The Death of Achilles (10 page)

In which a woman in black appears

Back at the hotel, there was a surprise in store for Erast Petrovich. As the young man approached suite 20, the door suddenly swung open and a buxom maid came running out toward him. Fandorin did not get a clear view of her face, since it was turned away, but there were certain eloquent details that did not escape the observant collegiate assessor’s attention: an apron worn back to front, a lace cap that had slipped to one side, and a dress that was buttoned crookedly. Masa was standing in the doorway, looking very pleased with himself and not in the least embarrassed by his master’s sudden return.

“Russian women are very good,” he declared with profound conviction. “I suspected this before and now I know for certain.”

“For certain?” Fandorin asked curiously, surveying his Japanese servant’s glistening features.

“Yes, master. They are passionate and do not demand presents for their love. Not like the female inhabitants of the French city of Paris.”

“But you don’t know Russian,” said Erast Petrovich with a shake of his head. “How did you explain yourself to her?”

“I did not know French, either, but to explain oneself to a woman, words are not needed,” Masa declared with a solemn expression. “The most important things are the breathing and the glance. If you breathe loud and fast, the woman understands that you are in love with her. And you must do this with your eyes.” He screwed up his already narrow eyes, which made them sparkle in quite an astonishing fashion. In reply Fandorin merely cleared his throat. “After that, all you need to do is to woo her a little, and a woman can no longer resist.”

“And how did you woo her?”

“There is a special approach for each woman, master. Thin ones like sweet things, fat ones like flowers. To the lovely woman who ran away on hearing your footsteps, I gave a sprig of magnolia, and then I gave her a neck massage.”

“Where did you get the magnolia?”

“There.” Masa pointed vaguely downward. “They are growing in pots.”

“And what is the point of the neck massage?”

The servant gave his master a pitying look.

“A neck massage develops into a shoulder massage, then into a back massage, then…”

“I see,” sighed Erast Petrovich. “You don’t need to continue. Better give me that little chest with my makeup kit instead.”

Masa perked up at that.

“Are we going to have an adventure?”

“We are not; I am. And another thing. This morning I had no time to do any gymnastics, and I need to be in good shape today.”

The Japanese began taking off the cotton dressing gown that he usually wore when he was at home.

“Master, shall we run across the ceiling or are we going to fight again? The ceiling is best. That is a very convenient wall.”

Surveying the wallpapered wall and molded ceiling, Fandorin felt doubtful.

“It’s awfully high. At least twelve
shaku
. Never mind, let’s try it.”

Masa was already standing ready in nothing but his loincloth. Around his forehead he tied a clean white rag with the hieroglyph for ‘diligence’ traced out on it in red ink. After changing into a pair of close-fitting tights and rubber slippers, Erast Petrovich jumped up and down for a while, then squatted down and gave the command: “
Ichi, ni, san
.” Both of them dashed at the wall and ran up it, and when they were just short of the ceiling, pushed off from the vertical, turning a back somersault in the air and landing on their feet.

“Master, I ran higher up — as far as that rose there, but you were two roses lower,” Masa boasted, pointing at the wallpaper.

Instead of answering, Fandorin called out once again: “
Ichi, ni, san!
” The vertiginous feat was repeated, and this time the servant touched the ceiling with his foot as he tumbled head over heels.

“I reached it, and you didn’t!” he declared. “Yes, master, even though your legs are considerably longer than mine.”

“You are made of rubber,” growled Fandorin, panting slightly. “All right, now we will fight.”

The Japanese bowed from the waist and adopted the combat position without any great enthusiasm: legs bent at the knees, feet turned out, arms relaxed.

Erast Fandorin leapt up, spun around in the air, and struck his partner quite hard on the back of the head with the toe of his slipper before Masa had time to turn away.

“First hit!” he shouted. “Come on!”

Masa created a distraction by tearing the white band off his forehead and tossing it to one side, and when Fandorin’s gaze involuntarily followed the flying object, the servant uttered a guttural cry, launched himself across the floor like a bouncing rubber ball, and tried to catch his master across the ankle with a hard kick. However, at the final moment Erast Petrovich leapt back, managing at the same time to strike the shorter man across the ear with the edge of his open hand.

“Second hit!”

The Japanese leapt agilely to his feet and began walking around the room with short, rapid steps, tracing out a semicircle. Fandorin shifted his weight lightly from one foot to the other where he stood, holding his upturned palms at the level of his waist.

“Ah, yes, master, I quite forgot,” said Masa, still walking. “It is unforgivable of me. A woman came to see you an hour ago. Dressed all in black.”

Erast Fandorin lowered his hands.

“What woman?”

He immediately received a blow from a foot to his chest. As he flew back against the wall, Masa exclaimed triumphantly: “First hit! An old, ugly woman. Her clothes were completely black. I could not understand what she wanted and she went away.”

Fandorin stood there, rubbing his bruised chest.

“It’s high time you learned some Russian. While I’m out, take the dictionary that I gave you and learn eighty words.”

“Forty will be enough!” Masa exclaimed indignantly. “You are simply taking your revenge.” And then, “I’ve learned two words already today:
sweehar
, which means ‘dear sir,’ and
chainee
— that’s Russian for ‘Japanese’.”

“I can guess who your teacher was. Just don’t ever think of calling me ‘sweetheart’. Eighty words, I said — eighty. Then next time you’ll fight fair.”

Erast Petrovich sat down in front of the mirror and started to apply his makeup. After considering several wigs, he selected a dark-brown one, with the hair cut to a single length and a neat center part. He turned down the ends of his curled black mustache and stuck a fluffy, lighter one over it, then glued on a thick, full beard cut short and square. He painted his eyebrows the appropriate color and moved them up and down for a while, stuck out his lips, extinguished the gleam in his eyes, pinched his ruddy cheeks, sprawled back in his chair, and, as if at the wave of a magic wand, was suddenly transformed into a boorish young merchant from Okhotny Ryad.

Shortly after seven in the evening a smart cab drove up to the Alpine Rose German restaurant on Sofiiskaya Street: a gleaming, lacquered droshky with steel springs, scarlet ribbons woven into the manes of the pair of black horses pulling it, and the spokes of the wheels painted yellow with ocher. The dashing cabbie roared out a deafening ‘whoa’ and cracked his whip boisterously.

“Wake up, Your Honor, here you are, delivered all proper and correct!”

The passenger in the back of the cab was snoring gently, sprawled out on the velvet seat — a young merchant in a long-skirted blue frock coat, crimson waistcoat, and tight-fitting boots. A gleaming top hat was perched at a devil-may- care angle on the reveler’s head.

The merchant opened his drowsy eyes and hiccupped: “Delivered? Where?”

“Where you ordered, Your Worship. This is it, the Rose itself.”

The restaurant was famous throughout Moscow, and there was a row of cabs lined up in front of it. The coachmen watched the noisy driver of the flashy cab with annoyance — shouting and yelling and cracking his whip like that, he was likely to frighten other people’s horses. One driver, a clean-shaven, high-strung- looking lad in a shiny leather coat, walked over to the troublemaker and set into him angrily.

“What do you think you’re doing, waving your whip around like that? This isn’t a gypsy fair! Now you’re here, stand in line like everyone else.” Then he added in a low voice, “Off you go, Sinelnikov. You got him here, now get going, don’t make yourself too obvious. I’ve got my carriage here. Tell Evgeny Osipovich everything’s going according to plan.”

The young merchant jumped down onto the pavement, staggered, and waved to the cabbie: “Off with you! I’ll be spending the night here.”

The smart driver cracked his whip, whistled like a bandit, and set off. The roistering trader from Okhotny Ryad took several uncertain steps and staggered. The clean-shaven young driver was there in a flash to take him by the elbow.

“Let me help, Your Worship. It wouldn’t do for you to go missing your step.”

He took a solicitous grip on the reveler’s elbow and whispered rapidly.

“Agent Klyuev, Your Honor. That’s my carriage there, with the chestnut mare. I’ll be waiting up on the box. Agent Nesznamov is at the rear entrance in an oilskin apron, playing the part of a knife-grinder. The mark arrived just ten minutes ago. He’s wearing a ginger beard. Seems very nervous. He’s armed, too — there’s a bulge under his armpit. And His Excellency told me to give you this.”

In the very doorway, the ‘cabbie’ deftly slipped a sheet of paper folded into eight into the young merchant’s pocket, then doffed his cap and bowed low from the waist, but he received no tip for his pains and could only grunt in annoyance when the door slammed in his face. To the jeers of the other drivers (“Hey, my bold fellow, didn’t you get your twenty kopecks, then?”) he plodded back to his droshky and climbed dejectedly up onto the box.

The Alpine Rose restaurant was regarded on the whole as a decorous European establishment — during the daytime, that is. Moscow’s Germans, both merchants and civil servants, flocked here for breakfast and lunch. They ate leg of pork with sauerkraut, drank genuine Bavarian beer, and read newspapers from Berlin, Vienna, and Riga. But come evening, all the boring beer-swillers went back home to tot up the balances in their account books, have supper, and get into their feather beds while it was still light, and a louder and more free-spending public began to converge on the Rose. For the most part they were foreigners, people of easy manners who preferred to take their fun in the European style rather than the Russian. If Russians did look in, it was more out of curiosity than anything else and also — in more recent times — to hear Mademoiselle Wanda sing.

The young merchant stopped in the white marble entrance hall, hiccupped as he surveyed the columns and the carpeted stairs, tossed his dazzling top hat to a flunky, and beckoned to the maitre d’hotel.

The first thing he did was to hand him a white one-ruble note. Then, enveloping him in cognac fumes, he demanded: “Now then, you German pepper sausage, you fix me up with a table, and not just one that happens to be standing empty anyway, but one I happen to fancy.”

“The place is rather crowded, sir,” the maitre d’hotel said with a shrug. He might have been German, but he spoke Russian like a true Muscovite.

“Fix me up,” the merchant said, wagging a threatening finger at him. “Or else I’ll make trouble! Oh, right, and where’s your privy here?”

The maitre d’hotel beckoned a flunky across with his finger and the rowdy customer was shown with all due deference to a room fitted out with the latest word in European technology: porcelain stools, flushing water, and washstands with mirrors. But our merchant was not interested in these German novelties. Ordering the flunky to wait outside, he went in, took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket, and began reading, frowning in concentration.

It was the transcript of a telephone conversation.

17 MINUTES PAST 2 IN THE AFTERNOON. PARTY 1-MALE, PARTY 2-FEMALE.

 

P1
: Young lady, give me number 762, the Anglia… This is Georg Knabe here. Could you please call Miss Wanda.

Voice
(sex not determined): One moment, sir.

P2
: Wanda speaking. Who is this?

P1
: (Note in the margin: “From this point on everything is in German.”) It’s me. An urgent matter. Very important. Tell me one thing. Did you do anything to him? You understand what I mean. Did you or didn’t you? Tell me the truth, I entreat you!

P2
: (following a long pause): I didn’t do what you mean. Everything simply happened on its own. But what’s wrong with you? Your voice sounds very strange.

P1
: You really didn’t do it? Oh, thanks be to God! You have no idea of the position I’m in. It’s like some terrible nightmare!

P2
: I’m delighted to hear it. (One phrase inaudible.) P1: Don’t joke. Everyone has abandoned me! Instead of praise for showing initiative, there’s only black ingratitude. And that is not the worst thing. It could turn out that a certain event of which you know will not postpone the conflict, but, on the contrary, bring it closer — that is what I have been informed. But you didn’t do anything after all?

P2
: I told you, no.

P1
: Then where’s the bottle?

P2
: In my room. And it’s still sealed.

P1
: I must collect it from you. Today.

P2
: I’m singing at the restaurant today and won’t be able to get away. I’ve already missed two evenings as it is.

P1
: I know. I’ll be there. I’ve already booked a table. For seven o’clock. Don’t be surprised — I’ll be in disguise. This business has to be kept secret. Bring the bottle with you. And another thing, Fraulein Wanda. Recently you’ve been tending to get above yourself. Take care — I’m not the kind of man to take liberties with.

(
P2
hangs up without replying.)
Stenographed and translated from the German by Yuly Schmidt
There was a note at the bottom in a slanting military hand: “Make sure he doesn’t get scared and do away with her! E.O.”

The young merchant emerged from the lavatory clearly refreshed. Accompanied by the maitre d ‘hotel, he entered the dining hall and cast a dull glance over the tables and their impossibly white tablecloths covered with gleaming silver and crystal. He spat on the brilliant parquet floor (the maitre d’hotel merely winced) and finally jabbed his finger in the direction of a table (an empty one, thank God) beside the wall. On the left of it there were two students in the company of several young milliners trilling with laughter, and on the right of it was a gentleman with a ginger beard in a checked jacket, sitting there watching the stage and sipping Moselle wine.