Fandorin in English 1-10

‘You mean to say that if your ball lands on the skull, you will d-dutifully drink that lousy muck?’

Columbine imagined the treacherous wine flowing in a rivulet of fire down her throat and into her body, and she shuddered. And the most terrible thing would be to get through those final fifteen minutes, with your heart still beating and your mind still wakeful, but with no way back, because you are already a living corpse. Who would find the dead body on the bench, and when? And what if it was sitting there slumped over with its eyes goggling and saliva dribbling from its open mouth?

She imagined it so vividly that it set her lips trembling and her eyelashes fluttering.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Genji whispered, squeezing her elbow to reassure her. ‘You won’t land on the skull.’

‘Why are you so sure?’ she asked, offended. ‘Do you think that Death could not choose me? That I am unworthy to be her lover?’

He sighed.

‘Ah indeed, our Russian soil is not yet ready for Mr Prospero’s teachings, that much is clear from basic grammar. What was that you just said? “Her lover”. That smacks of perversion.’

Columbine realised that he was trying to cheer her up and she attempted to smile, but it came out forced.

Genji repeated what he had said, speaking in a perfectly serious voice.

‘Don’t be afraid. You won’t have to drink poison, because I am certain to land on the p-precious skull.’

‘But you’re afraid yourself!’ she guessed, and her own fear immediately receded to make way for gloating. ‘So much for your desperate personality – you’re afraid too! You’re only playing the part of a superman, but actually you’re afraid of the end, just like everyone else.’

Genji shrugged.

‘I t-told you about my special relationship with Fortune.’

And he walked away.

Meanwhile everything was ready for the ritual.

The Doge raised one hand in the air, calling the aspirants to silence. He was holding the small ball between his fore-finger and thumb and it sparkled and flashed like a bright little golden star.

‘And so, ladies and gentlemen. Who feels ready? Who is the first?’

Genji immediately threw up his hand, but his rivals’ response was more energetic.

Caliban and Rosencrantz, Columbine’s timid admirer, exclaimed in chorus: ‘Me! Me!’

The bookkeeper glared at his rival as if he wanted to tear him to pieces. But Rosencrantz gave Columbine a haughty smile and was rewarded with a gentle smile of approval.

Neither they nor Prospero had noticed Genji’s reserved gesture.

‘Boy!’ Caliban fumed. ‘How dare you? I’m first! I’m older, and I’ve been a member of the club for longer!’

But the quiet little German lowered his head like a bull and was obviously not prepared to give way.

Then Caliban appealed to the Doge.

‘What is all this, Teacher? A Russian can’t breathe in his own country any longer! Whichever way you spit, there’s nothing but Germans and Polacks and Yids and Caucasians! And they not only prevent us from living, they even try to jump the queue to the next world! You decide for us!’

Prospero said sternly: ‘You should be ashamed, Caliban. Surely you do not think that the Eternal Beloved attaches any importance to nonsensical trifles such as nationality or creed? As punishment for your rudeness and impatience you shall be second, after Rosencrantz.’

The former ship’s bookkeeper stamped his foot angrily, but he didn’t dare to argue.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Genji put in, ‘but I raised my hand even before these gentlemen put in their bids.’

‘This is not an auction at which you can signal with gestures,’ the Doge snapped. ‘You should have stated your intention out loud. You will be third. If, that is, your turn comes.’

That was the end of the discussion. Columbine noticed that Genji was very annoyed and even slightly alarmed. She recalled the threat he had made the day before to disband the club of ‘Lovers of Death’ and wondered how he could do it. After all, the aspirants didn’t meet here under compulsion.

Rosencrantz took the ball from the Doge, looked at it closely and suddenly crossed himself. Columbine was so startled by this unexpected gesture that she gasped in compassion. The Baltic German span the roulette wheel and then played a trick that was entirely unlike him: looking straight at his young female sympathiser, he gave the ball a quick kiss before tossing it resolutely on to the rim of the wheel.

While it was spinning – and it went on for an eternity – Columbine moved her lips in a prayer to Death, Fate and God (she did not know whose) for the boy’s throw not to land in the fatal pocket.

‘Twenty-eight,’ Prospero announced dispassionately and everyone sighed in chorus.

Pale-faced Rosencrantz declared with dignity: ‘Schade.’²

He walked away from the wheel. He didn’t look at Columbine any more, evidently feeing that he had already made enough of an impression. And in all honesty, he had. She thought that desperate kiss had made Rosencrantz look terribly sweet. But alas, Columbine’s heart belonged to another.

‘Come on, give me that,’ Caliban said impatiently, grabbing the ball. ‘I have a feeling I’m going to be lucky.’

He spat three times over his left shoulder, span the roulette wheel with all his strength and tossed the little ball so that it went skipping across the pockets and almost flew over the edge.

Everybody froze as they watched the spinning wheel gradually slow down. When its impetus was spent, the ball landed on the skull! A howl of triumph erupted from the bookkeeper’s chest, but the next moment the little golden sphere tumbled across the dividing line as if attracted by some strange force, and settled in the next pocket.

Someone giggled hysterically – Columbine thought it was Petya. Caliban stood there as if he had been struck by lightning.

Then he croaked, ‘I’m not forgiven! I’m rejected!’ And he dashed towards the door, sobbing desolately.

Prospero sighed and said: ‘As you can see, Death informs us of her will unambiguously. Well now, would you care to try your luck?’

The question was addressed to Genji, who nodded politely and performed the necessary procedure quickly and efficiently, with no affectation: he span the roulette wheel gently, casually dropped in the ball and then didn’t even watch it, but looked at the Doge.

‘The skull!’ squealed the Lioness.

‘Ha! That’s quite a trick!’ Gdlevsky declared in a ringing voice.

Then everyone started shouting and talking at once and Columbine involuntarily groaned: ‘No!’

She didn’t understand why herself.

No, perhaps she did.

This man whom she had only known for such a short time radiated an aura of calm, confident strength. When she was with him the world somehow felt bright and clear, it was if she were transformed from Columbine, who had strayed into the dark wings of the stage, back into the old Masha Mironova. But there was clearly no way back – Genji’s fatal throw was the proof of that.

‘Please accept my congratulations,’ Prospero said solemnly. ‘You are a lucky man and we all envy you. Goodbye until tomorrow, my friends. Let us go, Genji.’

The Doge turned away and walked slowly through into the next room, leaving the doors open.

Before he followed him, Genji turned towards Columbine and smiled – as if he were trying to comfort her.

But he failed.

She ran out into the street, choking on her sobs.

III. From the ‘Agents’ Reports’ File

To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov

(Private and confidential)

Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,

An entirely new side has been revealed to the story of the ‘Lovers of Death’ and the part played by the Doge in all of these events.

I am writing this letter at night, with recent impressions still fresh in my mind. I have just returned from the Doge’s apartment, where I was witness to truly astounding events. Oh, how easy it is to be mistaken about people!

I beg your pardon for a certain degree of incoherence – I am still very excited. Let me try to set everything out in the correct order.

Today the society resumed its regular meetings, which had been interrupted by the disappearance of the medium. I must confess that I had expected the loss of our Vestal Virgin to throw the Doge into disarray and deprive him of his most dangerous weapon, but he has proved extremely enterprising and inventive. The substitute that he has found for spiritualism is brilliantly simple: a roulette wheel on which one of the divisions is marked with a skull and crossbones. If anyone lands on this grim symbol of death, he has to drink poison prepared by the Doge in person.

I felt encouraged when I heard all this, since I decided that the man whom I regarded as the devil incarnate had finally abandoned his habit of caution and now it would be possible to catch him red-handed.

I was lucky. Today, on the very first evening of this game, which is certainly the most hazardous known to mortal man, there was a winner – the very same Stammerer concerning whom I have already had the honour of reporting to you, and whom you, for some reason, found so very interesting. He is a most unusual individual, I have seen and heard enough to be quite sure of that, but how could you know him? A mystery.

However, I must not deviate from my subject.

When all the other members had left, I hid in the hallway and then went back into the drawing room, where the candles and the brazierhad already been extinguished. It was very helpful that for certain reasons of principle the Doge does not believe in having servants.

My plan was very simple. I was counting on obtaining direct proof of the Doge’s guilt. To do that, it was sufficient to slip through the dining room, open the door into the study slightly (all the doors in the house are upholstered with soft leather, and so they do not close tightly) and wait for the master of the house to offer the Stammerer the cup of poisoned wine with his own hands. After painful deliberations, I had come to the conclusion that the Stammerer would have to be sacrificed for the sake of the cause – there was nothing that could be done about that. In the final analysis, I reasoned, the life of one man does not outweigh the chance to avert a threat to dozens, or perhaps even hundreds, of immature souls.

I was going to wait for the Stammerer to drink the poison and go out to die on the boulevard (that was the arrangement reached earlier) and then call the constable who always stands on Trubnaya Square. The death by poisoning would be recorded by a representative of authority, and if the Stammerer had not lost consciousness by the time the policeman appeared, and if he had even a shred of conscience, he would still be able to testify against the Doge, and his testimony would be incorporated in the report. But even without this testimony, I thought, the very fact of the death and my evidence would still be enough. The constable and I would immediately set out for the Doge’s apartment and detain the criminal at the scene of his crime. He would be unlikely to have already washed the glass, and there would still be traces of cyanide on it. And in addition there would be a live witness – me. And also the roulette wheel with the skull.

You must admit that it was rather a good plan. At the very least, the Doge’s part in everything would have been revealed in a most unattractive light: he had organised a deadly dangerous game at his own home, but he himself did not take part; he had prepared the poison and served it to the victim himself. And there would have been the result of all these actions – a body that was still warm. This is quite obviously a serious criminal offence. At the same time, I had reason to hope that I would be able to persuade two, if not three, of the least convinced ‘lovers’ to give evidence for the prosecution if the case went as far as court proceedings.

But now let me tell you what actually happened.

I managed to open the door slightly without making a sound, and since it was quite dark in the drawing room I could not only hear, but also see what was happening in the study without any risk of being discovered.

The Master was sitting in his chair at the desk with a triumphant, almost majestic air. Glinting on the polished surface of the desk was a crystal goblet, containing a liquid the colour of pomegranate juice.

The Stammerer was standing by the desk, and so the scene was rather reminiscent of the artist Ge’s picture Peter the Great Questioning the Tsarevich Alexei. How often I have imagined myself as the captive Tsarevich: I stand in front of the formidable Peter, wholly and completely in his power, and my heart is wrung by a sweet feeling in which the awareness that I am absolutely defenceless, the fear of punishment and the hope of paternal mercy are all mingled together. But then, unlike the Tsarevich, the Stammerer was gazing straight at the seated man without the slightest sign of fear. I could not help being amazed at such presence of mind in a man who was destined to depart from this life in a matter of only a few minutes.

Neither of them spoke, and the pause seemed to go on forever. The Stammerer was looking hard straight into the Doge’s eyes, and the Doge started to seem a little bewildered.

‘I really do feel quite sorry,’ he said, sounding slightly embarrassed, which in ordinary circumstances is not typical of him at all, ‘that this lot has fallen to you.’

‘Why so?’ the Stammerer asked in a steady voice. ‘After all, this is the greatest good fortune, is it not?’

Seeming even more embarrassed, the Doge hastily agreed: ‘Yes, yes, of course. I am certain that all the other seekers – or almost all of them – would be glad to be in your place . . . All I meant to say was that I regret parting with you so soon. You intrigue me, and we still haven’t had a chance for a heart-to-heart talk.’

‘Well, then,’ the Stammerer said, in the same even voice. ‘Let’s have a heart-to-heart talk now. I’m not in any hurry. Are you?’

I had the impression that the Doge was glad to hear these words. ‘Excellent, let us talk,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t really understand why a mature and apparently self-sufficient individual like you was so eager to become one of my disciples. In fact, the more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. By character you are an individualist, and not at all like the seeker who recently hanged himself. If you have serious reasons to wish to die, you could quite easily have managed without all these ceremonies.’

‘But the ceremonies you invent are so amusing. And I, sir, am a very curious man.’

‘Ah, yes,’ the Doge mused, looking up at the other man. ‘You certainly are a curious man.’

‘Oh, no more so than yourself, Mr Blagovolsky,’ the Stammerer said.

Later it will become clear to you why I now consider it possible to reveal to you the Doge’s real name (by the way, in the club he goes by the name of ‘Prospero’). But then, I should also say that I had not known his name previously and heard it spoken for the first time by the Stammerer.

The Doge shrugged. ‘Well, so you have made enquiries about me and found out my real name. Why did you need to do that?’

‘I had to find out as much about you as possible. And I managed to do it. Moscow is my city. I have many acquaintances here, some of them in the most surprising places.’

‘Then what have your acquaintances who inhabit the most surprising places discovered about me?’ the Doge enquired ironically, but I could see that he was uneasy.

‘A lot. For instance, that while you were serving a seventeen-year sentence in the Schliesselburg Fortress, you tried to end your own life on three occasions. The first time, in 1879, you went on hunger strike in protest against the conditions imposed on your comrades, who had been deprived of the right to take exercise outside their cells by the prison authorities. There were three of you on the strike. On the twenty-first day you, and only you, agreed to take food. The other two remained intransigent and died.’

The Doge cringed against the back of his armchair, but the Stammerer continued implacably: ‘The second time was even worse. In April 1881 you attempted to commit self-immolation after the prison commandant sentenced you to an exemplary flogging for replying disrespectfully to an inspector. Somehow you managed to obtain matches, pour the kerosene out of a lamp and impregnate your prison robe with it, but you couldn’t bring yourself to ignite the blaze. After you were subjected to corporal punishment, you wove a noose out of threads, hung it from one of the bars on the window and were on the point of hanging yourself, but once again at the last moment you changed your mind and did not wish to die. When you were already floundering in the noose, you grabbed hold of the window ledge and started calling loudly for help. The jailers took you down and sent you to the punishment cell . . . From that time until you were released on the occasion of the coronation of His Majesty the Emperor, you caused no more trouble and made no more attempts at suicide. Your relations with the Death whom you adore seem rather strange, Sergei Irinarkhovich.’

I assume, Vissarion Vissarionovich, that it will not be difficult for you to check the correctness of the information adduced by the Stammerer through your own professional connections, but I do not have the slightest doubt concerning its authenticity – it was enough for me to see the Doge’s response. He covered his face with his hands, sobbed several times and generally looked pitiful in the extreme. If the aspirants had been shown their godlike Teacher at that moment, it would have caused a real furore. I remember thinking: It is beyond all understanding how Death could choose a sniveller like this as her instrument! Surely a more worthy helper could have been found? I even felt sorry for her, the poor noseless creature.

There was another lengthy pause. The Doge carried on sobbing and blowing his nose, and the Stammerer waited for him to pull himself together. Eventually Blagovolsky (how strange it feels for me to call him that) said: ‘Are you from the police? Yes, of course, how else could you have found out . . . But then, no, you can’t be from the police – you wouldn’t have toyed with Death so lightly when you spun the drum of the Bulldog. It’s my revolver, after all, and the bullets in it were real, I ought to know. Who are you? By the way, would you like to sit down?’ He indicated a heavy oak armchair facing the desk.

The Stammerer shook his head, laughed and said: ‘Well, let’s just say that I represent the secret club of “Lovers of Life”. Consider that I have been sent to inspect your establishment – to see if you are breaking any of the rules, not playing fair. I am resolutely opposed to suicide, with the exception of certain special cases when to leave this life is not really suicide at all. At the same time, unlike the fathers of the Christian church, I believe that every man is free to do as he wishes with his own life, and if he has decided to destroy himself, then that is his right. But only if, Sergei Irinarkhovich, the fatal decision was really taken independently, with no urging or compulsion. It is quite a different matter when someone else soaps the noose for an individual who is highly impressionable or easily influenced, especially someone very young, or helpfully hands them the revolver, or sets out the cup of poison.’

‘Oh, how mistaken you are about me!’ the Doge cried out in extreme agitation, interrupting the Stammerer (who, as it happens, had not stammered even once in the course of the above speech). ‘I am a weak, sinful man! Yes I am terribly afraid of Death, she petrifies me! More than that, I hate her! She is my very worst enemy. I am scorched and poisoned forever by the foul stench that she has breathed into my face three times. No doubt you were only speaking figuratively about the “Lovers of Life”, but if such an organisation really did exist, I would be its most fanatical member!’

The Stammerer shook his head incredulously. ‘Really? Then how am I to explain your activities?’

‘By this very thing, my dear sir! Explain them by this very thing! I have entered into single combat with the cruel, ravenous monster that has been abducting the purest and most precious of society’s children. In recent times how many people, mostly young and unspoiled, have been taking their own lives! This is a terrible degenerative disease of the soul, a gift to us from a jaded and faithless Europe. I do not destroy my disciples, as you imagined on the basis of external appearances. I do not kill tender young souls, I try to save them!’ He jerked his chin nervously. ‘Listen, would you not like to sit down? I have arthritis, it’s devilish uncomfortable for me to hold my head back all the time.’

‘You chose a strange way of saving delicate young souls,’ said the Stammerer, sitting down in the armchair.

‘Certainly it is strange! But effective, very effective. My club, the “Lovers of Death” is a kind of clinic for the mentally ill, and I am like the psychiatrist. After all, I do not accept as members romantically inclined youths who have succumbed to fashionable influences and simply wish to appear interesting to their friends, but only those who are genuinely obsessed with the idea of death, who have already set the revolver to their temple. I catch them at this dangerous moment, engage their morbid attention and try to lead them away from taking the fatal step. First of all, I free the potential suicide from his isolation and the feeling of his own infinite loneliness. A desperate man sees that there are many others like him and there are people whose suffering is possibly even worse than his own. This is extraordinarily important! That is the way we are all made – in order to survive we need to know that there is someone in the world who is less fortunate than ourselves. The second major component of my “treatment” is the resurrection of curiosity. The near-suicide has to stop being concerned only with himself and start looking in amazement at the world around him. To this end all means are good, even those that use quackery. I shamelessly dupe the seekers with all sorts of cunning tricks and impressive trumpery.’

The Doge pointed casually to his Spanish beret and medieval dagger.

The Stammerer nodded: ‘Oh yes, like lighting candles with a knife-blade that has been smeared with phosphorous. That’s an old trick.’

‘Or holding a burning coal on a hand that has been rubbed with a mixture of egg-white, resin and starch, which protects the skin from burning,’ the Doge put in. ‘Anything that impresses them and makes them submit to your will is useful . . . Oh, don’t smile in that shrewd fashion! You think I have given myself away by mentioning submission. Believe me, I am only too well aware of my weaknesses. Of course, apart from the main goal, I also derive a lot of pleasure from this game. I won’t try to pretend that I don’t enjoy having power over people’s souls, I find their adoration and boundless trust intoxicating, but I swear to you that I never use the power I have acquired for evil! I invent all these complicated and basically ludicrous rituals only in order to mesmerise the potential suicide, to distract him, to stimulate interest in the eternal mystery of existence! For my observations suggest that people most often arrive at the idea of self-destruction not out of grief or hopelessness, but out of a lack of any interest in life, out of boredom! But if the true cause of the suicidal impulse lies only in poverty (which also happens quite often), then I try to help the seeker concerned with money – as far as possible in some discreet way that is not humiliating for these morbidly proud individuals.’ At this point the Doge hesitated and spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness. With one finger he caught the cover of a bronze inkwell in the form of a heroic Russian warrior, raised the helmet that had been lying open, and started stroking it nervously. ‘But I am not all-powerful. There are too many neglected, incurable cases. My disciples die one after another, and every one lost costs me years of my life. But still, I can see that some are close to being cured. You must have noticed from the way the seekers behaved today that some of them no longer wish to die at all. I shall not be surprised if some are frightened by the dispassionate roulette wheel and do not come here again, and that will be a genuine victory for me. I would have saved many more of my wards, if only . . .

‘If only what?’ the Stammerer asked, urging him on and getting up out of his chair. I believe he was just as astounded by what he had heard as I was. In any case, he had listened to the Doge very attentively, without interrupting.

But the Doge hesitated, and his face turned whiter and whiter before my very eyes. He seemed to be trying to decide if he could reveal himself completely to the other man.

Finally he made up his mind: ‘If only . . . Oh, do sit down!’ The Stammerer shook his head impatiently and the Doge started looking around. I saw that his face was contorted into a mask of genuine terror. ‘If only I had not failed to take into account . . . that Death really does exist!’

‘That is indeed a most important discovery,’ the Stammerer remarked demurely.

‘Don’t laugh! You understand perfectly well what I mean. And if you don’t, then you’re not as intelligent as you seem. Death exists, not only as the end of physical existence, but as an animated substance, as an evil force that has accepted my challenge and entered into battle with me for the souls of my disciples.’

‘Listen, Blagovolsky, keep all that for the Lioness of Ecstasy,’ the Stammerer said with a frown.

The Doge gave a bitter smile.

‘Oh, I used to be just as much a sceptic as you are. Only very recently.’ He suddenly leaned forward bodily and grabbed hold of the other man’s hand. He looked almost insane, and his voice dropped to a loud whisper. ‘Have you not heard about the Signs? It was I who invented this additional complication, so that the aspirants would not take poor Ophelia’s ululations too seriously. It was a clever idea: a summons from the spirits is not enough, you also have to receive a mystical summons from Death. And they did receive them!’ the Doge shouted out, so loudly that I banged my head against the door in surprise. Thank God the moment was too tense for the two talkers to pay any attention to that dull sound.

The Doge started jabbering deliriously: ‘They all received them, every one! Ophelia only had to name the next Chosen One and he immediately started receiving Signs!’

‘Nonsense,’ the Stammerer retorted. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘Nonsense?’ The Doge laughed darkly and his bloodshot eyes glittered. ‘First there was Raven, a quiet drunk, a photographer by trade. One evening Ophelia named him as the Chosen One, and that night he jumped out of the window. I bought his farewell poem from the policeman, it talks in rather vague terms about “a vision, by means of which the call from beyond was reinforced”. It’s a terrible poem, simply appalling, but that’s not the point. What was that vision? Who can answer that now?’

‘Who knows what he might have thought he saw in his cups?’ the Stammerer objected quite reasonably. ‘No doubt after the spiritualist revelation your photographer celebrated his selection rather energetically.’

‘It’s possible, I won’t deny it!’ the Doge said, with a shake of his head, ‘I didn’t attach any importance to that line myself at first. But then, the letter had a postscript, addressed to me: “For P. No doubts remain! I am happy. Goodbye and thank you!” Thank you, eh? How do you think it felt for me to read that? But just listen to what happened next! A few days later Ophelia said in Raven’s voice: “Now it is the turn of the one for whom Death’s envoy will come swathed in a white cloak. Wait.” I immediately felt reassured – what damned envoy, I thought, where is he going to come from? But that very night, do you hear, that very night’ – the Master dropped his voice from a shout to a hiss again – ‘two of the searchers had a vision: someone in a white cloak came to them and summoned them to unite with Death. One was a student, a very gloomy character, a hypochondriac, who called himself Lycanthrope. The other was quite different – a wonderful, pure young girl – I thought that she would soon abandon this nonsensical obsession with suicide! Tell me, Doubting Thomas, how often does it happen that two entirely different people have the same dream at the same time?’

‘It can happen. If the mention of an envoy in a white cloak produces a strong impression on both of them . . .’

‘Too strong an impression!’ the Doge exclaimed, waving his arms in the air. ‘Lycanthrope and Moretta told us about their “good fortune” at the next meeting. I tried to dissuade them. They pretended to agree with me and said they were in no hurry to commit suicide, but they colluded with each other. They left this life together, but not out of love for each other – out of love for Death . . . Before he died, Avaddon heard the voice of some Beast. And what happened to Ophelia is a complete mystery. I was with her only shortly before her terrible end. Believe me, doing away with herself was the last thing she was thinking of. Quite the opposite . . .’

He cleared his throat in embarrassment. I have already told you that this old satyr is voluptuous and eagerly exploits the blind adoration of the female seekers – they are all in love with him. They say that the late Moretta was also acquainted with his bedroom. However, that has nothing to do with the matter at hand.

‘And our Lioness of Ecstasy!’ he continued. ‘Today this lady whispered to me that “Tsarevich Death” was courting her more gallantly than any of her numerous admirers, and sending her miraculous gifts. And this is a famous poetess, who has seen a great deal of the world, not some silly little girl who is ga-ga over decadence.’

‘Mass insanity?’ the Stammerer suggested with a frown. ‘Some kind of infectious disease? Such cases are known to psychiatric science. In that case your initiative with the club is harmful – it does not dissipate the illusion, it merely concentrates it.’

‘My God, what has illusion got to do with it? This is something far more terrible!’

The Doge jumped to his feet, but so clumsily that he knocked over the goblet standing on the desk with his broad sleeve – it fell on to the floor and shattered into pieces. This minor incident sent the conversation in a new direction.

Bending down and taking out his handkerchief, the Stammerer complained: ‘Your cyanide has splashed my gaiters.’ (I don’t recall if I told you that he is a serious dandy and dresses according to London fashion.)

‘Oh, there’s no cyanide,’ the Doge muttered absentmindedly, with a shudder. ‘Just an ordinary sleeping draft. Anyone who drank the malmsey would have slept the sleep of the righteous on the bench on the boulevard. Then I would have phoned, anonymously, for an ambulance. In the hospital they would have washed out his stomach, and that would have been that. All the aspirants, even you, would have thought it was just a stroke of bad luck, meddling by a jealous fate.’

It seemed to me that the Stammerer had still not entirely abandoned his suspicions, because I heard a note of caution in his voice again: ‘Let’s assume that you could have got away with it. Once. But what would you have done the next time someone landed on the skull?’

‘There wouldn’t have been any next time. And even this time I have absolutely no idea how the ball managed to land there. There’s a magnet under the next pocket, the number seven. The ball’s only covered with a thin layer of gold plate, it’s actually made of iron. You saw the way it landed on the skull and then suddenly jerked over on to the seven on Caliban’s turn? It’s strange the magnet didn’t work on your turn.’

‘There are only two explanations: either the magnet is too weak, or my luck is too strong . . .’ The Stammerer murmured, as if he were talking to himself, but then he turned back to the Doge: ‘What you say about an evil force sounds incredible, but I’ve lived in this world for a long time, and I know that incredible things sometimes happen. Carry on with what you’re doing, make the seekers write poems, titillate their nerves with the roulette wheel, only put in a stronger magnet, to make sure that today’s mishap is not repeated. And if you have no objections, I shall observe your “evil force”.’

The Doge folded his hands together prayerfully: ‘Not only do I not object, I implore you to help me. I feel as if I’m going insane!’

‘So, we are allies. Tell the others what you were going to say. That I drank the wine and fell asleep on the boulevard, and then some intrusive wellwisher called an ambulance.’

They shook hands, and I hurriedly retreated to the hallway, and from there into the street.

Need I explain the feelings that I am experiencing now? I am sure you will agree, Lieutenant-Colonel, that there is no need to arrest Mr Blagovolsky. On the contrary, he should not be hindered under any circumstances. Let him carry on with his good work. For now the ‘lovers’ are in good hands, but if they should each go their own way, they might do more than simply take their own lives – they might even start up their own suicide clubs.

As far as the ‘evil force’ is concerned, that is pure hysteria, Mr Blagovolsky’s imagination has become inflamed and his nerves are playing him false.

And I, naturally, will continue to keep an eye on this ‘Ward No. 6’. If Prospero is the head doctor, then I (ha-ha) am the inspector.

With assurances of my most sincere respect,

ZZ

Written on the night of 4 September 1900

1. Probability

2. A pity

CHAPTER 3I. From the Newspapers

This is the Only Way?

In memory of Lorelei Rubinstein (1860–1900)

Hang your heads low, all you lovers of Russian literature. Your hearts will surely be filled not only with grief, but with the even more sombre feelings of bewilderment and despair. For a star that shone brightly in the firmament of Russian poetry in recent years has been tragically extinguished: it has fallen and, in falling, carved a bloody furrow across our hearts.

Suicide always has a terrible effect on those who are left behind. It is as though the person who leaves us spurns and rejects God’s world and all of us who dwell in it. We are no longer necessary or interesting to him. And it is a hundred times more unnatural when the person who acts in this way is a writer, whose bonds with the life of the spirit and society ought, one would think, to be especially strong.

Poor Russia! Her Shakespeares and Dantes seem to be marked down for some special deadly fate: those who are not slain by an enemy’s bullet, like Pushkin, Lermontov and Marlinsky, contrive to carry out the malevolent verdict of destiny themselves.

And now yet another resounding name has been added to the martyrology of Russian literary suicides. We have only just commemorated a bitter anniversary – a quarter of a century since the death of Count A.K. Tolstoy and the effervescent Vassily Kurochkin. They both poisoned themselves. The noble Garshin threw himself down a stairwell, while in his despair Nikolai Uspensky cut his own throat with a blunt knife. Each of these losses has left an open wound on the body of our literature.

And now a poetess, the woman they called the Russian Sappho.

I knew her. I was one of those who believed in her talent, which blossomed at a mature age but promised so very much.

The reason that prompted Lorelei Rubinstein to take up the pen at an age when the first blush of youth was already behind her is well known: it was the death from consumption of the husband she passionately adored, the late M.N. Rubinstein, whom many recall as the most noble and worthy of men. Deprived of the only being dear to her heart, the childless Lorelei turned to poetry for salvation. She opened that passionate, long-suffering heart to us, her readers – opened it unhesitatingly, even shamelessly, because sincere, genuine feeling knows no shame. It was the first time in Russian poetry that sensuality and passion had spoken so boldly through the lips of a woman – following the death of her beloved husband these natural impulses could find no other outlet except in her poems.

Young provincial ladies and schoolgirls secretly copied these spicy lines into their cherished albums. The poor souls were abused for it, sometimes even punished for this enthusiasm for ‘immoral’ poetry that could teach them nothing good. But that was only poetry! Now Lorelei has set these romantic maidens languishing in neurotic passion a far more terrible and tempting example. I fear that many will wish to copy not only her poems, but also her own terrible end . . .

I know quite certainly that she was a member of the ‘Lovers of Death’, where she was known as the ‘Lioness of Ecstasy’. In recent weeks I was fortunate enough to become more closely acquainted with this astounding woman and was an involuntary witness of the fiery fall of her brilliant star.

No, I was not with her at that crucial moment when she took the fatal dose of morphine, but I could see that she was sinking, irrevocably sinking. I could see it, but I was powerless. Not long ago she confided to me in secret that the ‘Tsarevich Death’ was sending her secret signs, and she would not have to suffer the torment of life for much longer. I do not think I was the only one she told about this, but everyone regarded this confession as the fruit of her irrepressible fantasy.

Alas, fantasies can give rise to phantoms: the hard-hearted Tsarevich has come for Lorelei and taken her away from us.

Before she made the transition from this life to the history of literature, the Lioness of Ecstasy left a farewell poem. How little remains in these incoherent, impatient, final lines of the heady brilliance that captivated her female admirers!

No more, it’s time, the call has come.

We shall meet later – do not keep me now:

Something, I know, I should recall before I go.

But what? But what?

I cannot think.

My thoughts are in confusion. No more, it’s time.

I must make haste to learn what there will be

Beyond the last horizon

Forward!

Tsarevich Death,

Come in your bloody-red apparel,

Give me your hand and lead me to the light,

Where I shall stand with arms outstretched

Like an angel, like fate, like the reflection

Of my own self. This is the only way.

What terrible words of farewell! ‘This is the only way.’ Are you not afraid, ladies and gentlemen? I am, very.

Lavr Zhemailo

Moscow Courier, 7 (20)

September 1900, p.1

II. From Columbine’s Diary

Puzzles

I really am terribly fortunate to depart this life in the year that marks the boundary between the old and new centuries. It is as if I have glanced through a door that has opened a crack and seen nothing deserving enough of my attention to open the door wider and walk in. I shall halt on the threshold, flutter my wings and fly away. You can have your cinematograph, self-propelled carriages and tunics а la grecque(terribly vulgar, in my opinion). Live in the twentieth century without me. To depart without looking back – that is beautiful.

And on the matter of beauty. Our members talk about it a great deal, they even elevate it to the level of a supreme standard. Essentially, I am of the same opinion, but a sudden thought: Who is more handsome, Prospero or Genji! Of course, they are very different, and each impressive in his own way. Probably nine women out of ten would say that Genji is more interesting, in addition to being a lot younger (although he is also very old, about forty). But without the slightest hesitation, I prefer Prospero, because he is more . . . significant. When I am with Genji, I feel calm and lucid, sometimes even lighthearted, but I am overwhelmed by an ‘infinite thrill’ only in the presence of the Doge. There is magic and mystery in him, and that weighs more heavily than superficial beauty.

But then, of course, there is quite a lot of mystery about Genji too. In the last few days he has played Death at roulette three times (if one counts those first two times, with the drum of the revolver) and remained alive! It is truly incredible that the ambulance carriage just happened to be driving along the boulevard at the very moment when Genji lost consciousness after drinking the poisoned wine!

Obviously all this is because there is too much vital energy in this man, and he expends it sparingly, holding it inside himself.

Yesterday he declared: ‘I cannot understand, Columbine, why you find the world so disagreeable. You’re young, healthy and rosy-cheeked, and p-perfectly cheerful by nature, even though you do try to assume an infernal air.’

I was terribly upset. ‘Healthy and rosy-cheeked’ – is that all? On the other hand, as they say, you can’t blame the mirror. He is right: I lack subtlety and fatality. But even so, it was very tactless of him to say it.

‘And what about you?’ I retorted. ‘As I recall, you were so outraged with the Doge that you even threatened to break up our club, but you keep coming and you even tried to poison yourself.’

He replied with a serious air: ‘I adore everything mysterious. There are far too many mysteries here, dear Columbine, and mysteries give me a kind of itch – I shall never calm down until I get to the bottom of everything.’ Then suddenly he made a suggestion. ‘Do you know what? Why d-don’t we solve this puzzle together? As far as I am aware, you have nothing else to do in any case. It will be good for you. You might even come to your senses!’

I did not like his didactic tone, but I thought about Ophelia’s inexplicable suicide and remembered Lorelei, without whom our meetings now seemed pale and colourless. And he was right – how long could I just sit at home, waiting for the evening to come?

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘A puzzle to be solved. When shall we begin?’

‘Tomorrow, with no d-delay. I shall call for you at eleven, if you would please be so kind as to be ready on time in full marching order.’

There is one thing I do not understand: whether he is in love with me or not. To judge from his manner of restrained mockery – not in the least. But perhaps he is simply trying to appear interesting? Acting in accordance with that idiotic homily: ‘The less we love a woman, the more she likes us.’ Of course, it is all the same to me, since I love Prospero. But I would still like to know.

Take tomorrow’s outing, for instance – what is his real interest in it? Now that is a genuine riddle.

All right. Let Mr Genji try to solve his puzzle, and I shall solve mine.

But they did not set out at eleven the following day – and not at all because the young mistress of the flat had overslept or failed to make her preparations in time. On the contrary, Columbine was waiting for Prince Genji in perfect readiness and fully kitted out. Little Lucifer had been given food and drink and left to rustle about in a large plywood crate full of grass, and Columbine herself had put on an impressive outfit: a Bedouin burnous with little bells (she had spent half the night sewing them on).

His Japanese Majesty politely praised the costume but requested her to change into something a little less eye-catching, citing the particularly delicate nature of their mission. So it was his own fault that they were a little late.

With reluctant loathing, Columbine dressed up in a blue skirt and white blouse from Irkutsk, with a modest grey bolero, and put a beret on her head – the perfect image of a female student, only the spectacles were missing. But the earthbound Genji was pleased.

He did not come alone, but with his Japanese, to whom Columbine was formally introduced on this occasion, with endless bowing and scraping (on Mr Masa’s side, that is). In introducing his Man Friday, Genji called him ‘observant and sharp-witted’ and even ‘an invaluable assistant’ and the Oriental drew himself erect and puffed out his smooth cheeks so that he looked like a carefully polished samovar.

When the three of them got into the droshky, Columbine was helped in by both elbows, like a queen.

‘Where are we going, to Ophelia’s place?’ she asked.

‘No.’ Genji replied and gave the driver a familiar address, ‘Basmannaya Street, the Giant c-company’s apartment building. Let’s start with Avaddon. I can’t get that Beast out of my head – the one that howled on the night of the suicide.’

The sight of the large, grey five-storey block made the young woman feel rather unwell – she recalled the iron hook and the rope end hanging from it. Genji, however, did not walk into the left entrance, where the flat of the deceased Nikifor Sipyaga was located. He walked into the entrance on the right.

They walked all the way up to the top and rang the bell at a door with a plaque that said ‘A.F. Stakhovich, painter’. Columbine remembered that this man, Avaddon’s neighbour, had been mentioned by the yard keeper, who had taken Lucifer for an alcoholic hallucination.

The door was opened by a young man with a fiery ginger beard that covered his face almost right up to the eyes. There could be no doubt that this was the artist in person – he was wearing a dressing gown smeared with paint from top to bottom and clutching an extinct pipe in his teeth.

‘A thousand apologies, Alexei Fyodorovich,’ said Genji, politely doffing his top hat (so he had already found out the man’s first name and patronymic, how very meticulous). ‘We are friends of your neighbour, the late Mr Sipyaga, who met such an untimely d-death. We would like to reconstruct the woeful sequence of events.’

‘Yes, I felt sorry for the student,’ Stakhovich sighed, gesturing for them to go in. ‘Though of course, I hardly even knew him. A neighbour on the other side of the wall is not like one from the door opposite. Come in, only be careful, it’s chaos in here.’

His comment on the chaos was greatly understated. The small flat, an exact mirror image of Avaddon’s, was absolutely crammed with frames and canvases and there was all sorts of rubbish underfoot – empty bottles, rags, flattened paint tubes.

The room which Avaddon had made his bedroom served Stakhovich as a studio. Standing by the window was an unfinished painting of a female nude on a red divan (the nude’s body had been painted in detail, but the head was still missing), and placed against the opposite wall was the divan itself, covered in a red drape, and there really was a naked damsel reclining on it. She had a snub nose, freckles and loose straw-coloured hair, and she gazed at the visitors with idle curiosity, making no attempt to cover herself up.

‘This is Dashka,’ the painter said, nodding towards his model. ‘Stay there, Dunya, don’t move, it cost me a real effort to get you set out properly. They’ve come to make enquiries about that young fool from next door who hanged himself. They’ll be gone in a minute.’

‘A-a-ah,’ drawled Dashka, alias Dunya, and sniffed. ‘The one who hammered on the wall with his fist every time we started arguing a bit too loud?’

‘That’s the one.’

At this point Prince Genji proved that he was terribly old-fashioned and a total martyr to philistine prejudices. At the sight of the naked model he became embarrassed, turned his head away a full hundred and eighty degrees and started stammering twice as much as usual: in his place Prospero wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.

However, the Japanese Masa wasn’t even slightly embarrassed. He stared at the recumbent girl, clicked his tongue in approval and declared: ‘Beeootifur young rady. Round with fat regs.’

‘Masa!’ Genji protested, blushing. ‘How many times m-must I tell you? Stop staring! This isn’t Japan!’

But Dunya was obviously flattered by the comment from the Japanese.

‘What exactly are you interested in?’ asked the artist, squinting at each of his visitors in turn. ‘I really didn’t know him at all. I was never in his flat. He gave the impression of being a bit of a cold fish. No socialising, no binges, no women’s voices. A real hermit.’

‘The poor thing wasn’t much to look at either, his face was all covered in furuncles,’ Dunya put in, scratching her elbow and looking at Masa. ‘But he was interested in the female sex all right. When he ran into me in the entrance, he used to frisk me all over with those eyes of his. If he’d been a bit more perky, he could have been likeable enough. You get furuncles from loneliness. But he had good eyes, sort of sad, and the colour of cornflowers.’

‘Shut up, you fool,’ Stakhovich shouted at her. ‘To hear you talk, you’d think men have nothing on their minds but how to get their hands on your body. But she’s right: he was shy, you couldn’t get a word out of him. And he really was lonely, a lost soul. He was always muttering something in the evenings. Something rhythmical, like poetry. Sometimes he used to sing a bit out of tune – mostly Little Russian songs. The partition walls here are made of planks, you can hear every sound.’

All the walls of the room were hung with sketches and studies, most of them showing a female torso in various positions and from various angles, and it required no great gift of observation to realise that Dashka-Dunya’s body had served as the model for all of them.

‘Tell me,’ Columbine enquired. ‘Why do you always paint the same woman? Is it some kind of style you have? I’ve read that in Europe there are artists who only paint one thing – a cup, or flowers in a vase, or spots of light on glass – always trying to achieve perfection.’

‘What’s perfection got to do with it!’ Stakhovich exclaimed, turning round to take a look at this curious young lady. ‘Where would I get the money for any other models? Take you, for example. You wouldn’t pose for me out of the simple love of art, would you?’

Columbine felt as if the gaze of his narrowed eyes had pierced straight through her bolero, and she cringed slightly.

‘You have an interesting profile. The line of the hips is quite captivating. And the breasts must be pear-shaped, slightly asymmetrical, with large areolae. Am I right?’

Masha Mironova would probably have turned numb and blushed bright red at words like that. But Columbine didn’t turn a hair and even smiled.

‘C-come now sir, how d-dare you say such things?’ Genji exclaimed in horror, apparently prepared to intervene there and then for the honour of the lady and tear the insolent fellow into little pieces.

But Columbine saved the artist from the inevitable duel by saying in a perfectly calm voice: ‘I don’t know what areolae are, but I assure you that my breasts are perfectly symmetrical. However, you are quite right about them being pear-shaped.’

There was a brief pause. The artist examined the intrepid maiden’s waist. Genji mopped his forehead with a batiste handkerchief. Masa walked over to the model and offered her a boiled sweet in a green wrapper that he had taken out of his pocket.

‘From Landrine?’ Dashka-Dunya asked. ‘Merci.’

Columbine imagined Stakhovich, having become world-famous, bringing an exhibition of his work to Irkutsk. The most important canvas was a nude – Columbine Seduced. Now that would be a real scandal. It was probably worth thinking about.

But by now the artist was looking at the Japanese instead of her.

‘What an incredible face!’ Stakhovich exclaimed, rubbing his hands together in his excitement. ‘And you don’t notice it straight away. The way those eyes sparkle, and those folds! Chingiz Khan! Tamerlaine! Listen, good sir, I absolutely must paint your portrait!’

Columbine was stung. So she only had an interesting silhouette, but he thought this snuffling Oriental was Tamerlaine? Genji also stared at his valet with a certain degree of amazement, but Masa wasn’t even slightly surprised – he merely turned sideways so that the artist could appreciate his flattened profile as well.

Genji cautiously took the artist by the sleeve: ‘Mr Stakhovich, we have not come here to p-pose for you. The yard keeper told me that on the n-night of the suicide you supposedly heard some unusual sounds on the other side of the wall. Try to describe them in as much detail as possible.’

‘That’s the sort of thing you don’t forget in a hurry. It was a foul night, the wind was howling outside, the trees were cracking, but I could still hear it.’ The artist scratched the back of his head as he remembered. ‘Well, it was like this. He came home just before midnight – he slammed the front door very loudly, which was something he never used to do.’

‘That’s right!’ Dashka-Dunya put in. ‘And I said to you: “He’s drunk. Now he’ll start bringing whores back.” Remember?’

Genji cast an embarrassed sideways glance at Columbine, which she found very amusing. Was he concerned for her morals now? It was already quite clear that Dashka spent the nights here as well as the days.

‘Yes, that was exactly what you said,’ the artist confirmed. ‘We go to bed late. I work and Dunya looks at the pictures in the magazines until I finish. He was dashing around on the other side of the wall, stamping his feet and muttering something. He burst out laughing a couple of times, and then started sobbing – in general, he seemed a bit upset. And then, well after midnight, it suddenly started. This howling – very sinister it was, and it came and went. I’ve never heard anything like it in my life. At first I thought my neighbour had brought a stray dog home. But it didn’t sound like that. Then I imagined he’d gone barmy and started howling himself, but a man couldn’t have made sounds like that. It was a sort of deep, hollow sound, but at the same time it was articulate. As if it was chanting something, one word, over and over again. Two, three, four times in a row.’

‘O-o-o-oh!’ Dashka-Dunya howled in a deep bass voice. ‘Right, Sashura? Absolutely terrifying. O-o-o-oh!’

‘Yes, it was kind of like that,’ the artist said with a nod. ‘Only louder, and it was really weird. I’d say it wasn’t just “O-o-o-oh”, but more like “D-o-o-oh” or “K-o-o-oh”. It started with this vague, low sound, and then got louder and louder. Well, we make a bit of noise in here sometimes, so at first we put up with it. But when we went to bed – that was after three in the morning, we couldn’t take it any more. I banged on the wall and shouted: ‘Hey you, student, what kind of concert is that?’ But there was no answer. And it went on right until dawn.’

‘Just remembering it gives me goose pimples,’ the model complained to Masa, who was standing beside her, and he stroked her bare shoulder reassuringly, then left his hand where it was. Dashka-Dunya didn’t object.

‘Is that all?’ Genji asked pensively.

‘Yes,’ Stakhovich said with a shrug, observing Masa’s manoeuvres with amazement.

‘Thank you and g-goodbye. Madam.’

Genji bowed to the model and set off rapidly towards the door. Columbine and Masa went dashing after him.

‘Why didn’t you ask him about anything else?’ she asked him furiously, when they were already on the stairs. ‘He’d only just started talking about the most interesting part!’

‘He had already told us the most interesting part. That is one,’ Genji replied. ‘We wouldn’t have learned anything else interesting from him. That is two. Another minute and there could have been a scandalous incident, because someone was behaving with extreme impudence. That is three.’

After that he started speaking some kind of gibberish – it must have been Japanese, because Masa understood it very well and started gibbering away in reply. From his tone of voice he seemed to be making excuses.

Outside in the street Columbine suddenly felt as if she had been struck by lightning.

‘The voice!’ she cried out. ‘During the seance Ophelia mentioned some voice! Remember, when she was talking to Avaddon’s spirit!’

‘I remember, I remember. Don’t shout like that, p-people are looking at you,’ said Genji, the staid guardian of propriety. ‘But did you realise what that voice was singing? What it was calling on Avaddon to do? And in a way that left absolutely no room for doubt?’

She tried howling quietly: ‘Do-o-o-oh! Ko-o-o-oh!’

She imagined it was the dead of night, with a storm outside the window, a flickering candle flame, a white sheet of paper with crooked lines of writing. Oh my God!

‘Go-o-o!, g-o-o . . . Oi!’

‘Yes, “oi!” indeed. Just imagine it, a terrible inhuman voice repeating over and over again “Go, go, go”, hour after hour. And just b-before that Avaddon had been openly named as the Chosen One. That’s more than enough. Just write your farewell poem and p-put the noose round your neck.’

Columbine stopped and squeezed her eyes tight shut in order to remember this moment for ever. The moment when the miraculous had entered her life with all the incontrovertibility of scientific fact. It was one thing to dream of the Eternal Bridegroom, without being completely sure that he really existed. It was quite another thing to know, to know for certain.

‘Death is alive, he sees and hears everything, he is here beside us!’ Columbine whispered. ‘And Prospero is his servant! It’s all absolutely true! It’s not just a fantasy, it’s not a hallucination! Even the neighbours next door heard it!’

The surface of the pavement swayed beneath her feet. The young lady squeezed her eyes shut again in fright and grabbed hold of Genji’s arm, knowing that afterwards she would be angry with herself for being so weak and impressionable. Why, of course Death was a thinking, feeling being, how could it be otherwise?

She recovered quite quickly. She even laughed as she said: ‘Isn’t it wonderful that there are so many strange things all around us?’

It was well-put, impressive, and she glanced at Genji in the right way, throwing her head back slightly and half-lowering her eyelashes.

It was just a pity that he was looking off to one side and not at Columbine.

‘Mmm, yes, there are certainly many strange things,’ he murmured, not really seeming to have heard what she said. ‘ “Go, go” is impressive enough. But there is another circumstance even m-more surprising.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It is strange, surely, that the voice carried on howling right until dawn?’

‘Why is it?’ Columbine asked after thinking for a moment.

‘Avaddon hanged himself no later than three o’clock in the morning. There was no answer when Stakhovich started hammering on the wall some time after three. And the results of the autopsy indicate that d-death occurred at about three. If the Beast was sent by Death to summon her lover, then why would it carry on howling until d-dawn, when the guest had already arrived?’

‘Perhaps the Beast was mourning him?’ Columbine suggested uncertainly.

Genji looked at her reproachfully.

‘From the Beast’s point of view, it ought to have been rejoicing, not mourning. And then, long after the man had died, the Beast was still wailing “Go, go”. Doesn’t Death’s emissary strike you as being rather stupid?’

Yes, this is a very strange and mysterious story, thought Columbine. And the greatest mystery of all is why you brought me with you, sir.

The look in the prince’s blue eyes was warm and friendly, but she could not sense any hidden motive.

In short, it was a puzzle.

She shook the crystal teardrop from her lashes

From Basmannaya Street they drove for a long time past places that looked like hospitals and barracks, then the buildings on the streets gradually shrank and changed from stone to wood, until eventually the landscape became entirely rural. Columbine, however, did not look around much, she was still under the impression of the revelation that had been granted to her. Her companions did not speak either.

But then the carriage halted in the middle of a dusty, unpaved street lined with small, single-storey houses. On one side she could see the steep bank of a small river or a narrow ravine through the gap between two wooden fences.

‘Where are we?’ Columbine asked.

‘On the Yauza,’ Genji replied, as he jumped down from the footboard. ‘According to the description, th-that house over there is the one we need. This is where Ophelia used to l-live. Or to use her real name, Alexandra Sinichkina.’

Columbine could not help smiling at the funny name. Alexandra Sinichkina was even worse than Maria Mironova. No wonder the girl had preferred to be called Ophelia.

It turned out that the oracle of the ‘Lovers of Death’ had lived in a tidy little house that had four windows with white shutters, embroidered curtains and flowers on the window-sills: behind the house there was a green, leafy apple orchard, and the branches of the trees were bowed under the weight of gold and red fruit.

The knock at the gate was answered by a neat old woman of about forty-five, dressed in black.

‘Her mother,’ Genji explained in a low voice as the old woman walked towards them. ‘A provincial secretary’s widow. She and her daughter lived alone.’

When Ophelia’s mother came closer, her eyes proved to be as bright and clear as her daughter’s, but the eyelids were red and swollen. That was from crying, Columbine guessed, and she felt a sharp tingling in her nose. How could you explain to the poor woman that what had happened was not a misfortune at all, but the greatest possible blessing? She would never believe it.

‘Good afternoon, Serafima Kharitonovna,’ Genji said with a bow. ‘P-pardon us for disturbing you. We knew Alexandrovna Ivanovna . . .’

He hesitated, evidently uncertain how to introduce himself. After all, he wasn’t really a Japanese prince. But he was spared the need.

The widow opened the wicket gate and sobbed.

‘So you knew my Sashenka? She did have some friends after all? Thank you for coming to see me, I’ve been sitting here all on my own, with no one at all to talk to. The samovar’s all ready. We don’t have any relatives, and the neighbours don’t call, they turn their noses up. Of course, a suicide is a disgrace to the entire street.’

Their hostess led them into a small dining room where there were embroidered covers on the chairs, a portrait of some bishop on the wall and an old-fashioned clock ticking in the corner. She obviously really was in desperate need of company, because she started talking immediately and carried on with hardly a pause. She poured tea, but didn’t drink any herself, just ran her finger round the rim of the full cup.

‘While Sashenka was alive, we had plenty of lady visitors, everyone needed my daughter. They wanted her to read the candle wax, or cure a headache, or turn away the evil eye. Sashenka could do everything. Even tell if someone’s betrothed was still alive in a faraway country. And she did it all out of the goodness of her heart, she didn’t accept any gifts, she said that was wrong.’

‘Was it a talent that she was born with?’ Columbine asked sympathetically.

‘No, dear young lady, she wasn’t born with it. She was a weak child, always ailing. The Lord didn’t grant me children for long. He gave them to me for a year or two, or four at the most, and then took them back again. I buried six of them, and Sashenka was the youngest. I was so happy that she stayed in this world. She was sickly, but she was still alive – at five, and six, and seven. Every extra day was like a holiday for me, I praised God for it. And on Whit Sunday, when Sashenka was just eight, God worked a genuine miracle . . .’

Serafima Kharitonovna stopped talking and wiped away a tear.

‘Miracuw? What sort of miracuw?’ asked Masa, who was listening closely – he even stopped slurping from his saucer and put down his honeycake with a bite taken out of it.

‘Lightning struck the tree where she and two of the neighbours’ children were sheltering from the rain. The people who saw it said there was a loud crack and blue smoke, and the little boys dropped down dead, but my Sashenka just stood there without moving, with her fingers stretched out and sparks flying off her fingertips. She was unconscious for three days, and then she suddenly came round. I sat by her bed and all that time I didn’t eat or drink a thing, all I did was pray for the Holy Virgin’s intervention. Sashenka opened her eyes, and they were as bright and clear as a holy angel’s. And she was all right, she got up and started walking. And she wasn’t just alive, she was never ill again, never. But even that gift wasn’t enough for the Lord. In His mercy he decided to make Sashenka someone really special. At first I was frightened, but then I got used to it. I knew that when my daughter’s eyes turned transparent, it meant she was in her special state – she was hearing and seeing things that ordinary people couldn’t. At moments like that she could do all sorts of things. The year before last a little three-year-old boy went missing from round here and no one could find him. But Sashenka just sat for a while, then she moved her lips and said: “Look in the old well”. And they found him, alive, only he had a broken arm. That’s what she was like. And always talking about miracles and mysteries. She has a whole cupboard full of books in her room. Fairytales and fortune-telling and novels about all sorts of fairies and enchantresses.’

Ophelia’s mother glanced at Columbine.

‘And you were her friend? Such a fine-looking girl. And you dress modestly, not like these modern girls. Don’t you cry. I cried a bit myself, but then I stopped. What’s the point of crying? Sasha’s in heaven now, no matter what Father Innokentii might say about suicides.’

At that Columbine started crying in earnest. She felt so sorry for Ophelia and her wonderful gift that had been lost, she just couldn’t stand it.

Never mind, the whimpering worshipper of death told herself, hiding her red eyes from Genji and blowing her nose into a handkerchief. I’ll describe everything differently in the diary. So as not to seem like a fool. Like this, for example: ‘A crystal teardrop glinted in Columbine’s eyes, but the giddy girl shook her head and the teardrop flew off. There is nothing in the world that is worth feeling sad over for more than a minute. Ophelia did what she thought was right. The crystal teardrop was not dedicated to her, but to the poor old woman.’ And she could write a poem too. The first line simply wrote itself:

She shook the crystal teardrop from her lashes

‘Tell me, what happened that night?’ Genji asked, tactfully turning away from Columbine. ‘Why d-did she suddenly run off and drown herself ?’

‘Why, it didn’t happen like that at all,’ said the widow, holding up her hands. ‘She came home late, later than usual. My Sashenka lived as she liked. I knew she wouldn’t get up to anything bad. She often came back late, almost every day, but I always waited up for her, and I never pestered her with questions about where she’d been and what she’d been doing. I knew she’d tell if she wanted to. She was special, not like the other girls. I used to sit here, with the samovar all ready. Sashenka didn’t eat much, she was like a bird, but she liked her tea, with lime flowers . . . Well, I heard a cab drive up, and then a minute later she came in. Her face was really glowing, I’d never seen her like that before. I couldn’t help myself, I just had to find out why: “What’s happened to you? Another miracle? Or have you fallen in love?” “Don’t ask, mama,” she said. But I know her, and I wasn’t born yesterday. I could tell she’d been meeting a lover. It made me feel afraid, but happy too.’

Columbine shuddered when she remembered that evening and the way Prospero had told Ophelia to stay after the seance. Oh, tormentor! Oh, tyrant of poor helpless puppets! But what point was there in feeling jealous of a dead woman? And in any case, jealousy was a banal and unworthy feeling. If you had a lot of rivals, it meant you had chosen a worthy object for your love, she told herself, and suddenly wondered who actually was the object of her love – Prospero or Death? It didn’t really matter. She tried to picture the Eternal Bridegroom, and he appeared to her, not as a young Tsarevich, but as a wise, hoary-haired old man with a stern face and black eyes.

‘She only drank one cup of tea,’ the provincial secretary’s widow continued. ‘Then she stood right here, in front of the mirror, which she’d never done before in her life. She turned round this way and that way, laughed quietly and went to her room. But she came back less than a minute later, she hadn’t even changed her shoes. And her face was still the same, special. But her eyes were transparent, like two pieces of ice. I was frightened. “What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened?” She said: “Goodbye, mama, I’m leaving now.” She wasn’t here any more, she was far away, she wasn’t looking at me. “I’ve been given a Sign,” she said. I dashed over to her and held her hand, I couldn’t make sense of anything. “Where are you going in the middle of the night? And what sort of sign do you mean?” Sashenka smiled and said: “The kind of sign you can’t mistake. Like King Balthazar’s. It’s meant to be. It’s fate. I’m used to listening to fate. Let me go. There’s nothing to be done.” She turned towards me and gave me a sweet look. “It’s only goodbye until we meet again. We will definitely meet again.” She said it very calmly. And like a fool, I let go of her hand. Sashenka kissed me on the cheek, put on her shawl and walked out of the door. I should have kept her here, stopped her, but I wasn’t used to gainsaying her when she was in that special state . . . I didn’t follow her outside. Later I followed the tracks of her heels and I saw she’d gone straight into the orchard, down to the river and into the water . . . without even stopping once. As if someone was waiting for her there.’

Genji asked quickly: ‘When she went out, d-did you go into her room?’

‘No, I sat here until the morning, waiting.’

‘And in the morning?’

‘No, I didn’t go in there for two days. I kept running to the police station, or hanging about by the gate all the time. I never even thought of going down to the river. It was only later, when I came back here from the mortuary after the identification, that I tidied her room. And I don’t go in there any more. Let everything stay the way it was when she was here.’

‘May we take a look?’ Genji asked. ‘Just through the d-doorway? We won’t go in.’

Ophelia’s room was simple, but comfortable. A narrow bed with metal balls on the uprights and a heap of pillows. A dressing table with nothing but a comb and a hand mirror on it. An old bookshelf of dark wood, crammed full of books. A small writing desk with a candlestick under the window.

‘Candurs,’ said the Japanese.

Columbine raise her eyes to the ceiling, assuming that this simple-minded son of the Orient named every object that he saw – she had read somewhere that primitive peoples had that habit. Now he would say: ‘Table. Bed. Window.’ But Masa glanced sideways at his master and repeated: ‘Candurs.’

‘Yes, yes. I see,’ Genji said with a nod. ‘Well done. Tell me, Serafima Kharitonovna, did you put new candles in the candelabra?’

‘I didn’t put them in. They hadn’t been touched.’

‘So when your daughter came in here she d-didn’t light them?’

‘I suppose so. I’ve left everything just as it was, I haven’t disturbed anything. That book lying open on the windowsill – let it stay there. Her slippers under the bed. The glass of pear compote – she loved that. Perhaps her soul will look in every now and then to take a rest . . . Sashenka’s soul has no place of its own. Father Innokentii wouldn’t allow her to be buried in hallowed ground. They buried my daughter outside the fence, like a little dog. And he wouldn’t let me put up a cross. Your daughter’s sin is unforgivable, he said. But what sort of sinner is she? She was an angel. She stayed on earth for a little while and brought me joy, and then flew away again.’

As they walked back to the carriage and then drove along the streets shrouded in the shadows of early evening, Masa kept muttering angrily in his strange squawking language.

‘Why has he suddenly forgotten how to speak Russian?’ Columbine asked in a whisper.

Genji said: ‘He is being t-tactful. He does not wish to offend your religious sensibilities. He is roundly abusing the Christian Ch-church for its attitude to suicides and their families. And he is absolutely right.’

Black roses

At the entrance to the wing of a building on Povarskaya Street, where Lorelei Rubinstein had still lived only three days earlier, there were three heaps of flowers lying on the pavement. Most of them were black roses, which she had mentioned in a poem written shortly before her death – the one she had read for the first time one evening at Prospero’s apartment and then printed shortly afterwards in The Refuge of the Muse. There were notes, too – white spots against the background of the flowers. Columbine picked one out, opened it and read the inscription in small girlish handwriting:

Oh Lorelei, you have gone on before,

Pathfinder on the road into the night,

And, following the image I adore,

I too shall walk the dark path into light.

T.R.

She picked up another: ‘Oh, how right you are, dear, dear one! Life is vulgar and unbearable! Olga Z.’

Genji also read it, looking over her shoulder. He knitted his elegant black eyebrows and sighed. Then he resolutely rang the bronze doorbell.

The door was opened by a rather wizened lady with an anxious, tearful face who kept dabbing at her red, wet little nose with a handkerchief. She introduced herself as Rosalia Maximovna, one of ‘poor Lyalechka’s’ relatives, although the subsequent conversation made it clear that she had lived with Lorelei as her housekeeper, or simply as a dependent.

Genji spoke to her quite differently from the way in which he had spoken to Ophelia’s mother. He was dry and businesslike. Masa didn’t open his mouth at all, he sat down at the table and didn’t move, staring straight at Rosalia Maximovna through narrowed eyes.

The pitiful creature gazed at the severe gentleman in the black tails and the taciturn Oriental with a mixture of fright and obsequiousness. She answered Genji’s questions at length, with masses of detail, and from time to time he was obliged to bring her back to the point. Every time Rosalia Maximovna became flustered and began batting her eyelids helplessly. The conversation was also seriously impeded by a lapdog – a vicious dwarf bulldog that kept yapping at Masa and snapping at his trouser leg.

‘Had you lived with Madam Rubinstein for a l-long time?’ was the first question that Genji asked.

It turned out that she had been there for seven years, ever since Lorelei (whom she also referred to as ‘Lyalechka’ and ‘Elena Semyonovna’) had been widowed.

When she was asked whether the deceased had ever attempted to take her own life before, the answer was very long and confused.

‘Lyalechka never used to be like this. She was cheerful, she used to laugh a lot. She loved her husband Matvei very much. They had an easy, happy life together. They didn’t have any children – they were always going to the theatre and at-homes, they often went to resorts and to Paris, and all sorts of places abroad. But when Matvei Natanovich died, it was as if she lost her mind, the poor thing. She even took poison,’ Rosalia told him in a whisper, ‘only not enough to kill her that time. But after that she was all right, she seemed to have got used to things. Only her character had changed, completely changed. She started writing poems and in general . . . she wasn’t quite herself, somehow. If not for me, she wouldn’t have eaten properly, she just drank coffee all the time. Do you think it was easy for me keeping house for Elena Semyonovna? She spent all the money that Matvei Natanovich left on the memorial for his grave. She was only paid a pittance for her poems at first, then it was more and more, but that was still no help. Lyalechka used to send tenrouble wreaths to the cemetery every single day, and sometimes there wasn’t a crust of bread in the house. The number of times I told her: “You should put something aside for a rainy day!” But would she listen? So now there isn’t anything. She’s dead, and what am I supposed to live on? And the flat’s only paid up until the first of the month. I have to move out, but where to?’ She buried her face in the handkerchief and started sobbing. ‘Zhu . . . Zhuzhechka is used to eating well – a bit of liver, marrow bones, cottage cheese . . . But who needs us now? Oh, I’m sorry, just a moment . . .’

And she ran out of the room in floods of tears.

‘Masa, how did you manage to m-make the dog shut up?’ Genji asked. ‘Thank you, it was bothering me rather badly.’

Columbine suddenly realised that the bulldog had not barked once, but only grunted malevolently under the table during the entire monologue, which had been extended to some considerable length by nose-blowing and sobbing.

Masa replied in a steady voice: ‘Dog sirent because eating my reg. Masta, have you arready asked everyfin you want? If not I can howd for ronger.’

Columbine glanced under the table and gasped. The mean little beast had grabbed poor Masa by the ankle and was growling viciously and shaking its round head from side to side! No wonder the Japanese looked a bit pale and he was smiling painfully. He was a real hero! Just like the Spartan boy with the fox cub!

‘Oh, Lord, Masa,’ Genji sighed. ‘That’s g-going too far.’

He leaned down swiftly and squeezed the dog’s nose between his finger and thumb. The little beast snorted and immediately opened its jaws. Then Genji took it by the scruff of the neck and tossed it into the hallway with a remarkably accurate throw. There was a squeal, followed by hysterical barking, but Masa’s tormentor didn’t dare come back into the room.

And at that point Rosalia Maximovna returned, a little calmer, but Genji had already assumed a relaxed pose, leaning back slightly in his chair, with his fingers clasped across his stomach in a most innocent fashion.

‘Where’s Zhuzhechka?’ Rosalia Maximovna asked in a voice hoarse from sobbing.

‘You still have not told us what happened that evening,’ Genji reminded her sternly, and Lorelei’s aunt started blinking in fright.

‘I was sitting in the drawing room, reading the Home Doctor, Lyalechka subscribes to it for me. She’d just got back from somewhere or other and gone into her boudoir. Then suddenly she came running into the room with her eyes blazing and her cheeks bright red. “Aunty Rosa!” she cried. I was frightened, I thought it must be a fire or a mouse. But Lyalechka shouted: “The last Sign, the third one! He loves me! He loves me! There is no more doubt. I must go to him, to the Tsarevich! My Matvei has waited too long”. Then she put her hand over her eyes and said in a quiet voice: “No more, my torment is over. Now dost Thou release Thy servant, oh Lord. No more playing the jester for me.” I didn’t understand anything. You can never tell with Elena Semyonovna if something has really happened or she’s just fantasising. “Who is it who loves you?” I asked her. “Ferdinand Karlovich, Sergei Poluektovich or that one with the moustache, who arrived with the bouquet yesterday?” She had lots of admirers, you couldn’t remember them all. Only she didn’t care a brass farthing for any of them, so her raptures seemed strange to me. “Or has someone else turned up?” I asked her, “Someone completely new?” But Lyalechka laughed, and she looked so happy, for the first time in all those years. “Someone else, Aunty Rosa,” she said. “Someone quite different. The genuine one and only. I’m going to go to bed now. Don’t come into my room until the morning, whatever happens.” And she walked out. In the morning I went in, and she was lying on the bed in her white dress, and she was all white too . . .’

The aunt burst into tears again, but this time she didn’t go running out of the room.

‘How am I going to live now? Lyalechka didn’t think about me, she didn’t leave a single kopeck. And I can’t sell the furniture – it’s the landlord’s . . .’

‘Show me where Elena Semyonovna’s b-boudoir is,’ said Genji, getting to his feet.

Lorelei’s bedroom was startlingly different from Ophelia’s simple little room. It had Chinese vases as tall as a man, and painted Japanese screens, and a magnificent dressing table with a myriad bottles, jars and tubes standing in front of a triple mirror, and all sorts of other things too.

There were two portraits hanging above the luxurious bed. One was a perfectly ordinary photograph of a bearded man in a pince-nez (obviously the deceased husband Matvei himself), but Columbine found the second one intriguing: a swarthy, handsome man dressed in blood-red robes, with immense half-closed eyes, sitting astride a black buffalo and holding a club and a noose in his hands, and there were two terrifying four-eyed dogs huddling against the buffalo’s legs.

Genji walked up to the lithograph, but it was not the image that interested him, it was the three black roses on the top of the frame. One had not completely wilted yet, another was badly wrinkled, and the third was absolutely dry.

‘My God, who is that?’ Columbine asked, looking at the picture.

‘The Indian god of death, Yama, also known as the King of the Dead,’ Genji replied absentmindedly, staring hard at the gilded frame. ‘The dogs with four eyes are searching for p-prey among the living, and Yama uses the noose to pull their souls out.’

‘Tsarevich Death, come in your bloody-red apparel, give me your hand, lead me into the light,’ said Columbine, reciting two lines from Lorelei’s last poem. ‘So that was who she meant!’

But Genji failed to appreciate her astuteness.

‘What roses are these?’ he asked, turning to the aunt. ‘From whom?’

‘They . . .’ she said, and started blinking very, very fast. ‘How can I remember, when so many people used to give Lyalechka flowers? Ah yes, I do remember. She brought the bouquet home on that last evening.’

‘Are you sure?’

Columbine thought Genji was being too severe with the poor old woman. Rosalia Maximovna pulled her head down into her shoulders and babbled: ‘She brought them, she brought them herself.’

There seemed to be something else he wanted to ask her, but glancing at Columbine, he obviously realised that she disapproved of his manner and, taking pity on the unfortunate woman, left her in peace.

‘Thank you madam. You have been a g-great help.’

The Japanese gave a ceremonial bow, from the waist.

Columbine noticed that as Genji walked past the table he inconspicuously placed a banknote on the tablecloth. Was he feeling ashamed then? Yes, that must be it.

The expedition was over. Columbine had still not found out if Genji was in love with her, but that was not what she thought about on the way back. She suddenly felt quite unbearably sad.

She imagined how her mother and father would feel when they found out that she was gone. They would probably cry and feel sorry for their daughter, and then, like Ophelia’s mother, they would say: ‘She stayed in the world for a short time, and then she flew away.’ But it would be easier for them than for Serafima Kharitonovna, they would still have their sons, Seryozha and Misha. They’re not like me, Columbine comforted herself. They won’t get picked up by the wild east wind and carried away into the sunset to meet their doom.

She felt so moved that the tears started pouring down her cheeks.

‘Well, how did you like our excursion?’ Genji asked, looking into his companion’s wet face. ‘Perhaps you will l-live for a little longer after all?’

She rubbed her eyes, turned towards him and laughed in his face.

‘Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t,’ she said

In front of her house she jumped out of the carriage, gave a careless wave and ran into the entrance with a light clatter of heels.

Sitting down at the table without even taking off her beret, she dipped a pen in the inkwell and wrote a poem that came out in blank verse, like Lorelei’s. And for some reason it was in traditional folk style – could that be because of Ophelia’s mother, the old provincial secretary’s widow?

Not with white linen, but black velvet

Was my wedding couch arrayed,

A narrow bed, and all of wood,

Covered with lilies and chrysanthemums.

Dearest guests, why look you so sad,

Wiping teardrops from your cheeks?

Feast your eyes in joy on the bright glow

Of my slim face below the plaited wreath.

Ah, you poor and wretched, sightless souls,

Look closely now and you will see

That on this bed ringed with candles bright

My own true love lies here along with me.

Oh, how divine the beauty of his face!

Oh, how bright the twinkling of his eye!

How sweetly do his gentle fingers play!

How happy you have made me, bridegroom mine.

She wondered what Prospero would say about the poem.

III. From the ‘Agents’ Reports’ File

To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov

(Private and confidential)

Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,

I always knew that helping you was a risky and dangerous business – both for my reputation as a decent individual and, possibly, for my very life. Today my very worst fears have been confirmed. I really do not know what causes me greater torment, the physical suffering or the bitter realisation of how little you value my self-sacrificing efforts.

I indignantly reject your repeated offer to ‘pay my expenses generously’, although it is unlikely that any of your highly paid ‘collaborators’ demonstrates as much zeal and devotion to the cause as does your humble servant. However, my unselfish scrupulousness does not change the essence of the matter – you have in any case effectively transformed me from a principled opponent of nihilism and devilry into a vulgar spy!

Have you never entertained the thought, dearest Vissarion Vissarionovich, that perhaps you underestimate me? You regard me as a pawn in your game, whereas perhaps I am a piece of an entirely different calibre!

I am joking, only joking. How can we grains who have fallen between the millstones ever grow up to the heavens above? But even so, you should be more tactful with me, a little more formal. After all, I am a cultured man and also of European stock. Do not take this as an attack on yourself or an out-burst of Lutheran arrogance. I only wish to remind you that the fancy social graces mean more to a ‘pepper-and-sausage German’ than they do to a ‘Russak’. As it happens, you are not a Russak, you are a Caucasian, but that does not change the essence of the matter.

I have re-read what I have written and I feel sick with myself. How amusing you must find my rapid transitions from voluptuous self-abasement to unbending pride.

Ah, but it is not important, really it is not. The important thing is to remember that what is good for the Russian is death for the German.

And apropos of death.

From the latest instructions that I have received from you it is clear to me that you are no longer much concerned about the fate of the poor ‘Lovers of Death’, who dwell on the very edge of the precipice. You demonstrated far more interest in one of the members of the club, whom in previous reports I have dubbed the Stammerer. I have the feeling that you know far more about this man than I do. Why do you find him so intriguing? Do you really believe in the existence of a secret organisation called ‘Lovers of Life’? And who is this ‘very highly placed individual’ whose personal request you are carrying out? Which of your superiors has taken an interest in this man?

Whatever the answer might be, I have dutifully performed the strange assignment you set me, although you did not even condescend to tell me the reasons for it. I followed the Stammerer, and although I was not able to establish his place of residence, it was not, as you shall see, due to my own fault.

No, this really is absolutely outrageous! Why can you not set your own police agents to follow the Stammerer? You write that he is not a criminal ‘in the strict sense of the word’, but when has that circumstance ever been an obstacle for you and your kind? Or is your reluctance to attach official agents to the Stammerer explained by the fact that he has, as you informed me rather vaguely, ‘too many well-wishers in the most surprising places’? Surely not in the Department of Gendarmes too? Are you concerned that one of your colleagues might inform the Stammerer that he is being followed? Then who is this man after all, if even you are being so cautious? Why must I be left to wander in the dark? I absolutely demand explanations! Especially after the monstrous incident of which I, through your good services, have been the victim.

Nonetheless, I am presenting my report. I do not know if you will extract anything useful from it. I abstain from making any comments of my own, for I do not understand very much myself – I simply present the facts.

Tonight there was another game with the Roulette Wheel of Death, again without any result (we must assume that Blagovolsky has indeed installed a more powerful magnet). We have new members to replace the lost Ophelia and Lioness of Ecstasy. Since Lorelei Rubinstein’s suicide, the young maidens of Moscow have gone absolutely insane – the number of them wishing to join the mysterious club has increased several times over, for which we must thank the press’s fondness for carrion. The most persistent of these young persons attain their goal. This time Prospero introduced Iphigenia and Gorgon to us. The former is a plump student with bushy golden hair, very pretty and very stupid. She read a poem about a drowned child: ‘The little mite could not be saved, they lowered him into his grave’, or something of the kind. Why a foolish sheep like that is drawn to the embraces of death is a mystery. The latter is a nervous brunette with sharp features, she writes jerky and extremely indecent poems, although she herself is probably still a virgin. But then, our voluptuous Doge will soon put that right.

Gdlevsky read some new poems. Prospero is right, he is a true genius, the hope of the new Russian poetry. But then, you are not interested in poetry, I believe. Even so, there is something worthy of note here. Recently Gdlevsky has been in a constant state of excitement. I wrote you once that he is literally obsessed with the mystic nature of harmony and rhyme. He read in some spiritualist book that it is only possible to associate with the World Beyond on Friday, and therefore this day of the week is special. Every event that takes place on a Friday has a magical significance, it is a message, a sign, one only needs to know how to decipher it. And Gdlevsky is putting all his energies into deciphering these messages. It started last Friday, when he declared that he would tell his fortune from a rhyme. He took the first book that came to hand down off the shelf, opened it, jabbed his finger at the page and hit upon the word ‘breath’. He became indescribably agitated and started repeating ‘breath – death, breath – death’. Since today was also a Friday, as soon as he had greeted us, he grabbed a book that was lying on the table, opened it and – can you imagine – it happened to be Shakespeare, and it opened at the first page of Macbeth! Now the boy is absolutely certain that Death is sending him messages. He is waiting impatiently for the third Friday in order finally to make certain, and then he will feel perfectly entitled to do away with himself. Well, let him wait, coincidences like that don’t happen three times in a row.

We went home early, at half past nine – the entire ceremony lasted no more than twenty minutes. Blagovolsky effectively pushed everyone out of the door, leaving behind only Gdlevsky. He was obviously frightened for his favourite and wanted to distract him from his malign fantasy. It would be a pity if the new sun of Russian poetry were to be extinguished before it has even risen. Although, of course, there would be one more beautiful legend: Venevitinov, Lermontov, Nadson, Gdlevsky. The death of a young talent is always beautiful. But that does not interest you, so I shall proceed to my report proper.

As you requested, I followed the Stammerer, meticulously observing all the recommendations I had been given: proceeding on foot, I always remained on the opposite side of the street and maintained a distance of at least fifty paces; in a cab I increased the distance to two hundred paces; I diligently took notes in a notebook, not forgetting to include the time, and so forth.

And so.

On Rozhdestvensky Boulevard the Stammerer halted a cabby and told him to drive to the corner of Borisoglebskaya Street and Povarskaya Street. In the evening sounds carry a long way, and the cabby repeated the address very loudly, which made my task easier. I got into the next free carriage and told the driver to drive rapidly to the place, without bothering to follow the Stammerer, and therefore arrived there before him. I hid in a gateway, from where I had a good view of the entire crossroads. I only had to wait for two or three minutes.

The Stammerer (or, to follow the usual terminology in your spheres, the ‘mark’) knocked on a door and entered the wing of house number eighteen. At first I thought that he was lodging there, and the assignment you had set me was completed. But then after a little thought it seemed strange to me that a man would knock at the door of his own home. I decided to check. It was a single-storey wing, so it was not difficult to glance into the lighted windows, since at that late hour the street was already deserted and my manoeuvre would not attract any attention from passers-by. I picked up an empty box from outside a general shop, set it by the wall and peeped in through the gap between the curtains.

The Stammerer was sitting at a table with an elderly lady dressed in black. Since his top hat and gloves were lying there at his elbow, I realised that he was only visiting, and evidently not for very long. I could not hear their conversation. The Stammerer said nothing for most of the time and only nodded occasionally, but the woman almost never closed her mouth – she was telling him about something, glancing beseechingly into his face and constantly dabbing at her tearstained eyes with a handkerchief. He asked her several brief questions and she replied with obvious eagerness, looking as if she felt guilty and was trying to justify herself. Eventually the Stammerer got up and left, leaving a banknote on the table. His hostess greedily grabbed it and hid it behind a picture hanging on the wall.

Afraid of being discovered, I jumped down off the crate, ran off smartly to a short distance and stood behind a tree. I had not let my carriage go, but told the driver to wait round the corner. And I was right to do so, because at that time it would not have been easy to find another cab.

The Stammerer, for instance, stood on the pavement for eight whole minutes before he was able to continue his journey. If it were not for my foresight, the chase would have been broken off at that point.

I told my driver to keep his distance and only urge the horse on when the droshky in front of us turned a corner. We drove out on to Sadovaya Street, where it was possible to increase the distance even more, and drove straight for twenty-six minutes before turning on to Basmannaya Street. The Stammerer got out in front of a five-storey house (5B). I thought that this time he must surely have come home, but it immediately became clear that I was mistaken yet again. This time he did not even let his cab go. I drove on past as far as the next turning and told my driver to wait again.

Both entrances to the house were locked, but the Stammerer did not wake the yard keeper. I saw him go into the courtyard, and I followed him cautiously. Looking round the corner I saw him fiddle briefly with a lock, open the back door and go inside. This seemed most curious to me. Why would such an impressive gentleman, in an English redingote and a top hat, be creeping into back entrances in the middle of the night?

I checked the lock and saw that it was very primitive – it could easily be opened with a tie pin, which was evidently what the Stammerer had done. In the battle between caution and excitement, the latter won the upper hand and I made up my mind to go in. In order not to make a racket I took off my boots and left them outside before slipping through the door.

I could hear the mark’s footsteps as he climbed up to the top floor, the fifth. What he did there, I do not know – I did not venture to clamber up after him. I thought I heard something squeak quietly, then there was total silence. I waited impatiently for fifteen minutes and decided that was enough. I went outside and what do you think? My boots had disappeared! Oh, the fine people of Moscow! An empty yard in the middle of the night, but some villain had still spotted them. And how deftly it had been done – I was only five paces away, but I hadn’t heard a thing!

Imagine my position. Cool weather, and it was damp – there had been a shower of rain recently – and there was I in my socks. I was absolutely furious. I wanted to run to my carriage and go home. But then I thought: why don’t I take a look up at the fifth floor and see if any of the windows are lit?

No, there weren’t any lights on, but I suddenly noticed some kind of white spot run across the glass of one of the windows – the one next to the staircase. On looking closer I could see it was someone with an electric torch. Who else could it be if not the mark?

Now you must appreciate the full extent of my devotion to the cause. Chilled through, with wet feet, I nonetheless decided to see the assignment through to the end.

The Stammerer came out twenty minutes later, and the pursuit continued. There were no carriages about on the streets now, so the clatter of wheels and hooves on cobblestones carried very far, and I had to drop back a long way, so that I almost lost him twice. I was only hoping that the Stammerer had finally finished his business and was going home for the night, and I could hurry home, soak my feet in hot water and drink raspberry tea. You should know that I have a tendency to catch colds, followed every time by a stubborn cough.

Beyond the Yauza we drove into the suburbs, and I remember how surprised I was that the Stammerer could have chosen such a disreputable area in which to reside. I was finally convinced that his travels were over when I saw him let his driver go. I told mine to wait again, although he complained that the horse was tired and it was time for his tea. I had to give him an extra fifty kopecks for the wait – but it soon emerged that the money had been wasted. By the way, my outgoings today in carrying out your assignment amounted to a substantial sum: three roubles and fifty kopecks. I am not telling you this out of mercenary interest, but so that you will understand how much my altruism costs me in every possible way.

I concealed myself very successfully behind a well, in the thick shade of a spreading tree, whereas the Stammerer was brightly illuminated by the moon, so that I could observe all his movements while remaining completely safe, if, that is, one does not take into account the danger to my health from my frozen feet.

The house that the mark approached seemed quite unremarkable to me. A log building with four dark windows and a planking fence with a gate at the side. This time the Stammerer did not attempt to gain entry. He approached the second window from the left and started making movements that I could not understand. I thought at first that he was drawing a rectangle round the edge of the frame. But then I heard a slight rasping sound, and I realised that the Stammerer was scraping something on the glass. Then he took some item that I could not see out of his pocket, there was a plopping sound, the glass glinted in the moonlight and came out of its frame. I realised that the Stammerer had cut it out with a glasscutter. I do not know for what purpose. He took off his redingote, carefully wrapped his strange booty in it, and set off along the street in the direction from which he had come. Now it was clear why he had let his cab go. The glass could have been broken by jolting over the cobbled surface of the road. I was obliged to part company with my driver too, following which I set off after the mark, taking every possible precaution.

As I have already written, following the evening rain it was a clear, moonlit night, and so the Stammerer’s tall figure was visible from a long distance. I followed about a hundred and fifty paces behind, for obvious reasons making no sound, and he could not have noticed me.

We walked for a terribly long time – across a bridge, then down a long street, the name of which I do not know, then past Kolanchovskaya Square and the railway station. I bruised my feet all over against the cobblestones and tore my socks, but I firmly resolved to see the job through to the end. The restless Stammerer had to be on his way home now. It was impossible to imagine that he would engage in yet another escapade while carrying such a fragile load.

However, I was not able to discover his address, which was the main purpose of the assignment that you had set, because something terrible and mysterious happened to me in Ascheulov Lane off Sretenka Street.

I had to increase my speed, because the Stammerer had disappeared round a corner and I was afraid of losing him. As a result I let my guard down somewhat and walked past a gateway without even glancing into it. However as soon as I drew level with the dark aperture, I suddenly found myself grabbed by the collar from behind with monstrous, superhuman strength, so that I was almost lifted up off the ground. There was a terrible, bloodcurdling hissing sound and a baleful, whistling voice, the very memory of which freezes the blood in my veins, uttered a word that sounded like a curse: ‘TIKUSYO!’ I would pay dearly to know what it means. The next moment a blow of terrible force came crashing down on my poor, unfortunate, dumbfounded head and consciousness mercifully abandoned me.

I came to in the gateway. According to my watch, I must have lain there unconscious for at least half an hour. I do not know what disaster befell me, but it was not a robbery – I still had my watch and wallet and all my other things. Trembling in terror, I ran as far as Sretenka Street, stopped a night cab and drove home.

Now, as I write this report to you, my feet are soaking in a basin of hot water and I have a bag of ice tied to the back of my head, where a huge lump has come up. The soles of my feet are battered and bloody, and it is highly likely that I have a severe chill. I hardly need mention my shattered nerves – I sat down to write this letter to you because I am afraid to go to bed. I am sure that as soon as I fall asleep I shall hear that nightmarish, hissing voice. And I am very upset about my stolen boots. They were goatskin and almost brand-new.

And so, highly respected Lieutenant-Colonel, now that you know all the details of what I have suffered, through your good services, I shall make my demand. You may, if you wish, regard it as an ultimatum.

You must give me an absolutely exhaustive explanation of the reasons why your ‘very highly placed individual’ is interested in the Stammerer, who this mysterious gentleman is and what this devilish business is all about in the first place.

Affronted and perplexed,

ZZ

12 September 1900

CHAPTER 4I. From the Newspapers

There are More Things in Heaven and Earth . . .

Non-scientific musings concerning the epidemic of suicides in Moscow

Do you believe in science and progress?

And so do I, my reader. I believe with all my heart and I am proud of the achievements of the scientific geniuses who point out to us the way ahead into the twentieth century: electric light bulbs, the cinematograph and 1000-tonne battleships.

But do you believe in wizards, hexes and evil spirits?

Why, naturally, you do not, otherwise you would not be reading our enlightened newspaper, but the spiritualist Puzzle or A Glimpse into the Abyss. And if I, Lavr Zhemailo, were to tell you that the devil really does exist, you would think that your humble servant, who has been doggedly tracking one of the most dangerous secret societies of the century, has succumbed to the influence of mystical spells or lost his mind and any day now he will find himself a patient in the Bozheninka psychological clinic or, even worse, will soap up a rope and follow the example of the subjects of his own sombre articles.

There are rumours creeping round Moscow. Sinister, exciting, intoxicating, seductive rumours. In society drawing rooms, in artistic salons, where cultured individuals take tea, there is a great battle taking place between the materialists and mystics. People argue loudly, until their voices grow hoarse. Or, if there are children in the house, they argue in whispers, but no less furiously. The mystics would seem to be gaining the upper hand, and the mysterious word ‘Signs’ is now heard more and more often.

Even those who have never before taken an interest in poetry declaim the nebulous verse of suicides that speaks of emissaries in white cloaks, howling Beasts and Tsareviches who bring death.

This is frightening, very frightening. But it is even more interesting!

Has Death herself, in full regalia, complete with scythe and shroud, really taken to stalking the streets of our peaceful city, glancing into faces and marking her own with some secret sign? Or perhaps these are merely amusing pranks played by the Devil (whose name must not be mentioned after dark)?

I have amused you, you are smiling. And you are right to smile. The key to this box of tricks is far simpler than that.

The wasting disease of obscurantism has infected people’s minds and hearts. The brains of those who have contracted this terrible plague eagerly soak in the vapours of darkness and they gaze intently into the gloom, seeking for ‘Signs’, ready to accept anything strange or inexplicable as an invitation to throw themselves into the icy embrace of Her Majesty Death.

And then, glancing at the clouds at sunset, it is quite possible to see in them the silhouette of a gallows tree, as happened to sixteen-year-old F., who apparently had no connection with the ‘Lovers of Death’ (see the article ‘Death of a Schoolboy’ in our issue of 9 September); some listen with bated breath to the howling of the night wind in the chimney or shudder when they see a word that rhymes with death. Never before has the Old Capital known such an orgy of suicides as in recent days. Three yesterday, two the day before yesterday, four the day before that – and that does not include the ones who were saved, who probably number ten times more!

Five foolish young women have already poisoned themselves, following the example of Lorelei Rubinstein, who is unlikely to be lying easy in her grave as she is showered with curses by the unfortunate families of the girls who have died.

Yes, of course, in rational terms I understand very well that this is all a matter of the psychological malaise of modern society. But my God, how greatly I am tempted to repeat after the Prince of Denmark: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy!’

Indeed there probably are. For death, gentlemen, is no chimera or magic trick, but a scientifically established fact. From the point of view of physics it is an inexplicable loss of energy which, as far as I can recall from my grammar-school studies, directly contradicts the law of its conservation. Where does the vital energy really disappear to at the moment of death? Can it not return in some changed or transformed guise? What if there is some natural anomaly involved here? What if there is some invisible but entirely real cloud of death-dealing energy hovering over Moscow?

Has this really never happened before? Have not entire cities perished for reasons unknown, as if they were deprived of the very source of life? Ancient Babylon, Athens and Rome suffered decline and desolation. Historians blame a barbarian invasion, economic decline or spiritual crisis. But what if there is a different explanation for everything? Any ancient and populous city, in which hundreds of thousands and millions of people have left this life over the long centuries, is veritably choking in the tight embrace of graves and burial grounds. Dead bones are everywhere; in the graveyards, on the beds of the rivers, under the foundations of the houses, under the feet of people in the streets. The air is thick and oppressive with the final breaths of those who have died and the bursts of vital energy released. Does not the country dweller feel this asphyxiation when he first finds himself in the ancient capital and breathes in its vapours?

If we take all the inhabitants of Moscow over seven centuries, there will be far more dead than alive. You and I are in the minority, ladies and gentlemen. So is it really surprising that some, indeed, many of us feel drawn to join the majority? The focus of energy is there, not here.

Scientists will say that I am talking nonsense. Very possibly. But a hundred or two hundred years ago, invisible magnetism and electricity seemed like witchcraft to the precursors of our all-wise academics, and the sight of an automobile would have absolutely terrified them, not to mention X-rays or moving pictures. Who can tell, respected doctors and masters of science, perhaps the twentieth century will discover other forms of energy that our sense organs and imperfect instruments are not capable of detecting?

It is for the future to answer.

As for the modest reporter Zhemailo, who can see the future no more clearly than you can, you may rest assured, respected Courierreaders, that your humble servant will remain on the trail of the ‘Lovers of Death’, and henceforth you will be the first to learn of all my new observations and discoveries.

Lavr Zhemailo

Moscow Courier, 13 (26)

September 1900, p.2

II. From Columbine’s Diary

Unpredictable and capricious

I still do not know what he wants with me. He is certainly not trying to court me, and yet we spend quite a lot of time together. Supposedly I am helping him investigate the circumstances of poor Ophelia’s death and at the same time all the other mysterious events connected with our club.

But sometimes I have the feeling that he is simply taking care of me, like some simple-minded, stupid provincial girl who has suddenly found herself in the big city. Perhaps I am a provincial, but I am not stupid and certainly not simple-minded. I am no longer the person I used to be. I have come to understand perfectly well these ordinary, boring people with their ordinary, boring concerns, which means that I myself have ceased to be ordinary and boring.

And yet I am glad of his tutelage. I have nothing to busy myself with during the day, and the evening meetings do not last for very long: three or four volunteers try their luck at the roulette wheel, and that is the end of it. Since that first evening when Genji won, no one else has landed on the skull, although Caliban, for instance, never misses a single evening. I shall describe my own attempt of the day before yesterday. It took me a long time to prepare myself for it, and the six that I was granted was simply insulting, if you really think about it! Measured according to the values of a pack of cards, it means that for Death I am the lowest card of all. But the most monstrous thing (which I did not write about before) is that what I felt when I failed was not disappointment, but intense, keen, absolutely shameful relief. I am clearly not yet ready.

After the departure of the Lioness of Ecstasy, for a short while I was the only woman in the club. I have already described the two new female aspirants briefly, but it turns out that I was too indulgent towards them. They are absolute nonentities! And while Iphigenia is tolerable, because she understands her own limitations, the second one, Gorgon, is always acting like a queen, straining to be the centre of attention. She is often successful, but in a less flattering sense than she would wish.

Goat-hoofed Kriton, naturally, started paying his attentions to both of them immediately – I heard him pontificating to Iphigenia about the naturalness of nudity. But of course, it was Prospero who gathered the pollen from these young blossoms: three days ago he told Gorgon to stay, and yesterday the rosy-cheeked fool. What is really strange is that I did not feel even slightly jealous. I have come to the conclusion that matters of carnal sensuality are not really of interest to me. A further proof of this came the day before yesterday, when Prospero suddenly took me by the hand after the game and led me after him.

I went. Why not? Alas, the magic was not repeated. In general, the whole business turned out rather stupidly. He lay me down on the bearskin again, blindfolded me and spent a long time running a cold, wet brush over my body (it turned out later that he was drawing magical signs in Chinese ink – I barely managed to wash them off). It tickled, and several times I gave way and giggled. The physiological part of the ritual was completed very quickly.

In general, I feel more and more persuaded that the ‘raptures of sensuality’ which Russian writers mention in such vague terms and ‘les plaisirs de la chair’¹ which are described in much greater detail in modern French literature, are just one more piece of make-believe, invented by humanity to romanticise the onerous obligation to continue the race. It’s just like cognac. I recall, when I was little, I used to dream that when I grew up I would drink cognac too – Papa took such great pleasure in taking a glass before dinner in the evening. One day I plucked up my courage, moved a chair over to the sideboard, climbed up on it, picked up the carafe and took a sip out of it . . . I think that was the moment when I realised how much pretence there is in people. To this day I find the very sight of cognac revolting. How can anyone voluntarily drink that acrid muck? It would seem to be exactly the same with physiological love. I am sure that what gave Papa pleasure was not the cognac itself, but the ritual: Sunday, a grand dinner, the crystal carafe glinting, the anticipation of a leisurely, relaxed evening. The same applies to the act of love: everything that precedes it is so captivating that one can forgive the meaningless and shameful nature of the act itself, which fortunately does not last for long.

(I shall have to cross this paragraph out later – not because of the boldness of the ideas, that is really rather good – but it has turned out much too childish somehow. I shall dwell on the physiology in some other place, in greater detail and with less naivety.)

I think that Prospero noticed my disappointment – when we parted he had a thoughtful, perhaps even bewildered look. But his parting words were beautiful: ‘Go and dissolve into the night.’ I immediately felt like some creature of fantasy, a true phantom of the night. As I walked along the boulevard my steps were light and ethereal.

Even so, I am no longer a helpless puppet in his hands. Prospero’s power over me is no longer absolute, his enchantment has weakened.

But why am I trying to be cunning with myself ? It is not that the enchantment has weakened, it is just that Prospero no longer occupies my mind as much as he did before. It is not simply because I do not know how to keep myself occupied that I spend so much time with Genji. He intrigues me. Sometimes we say nothing for a long while, like yesterday in the coffee shop. But at other times we make conversation on the most surprising topics. Although he is taciturn, Genji is an engaging conversation partner. And a useful one, too, there are many things to be learned from him.

But what I really cannot stand about him is his vain male gallantry. Today I tried once again to make him accept the obvious: ‘How can you be so blind, with your stupid materialism and your attempts to find a rational explanation for everything? Our world is a little spot of light, surrounded on all sides by darkness. And a myriad eyes watch us keenly from out of that darkness. Mighty hands guide our actions, pulling on invisible strings. We will never manage to understand this mechanism. Your attempts to anatomise the Signs from the Beyond are simply laughable!’

Instead of replying, he said: ‘That is a very p-pretty dress, Mademoiselle Columbine, it suits you very well.’

The dress I was wearing really was rather good: light-blue silk with Brussels lace – at first glance entirely conventional, but with little bells sewn to the cuffs and bottom flounce, so that every movement is accompanied by a faint, gentle ringing sound – it is my own invention. However, this compliment paid so out of place made me angry.

‘Don’t you dare talk to me like some empty-headed idiot!’ I exclaimed. ‘What an appalling masculine manner!’

He smiled: ‘Those could be the words of a suffragette. But I thought you were giddy Columbine, a plaything in the hands of the wicked Harlequin.’

I blushed. I believe I did tell him something of the sort early in our acquaintance. How provincial! I would never utter such simpering banalities now. And yet only two weeks have gone by. Why have I changed so quickly?

Evidently the reason is that there is always someone dying close by, very close by. Death himself is circling round me smoothly and gracefully, and with every day the circles grow narrower. And Genji still talks about an investigation!

He is terribly secretive and tells me almost nothing. I don’t know his real name or what he does for a living. I think he’s an engineer – in any case he’s very interested in technical novelties and he becomes very lively when the subject of self-propelled carriages and motorbicycles comes up.

What do I really know about him? He has lived abroad for ten years, moving from one country to another. He makes only short visits to Russia – for some reason he is not on good terms with the Moscow authorities. He told me he had to change his flat because Masa spotted someone following them almost right in front of their very building. The Japanese dealt with the police agent rather roughly, because he cannot stand their kind ever since he was a bandit in his youth. They had to move out of Ascheulov Lane, which is only five minutes’ walk from Prospero’s house, to the Spassky Barracks on the other side of Sukharevka Street, where one of the officer’s flats happened to be free.

If I try to get any details out of him, he replies evasively, and I can never tell if he is talking seriously or making fun of me.

Columbine raised her eyes from her diary to look at the window and chewed thoughtfully on her pen. What would be the best way to describe today’s meeting in the cafй Rivoli?

She had arrived very late. That is, she had actually arrived before the agreed time and then strolled up and down on the opposite side of the street. She had seen Genji go into the cafй, and then spent another half-hour inspecting the shop windows. Arriving for an engagement on time was mauvais ton, a provincial habit that had to be extirpated. Just to be on the safe side, she had kept her eyes on the door. If he got bored of waiting and decided to leave, she would have to walk up and pretend that she had only just arrived.

I suppose I must look rather strange, thought Columbine: an extravagantly dressed young woman just standing here with nothing to do, like Lot’s wife transformed into a pillar of salt. She looked around and noticed that she was indeed being stared at by a youth wearing a check jacket and a ridiculous straw boater with a silk ribbon. He licked his lips impertinently (a gold tooth glinted in his mouth). At least he didn’t wink. He had obviously taken her for a cocotte. Well, let him. If not for the persistent attention of the young pup, she would have kept Genji languishing for longer.

He didn’t appear to be languishing, though. He was sitting there quite calmly, reading the newspapers. He didn’t utter a single word of reproach to Columbine for being late and he ordered her a cup of hot chocolate and cakes. He himself was drinking white wine.

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

He was dismayed by this judgement.

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

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

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

She winced eloquently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What is it?’ she asked cautiously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Stay,’ he ordered her.

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

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

And serve him right.

Friday is a special day

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

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

Before breakfast she performed her usual morning exercise to teach her soul not to be afraid of death. She went out on to the balcony, opened the cast-iron gate that led into emptiness and stood right on the very edge, listening to the rapid beating of her heart. The sounds coming up from the street had an eloquently hollow echo, the windows opposite her shimmered with tremulous patches of light, and below her the angel captured by Mцbius and Sons stood with its wings spread wide.

Then came the day, empty and meaningless – a pause, a drawing-in of breath, the silence before the velvet curtains of the night parted. But in the early evening Columbine’s keen hearing caught the distant sounds of a mystical orchestra, discordant as yet, but already magical, and she simply could not stay at home any longer.

As she walked along the purple streets with her heels clattering, the sweetly alarming sounds of the overture came drifting towards her and with every step the thunderous melody became clearer and clearer.

Columbine was prepared for anything, and as a sign of her resolution she had dressed herself in the colours of mourning. The meek schoolgirl, seeking to comprehend the secrets of death, had put on a modest black dress with a narrow white collar and a lilac apron with a mourning border, she had woven her hair into two vestal plaits and drawn them together with a crimson ribbon.

She walked unhurriedly, thinking about beautiful things. About how Friday was a special day, forever soaked in the blood of the dreamy and starry-eyed Pierrot, whom the cruel Harlequins had nailed to planks of wood nineteen centuries before. Because the scarlet drops would not dry up, but kept oozing out and dribbling down the cross, shimmering and glittering in the sun, the fifth day of the week was filled with a deceptive, flickering gleam of calamity.

From the boulevard Columbine turned into a sidestreet, and there the overture came to an end, and she heard the first solo aria of this ominous opera – an aria so absurdly comical that the dreamer very nearly laughed out loud. For a moment she imagined that the night had played a joke on her by inviting her to a tragedy and instead staging a farce.

Standing there on the pavement under a streetlamp, about ten steps away from Prospero’s house, was a shabby old organ grinder wearing a red fez and spectacles with blue lenses. He was furiously turning the handle of his squeaky instrument and bawling out a stupid little song at the top of his tuneless voice – it must have been his own composition.

Oh, barrel-barrel organ,

The road leads ever on.

Who can tell this poor boy

Where his happiness has gone?

There were many couplets, but most of the song consisted of a repeated refrain, uncouth doggerel, like all the other verses. The tin-plated throat repeated it over and over again:

Spin the lacquered handle

But it won’t bring happiness.

No amount of twirling will give me back my Beth!

No amount of twirling will give me back my Beth!

No amount of twirling will give me back my Beth!

Columbine stood and listened for a minute or two, then burst into loud laughter, tossed the amusing old man a coin and thought: a pessimist like that – and a poet too – really ought to join us ‘lovers’.

‘Today we shall spin the Wheel of Death for the last time,’ the Doge announced to the assembled company. ‘And if a Chosen One is not named yet again, I shall invent a new ritual.’

First Caliban and then Rosencrantz threw the little gold ball, and both were rejected by Death.

‘I know what the trouble is,’ said Cyrano, wrinkling up his monumental nose. ‘The ambulance carriage that brought Prince Genji back to life is to blame for everything. It stole Death’s betrothed from under the very wedding wreath, so to speak. And now the Great Lady has taken offence at our roulette wheel. So help me, Genji, you ought to drink poison again. You’re the reason the roulette wheel is being stubborn.’

Someone laughed at this audacious joke. Genji smiled politely, but Prospero looked so unhappy that Columbine felt sorry for him.

‘No, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘Let me try my luck! If Death is offended with men, then perhaps a woman will be lucky? After all, the Tsarevich summoned the Lioness of Ecstasy!’

Once she said it, she felt frightened. What if she did land on the skull? Her presentiment, and her funeral garb both pointed to the same thing.

She strode up to the table very quickly, to give herself no time to imagine the possible consequences, grabbed the little ball and prepared to throw it.

At that very moment the last of the ‘lovers’, Gdlevsky, who was late, walked, or rather, came rushing into the room like a tornado. His ruddy face with the first timid fluff of a moustache was glowing with happiness and delight.

‘I have it!’ he shouted from the doorway. ‘I have the third Sign! And precisely on a Friday! The third Friday in a row! Do you hear, do you hear what he is singing?’ Gdlevksy pointed triumphantly at the window, through which only a minute earlier they could hear the wheezing of the barrel organ and the hoarse howling of the old man. ‘Did you hear what he was singing? “No amount of twirling will give me back my Beth”! And over and over again!’

But now, as if to spite him, the organ grinder had fallen silent. And apart from Columbine, none of the aspirants seemed to have bothered to listen to the refrain of the idiotic little song, so Gdlevsky’s announcement caused general bewilderment.

‘What Beth? What is she spinning?’ Kriton asked in amazement. ‘What are you talking about, young man?’

‘The barrel organ,’ Gdlevsky explained agitatedly. ‘But that’s not important at all. The important thing is the rhyme: Beth – death. It’s the Sign! No doubt about it! The third Sign! I’ve been chosen, chosen!’

‘Wait, wait!’ the Doge asked with a frown. ‘You’re imagining things! Where is this organ grinder?’

Everyone dashed to the window, but the street was deserted, with not a soul to be seen. The old man had dissolved into the thickening darkness.

Without saying a word, Genji turned and walked quickly out into the hallway.

Everyone turned to look at the schoolboy again. Rosencrantz, who did not understand Russian very well, asked his brother: ‘Was bedeutet twirling?’²

There was obvious envy in the glance that he cast at Gdlevsky.

‘Why him? Why this young pup?’ Caliban groaned. ‘What makes him any better than me? How can you call this fair! Doge, you promised!’

The Doge flung up one hand angrily.

‘Quiet everyone! Boy, Death does not tolerate cheating. You are not playing fair! Yes, there was a barrel organ here for a long time, but naturally I did not listen to the song. Perhaps he did sing a word that rhymes with “death”, but there are many words in a song, not just one. Why did you decide to pick out “Beth”. You’re as bad as Rosencrantz with his fruit drink.’

Rosencrantz flushed. A few days earlier he had also come running in beaming with pride and said he was now Death’s Chosen One, because he had been sent a clear and unmistakable Sign. When he was eating supper in Alyabev’s restaurant on Petrovka Street, just before he finished his meal, he had been given a carafe of something bloody red ‘on the house’. When he asked what it was, the waiter had ‘smiled mysteriously’ and said: ‘You know, it’s Mors.’³ Rosencrantz had darted out of the room without finishing his supper and run all the way to Prospero’s house.

The mention of the Mors was greeted with laughter, but Gdlevsky was not even slightly disconcerted.

‘No cheating. It’s a Friday again, gentlemen, the third in a row. I didn’t sleep all night, I knew it would happen! I didn’t go to my lessons. I’ve been walking the streets since this morning, waiting for the Sign. Listening to conversations that I came across by chance, reading posters and signboards. I have played entirely fair, been absolutely honest! On the Arbat I saw a signboard that said “Aron Speth, Hardware and Ironmongery”. I’ve walked past there a hundred times and never noticed that shop before. It simply took my breath away. That’s it, I thought! What sort of absurd name is that? Names like that don’t even exist. Speth – death, it’s so obvious! But I wanted to make certain, so that there couldn’t possibly be any doubt. If it had ended on Speth, that would have been it, but the last word was “ironmongery”. Iron-mongery – what on earth rhymes with that? So it was no good, and I walked on by. And I had such a desolate feeling. No, I thought, I’m not a Chosen One, I’m the same as all the rest. On my way here I was almost crying. Then suddenly I turn the corner and I hear “give me back my Beth, give me back my Beth, give me back my Beth”. Three times, gentlemen, three times on the third Friday. First I hit on the word “breath” by sheer chance, and then I opened a book at Macbeth, and now this name, “Beth”. What could possibly be any clearer? And even if it is a proper name, what does that matter! What are you all staring at?’ the schoolboy asked with a sardonic laugh. ‘Do you envy me? I’m the Chosen One, not you! It’s me, the very youngest! So what if I am young? I’m a genius, I could have been a new Lermontov. Death chooses the best, not the worst. First Lorelei, and then me. And anyway, I couldn’t give a damn for Lermontov! Or for the whole world, or for all of you! Spin your roulette wheel, titillate your wretched nerves. The only thing I have to say to you is “adieu”. The Princess has chosen me! Me, not you!’

He looked round defiantly at everyone with his inflamed eyes and walked out, still laughing triumphantly.

‘Stop! Come back immediately!’ Prospero shouted after him.

In vain.

‘What this Lermontov deserves is a good box on the ear,’ Horatio declared pensively, stroking his Van Dyke beard.

White with fury, Caliban brandished his clenched fist.

‘Impudent, cocky, puffed-up little polack! How dare he compare himself with Lermontov! The impostor!’

‘Lermontov was impudent and cocky too,’ Cyrano remarked. ‘It will be a pity if the boy does anything stupid. He really is exceptionally talented. Lermontov was killed by someone else, but this one wants to climb into the grave himself.’

They left feeling subdued, in fact almost crushed.

Columbine had an uneasy, wretched feeling now, not at all like the one she had had before the meeting as she walked slowly through the evening streets. The stupid, arrogant boy, she thought. Prospero is absolutely right. How can the ludicrous croakings of a hoarse tramp be taken for a Sign from the Eternal Bride? And he’s sure to kill himself, he won’t back down, if only out of pride. And what a loss that would be for Russian literature, which had already lost its most gifted poetess only a few days earlier!

Columbine stopped on the boulevard, feeling that she couldn’t simply walk home and go to bed as if nothing had happened

Gdlevsky had to be stopped. By any means, at any price!

But how? What could she do?

She knew his address. One day shortly after she became a member, Gdlevsky had told her that his parents lived in Kolomna, but he had transferred to a Moscow grammar school for the final year of study, and he rented a room in Kleinfeld’s apartments on Maslovka Street. The boy had been terribly proud of the fact that he lived on his own, like a grown-up.

Well what if she did go to his place, then what? Why would he listen to Columbine if Prospero himself had been unable to stop him? Now even the Doge carried no authority for him. Why, of course not, Gdlevsky was a ‘Chosen One’, a ‘genius’!

What should she do?

The answer came to mind quickly.

Among the ‘lovers’ there was only one man capable of stopping the crazed poet doing something foolhardy. Even by force, if necessary. Genji! Of course, he always knew what to do. How unfortunate that he had gone out and not heard the schoolboy’s monologue right to the end!

She had to go to see Genji immediately, without wasting a moment. She just hoped he would be at home. Gdlevsky would not kill himself until he had written his farewell poem, so she might be in time.

She knew the Japanese prince’s approximate address. Hadn’t Genji told her he had moved from Ascheulov Lane to the officers’ building at the Spassky Barracks?

The cabdriver delivered the agitated young lady to Spasskaya-Sadovaya Street and pointed to a long building painted official pale yellow. ‘That’s it, the officers’ block.’

But it proved difficult to find the right room, because she did not know the tenant’s name. Columbine described Genji in detail to the doorkeeper, not forgetting to mention the stammer and the grey temples. She said she’d put his card somewhere and couldn’t find it, that she had a terrible memory for names – she could remember addresses, but names eluded her. She needed to see the gentleman she had described on a matter of the utmost urgency. The black-bearded doorkeeper heard her out without saying a word and, of course, he didn’t believe her. He looked the agitated girl over from head to toe, chewed on his lips and declared.

‘How do we know, perhaps His Excellency will give us the rough side of his tongue for a visit like this. This is a barracks, young lady, strangers aren’t allowed.’

‘His Excellency!’ So there was no mistake, Genji hadn’t deceived her and he did live here. Columbine was so delighted that she wasn’t even offended by the insulting remark. Let Blackbeard think that she was some kind of impertinent admirer or demi-mondaine – what difference did that make?

Columbine had mastered very well the lesson in dealing with the tribe of yard keepers and doorkeepers that she had once learned from Genji.

‘No, he won’t,’ she said confidently. ‘He’ll reward you for it. And meanwhile, take this.’

And she handed the attendant a rouble.

Cerberus immediately stopped growling and started wagging his tail. He put the banknote away in his peaked cap and told her: ‘All sorts come to see His Excellency. Even Khitrovka bandit types – not up to Your Grace’s standard. His Excellency is staying in the apartment of his friend Lieutenant-Colonel Smolyaninov. On a temporary basis. His Honour Mr Lieutenant-Colonel is in China at present, but we have orders always to let his friend stay for as long as he likes. And his name is Mr Neimless. Erast Petrovich. That’s him.’

‘Erast Petrovich Neimless?’ Columbine repeated the strange name and then could not resist asking: ‘But why do you call him “His Excellency”?’

‘We have a well-practised eye for a real gentlemen, even if he calls himself Ragamuffinov. Only you’ve wasted your time in coming, young lady, Mr Neimless is out, he hasn’t come back home yet. His valet is home though.’

‘The Japanese?’ Columbine asked, to make sure. ‘Masa?’

‘Masail Mitsuevich,’ the attendant corrected her sternly. ‘A most particular gentleman. Would you like to see him?’

‘I would, Since Erast . . . e-e-er . . . Petrovich is not here.’

‘By all means. My wife will show you how to get there. Fenya! Fenya! Show this young lady the way!’ the doorman shouted, turning towards the open door of the porter’s lodge. There was no answer.

‘She must have gone out. And I didn’t even notice,’ Blackbeard said in surprise. ‘Well, never mind, you won’t go astray. Walk along the wall, and when you turn the corner, the steps and porch are right there.’

The porch was quickly found, but when she knocked no one answered. Eventually Columbine’s patience ran out – after all, every minute was vital – and she angrily smashed her open palm against the door, which opened with a creak; it hadn’t been locked after all. A moment later the visitor was already in the small, spartan hallway, where the coat stand was hung with military greatcoats and civilian coats, as well as various belts, whips, bridles and other assorted horse tackle.

‘Masa, where are you?’ Columbine called. ‘I’ve come on urgent business. Will Mr Neimless be back soon?’

She heard rustling sounds and whispering behind a door decorated with a poster of French cancan dancers. Angry now, Columbine moved resolutely towards the sound, jerked the door open and froze.

The Japanese was standing there in his shirt front and cuffs, but with no trousers, helping a lady of ample dimensions who was much taller than him squeeze into a calico skirt. The effect produced by the unexpected visitor’s appearance was dramatic. The well-endowed lady squealed and squatted down, covering her impressive breasts with her hands, but Mr Neimless’s amazing valet set his plump hands against his thighs and bowed in ceremonial fashion.

‘What business, Corumbine-san?’ he asked on straightening up. ‘Urgen’-urgen’ or simpry urgen’?’

‘Urgent-urgent,’ she replied, trying not to look at the fat woman with no clothes on or the hairless legs of the Japanese, although this was not the moment for conventional propriety. ‘We need to go and rescue someone immediately, or something dreadful will happen. Where is your master?’

Masa knitted his sparse eyebrows, thought for a moment and declared decisively: ‘Masta not here. And terephone not ring. I rescue zis someone.’ He bowed to his lady love, who had not yet recovered from her state of shock, and pushed her towards the door. ‘Vewy gratefuw, Fenya-san, prease remember us kindry.’

Fenya (evidently the same woman who had not responded to the doorman’s call) grabbed her shoes, blouse and stockings and shot out of the door. Columbine turned away so that the Oriental could finish getting dressed.

A minute later they were already hurrying towards the gates, with Masa working his short legs so briskly that his companion could hardly keep up with him.

They rode in a cab for a long time, then they had to search for the Kleinfeld apartments in the dark, until eventually they found the grey, three-storey house opposite the Petrovsky Park. As befitted a poet, Gdlevsky rented a room on the attic floor.

As they walked up the stairs (the Japanese leading and Columbine following) she kept repeating: ‘If only we’re in time, if only we’re in time.’

The door was locked and no one opened it when they knocked.

‘Shall I go down to get the yard keeper?’ Columbine asked in a trembling voice.

‘No need. Stand aside a rittur, Corumbine-san.’

She stepped back. The Japanese uttered a peculiar abdominal sound, leapt up in the air and struck the door a terrifyingly powerful blow with his foot, sending it flying off its hinges with a crash.

They dashed to the room, their shoulders colliding in the narrow corridor.

The first thing that Columbine noticed in the twilight was the rectangle of the wide-open window. And she caught a pungent, strangely familiar smell. It was the smell the butchers’ stalls had when she was still a child and the cook Frosya used to take her to the market to buy offal and intestines for the home-made sausage.

‘Yes, was very urgen’, absorutery urgen’,’ Masa sighed. He struck a match and lit a kerosene lamp.

Columbine cried out.

The poet was lying on his front, with his face in a large, gleaming puddle. She saw the light-brown hair on the back of his head, soaked in blood, the arms flung out impotently.

They were too late!

What a terrible hurry he was in, Columbine thought.

She turned away with a shudder and saw a sheet of paper on the table, beside the lamp. Walking across to it on leaden legs, she read the lines of regular, even writing, without a single slip of the pen.

The curtains swayed to and fro,

Brocade whispering my name.

The candle on the bureau

Choked out its own dim flame.

The fingers of some dark shades

Have plucked some invisible string.

Could she really have espied

My icon lamp’s flickering?

Will this morbid dream of strife

Surrender in joy to Death?

Will the candle flame of life

Be snuffed by her virginal breath?

Not the death of whom we write,

In the daily prose of our time,

But the Other, in whom we delight

As the Mistress of our rhyme.

‘Oh God,’ she groaned. ‘Why was he in such a great hurry?’

‘To get away quickry, before he noticed,’ Masa replied, with his face almost touching the dead man. Then he stuck his head out of the window. ‘He did job and wen back ou’.’

‘Who went?’ Columbine sobbed. ‘Where did he go? What are you talking about?’

Masa’s answer came as a shock.

‘Ze kirrer. Came in by fire radder, broke his skull and crimb back ou’.’

‘What killer? Gdlevsky killed himself! Ah yes, you don’t know anything about it!’

‘Himself ?’ Masa picked up the piece of iron pipe. ‘Rike zat?’ He took off his bowler hat and pretended to hit himself on the back of the head. ‘Rike zat very difficur’, Columbinesan. No, young man was sitting at tabur. Someone crimbed in window. Young man frightened, ran towards door. Kirrer catch him and hit him on back of head with pipe.’

He squatted down beside the body and poked about in the bloody mess with his fingers. Columbine grabbed hold of the edge of the table as the room suddenly swam before her eyes.

‘Skurr smashed to smi-the-reens,’ said the Japanese, clearly savouring the impressive word. ‘Very, very strong kirrer. No many so strong. That good. Wirr be easier for masta to find him.’

Columbine was still struggling to recover from this new shock. Gdlevsky hadn’t committed suicide? Someone had killed him? But who? What for? It was ludicrous, insane!

‘We have to send for the police!’ she muttered.

The only thing she wanted was to get out of that room with its fresh smell of slaughter as soon as possible.

‘I’ll do it. I’ll go down to the yard keeper!’

Masa shook his head.

‘No, Corumbine-san. First ze masta. Ret him rook. Porice rater. Wait here. I go rook for terephone.’

He was gone for about twenty minutes, and those were the worst twenty minutes of Columbine’s life. That was what she thought as she stood at the window, looking out at the lights shining beyond the black bulk of the Petrovsky Park. She was afraid to turn round.

When she heard a light rustling sound behind her, she squeezed her eyes shut and cringed, pulling her head down into her shoulders. She imagined Gdlevsky’s corpse getting up off the floor, turning its shattered head and walking towards the window with its hands reaching out. There is nothing worse than standing with your back to an unknown danger. Columbine squealed and swung round.

It would have been better if she hadn’t.

Gdlevsky had not got up off the floor, he was still lying there, face down, but his hair was moving in a strange manner. Columbine looked closer and saw two mice crawling about in the wound and sniffing at it.

Choking on her own scream, she dashed to the door, flew out on to the stairs and ran into Masa on his way back up.

‘I rang from night chemist’s,’ he reported. ‘Masta at home. He come now. He very gratefuw to you, Corumbine-san. You can go home. I must be here, cannot see you to cab. Zis is unforgivabur.’ And the Japanese bowed guiltily.

God, how she ran to get away from those cursed Kleinfeld apartments! She ran all the way to Triumphal Square before she found a night cab.

When she had caught her breath and gathered her thoughts a little, she started pondering on the meaning of what had happened. The meaning proved to be simple, clear and frightening.

Since Gdlevsky had not killed himself but been killed (Masa had proved that irrefutably), there was only one creature that could have done it – if, of course, you could call this force a creature. No one had climbed into the attic window from the fire ladder. It was not someone, but Something that had entered the room. That was the explanation for a blow of such monstrous, superhuman power.

‘Death is alive,’ Columbine repeated to herself, gazing with wide-open eyes at the cabdriver’s stooped back.

The creature that went by the name of Death could walk round the city, look into windows, strike blows of fearsome power. It could love and hate, it could feel insulted.

How Gdlevsky had insulted Death was clear. The arrogant boy had declared himself her Chosen One, when he had no right to that title, he had arbitrarily invented Signs that did not really exist. He was a genuine impostor, and for that he had suffered the fate of impostors.

The sheer grandeur of what had happened set her trembling.

Columbine meekly handed the driver the extortionate sum of two roubles, although the journey should have cost seventy-five kopecks at the most.

She didn’t remember walking upstairs to the fifth floor, but as she was taking off her lilac mourning apron, a small rectangle of thick white paper fell out of the pocket. She picked it up absentmindedly and read the single word written on it in beautiful Gothic letters: ‘Liebste’⁴.

At first she smiled, imagining that shy Rosencrantz had finally plucked up the courage to take decisive action. But then she remembered that the German had not come near her even once during the whole evening, so he couldn’t possibly have slipped the note into her pocket.

But who had written it? And why in German?

In German, Death was a male noun – der Tod.

‘So now my turn has come,’ Columbine said to her reflection in the mirror.

The reflection’s lips smiled, its eyes staring in wild fright.

Columbine opened her diary and tried to describe her feelings. With a trembling hand she traced out the words: ‘Have I really been chosen? How jolly and how frightening!’

III. From the ‘Agents’ Reports’ File

To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov (Private and confidential)

Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,

I must confess that your note, delivered this morning by courier, came as a great shock to me. I already knew about the murder of Gdlevsky, because even before your messenger arrived I had a visit from one of the ‘lovers’ who was absolutely shattered by the incredible news. My initial response to your request to provide the detective police with every possible assistance was intense indignation. I decided that you had lost all sense of proportion and wished to reduce me to the status of a petty informer from Khitrovka.

However, after I had calmed down a little, I took a slightly different point of view of the matter. A genuine tragedy had occurred. A young man with an immense talent that promised great things – perhaps as great as Lermontov or Pushkin – had been killed at the age of eighteen, before he could make any substantial contribution to Russian literature. A few brilliant poems will find their way into anthologies and collections, but that will be the poor youth’s entire legacy. What a bitter, senseless loss! If Gdlevsky had laid hands on himself, as he was planning to do, that would have been a tragedy, but his murder is worse than tragic. It is a national disgrace. It is the duty of every patriot who holds dear the honour of Russia to do everything in his power to assist in clarifying this shameful affair. Yes, yes, I regard myself as a true Russian patriot, it is well known that the most sincere and passionate patriots are always drawn from the national minorities (to which you and I belong).

And so I have decided to do everything in my power to assist your colleagues from the police. Having analysed the information that you provided about the circumstances of the crime, I was struck by the following.

It is not clear why anyone would wish to murder a person who intended in any case to kill himself only a minute or an hour later.

And if someone did resort to murder for some purpose or other, then why did they not disguise the crime as a voluntary death? Nobody would ever have thought of suspecting foul play when the farewell poem had already been written.

The first explanation that comes to mind is coincidence – just as Gdlevsky was preparing to commit suicide (you wrote that he had a loaded pistol ready in the drawer of his desk), a robber who knew nothing about the young man’s fatal intentions climbed in through his window and hit him over the head with a length of metal pipe. A cruel joke played by fate. You write that the police regard this account of events as the most likely and ask my opinion.

I do not know what answer to give.

I think it might well interest you to know how the members of the club regard what has happened. Naturally, the story has made a very grave impression on everyone. The predominant feeling is fear, and fear of a mystical nature. Everyone is terribly frightened. No one mentions the idea of a robber who happened to climb in through the window. The general opinion is that Gdlevsky angered the Goddess with his boundless presumption, and she smashed his arrogant head to pieces. ‘No one should dare try to lure the Eternal Bride to the altar by deceit,’ is how our chairman expressed his own response.

As you know, I am a materialist and refuse to believe in the work of the Devil or evil spirits. I would sooner believe in the coincidental burglar. Only, if it was a burglar, why was he carrying a piece of metal pipe? And furthermore, you write that nothing was taken from the flat. Of course, it is possible to find an explanation for everything. We could assume that he took the weapon with him just in case, simply for use as a threat. And he didn’t steal anything because he took fright at what he had done and fled. Well, that is certainly possible.

In any case, I am well aware that you asked for my opinion largely out of politeness, remembering my rebuke about airs and graces, and what you actually require are observations, not hypotheses. Well then, by all means.

I observed the behaviour of all the aspirants very carefully today, looking for anything suspicious or strange. Let me say straight away that I saw nothing suspicious, but I did make one astonishing discovery, which you will no doubt find interesting.

We did not play roulette today. Nobody did anything but discuss Gdlevsky’s death and what it might mean. Naturally, the general mood was alarm and agitation, everyone tried to talk louder than everyone else, and our Doge was like a captain struggling at the helm of ship that is out of control. I also made a few comments for the sake of appearances, but most of the time I observed the others’ faces keenly. Suddenly I saw Cyrano (the one whom I have referred to in previous reports as Big Nose) casually walk over to the bookshelves and run his eye over them – he seemed to do it quite absentmindedly, and yet I had the impression that he was looking for something very specific. He glanced round to make sure that no one was watching (which immediately made me even more curious), took out one of the volumes and started leafing through the pages. For some reason he looked up at the light, licked his finger and ran it over the edges of the pages. And then he even touched them with his tongue. I do not know the significance of these manipulations, but I was intrigued.

What happened next was remarkable. Cyrano put the book back in its place and turned round. I was astounded by the expression on his face – it was completely red, and his eyes were gleaming. He strolled slowly round the room, pretending to be bored, and when he reached the door, he slipped out into the hallway.

I cautiously left the room after him, expecting that now he would go out into the street and I would follow him – he really was behaving very strangely. However, Cyrano walked down the dark corridor leading into the apartment and darted into the study. I went after him without making a sound and put my ear to the door. The study can be reached by a different route – from the sitting room through the dining room, but that could have attracted attention, which Cyrano clearly wished to avoid, and I soon realised why. The reason for the entire manoeuvre was the telephone in Prospero’s study.

Cyrano twirled the handle, gave a number in a low voice – I remembered it, in case it was important: 3845. Then he put his hand across the opening of the mouthpiece and said: ‘Romuald Semyonovich? It’s me, Lavr Zhemailo. Have you put the edition to bed? Excellent! Hold it. Leave a column on the first page. About sixty lines. No, better make it ninety. I assure you, this will be a bombshell. Wait for me, I’m leaving straight away.’ His voice was trembling with excitement.

So much for Cyrano! A fine aspirant he is! And our smart alecks kept wondering how the reporter from the Courier could be so well-informed about the internal life of the club. But what a newspaperman! He has known for ages where the future suicides gather, but he carries on duping the public, pretending that he is searching incessantly, and meanwhile he has made a name for himself and also, no doubt, earned himself a tidy sum. Who had ever heard of Lavr Zhemailo even a month ago? But now he is the star of Russian journalism.

The reporter darted back out of the study so quickly that I barely managed to press myself against the wall in time. He did not notice me, because he hurried off towards the front door. The door into the study was left slightly ajar. And then something else strange happened. The opposite door – the one leading into the dining room, was also slightly ajar, but it suddenly squeaked and closed of its own accord! I swear to you that I am not making this up. There was no draught. That ominous creaking sound made me feel quiet unwell. My knees started trembling, my heart started pounding so rapidly that I was even obliged to swallow two tablets of cordinium. When I finally pulled myself together and ran out into the street after the journalist, he had already disappeared.

But then what point would there have been in following him, when it was already clear that he was going to his newspaper’s office?

I wonder what ‘bombshell’ he had in store for his readers. Never mind, we shall find that out from the morning edition of the Moscow Courier.

With every assurance of my heartfelt respect,

ZZ

17 September 1900

1. Pleasures of the flesh

2. What does twirling mean?

3. A drink made from berries, but also ‘Death’ in Latin

4. Most beloved

CHAPTER 5I. From the Newspapers

Lavr Zhemailo is Dead

Active opponent of suicide takes his own life

The world of Moscow’s newspapers has been shaken by woeful news.

Our trade has lost one of its most brilliant pens. A bright star that only recently made its appearance in the journalistic firmament has been extinguished.

The police are conducting an investigation and following every possible line of enquiry, including the possibility of a ritual execution carried out by the ‘Lovers of Death’, although it is quite clear to all those who have read Lavr Zhemailo’s brilliant articles in the Moscow Courier that the members of that secret club are in the habit of ending their own lives, not those of others. No, what happened was not a murder, but a tragedy that is in some ways even more lamentable. Our colleague took too heavy a burden upon his own shoulders, a burden that was perhaps too onerous for any mortal to bear, and that burden broke him. Now he is on the far side of that fatal dividing line, he has joined the ‘majority’ of which he wrote in his visionary article that caused such a stir, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth . . .’

We knew Lavr Zhemailo as a tireless opponent of the terrible phenomenon which many of us call ‘the plague of the twentieth century’ – the epidemic of apparently motiveless suicides that is mowing down the ranks of our educated youth. The deceased was a genuine crusader, who threw down the gauntlet to this insatiable, bloodthirsty dragon. How long is it since he came to conquer Moscow, this self-effacing reporter from Kovno who won his reputation at the provincial level and then, like many before him, moved to Russia’s Old Capital? He had to start again here, from the very bottom of the journalistic hierarchy – as a journeyman reporter, recording the petty chronicle of everyday life, describing house fires and other insignificant events. But talent always breaks through, and very soon the whole of Moscow was following with bated breath as the indefatigable journalist tracked the sinister ‘Lovers of Death’. In recent weeks Lavr Zhemailo appeared only rarely in the offices of the Courier. Our colleagues told us that his enthusiasm for the investigation was so great that he had virtually turned his entire life into a secret operation and submitted his reports only via the municipal post – no doubt he was afraid of being exposed by the ‘Lovers of Death’, or of attracting too much attention from the gentlemen of the police force. An outstanding example of a man’s genuine dedication to his profession!

Alas, the medic who seeks to treat epidemic illnesses runs the risk of contracting the plague himself. But perhaps a different comparison is appropriate here, with those devotees of the public health who quite deliberately inoculate themselves with the bacillus of some deadly ailment in order to study its infectious mechanism more closely, so that they can save others.

God only knows what turmoil ravaged our colleague’s soul on the final evening of his life. We know only one thing – he remained a journalist right up to the very last minute. The day before yesterday he phoned the makerup at the Moscow Courier, Mr Bozhovsky, and told him to hold the morning edition because he had ‘a bombshell’ for the front page.

Now we know what ‘bombshell’ the deceased had in mind – his own suicide. Well, the conclusion of Lavr Zhemailo’s career was certainly dramatic. It is only a pity that the horrific news failed to make the morning edition of the Moscow Courier. Fate played a final trick on the journalist – his body was only discovered at dawn, after the newspaper had already been printed, even though the spot he chose for his suicide was very visible – Rozhdestvensky Boulevard, which is only a stone’s throw from Trubnaya Square. The body hanging on an aspen tree really ought to have been noticed by some late passerby or the local constable, or a night cabby, especially since it was lit up by a nearby gas lamp, but it hung there until after five in the morning, when it was spotted by a street sweeper who came out to start clearing away the leaves.

Sleep well, passionate soul. We shall finish the job that you began. Our paper solemnly vows to raise the fallen banner anew and carry it forward. The demon of suicide will be banished from the streets of our Christian city. The Moscow Gazette will continue the journalistic investigation begun by our colleagues from the Courier. Watch out for our forthcoming articles.

The Editors

Moscow Gazette, 19

September (2 October) 1900,

front page

II. From Columbine’s Diary

Chosen!

After I discovered in my handbag a second card with the single word ‘Bald’¹ written in the familiar Gothic letters, absolutely no doubt remained: I have been chosen, chosen!

Yesterday’s effusive outpourings on the subject of this realisation were laughable – the cluckings of a frightened hen. I have not simply crossed them out. I have torn out the two pages. I shall insert something more appropriate later.

Later? When later, if I have been told ‘Bald’?

The short word echoes inside my head, setting it ringing. When I go out I am not myself, I stumble into people on the pavement, I feel terrified and delighted by turns. But the main feeling I have is one of pride.

Columbine has changed completely. Perhaps she is no longer Columbine at all, but the alluring Distant Princess, far beyond the reach of any simple mortal.

All other interests and contingencies have been set aside, lost all meaning. Now I have a new ritual that sets my heart trembling: in the evening, when I get back from Prospero’s house, I take out the two small white rectangles, look at them, kiss them reverently and put them away in a drawer. I am loved!

The change that has taken place in me is so great that I feel no need to conceal it. Everyone in the club knows that Death is writing notes to me, but when I am asked to show these messages I always refuse. Genji is particularly persistent. As a man of intelligence, he realises that I am not fantasising, and he is very concerned – but I do not know if his concern is really for me or for the threat to his materialist views.

I cherish these messages and will not show them to anyone, they are mine and mine alone, addressed to me and meant for my eyes only.

I behave like a real queen at our meetings now. Or if not a queen, then at least the favourite or bride of the king. I am betrothed to the Royal Bridgroom. Iphigenia and Gorgon are green with envy, Caliban hisses in spite and the Doge looks at me with the melancholy eyes of a beaten dog. He is no Prospero, no master of the spirits of the earth and the air. He is not even Harlequin. He is the same kind of Pierrot as the mummy’s boy Petya, who once turned the head of a little fool in Irkutsk with his curly locks and bombastic versicles.

The evenings at the Doge’s apartment are my triumph, my benefit performance. But there are other times when I feel weakness creeping up on me. And then I am almost overcome by doubts.

No, no, I do not doubt the authenticity of the Signs. It is a different question that torments me: am I ready? Will I not feel regret, be unwilling to leave the light for the darkness?

The outcome is always the same. Perhaps I do feel regret, but the choice will be made with no hesitation. To fall into the abyss, into the dark embrace of my mysterious, ardently desired Beloved.

After all, it is now absolutely clear that death does not exist – at least, not the kind of death that I used to imagine: non-existence, absolute blackness, nothingness. There is no death, but there is Death. His kingdom is a magical land, great, mighty and beautiful, where such great bliss and wonderful new insights await me that the mere anticipation of it sets my heart aching sweetly. Ordinary people crawl into this magical land howling in terror, whimpering and afraid, broken by fatal disease or the ravages of age, with their physical and spiritual powers exhausted. But I shall enter the halls of Death, not as some pitiful dependent, but as a precious favourite, a long-awaited guest.

Fear hinders me. But what is fear? The sharp nails with which the foolish, pitiful, treacherous flesh clutches at life in order to wheedle a respite out of fate – for a year, a week, even a minute.

Yes, I am afraid. I am very afraid. Especially of pain at the final moment. And even more afraid of the pictures painted by my cowardly brain: a hole dug in the ground, the thud of dry lumps of earth against the lid of a coffin, death-worms in eye-sockets. And there is something from my childhood, from Gogol’s Horrific Revenge: ‘In the bottomless pit the dead gnaw on the dead man, and the dead man lying under the earth grows, gnawing on his own bones in terrible torment and shaking the ground horrifyingly.’

Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.

‘It’s time for me to go’

They argued heatedly, trying to shout each other down.

‘The place where the meetings are held is an open secret,’ the anatomist Horatio declared. ‘Cyrano must have given the address to his editors! I wouldn’t be surprised if we were being observed by newspaper hacks from the windows of nearby houses. And one day we’ll go out after a meeting and be met by flashing magnesium. We should stop the meetings temporarily.’

‘Shtupid nonsense!’ retorted Rosencrantz. ‘You haf no faith! Ve must trust in Schicksal!’

‘Destiny,’ his brother explained.

‘Yes, yes, destiny! Let things be as zey vill.’

‘It is not very likely that Cyrano gave the secret away,’ said Kriton, supporting the young man. ‘Why would he kill the chicken that was laying his golden eggs?’

Simple-minded Iphigenia fluttered her eyelids and said what was on everybody’s mind: ‘Gentlemen, we’re better off together, aren’t we? You can see, Death plays by his own rules. He takes whoever he wants. It’s frightening to sit at home alone with no one to talk to, but here we can all keep each other company . . .’

The ‘lovers’ looked at each other and there was a pause. We are like accomplices in a crime or condemned prisoners awaiting execution, thought Columbine.

‘But where’s Prospero?’ Petya asked plaintively, glancing round at the door. ‘What does he think?’

Genji moved to a seat in the corner, to smoke a cigar. He calmly released thin streams of bluish smoke into the air, taking no part in the conversation. Caliban also remained silent, listening to the arguers with a condescending smile.

The bookkeeper had been behaving strangely in general this evening. What had happened to the habitual brash impatience with which he had always waited for the spiritualist seance or the ‘Wheel of Death’?

Caliban only spoke when the Doge entered the salon, dressed in a black judge’s robe. The most fanatical of Death’s champions walked out into the centre of the room and shouted: ‘Stop talking rubbish! Listen to me instead! It’s my turn to celebrate now! I’ve been chosen! I’ve been sent a message too!’ He waved a piece of paper in the air. ‘See, you can check for yourselves. I’m not hiding anything. It’s a fact, not some foolish fantasy.’

The last remark was accompanied by a contemptuous glance, directed at Columbine.

Everyone crowded round the bookkeeper. The small rectangle, one eighth of a standard sheet of writing paper, was passed from hand to hand. It bore three words written in block capitals: ‘TESTED, APPROVED, DRAFTED’.

‘And I certainly have been tested!’ Caliban explained excitedly. ‘For patience and fidelity. Now it’s clear why she made me suffer for so long. She was testing my constancy. And I passed the test. You see – “approved”! And “drafted”! I came to say goodbye and wish you all the same good fortune, and to apologise for being so gruff sometimes. Try to remember Savely Papushin, the most detestable of all sinners on this earth, with kind thoughts. That’s my real name, there’s no point in hiding it any more – they’ll write it in the newspapers in any case. Amnestied with a free pardon! Congratulate me, ladies and gentlemen! And I’d like to thank you, dear Teacher.’ He grabbed Prospero’s hand with heartfelt feeling, ‘If not for you, I’d never have got out of the asylum, I’d still be rolling around on the floor and howling like a dog. You gave me hope and you made it real! Thank you!’

Caliban wiped away a tear with his huge red hand and blew his nose.

‘Let me see that please.’ Prospero took the piece of paper with a sceptical air and turned it over in his hands.

‘Well, let us test this,’ he said thoughtfully and suddenly held the paper over a candle. The message immediately caught fire, turning into a curl of black ash. The bookkeeper howled wildly: ‘What have you done? That’s a message from the Eternal Bride!’

‘You’ve been tricked, poor Caliban,’ said the Doge, shaking his head. ‘Why would any of you play such a cruel joke, ladies and gentlemen?’

Caliban’s eyes started out of his head in horror.

‘How . . . how could you, Teacher?’

‘Calm down,’ Prospero told him sternly. ‘This message was sent by a human being, not Death. The ancient books state quite definitely that a letter from the Beyond will not burn in fire.’

Then the Doge suddenly turned to Columbine: ‘You say that Death has already written to you twice. Tell me, have you tested the notes to see if they will burn?’

‘Of course I have,’ Columbine replied quickly, but inwardly she cringed.

A trick! A shabby trick! One of the aspirants had slipped these notes to her and Caliban so that he or she could mock and sneer! The trickster must think they were the two most stupid members of the club!

The scorching realisation came to her immediately. The victim of deceit cast a withering glance at Gorgon to see if she was laughing. Gorgon responded with a gaze charged with even greater hostility. Aha, she had given herself away!

Never mind, the rotten bitch wouldn’t dare own up – Prospero would throw her out of the club in disgrace if she did.

Columbine looked Gorgon straight in the eye and said defiantly: ‘I tried with a match and a candle – they don’t burn. And my cobra’ – she took hold of Lucifer by the neck, just as he was about to dive into her dйcolletй to find a warm spot, and showed everyone his small rhomboid head – ‘sank his fangs into the paper and recoiled in terror.’

If she was going to lie, she might as well do it properly.

‘I asked you not to bring that vile creature here,’ said Prospero, gazing at the snake in disgust. He had taken a dislike to the poor snake ever since that first night when it had snapped at his finger.

Columbine was about to defend her pet, but Caliban interrupted her.

‘Hers didn’t burn, but mine went up in flames?’ he groaned, heartbroken, and shouted so loudly that the candle flames flickered. ‘That’s not fair! It’s unjust!’

The brawny bookkeeper burst into tears, just like a little child.

While everyone was comforting him, Columbine quietly slipped out and set off in the direction of the boulevard. She felt like crying herself. What a vile, blasphemous joke! What a bitter taste was left now after the mystical rapture of the last few days, that special, sweet thrill of being chosen!

Revenge, her soul was thirsting for revenge! The best thing would be to whisper to Caliban which member of the club had been having fun writing notes. Caliban was no gentleman, he wouldn’t go easy on Gorgon. He’d flatten her foxy little face for her. And it would be good if he broke her nose or knocked a tooth out, Columbine thought hardheartedly.

‘Mademoiselle C-Columbine!’ a familiar voice called out behind her. ‘Will you permit me to accompany you?’

Apparently Prince Genji, with his preternatural astuteness, had discerned the storm raging in her soul. When he caught up with Columbine, he glanced with apparent unconcern into the false Chosen One’s red face, then started talking to her, not about the notes or Caliban’s fit of hysterics, but something quite different, and his voice didn’t have its usual slightly mocking humour, it was very serious.

‘Our sessions remind me more and more of a f-farce, but I do not feel like laughing. There are too many dead bodies. I have been coming to this absurd club for three weeks now, with no result whatsoever. No, what am I saying! There has been a result, b-but a negative one. Ophelia, Lorelei, Gdlevsky and Cyrano have died under my very nose. I failed to save them. And now I can see this black whirlpool sucking you in!’

Ah, if only you knew, Columbine thought, but she didn’t give herself away – on the contrary, she knitted her brows mournfully. Let him worry a bit, let him try to persuade her.

Genji really did seem to be worried – he kept talking faster and faster, and gesturing with one gloved hand when he couldn’t find the right word straight away: ‘Why, why urge death on, why make her task any easier? Life is such a fragile, defenceless jewel, it is already threatened by a myriad dangers every minute of the day. You will have to die anyway, that cup will not pass you by. Why leave the theatre without watching the play to the end? Perhaps this play – in which, by the way, everyone p-plays the leading role – will yet astonish you with some surprising twist of the plot? Indeed, it is sure to astonish you more than once, and perhaps in the most delightful fashion!’

‘Listen, Japanese Prince Erast Petrovich, what do you want from me?’ Columbine retorted furiously to this sermon. ‘What delightful surprises can your play promise me? I know the finale in advance. The curtain will fall in 1952, or thereabouts, when I am getting out of an electric tram (or whatever people will use for travelling in a half century from now) and I fall, break the neck of my femur, then spend a fortnight or a month lying in a hospital bed until pneumonia eventually finishes me off. And of course, it will be a paupers’ hospital, because by that time I shall have spent all my money, and there’ll be no way I can get any more. And in 1952 I shall be an ugly, wrinkled old woman of seventy-three with a papirosa always stuck in my mouth, no one will need me and the new generation won’t understand me. In the morning I shall turn away from the mirror in order not to see what my face has turned into. With my character I shall never have a family. And even if I do – that only makes the loneliness all the more desperate. Thank you for such a wonderful destiny. Who do you think would want me to live to see that, and why? God? But I think you do not believe in God, do you?’

Genji winced painfully as he listened to her. He replied passionately, with profound conviction: ‘No, no and no again! My dear Columbine, you must have trust in life. You have to entrust yourself to its flow, b-because life is infinitely wiser than we are! It will deal with you as it wishes in any case, sometimes rather cruelly, but in the final analysis you will come to realise that it was right. It is always right! In addition to the gloomy prospects that you picture so vividly, life also possesses many magical qualities!’

‘And what are they?’ Columbine laughed.

‘If nothing else, the ability, which you have mocked, of presenting surprising and precious gifts – whatever your age or physical condition.’

‘Such as?’ she asked and laughed again.

‘They are countless. The blue sky, the green grass, the morning air, the sky at night. Love in all its manifold shades and hues. And in the t-twilight of life, if you have deserved it – tranquillity and wisdom . . .’

Sensing that his words were beginning to have an effect, Genji redoubled his efforts: ‘Yes, and on the subject of old age, what makes you think that your year of 1952 will be so very terrible? I, for instance, am certain that it will be a wonderful time! Fifty years from now Russia will have universal literacy, which means that people will learn to be more tolerant with each other and distinguish the beautiful from the ugly. The electric tram that you mentioned will become merely the most ordinary means of transport. Flying machines will glide smoothly across the skies. Many more remarkable miracles of technology that we cannot even imagine today will appear! You are so young. The year of 1952, a time inconceivably far away, is well within your reach. And why have we drawn the line at 1952! By that time medicine will have developed so far that life expectancy will have greatly increased, and the very concept of old age will be pushed back to a later stage of life. You are sure to live to be ninety – and see the year 1969! Or perhaps to a hundred, and then you will even catch a glimpse of 1979! Just imagine it! Don’t those n-numbers take your breath away? Sheer curiosity should be enough to compensate for all the ordeals that the start of the new century apparently has in store for us. We must negotiate the narrows and rapids of history in order later to enjoy its smooth, even flow.’

How beautifully he spoke! Despite herself, Columbine listened admiringly. He’s right, she thought, a thousand times right. And she also wondered why he had mentioned love. Was it simply a figure of speech, or was there a special meaning in his words, one intended specially for her?