He Lover of Death

HOW SENKA WAS A PEACHER

Outside, once they’d got into the landau and driven off, Senka heaved a bitter sigh and said:

‘Thank you, Erast Petrovich, for taking such good care of me. That’s the way you treat a true friend, is it? What if the Prince had said “give me your mamselle”? Were you really going to hand me over to be tortured to death?’

‘Turn the corner and stop!’ the ungrateful engineer ordered the driver in his Caucasian voice. He answered the reproach when they got out of the carriage.

‘For the P-Prince only one woman exists. He won’t even l-look at any other. I needed you to look f-frightened, Senya – to make our little interlude m-more convincing. And you m-managed it very well.’

And then Senka realised that when Erast Petrovich was wearing fancy dress – as an old Yid or a wild mountain warrior – he didn’t stammer at all. That was amazing. And Senka remembered that the engineer had done the whole job on his own, without any help from his partner. He felt ashamed then, most of all for being such a coward and calling on the Virgin Mary and St Nicholas for help. But then, what was there to be ashamed of in that? He was a real person, wasn’t he, not some kind of stone idol like Mr Nameless. Erast Petrovich didn’t need to pray, Masa-sensei had told Senka that.

They walked along Pokrovka Street, past the Church of the Trinity in the Mud and the magnificent Church of the Assumption.

‘Don’t you ever pray to God, then?’ Senka asked. ‘Is that because you’re not afraid of anything at all?’

‘Why do you think I’m n-not afraid?’ Erast Petrovich asked in surprise. ‘I am afraid. Only p-people completely without imagination have no f-fear. And since I am afraid, I p-pray sometimes.’

‘You’re lying!’

The engineer sighed. ‘It would be b-better to say “I don’t believe you”, and best of all n-never to say such things unless it is absolutely n-necessary, because . . .’ He gestured vaguely with his hand.

‘... because you could collect a slap across the face,’ Senka guessed.

‘And for th-that reason too. And the p-prayer I say, Senya, is one I was t-taught by an old priest: “Spare me, Lord, from a slow, p-painful, humiliating death”. That is the entire prayer.’

Senka thought about it. The bit about a slow death was clear enough – who wanted to spend ten years just lying paralysed or withering away? The painful part was obvious too.

‘But what’s a humiliating death? Is that when someone dies and everyone spits on him and kicks him?’

‘No. Christ was b-beaten and humiliated too, but there was nothing shameful about his d-death, was there? All my life I’ve b-been afraid of something else. I’m afraid of d-dying in a way that people will f-find amusing. People don’t remember anything else about you after th-that. For example, the French p-president Faure will not be remembered for c-conquering the island of Madagascar and concluding an alliance with Russia, but for the f-fact that His Excellency expired on t-top of his lover. All that is left of the former l-leader of the nation is a d-dirty joke: “The president died in the p-performance of his duties – in every s-sense”. Even on his gravestone the p-poor fellow is shown embracing the b-banner of the republic. People walking by g-giggle and titter – that is the f-fate that I fear.’

‘That sort of cock-up couldn’t happen to you,’ Senka reassured the engineer. ‘You’re in sound health.’

‘If not that k-kind, then some other. Fate loves to j-jest with those who are too concerned for their own d-dignity.’ Erast Petrovich laughed. ‘For instance, you remember the way the t-two of us were sitting in the water closet, and the G-Ghoul heard a noise and p-pulled out his revolver?’

‘How could I forget that? It still gives me the shakes.’

‘Well then, if the Ghoul had started f-firing through the door, he would have left us b-both draped across the toilet bowl. What a beautiful d-death that would have been.’

Senka imagined himself and Erast Petrovich lying on top of each other across the china potty, with their blood flowing straight into the sewage pipe.

‘Not exactly beautiful, I’d say.’

‘Indeed. I wouldn’t want to d-die like that. A stupid weakness, I realise that, b-but I simply can’t help myself.’

Mr Nameless gave a guilty smile and suddenly stopped dead –right on the corner of Kolpachny Lane.

‘Now, Senya, this is where our ways p-part. I have to drop into the post office and s-send off a certain important letter. F-from here on you will act without me.’

‘How’s that?’ Senka asked warily. What torment had the sly Erast Petrovich got in store for him now?

‘You will g-go to the police station and deliver a l-letter to Superintendent Solntsev.’

‘Is that all?’ Senka asked suspiciously, screwing up his eyes.

‘That’s all.’

That was all right, delivering a letter was no big deal.

‘I’ll take off the tart’s rags and wash the paint off my mug,’ Senka growled. ‘I feel a right nelly.’

‘I feel embarrassed in front of people,’ the pernickety engineer corrected him. ‘There’s no t-time to get changed. Stay as you are. It will be s-safer that way.’

Senka felt a black cat scrape its claws across his heart. Safer? What exactly did that mean?

But Mr Nameless only made the vicious beast scrape away even harder.

‘You’re a b-bright young man,’ he said. ‘Act according to the s-situation.’

He took two envelopes out of his pocket, gave one to Senka and kept the other.

Senka scratched at his chest to stop that cat scraping so hard, but his hand ran into something soft – it was the cotton wool Erast Petrovich had stuffed under the dress to give it a woman’s curves.

‘Why don’t I run to the post office, and you go to the superintendent?’ Senka suggested without really feeling very hopeful.

‘I can’t show my f-face at the police station. Hold on t-to the letter. You have to g-give it to Colonel Solntsev in person.’

There was no address on the envelope, and it wasn’t even glued shut.

‘That is so you will n-not have to waste any time b-buying a new one,’ Mr Nameless explained. ‘You’ll read it anyway.’

There was no way you could hide anything from him, the sly serpent.

Before Senka had even walked on a hundred steps alone, someone ran up from behind and started pawing his cotton-wool tits.

‘Oh, soft and springy, we could have some sweet fun,’ a fervent voice whispered in his ear.

He turned his head and saw an ugly mug that hadn’t been shaved and smelled of stale vodka and onions.

So this was what it was like for a girl to walk round Khitrovka on her own.

At first Senka was just going to frighten the randy villain, tell him he would complain to Brawn, the biggest pimp in Khitrovka, about this cheek, but the unwelcome admirer went on to lick the false mamselle on the neck, and Senka’s patience snapped.

Following the rules of Japanese fighting art, first he breathed out all the air in his lungs (to shift the root of his strength from his chest to his belly), then he smashed his heel into his admirer’s shin and then, when the admirer gasped and opened his filthy great mitts, Senka swung round rapidly, jabbed his finger into the top of his belly and winded him.

The lascivious wooer squatted down on his haunches and clutched at his belly. His face turned serious and thoughtful. That’s right, you think about how you ought to behave with the girls.

Senka turned into a quiet passageway and unfolded the letter.

’Dear Innokentii Romanovich,I have learned from a reliable source that you have learned from a reliable source that I am in Moscow. Although we have never had any great affection for each other, I hopenonetheless that the orgy of atrocious crimes in the area entrusted to your care concerns you, as a servant of the law, noless than it does me, a man who left behind his former service and the cares of Moscow a long time ago. And therefore, I wish to put a business proposition to you.Tonight I shall bring together at a certain convenient location the leaders of the two most dangerous gangs in Moscow, the Prince and the Ghoul, and you and I shall arrest them. Then a ture of that place will not allow you to bring a large number of men – you will have to make do with one deputy, so choose your most experienced police officer. I am sure that the three of us will be enough to carry out the arrest of the Prince and the Ghoul.The person who will deliver this letter to you knows nothing about this business. Sheis an ordinary street girl, a simple soul who has undertaken to perform this errand for me for a small payment, so do not waste your time questioning her.I shall call for you at twenty minutes past three in the morning. Being an intelligent and ambitious man, you will no doubt realise that it would not be a good idea to report my proposal to your superiors. The greatest possible reward you would receive is the benevolent disposition of the municipal authorities. However, I am not a criminal, and I am not wanted by the police, so you will earn notitles or medals by informing on me. Youwill reap far greater dividends if you agree to take part in the undertaking that I propose. Fandorin.’

Senka knew what ‘dividends’ were (that was when they paid you money for nothing), but he didn’t understand that last word. It must mean ‘adieu’, or ‘please accept, etc.’, or ‘I remain yours truly’ –basically, what people wrote to give a letter a beautiful ending. ‘Fandorin’ had a fine ring to it. He’d have to remember it in future.

He licked the envelope and glued it shut, and a couple of minutes later he was walking into the courtyard of the Third Myasnitsky police station. Curse and damn the lousy place. Invented for tormenting people and trampling on lives that were miserable enough already.

There were several cab drivers standing at the gates, holding their caps in their hands. These violators of the laws of the road had come to ransom the numbers that had been taken off their cabs. That cost about seven roubles a time, and even then you really had to grovel.

Inside the yard there was a jostling circle of men wearing loose shirts with belts. They looked like a team of Ukrainian carpenters who had come to Moscow to earn money. The foreman, with a long, droopy moustache, was walking round the circle, holding out his cap, and the others were reluctantly dropping silver and copper coins into it. Clear enough – they’d been working for the builder without the right piece of paper, and now the coppers were tapping them for half their money. It happened all the time.

They said that sort of thing never used to happen here under the old superintendent, but it’s the priest who sets the tone of the parish.

The moment Senka pushed open the oilcloth-covered door and stepped into the dark, filthy corridor, a bumptious fat-faced copper with stripes on his arm grabbed him by the hem of his skirt.

‘Well, look at you,’ he said. Then he winked and pinched Senka on the side so hard that Senka could have torn his hands off. ‘Why haven’t I seen you around before? Come to get your yellow ticket amended? I do that. Let’s go.’

He grabbed Senka by the elbow and started dragging him off. Senka knew he was lying about that ticket – all he wanted was to use a girl for free.

‘I’ve come to see the superintendent,’ Senka said in a stern squeak. ‘I’ve got a letter for him, it’s important.’

The copper took his hands off. ‘Go straight on,’ he said, ‘and then right. That’s where His Honour sits.’

Senka went where he’d been told. Past the hen coop, full of tramps who had been picked up, past the locked cells with the thieves and criminals (the darlings were singing that song about a black raven – lovely it was, a real treat). Then the corridor turned a bit cleaner and brighter and it led Senka to a tall, leather-bound door with a brass plate on it that said: ‘Superintendent: Colonel I. R. Solntsev’.

Senka’s polite knock was answered by a stern voice on the other side of the door.

‘Yes?’

Senka went in. He said hello in a squeaky voice and held out the letter. ‘I was asked to deliver this to you in person.’

He tried to clear off straightaway, but the superintendent growled quietly: ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

The fearsome colonel was sitting at his desk eating an apple, cutting slices off it with a narrow-bladed knife. He wiped the blade on a napkin, then pressed a knob somewhere, and the blade disappeared with a metallic click.

Solntsev didn’t open the envelope straight off; instead he examined his visitor carefully, and his eyes lingered for a long time on her false bosom. (Ah, Mr Nameless had overdone it there, stuffed in way too much cotton wool!)

‘Who are you? A streetwalker? Your name?’

‘S-Sanka,’ Senka lisped. ‘Alexandra Alexandrova.’

‘What’s this letter about? Who’s it from?’

Solntsev fingered the envelope suspiciously and help it up against the light. What should Senka say?

‘A client gave me it . . . Give it to the colonel, he told me, hand it to him in person.’

‘Hmm, intrigues of the court of Burgundy,’ the superintendent muttered, opening the envelope. ‘Stay here, Alexandrova. Wait.’

He ran his eye over the letter quickly, jerked upright, unfastened the hook of his stiff collar, ran his tongue over his lips and started reading again, taking his time now, as if he was trying to make something out between the lines.

He took so long, Senka got bored. Luckily, there were photographs hanging on the walls and newspaper cuttings in frames behind glass.

The most interesting thing there was a picture from a magazine. Solntsev standing there, a bit younger than he was now, with his hands perched smartly on his hips, and a wooden coffin beside him on the floor. The man in it had a moustache and a black hole in his forehead. The caption underneath read: ‘Young district inspector puts an end to the criminal career of Loberetsky the Apache’.

Under that was an article with the enormous headline: ‘Gang of counterfeiters arrested. Three cheers for the police!’

A photograph without any caption: Solntsev shaking hands with the governor general. His Highness Simeon Alexandrovich was skinny and incredibly tall, with his chin stuck up in the air, and the superintendent was bowing, knees bent, with a smarmy great smile pasted right across his mug (that is, his face).

Another article, not so very old, it wasn’t yellow yet: ‘The youngest precinct superintendent in Moscow’, from the Moscow Municipal Police Gazette. Senka read the beginning: ‘The brilliant operation that resulted in the arrest of a band of robbers in Khamovniki, who were given away by one of the members of that criminal association, has drawn attention once again to the talent of Colonel Solntsev and secured him not only a priority promotion, but an appointment to one of the most difficult and high-profile precincts in the old capital, Khitrovka . . .’

He couldn’t read any more because the superintendent interrupted. ‘Well now. A most interesting message.’

He wasn’t looking at the letter as he said that, but at Senka, and looking at him in a nasty sort of way, as if he was going to take him apart, unscrew all his nuts and bolts and peer at what was inside.

‘Who do you belong to, Alexandrova? Who’s your pimp?’

‘I don’t belong to anyone, I work for myself,’ Senka answered after a moment’s hesitation. What if he named some pimp, even Brawn, and the superintendent took it into his head to check? Have you got a mamselle by that name, Brawn? That would be a real disaster.

‘You used to work for yourself,’ the superintendent said with an evil smile. ‘But not any more you don’t. From this day on you’re going to peach for me. I can tell just by looking at you that you’re a quick-witted girl, you’ve got sharp eyes. And good-looking too, buxom. Your voice is disgusting, that’s true, but then you won’t be singing at the Bolshoi.’

He laughed. So the rotten snake had decided to recruit Senka as a peacher! That was what they called mamselles who squealed on their own kind. If the bandits found out, there was only one pay-off for that – they’d rip the peacher’s guts out.

If a streetwalker was found with her belly ripped open, everyone knew what it was for. But just you try and find out who’d done it! Even so, there were plenty of little mamselles who peached. And not just for the fun of it, of course not. When the coppers started turning the screws, there was no way to wriggle out.

Now, it made no odds to Senka if they recruited him as a peacher, but any self-respecting mamselle had to kick up a bit.

‘I’m an honest girl,’ he said proudly. ‘Not one of those whores who squeal on their own kind to you coppers. Find yourself a squealer somewhere else.’

‘Wha-at?’ the superintendent bellowed in such a terrifying voice that Senka froze. ‘Who are you calling “coppers”, you little slut? Right, Alexandrova, for that, I’m going to fine you. Three days to pay, and do you know what happens after that?’

Senka shook his head in fright – and this time he wasn’t pretending.

But Solntsev stopped yelling and switched to gentle persuasion: ‘Let me explain. If you don’t pay your fine for insulting me in three days, I’ll lock you in a cell for the night. Do you know who I’ve got in there? Criminals who are sick. They’ve got consumption and syphilis. According to the latest “humane” decree, we have to keep them separate from other prisoners. But they’ll spend the night playing with you, my girl, and then we’ll see which one takes a shine to you first – the frenchies or consumption.’

The time had come for Senka to set his girlish pride aside. ‘How can I pay?’ he said in a weepy voice. ‘I’m a poor girl.’

The superintendent chuckled: ‘Which is it, poor or honest?

Senka rubbed his eyes with his sleeve – like he was wiping his tears away. He sniffed pitifully as if to say: I’m all yours, do whatever you want with me.

‘Right, then,’ said Solntsev in a brisk, businesslike tone. ‘Did you sleep with the man who gave you the letter?’

‘Well ...’ Senka said warily, not knowing what was the best answer.

The copper shook his head. ‘My, my, our squeamish friend really has gone down in the world. In the old days he would never have got mixed up with a street girl. He must have seen something in you.’ The superintendent came out from behind the desk and took hold of Senka’s chin with his finger and thumb. ‘Lively eyes, with sparks of mischief in them. Hmm . . . Where did it happen? How?’

‘At my apertiment,’ Senka lied. ‘He’s a very hot-blooded gent, a real goer.’

‘Yes, he’s a well-known ladies’ man. Listen, Alexandrova, I’ll tell you how you can pay your fine. Tell this man that you’ve fallen madly in love with him, or something else of the sort, but make sure that you stay with him. If he’s seen something in you, then he won’t throw you out. He’s a gentleman.’

‘But where can I find him?’ Senka wailed.

‘I’ll tell you that tomorrow. Hand over your yellow ticket. I’ll keep it here for the time being. Better safe than sorry.’

Oh no! Senka started batting his eyelids, he didn’t know what to say.

‘What, you mean you don’t have one?’ Solntsev gave a wolfish grin. ‘Trading without a ticket? Shame on you! And too proud to peach. Hey!’ he yelled, turning towards the door. ‘Ogryzkov!’

A constable came in, stood to attention and glared wide eyed at his superior.

‘Escort this girl home, wherever she says. Confiscate her residence permit and bring it to me. So you won’t be able to do a runner, Alexandrova.’

He patted Senka on the cheek. ‘Now that I look a bit closer, I reckon there really is something to you. Fandorin knows a good thing when he sees it.’ He lowered his hand and felt Senka’s backside. ‘A bit scraggy in the basement, but I’ve got nothing against a skinny bum. I’ll have to give you a try, Alexandrova. If you manage to avoid the frenchies, that is.’

And he laughed, the filthy old goat.

How could Death have billed and cooed with this reptile? Senka would rather hang himself.

And suddenly he felt sorry for women, the poor creatures. What was it like for them living in a world where all the men were filthy swines?

And what did ‘fandorin’ mean, anyway?