The Winter Queen (7 page)

Suddenly he roused himself. A certain plump gentleman with a white cross hanging around his neck had just taken advantage of a pause to interpose his word. “Amalia Kazimirovna, you recently forbade us to gossip about Kokorin, but I have learned something rather curious.”

He stopped for a moment, pleased by the effect this had produced, and everyone turned to look at him.

“Don’t be so tiresome, Anton Ivanovich, tell us,” said a fat man with a high forehead who looked like a prosperous lawyer.

“Yes, don’t be tiresome.” The others took up the refrain.

“He didn’t simply shoot himself, it was a case of American roulette, or so the governor-general whispered to me today in the chancellery,” the plump gentleman informed them in a meaningful tone of voice. “Do you know what that is?”

“It’s common knowledge,” said Hippolyte, shrugging his shoulders.

“You take a revolver and put in one cartridge. It’s stupid but exciting. A shame the Americans thought of it before we did.”

“But what has that to do with roulette, Count?” the old man with the diamond star asked, mystified.

“Odds or evens, red or black, anything but zero!” Akhtyrtsev cried out and burst into loud, unnatural laughter, gazing challengingly at Amalia Bezhetskaya (or at least so it seemed to Fandorin).

“I warned you that I would throw out anyone who mentioned that,” said their hostess, now angry in earnest, “and banish them from my house forever! A fine subject for gossip!”

An awkward silence fell.

“But you won’t dare banish me from the house,” Akhtyrtsev declared in the same familiar tone. “I would say I have earned the right to speak my mind freely.”

“And how exactly, may I inquire?” interjected a stocky captain in a guards uniform.

“By getting plastered, the snot-nosed pup,” said Hippolyte (whom the old man had addressed as ‘count’), deliberately attempting to provoke a scandal. “With your permission, Amelia, I’ll take him outside for a breath of fresh air.”

“When I require your intervention, Hippolyte Alexandrovich, you may be sure that I shall request it,” Cleopatra replied with a hint of malice, and the confrontation was nipped in the bud. “I’ll tell you what, gentlemen. Since there is no interesting conversation to be got out of you, let’s play a game of forfeits. Last time when Frol Lukich lost, it was quite amusing to see him embroidering that flower and pricking his poor fingers so badly with the needle!”

Everyone laughed merrily, apart from one bearded gentleman with a bobbed haircut whose tailcoat sat on him slightly askew.

“Well, my dear Amalia Kazimirovna, you’ve had your fun at the old merchant’s expense…Serves me right for being such a fool,” he said humbly, with a northern provincial accent. “But honest traders always pay their debts. The other day we risked our dignity in front of you, so today why don’t you take the risk?”

“Why, the commercial counselor is quite right!” exclaimed the lawyer. “A fine mind! Let Amalia Kazimirovna show some courage. Gentlemen, a proposal! Whichever one of us draws the forfeit will ask our radiant one to…well…to do something quite extraordinary.”

“Quite right! Bravo!” The cries came from all sides.

“Could this be rebellion? Pugachev’s revolt?” Their dazzling hostess laughed. “What on earth do you want from me?”

“I know!” put in Akhtyrtsev. “A candid answer to any question. No prevaricating, no playing cat and mouse. And it must be tête—à—tête.”

“Why tête—à—tête?” protested the captain. “Everybody will be curious to hear.”

“If ‘everybody’ is to hear, then it won’t be candid,” said Bezhetskaya with a twinkle in her eye. “Very well, then, let us play at being candid—have it your way. But will the lucky winner not be afraid to hear the truth from me? The truth could prove rather unpalatable.”

Rolling his
r
like a true Parisian, the count interjected: “
J’en ai le frisson d’y penser.
* To hell with the truth, gentlemen. Who needs it? Why don’t we have a game of American roulette instead? Well—not tempted?”

“Hippolyte, I believe I warned you!” The goddess hurled her thunderbolt at him. “I shall not say it again! Not a single word about
that
!”

Hippolyte instantly fell silent and even spread his arms wide as if to show that his lips were sealed.

Meanwhile, the adroit captain was already collecting forfeits in his cap. Erast Fandorin put in his father’s cambric handkerchief with the monogram
P.F
.

Plump Anton Ivanovich was entrusted with making the draw.

First he drew out of the cap the cigar that he himself had placed there and asked ingratiatingly, “What am I bid for this fine thing?”

“The hole from a doughnut,” replied Cleopatra, with her face turned toward the wall, and everyone except the plump gentleman laughed in malicious delight.

“And for this?” Anton Ivanovich indifferently drew out the captain’s silver pencil.

“Last year’s snow.”

Then came a medallion watch (‘a fish’s ears’), a playing card (‘
mes condoléances
), some phosphorous matches (‘Napoleon’s right eye’), an amber cigarette holder (‘much ado about nothing’), a hundred-ruble banknote (‘three times nothing’), a tortoiseshell comb (‘four times nothing’), a grape (‘Orest Kirillovich’s thick locks’—prolonged laughter at the expense of an absolutely bald gentleman wearing the order of St. Vladimir in his buttonhole), a carnation (‘to that one—never, not for anything’). Only two forfeits remained in the cap: Erast Fandorin’s handkerchief and Akhtyrtsev’s gold ring. When the ring gleamed and sparkled in the caller’s fingers, the student leaned forward urgently, and Fandorin saw beads of sweat stand out on the pimply forehead.

“Shall I give it to this one, then?” drawled Amalia Bezhetskaya, who was clearly a little bored with amusing her public. Akhtyrtsev rose halfway to his feet, unable to believe his luck, and lifted the pince-nez off his nose. “But, no, I don’t think so—not this one, the final one,” their tormentress concluded.

Everyone turned toward Erast Fandorin, paying serious attention to him for the first time. During the preceding minutes, as his chances had improved, his mind had been working ever more frantically to decide what he should do if he won. Now his doubts had been settled. It must be fate.

And then Akhtyrtsev jumped to his feet, came running over to him, and whispered fervently, “Let me have it, I implore you. What is it to you…you’re here for the first time, but my fate depends on it…Sell it to me, at least. How much? Do you want five hundred? A thousand? More?”

With a calm decisiveness that surprised even him, Erast Fandorin pushed the whispering student aside, walked over to their hostess, and asked with a bow, “Where shall we go?”

She looked at Fandorin with amused curiosity. Her stare set his head spinning.

“Over there will do—in the corner. I should be afraid to go somewhere alone with anyone as bold as you.”

Disregarding the mocking laughter of the others, Erast Fandorin followed her to the far corner of the hall and lowered himself onto a divan with a carved wooden back. Amalia Kazimirovna set
apakhitosa
in a silver cigarette holder, lit it from a candle, and inhaled deliriously.

“Well, and how much did Nikolai Stepanich offer you for me? I could tell what he was whispering to you.”

“A thousand rubles,” Fandorin replied honestly, “and then he offered more.”

Cleopatra’s agate eyes glinted maliciously. “Oho, how very impatient he is! So you must be a millionaire?”

“No, I’m not rich,” Erast Fandorin said modestly. “But I consider it dishonorable to sell my luck.”

The other guests grew weary of trying to eavesdrop on their conversation—they could not hear anything in any case—and they broke up into small groups and struck up conversations of their own, although from time to time every one of them kept glancing over at the far corner.

Meanwhile, Cleopatra surveyed her temporary lord and sovereign with frank derision. “What do you wish to ask about?”

Erast Fandorin hesitated. “Will the answer be honest?”

“Honesty is for the honest, and in our games there is but little honesty.” Bezhetskaya laughed with a barely perceptible hint of bitterness. “I can promise candor, though. But please don’t disappoint me by asking anything stupid. I regard you as an interesting specimen.”

Fandorin hurled himself recklessly into the attack. “What do you know about the death of Pyotr Alexandrovich Kokorin?”

His hostess was not frightened—she did not flinch—but Erast Fandorin imagined that he saw her eyes narrow for an instant. “Why do you want to know that?”

“I will explain afterward. First answer the question.”

“All right, I will. Kokorin was killed by a certain very cruel lady.” Bezhetskaya lowered her thick black lashes for a moment and from beneath them darted a rapid, scorching glance at him, like a rapier thrust. “And that lady goes by the name of love.”

“Love for you? Did he used to come here?”

“He did. And apart from me I believe there is no one here with whom to fall in love. Except perhaps Orest Kirillovich.” She laughed.

“And do you feel no pity at all for Kokorin?” asked Fandorin, amazed at such callousness.

The queen of Egypt shrugged her shoulders indifferently. “Everyone is master of his own fate. But is that not enough questions for you?”

“No,” Erast Fandorin said hurriedly. “How was Akhtyrtsev involved? And what is the significance of the bequest to Lady Astair?”

The buzz of voices suddenly grew louder, and Fandorin glanced around in annoyance.

“You don’t care for my tone?” Hippolyte asked in a thunderous voice, harassing the drunken Akhtyrtsev. “Then how do you care for this, my dear fellow?” And he shoved the student’s forehead with the palm of his hand, apparently without any great strength, but the miserable Akhtyrtsev went flying back against an armchair, plumped down into it, and stayed sitting there, blinking his eyes in bewilderment.

“By your leave, Count, but this will not do!” said Erast Fandorin, dashing across. “You may be stronger, but that does not give you any right…”

However, his faltering speech, at which the count had scarcely even glanced around, was drowned out by the resounding tones of the mistress of the house.

“Hippolyte! Get out! And do not dare set foot in here again until you are sober!”

The count swore and stomped off toward the door. The other guests gazed curiously at the wretchedly abject, limp form of Akhtyrtsev, who was not making the slightest effort to rise to his feet.

“You are the only one here who is anything like a man,” Amalia Kazimirovna whispered to Fandorin, as she set off toward the corridor. “Take him away. And be sure to stay with him.”

Almost immediately the lanky butler John appeared, having exchanged his livery for a black frock coat and starched shirtfront. He helped to get Akhtyrtsev as far as the door and then rammed his top hat onto his head. Bezhetskaya did not come out to take her leave, and a glance at the butler’s dour face told Erast Fandorin that he had best be on his way.

in which serious unpleasantness lies in wait for our hero

OUT IN THE STREET, ONCE HE HAD TAKEN A a breath of fresh air, Akhtyrtsev appeared to revive somewhat. He was standing firmly on his own two feet without swaying, and Erast Petrovich decided that it was no longer necessary to support him by the elbow.

“Let’s take a stroll as far as Sretenka Street,” he said, “and I’ll put you in a cab there. Do you have a long journey home?”

“Home?” In the flickering light of the kerosene streetlamp the student’s pale face appeared like a mask. “Oh, no, I’m not going home, not for the world! Let’s take a drive somewhere, shall we? I feel in the mood for a talk. You saw…the way they treat me. What’s your name? I remember—Fandorin, a funny name that. And I’m Akhtyrtsev, Nikolai Akhtyrtsev.”

Erast Petrovich gave a gentle bow as he attempted to resolve a complex moral dilemma: would it offend against decency if he were to take advantage of Akhtyrtsev’s weakened condition in order to worm out of him the information he required, since the ‘sloucher’ himself seemed rather inclined to a little candid conversation?

He decided that it would not. The investigative passion had indeed taken a tight grip on him.

“The Crimea’s not far from here,” Akhtyrtsev recalled. “And there’s no need for a cab—we can walk. It’s a filthy dive, of course, but they do have decent wines. Let’s go, eh? I invite you.”

Fandorin raised no objections, and they set off slowly (the student was just a little unsteady on his feet, after all) along the side street toward the lights of Sretenka Street shining in the distance.

“Tell me, Fandorin, I suppose you think I’m a coward?” Akhtyrtsev asked, slurring his words slightly. “For not calling the count out, for enduring the insult and pretending to be drunk? I’m no coward, and perhaps I’ll tell you something that will convince you of that…He was deliberately trying to provoke me. I daresay she was the one who put him up to it, in order to be rid of me and not pay her debt…Oh, you’ve no idea what kind of a woman she is! And for Zurov killing a man means no more than swatting a fly. He practices shooting with a pistol every morning for an hour. They say he can put a bullet into a five-kopeck piece at twenty paces. Call that a duel? There’s absolutely no risk in it for him at all. It’s simply murder called by a fancy name. And the main thing is, he won’t pay for it—he’ll squirm his way out of it somehow. He already has done so more than once. Well, he might go traveling abroad for a while. But now I want to live—I’ve earned the right.”

They turned off Sretenka Street into another side street, rather seedy looking, but even so it had not mere kerosene lamps but gas lamps. Now ahead of them there loomed up a three-story building with brightly lit windows. It had to be the Crimea, Erast Fandorin thought with a sinking heart—he had heard a great deal about this iniquitous establishment that was famous throughout Moscow.

No one met them at the high porch with its bright lamps. Akhtyrtsev pushed against the tall, decoratively carved door with a habitual gesture, and it yielded easily, breathing out warmth and a smell compounded of cooking and alcohol. There was a sudden din of voices and squeaking of violins.