The Death of Achilles

ONE

At the age of thirty Achimas Welde was fond of playing roulette. It was not a matter of money. He earned money, plenty of it — far more than he was able to spend — by other means. He enjoyed defeating blind chance and exercising control over the elemental force of numbers. It seemed to him that the spinning roulette wheel, with its pleasant clicking sound and bright gleam of metal and polished mahogany, followed laws of its own that no one else knew, and yet precise calculation, restraint, and control of the emotions were just as effective here as they were in every other situation with which Achimas was familiar, and therefore the basic law must be the same one that he had known since his childhood. The underlying unity of life through its infinite variety of forms — this was what interested Achimas above all else. Each new confirmation of this basic truth made the regular rhythm of his heart beat just a little faster.

His life included occasional prolonged periods of idleness, when he had to find something to occupy his time. The English had come up with an excellent invention when they devised the so-called ‘hobby,’ and Achimas had two of them: roulette and women. He preferred the very finest of women, the most genuine kind — professional women. They were undemanding and predictable; they understood that there were rules that had to be observed. Women were also infinitely varied, while still remaining the one, eternally unchanging Woman. Achimas ordered the most expensive from an agency in Paris — usually for a month at a time. If he happened to find a very good one, he would extend the contract for a second term, but never for longer than that — that was his rule.

For the last two years he had been living in the German resort of Ruletenburg, because here, in the liveliest town in Europe, both his hobbies could be pursued without any difficulty. Ruletenburg was like Solen-ovodsk — it also had mineral springs, and a leisured, idle throng of people. No one knew anyone or took any interest in anyone else. All that was missing were the mountains, but the overall impression of imperma-nence, of artificiality, was precisely the same. Achimas thought of the resort as a neat and accurate model of life made to a scale of 1:500 or 1:1000. A man lived five hundred months on this earth, or, if he were lucky, a thousand, but people came to Ruletenburg for one month. That is, the average lifetime of a resort resident had a length of thirty days and that was the precise rate at which the generations succeeded each other here. Everything was accommodated within this period — the joy of arrival, the process of habituation, the first signs of boredom, the sadness at the thought of returning to that other, bigger world. At the resort there were brief romances and tempestuous but short- lived passions, ephemeral local celebrities, and transient sensations. But Achimas was a constant spectator at this puppet theater, for unlike all the other residents he himself had determined the length of his own lifetime here.

He lived in one of the finest suites in the hotel Kaiser, the preferred accommodation of Indian nabobs, Americans who owned gold mines, and Russian grand dukes traveling incognito. His intermediaries knew where to find him. When Achimas accepted a commission, his suite was kept for him and sometimes it would stand empty for weeks, or even months, depending on the complexity of the matter he had to deal with.

Life was pleasant. Periods of exertion alternated with periods of recreation, when his eyes were gladdened by the dense green of baize and his ears by the regular clicking of the roulette wheel. All around him passions raged, heightened and intensified by their condensed timescale: respectable gentlemen blanching and blushing by turns, ladies swooning, someone shaking the final gold coin out of his wallet with trembling hands. Achimas never wearied of observing this fascinating spectacle. He himself never lost, because he had a System.

The System was so simple and obvious that it was amazing that no one else used it. They quite simply lacked patience, restraint, and the ability to control their emotions — all the things that Achimas possessed in abundance. All that was needed was to bet on one and the same sector, constantly doubling up the stake. If you had a lot of money, sooner or later you would get back all that you had lost and win something into the bargain. That was the entire secret. But you had to place your bet on a large sector, not a single number. Achimas usually preferred a third of the wheel.

He walked over to the table where they played without any limits on stakes, waited until the ball had failed to land in one or another of the thirds six times in a row, and then began to play. For his first bet he staked a single gold coin. If his third did not come up, he staked two gold coins on it the next time, then four, and then eight, and so on until the ball eventually landed where it should. Achimas could raise his stake to absolutely any level — he had more than enough money. On one occasion, shortly before the previous Christmas, the third on which he was staking his money had failed to come up for twenty-two spins in a row — the six preliminary spins and sixteen on which he had placed bets. But Achimas had never doubted his eventual success, for each failure improved his chances.

As he tossed chips with ever-longer strings of zeros onto the table, he recalled an incident from his American period.

It was 1866, and he had received a substantial commission from Louisiana. He had to eliminate the commissioner of the federal government, who was interfering with the sharing-out of various concessions by the carpetbaggers — enterprising adventurers from the North who came to the conquered South with nothing but an empty travel bag and left in their own personal Pullman cars.

Those were troubled times in Louisiana and human life was cheap. But the money offered for eliminating the commissioner was good, because it was very difficult to get close to him. The commissioner knew that he was being hunted down, and he behaved wisely, never leaving his residence at all. He slept, ate, and signed all his documents within the same four walls. His residence was guarded day and night by soldiers in blue uniforms.

Achimas put up at a hotel located three hundred paces from the commissioner’s residence — he was unable to secure anything closer. From his room he could see the window of the commissioner’s study. Every morning at precisely half past seven his target opened the curtains. This action took three seconds — not enough time to get a decent aim at such a great distance. The window was divided into two parts by the broad upright of the frame. An additional difficulty was caused by the fact that when the commissioner drew back the curtains, he stood either slightly to the right or slightly to the left of the upright. There would be only one chance to get off a shot — if Achimas missed, then he could forget about the job, because he wouldn’t get a second opportunity. Absolute certainty was imperative.

There were only two possibilities: The target would be either on the right or on the left. Then let it be the right, Achimas decided. What difference did it make? The long-barreled rifle with its stock gripped tight in a vice was trained on a spot six inches to the right of the upright, at exactly the height of a man’s chest. The most certain way would have been to set up two rifles, aiming to the right and the left, but that would have required an assistant, and in those years (and still even now, except in cases of extreme need) Achimas preferred to manage without help from anyone else.

The bullet was a special one that exploded on impact, unfolding its petals to release the essence of ptomaine within. It was enough for even the tiniest particle to enter the blood to render the very slightest of wounds fatal.

Everything was ready. On the first morning the commissioner approached the window from the left. Likewise on the second. Achimas did not try to hurry things. He knew that tomorrow or the next day the curtains would be pulled back from the right, and then he would press the trigger.

It was as if someone had cast a spell on the commissioner. From the very day that the sights were set, for six days running he parted the curtains from the left, not once from the right.

Achimas decided that his target must have established a routine, and he shifted his sights to a spot six inches left of center. Then on the seventh day the commissioner made his approach from the right! And again on the eighth day, and the ninth.

That was when Achimas realized that in a game played against blind chance the most important thing was not to get flustered. He waited patiently. On the eleventh morning the commissioner made his approach from the required direction, and the job was done.

Likewise last Christmas, at the seventeenth spin of the wheel, when his stake had risen to sixty-five thousand, the ball had finally landed where it should, and the house had paid out almost two hundred thousand to Achimas. His winnings had covered all the stakes that he had lost and left him slightly ahead of the game.