She Lover of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin (5 page)

There proved to be no small number of young men in Moscow with smocks and berets and long hair, and a large bow on their chests: she even called out to one after mistaking him for Petya.

She deliberately arrived at the rendezvous twenty minutes late, for which she had to walk back and forth along the entire length of the embankment twice. Harlequin was waiting beside a fountain where the cabdrivers watered their horses and he looked exactly the same as in Irkutsk, but here among the granite embankments and closely crowded houses, Columbine felt that this was not enough. Why had he not changed in all these months? Why had he not become something bigger, or something new, or something else?

And somehow the way Petya behaved wasn’t quite right either. He blushed and faltered. He was about to kiss her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it – instead he held his hand out in an absolutely fatuous manner. Columbine stared at his hand in jaunty incomprehension, as if she had never seen anything funnier in her life. Then he became even more embarrassed and thrust a bunch of violets at her.

‘Why would I want these corpses of flowers?’ she asked with a capricious shrug of her shoulders. She walked over to a cabby’s horse and held the little bouquet out to her. The roan mare indifferently extended her large flabby lip over the violets and chewed them up in an instant.

‘Quick, we’re late,’ said Petya. ‘They don’t like that in our set. The horse-tram stops over there, just before the bridge. Let’s go!’

He glanced nervously at his companion and whispered.

‘Everybody’s looking at you. In Irkutsk you dressed differently.’

‘Do I alarm you?’ Columbine asked provocatively.

‘What do you . . .’ he exclaimed in fright. ‘I’m a poet and I despise the opinion of the crowd. It’s just really very unusual . . . Anyway, that’s not important.’

Could he really be embarrassed by me? she wondered in amazement. Did harlequins even know how to be embarrassed? She glanced round at her reflection in a brightly lit shop window and flinched inwardly – it was a very impressive outfit indeed – but the attack of shyness was dismissed as disgraceful. That pitiful feeling had been left behind for ever beyond the branching Ural mountains.

In the tram, Petya told her in a low voice about the place where they were going.

‘There isn’t another club like it in the whole of Russia, even in St Petersburg,’ he said, tickling her ear with his breath. ‘Such people, you’ve never seen anyone like them in Irkutsk! We use special names, everyone invents his own. And some are given their names by the Doge. For instance, he christened me Cherubino.’

‘Cherubino?’ Columbine echoed in a disappointed voice, thinking that Petya really was more like a curly-haired page-boy than a self-confident, imperious Harlequin.

Petya misinterpreted the intonation of her voice and drew himself upright haughtily.

‘That’s nothing. We have more bizarre aliases than that. Avaddon, Ophelia, Caliban, Horatio. And Lorelei Rubinstein . . .’

‘What, you mean Lorelei Rubinstein herself goes there?’ the young provincial gasped. ‘The poetess?’

There was good reason to gasp. Lorelei’s sultry, shamelessly sensual poems had only reached Irkutsk after a considerable delay. Progressive young ladies who understood modern poetry knew them off by heart.

‘Yes,’ said Cherubino-Petya, nodding portentously. ‘Her alias in our group is the Lioness of Ecstasy. Or simply Lioness. Although, of course, everyone knows who she really is.’

Ah, what a sweet tightness she felt in her chest! Liberal-handed Fortune had flung open before her the doors into the most select possible society, and she looked at Petya far more affectionately now.

He continued. ‘The leader of the club is Prospero. There aren’t many men like him – not one in a thousand, or even a million. He’s already getting on, his hair is completely grey. But you forget that straight away, he has such strength in him, such energy and magnetism. In biblical times the prophets were probably like him. And he is a kind of prophet, if you think about it. He’s one of the old prisoners from the Schliesselburg Fortress; he spent a long time in a cell for revolutionary activity, but he never talks about his former views, because he has abandoned politics completely. He says politics is for the masses, and nothing of a mass nature can be beautiful, for beauty is always unique and inimitable. Prospero looks rather severe and he is often abrupt, but in actual fact he is kind and magnanimous, everybody knows that. He secretly helps those aspirants who need money. He used to be a chemical engineer before he was in the fortress, but now he has been left an inheritance and is rich, so he can afford it.’

‘Who are these “aspirants”?’ she asked.

‘That’s what the members of the club are called. We’re all poets. There are twelve of us, always twelve. And Prospero is our Doge. That’s the same thing as a chairman, only a chairman is elected, and in this case it’s the other way round: the Doge himself chooses who to accept as a member and who not.’

Columbine was alarmed.

‘But if there always have to be twelve of you, what about me? That makes me superfluous.’

Petya replied mysteriously: ‘When one of the aspirants marries, we can fill the place that is vacated with someone new. Naturally, the final decision is taken by Prospero. But before I take you into his home, you must swear that you will never tell anyone else what I have told you.’

Married? Vacated place? Columbine didn’t understand a thing but, of course, she immediately exclaimed: ‘I swear by sky, earth, water and fire that I shall say nothing!’

People on the seats nearby half-turned to look at her and Petya put one finger to his lips.

‘But what do you do there?’ asked Columbine, dying of curiosity.

The reply was triumphant.

‘We serve the Eternal Bride and dedicate poems to her. And some fortunate Chosen Ones offer up to her the supreme gift – their own life.’

‘And who is the Eternal Bride?’

His reply was a single short word, at the sound of which Columbine’s mouth immediately went dry.

‘Death.’

‘But . . . but why is death a bride? After all, some of the aspirants are women – Lorelei Rubinstein, for instance. Why should she want a bride?’

‘We just say that because in Russian “death” is a feminine noun. It goes without saying that for women Death is the Eternal Bridegroom. In general everything about the club is highly poetic. For the male aspirants Death is like
La Belle Dame
sans Merci, or the Beautiful Lady to whom we dedicate our poems and, if necessary our very lives. For the female aspirants Death is a Handsome Prince or an Enchanted Tsarevich, it’s a matter of taste.’

Columbine wrinkled up her brow in concentration.

‘And how is the rite of marriage performed?’

At that Petya glanced at her as if he were gazing at some wild savage with a bone through her nose. He narrowed his eyes incredulously.

‘You mean to say you’ve never heard of the “Lovers of Death”? Why, all the newspapers write about it!’

‘I don’t read the newspapers,’ she declared haughtily, ‘It’s too ordinary.’

‘Good Lord! So you don’t know anything about the Moscow suicides?’

Columbine shook her head cautiously.

‘Four of our people have already become wedded to Death,’ said Petya, moving closer, with his eyes gleaming. ‘And a replacement was found for each of them straight away! And I should think so – the whole city’s talking about us! Only no one knows where we are and who we are! If you came to Moscow to “write a full stop”, then you really have been incredibly lucky. You’ve drawn the lucky ticket, so to speak. Gone straight to the person who can really help you. We have a chance to leave this life without any vulgar provincialism, not to die like a sheep in slaughterhouse, but poetically, meaningfully, beautifully! Perhaps we might even depart together, like Moretta and Lycanthrope.’ His voice rang with inspiration. ‘It’s Moretta’s place that I want to propose you for!’

‘But who is this Moretta?’ Columbine exclaimed rapturously, affected by his agitation, but still not understanding a thing.

She was aware of this shortcoming in herself – a certain slowness of wit. No, she did not think of herself as stupid (she was cleverer than many, thank God), it was just that her mind worked rather slowly – sometimes even she found it irritating.

‘Moretta and Lycanthrope are the latest Chosen Ones,’ Petya explained in a whisper. ‘They received a Sign and shot themselves straight away, eleven days ago. Lycanthrope’s place is already taken. Moretta’s vacancy is the last one.’

Poor Columbine’s head was spinning. She grabbed hold of Petya’s arm.

‘Sign? What sign?’

‘Death gives his Chosen One a Sign. You must not kill yourself without the Sign – it’s strictly forbidden.’

‘But what is this Sign? What is it like?’

‘It’s different every time. There’s no way to guess in advance, but it’s quite impossible to mistake it . . .’

Petya looked keenly at his pale-faced companion. He frowned.

‘Are you frightened? You should be, we’re not playing games. Look, it’s still not too late to go. Only remember the oath that you swore.’

She really was frightened. Not of death, of course, only that now he might change his mind and not take her with him. Appropriately enough, she recalled the signboard for the Möbius insurance company.

‘I’m not afraid of anything with you,’ Columbine said, and Petya beamed.

Taking advantage of the fact that she herself had taken him by the arm, he started stroking her palm with his finger, and Columbine was overwhelmed by the infallible presentiment that
it
would definitely happen today. She responded to his grip. And they rode on like that through the squares, streets and boulevards. After a while their hands started sweating and Columbine, who regarded this natural phenomenon as vulgar, freed her fingers. However, Petya had grown bolder now and he triumphantly placed his hand on her shoulder and stroked her neck.

‘A snakeskin collar?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Very
bon ton
.’

He suddenly gave a quiet cry.

Columbine turned her head and saw Petya’s pupils rapidly expanding
.

‘There . . . there . . .’ he whispered, unable to move a muscle. ‘What is it?’

‘An Egyptian cobra,’ she explained. ‘Live. You know, Cleopatra killed herself with one like that.’

He shuddered and pressed himself back against the window, clasping his hands against his chest.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Columbine. ‘Lucifer doesn’t bite my friends.’

Petya nodded, with his eyes fixed on the moving black collar, but he didn’t come close again.

They got off on a green street running up a steep incline, which Petya said was Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. Then they turned into a side street.

It was after nine and dark already, the streetlamps had been lit.

‘There, that’s Prospero’s house,’ Petya said in a quiet voice, pointing to a single-storey detached building.

All that Columbine could really make out in the darkness were six curtained windows filled with a mysterious reddish glow.

‘What have you stopped for?’ asked Petya, trying to hurry his companion along. ‘Everyone’s supposed to arrive exactly at nine, we’re late.’

But at that precise moment Columbine was overcome by an irresistible urge to run back on to the boulevard, and then down to the broad, dimly lit square, and on, and on. Not to that cramped little flat in Kitaigorod, to hell with it, but straight to the station and straight on to a train. The wheels would start to hammer, reeling the stretched thread of the rails back up into a ball, and everything would just be like it was before . . .

‘You were the one who stopped,’ Columbine said angrily. ‘Come on, take me to these “lovers” of yours.’

Columbine hears the voices of the spirits

Petya opened the street door without knocking and explained: ‘Prospero doesn’t hold with having servants. He does everything himself – it’s a habit from his time in exile.’

It was completely dark in the hallway, and Columbine couldn’t make anything out properly, apart from a corridor that led on into the house and a white door. The spacious salon located behind the door proved to be not much brighter. There were no lamps lit, only a few candles on the table and, a little to one side, a cast-iron brazier with coals glowing scarlet. Crooked shadows writhed on the walls, the gilded spines of books gleamed on shelves, and the pendants of an unlit chandelier twinkled up under the ceiling.

It was only after Columbine’s eyes had adjusted a little to the dim lighting that she realised there were quite a few people in the room – probably about ten, or even more.

The aspirants did not seem to regard Petya as a very significant individual. Some nodded in response to his timid greeting, but others simply carried on talking to each other. Columbine found this cool reception offensive, and she decided to maintain an independent line. She walked up to the table, lit a
papirosa
from a candle and, projecting a loud voice right across the room, asked her companion: ‘Well, which one here is Prospero?’

Petya pulled his head down into his shoulders. It went very quiet. But, noticing that the glances directed at her were curious, Columbine immediately stopped being afraid. She set one hand on her hip, just like in the advertisement for Carmen
papiroses
, and blew a stream of blue smoke up into the air.

‘Oh come now, lovely stranger,’ said a pasty-looking gentleman in a shantung cotton morning coat, with his hair combed across a bald spot in true virtuoso fashion. ‘The Doge will arrive later, when everything’s ready.’

He walked closer, stopped two paces away from her and began unceremoniously examining Columbine from top to bottom. She replied by looking at him in precisely the same way.

‘This is Columbine, I’ve brought her as a candidate,’ Petya bleated guiltily, for which he was immediately punished.

‘Cherubino,’ the new candidate said in a sweet voice. ‘Surely your mama must have taught you that you should introduce the man to the lady, and not the other way round?’