The Death of Achilles

TWO

Formerly Chasan had imported contraband goods from Turkey and Persia and sold them to middlemen. Now, instead, he began transporting them farther himself — to Ekaterinodar, Stavropol, Rostov, and the market at Nizhny Novgorod. His goods sold well, because Chasan did not ask a high price. He and his buyer would shake hands and drink to the deal. Then Achimas would catch up with the buyer, kill him, and bring the goods back again — until the next time they were sold.

Their most profitable trip of all was to Nizhny Novgorod in 1859, when they sold one and the same lot of lambskin — ten bales — three times over: the first time for one thousand three hundred rubles (Achimas overtook the merchant and his bailiff on the forest road and killed both of them with his dagger); the second time for one thousand one hundred rubles (the young gentleman barely had time to grunt in surprise when the polite student traveling with him thrust the double- edged blade into his liver); the third time for one thousand five hundred rubles (and by a stroke of good luck they found almost three thousand rubles more in the Armenian’s belt).

Achimas killed calmly and was only distressed if the death was not instantaneous. But that rarely happened — he had a sure hand.

Things continued in this way for three years. During this time Prince Baryatinsky captured the Imam Shamil and the great war in the Caucasus came to an end. Uncle Chasan married a girl from a good mountain-tribe family, then took a second wife from a poorer family — according to the official documents, she was his ward. He bought a house in Solen-ovodsk with a big garden, in which peacocks strutted and screamed. Chasan became fat and developed a taste for drinking champagne on his veranda and talking philosophy. He was too lazy now to travel into the mountains for contraband, so people in the know brought the goods to him themselves. They would sit drinking tea and arguing at length over prices. If the negotiations proved difficult, Chasan sent for Achimas, who entered with a polite touch of his hand to his forehead and gazed silently at the obstinate trader with his pale, still eyes. It was very effective.

One day in autumn, the day after the serfs were liberated in Russia, Chasan’s old friend Abylgazi came to tell him that a new man had appeared in Semigorsk, a baptized Jew whose name was now Lazar Medvedev. He had come the year before to take the cure for his stomach, and had taken a liking to the place and stayed. He married a beautiful girl without a dowry, built a house with columns up on a hill, and bought three springs. Now all the visitors drank only Medvedev’s water and bathed only in his baths, and it was said that every week he sent ten thousand bottles of mineral water to Moscow and St. Petersburg. This was interesting, but by far the most interesting thing was that Lazar Medvedev had an iron room. The baptized Jew did not trust banks — and he was wise not to do so, of course. He kept all his immense fortune in the basement under his house, where he had a chamber in which all the walls were made of iron, with a door so thick that not even a shot from a cannon could break it in. It was hard to get into such a room, said Abylgazi, and therefore he was not asking to be paid in advance for telling Chasan all this; he was prepared to wait as long as necessary, and the fee he was asking was modest — only ten kopecks from each ruble that Chasan managed to take.

“An iron room — that is very difficult,” said Chasan, nodding solemnly. He had never heard of such rooms before. “And therefore, if Allah assists me, you will receive five kopecks from each ruble, respected friend.”

Then he called his nephew, recounted old Abylgazi’s story to him, and told him: “Go to Semigorsk and see what this iron room is like.”