The Death of Achilles

ONE

At the age of twenty Achimas Welde was a polite, taciturn young man who looked older than his years. For the visitors who came to the famous springs of Solenovodsk for the good of their health, and to local society in general, he was simply a well-brought-up young man from a rich merchant’s family, a student from Kharkov University on a long vacation to restore his health. But among people in the know, who shared their knowledge with very few others, Achimas Welde was regarded as a serious and reliable individual, who always finished what he began. Those in the know referred to him behind his back as Aksahir, which means the White Wizard. Achimas accepted the sobriquet as his due: He really was a wizard. Although his wizardry had nothing to do with magic, everything was determined by careful calculation, a cool head, and skillful psychology.

His uncle had bought him a student’s identity card for the Kharkov Imperial University for three hundred and fifty paper rubles — not a great price. The grammar school certificate, with the heraldic seal and genuine signatures, had been more expensive. After Chanakh, Chasan had sent his nephew to school in the quiet town of Solenovodsk, paid for a year in advance, and gone away into the mountains. Achimas had lived at the boarding school with the other boys, whose fathers were serving in distant garrisons or leading caravans west to east, from the Black Sea to the Caspian, or north to south, from Rostov to Erzerum. Achimas was not really close with any of his peers — he had nothing in common with them. He knew what they did not know and were unlikely ever to learn. This gave rise to a certain difficulty while Achimas was studying in the preparatory class at the grammar school. A stocky, broad-shouldered boy by the name of Kikin, who had subjugated the entire boarding school to his rule of fear, took a dislike to the pale-eyed ‘Finn’ and the other boys followed his lead and joined in the persecution. Achimas tried to put up with it, because he would not be able to deal with them all on his own, but it kept getting worse. One evening in his bedroom he discovered that his pillowcase had been smeared all over with cow dung and he realized that something had to be done.

Achimas considered all the possible solutions to his problem.

He could wait for his uncle to return and ask for his help. But he didn’t know when Chasan would be coming back. And it was extremely important to him that the spark of respectful interest that had appeared in his uncle’s eyes after Chanakh should not be extinguished.

He could try to give Kikin a beating, but he was unlikely to succeed — Kikin was older, stronger, and he would not fight one against one.

He could complain to his tutor. But Kikin’s father was a colonel, and Achimas was a nobody, the nephew of some wild mountain tribesman, who had paid for his board and lessons at the grammar school in Turkish gold coins out of a leather pouch.

The simplest and most correct solution would be for Kikin to die. Achimas racked his brain and thought up a neat and tidy way in which this could be done.

While Kikin delighted in kicking the ‘Finn,’ tipping thumbtacks down the back of his collar and blowing spitballs of chewed paper at him out of a little tube, Achimas was waiting for May to come. Summer began in May, and the pupils began running to the river Kumka to bathe. From the beginning of April, when the water was still scaldingly cold, Achimas began learning to dive. By the beginning of May he could already swim underwater with his eyes open, had studied the bottom of the river, and could hold his breath for an entire minute without any difficulty. Everything was ready.

It all turned out to be very simple, just as he had imagined it. Everybody went to the river. Achimas dived, tugged Kikin down by the leg, and dragged him underwater. Achimas was holding a piece of string, the other end of which was firmly attached to a sunken log. Chasan had once taught his nephew a Kabardinian knot — it is tied in a second, and there is no way that anyone who does not know the secret can possibly untie it.

In one swift movement Achimas tied the knot over his enemy’s calf, surfaced, and climbed out onto the bank. He counted to five hundred and then dived again. Kikin was lying on the bottom. His mouth was open, and so were his eyes. Achimas looked inside himself and discovered nothing apart from calm satisfaction with a job well done. He untied the knot and surfaced. The boys were shouting and splashing each other with water. It was some time before Kikin was missed.

After that particular difficulty was resolved, life in the boarding school improved greatly. Without Kikin as ringleader, there was no one left to persecute the pale- eyed ‘Finn’. Achimas moved on from one class to the next. He was neither a good pupil nor a poor one. He sensed that little of all this knowledge would be required in his life. Chasan came only rarely, but each time he took his nephew away into the mountains for a week or two — to hunt and spend the night under the starry sky.

When Achimas was about to finish sixth class, a new difficulty arose. Outside the town, three versts along the Stavropol highway, there was a bawdy house to which the men who had come to take the waters repaired in the evenings. And for some time Achimas, who at the age of sixteen had shot up and broadened in the shoulders so that he could quite easily be taken for a twenty-year-old, had also been making the three-verst journey. This was real life, not learning chunks of ancient Greek from the Iliad. One day Achimas was unlucky. In the public hall downstairs, where the painted girls drank lemonade while they waited to be taken upstairs, he ran into an inspector from the grammar school, Collegiate Counselor Tenetov — wearing a frock coat and a false beard. Tenetov realized from the boy’s glance that he had been recognized and although he said nothing to Achimas, from that day on he conceived a fierce hatred for the white-haired sixth-class pupil. It soon became clear what the inspector was aiming at — he was determined to fail Achimas in the summer examinations.

Staying back for a year would be shameful and boring. Achimas started pondering what he ought to do.

If it had been one of the other teachers instead of Tenetov, Chasan would have paid a bribe. But Tenetov did not take bribes and he was very proud of it. He had no need to take them — two years earlier, the collegiate counselor had married a merchant’s widow and taken as his dowry a hundred thousand rubles and the finest house in the entire town.

It was clearly not possible to improve relations with Tenetov: One glance at Achimas was enough to set the inspector trembling with fury.

Achimas ran through all the possible solutions and settled on the most certain.

That spring there were bandits operating in Solenovodsk; wicked men would approach a late stroller, stab him in the heart, and take his watch, his wallet, and — if he had any — his rings. Word was that it was the ‘Butchers,’ a famous gang from Rostov, working away from home.

One evening, when the inspector was walking back from Petrosov’s restaurant along the dark, deserted street, Achimas walked up to him and stabbed him in the heart with his dagger. He took a watch on a gold chain and a wallet from the fallen man, then threw the watch and the wallet in the river and kept the money — twenty-seven rubles — for himself.

He thought the difficulty had been resolved, but things turned out badly. The maidservant from the next house had seen Achimas walking quickly away from the scene of the murder and wiping a knife with a bunch of grass. The maidservant informed the police and Achimas was put in a cell.

It was fortunate for him that his uncle happened to be in town at the time.

His uncle threatened the maidservant that he would cut off her nose and ears, and she went to the superintendent of police and said that she had identified the wrong man by mistake. Then Chasan himself went to the superintendent and paid him five thousand rubles in silver — everything that he had amassed from his smuggling — and the prisoner was released.

Achimas felt ashamed. When Chasan sat Achimas down to face him, he could not look his uncle in the eye. Then he told him the whole truth — about Kikin and about the inspector.

After a long silence, Chasan sighed. He said: “Allah finds a purpose for every creature. No more studying, boy; we’re going to do real work.”

And a different life began.