Fandorin 1-10

The Prince started telling the twins, the sevener and the eighter, about Death. ‘You haven’t been here long, Maybe and Surely, you still don’t know what the mamselle’s like. Sure, you’ve seen her, all right, but there’s more to her than that. When I tell you what I did to get her, you’ll understand. When her old fancy man, Yashka from Kostroma, took a dose of lead poisoning and she was free, I started to make a move. I’d had my eye set on her for a long time, but while Yashka was still alive, I didn’t dare do anything about it. Had great respect from the Council, he did, and back then I was just a simple robber. No deck, no decent den, I didn’t deal in wet jobs, or do any big-time stuff. Sure, I wasn’t exactly the lowest of the low in Khitrovka, but how could I compare with Yashka from Kostroma? But I still thought, come hell or high water, that doll’s got to be mine. That was the first time I did a pawnshop and clouted the watchman with my flail. People started talking about me, and the big loot started rolling in. I start sending her presents: gold, and all sorts of fancy china, and Japanese silk. She sends it all back. If I show up, she throws me out, doesn’t even want to talk to me.

‘But I’m patient, I understand I ’m not big enough for Death yet.

‘Okay, so then I held up this post wagon, beat two men to death. Took forty thousand.

‘I showed up at her place with a gypsy choir, at night. Forked out five hundred roubles to the coppers at the Myasnitsky station so they wouldn’t interfere. I left a satin box outside her door, and there was a diamond brooch in the box, this big it was.

‘And what came of it? The gypsies and their women sang themselves hoarse, and she didn’t open the door, didn’t even look out the window.

‘Well, I think, what the hell else do you want? It’s not money, it’s not presents, that much is clear. But what, then?

‘So I got the idea of trying a different approach. I knew Death was soft on kids. She sent money and clothes and all sorts of sweets to the Mariinsky Home, where the Khitrovka orphans go. Yashka the horse thief once gave her a hundred gold imperials in a basket of violets, and the crazy bint kept the flowers and gave the money to the nuns at the orphanage, so they could build a bathhouse.

‘Aha, I think to myself. If I can’t get you by hook, then I’ll get you by crook.

‘I bought thirty pounds of the very finest Swiss chocolate and three bolts of Holland cloth, and some calico for underclothes. I took it there in person and gave it to the Reverend Mother Manefa. Take it, I said, a present from the Prince to the orphans.’

Here the fat-faced man, the tenner, cleared his throat and interrupted the Prince’s story:

‘Uhu, a right royal present it was, we remember.’

The Prince hissed at him. ‘Lardy,’ he said, ‘don’t you go barging in and spoiling the story. Well, what happens? I go breezing round to Death’s place to see if she’ll treat me any different. She opens the door, only it would have been better if she hadn’t. She comes out, eyes blazing. Clear out and don’t come back, she shouts. Don’t you dare come anywhere near me, and all sorts of other stuff like that. She prods and pokes me out the door, after everything I’d done . . . I took offence real bad, that time. Started drinking –I was wandering round in a haze for a week. And while I was drunk the memory that really stung was the way I’d bought that lousy chocolate with my hard-earned money and even felt the cloth in the shop – to check the quality.’

‘Well, I still say they gave you that cloth for nothing,’ Lardy put in again.

But the Prince said: ‘That’s not the point. I’d tried so hard, my feelings were hurt. Right, I think, you’re too flighty altogether. This isn’t going right. Damn you for that cloth and chocolate. That night I climbed over the orphanage wall, took the window out, broke down the door of their storeroom and started hacking away. I tipped the chocolate out on the floor and stamped on it. I slashed the cloth to shreds – now let’s see you wear that! I cut all the calico to pieces. And I smashed up everything else they had in there. The watchman came to see what all the noise was about. “What are you doing, you bastard,” he yells, “you’re depriving the poor orphans!” Well, I stuck my blade straight in his heart, the blood splashed out all over my arm. I came out of the storeroom all covered in blood, threads hanging off me and my face as black as an Arab’s with chocolate. And there’s Mother Manefa coming straight at me, with a candle. Well, I did her in too. It’s all the same to me, I think, I’ve damned my soul anyway. So screw my soul and the life eternal. I didn’t want any kind of life at all without Death . . .’

‘Yes,’ said Lardy with a nod. ‘That set Moscow on its ear. You might have been drunk, but you didn’t leave any tracks or witnesses. In the end they realised it was you running wild, of course, but there was no way to prove it.’

The Prince laughed. ‘The important thing was that our lot found out about it straight away, and they told Death. When I got back from the orphanage I slept for two days straight, didn’t wake up once. And when I came round, they gave me a note from her, from Death. “Come to me, you’ll be mine” – that was what it said. So that’s what she’s like, Death. Just try to understand her.’

Senka listened eagerly to the story, and afterwards he racked his brains trying to make sense of it, but he just couldn’t.

But that day, he didn’t have time to rack his brains, so many different things happened.

After the Prince announced his decision and treated his deck to vodka and cognac, Sprat took the new boy back to his place (he had a little room behind a chintz curtain near the way in).

He turned out to be a mighty fine lad, with no side to him at all, even though he had a number in the gang, and Senka had just turned up out of nowhere. He didn’t put on airs, he spoke simply and told Senka lots of useful things, as if he was one of them, almost a card in the deck.

‘It’s OK, Speedy,’ he said, ‘if Death herself asked for you, you’ll be in the deck, there’s no way round it. Maybe one of us will get put away or done in, and then they’ll take you as sixer and I’ll move up to sevener. You stick with me, and you’ll be all right. And you can live right here. It’s more fun snoring together.’

(They never did get to snore together, but we’ll come to that later.)

Because everyone knew about the Prince, and Senka knew as much about Death as Sprat did, he started asking about the others.

‘Everyone’s afraid of our Jack,’ said Sprat, ‘even the Prince is wary of him, because Deadeye has these fits. Most of the time, he’s calm and quiet, though he’s always using strange words and talking in poetry, but sometimes he just goes berserk, and then he gets really scary, like a devil, he is. He’s a gent from a good family, used to be a student, but he stabbed someone to death over some candy cane and got hard labour for life. You keep clear of him,’ Sprat advised. ‘The Prince can smack you in the kisser, even beat you to death, but at least you’ll know why and what for, but that Deadeye’s a crazy man.’

The next one in the deck, Lardy, was Ukrainian, that was how he got his moniker, because they eat lard there. He was a key man, with big connections among the fences in other cities – all the swag passed through his hands and came back as ‘crunch’, that is, money.

Sprat told Senka that the legless Bosun had really been a bosun in the fleet, a hero proper, known all over the Black Sea. When he started to tell you about the Turks or the high seas, he was absolutely fascinating. His legs were crushed by a steam boiler on board ship. He had crosses and medals and a hero’s pension, but he wasn’t the sort to spend his old age in peace and quiet. What he wanted was something to test his luck, a bit of gusto and excitement. He almost never took his share of the swag, either, and a niner’s share was a fair size, not like Sprat’s.

The sevener and eighter were twin brothers from the Yakimanka District. A smart, dashing pair of lads. The Prince had been advised to take them on by a constable he knew at the First Yakimanka Station. He said the lads were real desperadoes, it would be a shame if they didn’t make the big time, a real waste. And they were nicknamed Maybe and Surely because they had more daring than brains. Maybe wasn’t that bad, that was why he had a higher number, but Surely was a total loon. If the Prince told him to steal the double-headed eagle off the Saviour’s Tower at the Kremlin, he’d start climbing without a second thought.

Then at the end Sprat sighed, rubbed his hands together and said: ‘Anyway, you’ll see us all in action on the job tonight.’

‘What’s the job?’ Senka’s heart stood still – how about that, straight into a job on the very first day! ‘Are we going bombing?’

‘Nah, bombing’s nothing. This is a really wild job. The Prince and the Ghoul have a meet today.’

Senka remembered that Deadeye had asked about the meet too.

‘Is that the one at seven o’clock? What’s it about? This Ghoul, that’s Kotelnichesky, right?’

‘That’s the one. The Prince and him are going up for Ace of Moscow, if you get my drift.’

Senka whistled. So that was it.

The ace was like the tsar of bandits, there was just one for all of Moscow. The ace used to be Kondrat Semyonich, a really big man, everyone in Moscow was afraid of him. They used to say all sorts of things about Kondrat Semyonich, though. That he’d got old and rusty, he didn’t give the young men a chance. Some condemned him for living a life of luxury, not in Khitrovka, like the ace was supposed to do, but in a house on the Yauza. And he didn’t die like a bandit, from a knife or a bullet, or in jail. He drew his last breath on a soft feather bed, like some merchant.

Anyway, the Council had decreed that the ace should be one of the two: the Prince or the Ghoul.

The case for the Prince was clear enough – he was a man on the make. He’d appeared from nowhere, and the jobs he did were breathtaking. But the problem was he was in too much of a hurry and he was obstinate, those were his only flaws. The grandfathers were afraid that power like that might go to his head.

The Ghoul was a different matter altogether. He was from the old guard – the less showy bandits who’d plodded their way to the top. The Ghoul didn’t have any famous jobs to his name, his deck didn’t fire any broadsides, but people were just as much afraid of him as they were of the Prince.

The Ghoul’s deck didn’t make a living from hold-ups, though, they had a new business, one that was kept very quiet: they skimmed from the grain merchants and shopkeepers. Their kind of businessmen were called ‘milkers’. If you wanted your shop to stay safe, and you didn’t want the sanitary inspector picking on you, or the coppers bothering you – then you gave the milker his dough and carried on trading in peace. But as for those who didn’t pay – who thought they could manage or were just plain mean –all sorts happened to them.

One stubborn grocer was hit over the head from behind in a dark alleyway, he didn’t see who did it. He fell down and tried to get up, but he couldn’t – the ground was spinning in front of his eyes. Suddenly he saw a horse and cart coming straight at him, and the cart held a great heap of paving stones. He yelled and waved his arms, but the driver didn’t seem to hear him. The horse stepped over the grocer, so its hooves missed him, but the wheels of the cart ran right over his legs and smashed them to bits. Now they pushed that grocer around in a chair on wheels, and he paid the Ghoul promptly. And there was an ice-cream seller too, they ambushed his daughter, who was engaged, put a sack over her head and violated her, and not just one of them, no, half a dozen thugs. Now she sat at home and never showed her face outside, and she’d been taken down from a noose twice. If only the ice-cream seller had paid, none of that would ever have happened.

But even the Ghoul wasn’t to the liking of all the grandfathers, Sprat explained. Those who were older and remembered times past didn’t approve of the Ghoul’s trade. Back then it wasn’t done to suck people’s blood like that.

Anyway, today was the day of the meet.

‘They’ll do each other in!’ Senka gasped. ‘They’ll stab each other, or shoot each other.’

‘They can’t, that’s against the law. They can break a few ribs or crack someone’s head open, but that’s all. You can’t take weapons to a meet, the Council doesn’t allow it.’

*

At five o’clock the mediators came from the Council, two calm, slow-moving ‘grandfathers’ who used to be respected thieves. They named the spot for the meet – the Cows’ Meadow in the Luzhniki District – and the time: seven o’clock on the dot. They said the Ghoul wanted to know whether his whole deck should come or what.

They sat the grandfathers down to drink tea in the front room, and all crowded round the Prince at the table. Even the Bosun trundled in from the street, afraid they’d settle things without him.

Maybe shouted out first: ‘Let’s all go! We’ll give the ghoulies a beating to remember.’

The Prince hissed at him:

‘Think before you speak, smartarse. Do we have a Queen with us? No. Death won’t traipse across to Cows’ Meadow, will she now?’

Everyone smiled at the joke, and waited to see what the Prince would say next.

‘But the Ghoul’s Queen is Pockface Manka. Last year she smacked two narks’ heads together so hard, they never got up again,’ the Prince went on, polishing his fingernails with a little brush. He was sitting with his legs crossed and easing his words out slowly – no doubt already seeing himself as the ace.

‘We know Manka, she’s a woman to be reckoned with,’ the Bosun agreed.

‘Right, then. So think on a bit. You’re a cripple, Bosun – no offence meant – what good are you at a meet?’

The Bosun bounced on his stumps and started getting excited.

‘Why I. . . I’ll smack ’em so hard with this mallet – that’s enough to double anyone over. You know me, Prince!’

‘A mallet!’ the Prince mocked him, biting off a hangnail. ‘And the Ghoul’s niner is Vasya Ugreshsky. What good will it do to swing your mallet at him? You see?’

The Bosun went all sad and started sniffing.

‘Now let’s take Sixer,’ said the boss, nodding at Sprat.

‘What about me?’ said Sprat, jerking his head up.

‘I tell you what. Their sixer is Cudgel. He can hammer a six-inch nail into a log of wood with that great big fist of his, and anyone can knock you down with a feather, Sprat. So where does that leave us, my brave gents? With this – at a meet, their deck will leave us for dead, as sure as God’s holy. And then they’ll say the Prince had his whole deck with him, they won’t bother working out who’s too small, who’s crippled and who wasn’t even there. That’s what they’ll say, oh yes they will,’ the Prince declared in response to their dull muttering.

The room was suddenly quiet and downbeat.

Senka was sitting in the corner farthest away, afraid they might throw him out. He wasn’t too upset about them not taking him to the meet, he didn’t much fancy fisticuffs, especially not against real fighters. They’d batter a youngster like him down and trample him into the ground.

The Prince admired his nails, then bit off another hangnail and spat it out.

‘Call the grandfathers. I decide. And not a word! Keep your traps shut.’

Sprat ran off to get the mediators. They came and stood just inside the door. The Prince stood up too.

‘Two of us should go to the meet, that’s my opinion.’ He looked at them merrily and shook his forelock. –The King and one other chosen by the King. Tell the Ghoul that.’

Deadeye sighed and the others frowned but not a word was spoken. It clearly wasn’t on to haggle in front of outsiders, Senka thought.

But even when the grandfathers left, there was no yapping. Once the Prince had decided, that was that.

Sprat winked at Senka: come on outside. In the collidor he sniffed as he whispered: ‘I know that spot very well. There’s a little barn there, a good place to hide. We’ll wait and watch them from there.’

‘But what if they see us?’

‘Then we’re for it, no question,’ Sprat said with a careless wave of his hand. ‘They’re real strict about stuff like that. But don’t you get the wind up, they won’t see us. That barn’s a great spot, I tell you. We’ll burrow into the hay. No one will twig, and we’ll be able to see everything.’

Senka suddenly felt afraid and he hesitated. But Sprat spat on the floor and said: ‘You can please yourself, Speedy. I’m running over there right now. While they’re dragging things out, I’ll get there ahead of them.’

Of course, Senka went with him – what else could he do? He couldn’t act scared like some girl. And he really did want to watch: this was serious stuff, a proper bandit meet, to decide who would be Ace of Moscow. How many people had ever seen something like that?

Naturally, they didn’t actually run there, that was just Sprat’s way of talking. The young bandit had a wad of cash in his pocket. They walked to Pokrovka Street, hired a cab and drove out of town to Luzhniki. Sprat promised the driver an extra rouble to drive like the wind. It took them twenty-three minutes – Sprat timed it with his silver watch.

The Cows’ Meadow was just that, a meadow – all yellow grass and burdock. On one side, across the river, were the Sparrow Hills, and on the other side was the Novodevichy Convent, with its vegetable gardens.

‘This is where they’ll have the meet, there’s no other option,’ said Sprat, pointing to a trampled bald patch where four paths came together. ‘They won’t go into the grass, there’s cowpats all over the place, they’ll get their shoes filthy. And that’s the barn right there.’

The barn was rotten – sneeze and it would collapse. It had been built once upon a time to store straw, but it wouldn’t stay standing much longer, that was clear. It was less than a stone’s throw from the bald patch, ten paces or maybe fifteen.

They climbed up the ladder into the loft, full of last year’s straw. Then they settled into the hideaway, pulling the ladder up after them, so no one would get inquisitive and come over.

Sprat glanced at his watch again and said: ‘Three and a half minutes past five. Almost two hours to go. Why don’t we play a hand or two, fifty kopecks a time?’

He pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket. Senka was so frightened his hands and feet were freezing, he had cold shivers running up and down his spine, and Sprat wanted to play cards!

‘I ain’t got any money.’

‘We can play flicks. Only straight ones, mind, no twisting, my head’s not that hard.’

As soon as they’d dealt the cards, they heard voices. Someone had come up from behind, from the direction of the railway.

Sprat put his eye to a crack and whispered: ‘Hey, Speedy, take a gander!’

There were three men walking round the barn. They looked like bandits all right, but Senka didn’t know them. One was huge, with big, broad shoulders and a small head, shaved clean; one was wearing a cap, but even from up there you could still see that his nose had caved in; the third was short, with long arms, and his jacket was buttoned right up.

‘The bastard,’ Sprat hissed right in Senka’s ear. ‘That’s what he’s up to! What a lousy cheat!’

The men came into the barn, but Senka and Sprat could still see them through the cracks in the ceiling. All three men lay down and covered themselves with straw.

‘Who’s a lousy cheat?’ Senka whispered. ‘Who are they?’

‘The Ghoul’s a lousy cheat, that’s who. Those are his fighters, from his deck. The big one’s Cudgel, the sixer. The one with no nose is Beak, he’s the eighter. And the little one’s Yoshka, the Jack. Ah, this is really bad. This’ll be the death of us.’

‘Why?’ Senka asked, frightened.

‘Yoshka’s no good in a fight, but he never misses with that gun of his. He used to work in a circus, snuffing candles out with bullets. If they brought Yoshka it means there’ll be shooting. But our two will have left their guns at home. And there’s no way to warn them . . .’

This news set Senka’s teeth chattering. ‘What’re we going to do?’

Sprat had turned all pale too. ‘Hell only knows . . .’

They just sat there, shaking. Time dragged by, then seemed to stop completely.

Down below it was quiet. Just once they heard a match being struck and caught a whiff of tobacco smoke, then someone hissed: ‘Cudgel, you ugly mug, d’you want to burn us alive? I’ll shoot you!’

There was silence again. And then, just before the clock struck seven, there was a metal click. Sprat mimed for Senka: that was the hammer being cocked.

Oh, this was really bad!

Two light carriages drove up to the bald spot from different directions.

Sitting on the box of one carriage – a classy number in red lacquer –was Deadeye, wearing a hat and a sandy-coloured three-piece suit, and holding a cane. The Prince was sprawled on the leather seat, smoking a papyrosa. He was done up like a dandy too, in a sky-blue shirt and thin scarlet belt.

Sitting on the box of the other carriage, which wasn’t as fancy as the first, but still pretty smart, was a woman with hands the size of ham hocks. Her fat red cheeks stuck out from the bright flowery shawl wrapped tight round her head. It looked as though two watermelons had been stuck down the front of her blouse – Senka had never seen breasts like that before. The Ghoul was riding behind, like the Prince. He looked pretty ordinary: stringy and balding, narrow snaky eyes, greasy hair hanging down like icicles. He was no eagle from the look of him, no way was he a match for the Prince.

They met in the middle of the bald patch, but didn’t bother shaking hands. The Ghoul lit up, and glared at the prince. Deadeye and the huge woman stood a bit farther back – Senka supposed that must be the way it was done.

‘Shall we kick up a racket, eh, Speedy?’ Sprat asked in a whisper.

‘But what if the Ghoul only put his men in the barn just in case? Because he was afraid the Prince might try something? Then it’s the shiv for you and me.’

Senka was really afraid of making a racket. What if that Yoshka started firing bullets through the ceiling?

Sprat whispered: ‘Who can tell. . . OK, let’s watch for a bit.’

The men in the meadow finished their papyroses and threw them away.

The Prince was the first to speak. ‘Why didn’t you come with your Jack?’

‘Yoshka’s teeth have been bothering him, his cheek’s swollen right up. And why do I need my Jack? I’m not afraid of you, Prince. You’re the one who’s scared of me. You brought Deadeye along. A woman’s a match for you.’

Manka chuckled in a loud, deep voice.

The Prince and Deadeye locked eyes once more. Senka saw Deadeye drum his fingers on his cane. Maybe they’d guessed there was something shady going on.

‘If you want to bring a woman, that’s your business.’ The Prince put his hands on his hips. ‘Lording it over women is all you’re good for. When I’m the ace, I’ll let you run the mamselles of Khitrovka. It’ll be just the job for you.’

The Ghoul didn’t rise to the bait, he just smiled and cracked his long fingers: ‘Of course, you, Prince, are an outstanding hold-up artist, a man on the make, but you’re still wet behind the ears. What kind of ace would you make? It’s barely five minutes since you got your deck together. And you’re far too reckless. Every last nark in Moscow’s after you, but I’m a safe pair of hands. Do the decent thing and stand down.’

The words were peaceable, but the voice was jeering – you could see he was riling the Prince, trying to wind him up.

The Prince said: ‘I soar like an eagle, but you scrounge like a jackal, you feed on carrion! You’re a fine talker but Moscow isn’t big enough for the two of us! You’ve got to be under me, or . . .’ And he slashed a finger across his throat.

The Ghoul licked his lips, cocked his head and said slowly, almost gently: ‘Or what, my little Prince? Be under you . . . or death, is that it? And what if that Death of yours has already been under me? She’s a handsome girl. Soft to lie on, springy, like a duck-down bed . . .’

Manka laughed again, and the Prince turned crimson – he knew what the Ghoul meant. And the Ghoul got what he wanted – he’d driven his enemy wild with fury.

The Prince lowered his head, howled like a wolf and went for the man who had insulted him.

But Manka and the Ghoul obviously had everything arranged. He jumped to the left and she jumped to the right, stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled.

Down below the hay rustled, a door banged and Yoshka flew from the barn, though the other two stayed put. He had a shooter in his hand – black, with a long barrel.

‘Stop right there!’ he cried. ‘Look this way. You know me, old friend, I never miss.’

The Prince froze on the spot.

‘So that’s how you operate, is it, Ghoul?’ he asked. ‘No respect for the rules?’

‘Quite correct, little my Princeling, quite correct. I’ve got brains, and the rules aren’t made for people like me. Now both of you get down on the ground. Get down, or Yoshka will shoot you.’

The Prince grinned, as if he thought that was funny. ‘You don’t have brains, Ghoul, you’re a fool. You’re no match for the Council. You’re done for now. I don’t have to do a thing, the grandfathers will do it all for me. Let’s lie down, Deadeye, and take a rest. The Ghoul’s condemned himself.’

And he lay down on his back, crossed one leg over the other and took out a papyrosa.

Deadeye looked at him, and trailed the toe of his low boot across the ground – he must have been feeling bad about his suit – and lay down too, on his side, his head propped on his hand and his cane by his side.

‘Well, now what?’ the Prince asked. Then, turning to Yoshka: ‘Fire away, my little sharpshooter. Do you know what our traditionalists do with rule-breakers like you? For a trick like this they’ll dig you out from wherever you hide, then stick you straight back in the ground again.’

The way this meet was turning out was weird. What with two men lying on the ground smiling, and three people standing there, just watching them.

Sprat whispered: ‘They don’t dare fire. They bury you alive for that, it’s the law.’

The Ghoul’s moll whistled again. Then Cudgel and Beak came dashing from the barn and pounced on the men on the ground: Cudgel dropped the entire weight of his carcass on the Prince, Beak turned Deadeye face down and neatly twisted his arms behind his back.

‘There you go, little Prince’ The Ghoul laughed. ‘Now Cudgel’s going to beat your brains out with his great big fist. And Beak’s going to smash your Jack’s ribs. And no one will ever know about the shooter. Simple as that. We’ll tell the Council we beat you up. Shame you couldn’t handle the Ghoul and his woman. Right, lads, smash ’em now!’

Suddenly there was this fierce yell – ‘A-a-a-a-gh!’ – right beside Senka’s ear.

Sprat launched himself up with his elbows, got to his knees and leapt straight down on to Yoshka’s shoulders, screeching as he went. He couldn’t hold on and went flying to the ground. Yoshka swung the handle of his gun and smashed it into Sprat’s temple – but that brief moment, when Cudgel and Beak turned towards the noise, was enough for the Prince and Deadeye. They pushed off their enemies and jumped to their feet.

‘I’ll let them have it, Ghoul!’ Yoshka shouted. ‘It didn’t work out like you planned! We can dig the bullets out afterwards! Maybe that’ll work.’

And then Senka surprised himself by screeching even louder than Sprat and jumping on to Yoshka’s back. He clung on for grim death, sinking his teeth into Yoshka’s ear. He felt a salty taste in his mouth.

Yoshka swung round, trying to shake the kid off, but he couldn’t. Senka bellowed, and kept ripping Yoshka’s ear with his teeth.

He couldn’t have held on for long, of course. But then Deadeye snatched his cane up off the ground and shook it, the wooden stick went flying off, and something long and steely glittered in the Jack’s hand.

Deadeye bounded towards Yoshka, bent one leg and stretched out the other, straightened out like a spring, and elongated himself, like a viper attacking. He snagged Yoshka with his blade – right in the heart – and Yoshka stopped waving his arms and tumbled over, with Senka underneath him. Senka escaped, and looked round to see what would happen next.

He was just in time to see the Prince tear himself out of Cudgel’s great mitts, take a run at Manka and smash his forehead into her chin – the enormous woman went down on her backside, sat there for a moment then collapsed. But the Prince had already taken the Ghoul by the throat and they went tumbling over and over, off the well-trodden path and into the grass, setting the dry stalks swaying furiously.

Cudgel was about to go and lend his King a hand, but Deadeye came flying up from behind, his left hand tucked behind his back and his right hand holding that pen – it was more than two feet long – swish-swish, backwards and forwards through the air, and there were red drops dripping off the steel.

‘Oh, do not leave me,’ he recited, ‘stay a while. I have loved you for so long. Let my fiery caresses scorch you . . .’

Senka knew those lines – they were from this song, a real tear-jerker it was.

Cudgel turned towards Deadeye, fluttered his eyelids and staggered backwards. Beak was quicker off the mark, he’d scarpered straight off. And then the Prince and the Ghoul came tumbling back on to the bald patch, only now you could see who was getting the best of it. The Prince twisted his enemy round, grabbed hold of his face and started hammering his head against the ground.

The Ghoul wheezed: ‘Enough, enough. You win! I’m a punk.’

That was a special kind of word. When anyone said that at a meet, you weren’t supposed to hit him any more. That was the law.

The Prince thumped him another couple of times, just to round things off, or maybe it was more than a couple – Senka didn’t watch the end. He was squatting down next to Sprat, watching crimson blood streaming out of the black hole in the side of his head. Sprat was as dead as a doornail – Yoshka had smashed his head in with his shooter.

*

After that the grandfathers spent four days trying to decide whether a meet like that could decide anything. They ruled that it couldn’t. Of course the Ghoul had cheated, but the Prince had blotted his copybook too: his Jack had come with a blade, and there were the two lads hiding in the barn. The Prince wasn’t fit to be ace yet, that was the verdict. Moscow would have to manage a bit longer without a thieves’ tsar.

The Prince went about in a fury, drinking all the time and threatening to put the Ghoul in the ground. There was no sign of the Ghoul, he was holed up somewhere, recovering from the treatment the Prince had doled out.

All Khitrovka was buzzing with sensational talk about the meet in Luzhniki.

And as for Speedy Senka, you could say these were golden days.

He was the Prince’s sixer now, all fully legit. For his heroism the deck gave him a handsome ration and total respect–you can imagine how the lads in Khitrovka treated him now.

Senka went round there about three times a day, as if he had important secret business, but really just to cut a dash. All of Sprat’s clothes went to him: the English cloth trousers with a crease in them, and the box calf boots, and the boulanger pea-jacket, and the captain’s cap with the lacquered peak, and the silver watch on a chain with the little silver skull. The lads came running from all over to shake hands with the hero or gape from a distance as he told his story.

Prokha, who used to teach Senka what was good sense and put on airs around him, looked into Senka’s eyes now and asked him in a quiet voice, so the others wouldn’t hear, to fix him up as a sixer somewhere, even with a really feeble deck. Senka listened condescendingly and promised to think about it.

Oh, but it felt good.

True enough, his pockets were as empty as before, but surely that would all change when the first job came along.

It came along soon, and a real hotshot job it was too.

HOW SENKA WENT ON A REAL JOB

The Prince got this tip-off from a reliable man, a waiter at the Slavyanskaya hotel where merchants stayed, over in Berezhki. He said a rich Kalmyk horse-trader and his right-hand man had arrived from the town of Khvalynsk to buy stud horses for a herd. This Kalmyk had a fat wad of crunch on him, and it had to be lifted quick, because tomorrow, on Sunday, he was going to the horse auction, and he could spend the whole lot there.

Late in the evening the whole deck got into three two-seaters and set off. The Prince rode up front with Deadeye, then came Lardy and the twins, with the Bosun and Senka at the rear. Their job was to stand lookout and make sure the horses could be started at a gallop if they had to scram.

As they flew across Red Square, down Vozdvizhenka Street and along Arbat Street, Senka’s belly kept rumbling so bad he could have gone running to the lav. But later, after they clattered across the bridge, the sickening fear suddenly turned to jauntiness, like when Senka was a kid and his father took him to the Shrovetide Carnival that first time, to ride down the icy wooden slides.

The Bosun was merry right from the off and kept cracking jokes. Ah,’ he said, ‘Sebastopol, I’ll meet my moll.’ And again: ‘Ah, Poltava, what a palaver.’ Or else: –Ah, Samara, we’ll be there tomorra.’

He knew lots of different towns, some of them Senka hadn’t even heard of.

The hotel was a drab-looking place, like a workers’ bunkhouse. The lights were all out before ten – trading folk went to bed early, and it was market day tomorrow.

They drove through to the railway depot and jumped out. They didn’t talk, they didn’t need words now – everything had been talked through in advance.

Senka took the reins and steered the three carriages side by side, wheel to wheel, with the Bosun’s rig in the middle. Then he handed the Bosun all three reins. The horses wouldn’t play up with him, they were smart. When they sensed strength, they stood still and didn’t stir. And the Prince’s horses were special, miraculous – nothing could catch horses like that.

So there was the Bosun, sitting on the box, puffing on his long pipe, and Senka didn’t know what to do with himself; he paced down the street, then back up the other side. He wasn’t scared any more, just limp and fed up. He felt pretty useless.

He ran to one corner, then another, to check whether there was any need to scram. Not a thing, it was all quiet.

‘Uncle Bosun, what’s taking them so long?’

The Bosun took pity on the sixer. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘why should a healthy young lad like you be hanging about back here? Run and see how the job’s going. Take a look, then come back and tell me how they finish off the Kalmyks.’

Senka was surprised. ‘Can’t they just take the money? Do they have to finish them off?’

‘That depends how much there is,’ the Bosun explained. ‘If there’s not a lot of crunch, only a few hundred, you don’t need to finish them off, the coppers won’t look too hard. But if there’s thousands, it’s best to do them in. A merchant will offer the coppers a big reward for his thousands, to make sure they sweat real hard. Off you run, Speedy, don’t you worry none. I’ll manage here on my own. Ah, I’d go myself, like a shot, if I had any legs.’

Senka didn’t need to be told twice. He was so tired of just hanging around, he didn’t even go in through the gate, just climbed straight over the wall.

When he walked into the big hallway he saw a man in a long coat lying there on the counter, squealing in fear. He had his hands over his head, and his shoulders were shaking. Lardy was standing beside him, yawning, with his fiddle in his hand (that was what bandits called a devolvert: a fiddle, a bludgeon or a chanter).

The man on the counter said in this feeble voice: ‘Don’t kill me, gentlemen. I didn’t look at you, I closed my eyes straight away. Go easy on me . . . please? Don’t take my life – I’m a family man, a good Orthodox Christian, eh?’

Senka answered, playing the big man: ‘Don’t you worry. You won’t twitch much – we’ll take pity on you.’

Then the man said to Senka. ‘Curious? Go on, then, have a gander. They’re taking their time over it.’

There was a collidor. Long it was, with doors in a row on both sides. Maybe was standing at the near end, and Surely at the far end (or the other way round, Senka still found it hard to tell the brothers apart). They had fiddles too.

‘I came to have a look,’ Senka said. ‘Just a quick peep.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Maybe (or it could have been Surely), flashing his white teeth in a smile.

Just then, one of the doors started to open. He slammed it shut with his foot and barked: ‘Come out here and you’re for it!’

Someone wailed behind the door: ‘What are you doing, you fooligan? I have to get to the lav.’

Maybe hooted with laughter: ‘Puddle in your pants. But you kick up a racket, and I’ll shoot through the door.’

‘Holy God,’ gasped the voice behind the door. ‘Is it a hold-up, then? I won’t bother you, lads, I’ll be quiet.’

And the bolt rasped shut.

Maybe started giggling again (it was probably Surely after all – he was always grinning from ear to ear). He pointed with his devolvert to a half-open door halfway down the collidor: That’s where it is.

Senka walked over and glanced inside.

He saw two men tied to chairs – they had swarthy skin and narrow eyes. One was really old, about fifty, with a little goatee beard, a pair of good plaid trousers, and a silk waistcoat with a gold chain dangling out of the pocket. He had to be the horse-trader. The other one was young, without any beard or moustache, with a calico shirt hanging over his trousers – he was definitely the right-hand man.

The Prince was striding to and fro between the two men, waving his flail through the air.

Senka opened the door a bit wider – so where was Deadeye, then?

He was doing something really strange: he’d taken that pen of his (a foil, it was called) out of the cane, and was shredding the feather mattress on the bed with it, scattering fluff and feathers in the air.

‘Can’t think where else,’ said Deadeye. ‘Where could our friends from the steppe have concealed their porte-monnaie ?’

The Prince sneezed – the fluff must have got up his nose.

‘All right, Deadeye, don’t get in a sweat.’ He stopped in front of the foreman and grabbed hold of his hair with one hand. ‘They’ll spill the beans. Right, Yellow-face, are you going to blab? Or would you like to chew on this iron apple here?’

And he swung the flail in front of the foreman’s face (which wasn’t yellow at all, it was as white as chalk, as if it had been dusted with the stuff).

Deadeye stopped lashing his blade about and sprinkled some powder on his fingernail (candy cane, Senka guessed). As he threw his head back, Senka winced – now he’d start sneezing even worse than the Prince! But Deadeye wasn’t bothered, he just squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, they’d turned all wet and shiny.

The Kalmyk foreman licked his lips – they were as white as his mug – and said: ‘I don’t know . . . Badmai Kekteevich doesn’t tell me.’

‘Right, then,’ said the Prince with a nod. He let go of the foreman’s hair and turned to the horse-trader. ‘Well, Goat-beard? Shall I chop you into little pieces, or are you going to talk?’

The horse-trader seemed like a tough old nut to crack. He spoke calmly and his voice didn’t shake: ‘I’m not so stupid as to keep my money here. I went to the market office today and put it in the safe. Take what there is and leave. This watch is gold. And there’s money in the wallet. Enough for you.’

The Prince looked round at Deadeye, who was standing there, smiling at something. He confirmed the story.

‘That’s right. There is a safe at the horse market and the traders put their money in it for safe-keeping, so it won’t get stolen and they can’t binge it all away.’

Senka saw the trader and his man glance at each other, and Badmai fixed his eyes on something on the floor. Ah-ha! One leg of the foreman’s chair was pressing down on a floorboard, and its edge was sticking up. The foreman shifted a bit and the floorboard fell back into place.

The trader’s wallet was lying open on the table. The Prince took out the banknotes and rustled them.

The Prince took a step towards the horse-trader and smashed a fist into his cheekbone. The Kalmyk’s head bobbed about, but he didn’t shout out or start crying – he was a tough one.

‘I got the whole deck out for three hundred. It’s a flaming disgrace. Why, you squint-eyed snake!’

‘All right,’ said the Prince, tugging the watch out of the horsetrader’s pocket – it was gold, good stuff. ‘You can thank your Kalmyk god for keeping your fat purse safe. Let’s go, Deadeye.’

He was already on his way to the door when Senka stuck his head in and said, all modest like:

‘Uncle Prince, can I say something, please?’

‘What are you doing here?’ the Prince said with a scowl. ‘A scram?’

And Senka said: ‘Nah, no scram, but wouldn’t it be a good idea to check over there, under the floor, eh?’

And he pointed to the floorboard.

The horse-trader jerked on his chair and wheezed something Senka couldn’t understand – it must have been a curse in his own language. The Prince looked at Senka, then at the floor. He thumped the foreman in the ear – the blow hadn’t looked very hard, but the foreman tumbled over, taking his chair with him, and started snivelling.

The Prince bent down, hooked one finger under the edge of the floorboard and lifted it out – there was a hole in the floor underneath it. He put his hand in.

‘Ah-ha.’

He took out a big leather wallet, and it was stuffed chock-full with crunch.

The Prince counted the swag. ‘Why, there’s three thousand here!’ he said. ‘Good for you, Sixer.’

Senka was flattered, of course. He looked at Deadeye to see whether he was admiring him too.

But Deadeye wasn’t admiring Senka, and he wasn’t looking at the wallet. Something strange was happening to him. He’d stopped smiling, and his eyes weren’t gleaming now, they looked drowsy.

‘I believed them . . .’ Deadeye said slowly, and his whole face quivered, as if waves were running across it. ‘I believed the Judases. They looked me in the eye! And they lied! They lied – to me!’

‘Enough, enough, don’t go kicking up the dust,’ the Prince said –he was rather pleased with the find. ‘They have to mind their own interests

Deadeye started moving, muttering: ‘Goodbye, my darling Kalmyk girl. . . Your eyes are very narrow, true, your nose is flat, your forehead broad, you do not lisp in fluent French .. .’^[2]

He chuckled: ‘Narrow, very narrow . . .’

Then suddenly he leapt forward – exactly the same way he had when he spiked Yoshka – and stuck his foil straight down into the foreman’s eye. Senka heard a crunch (that was the steel running through the skull and sticking in the floor) and he gasped and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Deadeye had already pulled the foil out and was watching curiously as something white, like cream cheese, dripped off the blade.

The foreman hammered his heels on the floor and opened his mouth wide, but no shout came out. Senka was afraid to look him in the face.

‘What the . . . Are you crazy?’ the Prince snarled.

Deadeye answered back in a hoarse, strained voice: ‘I’m not crazy. It just sickens me that there’s no truth in this world.’

He gave a flick of his wrist, there was a whistling sound, and the sharp point of the foil slit the horse-trader’s throat. A tuft of beard that was sliced off went flying through the air, then the blood came spurting out in a thick jet – like water out of a fire hose.

Senka gasped again, but this time he forgot to close his eyes. He saw the horse-trader jerk up off the chair so hard that the ropes holding his hands broke. He jumped up, but he couldn’t walk, his legs were still tied to the chair.

The life was gushing out of the horse trader in spurts of cherry red, and he kept trying to hold it back with his hands, to stuff it back in, but it was no good – the blood flowed through his fingers, the Kalmyk’s face went blank and it was so terrifying that Senka screamed and went dashing out of that hideous room.

HOW SENKA SAT IN THE PRIVY CUPBOARD

He began to recover his wits only on Arbat Street, when he was completely winded from running. He didn’t remember flying out of the Slavyanskaya Hotel, or running across the bridge, and then right across the empty Smolensky market.

And even on Arbat Street he still wasn’t himself. He couldn’t run any longer, but he didn’t think to sit down and take a rest. He staggered along the dark street like an old man, croaking and gasping. And he kept looking round, all the time; he still thought he could see the Kalmyk behind him, with his torn-open throat.

The way things had turned out, he was the one who killed the horse-trader and his man. It was all his fault. If he hadn’t wanted to impress the Prince, if he hadn’t pointed out the hiding place, the Kalmyks would still be alive. But he had to go and blab, didn’t he? He was Speedy the Bandit, was he not?

But by Theatre Square, Senka was asking himself another question: what kind of damn bandit are you? A lousy worm of a bandit, that’s what you are. Oh, Semyon Spidorov, you haven’t got the stomach for real man’s work now, do you?

He felt so ashamed for running away, he couldn’t bear it. As he walked along Maroseika Street, he called himself every name he could think of, abused himself something rotten, but as soon as he remembered the Kalmyks, it was clear as day: there was no way back into the deck now. The Prince and his gang might forgive him –he could lie and say his stomach was turned or make up something else, but he couldn’t lie to himself. If Senka was a businessman, a cow was a thoroughbred.

Oh, the shame of it.

Senka’s legs carried him to the Yauza Boulevard before he had any idea where he was heading.

He sat on a bench for a while and got frozen right through. Then he paced up and down for a while. It started to get light. And it wasn’t until he realised he was walking past Death’s house for the third time that he understood what pain was gnawing hardest at his heart. He stopped in front of the door and suddenly his hand reached out of its own accord, so it did, and knocked. Loudly.

He felt scared and wanted to turn and run. He decided he would just hear the sound of her footsteps, her voice. When she asked ‘Who’s there?’ he would scarper.

The door opened without a sound and without any warning. There were no footsteps, no questions.

Death appeared in the doorway. The loose hair flowing down over her shoulders was black, but all the rest of her was white: the nightshirt, the lacy shawl on her shoulders. And her feet – Senka was looking down at them – they were white too, the tips were peeping out from under the hem of her nightshirt.

Well, well, she never even asked who was knocking at that time in the morning. She was fearless, all right. Or was it all the same to her?

She was surprised to see Senka. ‘You? Did the Prince send you? Has something happened?’

He shook his hanging head.

Then she got angry: ‘What are you doing here at this unearthly hour? Why are you hiding your eyes, you little beast?’

All right, so he looked up. And then he couldn’t look down again –he was lost in wonder. Of course, the dawn played a little trick of its own, peeping out from behind the roofs with its pink glow, lighting up the top of the doorway and Death’s face and shoulders.

‘Well, aren’t you going to say something?’ she said, frowning. ‘You look like a ghost. And your shirt’s torn.’

That was when Senka noticed that his shirt really was torn from the collar to the sleeve and it was hanging all askew. He must have snagged it on something when he was running out from the hotel.

‘What’s this, are you hurt?’ asked Death. ‘You’ve got blood on you.’

She reached out a hand and rubbed the spot of dried blood on his cheek. Senka guessed some of the spray must have hit him when the horse-trader’s blood came spurting out.

But Death’s finger was hot, and her touch came as such a surprise that Senka suddenly burst into tears.

He stood there, blubbing away, the tears streaming down his face. He felt terribly ashamed, but he simply couldn’t stop. He tried hard to force them back, but they kept breaking through – it was so pitiful, just like a little puppy whimpering! Then Senka started cursing like he’d never cursed before, with the most obscene words he knew. But the tears kept on flowing.

Death took his hand: ‘What’s wrong, what is it? Come with me . . .’

She bolted the door shut and dragged him into the house after her. He tried to dig his heels in, but Death was strong. She sat him down at the table and took hold of his shoulders. He wasn’t crying now, just sobbing and rubbing his eyes furiously.

She put a glass of brown stuff down in front of him. ‘Go on, get that down you. It’s Jamaican rum.’

He drank it. It made his chest feel hot, but otherwise it was all right.

‘Now lie down on the sofa.’

‘I’m not lying down!’ Senka snarled, and he looked away again.

But he did lie down, because his head was spinning. And the instant his head touched the cushions, everything went blank.

When Senka woke up it was day, and not early in the day either –the sun was shining from the other side, not from where the street was but from the yard. Lying under a blanket – which was light and fluffy with a blue-and-green check – he felt free and easy.

Death was sitting at the table, sideways on to Senka sewing something, or maybe doing her embroidery. She looked incredibly beautiful from the side, only she seemed sadder than when you saw her from the front. He didn’t open his eyes wide, just peeked out at her for a long time. He had to figure out how to behave after what had just happened. Why, for instance, was he lying there naked? Not completely naked, that is, he had his pants on, but no shirt and no boots. That had to mean she undressed him while he was asleep, and he didn’t remember a thing.

Just then Death turned her head and Senka shut his eyelids quickly, but even so she realised he wasn’t sleeping any more.

‘Are you awake?’ she said. ‘Are you hungry? Sit at the table. Here’s a fresh roll. And here’s some milk.’

‘I don’t want it,’ Senka muttered, offended by the milk. Why couldn’t she offer him a man’s drink – tea or coffee? But then, of course, what respect could he hope for after snivelling like a little kid?

She stood up, took the cup and bread roll off the table and sat down beside him. Senka was afraid Death would start feeding him by hand, like a baby, and he sat up.

Suddenly he felt so desperately hungry he started trembling all over. And he started gobbling down the bread and washing it down with milk. Death watched and waited. She didn’t have to wait for long, Senka guzzled it all in a minute.

‘Now tell me what the matter is.’

There was nothing else for it. He hung his head, scowled, and told her – briefly, but honestly, without keeping anything back. And this is how he finished: ‘So I’m sorry, I’ve let you down. You vouched for me to the Prince, and I turned out too weak, you see. What kind of bandit would I make? I thought I was a falcon, and I’m nothing but a mangy little sparrow.’

And as soon as he finished, he looked up at her. She seemed so angry that Senka felt really terrible.

They didn’t say anything for a little while. Then she spoke: ‘I’m the one who owes you an apology, Speedy, for letting you get anywhere near the Prince. I wasn’t myself at the time.’ Then she shook her head and said to herself, not to Senka: ‘Oh, Prince, Prince . . .’

‘It wasn’t the Prince, it was Deadeye,’ he said. ‘Deadeye killed the Kalmyks. I told you . . .’

‘What can you expect from Deadeye, he’s not even human. But the Prince wasn’t always that way, I remember. At first I even wanted . . .’

Senka never found out what it was she wanted, because at that very moment they heard a knock, a special one: tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, and then two more times, tap-tap.

Death started and jumped up: ‘It’s him! Talk of the devil. Come on, get up, quick. If he sees you, he’ll kill you. He won’t care that you’re just a kid. He’s so awfully jealous.’

Senka didn’t have to be asked twice – he was up off that sofa in a flash, he wasn’t even offended by that ‘kid’.

He asked in a frightened voice: ‘Which way? The window?’

‘No, it takes too long to open.’

Senka made for one of the two white doors at the back of the room.

‘You can’t go in the bathroom. The Prince is fussy about keeping clean, the first thing he always does is go and wash his hands. Go in there.’ And she nodded to the other door.

Senka didn’t care – he’d have climbed into a hot oven to get away from the Prince. He was knocking again now – louder than before.

Senka flew into a little room that was like a closet, or even a cupboard, only inside it was all covered in white tiles. On the floor by the wall there was a big vase or bowl – it was white too.

‘What’s this?’ Senka asked.

She laughed. ‘A water closet. A privy with flushing water.’

‘And what if he gets the urge?’

She laughed even louder: ‘Why, he’d burst before he’d go to the privy in front of a lady. He’s a prince, after all.’

The door to the closet slammed shut, and she went to open up. Senka heard her shout: ‘All right, I’m coming, I’m coming, no need for that racket!’

Then he heard the Prince’s voice: ‘What did you lock yourself in for? You never lock yourself in!’

‘Someone filched a shawl from the porch, crept in during the night.’

The Prince was already in the room. ‘That must have been a vagrant, passing through. No one in Khitrovka would dare do that. Don’t worry, I’ll put the word out, they’ll get your shawl back and find the thief – he’ll be sorry.’

‘Oh, never mind about the shawl. It was old anyway, I was going to throw it out.’

Then it went quiet for a while, something rustled and there was a slobbery sound.

She said: ‘Well, hello.’

‘They’re necking,’ Senka guessed.

The Prince said: ‘I’ll go and wash my hands and face. I’m all dusty.’

Water started running on the other side of the wall, and the sound went on for a long time.

Meanwhile Senka looked around in the privy cupboard.

There was a pipe sticking out over the bowl, and higher up there was a cast-iron tank with a chain dangling from it – he had no idea what it was for. But then Senka had no time for idle curiosity – he had to scarper while he was still in one piece.

And right up by the ceiling was a bright little window – not very big, but he could get through it. If he stood on the china bowl, grabbed hold of the chain, and then the tank, he could reach it all right.

He didn’t waste any time on second thoughts. He climbed up on the bowl (oh, don’t let the damn thing crack!) and grabbed the chain.

The bowl stood the test all right, but that chain played him a shabby trick: when he tugged on it, the pipe started roaring and water came gushing out!

Senka almost fainted, he was so afraid.

Death stuck her head in: ‘What are you doing? Have you lost your wits?’

And just then the next door slammed as the Prince came out of the bathroom. So Death swung round towards him, as if she’d just finished her business.

She closed the door behind her, firmly.

Senka stood there for a while with his hand on his heart while he gathered his wits. Once he’d recovered a bit, he squatted down on his haunches and started wondering how beautiful women did the necessary. It was nature, they had to, but it was impossible to imagine Death doing anything like that. And where could you do it in here? Not in this snow-white china bowl! It was beautiful, the sort of thing you could eat fruit jelly off.

So Senka still wasn’t sure – he found it easy to imagine that specially beautiful women had everything arranged in some special kind of way.

Once he got comfortable in the closet, he wanted to know what was going on outside.

He pressed his ear against the door and tried to listen, but he couldn’t make out the words. He tried sticking his ear here and there and finally crouched down on all fours, with his ear on the floor. There was a crack under the door, so he could hear better that way.

He heard her voice first: ‘I told you – I’m not in the mood for fooling around today.’

‘But I brought you a present, a sapphire ring.’

‘Put it over there, by the mirror.’

Footsteps. Then the Prince again, angry (Senka cringed):

‘Seems like you’re not in the mood very often. Other women can’t wait to get on their back, but you’re as prickly as a hedgehog.’

She said (real reckless!): ‘If you don’t like me, then clear off, I won’t try to stop you.’

He said (even angrier): ‘Get off your high horse! You owe me an apology. Where did you find that snot-nosed kid Speedy?’

Oh, Lord in Heaven, thought Senka!

‘Why, don’t you like him?’ Death asked. ‘They told me he saved your life.’

‘He’s a bright enough lad, only he’s too wet. If you see him, tell him this: once you’re in my deck, there’s only two ways you leave the Prince – the coppers put you away or you go into the cold damp ground.’

‘What’s he done?’

‘He’s done a runner, that’s what.’

She said: ‘Let him go. It’s my mistake. I thought he’d be useful to you. But clearly he’s not made of the right stuff.’

‘I won’t let him go,’ the Prince snapped. ‘He’s seen everyone, he knows everything. You tell him: if he doesn’t show up, I’ll hunt him down and bury him. Anyway, that’s enough of that nonsense. Last night, Death, my little darling, I picked up a fine load of loot, more than three thousand, and today I’m going to take even more, I’ve got a really grand lead. You know Siniukhin, the pen-pusher, lives in Yeroshenko’s basement?’

‘I know him. A drunk, used to be a clerk in the civil service. Has he given you a lead, then?’

The Prince laughed. ‘Ah – it’s not from him, it’s about him.’

‘But how can you get anything out of a miserable wretch like him? He can hardly feed his wife and children.’

‘I can, Death, my little darling, I most certainly can! A certain little person whispered to Lardy, and Lardy whispered to me. The pen-pusher found old treasure somewhere underground, heaps and heaps of gold and silver. He’s been drinking vodka for three days now, with salted mushrooms and salmon. He’s bought his old woman dresses, and boots for the kids – Siniukhin, who never had more than ten kopecks to his name! He sold Hasimka the Fence some old money, a whole handful of silver coins, then he got drunk in the “Labour” and boasted he was not much longer for Khitrovka, he was going to live in an apartment of his own, like before, dine off fancy food on a white tablecloth. I’m going to have a little chat with Siniukhin tonight. Let him spread his good luck around a bit.’

Suddenly the room went quiet, but it wasn’t just quiet, it was creepy. Senka pressed his ear hard up against the crack – he could tell there was something wrong.

Then the Prince roared: ‘So what’s this, then? Boots? And the sofa’s all creased up?’

There was a clatter as a chair fell over, or something of the sort.

‘You whore! You slut! Who is he? Who? I’ll kill him? Hiding, is he? Where?’

Well, Senka didn’t hang around after that. He closed the latch on the door, leapt up on the bowl, grabbed the chain, hauled himself up (ignoring the roar of the water), pushed open the window and dived out head first.

Behind him he heard a crunch and a crash as the door swung open, and then a bellowing voice: ‘Stop right now! I’m going to rip you to pieces!’

But Senka skidded down like a fish. With a hand from God, or somehow else, he managed not to break his neck. He tumbled awkwardly then darted off across the broken stone and brick towards the passage.

But he didn’t run very far. He stopped and thought: He’s going to kill her now, the Prince is. Kill her for nothing.

His feet carried him back, of their own accord. Then he stood under the windows and listened. It was quiet. Had he done her in already?

Senka rolled an old barrel to the window of the privy, stood it on end and began to climb back in. He didn’t know why he was doing it. He didn’t want to think about it. He had this stupid thought running round his head: you can’t kill Death. It wasn’t possible – or was it – to kill Death? And then he thought: I did enough running last night. I’m no hare, especially on broken bricks without boots.

When he got back in the closet, it was clear the Prince hadn’t killed her yet, and it didn’t look like he was about to.

Suddenly Senka didn’t feel so brave any more. Especially when, through the door, which was broken off its top hinge, he heard this: ‘Tell me, in God’s name. Nothing will happen to you, just say who it is.’

There was no answer.

Senka peeped out warily. Oh Lord, the Prince had a flick-knife and he was pointing it straight at Death’s chest. Maybe he would kill her after all?

He even said: ‘Don’t play games with me – I might just lose control. Killing someone’s like swatting a fly for the Prince.’

‘But I’m not just anyone, I’m Death. Go on, then, swat me. Well, what are you gawping at? Either kill me, or get out.’

The Prince flung the knife at the mirror and ran out. The front door slammed.

Senka craned his neck and saw that Death had turned away. She was looking at herself in the broken mirror, and the cracks in the mirror were like a cobweb stretched over her face. The way she was looking at herself was weird, as if there was something she couldn’t understand. She caught sight of Senka, swung round and said:

‘You came back? That was brave. And you said you were a sparrow. You’re not a hawk, I know, but you’re not a sparrow, more like a swift.’

And she smiled – the whole thing was water off a duck’s back to her. Senka sat down on the sofa and pulled on the boots that had caused the disaster. He was breathing hard; after all, he’d had a bad scare.

She handed him his shirt. ‘Look, I’ve put my mark on you. From now on you’ll be mine.’

Then he saw that she hadn’t just stitched up his torn shirt, she’d embroidered a flower on it while he was sleeping, a strange flower with an eye like hers, like Death’s eye, in the middle. And the petals were coloured snakes with forked tongues.

He realised she was joking about the sign. He put the shirt on and said, ‘Thanks.’

Her face was really close to his, and it had a special kind of smell, sweet and bitter at the same time. Senka gulped and his eyelids batted, his mind went blank and he forgot everything, even the Prince. She didn’t want to mess around with the Prince. Which meant she didn’t love him, right?

Senka took a small step closer, and felt himself swaying, like a blade of grass in the wind. But he didn’t have the nerve to move his hands and hug her or anything.

She laughed and tousled Senka’s hair. ‘Keep away from the flames, little gnat,’ she said. ‘You’ll singe your wings. I’ll tell you what you should do. You heard what the Prince said about the treasure? You know Siniukhin, the pen-pusher? He lives under Yeroshenko’s flophouse, in the Old Rags Basement. A miserable man with a red nose like a big plum. I went to Siniukhin’s place once, when his son was sick with scarlet fever –I took the doctor. Go and warn him to take his family and get out of Khitrovka fast. Tell him the Prince is going to pay him a visit tonight.’

A swift was all right, no offence taken, but Senka drew the line at that ‘gnat’. She understood, and started laughing even harder. ‘Stop sulking. All right, then, I’ll give you just one little kiss. But no nonsense.’

He couldn’t believe it – he thought she was mocking a poor orphan. But even so, he pursed his lips up and pushed them out. But would she really kiss him?

She didn’t cheat, she touched his lips with hers, but then she started pushing him away.

‘Off you go to Siniukhin, run. You can see what a wild beast the Prince has turned into.’

As he walked away from her house, Senka touched his lips gingerly with his little finger – oh Lord, they were burning up! Death herself had kissed them!

HOW SENKA RAN AND HID AND THEN GOT THE HICCUPS

It wasn’t Senka’s fault he didn’t get to the pen-pusher, there was good reason.

He made an honest effort, set straight out from Death’s house for Podkolokolny Lane, where Yeroshenkov’s flophouse was. It had apartiments with numbers upstairs – as many as a thousand people would snore away up there – and down below, under the ground, there were these massive deep cellars, and people lived there too: ‘diver-ducks’ who altered stolen clothes, paupers who had nothing, and the pen-pushers were the kind that settled there. Pen-pushers were a heavy-drinking crowd, but they tried not to overdo it, they needed to keep hold of a pen and set the words out right on paper. That was their trade, scribing letters for the unlearned: begging, weepy letters as often as not. They were paid by the page: one was five kopecks, two was nine and a half, and three was thirteen.

It wasn’t a long way from the Yauza Boulevard to the Yerokha (that was what Yeroshenko’s flophouse was usually called), but Senka never got to where he was heading.

When he turned the corner on to Podkolokolny Lane (he could already see the door of the Yerokha), Senka spotted something that stopped him dead in his tracks.

There was Mikheika the Night-Owl, and standing beside him, holding him tight by the shoulder was a short-arse in a check two-piece and bowler – the same Chinee Senka had nicked the green beads off the week before. Once you’d seen someone like that, you never forgot him. Big fat cheeks the colour of ripe turnips, narrow slits for eyes, a blunt little nose, but with a hook in it too.

Night-Owl was acting calm and grinning. What had he got to be afraid of? There were two Khitrovka lads standing behind the Chinaman (the pudding-head didn’t have a clue). Mikheika spotted Senka and winked: just you wait, the fun’s about to start.

Well, he couldn’t not watch, could he?

Senka came a bit closer, so he could hear, and stopped. The Chinee asked (the way he spoke was funny, but you could still make it out): ‘Night-Owr-kun, where your friend? The one who run so fast. Thin, yerrow hair, grey eyes, nose with freckurs?’

Well, well, so he’d remembered everything, the yellow pagan, even the freckles. But the question was, how had he managed to find Mikheika? He must have just wandered into Khitrovka and run into him by chance.

But then Senka spotted a battered old cap with a cracked peak in the Chinaman’s hand. Now, that was crafty! He hadn’t just barged in by accident, he’d come on purpose, to look for his beads. He’d twigged that the lads were from Khitrovka (or maybe the cabbies had given him the hint, they were an eagle-eyed bunch), come dashing over and nabbed Night-Owl. Mikheika didn’t know his letters, and he drew an owl on all his things so they wouldn’t get nicked. And now look where that had got him. The oriental titch must have walked around with the cap, which had been dropped on Sretenka Street, asking whose it was. And now he’d found out, he was in trouble. Old Slanty-eyes had made a big mistake, coming here and grabbing Night-Owl by the sleeve. That flat pancake face was in for a good battering.

Mikheika answered back: ‘What friend’s that? All those Chinese radishes must have gone to your head. I’ve never seen you before.’

Night-Owl was showing off in front of the lads, naturally.

The Chinaman waved the cap. ‘And what this? What bird this?’

And he jabbed his finger at the lining.

What was the point, though? The lads would fling a load of seventy-kopeck lead pellets in his face, and that was all he’d take home. Senka even felt sorry for the heathen. Pike, a smart lad from Podkopaevsky Lane, quick on his feet, had already gone down on all fours behind the gull’s back. Now Night-Owl would give Yellow-cheeks a shove and the fun would start. He’d leave with no pants, and they’d rearrange his teeth, and his ribs too.

There were gawkers grinning at the sight from the square and the lane. Boxman set off along the edge of the market, with an open newspaper in his hands – he stopped, looked over the top of the grey page, yawned and tramped on. Nothing unusual, just another gull getting what he had coming.

‘Oh, oh, don’t frighten me, mister, or I’ll wet me pants,’ Night-Owl mocked. ‘But thank you most kindly for the cap. Please accept my regards, and this too, out of the generosity of my heart.’

And he smashed his fist into the Chinaman’s teeth!

Or, rather, he aimed for the teeth, only Slanty-eyes bobbed down, Night-Owl’s fist flailed at empty air, and the swing of it spun him right round. Then the Chinaman lashed out with his right hand and left leg, at the same time: his hand caught Mikheika round the back of the head (only gently, but Mikheika dived nose first into the dust then didn’t move), and his heel smacked into Pike’s ear. Pike went flat out too, and the third lad, a bit older than Pike – Drillbit, his moniker was – tried to hit the nimble heathen with his brass knuckles, but all he caught was empty air, too. The Chinee leapt sideways and smacked Drillbit on the chin with the toe of his boot (how could he fling his legs up that high?), and Drillbit fell flat on his back.

So before the gawkers could even drop their jaws, the three lads who’d tried to fleece the pagan gull were stretched out on the ground, and not getting up in a hurry.

People shook their heads in wonder and went on their way. But the Chinee squatted down beside Mikheika and grabbed his ear.

‘Ver’ bad, Night-Owr-kun,’ he said. ‘Ver’, ver’ bad. Where beads?’

Mikheika started shaking all over. And for real – he wasn’t putting it on. ‘I don’t know about no beads! On me mother’s grave! In the name of Christ!’

The Chinaman twisted his ear a bit and explained what he wanted. ‘Littuw green baws, on thread. They were in bunduw.’

Then didn’t Night-Owl go and yell: ‘That wasn’t me, it was Speedy Senka! Ow, my ear! That hurts! There’s Senka, over there!’

Why, the Judas! Couldn’t even stand a simple ear-twist. He needed a bit of training from Uncle Zot!

The Chinaman swung round to where Night-Owl was pointing, and saw Senka. Then the heathen got up and walked towards him –moving softly, like a cat. ‘Senka-kun,’ he said, ‘don’ run. Today I have soos, not geta – I catch you.’

And he pointed to his half-boots. As if to say: not sandals, like the last time.

But of course Senka ran away. He’d sworn never to kick up his heels again, but it seemed like that was his destiny now, to keep scampering off like a hare. Crack the whip and give ’em the slip.

And Senka had to run a lot harder now than he had a week ago. First he dashed right along Podkolokolny Lane, then down Podkopai Lane, and then Tryokhsvyatskaya Street, along Khitrovka Lane, across the square, and turned back onto Podkolokolny again.

Senka galloped so fast it was a wonder the heels didn’t fly off his boots, but the Chinaman kept up, and the fat-faced blubber-bag even tried to reason as he ran: ‘Senka-kun, don’ run, you faw and hurt yourserf.’

He wasn’t even panting, but Senka was almost out of breath already.

It was a good thing Senka decided to turn on to Svininsky Lane, where the Kulakovka was – the biggest and rottenest dosshouse in Khitrovka. It was the Kulakovka’s cellars that saved Senka from the heathen Chinee. They were an even trickier maze than the Yerokha, no one knew every last inch of them. They’d dug so many tunnels and passages down there, the devil himself would never find you, and a Chinaman had no chance.

Senka didn’t go in very far – if you didn’t know the place, you could easily get lost in the dark. He just sat there and smoked a papyrosa.When he stuck his head out, the Chinee was squatting on his haunches beside the entry, squinting in the sunlight.

What could he do? He went back into the cellars and walked to and fro, to and fro again, smoked a bit more, spat at the wall (that was boring – you couldn’t see what you hit in the dark). Folks who lived in the Kulakovka flitted past like shadows. No one asked him why he was hanging about. They could see he was one of them, a Khitrovkan, and that was good enough for them.

He stuck his head out for another look, later, when the lantern by the entranceway was lit. The lousy Chinee was still sitting there, he hadn’t budged. The yellow race were a really stubborn lot!

This was starting to get Senka down. Was he going to hang about in the Kulakovka cellars for the rest of his life? He had cramps in his belly, and he had serious business to attend to – he had to warn that pen-pusher.

He went back down and started scouring the collidor (if you could call it a collidor – it was more like a cave really). The walls were slimy stone in some places, bare earth in others. There had to be another way out, right?

When the next Kulakovkan loomed out of the darkness, he grabbed him by the arm.

‘Is there another way out, mate?’

The man pulled his arm away and gave Senka a mouthful of abuse. At least he didn’t take a knife to him – you could expect that sort of thing in the Kulakovka.

Senka leaned back against the wall, and started wondering how he could get out of this miserable dive.

Suddenly this black, damp hole opened up right in front of where he was standing, and a shaggy head emerged and smacked Senka’s knee.

He yelled: ‘Lord, save me,’ and jumped out of the way.

But the head started barking: ‘What do you mean, by spreading yourself right across the burrow like that? Clumsy oafs all over the place, blocking the way!’

That was when Senka realised this was a ‘mole’ who had climbed out of his den. Underground, Khitrovka had this special class of ‘moles’, who stayed underground in the daytime, and came out only at night, if at all. People said they minded the secret hiding places for stolen goods, and the fences and dealers paid them a small share for food and drink, and they didn’t need proper clothes – what good were clothes underground?

‘Uncle Mole!’ Senka called, dashing after him. ‘You know all the ways in and out of this place. Take me out, only not through the door, some other way.’

‘You can’t get out any other way,’ said the mole, straightening up. ‘The only way out of the Kulakovka is on to Svininsky. If you hire me, I can take you to a different basement. The Buninka’s ten kopecks, the Rumyantsevka’s seven, the Yerokha’s fifteen . . .’

Senka was delighted. ‘The Yerokha’s the one I want! That’s even better than getting back outside!’

Siniukhin lived in the Yerokha.

Senka rummaged in his pockets – there was a fifteen-kopeck coin, his last one.

The mole took the money and stuck it in his cheek. He waved his hand: follow me now. Senka wasn’t worried he’d run off with the money and dump him in the dark. Everyone knew the moles were honest, or why would anyone ever trust them with their swag?

But he had to mind not to fall behind. It was all right for the mole, he was used to it, he could see everything in the dark, but for Senka it was hit or miss, feeling his way round the bends one step at a time.

At first they went straight and downhill a bit, or that was how it felt. Then his guide went down on all fours (Senka guessed only from the sound he made) and scrambled through a hole on the left. Senka followed him. They crawled along for maybe fifty feet, then the ceiling got higher. They left the passage and turned to the right. Then to the left again, and the stone floor changed to soft earth that was boggy in places and squelched under their feet. Then they turned left and left again into a place just like a cave, and he could feel a draught. From the cave they walked up some steps, not very far, but Senka still missed his footing and bruised his knee. At the top an iron door clanged open and behind it there was a collidor. After the passage they’d crawled though on all fours, it seemed quite light in here to Senka.

‘There, that’s the Yerokha,’ said the mole – the first time he’d spoken since they had set out. ‘From here you can get out either through the Tatar Inn or on to Podkolokolny. Where do you want to go?’

‘I want to go to the Old Rags Basement, Uncle, where the pen-pushers live,’ Senka said, and then, just to be safe, he added a lie: ‘I want a letter written to my father and mother.’

The underground man led him to the right, through a big stone cellar with high, round ceilings and fat-bellied brick columns, then along another collidor and through another big cellar till they came out in a collidor a bit wider than the others.

‘Ah-ha,’ said the mole as they turned a corner.

When Senka followed, the mole had disappeared, as if the ground had swallowed him up. There was grey light round the corner – the way out on to the street wasn’t far – but it wasn’t likely the mole had dashed out that way, he must have ducked into a burrow.

‘Are we here, then?’ Senka shouted, although there was no one there to hear.

The echo bounced off the ceiling and the walls: ‘eerthen-eerthen-eerthen’.

And the hollow answer seemed to come from under the earth: ‘Ah-ha’.

So this was it, the Old Rags Basement. Senka looked hard, and saw rough wooden doors along both walls. He knocked on one and shouted:

‘Where do the Siniukhins live round here?’

There was a pause, then a rattly voice asked: ‘What is it, want something written? I can do that. I write a better hand.’

‘No,’ said Senka. ‘The snake owes me half a rouble.’

A-a-ah,’ the voice drawled. ‘Go right. It’s the third door along.’

Senka stopped in front of the door and listened. What if the Prince was there already? Then he’d be in really hot water.

But no, it was quiet inside.

He knocked, gently at first, then with his fist.

Still no sound.

Maybe they’d gone out. But no – when he looked he could see light coming out from under the door, very faint.

He pushed the door, and it opened.

A rough table and on it a candle-end in a clay bowl, with splints of wood lying beside it. That was about all he could see at first.

‘Hello?’ Senka called, and took off his cap.

No one answered. But he had to keep the banter brief – he didn’t want the Prince to catch him here.

Senka lit one of the splinters and held it above his head. What was up with these Siniukhins, then? Why were they so quiet?

There was a woman lying on a bench by the wall, sleeping. And on the floor under the bench there was a kid – still a baby, only three, or maybe even two.

The woman was lying on her back, and she’d covered her eyes with something black. Uncle Zot’s wife used to put cotton wool soaked in sage tea on her eyes at night, so she wouldn’t get wrinkles. Women were fools, everyone knew that. They looked horrifying like that, as if they had holes in their faces, not eyes.

‘Hey, Auntie, get up! This is the no time for dozing,’ Senka said, approaching her. ‘Where’s the man of the house? I’ve got something to—’

He gagged. It wasn’t cotton wool on the woman’s eyes, it was mush. It had clotted in the hollows of her sockets and some had overflowed down her temple towards her ear. And it wasn’t black, no, it was red. And Mrs Siniukhin’s neck was all wet and shiny too.

Senka fluttered his peepers for a bit before he caught on: someone had slit the woman’s throat and gouged her eyes out – that was it.

He tried to scream, but all that came out was: ‘Hic!’

Then he squatted down on his haunches to take a look at the kid. He was dead too, and where his eyes should be there were two dark holes, only little ones – he wasn’t too big himself.

‘Hic,’ Senka went. ‘Hic, hic, hic.’

And he kept on hiccuping, he just couldn’t stop.

Senka backed away from that horrible bench, stumbled over something soft and almost fell.

When he held the light down, he saw a young lad, about twelve, lying there. He had no eyes either, they’d been gouged out too.

‘Blimey!’ Senka finally managed to say. ‘That’s awful!’

He was all set to dash back to the door, but suddenly he heard a voice coming from a dark corner.

‘Mitya,’ the voice called, all low and pitiful. ‘Has he gone? Did he hurt your mother? Eh? I can’t hear . . . Look what he did to me, the animal. . . Come here, come . . .’

There was a chintz curtain hanging across the corner. Should he run for it or should he go over there?

He went over. Pulled the curtain back.

He saw a wooden bed. There was a man on it, feeling his chest –it was soaked in blood. And he had no eyes, just like the others. This had to be the pen-pusher, Siniukhin.

Senka tried to explain that Mitya, and his mum, and the little kid, had all been slaughtered, but all he did was hiccup.

‘Shut up and listen,’ said Siniukhin, licking his lips. He looked like he was smiling, and Senka turned away, so as not to see that no-eyed smile. ‘Listen now, my strength’s almost gone. I’m on my way out, Mitya. But never mind, that’s all right. I lived a bad life, a sinful life, but at least I can die like a man. Maybe that will earn me forgiveness . . . I didn’t tell him, you know! He ripped my chest open with that knife of his, but I bore it all . . . I pretended to be dead, but I’m still alive!’ The pen-pusher laughed, and something gurgled in his throat. ‘Listen, son, remember . . . That secret place I told you about, this is how you get there: you know the underground hall with the vaulting and the brick pillars? You know it, of course you do . . . Well, in there, behind the last pillar on the right, right in the very corner, you can take the bottom stone out . . . I came across it when I was looking for a place to hide a bottle from your mother. You take the stone out, and then you can take some more out, from above the first one . . . Crawl in there, don’t be afraid. It’s a secret passage. After that, it’s easy: you just keep going . . . And you come out into the chamber where the treasure is. The important thing is, don’t be frightened . . .’ His voice had gone really quiet now, and Senka had to lean over him – the hiccups made it hard for him to listen properly too. ‘The treasure . . . There’s so much of it . . . It will all be yours. Live a good life. Don’t think too badly of your old dad . . .’

Siniukhin didn’t say anything else. Senka looked at him: his lips were set in a wide smile, but he wasn’t breathing any more. He’d passed over.

Senka crossed himself and reached out to the departed, like you were supposed to, to close his eyes, then jerked his hand away.

He wasn’t hiccuping any more, but he was trembling silently. And not from fear – he’d forgotten all about that.

Treasure! So much treasure!

HOW SENKA HUNTED FOR TREASURE

Now of course, he was shaken up, after something like that.

He kept thinking: There’s a monster on the loose, he didn’t even spare the little baby, cut his eyes out too, the fiend! And what does that make the Prince! If he’s supposed to be an honest bandit, why does he keep a villain who gouges people’s eyes out when they’re still alive?

But his thoughts kept skipping from these terrible things to the treasure. He couldn’t imagine it properly, though: it was like the Holy Gate in the icon screen in church. With everything sparkling and shimmering, so you couldn’t make anything out. He imagined chests too, full of gold and silver, and all sorts of precious stones.

But then his thoughts turned to his brother Vanka, and how Senka would go to see him and give him a present – not a wooden horse with a string tail, and not some dwarf pony, like Judge Kuvshinnikov did, but a genuine thoroughbred Arab racer, and a carriage on springs to go with it.

And he thought about Death a bit too – well, of course he did. If Senka had all these huge riches, maybe she’d see him differently then. Not some gap-toothed, freckly kid, not a gnat or a swift, but Semyon Trifonovich Spidorov, a substantial squire. And then . . .

He didn’t really know what came ‘then’.

When he left that hideous room he ran back to the first cellar, with the fat-bellied pillars – that had to be the one Siniukhin was talking about.

Last pillar ‘on the right’ – was that this end or the other?

Probably the other, the one farthest from Siniukhin’s place

Senka was feeling a bit squiffy after everything that had happened, but he’d still grabbed the matches and a supply of splints off the table.

In the far corner he squatted down on his haunches and struck a match. He saw the dressed stonework of an ancient wall, every stone the size of a crate. Just try shifting one of those!

When the flame went out, Senka felt for the joint, tried pushing this way and that – a dead loss. He tried moving the next stone too –the same thing.

Right. He went over to the next corner on the right. This time he lit a splint, not just a match, and moved the light this way and that. The stones here looked the same, but one, at the bottom, was surrounded by black cracks. Was he in business?

He grabbed hold and pulled. The stone yielded, and quite easily too.

He tugged it out with a grunt and pushed it aside. The hole gave out a smell of damp and decay.

Senka started to shake again. Siniukhin was telling the truth! There was something there!

The next stone was even easier to get out – and a bit broader than the one underneath. The third was broader still, and it wasn’t held in by mortar either. He took out five stones altogether. The top one must have weighed seventy-five pounds, if not more.

Now Senka was peering into a narrow gap – a man could quite easily get through it if he turned sideways and bent crooked.

So he crossed himself and clambered in.

Once he’d squeezed through, there was much more room. He hesitated, wondering whether he ought to put the stones back. But he didn’t – what would anyone else want in the corner of the cellar? You’d never see the gap without a light, and the tenants in the Yerokha didn’t carry lights.

Senka was really desperate to get to that treasure, and as quick as possible.

The passage was about a yard wide, with something trailing down off the ceiling – cobwebs maybe, or dust. And there was squeaking from the floor – rats. They were all over the place in the basements –the motherland of rats, those places were. One of them jumped up on Senka’s boot and sank its teeth into the folds. He shook it off and another jumped on. They had no fear at all!

He stamped his feet: scram, damn you.

He walked on through the passage and every now and then the pointy-nosed grey vermin scuttled from under his feet. Their bright eyes glinted in the darkness, like little drops of water.

The lads had told him that last winter the rats went crazy with hunger, and they ate the nose and ears off a drunk who fell asleep in a basement. They often gnawed at babies if they were left unwatched. Never mind, thought Senka, I ain’t no drunk or little baby. And they can’t bite through these boots.

When the splint burned out, he didn’t light another. What for? There was only one way to go.

It’s hard to say how long he walked in the dark for, but it wasn’t really that long.

He held his hands out and ran them along the walls, afraid of missing a turning or a fork.

He should have been feeling for the ceiling instead. He hit his forehead on a stone – the smack set his ears ringing and he saw stars. He bent his head down, took three short steps, and the walls disappeared from under his hands.

He lit a splint.

The passage had led out into some kind of vault. Could this be the chamber Siniukhin was talking about?

The ceiling here was smooth and curved, and made of narrow bricks – not exactly high, but high enough so he couldn’t reach it. The bricks had flaked away in places, and the chips were lying around on the floor. It wasn’t a very big space, but it wasn’t small either. Maybe twenty paces across from wall to wall.

Senka couldn’t see any chests.

But there was a heap of sticks lying by the wall on the right. When he walked over he saw they weren’t sticks, they were iron rods, all black with age.

It looked like there used to be a door opposite the passage Senka had come out of, but it was blocked off with broken bricks, stones and earth – there was no way through.

So where was the huge treasure that Siniukhin and his family had suffered such a horrible death for?

Maybe it was under the floor, and Siniukhin didn’t have time to say.

Senka went down on all fours and crawled round the floor, knocking as he went. The floor was brick too, and made a hollow sound.

In the middle of the chamber he found a big purse of thick leather, which had turned stiff and hard. It was tattered and useless – but something jingled inside. Now then!

He turned the purse inside out and shook it. Scales or flakes of some kind clinked as they fell to the ground. A couple of handfuls, the pieces no bigger than the nail on his pinkie.

Were they leaves of gold?

It didn’t look like it – they didn’t glitter bright enough.

Senka had heard that you tested gold with your teeth. He gnawed on one of the flakes. It tasted dusty, but there was no way he could bite through it. So maybe it was gold. God only knew.

He tipped the flakes into his pocket and crawled on. He lit another three splints and scrubbed the whole floor with his knees, but still he didn’t find anything more.

Then he sat down on his backside, put his head in his hands, and started feeling miserable.

Some treasure. Was Siniukhin just raving? Or maybe there was a hiding place in the wall.

He jumped to his feet, picked an iron rod out of the heap and started sounding the walls out.

And a fat lot of good that did him – all he got was earache from the noise.

Senka took one of the flakes out of his pocket and held it close to the flame. He could make out a stamp: a man on a horse, some initials. It looked like a coin, only kind of crooked, like someone had chewed it.

Feeling all frustrated, he stuck his hand back in the purse and felt under the lining. He found another flake and then a coin – a proper round coin, bigger than a rouble, with a bearded man stamped on it, and some letters too. It was silver money, Senka realised that straight off. There had quite likely been a whole bagful here, which Siniukhin had taken and hidden. No way he would ever find them now.

There was nothing else for it – Senka set off back along the underground passage, with almost nothing to show for his pains.

Well, a round piece of silver. And those flakes – maybe silver, maybe copper, who could tell? And even if they were silver, they wouldn’t add up to real riches.

He took the iron rod he’d used to tap the walls, to keep the rats away. And he was sure it would come in handy – it had a good hefty feel to it.

HOW SENKA WAS NABBED

Even though there wasn’t any treasure in the vault, when Senka came out of the passage, into the cellar with the brick pillars, he pushed the stones back in place anyway. He’d have to come back with an oil lamp and search a bit better – maybe there was something he’d missed?

On the way out, from the spot where the mole had asked which exit he wanted to go to, Senka turned left, so he wouldn’t wind up in the Old Rags Basement. Walk back past that door, with those eyeless corpses behind it? No thank you, that’s a treat we can do without.

Senka felt amazed at his own daring – after a horror like that, how come he didn’t go haring out of the Yerokha, and even went hunting for treasure? It meant one of two things: either he was a pretty hard case after all, or else he was as greedy as they come – and his greed was stronger than his fear.

That was what he was thinking when he walked through the side door into the Tatar Tavern. When he got outside the flophouse, he screwed his eyes up at the bright light. Well, well, it was morning already, and the sun was gleaming on the bell tower of St Nikola of Podkopai. He’d spent the whole night creeping around underground.

Senka walked along Podkolokolny Lane, looking at how pure and joyous the sky was, with its lacy white doilies. He should have been looking around, instead of staring at the clouds.

He walked straight into someone – as solid as cast bronze. Bruised himself, he did, but whoever it was didn’t even budge.

Oh Lord – it was the Chinaman.

After all these goings-on, Senka had forgotten all about him, but the Chinee was dogged – he’d stayed put in that street all night long. And all for seventy kopecks! If those lousy beads were worth even a three-note, he’d probably have had a fit.

Slanty-eyes smiled: ‘Good moruning, Senka-kun.’ And he stretched out his stubby hand to grab Senka’s collar.

Sod that!

Senka smashed him across the arm with the iron stick out of the vault. That made the nifty heathen pull back sharpish.

Oho, off we go again – the old catch-me-if-you-can routine. Senka spun round and sprinted off down the lane.

Only this time he didn’t get very far. As he went running past a fancy gent (what was a dandy like that doing in Khitrovka?), Senka’s pocket caught on the knob of his cane. It was weird – the stroller’s cane wasn’t jerked right out of his hand, like it should have been. Instead, it was Senka who stopped dead in his tracks.

The dandy pulled the cane lightly towards him, and Senka went with it. He looked respectable all right, with a silk stovepipe hat and starched collars. And he had a smooth face too – handsome he was, only not so young any more, his hair was grey at the temples.

‘Unhook me quick, mister!’ Senka yelled, because the Chinaman was getting quite close. He wasn’t running, just strolling towards them in no great hurry.

Suddenly the handsome man laughed, twitched his black moustache and said, with a bit of a stammer: ‘Of c-course, Semyon Spidorov, I’ll let you go, but . . . but not until you return my jade b-beads.’

Senka gaped at him. How come he knew his name?

‘Eh?’ he said. ‘What d’you—? What beads are those?’

‘The ones that you pilfered from my valet Masa eight d-days ago. You’re a smart young man. You’ve c-cost us a lot of time, making us chase after you.’

That was when Senka recognised him: it was the same gent he’d seen from the back on Asheulov Lane. His temples were grey, too, and he stammered.

‘No offence intended,’ the gent went on, taking hold of Senka’s sleeve in a grip like a vice with his finger and thumb, ‘but Masa is t-tired of running after you, he’s not sixteen years old any more. We’ll have to take p-precautions and put you in irons t-temporarily. That rod of yours, if you please.’

The dandy took Senka’s iron stick, gripped both ends tight, wrinkled up his smooth forehead, and then didn’t he just twist that rod round Senka’s wrists! Real easy, too, like it was some kind of wire!

That took incredible strength! Senka was so shaken he couldn’t even do his poor orphan routine.

But the strongman raised his fine eyebrows, as if he was amazed by his own strength, and said: ‘Curious. May I enquire where you g-got this thingummy from?’

Senka gave him the appropriate answer: ‘Where from, where from? From a stroke of luck. If you want to know more, you can go get. . .’

It was like his hands really were in shackles, there was no way he could pull them from the iron loops, no matter how he wriggled.

‘Well, indeed, you’re quite right,’ the man with the moustache agreed calmly. ‘My question is indiscreet. You have every right not to answer it. So where are my beads?’

Then the Chinaman joined them. Senka screwed up his eyes and winced – old Yellow-face would hit him now, like he did Mikheika and the lads.

The words just burst out on their own: ‘Tashka’s got them! I gave them to her.’

‘Who this Taska?’ asked the Chinee that the dandy had called Masa.

‘My moll.’

The handsome gent sighed: ‘I understand. It’s unpleasant and improper to t-take a present back from a l-lady but please understand me, Semyon Spidorov I’ve had those b-beads for fifteen years. One grows accustomed to things, you know. And furthermore, they are associated with a certain rather special m-memory. Let us go to see Mademoiselle Tashka.’

Now, Senka took offence at that. How did he know Senka’s moll was a mamselle? Well, of course, Tashka was a mamselle, but he hadn’t said anything of the sort about her. She could have been a respectable girl. Senka was all set to spring to the defence of Tashka’s honour, shout some coarse insult, but he took a closer look at those calm blue eyes and thought better of it.

‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s go.’

They set off back along Podkolokolny, Masa holding one end of the twisted rod. The other tormentor walked on his own, tapping his cane on the cobbles.

Senka felt ashamed, being led along like a little dog on a lead. If any of the lads saw him, he’d be disgraced. So he tried to walk as close as he could to the Chinaman, like they were friends, or they were doing a job together. The Chinee understood Senka’s suffering: he took off his jacket and threw it over Senka’s shackled hands. He was human too, even if he wasn’t Russian.

A crowd of people was jostling around the way into the Yerokha. And over their heads, Senka could see a cap with a badge. A constable! Standing there looking all stern and haughty, not letting anyone in. Senka knew right off what was going on – they’d found the Siniukhins! But in the crowd they were saying all sorts.

Someone, who looked like a ragman (they collected old rags from rubbish tips), was explaining loudly: ‘It’s this order as was just issued by the orforities. Close down the Yerokha and spray it with infection, ’cause it’s spreading bacilluses right across Moscow.’

‘What’s it spreading?’ a woman with a broken nose asked in a frightened voice.

‘Bacilluses. Well, to put it simply, that’s a mouse or a rat. And you gets cholera from them, ’cause some of them as live in the Yerokha eats these bacilluses when they’re hungry, and they swell right up from the rat meat. Well, the orforities have found out about it.’

‘Don’t tell lies, sir, you’re only confusing the good people,’ a man emaciated from drink rebuked the ragman. Wearing a tattered frock coat, he was, must have been, one of the pen-pushers, like the late deceased Siniukhin, God rest his soul. ‘There’s been a murder in there. They’re waiting for the superintendent and the investigator.’

‘Hah, they wouldn’t make all this fuss over a trifle like that,’ the ragman said suspiciously. ‘Only today two men were stabbed to death across there in the Labour, as if anyone cares.’

The pen-pusher lowered his voice. ‘My neighbour told me what happened was horrible. Supposedly they did away with countless numbers of little children.’

The people around him gasped and crossed themselves, and the gent who owned the beads pricked up his ears and stopped.

‘Children have b-been killed?’ he asked.

The pen-pusher turned round, saw the important-looking gent and whipped off his cap. ‘Yes indeed, sir. I did not witness it myself, but Ivan Serafimovich from the Old Rags Basement heard the constable who ran to the station saying to himself: “Didn’t even spare the children, the vicious brutes”. And something else, about eyes being put out. My neighbour is an extremely honest man, he would never lie. He used to work in the excise office, a victim of fate, like myself. Obliged to waste his life away in such an appalling place because—’

‘The eyes were p-put out?’ Senka’s captor interrupted and handed the pen-pusher a coin. ‘Here, take this. All right, Masa, let’s go in and t-take a look at what’s happened here.’

And he walked up to the door of the flophouse, the Chinaman pulling Senka along behind. But the Old Rags Basement was the last place on God’s earth Senka wanted to go.

‘Why, what’s there to see in there?’ he whined, digging his heels in. ‘People talk all sorts of rubbish.’

But the gent had already gone up to the constable and given him a nod – the constable didn’t dare stop an imposing individual like that, he just saluted.

After they had walked down the steps to the cellars, the dandy murmured thoughtfully: ‘The Old Rags Basement? I think. . . that’s l-left and then right.’

What an amazing gent, where would he know that from? He walked along the dark corridors quickly, confidently too. Senka was astonished. But he still whined as he was dragged behind: ‘Mr Chinaman, why don’t we wait here, eh? What do you say to that?’

The Chinee stopped, turned round and gave Senka a light flick on the forehead.

‘I not Chinese, I Japanese. Awright?’

Then he went back to towing Senka.

Well, well! And Senka thought Japanese and Chinese were all the same yellow-faced slanty-eyes, but apparently they thought they were different, and they even took offence.

‘Mr Jappo,’ said Senka, correcting his mistake, ‘I’m exhausted, I can’t go on.’

And he tried to sit down, like he’d collapsed, but Masa waved a fist at him very persuasively, so Senka stopped talking and accepted his fate.

When they reached Siniukhin’s apartment, who was at the door but Boxman himself? As straight and tall as the Kremlin’s bell tower. And there was a lit paraffin lamp on the ground.

‘Boxman?’ the gent said in surprise. ‘So you’re still in Khitrovka. Well, well, well.’

And Boxman was even more astounded. He gaped at the dandy, wide-eyed and blinking.

‘Erast Petrovich,’ he said. ‘Your Honour!’ And he stood to attention. ‘I was informed you had changed your Russian domicile for a foreign residence!’

‘I have, I have. But I come to visit my native city on occasion, in private. How are you, Boxman, still up to your old tricks, or have you settled down? Oh, I never dealt with you, did I? Didn’t have the time.’

Boxman smiled, not very broadly, though, just a bit, civilly.

‘I’m too old to be getting up to any tricks. It’s time I was thinking about my old age. And my soul.’

Well, would you believe it! This gent wasn’t any old body – even Ivan Fedotich Boxman paid him respect. Senka had never seen the policeman carry himself so straight for anyone, not even the superintendent.

Boxman squinted at Senka and knitted his shaggy eyebrows together.

‘What’s he doing here? Has he done the dirt on you some way? Just say the word and I’ll grind him to dust.’

The one who was called Erast Petrovich said: ‘No need, we’ve already resolved our conflict. Haven’t we, Senya?’ Senka started nodding, but the interesting gent wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at the door. ‘What’s happened here?’

‘This piece of villainy is a criminological atrocity, the like of which I have never laid eyes on before, not even in Khitrovka,’ Boxman reported glumly. ‘They’ve knifed a pen-pusher, and his entire family with him, and in the most fiendish fashion, too. But you’d better be leaving, Erast Petrovich. Back then the order went out that if any policeman saw you, he should report it to the top brass straightaway. The superintendent and the gentleman investigator might find you here . . . They’re due any minute.’

Well, now, Senka thought, this gent must be a businessman, only not an ordinary one, some kind of super-special one, and all Moscow’s businessmen are just lousy punks next to him. The devil himself must have tempted me into filching an important souvenir from a bandit-general prince like that! That’s an orphan’s luck for you!

And then Boxman said this: ‘The superintendent here nowadays is Innokentii Romanovich Solntsev, the gentleman you wanted to put on trial. And he’s spiteful, not one to forget a grudge.’

If he could drag a man like the superintendent to court, than what kind of bandit must he be? Senka was bewildered now.

Erast Petrovich wasn’t at all put out by the warning. ‘It’s all right, Boxman. If God doesn’t tell, the pig won’t know. We’ll make it quick, be out in a flash.’

Boxman didn’t try to argue, just moved aside: ‘If I whistle, get out quick, don’t drop me in it.’

Senka wanted to stay outside, but that lousy Jap Masa wouldn’t let him, even though Boxman was there to keep an eye on him. He said: ‘You too agire. An’ you run fast.’

When they went inside, Senka didn’t look at the dead bodies (he’d seen enough of them already, thank you very much). He stared at the ceiling instead.

It was brighter in the room than before – there was another paraffin lamp, like the one in the collidor, burning on the table.

Erast Petrovich walked round the room, leaning down sometimes and jingling something. It was as though he was turning the bodies over and touching their faces, but Senka turned away – he could do without that abomination.

The Japanese was doing some rummaging of his own. He dragged Senka after him, bending down over the cadavers and muttering something Senka couldn’t understand.

This went on for about five minutes.

The smell of freshly slaughtered meat was making Senka queasy. And there was a whiff of dung too – that must be from the bellies being slashed open.

‘What do you think?’ Erast Petrovich asked his Jap, and he answered in his own tongue, not in Russian.

‘You think it’s a maniac? Hmmm.’ The gentleman bandit rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Reasons?’

And the Jap switched back to Russian.

‘Kirring for money out of question. This famiry extremerry poor. That one. Insane cruerty of it – he didn’t even spare the ritter boy. That two. An’ eyes. You terr me yourserf, master, sign of a maniac murder is rituar. Why gouge out eyes? It crear – an insane rituar. That three. Maniac kirred them, that certain. Like Decorator other time.’

Senka didn’t know who Maniac and Decorator were (from the names they sounded like Yids or Germans) – he didn’t understand very much at all really – but he could see the Jap was very proud of his speech.

Only he didn’t seem to have convinced the gent.

Erast Petrovich squatted down by the bed where Siniukhin was lying and started going through the dead man’s pockets. And him such a decent-looking gent! But then, God only knew who he really was. Senka gazed at the icon hanging in the corner. He thought: The Saviour saw the horrible things Deadeye did to the pen-pusher, and he didn’t interfere. And then he remembered the way the Jack flung his little knife straight into the icons’ eyes, and he sighed. At least the fiend didn’t put this icon’s eyes out.

‘What do we have here?’ he heard Erast Petrovich’s voice ask.

Senka couldn’t resist it, he peeped round Masa’s shoulder, and saw a little scale in the gent’s hand – just like the ones in Senka’s pocket!

‘Who knows what this is?’ Erast Petrovich asked, turning round. ‘Masa? Or perhaps you, Spidorov?’

Masa shook his head. Senka shrugged and gaped like a fool to make it clear he’d never laid eyes on such an odd-looking item. He even said out loud: ‘How would I know?’

The gent looked at him.

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘This is a seventeenth-century kopeck, m-minted in the reign of Tsar Alexei. How d-did it come to be in the home of a pauper, a drunken “pen-pusher”?’

When he heard it was a kopeck, Senka felt rotten. Some treasure that was! A handful of kopecks from some mouldy old tsar.

The door from the collidor opened and Boxman stuck his head in: ‘Your Honour, they’re coming!’

Erast Petrovich put the scale on the bed, where it could easily be seen.

‘That’s all, we’re going.’

‘Go that way, so you don’t bump into the superintendent,’ said Boxman, pointing. ‘You’ll come out into the Tatar Tavern.’

The gent waited for Masa and Senka to come out – he didn’t seem in any great hurry to scarper from the superintendent. But then, why bother running? If they heard steps, they could just dodge into the darkness and disappear.

‘I don’t think it’s a m-maniac,’ Erast Petrovich said to his servant. ‘And I wouldn’t exclude greed as a motive for the c-crime. Tell me, what do you think, were the eyes p-put out when the victims were alive or dead?’

Masa thought for a moment and smacked his lips.

‘Woman and chirdren, after they dead, and man whire he stirr arive.’

‘I came to the same c-conclusion.’

Senka shuddered. How could they have known Siniukhin was still alive at first? Were they magicians or what?

Erast Petrovich turned towards Boxman. Tell me, Boxman, have there been any similar c-crimes in Khitrovka, with the victims’ eyes being put out?’

There have, and very recently indeed. A young merchant who was stupid enough to wander into Khitrovka after dark was done away with. They robbed him, smashed his head in, took his wallet and his gold watch. And for some reason they put his eyes out, the fiends. And before that, about two weeks back, a gentleman reporter from the Voice was done to death. He wanted to write about the slums in his newspaper. He didn’t bring any money or his watch with him – he was an experienced man, it wasn’t his first time in Khitrovka. But he had a gold ring, with a diamond in it, and it wouldn’t come off his finger. So the vicious beasts did for him. Cut the finger off for the ring and put his eyes out too. That’s folks round here for you.’

‘You see, Masa,’ said the handsome gent, raising one finger. ‘And you say m-money’s out of the question as a motive. This is no maniac, this is a very p-prudent criminal. He has clearly heard the fairy tale about the last thing a p-person sees before he dies being imprinted on his retina. So he’s being careful. He c-cuts out all his victims’ eyes, even the children’s.’

The Japanese hissed and started jabbering away in his own language – cursing the murderer, no doubt. But Senka thought: You’ve got a very high opinion of yourself, Your Honour, or whoever you are. You guessed wrong, there’s nothing cautious about Deadeye, he’s just in a fury ’cause of all that candy cane.

‘A picture on their eyes?’ Boxman gasped. ‘Whatever next?’

‘A fairy tare mean it not true, yes?’ asked Masa. ‘Tamoebanasi ?’

Erast Petrovich said he was right: ‘Of course, it’s n-nonsense. There was such a hypothesis, but it was never c-confirmed. The interesting thing here is . . .’

‘They’re coming!’ Boxman interrupted, straining to see. ‘Hear that? Sidorenko – he’s standing at the door – just barked: “Good health to you, Your Worship” – I told him not to spare his lungs. They’ll be here in a minute, two at most. What’s this murder to you, Erast Petrovich? Or are you going to investigate?’

‘No, I can’t.’ The gent shrugged and spread his hands. ‘I’m here in Moscow on entirely different business. Tell Solntsev and the investigator what I said. Say you worked it out yourself.’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Boxman, pulling a wry face. ‘Let Inno-kentii Romanich bend his own wits to the job. There’s enough people already trying to ride into heaven on someone else’s back. Never you mind, Your Honour, I’ll find out who it is that’s up to mischief in Khitrovka, and take his life with my own bare hands, as sure as God’s holy.’

Erast Petrovich just shook his head: ‘Oh, Boxman, Boxman. I see you’re still the same as ever.’

Well, thank God, they finally left that cursed basement. They came into the light of day through the Tatar Tavern, then set off to find Tashka.

Her and her mum lodged on Khokhlovsky Lane. A one-window room with its own entrance – for the trade of a mamselle. Lots of tarts lived like that, but only Tashka’s place had fresh flowers on the windowsill every day – to suit the mood of the lady of the house. Senka knew by now that if there were buttercups on the left and forget-me-nots on the right, then Tashka was doing fine, she was singing her songs and setting out her flowers. But if, say, it was stocks and willowherb, then Tashka had had a scrap with her mum, or got landed with a really awful client, and she was feeling sad.

Today happened to be one of those days – there was a sprig of juniper hanging down over the curtain too (in the language of flowers that meant ‘guests not welcome’).

Welcome or not, what could he do? He’d been dragged there.

They knocked and went in.

Tashka was sitting on the bed, looking darker than a thundercloud. She was chewing sunflower seeds and spitting the husks into her hand – no ‘hello’ or ‘how’s things’ or anything of the sort.

‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘And what gulls are these you’ve brought? What for? I’ve got enough trouble with this trollop.’

She nodded to the corner, where her mum was sprawled out on the floor. It looked like she’d got as tight as a newt again then coughed up blood, and that was why Tashka was in such a rage.

Senka started to explain, but then the Jappo’s jacket slipped off and fell on the floor. When Tashka saw Senka’s shackled hands, she fairly bounded off the bed, straight at Masa. Sank her nails into his plump cheeks and started yelling:

‘Let him go, you fat-faced bastard! I’ll scratch your slanty eyes out!’ – and then a whole heap of other curses, Tashka had quite a mouth on her. Even Senka winced, and the spruce gent stood there just blinking.

While the Jap used his free hand to fight off the mamselle’s assault on his handsome yellow features, Erast Petrovich stepped aside. He answered Tashka’s swearing in a respectful voice: ‘Well, yes indeed, far from the m-motherland, one becomes unaccustomed to the v-vigour of the Russian tongue.’

Senka had to come to the Jap’s defence. ‘Stop it, will you, Tashka? Calm down. Leave the man alone! Remember those beads I gave you, the green ones? Are they safe? Give them to these gents, the beads belong to them. Or I’ll be for it.’ And then suddenly he took fright. ‘You haven’t sold them, have you?’

‘Who do you think I am, some floozie from Zamoskvorechie? As if I’d sell a present that was given to me! Maybe no one’s ever given me a present before. The clients don’t count. I’ve got your beads put away somewhere safe.’

Senka knew that ‘safe place’ of hers – in the cupboard under the bed, where Tashka kept her treasures: the book about flowers, a cut-glass scent bottle, a tortoiseshell comb.

‘Give them back, will you? I’ll give you another present, anything you like.’

Tashka let go of the Japanese and her face lit up. ‘Honest? What I want, Senka, is a little dog, a white poodle. I saw them at the market. Have you ever seen a poodle? They can dance the waltz on their back paws, Senka, they can skip over a rope and give you their paw.’

‘I’ll give you one, honest to God I will. Just hand the beads back!’

‘Don’t bother, no need,’ Tashka told him. ‘It was just talk. A poodle like that costs thirty roubles, even as a puppy. I checked the price.’

She sighed. But it wasn’t that sad a sigh.

Then she climbed under the bed, sticking her skinny backside up in the air – and she was wearing only a short little shirt. Senka felt ashamed in front of the others. She was a real harum-scarum. He walked over and pulled her shirt down.

Tashka scrabbled about down there for a while (she obviously didn’t want to get her treasures out in front of strangers), then clambered back out and flung the beads at Masa: ‘There, you miser, I hope you choke on them.’

The Jap caught the string of beads and handed them to his master with a bow. The gent flicked through the little stones, stroked one, then put them in his pocket.

‘Right then, all’s well that ends well. You, m-mademoiselle, have done nothing to offend me.’ He reached into his pocket, took out a wallet, and extracted three banknotes. ‘Here is thirty roubles for you. B-buy yourself a poodle.’

Tashka asked in a matter-of-fact voice: ‘So what way is it you’re planning to horse me, then, for three red ones? If,’ she continued, ‘you want it this way or that, I’m agreeable, but if you want it that way or this, I’m a decent girl and I don’t let anyone do dirty things like that to me.’

The smooth-faced gent shrank back and flung his hands up in the air: ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I don’t want anything like that from you. It’s a p-present.’

He didn’t know Tashka! She put her hands on her hips. ‘You clear out of here with your paper money. I takes presents from a client or a mate. If you don’t want to horse around, you ain’t a client, and I’ve already got a mate – Senka.’

‘Well, mademoiselle,’ Erast Petrovich said to her with a bow. ‘Anyone should be honoured to have a m-mate like you.’

Then Tashka suddenly shouted out: ‘Scarper, Senka.’

She flung herself at Masa and sank her teeth into his left hand, the one holding the end of the bar. The Japanese was taken by surprise and opened his fingers, so Senka made a dash for the door.

The gent shouted after him: ‘Wait, I’ll f-free your hands!’

Pull the other one. We’ll get ourselves free without help from the likes of you.You still haven’t made us pay for thieving. How do we know if you’re going to give us a bashing? And anyway you can’t be far enough away from some freak that even Boxman’s afraid of – that’s what ran through Senka’s mind.

But Tashka, that Tashka! What a girl she was – pure gold!

HOW SENKA GOT RICH

Senka might have scarpered, but he still had to get rid of this iron lump. He walked along, pressing his hands to his chest, with the ends of the bar turned up and down, so they wouldn’t be so obvious.

He had to clear out of Khitrovka – not just because it was dangerous with that Erast Petrovich about, but so no one he knew would see him looking silly like this. They’d laugh him down for sure.

He could go into the smithy, where they forged horseshoes, and tell them some lie or other about how the iron bar had been twisted on him out of mischief, or as a bet. They were big hefty lads in the smithy. Maybe they didn’t have a grip to match the handsome gent’s, but they’d unbend it one way or another, they had tools for doing just that. But not for a kind word and a nod, of course – he’d have to give them twenty kopecks.

And then it hit him: where was he going to get twenty kopecks from? He’d given his last fifteen-kopeck piece to the mole yesterday. Or maybe he should diddle the blacksmith? Promise him money then do a runner. Even more running, Senka thought with a sigh. If the blacksmiths caught him, they’d batter him with those big fists of theirs, worse than any Japanese.

So there he was, walking down Maroseika Street, wondering what to do, when he saw a shop sign: ‘SAMSHITOV. Jeweller and goldsmith. Fine metalworking’. That was just what he needed! Maybe the jeweller would give him something at least for the silver coin, or even those old kopecks. And if he didn’t, Senka could pawn Sprat’s watch.

He pushed open the door with the glass window and went in.

There was no one behind the counter, but there was a red parrot bird, sitting on a perch in its cage, and screeching in a horrible voice: ‘Wel-come! Wel-come!’

Just to be safe, Senka doffed his cap and said: ‘Good health to you.’

It may have been a beast, but it clearly had some understanding.

‘Ashot-djan, the door’s not locked again,’ a woman called from the back of the shop in an odd, lilting voice. ‘Anyone at all could come in off the street!’

There was a rustle of steps and a short man popped his head out from behind the curtain. He had a deep-set face and a crooked nose and a round piece of glass set in a bronze frame on his forehead. He sounded frightened as he asked: ‘Are you alone?’

When he saw that Senka was, he ran to bolt the door, then turned again to his visitor. ‘What can I do for you?’

Someone like him could never unknot an iron bar, thought Senka disappointedly. So what was that about metalworking on the sign? Maybe he had an apprentice.

‘I’d like to sell something,’ Senka said, and reached into his pocket, but that was no mean feat with his hands shackled together.

The parrot began to mock him: ‘Sell something! Sell something!’

The man with the big nose said: ‘Shut up, shut up, Levonchik.’ Then he looked Senka up and down and said, ‘I’m sorry, young man, but I don’t buy stolen goods. There are specialists for that.’

‘You don’t need to tell me you that. Here, what will you give me?’

And he plonked the coin down on the counter.

The jeweller stared at Senka’s wrists, but he didn’t say a word. Then he looked at the silver coin without any real interest.

‘Hmm, a yefimok.’

‘Come again?’ said Senka.

‘A yefimok, a silver thaler. Quite a common coin. They go for double weight. That is, the weight of the silver, multiplied by two. Your yefimok’s in good condition.’ He took the coin and put it on the balance. ‘In ideal condition, you could say. A perfect thaler, six and a half zolotniks in weight. One zolotnik of silver is . . . twenty-four kopecks now. That makes . . . hmm . . . three roubles twelve kopecks. Minus my commission, twenty per cent. In total, two roubles and fifty kopecks. No one’s likely to give you more than that.’

Two roubles fifty – well, that was something. Senka writhed around again, reached into his pocket for the scales, and tipped them on to the counter.

‘And what about this?’

He had exactly twenty of those scales, he’d counted them during the night. They were pretty battered kopecks, but if you added them to two roubles fifty, that would make two seventy.

The jeweller was more impressed by the kopecks than he was by the yefimok. He moved the lens off his forehead onto his eye and examined them one by one.

‘Silver kopecks? Oho, “YM” – Yauza Mint. And in enviable condition. Well, I can take these for three roubles apiece.’

‘How much?’ Senka gasped.

‘You have to understand, young man,’ said the jeweller, looking at Senka through the lens with a huge black eye. ‘Pre-rebellion kopecks, of course, are not thalers, and they go for a different rate. But they dug up another hoard from that time only recently, over in Zamoskvorechie, three thousand silver kopecks, including two hundred from the Yauza Mint, so their price has fallen greatly. How would you like three fifty? I can’t go higher than that.’

‘How much will that make altogether?’ Senka asked, still unable to believe his luck.

‘Altogether?’ Samshitov clicked the beads on his abacus and pointed: ‘There. Including the yefimok, seventy-two roubles and fifty kopecks.’

Senka could barely croak out his answer: ‘Fine, all right.’

And the parrot went off again: ‘All right! All right! All right!’

The jeweller raked the coins off the counter and jangled the lock of his cash box. There was the sound of banknotes rustling – pure music to Senka’s ears. Now was this really something, big money!

The woman’s voice sang out again from the back of the shop. ‘Ashotik-djan, are you going to take your tea?’

‘Just a moment, dear heart,’ said the jeweller, turning towards the voice. ‘I’ll just let this client out.’

The lady of the house appeared from behind the curtain, carrying a tray, with a glass of tea in a silver holder and a little dish of sweets –very neat it looked too. The woman was stout, a lot bigger than her little titch of a husband. She had a moustache under her nose and hands like sugar loaves.

Mystery solved! With a woman like that, you didn’t need an apprentice.

‘There’s this as well . . .’ Senka said, clearing his throat as he showed them his hands and the metal bar. ‘I’d like to get untangled . . . The lads played a joke . . .’

The woman took one look at his shackled hands then went back behind the curtain without saying a word.

But the jeweller took the bar in his skinny hands, and Senka was amazed when he straightened it out in a trice. Not all the way, but at least enough for him to pull his wrists out. Good old Ashotik!

While Senka was stuffing the banknotes and ten-kopeck pieces in his pockets, his hands nice and free, Samshitov was eyeing up the rod. He dropped something on it from a little bottle and scraped the surface. Then he pulled down his lens, put one end of the rod to his eye, and began to mop his bald patch with a handkerchief.

‘Where did you get this?’ he asked, and his voice was trembling.

As if Senka was going to tell him that! But he didn’t come out with, ‘Where from, where from? A stroke of luck. If you want to know more, you can get ****ed,’ because Ashot was a good man, he’d helped him out.

So Senka said politely: ‘From the right place.’ And then he turned to go. He had to think what to do with his sudden riches.

But then didn’t the jeweller go and blurt out: ‘How much do you want for it?’

Pull the other one – for scrap iron?

But Samshitov’s voice was really shaking now.

‘It’s incredible,’ he said, rubbing the rod with a wet rag. ‘I’ve read about the thaler rod, of course, but I didn’t think any others had survived . . . And the hallmark of the Yauza Mint!’

Senka watched as the black rod turned white and shiny under the rag.

‘Huh?’

The jeweller looked as if he was figuring something out. ‘How would you like double the weight? Like the thaler, right?’

‘What?’

‘Triple, then,’ Samshitov corrected himself quickly. He put the rod on the balance. ‘There’s almost five pounds of silver here. Let’s say five on the dot.’ He clicked the beads on the abacus. ‘That’s a hundred and fifteen roubles and twenty kopecks. And I’ll give you triple weight, three hundred and forty-six roubles. Even three hundred and fifty. No, four hundred. An entire four hundred! Four hundred, eh? What do you say?’

Senka said: ‘What?’

‘I don’t keep that much money in the shop, I have to go to the bank.’ He ran out from behind the counter and gazed into Senka’s eyes. ‘You have to understand. A commodity like this requires a lot of work. Before you can find the right buyer. Numismatists are a special breed.’

‘What?’

‘Numismatists are collectors of units of currency – coins and notes,’ the jeweller explained, but that didn’t leave Senka any the wiser.

In his time, Senka had seen plenty of these numismatists, who loved nothing more than collecting money – his Uncle Zot for starters.

‘And how many of them are there, who want these rods?’ Senka asked, still suspecting a trick.

‘In Moscow, maybe twenty. In Petersburg, twice as many. If you send them abroad, there are lots of people wanting to buy them there too.’ The big-nosed jeweller flinched. ‘You said “rods”? You mean you’ve got more of them? And you’re willing to sell?’

‘At four hundred a time?’ Senka asked with a gulp. He remembered how many of those sticks there were underground in the vault.

‘Yes, yes. How many do you have?’

Senka said warily: ‘I could get hold of about five.’

‘Five thaler rods! When can you bring them to me?’

Now this was where he had to show a bit of dignity, not do himself down. Let on what a difficult business it was. Not something just anyone could manage. So he paused for a while then said grandly: ‘In about two hours, not before.’

‘Ninochka,’ the jeweller yelled to his wife. ‘Close the shop! I’m going to the bank!’

The exotic bird was delighted with all the shouting and started to squawk: ‘To the bank! To the bank! To the bank!’

Senka walked out of the shop to the sound of its screeching.

He had to lean his hand against the wall – he was really staggering.

How about that? Four hundred roubles for a rod! It was just like a dream.

Before he went back underground, Senka called round to Kho-khlovsky Lane. To see whether those two had done anything to offend Tashka, and in general –just to say thank you.

Thank God, they hadn’t touched her.

Tashka was sitting in the same place on the bed, combing her hair – she was going out working soon. She’d already tarted up her face: black eyebrows and eyelashes, red cheeks, glass earrings.

‘That slanty-eyed one sends his regards,’ Tashka said as she wound the hair at her temple onto a stick to make it curly. ‘And the dream-boat said he would look out for you.’

Senka didn’t like the sound of that at all. What did that mean –‘look out’ for him? Was he threatening him or what? Never mind, he’d never get his hands on Senka now, he’d never find him. Senka’s life was going to be different from now on.

‘I tell you what,’ he told Tashka. ‘You drop all this. You don’t need to keep walking the streets. I’ll take you away from Khitrovka, we’ll live together. You should just see how much money I’ve got now.’

At first Tashka was delighted, she even started whirling round the room. Then she stopped. ‘Can Mum come too?’

‘All right.’ Senka sighed and looked at the drunken woman – she still hadn’t slept it off. ‘Your mum can come too.’

‘No, she can’t leave this place. Let her die in peace. When she dies, you can take me away.’

He tried to talk her round but she just wouldn’t listen. Senka gave her all the crunch he’d got from the jeweller. Why be greedy? Soon he’d have all the money anyone could ever want.

And now he had to go back into the Yerokha, where the passage to the treasure was.

They were just carrying the dead bodies out of the doors of the flophouse when he arrived. They flung them into a cart – two large sackcloth bundles, one a bit smaller and one that was tiny.

People stood there, gawping, and some crossed themselves.

Three men came out: an official in specs, Superintendent Solntsev and a man with a beard carrying a photographic box on a tripod.

The superintendent and the official shook hands, the photographer just nodded.

‘Innokentii Romanovich, be sure to keep me up to date with new developments at all times,’ the man in specs ordered as he got into a four-wheel carriage. ‘Without your agents in Khitrovka, we won’t get anywhere.’

‘Certainly,’ the superintendent said with a nod, stroking his curled moustache.

The parting in his hair gleamed so bright it was almost blinding. He was a fine figure of a man, no denying that, even if he was a lousy snake – everyone in Khitrovka knew that.

And make a special effort not to get the reporters so . . . worked up. No colourful details. There’ll be more than enough rumours anyway . . .’ The official waved his hand forlornly.

‘But of course. Don’t concern yourself, Khristian Karlovich.’ Solntsev wiped his forehead with a pure white handkerchief, then put his cap back on.

The carriage drove off.

‘Boxman!’ the superintendent yelled. ‘Yeroshenko! Where have you got to?’

Another two men appeared out of the dark pit: Boxman and the owner of the flophouse, the famous Afanasii Lukich Yeroshenko. A big man, and his head was worth its weight in gold. A native Khi-trovkan, he started as a waiter in a tavern, then rose to tavern keeper. He dealt in swag, naturally, but nowadays he was a respected citizen, he had crosses and medals, went to the governor general’s place at Easter to exclaim ‘Christ is arisen!’ and give him the triple kiss. He had three flophouses like this, a wine business and shops. In short, he was millionaire.

‘The newspapermen will come running soon,’ Solntsev told them with a laugh. ‘Tell them everything, let them go anywhere they like, show them the scene of the crime. And don’t even think of washing away the blood. But don’t answer any questions about the progress of the investigation – send them to me for that.’

As Senka watched the superintendent he was amazed. What a brazen rogue, what a louse! He’d promised that man in specs – and now look what he was doing. And he wasn’t ashamed to do it in front of people, either. Although to him they probably weren’t people at all.

The superintendent was not respected in Khitrovka. He didn’t keep his word, he knew no shame and he was incredibly greedy. The others before him had been real numismatists too, but he’d outdone them all. If you’re taking a cut from the dives where the mamselles work, then take it, it’s your right. But he was the first superintendent who wasn’t too squeamish to use the whores for himself. Of course, he chose the pricier ones, the ten-rouble tarts, but there was never any question of the girl getting paid for her trouble, or even getting a present. And he treated his narks to them too. There was nothing worse for a whore than ending up at the Third Myasnitskaya Station when they ‘broke their fast’. They picked them up for nothing, stuck them in the ‘hen coop’, and anyone who felt like it could horse around with them. The grandfathers went to Boxman and asked whether he would let them have the superintendent knifed, or maybe have a big stone dropped on him. Not so as to kill him, of course, but enough to make him see sense. Boxman wouldn’t have it. Be patient, he said, His Worship’s only just shown up, and he won’t hang around. He’s aiming high, making his name.

And what else could they do?

Solntsev said to Yeroshenko: ‘I’m fining you, Afanasii Lukich. Be so good as to hand over a thousand for the disorder in your establishment. We have an agreement.’

Yeroshenko didn’t say anything, just bowed gravely. ‘And I’m fining you too, Boxman. I don’t interfere in your business, but you answer to me for Khitrovka. If you don’t find me the murderer in three days, you pay two hundred roubles.’

Boxman didn’t say a word, either, just twitched his grey moustache.

The superintendent’s carriage rolled up. His Worship got in and wagged his finger at the crowd, as if to say: ‘Look at you, hoodlum!’ and rode off. He was just putting on airs, he could have walked –the station was no distance away at all.

‘Don’t let it bother you, Ivan Fedotich,’ said Yeroshenko. ‘Your fine’s on me, I’ll cover you.’

‘I’ll give you “cover me”,’ Boxman snarled. ‘You won’t get me off your back for a two lousy hundred. After the things I’ve let a crook like you get away with!’

That was Boxman for you. Yeroshenko could hang crosses all over himself, and kiss the governor general to death, but to Boxman he would always be Afonka the Thief.

Senka’s visit to the basement was a lot easier than the first time. He borrowed an oil lamp in the Labour, left his cap as a pledge, and got to the chamber very quickly. Less than ten minutes by his watch.

The first thing he did was count the silver rods. But it would take for ever to shift them all. He counted a hundred by one wall, and he hadn’t even got halfway. He was dripping with sweat.

And he found the leather sole off a boot, well gnawed by the rats. He pulled some of the stones and bricks from the blocked-off doorway, too, he wanted to see what was behind it. But then he got bored and gave up.

He wore himself out so much that he took only four rods, not five. That was enough for Samshitov, and they were heavy, they weighed about five pounds each.

When Senka got back to the jeweller’s shop and was already reaching his hand out to the door, someone whistled behind him –it was a special Khitrovka whistle – and then an owl hooted: Whoo-oo whoo-oo!

He turned round, and there were the lads hanging about on the corner of Petroverigsky Lane. That was really rotten luck.

But what could he do? He went over.

Prokha said: ‘We were told as you’d been picked up.’

Squinteye asked: ‘What are you carrying that scrap about for?’

But Mikheika blinked guiltily and said: ‘Don’t be angry ’cause I grassed on you to that Chinaman. I was dead frightened when he started laying everyone out. You know what Chinamen are like.’

‘If you don’t like a fright, then stay home at night,’ Senka growled, but without any real malice. ‘I’d hang one on your ugly mug, you creep, but I ain’t got time. Business.’

Prokha said to him, real spiteful: ‘What kind of business have you got, Speedy? You were a businessman once, but not no more.’

Senka realised everyone already knew he’d done a runner on the Prince. ‘I’ll tell you, I’ve got a job for the Armenian here, putting bars on his windows. See, iron bars.’

‘In a jewellery shop?’ Prokha drawled, and screwed his eyes up. ‘Well, well. You’re even slyer than I thought. Who are you with now, then? That Chinaman? And you’ve decided to do the Armenian over? Now that’s slick!’

‘I’m on my own.’

Prokha didn’t believe him. He took Senka off to one side, put a hand on his shoulder and whispered: ‘Don’t say, if you don’t want to. But you should know: the Prince is looking for you. He’s threatening to knife you.’

He gave Senka a pinch and ran off, then whistled and scoffed: ‘Be seeing you, bandit boy.’

And he darted off down the street with the lads.

Senka realised what Prokha was scoffing at when he saw that Sprat’s silver watch was missing from the belt his pants. So that was why the lousy scum had been all over him like that!

But he wasn’t too upset about it. It was just a watch – worth twenty-five roubles at the outside – but the idea of the Prince spreading his threats around, now that really got him down. He’d have to keep his eyes peeled.

Senka walked into the shop and the parrot greeted him, but he was feeling really low. His mind wasn’t on the money, it was on the Prince’s knife.

He dumped the bars on the counter and the parrot squawked. ‘I brought four. That’s all there are.’

But when he walked out on to Maroseika Street five minutes later, he’d forgotten all about the Prince.

And there it was, under his shirt, close to his heart, a huge amount of money – four petrushas, five-hundred-rouble notes. Senka had never set eyes on anything like that.

He fingered the crisp notes through his shirt, trying to imagine what it was like to live in luxury.

HOW SENKA LIVED IN LUXURY

Story One. The first step is the hardest

It turned out to be hard work.

On Lubyanka Square, where the cabbies water their horses at the fountain, Senka suddenly felt like having a drink too – some kvass, or spiced tea, or orangeade. And his belly started rumbling as well. How long could he carry on, walking around empty-bellied? He hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday morning. He wasn’t some kind of monk now, was he?

That was when Senka’s problems started.

An ordinary person has all sorts of money: roubles and ten-kopeck coins and fifty-kopeck coins. But Senka the rich man had nothing but five-hundred-rouble notes. What good was that in a tavern or for hiring a cab? Who could give you that much change? Especially if you were dressed up Khitrovka-style: with you shirt hanging outside your trousers, concertina boots and a bandit’s cap perched on the back of your head.

Ah, he should have taken at least one petrusha from the jeweller in small notes, he could die of hunger like this, like the king in that story, the one they told at college: whatever the king touched turned to gold, so even with all those riches, there was no way the poor beggar could eat or drink a thing.

Senka went back on to Maroseika Street. He tried the shop – it was locked. There was just the parrot, Levonchik, sitting behind the glass squealing something – you couldn’t make out what it was from outside.

But it was plain to see – Ashot Ashotovich had stopped trading and gone running after those . . . what-were-they-called?. . . numismatist collectioners, to get down to business.

Maybe he should drop in on Tashka? Take back some of the money he gave her?

Well, for starters, she was probably already out walking the street. And anyway, he’d be ashamed. He gave her the beads and took them back again. He gave her money, and now he wanted to take that back too. No, he had to wriggle out of this fix himself.

Maybe he could nick something at the market, before it closed?

Just that morning, Senka would have lifted some grub no problem, he wouldn’t have thought twice. But it’s easy to steal when you’ve got nothing to lose and your heart’s wild and brave. If you’re afraid, you’re bound to get caught. And how could he not be afraid, with all that crunch rustling away under his shirt?

He was so desperately hungry, he could have howled. Why did he have to suffer this kind of torment? Two thousand in his pocket, and he couldn’t even buy a kopeck bun!

Senka got so annoyed with the low cunning of life that he stamped his foot, tossed his cap down on the ground, and let the tears come pouring out – not in two streams (like in the stories) but in four!

He stood there by a street lamp, bawling like a cretin.

Suddenly a child’s voice said: ‘Glasha, Glasha, look – a big boy, and he’s crying!’

The little kid was walking out of the market in a sailor suit. He had a red-faced woman with him – his nanny or someone like that, carrying a basket. She’d obviously just been to market to do her shopping, and the master’s little boy had tagged along.

The woman said: ‘If he’s crying, he must have troubles. He wants to eat.’

And she dropped a coin into his cap on the ground – fifteen kopecks, plonk.

Senka looked at that coin and started wailing even louder. He felt really hard done by now.

Suddenly there was a clang – another coin, five kopecks this time. An old woman in a shawl had thrown it. She made the sign of the cross over Senka and walked on.

He picked up the alms, and was about to dash off and buy some pies or some buns, but then he changed his mind. So he’d stuff his belly with a couple of buns, and then what? If he could collect three or four roubles, he could buy himself a jacket, and then maybe he could change a petrusha.

He squatted down on his haunches and started rubbing his eyes with his fists, not real hard, just enough to give them a pitiful look. And what do you think? The Christian people took pity on the weeping beggar. Senka had sat there for less than an hour before he had collected a whole heap of coppers. A rouble and a quarter, to be precise.

He sat there, blubbing and reasoning philosophically: When I didn’t have half a kopeck to my name, I still didn’t go begging on the street, and now look at me. That’s what you get for being rich. And it says that in the gospels too, the people who have riches are the greatest paupers of all.

Suddenly Senka was whacked hard across the tailbone. It hurt. He turned round and there was a beggar with a crutch, who yelled: ‘Oh, the ravening beasts! Oh, the jackals! Stealing someone else’s bread! My place, since time out of mind! Can’t even go away to get some tea! Give it back, whatever you’ve taken, you little thief, or I’ll call our lot!’

And he bashed Senka with the crutch, again and again.

Senka grabbed the cap, almost spilled his booty, then ran off, out of harm’s way. He didn’t want to mess with beggars – they could easily beat you to death. They had their own council and laws.

He walked across Resurrection Square, trying to think of the smartest way to spend a rouble and a quarter.

And then he was shown the answer.

A messenger boy came darting out of the Grand Moscow Hotel, in a short little jacket with the gold letters ‘GMH’, and a cap with a gold cockade on it. The lad was clutching a three-rouble bill – one of the guests must have asked him to buy something.

Senka overtook the messenger and struck a deal to hire the tunic and cap for half an hour. As a deposit, he tipped out all the change he’d scrounged at the market. And he promised to pay twice as much again when he got back.

Then off he ran to the Russo-Asian Bank.

He stuck a five-hundred note through the little window and said the words as if he was in a rush: ‘Change this for four hundreds, and give me the other hundred in small notes. That’s what the guest asked for.’

The cashier shook his head respectfully. ‘Well, they certainly have trust in you over at the Grand Moscow.’

‘That’s because we’ve earned it,’ Senka replied with dignity.

The bank clerk checked the number of the note against a piece of paper – and handed back exactly what he’d been asked for.

Well, after that, when Senka had dressed up in clean clothes and got a fashionable haircut at the ‘Parisian’ salon, the rich life began to treat him better.

Story Two. About life in society, at home and at court

His means were quite adequate to allow him to move into the Grand Moscow Hotel, and Senka got as far as the doors, but then he looked at the electric lamps, the carpets, the lions’ faces over the windows, and he lost his nerve. Well, naturally, Senka was dolled up like a real gent now, and there were lots of other expensive duds, still unworn, folded in his brand-new suitcase, but hotel commissionaires and flunkeys were a fly lot, they’d spot a Khitrovka mongrel under his cheviot and silk straight off. Just look at that general with gold epaulettes they had behind the counter. What would Senka say to him? ‘The most excellent room that you’ve got, please’? And the general would say: ‘Where do you think you’re going, sticking your swinish snout in the bread bin?’ And what was the proper way to approach him? Should he say hello or what? Should he take his cap off? Maybe he should just tip it, the way gents did to each other in the street? And then, weren’t you supposed to tip them all in a hotel? How could you hand a tip to someone as grand as the general? And how much? What if he just flung Senka out and took no notice of the swish Parisian haircut?

Senka loitered in front of the door for a long time, but he couldn’t build up the courage.

Only this set him thinking. Wealth wasn’t a simple thing – that much was clear. It needed special study.

Of course, Senka found a place to live – this was Moscow after all, not Siberia. He took a cab at Theatre Square and asked after a handy place for a visitor from out of town to stay, somewhere decent and proper. And the cabby delivered him like the wind to Madam Borisenko’s on Trubnaya Street.

The room was wonderful, Senka had never lived in anything like it before. A great big room with white curtains, a bedstead with bright shiny knobs, and a feather mattress on the bed. In the morning he was promised a samovar with doughnuts and in the evening, dinner if required. Servants did all the cleaning, and in the collidor there was a washbasin and a privy – not quite like Death’s privy, of course, but it was clean, you could sit and read a newspaper in it. A right royal mansion, in other words. True, it cost a fair bit, thirty-five roubles a month. By Khitrovka standards that was crazy money –you could stay there for five kopecks a night. But if you had almost two thousand roubles in your pocket, it didn’t seem so bad.

Senka settled in, admired his new things, laid them out, hung them up, sat down by the window and looked out on the square. He had to do some thinking about his new life in this world.

It’s a well-known fact that every man turns his nose up at his own lot, and envies other people’s. Take Senka. He’d dreamt of riches all his life, though he knew in his heart he’d never have any. But the Lord above sees all things, He hears every prayer. Whether He’ll grant them all is a different matter altogether. The Almighty has His own reasons, beyond the ken of mortal men. One of the lame cripples who wander the earth once said: The most grievous test the Lord can set is to grant you all your wishes. There you go, dreamer, choke on that. Weren’t you coveting too much? And what are you going to covet now?

And that was how it happened with Senka. God was asking him: ‘Did you really want earthly treasures? Well, here’s some treasure for you – now what?’

Life without money is rotten – no two ways about it – but even with riches, it’s not all as sweet as honey.

So Senka had stuffed his paunch – he’d gobbled down eight pastries in the confectioner’s shop, and got belly cramps for his trouble. He’d dressed himself up and got beautiful lodgings, but what came next? What will you wish for now, Semyon Trofimovich?

But Senka’s state of philosophical melancholy (brought on by those pastries) didn’t last very long, because his dreams took shape of their own accord. He had two: one for earth and one for heaven.

The earthly dream was about turning riches into even greater riches. They named you Speedy, now show some nous, use your noggin.

Any fool could see that if you dragged all the silver sticks in that vault out into the open, no one would buy them except by weight. Where would you find enough numismatists to take them all, one stick each?

All right, let’s figure out how much that is, by weight. How many rods are there. . . God only knows. Five hundred at least. Five pounds of silver in each one, right? That makes . . . two and a half thousand pounds, right? Ashot Ashotovich said that a zolotnik of silver is twenty-four kopecks these days. One pound is ninety-six zolotniks . . . Multiply two and a half thousand by ninety-six zolotniks by twenty-four kopecks – that makes . . .

He groaned and started totting up figures on a piece of paper, like they’d taught him to do at commercial college. But they hadn’t had very long to teach him, and he’d forgotten a few things, he was rusty – so the sum didn’t work out.

He tried a different way, simpler. Samshitov said there was 155 roubles’ worth of pure silver in a bar. For five hundred bars that made . . . fifty thousand, right? Or was it five hundred thousand?

Hang on a minute, Senka thought. Ashot Ashotovich gave me four hundred for a rod, and I don’t suppose he was doing himself down. He might let those numismatists of his have them for a thousand each.

If the black sticks were worth that much, he’d be better off trading them himself, without Samshitov. Of course, it wasn’t an easy business. There were lots of things he’d have to figure out to get started. And the first thing of all was the real price. After that he could service all the Moscow buyers. Then the ones in Peter. And then, maybe, he could find a way to the foreign ones. He’d have to hang on to the rods and flog them one at a time, to the suckers willing to pay more than their weight in silver. Then later, when those fools had had their fill, he could sell the rest of the sticks for melting down.

Thinking like a merchant brought Senka out in a sweat. You needed real brains for a deal like this! For the first time he regretted he hadn’t done more studying. He couldn’t even work out the future takings properly.

So what did that mean?

Yes, it meant he had to catch up. Squeeze all that ignorance and bad manners out of himself, learn how to make fancy small talk, and it would be no bad thing if he could banter in foreign as well, so he could trade over in Europe.

The very thought of it took his breath away.

And that was only the earthly dream, not the most important one. The other dream, the heavenly one, set Senka’s head spinning good and proper.

Of course, if you thought about it, this was an earthly dream too, maybe even more earthly than the other, only it warmed his heart as well as his head, and the heart was where the soul was. Then again, it made Senka’s belly – and other parts of his body – feel hot too.

Before, he was a nobody, just a young pup, no kind of match for Death. But now, if he didn’t mess things up, he could be the richest man in Moscow. And then, Senka dreamed, he’d throw all those thousands and thousands at her feet and save her from the Prince and the Ghoul, cure her of the candy-cane sickness and carry her off to somewhere far, far away – to Tver (they said it was a fine town) or somewhere else. Maybe even all the way to Paris.

It didn’t matter that she was older. The fluff on his cheeks would sprout into a beard and moustache soon enough, and then he’d really come into his own. And he could touch up his temples with grey, like Erast Petrovich – and why not, it was very impressive.

Only when Senka and Death went to get married, it would have to be well away from any embankment where you could fall in and drown. God takes care of those as take care of themselves.

So there was Senka, already picturing the wedding, and the feast in the Hermitage dining hall, but he knew the money on its own wouldn’t be enough. Death had had beaus and lovers with huge fortunes before, that was nothing new for her. And he couldn’t win her over with presents. He had to turn himself from a grey sparrow into a white falcon and go soaring way up high before he could fly close to a swan like her.

His thoughts turned to education and cultured manners. He had no chance of being a falcon without them, even if he did have the riches.

There was a bookstall out on the square – Senka could see it from the window. He went out and bought a clever book that was called Life in Society, at Home and at Court – how to behave in decent society so you they wouldn’t boot you out.

When he started reading, he came out in a cold sweat. Holy saints, it was all so complicated! How to bow to who, how to kiss a woman’s hand – a lady’s, that is – how to give compliments, how to dress when and where, how to walk into a room and how to walk out. If he spent his whole life studying, he still wouldn’t remember it all!

‘One should never pay a visit earlier than two o’clock or later than five or six,’ Senka read, moving his lips and ruffling up his French coiffure. ‘Before two o’clock, one risks finding the master and mistress of the house engaged in domestic activities or arranging their toilette; at a later hour, one may appear to be angling for an invitation to dinner.’

Or there was this: ‘On arriving to pay a visit and not finding the master and mistress of the house at home, a well-bred individual leaves a card, creased at the upper left side; if the visit is on the occasion of a death or other sad event, the card is creased at the lower right, with the fold slightly torn.’

Blimey!

But the most frightening thing of all was reading about clothes. If you were poor, it was easy: just one shirt and one pair of trousers –nothing to rack your brains over. But oh, the hassle if you were rich! When to wear a jacket, when to wear a frock coat, when to wear tails: when you should take your gloves off, when you shouldn’t; what should be check, what should be striped, and what should be flowery. And it seemed, for cultured people, not every colour matched every other one!

But the hardest part of all, though, was the hats – Senka even had to make notes.

The rules went like this. In an office, shop or hotel, you took your hat off only if the owners and countermen were bareheaded too (ah, if only he’d known that back at the Grand Moscow!). When leaving after a visit, you put your hat on outside the door, not in the doorway. In an omnibus or carriage, you didn’t take your hat off at all, even in the presence of ladies. When you paid a visit, you held your hat in your hand, and if you were in tails, your top hat had to be the kind with a spring to keep it straight, not the simple kind. When you sat down, you could put your hat on a vacant chair or on the floor but never, God forbid, on a table.

Senka felt sorry for the poor hat, it would get dirty on the floor. He looked at the handsome boater on his table (twelve and a half roubles, that cost). Put it on the floor? Not a chance.

When he was tired of studying society manners, he took another look at his new clothes. A frock coat of fine camlet (nineteen roubles ninety), two piqueґ waistcoats, one white and one grey (ten roubles the pair), pantaloons with a black and grey stripe (fifteen roubles), trousers with foot straps (nine roubles ninety), button-down half-boots (twelve roubles), and another pair, patent leather (he shelled out twenty-five for them, but they were a real sight for sore eyes). And there was a little mirror with a silver handle, and pomade in a gilded jar – to grease his quiff, so it wouldn’t dangle. He spent longest of all admiring the mother-of-pearl penknife. Eight blades, an awl, even a toothpick and a nail file too!

When he’d had his fun, he read a bit more of the book.

Senka went down to dinner, dressed according to the requirements of etiquette, in his frock coat, because ‘a simple jacket is only permissible at table in the family circle’.

In the dining room he bowed respectfully, said ‘Bonsoir’, and put his hat on the floor – so be it, but he put a napkin he’d taken from the kitchen underneath.

There were about ten people dining at the widow Borisenko’s. They gaped at the well-bred young man, some of them said good evening, others simply nodded. Not one was wearing a frock coat, and the fat, curly-headed young man sitting beside Senka was dining in his shirt and braces. He turned out to be a student at the Institute of Land Surveyors, George by name. He lived up in the attic, where the rooms were twelve roubles apiece.

Their landlady introduced Senka as Mr Spidorov, a Moscow merchant-trader, although when they agreed terms for the room, he’d just called himself a trading man. Of course ‘merchant-trader’ sounded much better.

This George started pestering him straight away, asking what kind of commerce he was engaged in at such a young age, and about his old mum and dad. When they served the sweet (it was called ‘dessert’), the student asked in a whisper whether he could borrow three roubles.

Naturally, Senka didn’t give him three roubles just like that, and he answered his questions vaguely, but he had an idea for how George could be useful.

Senka couldn’t learn everything from just one book. A tutor, that was what he needed.

He took George aside and started lying, saying he was a merchant’s son who had worked in his father’s business, he’d never had time to study. Now his old dad had died and left all his riches to his heir, but what had he, Semyon Spidorov, ever seen of life, apart from a shop counter? If he could fine someone good-hearted to teach him a few things – proper manners, French and other bits and pieces –then he would pay good money for the privilege.

The student listened carefully and took the hint, and they fixed terms for classes straight off. As soon as George heard Senka was going to pay a rouble an hour, he announced that he wouldn’t go to the institute and was ready to put himself entirely at Semyon Trofimovich’s disposal all day long.

What they agreed was this: one hour a day studying spelling and fine handwriting; an hour for French, an hour for arithmetic; lunch and dinner were for studying good manners; and the evening class was proper behaviour in society. Seeing as it was a bulk-supply contract, Senka arranged a discount for himself: four roubles a day all told. They were both satisfied.

They lost no time, starting straight after dinner with a trip to the ballet. Senka’s tails were hired for two roubles from the musician in the next room.

At the theatre Senka sat up straight without fidgeting, though he soon got tired of watching men in tight underpants jumping about all over the stage. When the girls came running out in transparent skirts, things got a bit more lively, but the music had a really sour edge to it. It would have been deadly boring if George hadn’t taken the magnifying glasses from the cloakroom (‘binoculars’, they were called). Senka got a good look at everything. First the thighs of the dancing girls, then who was sitting in the boxes round the hall, and then he let his fancy wander – a wart on the bald patch of the leader of the musicians, who was waving a stick at the orchestra, so they would keep better order. When everyone applauded, Senka stuck the binoculars under his arm and clapped his hands, too, louder than anyone else.

Spending seven roubles to sit in a prickly collar for three hours couldn’t be anybody’s idea of fun. He asked George if rich people went to get sweaty at the theatre every night. George reassured him: he said you could go just once a week. Well, that wasn’t too bad, and Senka cheered up a bit. It was like standing through mass on a Sunday if you were God-fearing.

From the ballet, they went to the bordello (that was the cultured name for a bawdy house), to learn proper manners with ladies.

Senka was really embarrassed by the lamps with silk shades and the soft couches with bouncy springs. Mamselle Loretta, who was sat on his knee, was plump and springy herself, and she smelled of sweet powder. She called Senka ‘sweety’ and ‘kitten’, then she led him into a room and started getting up to all sorts of tricks that Senka had never heard of, even from Prokha.

But he felt ashamed because the lamp was lit, and anyway, there was no way this fat pussycat Loretta had anything on Death.

Phooey!

After that, they spent a long time learning how to drink champagne: you put a strawberry in it, let it settle in and get well soaked, then fished it out with your lips. Then you downed the bubbly booze in one and started all over again.

Well, of course, in the morning his head was killing him. It was even worse than after vodka. But only until George called in.

George looked at his pupil’s agony, clicked his tongue and sent one of the servants out for champagne and pвtй at once. They spread the pвtй on white bread rolls and drank the wine straight from the bottle.

Senka felt a bit better.

‘Now we’ll do a bit of French, and for lunch we’ll go to a French restaurant to reinforce our knowledge,’ George told him, and licked his thick lips.

Well, this isn’t too shabby, Senka thought, feeling more relaxed. Not nearly as hard as it looks. The life of luxury is all right by me.

Story three. About his little brother Vanka

Senka enjoyed thinking about his two great dreams, imagining how everything would work out – with love and countless riches. But even with his present riches, which weren’t so very great, he could already make one dream – which had seemed impossible before –come true. He could appear in all his glory before his brother Vanka.

Of course, he couldn’t turn up out of the blue just like that: Hello, I’m your big brother, dressed to the nines, but I’m a slum boy through and through, can’t speak a single cultured word. What if Vanka despised his ignorance?

But he could get by without all that much learning in front of a little kid.

Right from the off, Senka had asked George to correct any words he got wrong when they were talking. And to make sure the student made the effort, he was relieved of five kopecks for every word corrected.

Naturally, he was only too glad to try his best. Almost every other word got a: ‘No, Semyon Trofimovich, in cultured society they don’t say collidor, it should be corridor’ – and he jotted down another cross on his special piece of paper. Afterwards, in the arithmetic lesson, Senka himself multiplied those little crosses by five. On the first of September 1900, he was stung for eighteen roubles and seventy-five kopecks – and he’d tried to be stingy, not say a single word more than he needed to get by. He started off talking like a book: ‘But in this case it seems to me that. . .’ And then shut his mouth.

Senka groaned at the huge sum, and demanded a reduction –from five kopecks to one.

On the second of September he forked out, that is, he paid out, four roubles and thirty-five kopecks.

On the third of September, it was three roubles and twelve kopecks.

By the fourth of September he’d copped on a bit, that is got the feel of things, and it was down to one rouble and ten kopecks, and on the fifth he escaped only ninety kopecks poorer.

Senka decided that was good enough for Vanka, it was time to go. He could now expound his opinions for five minutes with perfect ease.After all, God had given him a perfectly good memory.

According to society etiquette, first he ought to send Justice Kuvsh-innikov a letter, saying this and that, and I would like to call on Your Grace with a view to visiting my adored little brother Vanya. But he didn’t have the patience for that.

First thing in the morning Senka went to the dentist to have a gold tooth put in, and he packed George off to Tyoply Stan to warn them that in the afternoon, if His Grace was agreeable, Semyon Trofimovich Spidorov, the well-to-do merchant-trader, would call in person, for a family visit, so to speak. George dressed up in his student uniform, bought his uniform cap out of hock and set off.

Senka was extremely nervous (that is, he was in a real lather) in case the judge said: What the hell does my adopted son want with scummy relatives like that?

But it went off all right. George came back delighted with himself and announced that they were expecting him at three. So not for lunch, Senka twigged, but he didn’t take offence; on the contrary, he was glad, because he still wasn’t too good with table knives and telling the meat forks from the ones for fish and salad.

It said in the book: ‘When paying a visit to children, one should give them a present of sweets in a bonbonnier’, and Senka didn’t play the tightwad, that is he didn’t penny-pinch – he bought the very finest tin of chocolate from Perlov’s on Myasnitskaya Street, in the shape of the little humpbacked horse from the fairy tales.

He hired a shiny lacquered carriage for a five-rouble note, but his nerves were so bad he set out way too early, and at first he walked along the street with the carriage driving behind him.

He tried to step out the way the textbook said you should: ‘In the street, the well-bred, refined individual is easily distinguished. His gait is always steady and measured, his stride is confident. He walks straight ahead, without looking round, and only occasionally stops for a moment in front of shops, usually stays on the right-hand side of the road and looks neither up nor down, but several paces straight ahead of himself.’

He walked that way down Myasnitskaya Street, Lyubanka Street and Theatre Lane. And when he got a stiff neck from looking ahead of him all the time, he got into the carriage.

They drove as far as the apple orchards in Konkovo, all unhurried, but just before Tyoply Stan the passenger told the driver to put on some speed so they would drive up to the judge’s house at a spanking pace, looking good, with real chic.

He walked into the house in fine old fashion, said bonjour and bowed.

Judge Kuvshinnikov replied: ‘Hello, Semyon Spidorov,’ and asked him to take a seat.

Senka sat there modestly and politely. He took off his right glove, but not the left, the way you’re supposed to at the start of a visit, and put his hat on the floor, only without any napkin. And when he’d managed all that, he took a proper look at the judge.

Ippolit Ivanovich had got old, you could see that from close up. His horseshoe moustache had turned grey. The long hair hanging down below his ears was all white too. But his gaze was the same as ever: black and piercing.

Senka’s old dad used to say that in the whole wide world you could never find anyone cleverer than Judge Kuvshinnikov, and so, when he gazed into Ippolit Ivanovich’s stern eyes, Senka decided he would forget the rules of etiquette and behave with genuine courtesy, as he had been taught, not by George, and not by a book, but by a certain individual (we’ll get to him later, we’ve got ahead of ourselves).

This individual had told him that genuine courtesy was founded not on polite words, but on sincere respect: Respect any person as far as that is possible, until that person has shown himself unworthy of your respect.

Senka had thought about this strange assertion for a long time, and eventually explained it to himself like this: It’s better to flatter a bad man than offend a good one – wasn’t that it?

So he didn’t try to make polite conversation with the judge about the pleasantly cool weather; he said in all honesty, with a bow: ‘Thank you for raising my brother, an orphan, as your own son and not offending him in any way. And Jesus Christ will show you even greater gratitude for it.’

The judge leaned forward and said there was no need for thanks, Vanya brought himself and his wife nothing but joy and delight in their old age. He was a lively boy, with a tender heart and great abilities.

Well, that was that. Then they said nothing for a while.

Senka racked his brains – how could he bring the conversation round to seeing his little brother? He started sniffing with the strain of it, but immediately remembered that ‘the loud sniffing in of nasal fluid in company is absolutely impermissible’, and quickly pulled out his handkerchief to blow his nose.

The judge said: That friend of yours who called this morning said you were a “well-to-do merchant-trader” . . .’

Senka thrust out his chest, but not for long, because Ippolit Ivanovich went on like this: ‘Where did the money come from, for the shiny carriage, the frock coat and the top hat? I correspond with your guardian, Zot Larionovich Puzyrev. All these years I’ve been sending him a hundred roubles every three months for your keep, I receive reports. Puzyrev wrote that you didn’t want to study at the grammar school, that you are wild and ungrateful and consort with all sorts of riff-raff. And in his last letter he informed me that you had become a thief and a bandit.’

Senka was so taken by surprise that he leapt to his feet and shouted – it was stupid of course, he should have kept his mouth shut: ‘Me, a thief? When did he ever catch me?’

‘When they do catch you, Senya, it will be too late!’

‘I didn’t want to go to the grammar school? He was getting a hundred roubles for me?’

Senka choked. What a skunk his Uncle Zot was! Smashing those windows was too good for him, he should have set the house on fire!

‘So where does your wealth come from?’ the judge asked. ‘I have to know before I can let you see Vanka. Perhaps your frock coat was cut from blood and sewn with tears.’

‘It’s not cut from any blood. I found a treasure, an old one,’ Senka muttered, realising as he said it that no one would ever believe that.

So much for driving up in grand style and presenting his little brother with the sweets! His old dad was right: the judge was a clever man.

But Kuvshinnikov turned out to be even cleverer than that. He didn’t smack his lips in disbelief, he didn’t shake his head. He asked calmly: ‘What kind of treasure? Where from?’

‘Where from? From the Khitrovka basements, that’s where from,’ Senka replied sullenly. ‘There were some silver rods there, with a stamp on them. Five of them. They’re worth a lot of money.’

‘What kind of stamp?’

‘How would I know? Two letters: “Y” and “M”.’

The judge looked at Senka for a long time, without saying a word. Then he got up. ‘Let’s go into the library.’

That was a room covered all over from top to bottom with books. If all the books Senka had ever seen in his life were put together, there still probably wouldn’t be as many.

Kuvshinnikov climbed up a ladder and took a thick volume down off a shelf. He started leafing through from his perch.

‘Aha,’ he said.

Then: ‘Hmmm. Yes, yes.’

He looked at Senka over the top of his specs and asked. ‘“YM”, you say? And where did you find the treasure? Not in the Serebryanniki district, was it?’

‘No, in Khitrovka, honest to God,’ said Senka, crossing himself.

Ippolit Ivanovich climbed down the ladder quickly, put the book on a table and went over to a picture that was hanging on the wall. It was a queer-looking picture, like a drawing of the way pork carcasses were butchered that Senka had once seen in a German meat shop.

‘Here, take a look. This is a map of Moscow. This is Khitrovka, and this is Serebryanniki, the lane and the embankment. It’s just a stone’s throw from Khitrovka.’

Senka went over and tried to take it in. Just to be on the safe side, he said: ‘Of course.’

But the judge wasn’t looking at Senka, he was muttering away to himself: ‘Why, yes! In the seventeenth century that’s where the Silversmiths’ Quarter used to be, the place where the master craftsmen from the Yauza Mint lived. What do your rods look like? Like this?’

He dragged Senka across to the table where the book was. In a picture Senka saw a rod exactly like the ones he’d sold to the jeweller. And a big picture of the end, with the letters ‘MM’.

‘The “MM” means “Moscow Mint”,’ Kuvshinnikov explained. It was also called the New Mint or the English Mint. In the olden days Russia didn’t have much silver of its own, so they used to buy European coins – joachimsthalers, or yefimoks. Senka nodded again at the familiar word, but this time in earnest. ‘They melted the thalers down and made silver rods like that, then they drew them out into wire, cut pieces off it, flattened them and minted kopecks –“scales”, they were called. A lot of kopecks have survived, and even more thalers, but there are no silver billets, or rods, left at all. Well, naturally – they all were all used up.’

‘What about this one?’ asked Senka, pointing to the picture.

‘Well done,’ the judge said approvingly. ‘You use your head. Quite right, Spidorov. Only one rod came down to our times, minted at the Moscow or New Mint.’

Senka thought about that.

‘Why would those silversmiths have dumped the billets and not stamped coins out of them?’

Kuvshinnikov shrugged. ‘It’s a mystery.’ His eyes weren’t narrow and piercing now, they were wide-open and glowing, as if the judge was really surprised or delighted. ‘Although it’s not that great a mystery, if you give it a little thought. A lot of stealing went on in the seventeenth century, even more so than now. Look here, it says in the encyclopedia . . .’ – and he ran his hand down the page; ‘“For so-called ‘smelting losses’ the craftsmen were beaten mercilessly with a knout, and some had their nostrils torn out, but they were not dismissed, because silversmiths were in short supply”. Clearly they didn’t beat them hard enough if someone made a secret hoard of silver “lost in smelting”. Or perhaps it wasn’t the craftsmen they should have beaten, but the clerks.’

The judge turned to his book. Suddenly he whistled. Senka was really surprised: a man like that, and him whistling.

‘Senya, how did much did you sell your rods for?’

Senka didn’t see the point in lying. Kuvshinnikov was a rich man himself, he wouldn’t be jealous.

‘Four hundred.’

‘It says here that fifty years ago, at an auction in London, this bar was acquired by a collector for seven hundred pounds sterling. That’s seven thousand roubles, and in today’s money probably a lot more.’

Senka’sjaw dropped. Why, that Ashot Ashotovich, what a snake!

‘You see, Spidorov, if you’d given your treasure to the state treasury

‘What joy would I get out of that?’ Senka snarled, still smarting at the jeweller’s treachery.

‘Well, the silver was stolen from the treasury. It may have been two hundred years ago, but it’s the same state, still Russia. For handing over a treasure trove to the authorities, according to the law, the finder is entitled to a third of its value. So for your five bars, you would have received a lot more than just two thousand. And in addition you would have been an honest man, helping your motherland.’

Senka was about to say that could be put right – but he bit his tongue just in time. He would have to think long and hard before he started blabbing. Kuvshinnikov was sharp-witted, he’d worm the whole thing out of him in a trice.

The looks the judge was giving Senka were knowing enough as it was.

‘All right,’ said Kuvshinnikov. ‘Just give a little thought to where you’d take the bars, if you happened to find any more: to a fence or to the treasury. If you decide to follow the law, I’ll tell you how to do it. The newspapers will write about your patriotism.’

‘About what?’

‘About you not just filling your belly, but loving your homeland, that’s what.’

Senka wasn’t too sure about the homeland part. Where was his homeland, anyway? Sukharevka, was it, or Khitrovka? Why should he love those lousy dives?

Then Kuvshinnnikov surprised him again. He sighed. ‘So, Zot lied to me about the grammar school. And about everything else too, no doubt. . . Very well, he’ll answer to me for that.’

The judge turned sad and hung his grey head. ‘Forgive me, Senya, for buying off my conscience with a hundred roubles. I could have called to check how you were getting on at least once. When your father died, I wanted to take both of you in, but Puzyrev clung on to you like grim death – he’s my nephew, he said, my sister’s flesh and blood. But it would seem money was the only thing on his mind.’

Senka’s thoughts briefly turned away from money to something completely different: how would everything have turned out if he’d been taken in by Judge Kuvshinninkov instead of Uncle Zot?

But what point was there in eating his heart out now?

Senka asked sullenly: ‘Won’t you let me see Vanka?’

The judge paused for a moment before he answered. ‘Well now, you’ve spoken to me honestly, and you’re not an entirely hopeless case. So yes, you can see each other. Why shouldn’t you? Vanya’s French lesson has just finished. Go to the nursery. The maid will show you the way.’

And Senka needn’t have worried about his little brother.

When they told Vanka his big brother had arrived, he ran out to meet him, jumped right up and threw his arms round Senka’s neck.

‘Aha! I did it, I wrote him a letter! Senya, you look just the way I imagined you!’ Then he corrected himself. ‘Not imagined, remembered. You haven’t changed at all, even the tie’s still the same!’

What a brazen liar the little scamp was!

Senka gave him the bonbonnier and some other presents: binoculars and a penknife – the same one, with the nail file on it. Of course, Vanka immediately forgot all about his brother and started fiddling with the blades – but that was all right, kids will be kids.

Senka shook the judge’s hand when he said goodbye and promised to come again in a couple of days.

He walked back almost all the way to the Kaluga Gate, deep in thought.

Seven thousand a rod! If he didn’t force down the price, he could live like a king for a whole year – on just one rod.

He had to put his wits to work, use that noggin a bit.

As a certain individual, who has already been mentioned, had taught him: ‘He who think rittur, cry man’ tears.’

Story Four. About the Japanese man Masa

Meaning: ‘He who thinks little, cries many tears’. This individual could not pronounce the Russian ‘l’ because there was no such letter in the language where he was from. But apparently they managed somehow, they got by.

So now it is time to tell you about Senka’s other teacher, who wasn’t hired, but self-appointed.

It happened like this.

The day after the ballet, when Senka was feeling unwell first thing in the morning, and then was cured by champagne and pate, he had an unexpected visitor.

There was a knock on the door – a quiet, well-mannered knock. He thought it was the landlady.

But when he opened the door he saw the Japanese, from yesterday.

Senka got an awful fright. Now the Jap would start belting him and asking why he had scampered off before being called to account for his stealing.

The Japanese said hello and asked: ‘Why you trembur?’

Senka told him straight: ‘I’m trembling because I’m afraid for my life. Afraid you might do me in, mister.’

The Japanese was surprised: ‘You mean, Senka-kun, that you afrai’ of death?’

‘Who isn’t afraid of it?’ Senka answered. The question sounded like a threat, and Senka backed away towards the window. He’d thought maybe he could leap from the window. But it was a bit on the high side, otherwise he’d definitely have jumped.

The Japanese continued to put the wind up Senka – making out he was even more surprised. ‘Why be afrai’? You no’ afrai’ to sreep at nigh’, are you?’

After a dark hint like that, Senka stopped feeling afraid of the height. He backed off all the way to the window and opened the curtain, as if he needed some air. Now if anyone tried to kill him, he could jump up on the windowsill in a single bound.

‘But when you sleep,’ he said, ‘you know you’re going to wake up in the morning.’

‘An’ wake up afta death too. If you rive good rife, waking up wirr be good.’

So now he was playing the priest! That was a bit much, a heathen preaching to a baptised Christian about heaven and resurrection!

With the window so close now, Senka felt a bit bolder: ‘How did you find me?’ he asked. ‘Do you know some magic word?’

‘I know. It carred “roubur”. I gave boy roubur, an’ he forrow you.’

‘What boy?’ asked Senka, startled.

Masa pointed to a spot about two and a half feet off the floor. ‘Rittur boy. Snot face. But run fast.’

The Japanese glanced round the room and nodded approvingly. ‘Werr done, Senka-kun, for moving here. It crose to Asheurov Rane.’

Senka twigged – he meant Asheulov Lane, where he and Erast Petrovich had their lodgings. It really wasn’t far.

‘What do you want from me? I gave back the beads, didn’t I?’ he whined.

‘Master tord me to come,’ Masa explained sternly, almost solemnly, then sighed. ‘An’ you, Senka-kun, rike me. When I was rike you, I was rittur bandit too. If I not meet Master, I woul’ grow into big bandit. He is my teacher. And I wirr be your teacher.’

‘I’ve already got a teacher,’ Senka growled (he’d lost his fear of death).

‘What lessons he give you?’ Masa asked, livening up. (Well, actually, he said ‘ ressons’, but Senka had already learned to make out his queer way of talking.)

‘Well, there’s good manners . . .’

The short-ass was delighted at that. That was the most important thing, he said. And he explained about genuine politeness, which was based on sincere respect for every person.

At the very height of the explanation, a fly started buzzing about over Senka’s head. The rotten pest kept flying round and round, it just wouldn’t leave him alone. The Japanese jumped up in the air, waved his arm and caught the insect in his fist.

His agile speed made Senka squeal out loud and squat right down – he thought Masa was trying to kill him.

Masa looked down at Senka doubled up on the floor and asked what he was doing. ‘I was afraid you’d hit me.’

‘What for?’

Senka said with a sob in his voice: ‘Everyone wants to hurt a poor orphan.’

The Japanese raised one finger like a teacher. You need to know how to defend yourself, he said. Especially if you’re an orphan.

‘Yeah, but how do I learn?’

The Japanese laughed. Who was it, he asked, who said he didn’t need a teacher? Do you want me to teach you how to defend yourself?

Senka recalled the way the Oriental flung his arms and legs about, and he wanted to do that too. ‘That wouldn’t be bad,’ he said. ‘But I reckon nifty battering’s difficult, ain’t it?’

Masa walked over to the window and set the captured fly free. No, he said, battering people’s not difficult. Learning the Way, that’s what difficult.

(It was only later Senka realised he’d said the word ‘Way’ like it was written with a big letter, but at the time he didn’t twig.)

‘Eh?’ he asked. ‘Learning what?’

Masa started explaining the Way. He said life was a road from birth to death and you had to walk that road the right way, or else at the end of the journey you wouldn’t have got anywhere and afterwards it was too late to complain. If you crawled along the road like a fly, then in the next life you’d be born a fly, like the one that was just buzzing round the room. And if you crept along through the dust, you’d be born a snake.

Senka thought that was just fancy talk. He didn’t know then that Masa was serious when he talked about flies and snakes.

‘And what’s the right way to walk the road?’ asked Senka.

It turned out that doing it right was a kind of self-torture. First of all, when you woke up in the morning, you had to say to yourself: ‘Today death is waiting for me’ – and not feel afraid. And you had to think about it – death, that is – all the time. Because you never knew when your journey would come to an end, and you always had to be ready.

Senka closed his eyes and said the special words, and he wasn’t frightened at all, because he saw Death in front of him, looking incredibly beautiful. (Why be afraid, if she was waiting for you?)

But the more he learnt, the worse it got.

You couldn’t tell lies, you couldn’t doss about doing nothing, you couldn’t sleep on a feather bed (no mollycoddling yourself at all!) and you had to torture and torment yourself, toughen yourself up and in general really put yourself through it.

Senka listened and listened, and decided he didn’t want to go through all that agony. He’d already seen more than enough poverty and hunger – in fact he’d only just got a whiff of real life.

‘Ain’t there any simpler way, without the Way? Just so you can fight?

Masa was upset by that question, he shook his head. There is, he said, but then you’ll never beat a tiger, only a jackal.

‘Never mind, a jackal’s good enough for me,’ Senka declared. ‘I can walk round a tiger, me legs won’t fall off.’

Well, that made the Japanese even more sorrowful. ‘Damn your lazy soul,’ he said. ‘But take off your jacket and you can have your first resson.’

And he started teaching Senka the right way to fall if someone smashed you hard in the face.

Senka learned the skill quickly: he fell correctly, tumbled right over backwards and back up on his feet, and all the time he was waiting for Masa to ask him where a Khitrovka ragamuffin got so much money.

He never did.

But before he left, Masa said: ‘The master asks if you want to tell him anything, Senka-kun? No? Then sayonara.’

That was how they said ‘see you later’.

And he got into the habit of coming to the boarding house, never missed a day.

If Senka went down to breakfast, Masa was already there, sitting by the samovar, all red from drinking tea, and the landlady was serving him more jam. When he was there, strict Madam Borisenko went all soppy and started blushing. How come he affected her like that?

Then afterwards the Japanese gymnastics lesson began. Truth be told, Masa spent more time jabbering away than teaching him anything useful. The wily Oriental was obviously still trying to drag Senka on to that Way of his.

For example, he was teaching Senka to leap down off the roof of the shed. Senka had climbed up all right, but he couldn’t jump, he was afraid. It was fifteen feet! He’d break his leg!

Masa stood beside him, preaching. It’s the fear that’s stopping you, he said. Drive it away, a man doesn’t need it. All it does is stop your head and your body doing their job. You know how to jump, don’t you? I showed you, I explained. So don’t be afraid, your head and your body will just do it if fear doesn’t stop them.

Easily said!

‘So isn’t there anything in the world you’re afraid of, Sensei?’ That was what Senka had to call him, ‘sensei’. It meant ‘teacher’. ‘I didn’t think there was anybody who didn’t have any fear.’

The answer was: There are some people, but not many. The master, for instance, he’s not afraid of anything. But there is one thing that I am very much afraid of.

Senka felt a bit better when he heard that. ‘What? Dead men?’

No, said Masa. I’m afraid the master will put his trust in me and I’ll disappoint him, let him down. Because of my stupidity or circumstances beyond my control. I’m terribly afraid of that, he said. All right, stupidity lessens as the years go by. But only the Buddha has power over circumstances.

‘Who does?’ Senka asked.

Masa pointed one finger towards the sky. ‘Buddha.’

‘Ah-ha, Jesus Christ.’

The Japanese nodded. That’s why, he said, I pray to him every day. Like this.

He closed his narrow eyes, folded his hands and started droning something through his nose. Then he translated it: ‘I trust in the Buddha and do everything I can.’ That was their prayer in Japan, he said.

‘That ain’t Japanese. Trust in God and do right yourself.’