She Lover of Death

I. From the Newspapers

Lavr Zhemailo is Dead

Active opponent of suicide takes his own life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Editors

Moscow Gazette, 19

September (2 October) 1900,

front page

II. From Columbine’s Diary

Chosen!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.

‘It’s time for me to go’

They argued heatedly, trying to shout each other down.

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

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

‘Destiny,’ his brother explained.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘How . . . how could you, Teacher?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And what are they?’ Columbine laughed.

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

‘Such as?’ she asked and laughed again.

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

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

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

From that point her thoughts started off in a different direction, far removed from philosophising and attempts to guess the future.

What is Mr Erast Petrovich Neimless’s personal life like, Columbine wondered, squinting sideways at her companion. All the signs indicated that he was an inveterate bachelor, one of those who, as her nanny used to say, would rather strangle himself than get married. Was he really content to live year after year with only his Japanese for company? Oh, hardly, he was far too handsome.

She suddenly felt it was a terrible pity that she had not met him earlier, before Prospero. Perhaps then everything would have turned out quite differently.

They parted at the corner of Staropansky Lane. Genji removed his top hat and kissed the thoughtful young lady’s hand. Before walking into the entrance, she glanced round. He was standing in the same place, under a streetlamp, holding the top hat in his hand while the wind ruffled his black hair.

As Columbine climbed the stairs, she imagined how everything would have been if she had met Genji earlier. And as she unlocked her door she was humming a song to herself.

But five minutes later she had shaken off all this maudlin folly and knew that none of the things Genji had spoken about had ever existed – life was not good and wise, there was no love. There was only one thing – a great magnet that was drawing her to itself like a little iron filing. It had already caught her, and it would never let her go.

What happened during those five minutes?

She sat down at the desk as usual, to write down all the events of the day in her diary, and then, suddenly remembering Gorgon’s mean joke, she angrily jerked open the drawer, grabbed the two little rectangles of cardboard and held a lighted match to them, in order to destroy the evidence of her shameful gullibility.

Less than a minute later, Columbine was convinced that the messages would not burn. She had used up several matches and singed the tips of her fingers. But the paper had not even darkened at all!

She grabbed her handbag in order to take out her cigarette case. She needed to smoke a papirosa and gather her thoughts. The handbag fell from her trembling hands, its contents scattered across the floor and Columbine’s eye was caught by a small piece of white card, exactly like the two previous ones. She picked it up and read the single word that was written on it:‘Komm’.²

So there it was. Irrefutable.

Columbine sat there for a few minutes without moving, and thought. Not about the One who had sent her this summons, but about the Japanese prince. ‘Thank you, dear Genji,’ she thought, taking leave of him. ‘You are clever and handsome. You wished me well. I would certainly have fallen in love with you – everything was leading to that, but an even more impressive admirer than you has put in an appearance. Everything has finally been decided. It’s time for me to go.’

Enough of that.

All she still had to do was write the concluding chapter in her diary. The title simply wrote itself.

How tenderly Columbine departs from the City of Dreams

Tenderly, because tenderness is precisely the feeling that now suffuses the traveller’s entire being as her voyage approaches its brilliant conclusion. And this feeling is both sweet and sad.

Columbine sat at the desk for a long time as the three white candles on it slowly burned down. She thought about various ways in which she could make her departure, as if she were searching through the dresses in her wardrobe for one to wear at a ball, measuring them against herself, looking in the mirror, sighing and tossing each rejected outfit on to a chair. No good, no good. Somehow she did not really feel afraid. The three white cards, neatly laid out on the desk, radiated a calm strength that supported her. Columbine knew for certain that it would hurt a little bit at first, but after that everything would be very, very good: the vain girl was more concerned with something that was not really so important – how she would look when she was dead. But then, perhaps this was the most important problem that she still had to decide in her short life that was now rushing rapidly to its finale. After her departure she wanted to look like a beautiful doll laid out in an elegant box, so the quick means like a rope or a jump from the balcony were not suitable. The best way, of course, would be to take a sleeping draft – to swallow an entire crystal phial of opium, then wash it down with sweet tea and blackcurrant jam. Columbine had tea, and she had blackcurrant jam. But she did not have any soporific substances in her apartment, because she had never suffered from insomnia: as soon as she put her head on the pillow and parted her golden tresses to both sides, she immediately fell into a sound sleep.

Finally the difficult choice was made.

Fill the bath with warm water. Add a few drops of lavender oil. Anoint her face and neck with miraculous Lanoline cream – ‘the ideal way to preserve attractive skin’ – from the little tin tube (she only needed to preserve it for two or three days, until the funeral, after that she wouldn’t need attractive skin). Put on her white lace dress, which was a bit like a wedding dress. Tie back her hair with a scarlet ribbon that would match the colour of the water. Lie down in the bath, run a sharp knife across her veins (under the water, so that it wouldn’t hurt too much), and slowly go to sleep. Whoever found Columbine would say: She was like a white chrysanthemum floating in a glass of vin rosé.

Now there was one last thing she had to do: write a poem. And that would conclude the story of Columbine, who flew into the City of Dreams from the magical distance, spread her ethereal wings there for a short while and then darted from the light into the shadow.

No, that’s no good at all. The first line is from a poem by someone else, and God only knows what that last line means.

That’s no better. I simply can’t stand that third line, it makes me feel sick. ‘Travel’ – what sort of word is that for a poem? This is really hard. And the water’s getting cold. I’ll have to let it out and fill the bath again. Come on now!

No. It has to be less heavy, without any irony. Light and airy.

Will they realise that the falling water is the sound of the tap filling the bath? Ah, never mind if it’s not clear! I’ve wasted enough paper already. Whoever said that a farewell poem has to be long? Columbine’s will be short, absurd and break off when it has hardly begun, just like her short and absurd (but nonetheless beautiful, very beautiful) li . . .

Before Columbine could finish writing the word, the silence of the night was broken by the ringing of her doorbell.

Who could it be at this hour, after two in the morning?

At any other time she would have been afraid. Everyone knew that a doorbell rung in the middle of the night boded no good. But what should she be afraid of, when she had already settled her final account with life?

Maybe she shouldn’t answer? Let them ring away.

Lucifer was warming himself on her bosom: she settled his little head more comfortably in the hollow over her collarbone and tried to concentrate on her diary, but the continuous ringing would not let her.

All right, she would have to go and see what surprise life had in store for her just before it came to an end.

Columbine didn’t bother to turn on the gas lamp in the hallway. She had already guessed who had come to visit her so late – Genji, it couldn’t be anyone else. He had sensed something. Now he would start remonstrating with her again, trying to convince her. She would have to pretend that she agreed with everything, wait for him to go and then . . .

She opened the door.

It was dark on the stairway too. Someone had turned off the light. She could make out a vague silhouette. Tall and massive – no, it wasn’t Genji.

Her visitor didn’t say anything, all she could hear was loud, fitful breathing.

‘Did you want to see me?’ Columbine asked, peering into the darkness.

‘Yes, you!’ a hoarse voice rasped – it sounded so savage and malevolent that she took a sharp step back.

‘Who are you?’ she cried out.

‘Your death! With a small letter.’

Columbine heard gruff, throaty laughter. She thought she recognised the voice, but she was so frightened that she couldn’t understand a thing, and before she could gather her wits the shadow stepped into the hallway and seized her round the neck with fingers of iron.

The voice hissed: ‘You’ll be black and blue, with your tongue hanging out. A fine Chosen One!’

The terrible visitor laughed again, wheezing like a decrepit old dog barking.

The reply to his laughter was an angry hiss from Lucifer, who had woken up. The bold little snake had grown a lot in the last few weeks of feeding on milk and minced meat. He sank his fangs into the attacker’s hand.

The attacker growled, grabbed the grass snake by the tail and smashed it against the wall. It only took a second, but that was enough for Columbine to dart away. She didn’t make a decision or choose her moment, she simply went away, following her instinct like an animal.

She ran down the corridor with her mouth wide open, but not uttering a sound. She ran blindly, with no idea of where she was going or why, urged on by the most effective goad of all – the fear of death, vile and loathsome. It was not Death lumbering along after her, but death – filthy, foul-smelling and terrifying. The death from her childhood. With the rich, thick soil of the graveyard. The white death-worms. The grinning skull with holes instead of eyes.

A sudden thought occurred to her: she should run into the bathroom, bolt the door and then shout and hammer on the steel pipe so that the neighbours would hear. The bathroom door opened outwards, the handle was flimsy, if he tugged hard, it would break off, and the door would stay locked.

It was a wonderful idea, good enough to save her. But it would take three seconds, or at least two, for her to do it, and she didn’t have them.

In the doorway of the room a hand grabbed her sleeve from behind. Columbine jerked away as hard as she could, sending buttons flying. But she recovered her voice.

‘Help!’ she shouted at the top of her lungs. And then she carried on shouting. As loud as she could manage.

She darted out of the room to the left, into the kitchen. There was the door of the bathroom, she could hear the water splashing out of the tap. No, not enough time.

Left again out of the kitchen, into the corridor. The circle was completed. Where to now? Back into the room or out on to the stairs? The front door was still open.

Better on to the stairs. Maybe someone would look out of their door?

She flew out on to the dark landing with a scream and went dashing down the steps. If only she didn’t stumble!

Columbine’s long skirt hampered her. She tugged it up above her knees with a jerk.

‘Stop, thief! Stop!’ the hoarse voice roared behind her.

Why ‘thief’? Columbine wondered, and at that very moment, just before the final flight of steps, the heel of her shoe slipped sideways with a crunch.

The fugitive screeched and fell, landing with her chest and stomach on the steps, and slid downwards. She hit her elbows against the stairs, but she didn’t feel any pain, she was just very afraid.

Realising she wouldn’t have time to get up, she pressed her forehead against the floor. It was cold and smelled of dust. She squeezed her eyes shut.

The door of the entranceway banged loudly and someone shouted out: ‘Don’t move! I’ll fire!’

The hoarse voice answered: ‘Here, take this!’

There was a deafening crash and Columbine’s ears were suddenly blocked. She hadn’t been able to see anything in the dark, and now she couldn’t hear anything either.

As well as the dust, there was another smell now. An acrid smell, vaguely familiar. She remembered what it was – gunpowder. When her brother Misha used to shoot crows in the garden it had smelled like that.

She heard a faint voice in the distance.

‘Columbine! Are you alive?’

Genji’s voice.

Hands that were strong but gentle, not rough like those others, turned her over on to her back. She opened her eyes and then squeezed them shut again.

There was an electric torch shining straight into them.

‘That’s blinding,’ Columbine said.

Then Genji put the torch down on a step and she could see that he was leaning against the banisters with a smoking revolver in his hand; his top hat had slipped to one side and his coat was unbuttoned.

Columbine asked in a whisper: ‘What was all that?’

He picked up the torch again and pointed the beam to one side. Caliban was sitting by the wall, with his dead eyes staring down at the floor. There was a trickle of something dark running from his half-open mouth and another trickle, absolutely black, running from the round hole in his forehead.

He’s dead, Columbine guessed. The bookkeeper was still clutching a knife in his hand, holding it by the blade instead of the handle.

‘He was about to throw it,’ Genji explained. ‘He must have learned that from his shipmates while he was still sailing the seas. But I fired first.’

Even though her teeth were chattering and she had hic-cups, Columbine asked: ‘W-why? What f-for? I was g-going to do it anyway, myself . . .’

How strange, she thought, now I’m stammering, but he isn’t.

‘Later, later,’ Genji said to her.

He carefully picked the young lady up in his arms and carried her up the stairs. Columbine pressed her head against his chest. She felt very content just then. He was holding her so comfortably, just right. As if he had made a special study of how to carry enervated and exhausted young women.

She whispered: ‘I’m a doll, I’m a doll.’

Genji leaned his head down and asked: ‘What?’

‘You’re carrying me like a broken doll,’ she explained.

A quarter of an hour later Columbine was alone in her flat, sitting with her feet pulled up on to the armchair, wrapped in a rug and crying.

Alone because, after wrapping her in the rug, Genji had gone to get a doctor and the police.

With her feet pulled up because the entire floor was wet – the bath had overflowed.

But she was not crying because she was afraid (Genji had told her there would be nothing more to be afraid of). She was crying in grief: brave Lucifer was lying on her knees still and lifeless, like a patterned ribbon.

Columbine sobbed and sniffed as she stroked the rough scales on her rescuer’s back.

But she stopped crying when she turned to look in the mirror and saw the crimson graze on her forehead, her swollen nose and red eyes and the blue stripes on her neck.

She ought to tidy herself up a bit before Genji got back.

III. From the ‘Agents’ Reports’ File

To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov

(Private and confidential)

Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,

You may consider the epic story of the ‘Lovers of Death’ at an end. I shall try to set forth for you the events of this evening without omitting anything of significance.

When we all gathered at the usual time at Prospero’s apartment, I immediately realised that something quite exceptional had happened. The meeting was not chaired by Blagovolsky, but the Stammerer, and it soon became clear that our Doge had been overthrown and the reins of power had been taken up by the strong hands of a new dictator, although not for long and only in order to declare the society disbanded.

It was from the Stammerer that we learned of the quite incredible events of the previous night. I will not retell them here, because you have undoubtedly been informed about everything by your own sources. I presume that the Moscow police and your people are searching for the Stammerer in order to question him about what happened, however, I cannot help you with that. It is absolutely obvious to me that the man acted correctly, and if he does not wish to meet representatives of the law (and his words certainly gave me that impression), that is his right.

The necessity for the killing, which was committed in self-defence, was also confirmed by Columbine, who almost met her end at the hands of the insane Caliban (the aspirant to whom I have referred in previous reports as the Bookkeeper – his real name is no doubt already known to you). The poor girl’s neck, which still bore the signs of the violence done to her, was covered with a scarf, a bruise was clearly visible under a thick layer of powder on her forehead, and her voice, usually so clear, was quite hoarse from crying desperately for help.

The Stammerer began his lengthy speech by denouncing the idea of suicide, a matter in which I am entirely in agreement with him. However, with your permission, I shall not reproduce this inspired monologue, since it is of no interest to your department. I will only note that the speaker was remarkably eloquent, although he stammered more than usual.

However, the information that the Stammerer provided will probably be of some use to you. This part of his speech I shall relate at length and even in the first person, without reproducing the stammer, in order to be able to interpose my own comments from time to time.

The Stammerer began as follows, or pretty much so.

‘I live abroad for most of the time and only rarely visit Moscow, since for some time now the climate of my native city (I thought he was a Muscovite, from his accent) has not been very good for my health. But I follow events here carefully: I receive letters from friends and read the major Moscow newspapers. Reports of an epidemic of suicides and the “Lovers of Death” could not fail to attract my attention, since not too long ago I happened to deal with the case of the “Nemesis” club in London – a criminal organisation which had mastered the rare criminal speciality of driving people to commit suicide in order to profit from their deaths. It is hardly surprising that the news from Moscow made me prick up my ears. I suspected that there might be a perfectly natural and practical reason for the unusually high frequency of motiveless suicides. Was the story of the “Nemesis” club being repeated, I wondered. What if certain malevolent individuals were deliberately pushing gullible or easily influenced people to take the fatal final step?

‘Two days after I arrived in Moscow yet another versifier, Nikifor Sipyaga, took his own life. I went to examine his flat and became convinced that he had indeed been a member of the “Lovers of Death”. The police did not even bother to enquire who paid for this poor student’s quite decent accommodation. I, however, ascertained that the deceased’s flat was rented for him by a certain Sergei Irinarkhovich Blagovolsky, a man who had led an unusual and rather eccentric life. My conjecture was confirmed by observation of Mr Blagovolsky’s home: it was the place where the secret meetings were being held.

‘Having managed to become one of you without any great difficulty, I was able to continue my investigations from within the club. At first all the evidence definitely pointed to one particular individual. (The Stammerer cast an eloquent glance at Prospero, who was sitting there hunched over pitifully.) However, more thorough investigation of the string of suicides and, in particular, the most recent events – the murders of Gdlevsky and Lavr Zhemailo (yes, yes, Mr Zhemailo was also murdered), as well as the attempt on Mademoiselle Columbine’s life – have thrown a completely different light on this whole story. It is a strange story, so tangled and confused that there are many details I have still not untangled completely, but yesterday’s events served me as the sword with which to slice through this Gordian knot. The details have ceased to be important, and it will in any case not be very difficult to establish them now.

‘Lorelei Rubinstein poisoned herself with morphine after three black roses appeared in her bedroom in some mysterious fashion, one after another, and this woman obsessed with the idea of suicide took them as a summons from Death. I was able rather easily to establish that the black roses had been put in Lorelei’s room by the aunt who lived with her, an avaricious and stupid individual. She had no idea that she was doing anything wrong. She thought she was helping the latest admirer of the poetess’s talent. For performing this rather strange but, at first glance, innocent errand, the stranger paid her five roubles on each occasion, making it a condition of payment that she keep the matter secret. During my first conversation with this woman, I could see that she was frightened – she already knew what her simple assistance had led to. And when she told me that the dead roses were a single bouquet, I knew immediately that she was lying – the three flowers were at different stages of withering.

‘I went back to the woman again, with no witnesses, and made her tell me the truth. She confessed everything and gave me a very rough description of the mysterious admirer, saying that he was tall, uncouth and clean-shaven with a coarse voice. I was unable to get any more out of her – she is unintelligent, unobservant and has weak eyesight. It is clear now that it was Caliban who visited her, but at the time I still suspected Mr Blagovolsky and only realised later that my theory was wrong. If I had demonstrated a little more astuteness, the schoolboy and the reporter and, probably, Caliban himself would still be alive.’

He paused in order to rein in his feelings. One of us took advantage of the silence to ask: ‘But why did Caliban want to drive some to suicide and kill others, and in such a cruel manner?’

The Stammerer nodded, as if acknowledging the reasonableness of the question.

‘You are all aware that he was not an entirely normal individual. (I thought this remark amusing. As if all the other ‘lovers’ were normal!) However, there were circumstances in his life of which I have become aware only now, after his death. Caliban, or Savely Akimovich Papushin (that is his real name), worked as a bookkeeper on board a merchant vessel in the Volunteer Fleet. His ship was travelling on the route from Odessa to Shanghai when it was caught in a typhoon. Only three members of the crew survived and managed to reach a small deserted island in a life boat. To be precise, it was not so much an island as a series of rocky cliffs protruding from the surface of the ocean. A month and a half later a British tea clipper that happened to be in those waters discovered a single survivor – Papushin. He had not died of thirst because it was the rainy season. He did not explain how he had managed to survive for so long without food, but the remains of his two comrades were discovered on the sand: skeletons that had been gnawed absolutely clean. Papushin said that crabs had devoured the corpses. The English did not believe him and held him under lock and key until they arrived at their first port of call and then handed him over to the police authorities. (I myself have absolutely no doubt that our bookkeeper killed his two comrades and gobbled them up – it is enough to remember the bloodcurdling verse that he composed, which always included cliffs, waves and skeletons searching for their own flesh.) Papushin was held in a psychiatric clinic for more than a year. I spoke with his psychiatrist, Dr Bazhenov, today. The patient was plagued by constant nightmares and hallucinations, all connected with the subject of cannibalism. During the first week of treatment he swallowed a spoon and a shard of a broken plate, but he did not die. He did not make any further attempts at suicide, having decided that he was unworthy of death. Eventually Papushin was released on condition that he report for regular examinations and interviews with his doctor. At first he came, but then he stopped. During his final interview he seemed calmer and said that he had found people whom would help him “solve his problem”.

‘We all remember that Caliban was the most zealous advocate of voluntary death. He waited impatiently for his own turn to come and was bitterly jealous of others’ “luck”. Every time the choice fell on someone else, he fell into black despair: Death still considered him unworthy to join the comrades whom he had killed and eaten. But had he not changed, purged himself through contrition, did he not serve Death faithfully, love and desire her passionately?

‘I became a member of the club too late, and it is hard for me now to tell how or why Papushin reached his decision to push certain of the aspirants into suicide. In Ophelia’s case, he probably simply wanted to get rid of her, to put an end to the spiritualist seances – he no longer believed that the angry spirits of the “lovers” would ever summon him. Here, as in Avaddon’s case, Caliban displayed an uncommon ingenuity, of which I would never have suspected him capable. It is, however, well known that individuals of a maniacal bent can be exceptionally cunning. I will not go into the technical details here, since they have no bearing on our immediate business.

‘Why did he decide to push the Lioness of Ecstasy over the edge? Possibly she irritated him with her excessively rapturous manner. The cruel joke that Papushin played on poor Lorelei probably seemed very witty to his sick, perverted mind. I cannot suggest any other motive.

‘In Gdlevsky’s case, however, everything is quite clear. The boy boasted too much about how greatly Death favoured him. The story of the Friday rhymes is genuinely astonishing – there are too many coincidences. I suspected foul play and tried to pursue the organ grinder whose song Gdlevsky had taken as his final Sign. But the tramp seemed to have disappeared into thin air. That evening I walked round all the streets in the vicinity, but failed to find him . . .

‘Caliban’s love for Death was genuine insanity. He loved her passionately, in the way that men love femmes fatales. In the way that José must have loved Carmen and Rogozhin loved Nastasya Filippovna – constantly tormented by desire and consumed by desperate envy of his more fortunate rivals. And the schoolboy actually boasted about his imaginary triumph! In killing Gdlevsky, Caliban eliminated a rival. He deliberately arranged things so that you others would realise it was no suicide and the boy was a usurper, Death did not walk to the altar with him. To use the language of the newspapers, it was a genuine crime of passion.’

The mention of newspapers reminded me of Lavr Zhemailo.

‘But what happened to Cyrano?’ I asked. ‘You said it was a murder. Papushin again?’

‘Certainly, Zhemailo’s death was no suicide,’ the Stammerer replied. ‘Caliban somehow discovered who Cyrano was. A few minutes before his death the journalist phoned his newspaper’s offices (it must have been from here, it couldn’t have been anywhere else) and promised to deliver an incredible news story. I don’t know what he had in mind, but I remember the events of that evening very clearly. Cyrano went across to the bookshelves, looked at the spines of the books, and took out one volume. Then he went out and didn’t come back again. That was at about ten o’clock in the evening. The autopsy established that he died no later than eleven.’

(So that was the meaning of the mysterious movement of the door that I observed in the study that evening! While I was eavesdropping on Cyrano from the corridor, at the same time Caliban was hiding on the other side, in the dining room. That was when he had seen through the correspondent’s mask!)

‘The police surgeon,’ continued the Stammerer, ‘determined that Zhemailo died of asphyxiation, even though, in addition to the furrow left by the rope, his neck bore the clear imprints of fingers. Papushin obviously followed the journalist, overtook him on the boulevard, which was completely deserted at that late hour, and strangled him, which would not be difficult, since nature had endowed the killer with such great strength. Short, flabby Cyrano could not possibly have offered any serious resistance to the enraged bookkeeper. Afterwards Caliban hung the body on a tree, using the victim’s trouser belt. This was no crime of passion but an act of revenge. Caliban regarded membership of the club as a sacred ministry, Cyrano was a villainous traitor. That was why he hung him on a Judas tree, an aspen.’

(At this point, to be quite honest, I broke into a cold sweat. I imagined what the madman would have done to me if he had found out about my correspondence with you. Do you at least understand the monstrous risk to which I exposed myself in carrying out your assignment?

My heart started pounding, my fingers started trembling and after that I listened less attentively, and so I will convey the conclusion of the speech in somewhat abbreviated form.)

‘The fact that he had got away with the two previous murders and his ever-increasing resentment drove Papushin into attempting yet another crime. He decided to kill Columbine, Death’s new favourite. The madman must have found it particularly hard to bear the humiliation he had suffered when his cherished message from the Eternal Bride was publicly declared a forgery. And Columbine had already stated that fire did not touch her Signs.

‘At this point I should really explain that it was Papushin’s profound conviction – a conviction that the Doge did everything possible to support and encourage – that suicide is the noblest manner in which to leave this life or, as Sterne put it, the aristocrat of deaths. By preventing Columbine from dying of her own free will, Caliban would have exposed her as a usurper – in exactly the same way as he had already done with Gdlevsky.

‘And that is exactly what would have happened yesterday if I had not felt concerned about Mademoiselle Columbine’s state of mind and decided to see her home. We said goodnight outside the house, but I decided to keep an eye on her windows so that I could intervene immediately if I noticed anything suspicious. Naturally, the idea of a murder never even entered my head – what I was afraid of was that the young woman intended to take her own life.

‘One of her windows was lit and every now and then I saw a shadow move across the curtain. It was already very late, but Mademoiselle Columbine had still not gone to bed. I wondered if I should go upstairs? But how would it look, a man visiting a solitary young woman at that time of night? No, it was absolutely unthinkable.

‘I didn’t see Caliban make his way into the entrance, he entered from the yard, through the back door. At a quarter past two I thought I heard muffled screams from somewhere above me, but I could quite well have been mistaken. I listened closely and a few seconds later I quite distinctly heard someone shout: “No! No! Skulls! Worms!” The shouts were coming from the entrance. I didn’t understand what the words meant, and I still do not understand why Mademoiselle Columbine uttered them, but I immediately dashed towards the front door. Just in time, as it turned out. A few moments later it would have been too late.’

(At this point Columbine had a fit of hysterics. She started sobbing, threw herself on the Stammerer’s chest, babbled incoherently and kissed him several times on the forehead and cheeks, inflicting some damage to the dandy’s coiffure and collar. After the distressed maiden had been given a drink of water and seated in an armchair, the Stammerer concluded his address.)

‘That is all, ladies and gentlemen. I hereby declare the club of “Lovers of Death” disbanded. There is no Death with a capital letter. That is one. The death that does exist has no need of lovers, male or female. That is two. Your turn to meet this boring lady will inevitably come, but all in good time. It is one meeting that you cannot avoid. That is three. Goodbye.’

We left in silence, and the commonest expressions on people’s faces were bewilderment or indignation. No one said goodbye to Prospero, not even his odalisques. He just sat there, completely crushed. And I should think so! How could this adored clairvoyant and self-appointed saviour of souls have been so fatally mistaken? He himself had introduced a dangerous maniac into the club and given him every patronage and favour – in effect, he had encouraged a murderer! I would not like to be in his skin.

Or would I? So help me, I believe the position of a deposed idol, who yesterday was exalted to the heavens and today is cast down, humiliated and trodden in the dirt, offers a gratification no less acute than is to be found in the most triumphant success. We Germans know about such things, because we have absolutely no sense of measure. The subtle sweetness of disgrace that is known only to the proud was felt very keenly by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, the most German of all Russian writers. It is such a pity that we have not had a chance to talk about literature. And now we never shall.

And so I conclude my final report, for I have fulfilled the terms to which I agreed. You can in turn report to your superiors that the epidemic of suicides in Moscow is now over. Attribute this achievement to your own efforts – I do not mind. I am not ambitious, it is not honours and a career that I require from life, but something quite different, something that I am afraid you cannot appreciate or understand.

Goodbye, Lieutenant-Colonel, remember me kindly. And I shall try to remember you kindly too.

Your ZZ

20 September 1900

1. Soon

2. Come