The Death of Achilles

EIGHT

In which disaster strikes

“Nastasya, will you stop squealing like a stuck pig?” Xavier Feofilaktovich said angrily, glancing out into the entrance hall, where the shouting was coming from.

His cook was an empty-headed woman with an intemperate tongue, who treated her master irreverently. Grushin only kept her on out of habit, and also because the old fool baked quite magnificent pies with rhubarb or liver. But her strident foghorn of a voice, which Nastasya employed unsparingly in her constant squabbles with the neighbor Glashka, the local constable Silich, and beggars of every description, had often distracted Xavier Feofilaktovich from his reading of the Moscow Police Gazette or his philosophical ruminations and even his sweet early-evening sleep.

Today once again the accursed woman had started kicking up such a racket that Grushin had been obliged to abandon his pleasant doze. It was a pity — he had been dreaming that he wasn’t a retired police inspector at all, but a head of cabbage growing in a kitchen garden. His head was sticking straight up out of the soil of the vegetable patch and there was a raven sitting beside it, pecking at his left temple, but it was not at all painful; on the contrary, it was all very pleasant and restful. He didn’t need to go anywhere, he was in no hurry, and he had nothing to worry about. Sheer bliss. But the raven had started getting carried away, gouging his head cruelly with a loud crunch, and then the villain had begun cawing deafeningly in his ear and Grushin had woken up with his head throbbing to the sound of Nastasya’s screeching.

“I hope you gets all cramped up even worse,” the cook was howling on the other side of the wall. “And you, you heathen brute, what are you squinting at? I’ll give you such a whack with my duster across your greasy chops!”

Listening to this tirade, Xavier Feofilaktovich began wondering who it was out there that was all cramped up. And who could this heathen brute be? He got to his feet with a grunt and set out to restore order.

The meaning of Nastasya’s mysterious words became clear when Grushin stuck his head out on the porch.

So that was it — more beggars, the kind that roamed the pitiful, narrow streets of Zamoskvorechie all day long from dawn till dusk. One of them was an old hunchback, bent over double and supporting himself on two short crutches. The other was a grubby Kirghiz wearing a greasy robe and tattered fur cap. Good Lord, you certainly saw all kinds in old Mother Moscow!

“That will do, Nastasya, you’re enough to deafen a man!” Grushin yelled at the rowdy woman. “Give them a kopeck each and let them go on their way.”

“But they’re asking for you!” said the enraged cook, swinging around to face him. “This one here” — she jabbed her finger at the hunchback — “says wake ‘im up, like, we ‘ve got business with yer master. I’ll give you ‘wake ‘im up. Right, off I goes at the double! Robbing a man of his chance for a sleep!”

Xavier Feofilaktovich took a closer look at the wandering beggars. Wait! That Kirghiz looked familiar, didn’t he? Yes, he wasn’t a Kirghiz at all. The inspector clutched at his heart: “What’s happened to Erast Petrovich? Where is he?”

Ah, yes, he didn’t understand Russian.

“You, old man, are you from Fandorin?” asked Grushin, leaning down toward the hunchback. “Has anything happened?”

The invalid straightened up until he stood half a head taller than the retired detective.

“Well, Xavier Feofilaktovich, if you didn’t recognize me, it means the disguise is a success,” he said in the voice of Erast Petrovich Fandorin.

Grushin was absolutely delighted.

“How could anyone recognize you? Clever, very clever. If it wasn’t for your servant, I would never have suspected a thing. But isn’t it tiring to walk around bent over like that?”

“That’s all right,” said Fandorin, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Overcoming difficulties is one of life’s great pleasures.”

“I’d be prepared to argue that point with you,” said Grushin, letting his guests through into the house. “Not just at his moment, of course, but sometime later, sitting by the samovar. But today, I gather, you’re setting out on an expedition of some kind?”

“Yes. I want to pay a call to a certain inn in the Khitrovka district. With the romantic name of Hard Labor. They s-say that it’s something like Little Misha’s headquarters.”

“Who says?”

“Pyotr Parmyonovich Khurtinsky, the head of the governor-general’s chancelry.”

Xavier Feofilaktovich merely spread his arms in a shrug.

“Well, that certainly means something. He has eyes and ears everywhere. So you’re off to the Labor?”

“Yes. Tell me, what kind of inn is it, how do people behave there, and, most important of all, how do we get there?” Fandorin asked.

“Sit down, my dear fellow. Best not in the armchair; over there on the bench. Your getup is a bit…” Xavier Feofilaktovich also took a seat and lit his pipe. “From the beginning. Your first question: What kind of inn is it? My answer: It is owned by Full State Counselor Eropkin.”

“How can that be?” asked Erast Petrovich, amazed. “I had assumed that it was a d-den of thieves, a stinking sewer.”

“And you assumed correctly. But the building belongs to a general and it earns His Excellency a handsome income. Eropkin himself is never there, of course; he rents the building out, and he has plenty of similar premises across Moscow. As you know yourself, money has no smell. In the upstairs rooms there are cheap girls for fifty kopecks, and in the basement there’s an inn. But that’s not the most valuable thing about the general’s house. During the reign of Ivan the Terrible the site was occupied by an underground prison, complete with a torture chamber. The prison was demolished long ago, but the underground labyrinth is still there. And during the last three hundred years they’ve dug plenty of new tunnels — it’s a genuine maze, so it’ll be no easy job trying to find Little Misha in that place. Now for your second question: How do people behave there?” Xavier Feofilaktovich smacked his lips in a cozy, reassuring manner. It had been a long time since he had felt so exhilarated. And his head wasn’t aching anymore. “People behave terribly there. Like real bandits. The police and the law have no authority there. Only two species survive in Khitrovka: those who fawn on someone strong, and those who oppress the weak. There is no middle way. And the Labor is where their high society gathers. It’s the place where stolen goods circulate, and there’s plenty of money, and all the big bandit bosses come calling. Khurtinsky’s right — you can find Little Misha through the Labor. But how, that’s the question. You can’t just go barging in.”

“My third question was n-not about that,” Fandorin reminded him politely but firmly. “It was about the location of the Labor.”

“Ah, well, that I won’t tell you,” said Xavier Feofilaktovich with a smile, leaning against the back of his armchair.

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll take you there myself. And don’t argue. I don’t want to hear a word.” Noticing Erast Petrovich’s gesture of protest, the inspector pretended to stick his fingers in his ears. “In the first place, without me you won’t find it anyway. And in the second place, when you do find it you won’t get in. And if you do get in, you won’t get out alive again.”

Seeing that his arguments had produced no effect on Erast Petrovich, Grushin implored him: “Show some mercy, my dear fellow! For old times’ sake, eh? Take pity on an old man who’s all shriveled up from doing nothing, humor him. We could have such a marvelous adventure!”

“My dear Xavier Feofilaktovich,” Fandorin said patiently, as if he were addressing a small child. “For goodness’ sake, in Khitrovka every dog in the street can recognize you!”

Grushin smiled cunningly.

“There’s no need for you to fret over that. Do you think you’re the only one who knows how to dress himself up?”

And that was the beginning of a long, exhausting argument.

It was already dark as they approached Eropkin’s establishment. Fandorin had never before had occasion to visit the infamous Khitrovka district after twilight had fallen. It proved to be an eerie, frightening place, like some underground kingdom inhabited not by living people, but by phantoms. On the crooked streets not a single lamp was lit; the plain little houses twisted either to the right or the left, and the garbage heaps filled the air with a fetid stench. Nobody walked here, they slithered or scurried or hobbled along beside the wall: A gray shadow would dart out of an entryway or an invisible door, flash a quick glance this way and that, scurry across the street, and melt away again into some little hole. A land of rats, thought Erast Petrovich, hobbling along on his little crutches. Except that rats do not sing in voices hoarse from drink, or shout obscenities and weep at the top of their voices, or mutter inarticulate threats to passersby.

“There it is, the Hard Labor,” said Grushin, crossing himself as he pointed to a dismal two-story building with a malevolent glow in its half-blind windows. “God grant we can do the job and get away in one piece.”

They entered as they had agreed: Xavier Feofilaktovich and Masa went in first and Fandorin followed a little later. Such was the condition imposed by the collegiate assessor. “Don’t you worry that my Japanese doesn’t speak Russian,” Erast Petrovich had explained. “He has been in all sorts of predicaments and he senses danger instinctively. He used to be one of the yakuia — the Japanese bandits. His reactions are lightning-fast, and he is as skillful with his knife as the surgeon Pirogov is with his scalpel. When you are with Masa, you have no need to worry about your back. But if all three of us burst in together it will look suspicious — we ‘d look like a police detail come to arrest someone.”

He had managed to convince the inspector.

It was pretty dark in the Labor — the local folk weren’t overly fond of bright light. There was only a paraffin lamp on the bar — for counting the money — and a single thick tallow candle on each rough-board table. As the flames flickered, they sent crooked shadows scurrying across the low-vaulted stone ceiling. But semidarkness is no obstacle to the accustomed eye. Sit there and take your time, then take a look around, and you can see everything you need to see. Over in the corner a tight-lipped group of ‘businessmen’ was sitting at a richly spread table that actually had a cloth on it. They were drinking in moderation and eating even less, exchanging terse phrases incomprehensible to the outsider. These jaunty fellows definitely seemed to be waiting for something to happen: Either they were going out on a job or there was some serious discussion in the offing. The other characters there were an uninteresting bunch: a few girls, ragamuffins totally ruined by alcohol, and, of course, the regular clients — pickpockets and thieves who were doing what they are supposed to do, divvying up swag, that is, sharing out the day’s booty, grabbing at one another’s chests, and arguing in precise detail over who stole how much and what everything was worth. They had already thrown one of their number under the table and started kicking him furiously. He was howling and struggling to get out, but they drove him back under, repeating over and over: “Don’t steal from your own!”

An old hunchback came in. He stood in the doorway for a moment, rotated his hump to the left, then to the right, getting his bearings, and then hobbled across into the corner, maneuvering skillfully on his crutches. Hanging around the cripple’s neck was a heavy cross on a green-tarnished chain and some bizarre religious instruments of self-torment in the form of metal stars. The hunchback grunted as he sat down at a table. In a good spot, with the wall at his back and quiet neighbors: on the right a blind beggar with blank, staring walleyes, steadily chomping away at his supper, and on the left a girl sleeping the sleep of the dead with her black-haired head resting on the table and her hand clutching a large, half-empty square bottle — obviously one of the ‘businessmen’s’ molls. Her clothes were a little cleaner than those of the other trollops and she had turquoise earrings, and — most significant of all — no one was molesting her. Which meant they weren’t supposed to. Let the girl sleep if she was tired. When she woke up, she could have another drink.

The waiter came across and asked suspiciously, “Where would you be from, grandpa? I don’t reckon I’ve seen you in here before.”

The hunchback grinned, exposing his rotten teeth, and broke into a rapid patter.

“Where from? From hereabouts and thereabouts, up hill creeping and crawling, down hill tumbling and falling. Bring me some vodka, will you, my friend. Been out and about all day long. Fair worn out I am, all hunched up like this. And don’t you worry; I’m not short of money.” He jangled some copper coins. “The Orthodox folks take pity on a poor wretched cripple.”

The lively old man winked, pulled a long roll of cotton padding out from behind his shoulders, straightened up, and stretched. The hump had completely vanished.

“Oh, my bones are sore and aching from that sweaty moneymaking. What I need is a crust of white bread and a woman in the bed.”

Bending over to his left, the jester nudged the sleeping girl: “Hey, little darling, ya sweet plump starling! Whose might you be? Would you fancy pleasuring an old man?”

And then he did something that made the waiter gasp: What a gay old granddad this was! The waiter advised him, “Don’t you go pestering Fiska; she’s not for the likes of you. If you want a bit of cuddling and coddling, get yourself up those stairs over there. And take fifty kopecks and half a bottle with you.”

The old man got his bottle, but he was in no hurry to go upstairs — he seemed to feel quite comfortable where he was. He knocked his glass over, then started humming a song in a thin little voice and darting glances in all directions out of those sharp eyes with their youthful gleam. In an instant he had examined everybody there, taken a good look at the ‘businessmen,’ and turned toward the bar, where the innkeeper, Abdul, a placid, powerfully built Tartar who was known and feared by the whole of Khitrovka, was chatting about something in a low voice with an itinerant junk dealer. The junk man was doing most of the talking, and the innkeeper was answering reluctantly, in monosyllables, as he slowly wiped a glass tumbler with a dirty rag. But the gray-bearded junk dealer, who was wearing a good-quality nankeen coat and galoshes over his boots, would not give up — he kept on whispering something, leaning in over the counter and every now and then prodding a box that hung over the shoulder of his companion, a young Kirghiz who was glancing around cautiously with his sharp, narrow eyes.

So far everything was going according to plan. Erast Petrovich knew that Grushin was playing the part of a dealer in stolen goods who had come across a full set of fine housebreaking tools and was looking for a buyer who knew the value of the goods. The idea was sensible enough, but Fandorin was terribly alarmed by the keen attention that the ‘businessmen’ were paying to the junk merchant and his assistant. Could they really have seen through them? But how? Why? Xavier Feofilaktovich’s disguise was magnificent — there was no way anyone could have recognized him.

Now he saw that Masa had also sensed the danger — he stood up, thrust his hands into his sleeves, and half-closed his thick eyelids. He had a dagger in his sleeve, and his pose indicated readiness to repel a blow from whichever side it might be struck.

“Hey, slanty-eyes!” one of the ‘businessmen’ shouted, “which tribe would you be from, then?”

The junk dealer swung around abruptly.

“He’s a Kirghiz, my dear man,” he said politely but without a trace of timidity. “A wretched orphan; the infidels cut his tongue out. But he suits me very well.” Xavier Feofilaktovich made some cunning sign with his fingers. “I deal in gold, and peddle dope, so I can do without talkative partners.”

Masa also turned his back to the counter, realizing where the real danger lay. He closed his eyes almost completely, leaving just a small spark barely gleaming between his eyelids.

The ‘businessmen’ glanced at one another. The junk dealer’s words seemed to have had a reassuring effect on them. Erast Petrovich was greatly relieved — Grushin was nobody’s fool, and he could look after himself. Fandorin sighed in relief and took the hand that had been about to grasp the butt of his Herstal back out from under the table.

He ought not to have done that.

Taking advantage of the fact that both of them had turned their backs to him, the innkeeper suddenly grabbed a two-pound weight on a string off the counter and, with a movement that looked easy and yet was appallingly powerful, swung it against the round back of the Kirghiz’s head. There was a sickening crunch and Masa slumped to the floor in a sitting position. Then the treacherous Tartar, who had clearly had plenty of practice, struck Grushin’s left temple just as he began to turn around.

Absolutely astounded, Erast Petrovich threw his chair back and pulled out his revolver.

“Nobody move!” he shouted in a wild voice. “Police!”

One of the ‘businessmen’ dropped his hand under the table and Fan-dorin immediately fired. The young man screamed, clutched at his chest with both hands, collapsed on the floor, and began thrashing about in convulsions. The others froze.

“Anybody move and I’ll fire!”

Erast Petrovich waved his gun about rapidly, shifting his aim from the ‘businessmen’ to the innkeeper as he tried feverishly to work out whether there would be enough bullets for all of them and what to do next. A doctor, they needed a doctor! Although the blows with the weight had been so shattering that a doctor was unlikely to be required… He glanced rapidly around the room. He had the wall at his back, and his flanks also appeared to be covered. The blind man was still sitting in the same place, merely turning his head this way and that and blinking his terrible white walleyes; the girl had been woken by the shot and she raised a pretty face made haggard by drink. She had gleaming black eyes — evidently a gypsy.

“The first bullet’s for you, you bastard!” Fandorin shouted at the Tartar. “I won’t wait for your trial, I’ll—”

He didn’t finish what he was saying, because the gypsy girl raised herself up as stealthily as a cat and hit him over the back of the head with a bottle. Erast Petrovich never saw it coming. As far as he was concerned, everything suddenly just went black — for no reason at all.