s Prospero,’ he told her in a low voice.

‘I guessed that without you.’

Their host cast a brief glance at the two whisperers, and immediately absolute silence fell. The Doge reached out one hand to the brazier, so that he looked like Mucius Scaevola in the fourth-class history book. He sighed and uttered a single word: ‘Dark.’

And then everybody gasped as he placed a red-hot coal on his palm. He really was Scaevola!

‘I think it will be better like this,’ Prospero said calmly, raising the lump of fire to the large crystal candelabra and lighting the twelve candles one after another.

The light revealed a round table, covered with a dark tablecloth. The darkness retreated to the corners of the room and now that she could finally examine the ‘lovers of death’ properly, Columbine began turning her head in all directions.

‘Who will read?’ their host enquired, seating himself on a chair with a high carved back.

All twelve of the other chairs set around the table were simpler and lower.

Several people immediately volunteered.

‘The Lioness of Ecstasy will begin,’ Prospero declared.

Columbine stared wide-eyed at the famous Lorelei Rubinstein, She didn’t look as she might have been imagined from her poems: not a slim, fragile lily with impulsive movements and huge black eyes, but a rather substantial lady in a shapeless robe that hung down to her heels. The Lioness looked about forty, but that was in the semi-darkness.

She cleared her throat and said in a rumbling voice: ‘ “The Black Rose”. Written last night.’

Her plump cheeks quivered with emotion, her eyes darted upwards, towards the rainbow sparkling of the chandelier, her eyebrows knitted together dolefully.

Columbine gave Lucifer a gentle slap to stop him distracting her by slithering round her neck, and she became all ears.

The celebrated poetess declaimed wonderfully, intoning with real passion.

When will Night come, rapturous and enticing,

When will he make his entrance through my door,

Entering swiftly, without knocking,

This darling Guest that I am waiting for?

How luminous, in jail or roaming free,

The flame with which my chosen lover glows

But in the sacred darkness here with me

His eye will not descry the lone black rose.

And then the sonorous Word shall be proclaimed

Sundering the dense silence like a pall.

Let it be so: what is not fated

Will then be gone once and for all.

Just think of it, she had heard a new poem by Lorelei Rubinstein, one she had only just written! She and these few chosen ones were the first!

Columbine began applauding loudly, but immediately broke off, realising that she had committed a faux pas. Applause was apparently not the done thing here. Everybody – including Prospero – looked at the enraptured young woman without saying a word. She froze with her hands parted and blushed. She had muffed it again!

The Doge cleared his throat and said to Lorelei in a quiet voice: ‘Your usual shortcoming: elegant, but unintelligible. But that black rose is interesting. What does the black rose mean to you? No, don’t tell me. I’ll guess for myself.’

He closed his eyes and lowered his head on to his chest. Everybody waited with bated breath, and the poetess’s cheeks flushed bright crimson.

‘Does the Doge write poems?’ Columbine asked Petya quietly.

He put a finger to his lips, but she knitted her brows angrily and he whispered back almost silently: ‘Yes, and they are works of genius, for certain. No one understands poetry better than he does.’

She found this reply strange.

‘ “For certain”?’

‘He doesn’t show his poems to anyone. He says that they’re not written for people to read and he will destroy everything he has written before his departure.’

‘What a shame!’ she exclaimed rather more loudly than was necessary.

Prospero glanced at his new guest again, but once more he said nothing.

‘I have it,’ he said, giving Lorelei an affectionate, sad smile. ‘I understand.’

Lorelei beamed and the Doge turned to a spruce, quiet little man with a pince-nez and a Van Dyke beard.

‘Horatio, you promised to bring some poems today at last. You know there’s nothing to be done about it – the Bride accepts only poets.’

‘Horatio’s a doctor,’ Petya told Columbine. ‘That is, he’s a dissector – he cuts up bodies in the anatomy room. He took Lancelot’s place.’

‘And what happened to Lancelot?’

‘He departed. And he took some companions with him,’ Petya replied obscurely, but this was no time to ask questions – Horatio was ready to recite.

‘This is actually the first time I have tried my hand at poetry . . . I studied a manual on versification, made a great effort. And this, mmm, as it were, is the result.’

He cleared his throat in an embarrassed manner, straightened his tie and took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. When he was just about to begin, he evidently decided that he had not explained enough: ‘The poem is about my professional, so to speak, line of work . . . there are even a few special terms in it. The rhyme has been simplified, just the second and fourth lines, it’s very hard when you’re not used to it . . . After our esteemed, mmm . . . Lioness of Ecstasy, of course, my efforts in verse will seem even less accomplished . . . But anyway, I offer them up for your strict judgement. The poem is called “Epicrisis”.

The girl swallowed a hundred needles

To still her heart’s torment and pain.

Slicing neatly into her abdomen

The scalpel brings them to the light again.

‘You do not know if you should laugh or cry,

It’s like a hedgehog in the rain,

The way the human stomach shudders,

Flabbily trembling over and again.

‘The young cadet condemned himself to death

After his visit to a whore.

You neatly open up his brain pan

To find what you are looking for.

‘And you will find the piece of lead you seek

Among the grey necrotic mush,

Glinting dully like some precious pearl

Lodged in the epithalimus.

The reader broke off, crumpled up the sheet of paper and put it back in his pocket.

‘I wanted to describe the lungs of a woman who has drowned as well, but I couldn’t manage it. I only made up one line: “Among the dove-grey spongy mass”, but I just couldn’t carry on . . . Well gentlemen, was it very bad?’

Nobody spoke, waiting for the verdict of the chairman (he was the only one there still sitting in his original pose).

‘ “Epicrisis” – I believe that is the conclusion of a medical diagnosis,’ Prospero said, slowly and thoughtfully.

‘Yes indeed,’ Horatio agreed eagerly.

‘A-ha,’ Prospero drawled. ‘Well, this is my epicrisis for you: you cannot write poetry. But you are genuinely entranced by the multiplicity of the faces of death. Who is next?’

‘Teacher, let me!’ said a large strapping fellow with broad shoulders, raising his hand. He had childlike, naive blue eyes that looked strange in his coarse face. What does he want with the Eternal Bride? Columbine thought in surprise. He should be floating rafts of timber down the Angara river.

‘The Doge dubbed him Caliban,’ Petya whispered, and then felt it necessary to explain. ‘That’s from Shakespeare.’ Columbine nodded: so it was from Shakespeare. ‘Nowadays he works as an accountant in some loan company or other. He used to be a bookkeeper in a merchant-shipping line, sailing the oceans, but he was shipwrecked and only survived by a miracle, so he doesn’t go to sea any more.’

She smiled, pleased with her skill in reading faces – she hadn’t been so very far wrong with those rafts of timber.

‘As far as intellect goes, he’s a complete nonentity, an amoeba,’ Petya gossiped and then added enviously, ‘but Prospero gives him special treatment.’

Stamping loudly, Caliban walked out into the centre of the room, cocked his hip and started bawling out extremely strange verse in a stentorian voice:

The Island of Death

Where blue waves murmur to the sky

And seabirds ride the ocean swell

There is a solitary isle

Where only ghosts and phantoms dwell.

‘Some of them lie there on the sand

And over them the crabs do crawl

Others in mournful sorrow wander,

Bare skeletons, no flesh at all.

‘The rattling of their bones I hear,

I see them walk, oh horrid sight!

It fills me with such dreadful fear,

I cannot get to sleep at night.

‘My teeth do knock, my hands do shake

Even by the bright light of day.

I long to be there with the wraiths

On that dread island far away.

‘Then we shall blithe and merry be,

Rejoicing as we did before,

Luring the vessels from the sea

On to the jagged cliffy shore.

At the beginning Columbine almost snorted out loud, but Caliban declaimed his ungainly doggerel with such feeling that she soon stopped wanting to laugh, and the final verse sent cold shivers down her spine.

She glanced at Prospero without the slightest doubt that the severe judge who had dared to criticise Lorelei Rubinstein herself would demolish these shoddy efforts utterly.

But he didn’t!

‘Very good,’ the Doge declared. ‘Such expression! You can hear the sound of the ocean waves and see their foaming crests. Powerful. Impressive.’

Caliban’s face lit up in a smile of happiness that completely transformed his square-cut features.

‘I told you, he’s the favourite,’ Petya muttered in her ear. ‘What on earth does he see in this primitive amoeba? Aha, this is Avaddon, he’s at university with me. He’s the one who brought me here.’

Now it was the turn of the ill-favoured youth with blackheads who had been talking to Petya earlier.

The Doge nodded patronisingly.

‘Very well, Avaddon, we are listening.’

‘He’s going to read “Angel of the Abyss”,’ Petya told her. ‘I’ve already heard it. It’s his best poem. I wonder what Prospero will say.’

This was the poem:

Angel of the Abyss

The abyss has been unsealed,

Releasing its hot dry gloom.

See the locust horde set free

Spreading pain and doom.‘

See them flourish their sharp barbs

And those they choose to sting

Never knew the Grief Divine,

Living this life of sin.

‘Silver hooves trample the ground

And with their tortured breath

All those who are smitten down

Invoke their own swift death.

‘But all that was just a dream.

There is no death, no hope.

The dark angel Avaddon

Gazes through the smoke.

Columbine liked the poem very much, but she was no longer sure what she ought to think about it. What if Prospero thought it was mediocre?

Their host paused for a moment and then said: ‘Not bad, not bad at all. The last stanza is good. But “flourish their sharp barbs” is no good at all. And the rhyme “death” and “breath” is very hackneyed.’

‘Nonsense,’ a clear, angry voice exclaimed. ‘There are almost no rhymes for the word “death”, and they can no more be hackneyed than can Death itself ! It is the rhymes for the word “love” that have been mauled by sticky hands until they are banal, but no dross can stick to Death!’

The person who had called the opinion of the master ‘nonsense’ was a pretty-looking youth who seemed hardly more than a boy – tall and slim, with a capriciously curved mouth and a feverish bloom on his smooth cheeks.

‘It is not a matter of the freshness of the rhyme, but of its precision,’ he continued somewhat incoherently. ‘Rhyme is the most mysterious thing in the world. Rhymes are like the reverse side of a coin! They can make the exalted seem ludicrous and the ludicrous seem exalted! Hiding behind the swaggering word “king” we have the banal “thing” and behind the gentle “flower” we have “power”! There is a special connection between phenomena and the sounds that denote them. The person who can penetrate to the heart of these meanings will be the very greatest of discoverers.’

‘Gdlevsky,’ Petya sighed with a shrug. ‘He’s eighteen, hasn’t even finished grammar school yet. Prospero says he’s as talented as Rimbaud.’

‘Really?’ Columbine took a closer look at the irascible boy, but failed to see anything special about him. Except that he was good-looking. ‘And what’s his alias?’

‘He doesn’t have one. Just “Gdlevsky”. He doesn’t want to be called anything else.’

The Doge was not at all angry with the troublemaker – on the contrary, he smiled paternally as he looked at him.

‘All right, all right. You’re not really very strong on theorising. Since you got so steamed up over the rhyme, I expect you have “breath” and “death” too?’

The boy’s eyes flashed, but he said nothing, from which it was possible to conclude that the perspicacious Doge was not mistaken.

‘Well then, recite for us.’

Gdlevsky tossed his head, sending a strand of light hair tumbling down across his eyes and declared:

Untitled

I am a shadow of shadows, one of the reflections,

Wandering blindly through this earthly maze,

But midnight with its sacred incantations

Unfurls the starry scrolls before my gaze.

‘The time will come when I draw my last breath,

And summon the disastrous heavenly fire –

Go soaring upwards with my sister Death,

My premonitions leading ever higher.

‘The Poet is not ruled by happenstance

His destiny is the prophetic rhyme.

Mysterious and magic circumstance

Compose the link of prophecy with time.

This was Prospero’s commentary. ‘Your writing gets better and better. You should think less with your head, listen more to the voice sounding within you.’

After Gdlevsky no one else volunteered to recite a poem. The aspirants began discussing what they had heard in low voices, while Petya told his protйgйe about the other ‘aspirants’.

‘They are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz,’ he said, pointing to a pair of rosy-cheeked twins who kept together. ‘Their father is a confectioner from Revel and they are studying at the Commercial College. Their poems are never any good – nothing but “herz” and “schmerz”. They’re both very serious and thoroughgoing, they joined the aspirants out of some complicated philosophical considerations and they are sure to get what they want.’

Columbine shuddered as she imagined what a tragedy this Teutonic single-mindedness would produce for their poor ‘mutti’, but then immediately felt ashamed of this philistine thought. After all, only recently she had written a poem which asserted the following:

Only the reckless and impetuous

Can drain life’s goblet till it’s dry

Our home, our parents, what are these to us?

Give us the glitter of the sparkling wine!

One of the other people there was a short, stout man with dark hair and a long nose that looked completely out of place on his plump face. He was called Cyrano.

‘He’s not particularly subtle,’ said Petya, pulling a face. All he does is copy the manner of Rostand’s Bergerac: “Into the embraces of she who is dear to me I shall fall at the end of this missive.” An inveterate joker, a buffoon. Absolutely desperate to get to the next world just as soon as possible.’

This last remark made Columbine look closely at the follower of the famous Gascon wit. While Caliban was declaiming his terrifying work about skeletons in a thundering bass, Cyrano had listened with an exaggeratedly serious expression, but when he caught the new visitor’s glance, he made a skull-face by sucking in his cheeks, opening his eyes in a wide stare and moving his eyes together towards his impressive nose. Taken by surprise, Columbine tittered slightly and the prankster bowed to her and resumed his air of intent concentration. Absolutely desperate to get to the next world? This jolly, tubby man was obviously not so very simple after all.

‘And that is Ophelia, she holds a special position here. Prospero’s main assistant. When we’re all dead, she’ll still be here.’

Columbine had not noticed the young girl until Petya mentioned her, but now she found her more interesting than the other members of the club. She took envious note of the clear white skin, the fresh little face, the long wavy hair which was so blonde that in the semi-darkness it appeared white. A perfect angel from an Easter card. Lorelei Rubinstein didn’t count – she was old and fat, and an Olympian figure in any case, but in Columbine’s opinion, this nymph was clearly superfluous. Ophelia had not uttered a single word the whole time. She just stood there as if she couldn’t hear the poems or the conversations and was listening to something completely different; her wide-open eyes seemed to look straight through the other people there. What sort of ‘special position’ could she have? the new visitor thought jealously.

‘She’s strange, somehow,’ said Columbine, delivering her verdict. ‘What does he see in her?’

‘Who, the Doge?’

Petya was about to explain, but Prospero raised his hand imperiously and all talking ceased immediately.

‘Now the mystery will begin, but there is a stranger among us,’ he said, without looking at Columbine (her heart skipped a beat). ‘Who brought her?’

‘I did, Teacher,’ Petya replied anxiously. ‘She is Columbine. I vouch for her. She told me several months ago that she is weary of life and definitely wishes to die young.’

Now the Doge turned his magnetic gaze to the swooning damsel and from feeling cold, Columbine turned feverish. Oh, how his stern eyes glittered!

‘Do you write poetry?’ Prospero asked.

She nodded without speaking, afraid that her voice would tremble.

‘Recite one verse, any will do. And then I shall say if you can stay.’

I’ll muff it straight away, I know I will, Columbine thought mournfully, batting her eyelids rapidly. What shall I recite? She feverishly ran through all of her poems that she could remember and chose the one she was most proud of – ‘The Pale Prince’. It was written on the night when Masha read Rostand’s Distant Princesses and then sobbed until the morning.

The Pale Prince seared me with the gaze

Of his eyes of effulgent green

And now we shall never see the day

Of the wedding that might have been.

The ‘Pale Prince’ was Petya, the way he had seemed to her in Irkutsk. At that time she had still been a little bit in love with Kostya Levonidi, who had been planning to propose to her (how funny it was to remember that now!) and then Petya, her dazzling Moscow Harlequin, had appeared. The poem about the ‘pale prince’ had been written to make Kostya understand that everything was over between them, that Masha Mironova would never be the same again.

Columbine hesitated, afraid that one quatrain was not enough. Perhaps she should recite a little more, to make the meaning clearer? The poem went on like this:

We shall never stand at the altar

To make our wedding vows

The Pale Prince came riding to me

And called me to Moscow town.

But thank God that she didn’t recite that part, or she would have spoiled everything. Prospero gestured for her to stop.

‘The Pale Prince, of course, is Death?’ he asked.

She nodded hastily.

‘A pale prince with green eyes . . .’ the Doge repeated. ‘An interesting image.’

He shook his head sadly and said in a quiet voice: ‘Well now, Columbine. Fate has brought you here, and fate will not be gainsaid. Stay, and do not be afraid of anything. “Death is the key that opens the doors to true happiness.” Guess who said that.’

She glanced in bewilderment at Petya, who shrugged.

‘It was a composer, the very greatest all composers,’ Prospero prompted her.

Bach was the gloomiest of all the composers that Columbine knew, and so she whispered uncertainly: ‘Is it Bach?’ And then, remembering her unfortunate gaffe with Goethe, she explained: ‘Johann-Sebastian, wasn’t it?’

‘No, it was the radiant Mozart who said it, the creator of the Requiem,’ the Doge replied and turned away.

‘That’s it, now you’re one of us,’ Petya murmured behind her back. ‘I was so nervous for you!’

He looked just as if it was his birthday. Obviously he thought that now the candidate he had proposed had passed the examination, his own status among the ‘lovers’ would be enhanced.

‘Well then,’ said Prospero, gesturing invitingly towards the table. ‘Please be seated. Let us listen to what the spirits will tell us today.’

Ophelia took the seat to the right of the Doge. The others also sat down, placing their hands on the tablecloth so that their little fingers touched each other.

‘This is a spiritualist figure,’ Petya explained. ‘It’s called “the magic wheel”.’

Spiritualist seances were known even in Irkutsk. Columbine had done a little table-spinning herself, but that had been more like a jolly game of Yuletide fortune-telling: there was always someone tittering, gasping or giggling, and Kostya always tried to squeeze her elbow or kiss her cheek under the cover of darkness.

But here everything was deadly serious. The Doge extinguished the candles, leaving only the dull glow of the brazier, so that the faces of everyone sitting there were red below and black above – as if they had no eyes.

‘Ophelia, your time has come,’ their chairman said in a deep, resonant voice. ‘Give us a sign when you hear the Beyond.’

So that’s who Ophelia is, Columbine realised. A genuine medium, and that’s why she seems so much like a sleepwalker.

The blonde nymph’s face was still and absolutely expressionless, her eyes were closed and only her lips were trembling slightly, as if she were soundlessly whispering some incantation.

Suddenly Columbine felt a tremor run across her fingers and a cold draught blow on her cheeks. Ophelia raised her long eyelashes and threw her head back, and her pupils were so wide that her eyes were completely black.

‘I see you are ready,’ the Doge declared in the same solemn tone. ‘Summon Moretta to us.’

Columbine remembered that was the name of the girl whose vacancy she had filled. The poor creature who had shot herself together with that other one, Lycanthrope.

Ophelia was absolutely still for a few seconds, and then she said: ‘Yes . . . Yes . . . I hear her . . . She is far away, but coming closer every moment . . . It is I, Moretta. I have come. What do you want to know?’ she suddenly said in a quite different voice – a low, breathy contralto.

‘That’s Moretta’s voice!’ Lorelei Rubinstein exclaimed. ‘Do you hear?’

The people at the table stirred and their chairs creaked, but Prospero shook his head impatiently and everyone was still again.

‘Moretta, my girl, have you found your happiness?’ he asked. ‘No . . . I don’t know . . . It all feels so strange . . . It’s dark here, I can’t see anything. But there is someone beside me, someone who touches me with his hands and breathes in my face . . .’

‘It is he! The Eternal Bridegroom!’ Lorelei whispered passionately.

‘Quiet!’ the bookkeeper Caliban bellowed at her.

The Doge’s voice was gentle, almost unctuous.

‘You are not yet accustomed to the World Beyond, it is hard for you to speak. But you know what you must tell us. Who will be next? Who should expect the Sign?’

The silence was so intense that they could hear the coals crackling in the brazier.

Ophelia didn’t say anything. Columbine noticed that Petya Lileiko’s little finger was trembling rapidly – he was sitting on her right – and she suddenly started trembling herself: what if the spirit of this Moretta were to name her, the new aspirant? But her sense of grievance was stronger than her fear. How unjust that would be! Before she had really even become a member of the club, before she had really understood anything properly. There, take that!

‘A . . . A-a-a . . . A-va . . . Avaddon . . .’ Ophelia said very quietly.

Everyone turned towards the unhandsome student, and the people beside him – the anatomist by the name of Horatio and one of the twins (Columbine couldn’t remember which one it was) involuntarily jerked their hands away. A bewildered smile appeared on Avaddon’s face, but he was looking at Prospero, not the medium.

‘Thank you, Moretta.’ the Doge said. ‘Return to your new dwelling place. We wish you eternal happiness. Send Lycanthrope to us.’

‘Teacher . . .’ Avaddon said with a gulp, but Prospero jerked his chin peremptorily.

‘Be quiet. This does not mean anything as yet. We shall ask Lycanthrope.’

‘I am already here,’ Ophelia responded in a hoarse young man’s voice. ‘Greetings to the honest company from the newly-wed.’

‘I see you are still a joker, even there,’ the Doge chuckled.

‘Well why not, this is a jolly place. Especially looking at you lot.’

‘Tell us who should be next,’ Prospero told the spirit sternly. ‘And no jokes.’

‘Ah, yes, that’s no joking matter . . .’

Columbine was gaping wide-eyed at Ophelia. It was incredible! How could this delicate girl’s lips speak in such a confident, natural baritone?

Lycanthrope’s spirit said quite clearly: ‘Avaddon. Who else?’ And then he concluded with a laugh: ‘The wedding bed is already made up and waiting . . .’

Avaddon cried out, and the strange guttural sound roused the medium from her trance. Ophelia shuddered, fluttered her eyelids and rubbed her eyes, and when she took her hands away, her face was as it had been before: absentminded and illuminated by a faint, timid smile. And her eyes were no longer black, but quite normal – bright and moist with tears.

Someone lit the candles and soon the chandelier was lit too, making the drawing room very bright.

‘What’s his real name?’ Columbine asked, unable to take her eyes off the Chosen One (in fact, everyone else had eyes only for him).

‘Nikisha. Nikifor Sipyaga,’ Petya murmured in confusion.

Avaddon got up and looked at the others with a strange expression on his face, a mixture of fear and superiority.

‘Straight in off the red!’ he laughed, then sobbed and laughed again.

‘Congratulations!’ Caliban exclaimed with sincere feeling, shaking the condemned man firmly by the hand. ‘Phoo, your hand’s covered in cold sweat. Turned coward? Eh, the fools have all the luck!’

‘What . . . What now?’ Avaddon asked the Doge, ‘I can’t seem to gather my thoughts . . . my head’s spinning.’

‘Calm down,’ said Prospero, going over and putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘We know the spirits like to play tricks on the living. Without the Sign all this means absolutely nothing. Wait for the Sign, and make sure you don’t do anything stupid . . . That is all, the meeting is over. Leave now.’

He turned his back to the aspirants and one by one they made their way to the door.

Shaken by what she had seen and heard, Columbine watched Avaddon’s unnaturally straight back as he left the room first.

‘Let’s go.’ said Petya, taking her by the hand. ‘There won’t be anything else.’

Suddenly they heard a low, imperious voice.

‘Let the new girl stay!’

Columbine immediately forgot about Avaddon and Petya. She turned round, afraid of only one thing – that she might have misheard.

Without looking round, Prospero raised one hand and beckoned with his finger for her to approach.

Petya, the false Harlequin, looked plaintively into Columbine’s face and saw it was flushed with happiness. He shuffled his feet, sighed and meekly walked out.

A minute later, Columbine was left alone with the master of the house.

A discarded chrysalis

This is how it was. The wind was howling outside the windows, bending down the trees. The metal sheeting of the roof was clattering. Nature was rampaging in the grip of titanic passions.

The same passions were raging in Columbine’s soul. Her little heart alternately stood still and fluttered wildly, as rapidly as a moth beating its wings against the glass.

But he – he slowly approached and put his hands on her shoulders and throughout the entire mystical ritual he did not utter another word. There was no need to speak, this evening belonged to silence.

He grasped Columbine’s slim wrist and drew her after him into a dark series of rooms. The captive felt as if, passing through these rooms, she underwent a series of transformations, like a butterfly.

In the dining room she was still a larva – moist and timid, curled up, helpless; in the study she became rigid with fear, a blind, motionless chrysalis; but on the bearskin that was spread out in the bedroom, she was destined for transformation into a butterfly with bright-coloured wings.

No words can even come near to describing what happened. Her eyes were wide open as her innocence was sacrificed, but they saw nothing except shadows slipping across the ceiling. And as for sensations . . . No, I do not remember any. Alternating immersion first in cold, then in heat, then in cold – that is probably all.

There was none of the pleasure that is described in French novels. Nor any pain. There was the fear of saying or doing something wrong – what if he should pull away contemptuously and the ritual was interrupted, left incomplete? And so Columbine said nothing and did nothing, merely submitted to his gentle but astonishingly masterful hands.

One thing I know for certain: it did not last long. When I walked back through the drawing room, alone, the candles were not even burned halfway down.

Oh no, he did not stand on ceremony with his obedient puppet. First he took her, never doubting his right for a moment, then he stood up and said: ‘Leave’. One word, only one.

Stunned and confused, Columbine heard the rustle of retreating footsteps and the quiet creak of a door: the rite of initiation was over.

The clothes lying on the floor even looked like a discarded chrysalis. Ah, a discarded chrysalis is nothing at all like an abandoned doll!

The new-born butterfly got up and fluttered her white arms like wings. She spun round on the spot. If she must leave, she must leave.

She walked along the deserted boulevard on her own. The wind threw leaves torn from the trees and fine rubbish into her face. Ah, how fiercely the night rejoiced in its new convert, exulted that the fall from light into darkness had finally been accomplished!

Apparently there is pleasure even in this – wandering through the empty streets at random, without knowing the way. A strange, incomprehensible city. A strange, incomprehensible life.

But a genuine one. Absolutely genuine.

Columbine re-read the entry in her diary. She crossed out the paragraph about pleasure as too naive. She hesitated over the silence throughout the mystical ritual – that was not entirely true. When Prospero started unfastening the buttons of her lemon-yellow blouse as they walked along, silly little Lucifer had snapped at the aggressor’s finger with his infant fangs (he must have feeling jealous) and that had spoiled everything a little bit. The Doge had cried out in surprise and insisted that the reptile must be imprisoned in a jug during the ritual, and he had spent at least two minutes rubbing the bite – two tiny indentations in his skin – with alcohol. Meanwhile Columbine had stood there with her blouse unbuttoned, not knowing what to do – button the blouse up again or take it off herself.

No, she hadn’t written about that petty, annoying trifle – what would be the point?

Afterwards she sat down in front of a mirror and studied herself for a long time. Strange, but she couldn’t see any particular changes, any new maturity or sophistication, in her face. They would come, but obviously not straight away.

One thing was clear: she would not be able to sleep on this great night.

Columbine sat down in the armchair by the window and tried to spot a star, even the very tiniest, in the murky sky, but she couldn’t. She felt rather upset, but then she told herself that it was all right. The thicker the darkness, the better.

She did fall asleep after all. And she only realised she had been sleeping when she was woken by loud knocking.

Leave

When she opened her eyes, she saw the sun already high in the sky outside the window and heard the sounds of the street: hooves clopping over cobblestones, a knife-grinder crying his trade. And then she heard that insistent knocking again: rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat!

She realised it was late morning and someone was knocking on the door, perhaps they had already been knocking for a long time.

But before she went to open the door, she checked to make sure there were no creases or indentations on her face after her sleep (there weren’t), ran a comb through her hair, straightened her dressing gown (cut Japanese-style, with Mount Fujiyama on the back).

The knocking on the door continued. Then she heard a muffled call: ‘Open up! Open up! It’s me!’

Petya. Well, of course, who else? He had come to make a jealous scene. She shouldn’t have given him her address yesterday. Columbine sighed, pulled her hair across her left shoulder on to her breasts and tied it with a scarlet ribbon.

Lucifer was lying on the bed in a neat spiral. He was probably hungry, poor thing, so she poured some milk into a bowl for the little snake and only then let the jealous rival in.

Petya burst into the hallway, pale-faced, with his lips trembling. He cast a surreptitious glance at Columbine (at least, that was how it seemed to her) and immediately turned his eyes away. She shook her head in amazement at herself. How could she have taken him for Harlequin? He was Pierrot, an absolutely genuine Pierrot, and that was his real name, after all, Pyotr, Petya.

‘What are you doing here at the crack of dawn?’ she asked severely.

‘But it’s midday already,’ he babbled and sniffed. His nose was wet and red. Had he caught a cold? Or had he been crying?

It proved to be the latter. The disgraced Harlequin’s face contorted, his lower lip worked up and down, tears gushed from his eyes and he started blubbing in grand style. He spoke haltingly, incomprehensibly, and not about what Columbine had been expecting.

‘I went round this morning, to his flat . . . He rents one, on Basmannaya Street, in the Giant company building . . . Like yours, on the top . . . So we could go to lectures together. And I was worried after yesterday. I caught up with him and walked him home.’

‘Who?’ she asked. ‘Speak more clearly.’

‘Nikisha. You know, Nikifor, Avaddon.’ Petya sobbed. ‘He wasn’t himself at all, he kept repeating: “It’s been decided, it’s over, now I just have to wait for the Sign.” I said to him: “Maybe there won’t be any Sign, eh, Nikisha?” “No”, he said, “There will, I know there will. Goodbye, Petushok. We won’t see each other again. Never mind” he said, “it’s what I wanted” . . .’

At this point the story was interrupted by another fit of sobbing, but Columbine had already guessed what was wrong.

‘What, there was a Sign?’ she gasped. ‘A Sign of Death? The choice was confirmed? And now Avaddon will die?’

‘He already has!’ Petya sobbed. ‘When I got there, the door was wide open. The yard keeper, the owner of the house, the police. He hanged himself!’

Columbine bit her lip and pressed one hand to her breast, her heart was pounding so hard. She listened to the rest without interrupting.

‘And Prospero was there too. He said he hadn’t been able to get to sleep during the night, and just before dawn he quite clearly heard Avaddon calling him, so he got up, got dressed and went. He saw that the door was half-open. He went in, and there was Nikifor, that is, Avaddon, in the noose. He was already cold . . . Of course, the police don’t know anything about the club. They decided that Prospero and I were simply acquaintances of the deceased.’ Petya squeezed his eyes shut, obviously recalling the terrible scene. ‘Nikisha was lying on the floor, with a blue furrow round his neck and his eyes bulging out, and his tongue was huge and swollen, too big to fit in his mouth. And there was an appalling smell!’

Petya started shaking and his teeth chattered

‘So there must have been a Sign . . .’ Columbine whispered and raised her hand to cross herself (not out of piety, of course, but from childish habit), and only caught herself just in time. She had to pretend to tuck away a lock of hair.

‘Who can tell now?’ Petya asked with a fearful shudder. ‘The poem doesn’t say anything about a Sign.’

‘What poem?’

‘The death poem. It’s a custom of ours. Before you marry Death, you have to write a poem, it’s essential. Prospero calls it the “epithalamium” and also the “moment of truth”. He gave the constable fifty kopecks, and he allowed him to make a copy. I copied it out for myself too . . .’

‘Give it to me!’ Columbine demanded.

She grabbed the crumpled, tear-stained piece of paper out of Petya’s hands. At the top, in big letters, she read ‘A Riddle’. That was obviously the title.

But she simply couldn’t read the epithalamium with Petya there. He burst into sobs again and started telling the whole story for a second time.

So Columbine took hold of him by the shoulders, pushed him towards the door and said just one word: ‘Leave’.

She said it in exactly the same way as Prospero had to her the night before, after everything was over. Only she pointed with her finger for greater emphasis.

Petya looked at her imploringly, wavered on the spot for a while, sighed several times and walked out, like a beaten puppy dog. Columbine frowned. Surely she hadn’t looked as pitiful as that the night before?

Petya’s expulsion gave her a distinctly wicked pleasure. I definitely have what it takes to be a femme fatale, Columbine told herself, and sat down by the window to read the poem by the ugly individual who in life had borne the ugly name of Nikifor Sipyaga.

A Riddle

A nervous night, a hostile night,

The bed clatters its teeth,

Arching its back in wolfish spite.

I dare not sleep.

I fear sleep. In my waking trance

The wall-eyed windows show

Blue ash-tree skeletons that dance.

They creak, they groan.

I am still in this world, still here,

Warm, quivering, afraid.

The wind, knowing the Beast is near,

Taps on the pane.

The sated Beast will still be here,

The wind will sob and sigh

But I shall not be in this world.

Oh where am I?

Columbine suddenly felt quite unbearably afraid – afraid enough to make her want to go running after Petya and ask him to come back.

‘Oh, dear mother,’ whispered the femme fatale. ‘What Beast is this?’

III. From the ‘Agents’ Reports’ File

To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov

(Private and confidential)

Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,

Ever since our latest exchange of opinions I have been reproaching myself for failing to display the firmness of character required to answer you in the appropriate manner. I am a weak man, and you possess the strange ability to stifle my will. The most disgusting thing of all is that I experience a strange pleasure in submitting to you, for which I hate myself afterwards. I swear that I shall drive this base, voluptuous servility out of myself !

Alone with a sheet of paper, it is easier for me to say what I think of your outrageous demand!

I think that you are abusing my goodwill and my readiness to assist the authorities voluntarily and render entirely disinterested assistance in eradicating this deadly cancer that is consuming society. For after all, it was I who informed you about my family tragedy, about my dearly beloved brother who became obsessed with the idea of suicide. I am a principled opponent of evil, and not some ‘collaborator’ as you call paid informers in your department. And if I have agreed to write you these letters (do not dare to call them ‘reports’), it is not at all out of fear of being exiled for my former political views (as you once threatened), but only because I have realised just how truly malign spiritual nihilism is and come to fear it. You are absolutely right – materialism and inflated concern for the rights of the individual are not the Russian way, I am in complete agreement with you on that, and I believe I have already demonstrated quite adequately the sincerity of my enlightenment. It would appear, however, that you have decided to make it impossible for me to remain a decent human being! That is going too far.

I hereby declare categorically and irrevocably that I will not tell you the real names of the members of the club (in fact, I do not even know most of them), indeed, I will not even tell you the absurd aliases that they use among themselves, for that would be dishonourable and it smacks of simple informing.

Be merciful. I yielded to your insistent requests and agreed to find the secret society of potential suicides and insinuate myself into it, because you saw a political background to this sinister movement, like the medieval Arab order of assassins, fanatical killers who placed no value at all on human life – neither other people’s nor their own. You must admit that I carried out your difficult assignment quite excellently, and now you receive reliable first-hand information about the ‘Lovers of Death’. And I have had enough of you. Do not ask me to do anything more.

It has become absolutely clear to me that the Doge and his followers have no connection whatever with terrorists, socialists or anarchists. And what is more, these people have no interest whatever in politics and they despise all social concerns. You may put your mind at rest there – none of them will throw themselves under the wheels of the governor-general’s carriage with a bomb. They are the perverted and world-weary children of our decadent era – affected and sickly, but in their own way very beautiful.

No, they are not bombers, but for society, and especially for young, immature minds, the ‘lovers’ are very, very dangerous indeed – precisely because of their pale, intoxicating beauty. The ideology and aestheticism of the lovers of death undeniably contain a poisonously attractive temptation. They promise their followers an escape into a magical world far removed from the humdrum greyness of everyday life – the very thing for which exalted and sensitive souls yearn.

And the main danger, of course, is represented by the Doge himself. I have already described this terrible character to you, but his truly satanic grandeur is revealed more clearly to me every day. He is a ghoul, a vampire, a basilisk! A genuine fisher of souls who is so artful in subordinating others to his will that I swear to God even you cannot compare with him.

Recently a new member appeared – a funny, touching young girl from somewhere in Siberia. Naive and rapturous, with her head full of all sorts of foolishness that is fashionable among today’s young people. If she had not found her way into our club, in time she would have grown out of all this and become like everyone else. The usual story! But the Doge instantly snared her in his web and turned her into a walking automaton. It happened before my very eyes, in a matter of minutes.

Undoubtedly, an end must be put to all of this, but ordinary arrest will not suit here. Arrest will only make the Doge into a tragic figure, and it is frightening to think what a public trial would be transformed into! This man is picturesque, imposing, eloquent. Why, after his address to the court, ‘lovers’ would appear in every one of our district towns!

No, this monster has to be unmasked, trampled underfoot, displayed in a pitiful and monstrous light, so that his poisonous sting can be drawn once and for all!

And for what offence could you actually arrest him? After all, it is not a crime to set up poetry clubs. There is only one way out: I must uncover some corpus delicti in the Doge’s activities and prove that this gentleman, with deliberate intent and malice aforethought, encourages frail souls to commit the terrible sin of suicide. Only when I manage to obtain reliable evidence will I give you the Doge’s name and address. But not before then, not before.

Fortunately, I am not suspected of playing a double game. I deliberately make myself out to be a jester, and even derive a certain morbid satisfaction from the frankly scornful looks that certain of our smart alecks, including the Master himself, give me. Never mind, let them think me a pitiful worm, that is more convenient for my purposes. Or am I really a worm? What do you think?

Very well, let us leave that aside. The convulsions of my wounded vanity are of no importance. I am tormented by something quite different: after Avaddon’s terrible death we have another ‘vacancy’, and I am waiting anxiously to see what new moth will come flying to singe its wings on this infernal flame . . .

Yours affronted, but with genuine respect,

ZZ

28 August 1900

CHAPTER 2I. From the Newspapers

Lavr Zhemailo Meets the High Priest of the ‘Lovers of Death’

And so, it has come to pass! Your humble servant has succeeded in infiltrating the holy of holies of the highly conspiratorial suicide club which set everyone talking after the recent death of S., a 23-year-old student at Moscow University. The story of how I managed to overcome all the cunning barriers and insuperable obstacles in order to attain my goal would make the plot of a thrilling novel. However, bound by my word, I shall remain silent, and let me state immediately for the benefit of the gentlemen of the police that Lavr Zhemailo will never, under any circumstances, even under threat of imprisonment, betray his helpers and informants.

My meeting with the high priest of the sinister sect of worshippers of death commenced in a dark and gloomy cellar, the location of which has remained a mystery to me since my cicerone delivered me there with a blindfold over my eyes. I could smell damp earth, several times cobwebs dangling from the ceiling brushed across my face and once a bat flew past with a loathsome squeak. After this prelude, I felt sure I would see some appalling vault with slimy walls, but when the blindfold was removed, there was a rather pleasant disappointment in store for me. I was standing in a spacious, superbly furnished room that resembled the drawing room of a rich house: a crystal chandelier, bookcases, chairs with carved backs, a round table like those that are used for spiritualist seances. The person I spoke to told me to call him ‘Doge’. Naturally, he was wearing a mask, so that I could see only his long, snow-white hair, small grey beard and exceptionally keen, or rather, I should say, piercing eyes. The Doge’s voice proved to be resonant and beautiful, and at times quite spellbinding. There can be no doubt that he is a talented and exceptional individual.

‘I know you, Mr Zhemailo, as a man of honour, and that is the only reason I have agreed to meet you.’ Thus did my mysterious companion begin the conversation. I bowed and promised once again that the ‘Lovers of Death’ need not fear any indiscretion or foul play on my part.

My reward for this promise was an extensive lecture, delivered by the Doge with such exceptional eloquence that I was enthralled even against my own will. I shall try here to convey the content of this eccentric sermon in my own words.

The venerable Doge asserts that man’s true native land is not the planet Earth or the condition which we call life, but in fact the absolute opposite: Death, Blackness, Non-existence. This is the true homeland of all of us. That is where we formerly dwelt, and where we shall soon return. For a brief, insubstantial moment, we are doomed to dwell in the light, in life, in existence. Precisely doomed, that is, punished, expelled from the bosom of Death.

All of the living, without exception, are winnowed chaff, dross, criminals condemned to the daily torment of life for some crime that we have forgotten, but which must be extremely grave. Some of us are less guilty and therefore condemned only to a short sentence. Such individuals return to Death when they are still infants. Others, who are guiltier, are condemned to hard labour for seventy, eighty or even a hundred years. Those who live to extreme old age are the most evil of wrong-doers and unworthy of any indulgence. But nonetheless, sooner or later, Death in its infinite mercy forgives everyone.

At this point your humble servant, unable to restrain himself, interrupted the orator.

‘A curious assertion. And so the length of our lives is not set by God, but by Death?’

‘Let it be God – use whatever name you wish. Only the judge whom people have called God is by no means the Lord Almighty, but merely an acolyte in the service of Death.’

‘What an appalling image!’ I exclaimed.

‘Not at all,’ the Doge reassured me. ‘God is stern, but Death is merciful. Out of benevolence Death has endowed us with the instinct of self-preservation, so that we will not feel oppressed by the walls of our prison and will fear any attempt to escape from them. And Death has also granted us the gift of oblivion. We have no memory of our true homeland, of our lost Eden. Otherwise not one of us would be willing to bear the torment of imprisonment and there would be a genuine orgy of suicides.’

‘What is so bad about that, from your point of view? After all, surely you actually exhort the members of your circle to commit suicide?’

‘Unauthorised suicide is an escape from prison, a crime that is punishable by a new term of imprisonment. No, it is not permissible to flee from this life. But it is possible to earn pardon – that is, a reduction in the sentence.’

‘In what way, if I might enquire?’

‘Through love. One must love Death with all one’s soul. Entice and summon her to you, like your own dearly beloved. And wait, wait meekly for her Sign. When the Sign is manifested, you not only may, but should, die by your own hand.’

‘You speak of Death as “she”, as your dearly beloved, but there are both men and women among your followers.’

‘In Russian, Death is a feminine noun, but that is a convention of grammar. In German, as we know, the word is masculine – der Tod. For a man Death is the Eternal Bride. For a woman he is the Eternal Bridegroom.’

Then I asked the question that had been bothering me from the very beginning of this strange dialogue: ‘When you talk it is clear that you have unshakeable confidence in the truth of what you say. How do you know all this, if Death has denied man any memory of his previous existence, that is – I beg your pardon – Non-existence?’

The Doge replied with a triumphant air.

‘There are some people – rare individuals – from whom Death has decided to take away the gift of forgetting, so that they are able to perceive both worlds, Being and Non-being. I am one of these people. After all, a prison administration needs a steward from among the prisoners in the cell. It is the steward’s duty to keep an eye on those in his care, to instruct them and recommend those who deserve leniency to the Governor. That is all, no more questions. I have nothing more to say.’

‘Just one. The very last!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you have many wards in your “cell”?’

‘Twelve. I know from the newspapers that many times that number would like to join us, but our club only opens its doors to the select few. To become a Lover of Death is a precious lot, the highest possible reward for anyone alive . . .’

I was blindfolded from behind and led towards the door. The conversation with the Doge, the high priest of the suicide sect, was over.

As I was plunged into darkness, I could not help shuddering at the thought that I was descending forever into the Blackness so dear to the ‘lovers’.

No, gentlemen, I thought to myself when I was back in the bright sunshine under the blue sky, I may be a condemned criminal, but I do not desire any leniency – I prefer to serve my ‘sentence’ to the end.

But what would you prefer, dear reader?

Lavr Zhemailo

Moscow Courier, 29 August

(11 September) 1900, p.2

II. From Columbine’s Diary

Her slippers barely even touch the ground

Poor Columbine, brainless puppet, dangling in mid-air. Her satin slippers barely even touch the ground, and if the deft puppet-master pulls on the slim strings, the puppet throws up its arms or doubles over in a bow: sometimes crying, sometimes laughing.

I think about one and the same thing all the time now: the meaning of the words that he spoke; the tone in which he said them; the way he looked at me; why he didn’t look at me at all. Oh, my life is so full of strong feelings and experiences!

For example, yesterday he said: ‘You have the eyes of a cruel child.’ For a long time afterwards, I wondered if that was good or bad – a cruel child. From his point of view, probably good. Or bad?

I have read that old men (and he’s very old, he knew Karakozov, who was hanged thirty-five years ago) feel a burning passion for young girls. But he’s not lascivious at all. He’s cold and indifferent. Since that first, tempestuous union, when the trees outside the windows were bowing before the hurricane’s onslaught, he has only told me to stay once. That was the day before yesterday.

Without a single word, with only gestures, he ordered me to throw off my clothes, lie on the bearskin and not move. He covered my face with a white Venetian mask – a dead, stiff disguise. All I could see through the narrow eye-slits was the ceiling, looking light-coloured in the twilight.

I lay there for a long time without moving. It was very quiet, all I could hear was the quiet crackling of the candle flames. I thought: He’s looking at me, defenceless, with no covering, without even a face. This is not me, this is nameless female flesh, simply a rubber doll.

What did I feel?

Curiosity. Yes, curiosity and the sweet thrill of uncertainty. What would he do? What would his first touch be like? Would he press his lips to mine in a kiss? Or lash me with a whip? Would he scorch me with hot drops of candle wax? I would have accepted anything at all from him, but time passed and nothing happened.

I started feeling cold, my skin was covered with goose-pimples. I said plaintively: ‘Where are you? I’m frozen!’ Not a single sound in reply. Then I took off the mask and sat up.

There was no one else in the bedroom, and this discovery set me trembling. He had disappeared! This inexplicable disappearance set my heart beating faster than even the most ardent of embraces.

I thought for a long time about what this trick could mean. For a whole night and a day I searched desperately for the answer. What was he trying to tell me? What feelings did he have for me? Without a doubt, there was passion. Only not fiery, but icy, like the polar sun, which scorches no less for being cold.

I am only writing this in my diary now, because I have suddenly understood the meaning of what happened. The first time he possessed only my body. The second time he possessed my soul. The initiation is complete.

Now I am his thing. His property, like a key-ring or a glove. Like Ophelia.

There is nothing between them, I am sure of that. That is, the girl is in love with him, of course, but he only needs her as a medium. I cannot imagine any man being inflamed with passion for this sleep-walker. A strange, innocent smile constantly trembles on her face, her eyes have a gentle but abstracted look. She hardly ever opens her mouth – except during the seances. But during those minutes of communication with the World Beyond, Ophelia is completely transformed. As if somewhere deep inside her fragile little body a bright lamp suddenly lights up. Pierrot says that she is actually half-insane and she should be put in a clinic, that she lives in a dream. I don’t know. I think, on the contrary, that she is only alive and fully herself when acting as a medium.

I myself find it hard to distinguish dreams from reality now. The dream is getting up late in the morning, breakfast, all the shopping that has to be done. Waking life only begins as evening approaches, when I try to write poems and get ready to go out. But I only come fully awake after eight, as I walk quickly along Rozhdestvenka Street, with its bright streetlamps, towards the boulevard. The world bears me along on waves of energy, the blood pulses in my veins. My heels clatter along so quickly, so single-mindedly that people turn round to look at me as they walk by.

Evening is the culmination and the apotheosis of the day. Later, after midnight already, I come home and artificially prolong the magic by writing down the details of everything that happened in a Moroccan leather notebook.

Today many things happened.

From the very beginning he behaved quite differently from usual.

But no, I mustn’t write like that – always he, he. I am not writing for myself, but for art.

Prospero was not the same as always – he was lively, almost agitated. Nearly as soon as he joined us in the drawing room, he started talking.

‘Today a man approached me in the street. Handsome, elegantly dressed, very self-confident. He spoke strange words with a slight stammer: “I know how to read faces. You are the one I need. Fate has s-sent you to me.”

‘ “But I can read nothing in your face,” I replied hostilely, since I cannot bear undue familiarity. “I am afraid, sir that you have made a mistake. No one can send me anywhere, not even fate.”

‘ “What is that you have there?” he asked, taking no notice of my harsh words and pointing to my coat pocket. “What is m-making that bulge? A revolver? Give it to me.”

‘You know that I never leave home without my Bulldog. The stranger’s behaviour was beginning to intrigue me. Without further words I took the weapon out and handed it to him – to see what would happen.’

At this point Lorelei exclaimed: ‘But he is obviously insane! He could have shot you! How reckless you are!’

‘I am used to trusting in Death,’ Prospero said with a shrug. ‘She is wiser and kinder than we are. And then, tell me, good Lioness, what would I have lost if the mad stranger had put a bullet through my forehead? It would been an elegant conclusion . . . But listen to the rest.’

And he went on with his story: ‘The stranger opened the revolver and shook out four bullets into the palm of his hand, leaving the fifth in the gun. I observed his actions with curiosity.

‘He spun the drum hard, then suddenly put the barrel against his temple and pressed the trigger. The hammer clicked loudly against an empty chamber, and not a single muscle twitched in the amazing gentleman’s face.

‘ “Now will you talk to me seriously?” he asked.

‘I didn’t answer, I was rather shaken by this performance. Then he spun the barrel again and set the gun against his temple again. I tried to stop him, but I was too late. The trigger clicked again – and again he was lucky.

‘ “Enough,” I explained. “What is it that you want?”

‘He said: “I want to be with you. You are the person I t-take you to be, are you not?”

‘Apparently he had been searching for the “Lovers of Death” for a long time in order to become one of them. Naturally, he had not guessed who I was from my face – that had been said simply for the sake of effect, in order to make an impression on me. In actual fact, he had pursued a cunning investigation that had led him to me. What do you make of that? He is an extremely interesting individual – I know people. He composes poetry, in the Japanese style. You will hear it, it is quite unlike anything else. I told him to come today. After all, Avaddon’s place is still free.’

I envied this unknown gentleman who had managed to make such an impression on our impassive Doge, although I was not listening to the story very carefully, because something else was bothering me. I was going to read a new poem that I had worked on throughout the previous night and I was hoping that I had finally managed to get it right, and that Prospero would criticise this cry from the soul less severely than my previous efforts, which . . . Never mind, I have already written about that more than once, I will not repeat myself here.

When my turn came, I read out:

You’ll forget her, won’t you,

This doll with hempen curls

And eyes of misty blue

Enchanted by your spells?

‘It’s clear you do not care

That she is a martyr

To the doting worship

Of her celluloid heart.

‘Then should I pray to God,

Offer up this drama?

The former touch-me-not

Weeps quietly: ma-ma!

There was another stanza, which I particularly liked (I even shed a few teardrops over it) – about how a puppet has no god but the puppet-master.

But heartless Prospero waved his hand dismissively for me to stop, and frowned as he said: ‘Stodgy semolina!’

My poems do not interest him at all!

Afterwards Gdlevsky, whom Prospero always praises exorbitantly, read his verse, and I quietly left the room. I stood in front of the mirror in the hallway and started to cry. Or rather, I started howling. ‘Stodgy semolina!’

It was dark in the hallway, and all I could see in the mirror was my own stooped figure with a stupid bow in my hair, which had slipped right over to the left. Lord, how unhappy I felt! I remember I thought: If only the spirits would summon me today, I would gladly leave you all and go to the Eternal Bridegroom. But there was not much hope. Firstly, just recently the spirits had either not appeared at all or had simply babbled some sort of nonsense. And secondly, why would Death choose such a worthless, untalented woodlouse for a bride?

Then there was a ring at the door. I hurriedly straightened my bow, dried my eyes and went to open it.

There was a surprise in store for me.

Standing on the doorstep was the same gentleman I had seen when I took the forget-me-nots to Avaddon.

The appearance of Prince Genji

On that day when the tearful Petya-Cherubino had shown up at the small flat under the roof and frightened its occupant with the news of Avaddon’s death, and then with the Chosen One’s final poem, Columbine had sat in the armchair for a long time, reading the mysterious lines over and over again.

She had cried a little bit, of course. She felt sorry for Avaddon, even if he was a Chosen One. But then she had stopped crying, because what point was there in crying if someone had been granted what he was yearning for? His wedding with his Eternal Betrothed had been celebrated. In such cases one should not sob and weep, but feel glad.

And Columbine had set out to the newly-wed’s flat to congratulate him. She had put on her very smartest dress (white and airy, with two silver streaks of light sewn along the bodice), bought a bouquet of delicate forget-me-nots and gone to Basmannaya Street. She had taken Lucifer with her, only not on her neck, like a necklace (black would not have been appropriate on a day like this) but in her handbag – so that he would not be bored at home alone.

She found the Giant company’s building – a new, five-storey stone structure – with no difficulty. She had been planning simply to leave the flowers at the door of the flat, but the door was not sealed, in fact it was even half-open. She could hear muffled voices inside. If other people can go inside, then why can’t I, the bearer of congratulations, she reasoned, and walked in.

It was a small flat, no larger than her own in Kitaigorod, but quite remarkably neat and tidy and far from squalid, as she would have expected it to be from the late Avaddon’s shabby clothes.

Columbine stopped in the hallway, trying to guess where the room in which the Bridegroom had met his Bride would be.

The kitchen seemed to be on the left. She heard a man speaking in it, with a slight stammer.

‘And what d-door is this? The rear entrance?’

‘Precisely so, Your Excellency,’ replied another voice, husky and obsequious. ‘Only the gentleman student never used it. The back door is for servants, and he managed for himself. Because he was dog-poor, if you’ll pardon the expression.’

She heard a bump and a clang of metal.

‘So he d-didn’t use it, you say? Then why are the hinges oiled? And very thoroughly too?’

‘I couldn’t say. I suppose someone must have oiled them.’

The man with a stammer sighed and said: ‘A reasonable s-supposition.’ There was a pause in the conversation.

He must be a police investigator, Columbine guessed and started back towards the door to avoid trouble – he might start pestering her with questions: who was she, why was she here, what did the forget-me-nots mean? But before she could withdraw, three men walked out of the short corridor into the hall.

The first, ambling along and occasionally glancing round, was a bearded yard keeper in an apron, with his metal badge on his chest. Following him at a leisurely pace and tapping his cane on the floor, came a tall lean gentleman in a beautifully tailored frock-coat, snow-white shirt with immaculate cuffs and even a top hat – a perfect Count of Monte Cristo – and the yard keeper had called him ‘Excellency’, hadn’t he? The similarity to the former prisoner of the Chвteau d’If was reinforced by the pale well-groomed face (which, she had to admit, was most impressive) and romantic black moustache. And the dandy was about the same age as the Parisian millionaire – she could see grey temples under the top hat.

Bringing up the rear was a squat, solidly built Oriental in a three-piece suit and a bowler hat pulled so far forward that it almost covered his eyes. But they weren’t really eyes – he stared out at Columbine from under the black felt through two narrow slits.

The yard keeper waved his arms at the young lady as if he were shooing away a cat.

‘You can’t come in here, get out! Go away!’

But Monte Cristo looked keenly at the smartly dressed girl and said laconically: ‘Never mind, it’s all right. Here, take this as well.’

He handed the yard keeper a banknote, and the bearded man doubled over in delight and called his benefactor ‘Your Highness’ instead of ‘Your Excellency’, from which she concluded that the handsome man with the stammer was not a count and most definitely not a policeman. Who had ever heard of policemen flinging rouble notes at yard keepers? Another curious outsider, Columbine decided. He must have read about the ‘Lovers of Death’ in the newspapers, and now he’d come to gape at the lodgings of the latest suicide.

The handsome gentleman doffed his top hat (in the process revealing that only his temples were grey, and the rest of his coiffure was still quite black), but he didn’t introduce himself, he merely asked: ‘Are you an acquaintance of Mr Sipyaga’s?’

Columbine refused to favour the Count of Monte Cristo with a glance, let alone a reply. The feeling of excitement and exultation had returned, she was not in the mood for idle conversation.

Then the persistent dark-haired gentleman lowered his voice and asked: ‘You must b-be from the “Lovers of Death”, I suppose?’

‘What makes you think so?’ she asked with a start, glancing at him in fright.

‘Why, it’s quite clear.’ He leaned on his cane and started bending down the fingers of one hand in a close-fitting grey glove. ‘You walked in without ringing or kn-knocking. So you must have come to see someone you know. That is one. You see strangers here, but you don’t ask after the occupant of the flat. So you already know that he is dead. That is two. But that didn’t stop you coming here in an extravagant dress with a f-frivolous bouquet. That is three. Who could regard a suicide as cause for congratulation? Only the “Lovers of Death”. That is four.’

The Oriental joined in the conversation. He spoke Russian rather briskly, but with an appalling accent.

‘Not onry ruvers,’ he protested energetically. ‘When Prince Asano’s nobur samurai receive permission commit hara-kiri, everyone congraturate them too.’

‘Masa, we can d-discuss the story of the forty-seven faithful vassals some other time,’ said Monte Cristo, interrupting the short Oriental. ‘At the moment, as you can see, I am talking to a lady.’

‘You may be talking to the lady,’ Columbine snapped. ‘But the lady is not talking to you.’

‘His Highness’ shrugged, discouraged, and she turned into the doorway that led to the right, beyond which there were two small rooms. The first one contained nothing but a cheap writing desk and the one beyond it was the bedroom. Her eye was caught by the divan bed, one of the new-fangled kind, with a central section that folded out, but it was very shabby and crooked. The top section didn’t fit properly against the bottom and the divan seemed to be grinning with a dark mouth.

Columbine remembered a line from Avaddon’s final poem, and muttered: ‘The bed clatters its teeth.’

‘What’s that?’ She heard Monte Cristo say behind her. ‘Poetry?’

Without turning round, she recited the entire quatrain in a whisper.

A nervous night, a hostile night,

The bed clatters its teeth,

Arching its back in wolfish spite.

I dare not sleep.

There really was something wolfish about the divan’s curved back.

The windowpane trembled (it was windy, like the evening before), Columbine gave a chill shudder and recited the final lines of the poem:

The wind, knowing the Beast is near,

Taps on the pane.

‘The sated Beast will still be here,

The wind will sob and sigh

But I shall not be in this world.

Oh where am I?

And she sighed. Where are you now, Chosen One Avaddon? Are you happy in the World Beyond?

‘That is Nikifor Sipyaga’s d-death poem?’ the quick-witted dandy stated rather than asked. ‘Interesting. Very interesting.’

The yard keeper told them: ‘There was a beast howling, really. The tenant on the other side of the wall told me. The walls here are flimsy, Your Excellency, nothing to them really. When the police left, the tenant next door came down to see me, out of curiosity. And he told me: at night, he says, someone started howling, eerie it was, going up and down, like he was calling someone or threatening them. And it went on right until dawn. He even banged on the wall – he couldn’t sleep. Thought as Mr Sipyaga had got a dog. Only there wasn’t any dog here.’

‘An interesting little flat,’ said the man with dark hair. ‘I can hear some k-kind of sound too. Only not howling, it’s more like hissing. And this intriguing sound is coming from your handbag, Mademoiselle.’

He turned to Columbine and looked at her with his blue eyes – she couldn’t tell if their expression was sad or happy.

Never mind, they’ll be frightened in a moment, Columbine thought mischievously.

‘From my handbag? Are you sure?’ she asked, feigning surprise. ‘But I can’t hear anything. Well now, let’s take a look.’

She deliberately lifted up her bag so that it was right under the arrogant stranger’s nose and clicked open the little lock.

Lucifer didn’t let her down. He stuck out his narrow little head just like a jack-in-a-box, opened his jaws and gave such a hiss! He’d obviously got bored in his dark, cramped lair.

‘Holy Mother of God!’ the yard keeper howled, banging the back of his head against the doorpost. ‘A snake! It’s black! And I haven’t drunk a drop!’

But what a pity – the handsome gentleman wasn’t in the least bit frightened. He inclined his head to one side to take a good look at the snake and said approvingly: ‘A fine little g-grass snake. You’re fond of animals, Mademoiselle? Very laudable.’

And then he turned back to the yard keeper, as if nothing had happened.

‘So, you say the unknown b-beast was howling until dawn. That’s the most interesting thing of all. What’s the neighbour’s name? The one who lives on the other side of the wall. What does he d-do for a living?’

‘Stakhovich. He’s an artist.’ The yard keeper kept glancing warily at Lucifer and rubbing the bruise on the back of his head. ‘Young Miss, is he safe? He won’t bite?’

‘Of course he will!’ Columbine replied haughtily. ‘Not half he will.’ And she told the Count of Monte Cristo. ‘You’re a grass snake. This is an Egyptian cobra.’

‘A Co-bra, very well,’ he drawled absentmindedly, not really listening.

He stopped by the wall where there was clothing hanging on nails – evidently Avaddon’s entire wardrobe: a pitiful, patched greatcoat and a worn student’s uniform jacket, obviously second-hand.

‘So Mr Sipyaga was very p-poor?’

‘As poor as a church mouse. Never even tipped a kopeck, not like Your Grace.’

‘And yet the flat is not at all bad. Probably thirty roubles a month?’

‘Twenty-five. Only it wasn’t him that rented it, how could he have? It was Mr Blagovolsky, Sergei Irinarkhovich, who paid.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘I couldn’t say. That’s what it says in the accounts book.’

As she listened to this conversation, Columbine turned her head this way and that, trying to guess exactly where the wedding with Death had taken place. And eventually she found it. There was a severed rope-end hanging from the hook of the curtain rod.

She gazed at the crude piece of metal and the tattered piece of hemp in awe. Lord, how pitiful, how wretched are the gates through which the soul escapes from the hell of life into the heaven of Death!

‘Be happy, Avaddon!’ she thought to herself and put the bouquet down on top of the skirting board.

The Oriental came across and clicked his tongue disapprovingly: ‘Brue frowers no good! Brue for when drowned. When hanged, should be daisy.’

‘Masa, you ought to give the “Lovers of Death” lectures on how to honour suicides,’ Monte Cristo remarked with a serious air. Tell me now, what colour should the bouquet be, for instance, when someone has shot himself ?’

‘Red,’ Masa replied just as seriously. ‘Roses or poppies.’

‘And if he poisoned himself ?’

The Oriental didn’t hesitate for a second.

‘Yerrow chrysanthemums. If no chrysanthemums, can be buttercups.’

‘And what if his stomach was slit open?’

‘White frowers – because white corow most nobur.’

The Oriental folded his short-fingered hands as if in prayer and his friend nodded in approval.

‘A pair of clowns,’ Columbine exclaimed scornfully. She cast a final glance at the hook and walked towards the door.

Who could have imagined that she would see the dandy from Avaddon’s flat again and, of all places, at Prospero’s house!

He looked almost exactly the same as he had at their previous meeting: elegant, with a cane, only the frock-coat and the top hat were ash-grey instead of black.

‘Good evening, m-madam,’ he said with his characteristic slight stammer. ‘I’m here to see Mr Blagovolsky.’

‘Who? There’s no one here by that name.’

In the semi-darkness he couldn’t make out Columbine’s face, but she recognised him immediately – there was a gas lamp burning under the canopy of the door. She was terribly surprised. Had he got the wrong address? What a very strange coincidence that would be!

‘Ah, yes, I b-beg your pardon,’ said her chance acquaintance, bowing jokingly. ‘I meant to say Mr Prospero. Indeed, I was warned most strictly that it is not the d-done thing to use one’s own name here. So you must be Zemfira, say, or Malvina?’

‘I am Columbine,’ she replied coolly. ‘But who are you?’

Once he walked into the hallway he was able to see who it was that had opened the door for him. He recognised her, but gave no sign of being surprised.

‘Hello, mysterious stranger. Well, it’s a small world, as they say.’ Lucifer was dozing on the girl’s neck and he stroked the snake’s head. ‘Hello there, little one. Allow m-me to introduce myself, Mademoiselle Columbine. Mr Blago . . . that is, Mr Prospero and I agreed that here I will be known as Genji.’

‘Genji? What a strange name!’

She simply couldn’t understand what this mysterious appearance could mean. What had this gentleman with a stammer been doing at Avaddon’s flat? And what did he want here?

‘In olden times there was a Japanese p-prince by that name. A seeker of thrills such as myself.’

She rather liked the unusual name – Genji. Japonisme was so refined. So, it was not ‘Your Excellency’ but actually ‘Your Highness’. Columbine chuckled sarcastically, but she had to admit that the dandy really was remarkably like a prince, if not Japanese, then at least a European one, like in Stevenson.

‘Was your companion Japanese?’ she asked, struck by a sudden insight. ‘The one I saw on Basmannaya Street? Is that why he kept talking about samurais and cutting out stomachs?’

‘Yes, he is my valet and closest friend. By the way, you were wrong to call us cl-clowns.’ Genji shook his head reproachfully. ‘Masa has great respect for the institution of suicide. As, indeed, do I. Otherwise I would not be here, would I?’

She rather doubted the sincerity of that last assertion – the tone in which it was made was far too flippant.

‘You don’t look as if you were particularly keen to leave this world,’ Columbine said mistrustfully, looking into the visitor’s calm eyes.

‘I assure you, Mademoiselle Columbine, that I am a desperate man, c-capable of the most extreme, quite inconceivable actions.’

Once again he spoke in a way that made it impossible to tell if he was serious or joking. But then she suddenly remembered the Doge’s story about ‘a highly interesting character’. He wasn’t like any of the other aspirants. In fact, she had never seen anyone of his type before.

‘Well, now you’re here, let’s go,’ she said coolly, so that he wouldn’t get too high an opinion of himself. ‘You still have to pass the test.’

They entered the salon just as Gdlevsky was completing his recitation and Rosencrantz was preparing for his performance.

Telling the twins apart had turned out to be quite easy. Guildenstern spoke quite faultless Russian (he had studied at a Russian grammar school) and his disposition was noticeably more cheerful. Rosencrantz was always writing something down on a thick notepad and he sighed frequently. Columbine often caught his doleful Baltic glance on her, and although her own response was uncompromising, she enjoyed this silent adoration. It was a pity that the young German’s poetry was so appallingly bad.

This time he had taken up that solemn pose again: feet in position three, the fingers of the right hand spread out like a fan, his eyes fixed on Columbine.

The pitiless Doge interrupted him after the very first stanza.

‘Thank you, Rosencrantz. You can’t say “weeping with a sighfully pure tear” in Russian, but you did do a little better today. Ladies and gentlemen! Here is the candidate for Avaddon’s place,’ he said, introducing the newcomer, who had halted in the doorway and was surveying the drawing room and the people gathered in it with a curious glance.

Everyone turned towards the candidate and he gave a light bow.

‘It is our custom to hold a kind of poetic examination,’ the Doge told him. ‘I only need to hear a few lines of a poem written by a candidate and I can tell immediately if his way lies with us or not. You write verse that is unusual for our literature, with no rhymes or rhythm, and so it is only fair if I ask you to extemporise on a theme that I set.’

‘By all means,’ Genji replied, not disconcerted in the least. ‘What theme would you l-like to suggest?’

Columbine noticed that Prospero addressed him in a rather formal tone, which was unusual in itself. This formidable gentleman had obviously made quite an impression.

The chairman paused for a long moment. Everyone held their breath and waited: they knew that in a moment he would dumbfound the self-confident novice with some paradox or sudden surprise.

And so he did. Flinging back his lacy cuff (today the Doge was dressed as a Spanish grandee, which suited his beard and long hair very well), Prospero took a red apple out of a bowl and sank his firm teeth into it with a crunch. He chewed, swallowed and glanced at Genji.

‘There is your subject.’

They all looked at each other. What kind of subject was that?

Petya whispered to Columbine: ‘He did that on purpose. Now he’ll shoot him down, just you see.’

‘A b-bitten apple, or an apple in general?’ the probationer enquired.

‘That is for you to decide.’

Prospero smiled contentedly and sat on his throne.

With a shrug of his shoulders, as if this was all the merest of trifles, Genji recited:

The apple is beautiful,

Not on the branch or in the stomach

But in the moment of its fall.

Everybody waited for the continuation. But none came. Then Cyrano shook his head and Kriton giggled rather loudly, although Gdlevsky nodded approvingly and the Lioness of Ecstasy even exclaimed: ‘Bravo!’

Columbine had been about to pull a disdainful face, but instead she assumed a thoughtful air. If the two leading luminaries had seen something in Prince Genji’s outlandish composition, it couldn’t be entirely irredeemable. But of course, the important opinion was the Doge’s.

Prospero walked up to Genji and shook him firmly by the hand.

‘I was not mistaken in you. Precisely so: the essence lies neither in dreary existence nor in decay following death, but in the catharsis that transforms one into the other. Precisely so! And so terse, not a single superfluous word! So help me, the Japanese have something to teach us.’

Columbine squinted sideways at Petya. He shrugged – like her, he had clearly failed to find anything exceptional in the aphorism he had just heard.

The new aspirant strolled across the salon and declared in a tone of surprise: ‘I was certain that the interview with the high priest of the suicide club p-printed in the Courier was a stupid hoax. However, the description of the way the room is furnished was exact, and the worthy Doge himself seems to have been drawn from the life. Is such a thing really possible? Did you meet with a c-correspondent, Mr Prospero? But what for?’

There was an awkward silence for, without knowing it, Genji had touched on a sore point. The calamitous article, which had expounded Prospero’s views rather precisely and even directly quoted some of his favourite maxims, had caused a real storm in the club. The Doge had formally interrogated every one of them in an attempt to discover if one of his followers had been too open with outsiders, but he had failed to identify the informant.

‘I didn’t talk to any correspondent!’ Prospero said angrily and gestured round the aspirants. ‘There’s a Judas here, among my own disciples! Either out of vanity, or for a few silver pieces, one of them has held me and our society up to the mockery of the crowd. Genji, to be quite honest, I have special hopes for you. You impressed me with your remarkable analytical abilities. With only a few scattered crumbs of information to go on, you unerringly followed the trail to the “Lovers of Death” and identified me as the leader of the club. So perhaps you will assist me to expose the mangy sheep that has insinuated itself into my flock?’

‘I expect that will not be difficult,’ said Genji, glancing round at the faces of the hushed ‘lovers’. ‘But first I shall have to g-get to know these ladies and gentlemen a little better.’

No one liked the sound of these words at all, they sounded far too menacing.

‘Only hurry,’ Kriton laughed. ‘The acquaintance might prove to be short, since we stand on the edge of a gaping grave.’

Cyrano wrinkled up his monumental nose and declaimed with a sneer:

Set the secret police to work

Make the cunning rogue confess

Send the rascal to the block

To edify and scare the rest.

Even prim, starchy Horatio, the bard of the anatomist’s art, who did not open his mouth very often, was outraged: ‘The last thing we need here is detectives and informers!’

Columbine suddenly felt afraid. This was a genuine revolt. Well, now the troublemakers would get what they deserved! Prospero would unleash the withering force of his wrath against the rebels.

But the Doge did not cast any thunderbolts or wave his arms in the air. His face took on a sad expression and his head sank down on to his chest.

‘I know,’ Prospero said in a quiet voice. ‘I have always known. One of you will betray me.’

And with that he got up and walked out of the door without saying another word.

‘Teacher! As long as I’m here, you have nothing to fear!’ Caliban roared furiously and looked at Kriton, who was standing beside him, with an expression of such intense hatred that the goat-hoofed preacher of amorous passion recoiled in horror.

Columbine’s heart was aching with compassion. She would have gone dashing after Prospero, if only she dared. Then he would know that she at least would never betray him!

But the door slammed shut adamantly. Columbine knew only too well what lay beyond it: a sparsely furnished dining room, then a large study crowded with massive furniture, and after that – the bedroom that she dreamed about so often at night. You could get straight out of the study into the corridor and then into the hallway. That was the inglorious route that Columbine herself had followed twice as she left those sacred halls, crushed and confused . . .

‘Vill zere be no zeance?’ Rosencrantz asked, fluttering his white eyelashes. ‘But ze Toge said today voz a perfect evening for talking vith ze spirits of ze dead. A starry sky, a fat moon. It is a shame to miss zuch a shance!’

‘What do you say, dear?’ the Lioness of Ecstasy asked Ophelia gently, as if she were a little child. ‘After all, we really have been waiting so long for the full moon. What can you feel? Will we be able to establish contact with the World Beyond today?’

Ophelia smiled in confusion and babbled in her thin little voice: ‘Yes, today is a special night, I can feel it. But I can’t do it on my own, someone has to lead me. I need a calm, confident pair of eyes so that I don’t lose my way in the fog. Only Prospero has eyes like that. No, ladies and gentlemen, I simply can’t do it without him.’

‘So we’re going home then?’ asked Guildenstern. ‘That’s stupid. The time’s just been wasted. I’d have been better off studying. The exams are soon.’

Some people were already on their way to the door, but the new member walked over to Ophelia, took her by the hand, looked straight into her face and said quietly: ‘Well now, my d-dear young lady, look into my eyes. That’s right. Good. You can trust me.’

God only knows what Ophelia saw in his eyes, but she suddenly became calm, the wrinkles disappeared from her clear little forehead, and her smile was no longer confused, but radiant.

‘Yes,’ she said with a nod. ‘I trust you. We could try.’

Columbine almost choked on her indignation. A spiritualist seance without Prospero? Unthinkable! Just who did this svelte gentleman think he was? He was an impostor, an upstart, a usurper! And this would be an even worse betrayal of the Doge than careless talk with a newspaper reporter!

However, the others did not appear to share her sense of outrage, in fact they seemed intrigued. Even Caliban, the Doge’s devoted minion, asked Prince Genji in an almost obsequious voice: ‘Are you sure it will work? Will you be able to summon the spirits? And will they name the next Chosen One?’

Genji shrugged.

‘Why, naturally it will work. They’ll show up, as meek as lambs. And we’ll find out soon enough what they have to t-tell us.’

He calmly seated himself on the chairman’s throne and all the others rushed to take their places, with their fingers spread out wide.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Petya, turning to look at the outraged Columbine. ‘Sit down. Without you there’s a link missing.’

And so she sat down. It was hard to go against everyone else all on your own. And of course, she felt curious as well – would it really work?

Genji clapped his hands rapidly three times and it suddenly went very quiet.

‘Look only at me, Mademoiselle,’ he told Ophelia. ‘You must shut down the other f-four senses and leave only hearing. Listen to the silence. And you, gentlemen, do not distract the medium with extraneous sounds.’

Columbine looked at him in absolute amazement. How quickly this man, who had only just appeared in the club, had imposed his authority on all the others! No one had even attempted to dispute his leadership, and yet he hadn’t done anything special, and he had spoken no more than a few words. Then the recent grammar-school girl remembered how in one lesson their history teacher, Ivan Ferdinandovich Segiur (all the girls in seventh class were in love with him), had told them about the role of strong personalities in society.

There were two types of strong personalities: the first was full of energy, highly active, he would out-shout anyone, override and bedazzle them and drag them after him, even against their own will; the second was taciturn and at first glance seemed rather inactive, but he conquered the crowd with an aura of calm, confident power. The strength of leaders of this kind, wise Ivan Ferdinandovich had asserted, with the glint of his pince-nez fascinating the female pupils, derived from a natural psychological defect – they felt no fear of death. On the contrary, everything they did seemed intended to tempt or summon death to them: quickly, come and take me. Grammar-school girl Mironova’s breast had heaved under her white apron and her cheeks had blazed bright red, she found what her teacher said so exciting.

Now, thanks to Segiur, she realised why a person like Prince Genji had wanted to join the ‘Lovers of Death’. He really must be an exceptional personality, truly desperate and capable of acting in extreme ways.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked Ophelia.

She was already in a trance: her eyelashes were drooping, her face was blank, her lips were moving faintly.

‘Yes, I’m ready,’ she replied, still speaking in her normal voice.

‘What was the n-name of the last Chosen One, the one who hanged himself?’ Genji asked quietly, turning to Guildenstern, who was sitting beside him.

‘Avaddon.’

Genji nodded and said to Ophelia: ‘Summon the spirit of Avaddon.’

For about a minute nothing happened. Then Columbine felt the familiar cold breeze that always took her breath away blow over the table. The flames of the candles fluttered and Ophelia threw her head back as if it had been pushed by some invisible force.

‘I’m here,’ she said in a hoarse, muffled voice that sounded very like the voice of a man who had hanged himself. ‘It’s hard to talk. My throat’s crushed.’

‘We won’t torment you for long.’ It was strange, but as he talked to the spirit, Genji stopped stammering completely. ‘Avaddon, where are you?’

‘Between.’

‘Between what and what?’

‘Between something and nothing.’

‘Ask what he’s feeling now,’ the Lioness whispered excitedly.

‘Tell me, Avaddon, what feelings are you experiencing now?’

‘Fear . . . I’m afraid . . . very afraid . . .’

Poor little Ophelia started shaking all over, her teeth even started chattering, and her pink little lips turned purple.

‘Why did you decide to leave this life?’

‘I was sent a Sign.’

Everybody held their breath.

‘What Sign?’

The spirit didn’t answer for a long time. Ophelia opened and closed her mouth without making any sound, her forehead wrinkled up as if she was trying very hard to listen to something, her nostrils distended. Columbine felt afraid now that the medium would start talking meaningless gibberish, as she had during all the latest seances.

‘Howling . . .’ Ophelia exclaimed hoarsely. ‘A terrible, eerie howling . . . A voice calling me . . . It’s a Beast . . . She has sent a Beast for me . . . I can’t bear it! One more line, just write the last line, and then no more, no more, no more. Oh, where am I? Oh, where am I? Oh, where am I?’

After that the words became unintelligible. Ophelia was shaking all over. She suddenly opened her eyes, and there was such inexpressible horror in them that several people cried out.

‘Go back! Go back immediately!’ Genji exclaimed abruptly. ‘Go in peace, Avaddon. And you, Ophelia, come to me. This way, this way . . . Calmly now.’

She gradually came round. She shuddered and started sobbing. The Lioness hugged her, kissed her on the top of her head and murmured something reassuring.

But Columbine sat there, overwhelmed by the blood-chilling revelation. A Sign! The Sign of the Beast! Death had sent a Beast to Avaddon, her Chosen One! ‘The Beast is near!’ ‘The sated Beast!’ It wasn’t a metaphor, not just a figure of speech!

At that moment she glanced round and saw Prospero standing in the doorway that led from the drawing room into the hallway and watching everyone who had taken part in the seance. There was a strange, lost expression frozen on his face. She suddenly felt so sorry for him – no words could have expressed it! In Christ’s twelve disciples, there had only been one Judas, but here every one of them had betrayed and abandoned their teacher.

She jumped to her feet impetuously and walked over to Prospero, but he didn’t even glance at her – he was looking at Ophelia and slowly shaking his head, as if he couldn’t believe what he saw.

The aspirants started to leave, talking among themselves in low voices.

Columbine waited for them all to go. Then she would be left alone with the Doge and she would show him that there were such things as true devotion and love in the world. Today she would not be his submissive puppet, but his genuine lover. Their relationship would be changed once and for all! Never again would he feel betrayed and alone!

Then Prospero spoke those cherished words, but they were not addressed to Columbine.

He beckoned to Ophelia with one finger and said in a quiet voice: ‘Stay. I’m worried about you.’

Then he took her by the hand and led her after him into the depths of the house.

She trotted along behind submissively – small, pale and exhausted after associating with the spirits. But her little face was aglow with joyful surprise. Well, she might be half-witted, but she was still a woman! Unable to bear the sight of that idiotic smile, Columbine stamped her foot, dashed headlong out of the house, and then strode backwards and forwards in front of the porch, not really sure what to do or where to go.

Just then Genji came out, glanced thoughtfully at the distressed young lady and bowed.

‘The hour is late. Will you allow m-me to see you home, Mademoiselle Columbine?’

‘I’m not afraid of wandering through the night alone,’ she answered in a faltering voice and then couldn’t go on as the sobs rose in her throat.

‘Nonetheless, I will escort you,’ Genji said resolutely.

He took her by the arm and led her away from that cursed house. She didn’t have the strength to argue or refuse.

‘Strange,’ Genji said pensively, seeming not to notice the state his companion was in. ‘I always used to think that spiritualism was a f-fraud or, at best, self-deception. But Made-moiselle Ophelia does not seem like a liar or a hysterical girl. She’s an interesting specimen. And what she t-told us is also extremely interesting.’

‘Really?’ Columbine asked, squinting sideways at the Japanese prince and sniffing inelegantly.

A melancholy thought came to her: Even this one finds Ophelia more interesting than me.

She was found by a boatman

She was found by a boatman. The hem of her dress had caught on one of the piers of the Ustinsky Bridge, where the Yauza joins the River Moscow. She was swaying there, in the murky green water, her loose hair rippling like waterweed in the current. It was Genji who told me, he knows everything and he has connections everywhere. He even has informers in the police.

First she disappeared, and Prospero didn’t gather us together for two days, because the seances were impossible without her in any case.

During those days, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I went to the general shop once and bought half a pound of tea and two baumkuchen pastries for four kopecks each. I nibbled on one, but didn’t even touch the other. I went out to have lunch at the small local restaurant, read the entire menu and only ordered Seltzer water. The rest of the time I simply sat on the bed and looked at the wall. I wasn’t there. I didn’t feel hungry at all. Or sleepy.

It was as if the doll had been put back in her dusty box, and she just lay there, staring at the ceiling with her glass eyes. There was no reason to go anywhere. I tried writing a poem, but I couldn’t. Apparently I can’t manage any longer without our meetings, without Prospero. I can’t manage at all.

Pierrot came and talked about some nonsense or other, I hardly even listened. He took my hand and squeezed it and kissed it for a long time. It tickled, and then I got fed up of it, and I pulled my hand away.

Yesterday the Lioness of Ecstasy unexpectedly came to call and stayed for a long time. I was flattered by this visit. She’s talkative, with broad, sweeping gestures, and she smokes papirosas all the time. She’s amusing to be with, only she seems unhappy somehow, although she claims that she lives a full life. She thinks of herself as a great connoisseur of men. She said that Prospero was probably once badly hurt or humiliated by a woman and so he’s afraid of them, he doesn’t let them get close to him and prefers to torment them. Then she looked at me expectantly, waiting to see if I would offer any revelations. But I didn’t. Then the Lioness started making confessions of her own. She has two lovers, both well-known men (she said it with the meaning of ‘too well-known’) – the editor of a newspaper and a certain Great Poet. They adore her immeasurably, but she toys with them as if they were pet dogs. ‘The secret of handling men is simple,’ the Lioness lectured me. ‘If you don’t know this secret, they become dangerous and unpredictable. But they’re basically primitive and easy to manage. No matter how old he might be or what high position he might hold, deep in his heart every one of them is a boy, an adolescent. You have to treat a man like a one-year-old bulldog – the foolish creature’s teeth have already grown, so it’s best not to tease him, but you must not be afraid of him. Flatter them a little, intrigue them a little, scratch them behind the ear every now and then, do not torment them too long, otherwise their attention will be caught by another bone that is more accessible. Deal with them like this, my child, and you will see that a man is the very dearest of creatures: undemanding, useful and very, very grateful.’

Lorelei lectured me in this way for a long time, but I sensed this was not what she had come for. And then, evidently having taken a decision, she said something that set me quivering with excitement.

Here are her precise words: ‘I have to share this with someone,’ the Lioness murmured, interrupting her own peroration in mid-word. ‘With one of us, and it has to be a woman. But not with Ophelia! And anyway, no one knows where she’s got to. That only leaves you, dear Columbine . . . Of course, I ought to keep quiet about it, but I’m absolutely bursting. Here I’ve been telling you all sorts of nonsense about my lovers. They’re just baubles, pitiful surrogates who help to fill at least a part of the hole in my soul. I don’t need them any longer.’ She lowered her voice and clutched the mother-of-pearl watch hanging round her neck in a plump hand spangled with rings. ‘I think I have been chosen,’ she told me in a terrible whisper. ‘And without any seances. The Tsarevich Death has sent me a sign. “But in the sacred darkness his eye will not descry the lone black rose”, that’s what I wrote. But he did notice it and he has made it clear to me in no uncertain terms. The Sign has already been given twice! There can hardly be any more doubt!’

Of course, I started showering her with questions, but she suddenly fell silent and her plump face contorted in fright.

‘Oh Lord, what if he’s offended with me because I gossip about it? What if there won’t be a third Sign now?’

And she ran out, all flustered, leaving me to be devoured by envy – which has been my entire lot just recently.

How I had envied Ophelia! How I had hated her. How I had wanted to be in her place!

But it had turned out that her place was the murky water under the Ustinsky Bridge, where rubbish floats on the surface and fat leeches wriggle in the silt.

Genji rang the doorbell at four minutes to five – I was lying on the bed and watching the face of the clock for want of anything better to do.

‘She’s b-been found,’ he said when I opened the door.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Who?’ he repeated in surprise. ‘Ophelia!’

One of his acquaintances in the police had told him about a drowned woman found in the Yauza whose description matched the missing girl. Genji had already been to the morgue, but he hadn’t been able to provide a positive identification; after all, he had only seen her in a dark room, and her face had changed.

‘I went to Prospero’s house, but he wasn’t at home,’ said Genji. ‘You’re the only aspirant whose address I know, and that’s only b-because I happened to walk you home once. Let’s go, Columbine . . .’

And so we went . . .

Yes, it was Ophelia, without the slightest doubt. The attendant jerked back the dirty grey sheet with its sickening blotches and I saw the skinny little body stretched out on a narrow zinc-covered table, the sharp features of the little face, the familiar half-smile frozen on her bloodless lips. Ophelia was lying there completely naked: I could see her thin collarbones and ribs and her sharp hips through her bluish skin; her hands were clenched into tiny little fists. For a moment I thought the body looked like a plucked chicken.

If the Eternal Bridegroom chooses me, will I lie there like that too – naked, with glassy eyes, and will the drunk attendant hang an oilcloth number on my foot?

I had a fit of genuine hysterics.

‘She didn’t want to die! She shouldn’t have died!’ I shouted, sobbing on Genji’s chest in an absolutely pitiful fashion. ‘She wasn’t even a real aspirant! He couldn’t have chosen her!’

‘Who is he?’

‘Death!’

‘Then why say “he”, instead of “she”?’

I didn’t explain to the slow-witted dunce about der Tod: instead I surprised even myself by showering him with reproaches.

‘Why did you bring me to this dreadful place? You’re lying when you say you couldn’t identify her! She hasn’t changed all that much! You deliberately wanted to make me suffer!’

And then he said quietly, but very clearly: ‘You’re right. I wanted you t-to see her like this.’

‘But . . . but why?’ I asked, choking on my indignation.

‘To wake you up. To make you realise that this insanity has to be stopped,’ said Genji, nodding towards the blue body of the drowned woman. ‘No m-more deaths. That’s why I joined your society.’

‘So you don’t want to be Death’s Bridegroom, then?’ I asked stupidly.

‘I have already played that p-part once, many years ago,’ he replied with a sombre air. ‘I thought I was marrying a beautiful young woman, but instead I married death. Once is enough.’

I didn’t understand this allegory. In fact, I couldn’t understand anything at all.

‘But you fired the revolver!’ I exclaimed, remembering. ‘And twice! Prospero told us. Or was that some kind of trick?’

He shrugged one shoulder, seeming slightly embarrassed.

‘Something of the kind. You see, Mademoiselle Columbine, in some ways, I’m quite a rare phenomenon: I always win at any game of chance. I don’t know how to explain this anomaly, but I came to terms with it a long time ago and sometimes make use of it for practical purposes, as I did during my meeting with Mr Prospero. Even if there had been b-bullets in four out of the five chambers, I would quite certainly have got the empty one. But one chance of death against four of life is simply a joke.’

I didn’t know how to take this bizarre explanation. Was it plain ordinary bragging or did he really have some special relationship with fate?

Genji said: ‘Do not forget what you have seen here. And for God’s sake, don’t do anything stupid, no matter what miraculous signs may be manifested to you. I shall destroy this loathsome temple of corpse worship. Oh yes, I haven’t told you yet – a messenger brought me a note from Prospero. You’re certain to get one t-today as well. The meetings are to recommence. We are expected tomorrow at nine, as usual.’

I immediately forgot about Genji and his plans for destruction, and even about the cold mortuary, with its stench of decay.

Tomorrow! Tomorrow evening I shall see him again!

I shall awake and start to live again.

She thought him magically handsome

Today I shall present to you the very finest of my inventions!’ the Doge declared, as he swept into the dimly lit drawing room.

Columbine thought him magically handsome in his crimson velvet blouse with a cambric frill, a beret tilted on one side of his head and short suede boots. A genuine Mephistopheles! The resemblance was emphasised by the dagger glittering with precious stones hanging at his side.

A brief gust of air followed him in through the door and the candles on the table fluttered and went out, leaving only the uncertain light of the brazier.

The Doge drew his dagger from its sheath, touched each candle with it in turn and – wonder of wonders – they lit up again, one after another.

Then Prospero glanced round at the assembled company, and everyone’s eyes lit up just as the candles had done a moment earlier. Columbine felt the usual effect of that hypnotic glance. She was suddenly feverish and found it hard to breathe; she felt that she was finally waking up at last, emerging from a hibernation that had lasted for three whole days while there had not been any evening meetings.

Columbine and also, she assumed, all the others, were swept away by the most magical and wonderful feeling that anyone can experience – the anticipation of a miracle.

The sorcerer halted by the table, and it was only then that most of those present noticed that all the chairs except one, the chairman’s, had disappeared, and there was something covered with a patterned shawl lying in the middle of the table: something large, high and round, like a wedding cake.

‘I used to be an engineer and, so they say, quite a good one,’ said the Doge, smiling slyly into his grey moustache. ‘But I assure you, none of my inventions can compare with the brilliant simplicity of this one. Ophelia has been united with the Eternal Bridegroom. We are glad for her, but now who will help us to maintain contact with the World Beyond? I have racked my brains over this problem and found an answer. What informs a man most clearly and unambiguously of the attitude that fate takes toward him?’

He waited a moment for an answer, but none of the eleven seekers spoke.

‘Come now!’ Prospero encouraged them. ‘It was one of you who gave me the idea of the solution – Prince Genji.’

Everybody looked at Genji. He was frowning at the Doge, as if suspecting some cunning trick.

‘Blind chance,’ Prospero declared triumphantly. ‘Nothing has keener sight than blind chance! It is the will of the Supreme Judge. A spiritualist seance is an unnecessary affectation, an entertainment for bored, hysterical ladies. But here everything will be simple and clear, without words.’

And, so saying, he jerked the shawl off the table. Something brightly coloured and round glinted with a hundred brilliant points of light. A roulette wheel! An ordinary roulette wheel, the kind to be seen in any casino.

However, when the seekers crowded round the table and examined the wheel more closely, it transpired that this wheel of fortune had one unusual feature: where the double zero ought to have been, there was a white skull and crossbones.

‘This invention is called the “Wheel of Death”. Now everyone will be able to ascertain his own relationship with the Eternal Bride,’ said Prospero. ‘And here is your new medium.’ He opened his hand, and there, glittering on his palm, was a small golden ball. ‘This whimsical piece of metal, which at first glance would not appear to be subject to anybody’s will, will become the messenger of love.’

‘But surely messages can be sent by other means too?’ the Lioness of Ecstasy asked in anxious alarm. ‘Or can it now only be through the roulette wheel?’

She’s worried about her Signs, Columbine guessed. After all, the Lioness and the Tsarevich have established their own secret relationship. I wonder what it is. What kind of Signs does he send her?

‘I am not Death’s personal interpreter,’ the Doge said in a stern, sad voice. ‘I do not have absolute mastery of her language. How would I know what means she might choose to inform her Chosen Ones that their feelings are reciprocated? But this means of communicating with fate appears irrefutable to me. It is similar to the means used by the ancients to elicit from the oracle the will of Morta, the Goddess of Death.’

The Lioness of Ecstasy seemed completely satisfied with this answer, and she walked away from the table with an air of superiority.

‘Every one of you will have an equal chance,’ Prospero continued. ‘Anyone who feels ready, whose spirit is sufficiently strong, may try his or her luck today. The lucky player who throws the ball so that it lands on the death’s head is the Chosen One.’

Cyrano asked: ‘What if everyone tries their luck and no one wins? Do we carry on spinning the wheel all night long?’

‘Indeed, the probability of success is not very high.’ Prospero agreed. ‘One chance out of thirty-eight. If no one is lucky, then Death has not yet made her choice and the game will be continued the next time. Agreed?’

The first to respond was Caliban.

‘An excellent idea, Teacher! At least everything will be fair, with no favourites. That Ophelia of yours couldn’t stand me. I’d have been waiting till the end of the century with her seances. And by the way, some people who arrived after me have already scooped the prize. But now everything will be fair. Fortune can’t be duped! Only you ought to let us keep on trying our luck until we get a result.’

‘It will be as I have said,’ the Doge interrupted him sternly. ‘Death is not a bride who can be dragged to the altar by force.’

‘But surely only someone who is morally prepared can throw the ball? Participation in the game is not compulsory?’ Kriton asked in a quiet voice. When the Doge nodded in agreement, he declared in relief: ‘I’d really had quite enough of all that spiritualist wailing. The roulette is quicker, and there are no doubts.’

‘I think the idea of this game of chance is vulgar,’ Gdlevsky said with a shrug. ‘Death is not a croupier in a white shirt-front. Her Signs must be more poetic and exalted. But we can spin the little ball round and round to titillate our nerves. Why not?’

Lorelei exclaimed passionately: ‘You are right, my radiant boy. This device does belittle the majesty of Death. But there is one thing you have not taken into account. Death is no snob, and he will talk to anyone who is in love with him in a language that she can understand. Let them spin their wheel, what does that matter to you and me?’

Columbine noticed that Caliban, who envied both of the poetical luminaries and was jealous of their relationship with the Doge, cringed at these words.

The anatomist Horatio cleared his throat, adjusted his pince-nez and enquired in a businesslike voice: ‘Very well, let us assume that one of us has landed on the skull. Then what? What action, so to speak, is taken after that? Does the lucky winner immediately go dashing off to hang himself or drown himself ? Surely you agree that performing this act requires a certain degree of preparation? But if it is postponed until the next morning, then weakness may stir in a person’s soul. Would it not be an insult to Death and all of us if her Chosen One were to . . . mmm . . . leave her standing at the altar? Pardon me for being so direct, but I am not entirely sure of all our members.’

‘Are you . . . Are you alluding to me?’ Petya cried out in a trembling voice. ‘How dare you! Just because I have been in the club for a long time and am still alive, it doesn’t mean that I am avoiding it or playing the coward. I have been waiting for a message from the spirits! And I’m willing to spin the roulette wheel first!’

Petya’s emotional outburst took Columbine by surprise – she had imagined that the anatomist’s thrust was directed against her. But if the cap fits . . . She had just that moment imagined that she would have to die today, and the thought had been so unbearable that she had started trembling in fear.

Prospero raised his hand to call for silence.

‘Do not be concerned, I have taken care of everything.’ He pointed to the door. ‘Through there, in the study, there is a glass of malmsey. And dissolved in the wine is cyanide, the most noble of poisons. The Chosen One will drain the wedding cup, then walk along the street to the boulevard, sit on a bench, and a quarter of an hour later he or she will fall into a quiet sleep. It is a good way to depart. With no pain and no regrets.’

‘That’s a different matter,’ said Horatio, chewing on his lips. ‘In that case I’m in favour.’

The twins exchanged glances and Guildenstern spoke for both of them: ‘Yes, we like this method better than spiritualism. Mathematical Wahrscheinlichkeit¹ is more serious than the voices of the spirits.’

Someone touched Columbine’s elbow. Turning round, she saw Genji.

‘How do you like Prospero’s invention?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘You’re the only one who hasn’t s-said anything.’

‘I don’t know. I feel like all the others.’

It was strange – never before had she felt so alive as during these moments that might be the last before her death.

‘Prospero is a genuine magician,’ Columbine whispered excitedly. ‘Who else could fill our souls with this tremulous, all-embracing rapture of existence? “All that threatens ruin is fraught with delight for the mortal heart.” Oh, how true that is! “Perhaps the pledge of immortality”!’