The Death of Achilles (30 page)

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.

That September morning in 1872 had begun as usual. Achimas and Azalea had breakfasted alone together. She was a slim, loose-limbed Chinese girl with a remarkable voice like a small crystal bell. Her real name was something different, but in Chinese it meant ‘Azalea’ — or so the agency had informed him. She had been sent to Achimas on approval, as a sample of the oriental goods that had only recently begun to appear on the European market. The price asked was only half of the usual, and if Monsieur Welde wished to return the girl early, his money would be refunded. In exchange for such preferential conditions the agency had requested him, as a connoisseur and regular client, to give his authoritative opinion both on Azalea’s abilities and the prospects for yellow goods in general.

Achimas was inclined to award her the highest possible rating. In the mornings, when Azalea sang quietly to herself as she sat in front of the Venetian mirror, Achimas felt a strange tightness in his chest, and he did not like the feeling. The Chinese girl was simply too good. What if he were to grow accustomed to her and not wish to let her go? He had already decided that he would send her back ahead of time. But he would not demand a refund and he would give the girl excellent references, in order not to spoil her career.

Following his invariable custom, that afternoon Achimas entered the gaming hall at two-fifteen precisely. He was wearing a jacket the color of cocoa with milk, checked trousers, and yellow gloves. Attendants came dashing up to take the regular client’s cane and top hat. Herr Welde was a very familiar figure in the gambling houses of Ruletenburg. At first his manner of gambling had been accepted begrudgingly as an inevitable evil, but then they had noticed that the constant doubling-up of the stake practiced by the taciturn blond with the cold, pale eyes inflamed the passions of his neighbors at the table. Achimas had then become a most welcome guest.

He drank his usual coffee with liqueur and looked through the newspapers. England and Russia could not reach an agreement over customs duties. France was delaying the payment of reparations and in response Bismarck had sent a threatening diplomatic note to Paris. In Belgium the trial of the Pied Piper of Brussels was just about to begin.

After he had smoked a cigar, Achimas went over to table 12, where they were playing for high stakes.

There were three players and a gray-haired gentleman simply sitting there, nervously clicking the lid of his gold watch. Catching sight of Achimas, he fastened his eyes on him like limpets. Experience and intuition told Achimas that he was a client. His presence here was not accidental; he was waiting. But Achimas gave the gentleman no sign — let him make the first approach.

Eight and a half minutes later the required third of the wheel had been selected — the last one, from 24 to 36. Achimas staked a Friedrichs-dor. He won three. The gray-haired man kept on watching. His face was pale. Achimas waited for another eleven minutes before the next sector was determined. He staked a gold coin on the first third, from 1 to 12. Number 13 came up. The second time he staked two gold coins. Zero came up. He staked four gold coins. Number 8 came up. He had won twelve Friedrichsdors and was now five gold coins to the good. Everything was proceeding as usual, with no surprises. At this point the gray- haired man finally stood up. He came over and inquired in a low voice: “Mr. Welde?” Achimas nodded, continuing to follow the spinning of the wheel. “I have come to you on the recommendation of the Baron de —.” The gray-haired man named Achimas’s intermediary in Brussels. He was becoming more and more agitated and lowered his voice to a whisper as he explained. “I have a very important matter to discuss with you.”

“Would you perhaps care to take a stroll?” Achimas interrupted, slipping the gold coins into his purse.

The gray-haired gentleman proved to be Leon Fechtel, the owner of a banking house famous throughout Europe — Fechtel and Fechtel. The banker had a serious problem. “Have you read about the Pied Piper of Brussels?” he asked when they were seated on a bench in the park.

All the newspapers were full of the story: The maniac who had been kidnapping little girls had been captured at last. The
Petit Parisien
said that the police had arrested ‘Mr. F.,’ the owner of a suburban villa outside Brussels. The gardener reported that he had heard the muffled groans of children coming from the basement at night. When the police entered the house in secret, in the course of their search they had discovered a concealed door in the basement, and behind it things so horrible that the newspaper claimed ‘paper could never bear the description of this monstrous scene’. The scene was, however, described in lurid detail in the very next paragraph. In several oak barrels the police had discovered pickled parts of the bodies of seven of the little girls who had disappeared in Brussels and its environs during the previous two years. One body was still quite fresh and it bore the traces of indescribable tortures. In recent years fourteen girls ages six to thirteen had disappeared without a trace. On several occasions people had seen a respectably dressed gentleman with thick black sideburns offering a seat in his carriage to little flower girls or cigarette girls. On one occasion a witness had actually heard the man with sideburns urging the eleven-year-old flower girl Lucille Lanoux to bring her entire basket of flowers to his house and promising that if she did, he would show her a mechanical piano that played wonderful melodies all on its own. This was the occasion that had prompted the newspapers to stop calling the monster ‘Blue Beard’ and christen him ‘the Pied Piper of Brussels,’ by analogy with the fairy-tale Pied Piper who had lured the children of Hamlin away with the music of his magical flute.

Concerning the prisoner, Mr. R, it was reported that he was a member of the gilded youth from the very highest social circles, that he did indeed possess thick black sideburns, and that he had a mechanical piano at his villa. The motive for the crimes was clear, wrote the
Evening Standard
— it was perverted sensual gratification in the manner of the Marquis de Sade. The date and location of the court hearing had already been determined: the twenty-fourth of September in the little town of Merlain, only half an hour’s journey from the Belgian capital.