by Boris Akunin
‘And I certainly have been tested!’ Caliban explained excitedly. ‘For patience and fidelity. Now it’s clear why she made me suffer for so long. She was testing my constancy. And I passed the test. You see – “approved”! And “drafted”! I came to say goodbye and wish you all the same good fortune, and to apologise for being so gruff sometimes. Try to remember Savely Papushin, the most detestable of all sinners on this earth, with kind thoughts. That’s my real name, there’s no point in hiding it any more – they’ll write it in the newspapers in any case. Amnestied with a free pardon! Congratulate me, ladies and gentlemen! And I’d like to thank you, dear Teacher.’ He grabbed Prospero’s hand with heartfelt feeling, ‘If not for you, I’d never have got out of the asylum, I’d still be rolling around on the floor and howling like a dog. You gave me hope and you made it real! Thank you!’
Caliban wiped away a tear with his huge red hand and blew his nose.
‘Let me see that please.’ Prospero took the piece of paper with a sceptical air and turned it over in his hands.
‘Well, let us test this,’ he said thoughtfully and suddenly held the paper over a candle. The message immediately caught fire, turning into a curl of black ash. The bookkeeper howled wildly: ‘What have you done? That’s a message from the Eternal Bride!’
‘You’ve been tricked, poor Caliban,’ said the Doge, shaking his head. ‘Why would any of you play such a cruel joke, ladies and gentlemen?’
Caliban’s eyes started out of his head in horror.
‘How . . . how could you, Teacher?’
‘Calm down,’ Prospero told him sternly. ‘This message was sent by a human being, not Death. The ancient books state quite definitely that a letter from the Beyond will not burn in fire.’
Then the Doge suddenly turned to Columbine: ‘You say that Death has already written to you twice. Tell me, have you tested the notes to see if they will burn?’
‘Of course I have,’ Columbine replied quickly, but inwardly she cringed.
A trick! A shabby trick! One of the aspirants had slipped these notes to her and Caliban so that he or she could mock and sneer! The trickster must think they were the two most stupid members of the club!
The scorching realisation came to her immediately. The victim of deceit cast a withering glance at Gorgon to see if she was laughing. Gorgon responded with a gaze charged with even greater hostility. Aha, she had given herself away!
Never mind, the rotten bitch wouldn’t dare own up – Prospero would throw her out of the club in disgrace if she did.
Columbine looked Gorgon straight in the eye and said defiantly: ‘I tried with a match and a candle – they don’t burn. And my cobra’ – she took hold of Lucifer by the neck, just as he was about to dive into her décolleté to find a warm spot, and showed everyone his small rhomboid head – ‘sank his fangs into the paper and recoiled in terror.’
If she was going to lie, she might as well do it properly.
‘I asked you not to bring that vile creature here,’ said Prospero, gazing at the snake in disgust. He had taken a dislike to the poor snake ever since that first night when it had snapped at his finger.
Columbine was about to defend her pet, but Caliban interrupted her.
‘Hers didn’t burn, but mine went up in flames?’ he groaned, heartbroken, and shouted so loudly that the candle flames flickered. ‘That’s not fair! It’s unjust!’
The brawny bookkeeper burst into tears, just like a little child.
While everyone was comforting him, Columbine quietly slipped out and set off in the direction of the boulevard. She felt like crying herself. What a vile, blasphemous joke! What a bitter taste was left now after the mystical rapture of the last few days, that special, sweet thrill of being chosen!
Revenge, her soul was thirsting for revenge! The best thing would be to whisper to Caliban which member of the club had been having fun writing notes. Caliban was no gentleman, he wouldn’t go easy on Gorgon. He’d flatten her foxy little face for her. And it would be good if he broke her nose or knocked a tooth out, Columbine thought hardheartedly.
‘Mademoiselle C-Columbine!’ a familiar voice called out behind her. ‘Will you permit me to accompany you?’
Apparently Prince Genji, with his preternatural astuteness, had discerned the storm raging in her soul. When he caught up with Columbine, he glanced with apparent unconcern into the false Chosen One’s red face, then started talking to her, not about the notes or Caliban’s fit of hysterics, but something quite different, and his voice didn’t have its usual slightly mocking humour, it was very serious.
‘Our sessions remind me more and more of a f-farce, but I do not feel like laughing. There are too many dead bodies. I have been coming to this absurd club for three weeks now, with no result whatsoever. No, what am I saying! There has been a result, b-but a negative one. Ophelia, Lorelei, Gdlevsky and Cyrano have died under my very nose. I failed to save them. And now I can see this black whirlpool sucking you in!’
Ah, if only you knew, Columbine thought, but she didn’t give herself away – on the contrary, she knitted her brows mournfully. Let him worry a bit, let him try to persuade her.
Genji really did seem to be worried – he kept talking faster and faster, and gesturing with one gloved hand when he couldn’t find the right word straight away: ‘Why, why urge death on, why make her task any easier? Life is such a fragile, defenceless jewel, it is already threatened by a myriad dangers every minute of the day. You will have to die anyway, that cup will not pass you by. Why leave the theatre without watching the play to the end? Perhaps this play – in which, by the way, everyone p-plays the leading role – will yet astonish you with some surprising twist of the plot? Indeed, it is sure to astonish you more than once, and perhaps in the most delightful fashion!’
‘Listen, Japanese Prince Erast Petrovich, what do you want from me?’ Columbine retorted furiously to this sermon. ‘What delightful surprises can your play promise me? I know the finale in advance. The curtain will fall in 1952, or thereabouts, when I am getting out of an electric tram (or whatever people will use for travelling in a half century from now) and I fall, break the neck of my femur, then spend a fortnight or a month lying in a hospital bed until pneumonia eventually finishes me off. And of course, it will be a paupers’ hospital, because by that time I shall have spent all my money, and there’ll be no way I can get any more. And in 1952 I shall be an ugly, wrinkled old woman of seventy-three with a papirosa always stuck in my mouth, no one will need me and the new generation won’t understand me. In the morning I shall turn away from the mirror in order not to see what my face has turned into. With my character I shall never have a family. And even if I do – that only makes the loneliness all the more desperate. Thank you for such a wonderful destiny. Who do you think would want me to live to see that, and why? God? But I think you do not believe in God, do you?’
Genji winced painfully as he listened to her. He replied passionately, with profound conviction: ‘No, no and no again! My dear Columbine, you must have trust in life. You have to entrust yourself to its flow, b-because life is infinitely wiser than we are! It will deal with you as it wishes in any case, sometimes rather cruelly, but in the final analysis you will come to realise that it was right. It is always right! In addition to the gloomy prospects that you picture so vividly, life also possesses many magical qualities!’
‘And what are they?’ Columbine laughed.
‘If nothing else, the ability, which you have mocked, of presenting surprising and precious gifts – whatever your age or physical condition.’
‘Such as?’ she asked and laughed again.
‘They are countless. The blue sky, the green grass, the morning air, the sky at night. Love in all its manifold shades and hues. And in the t-twilight of life, if you have deserved it – tranquillity and wisdom . . .’
Sensing that his words were beginning to have an effect, Genji redoubled his efforts: ‘Yes, and on the subject of old age, what makes you t
hink that your year of 1952 will be so very terrible? I, for instance, am certain that it will be a wonderful time! Fifty years from now Russia will have universal literacy, which means that people will learn to be more tolerant with each other and distinguish the beautiful from the ugly. The electric tram that you mentioned will become merely the most ordinary means of transport. Flying machines will glide smoothly across the skies. Many more remarkable miracles of technology that we cannot even imagine today will appear! You are so young. The year of 1952, a time inconceivably far away, is well within your reach. And why have we drawn the line at 1952! By that time medicine will have developed so far that life expectancy will have greatly increased, and the very concept of old age will be pushed back to a later stage of life. You are sure to live to be ninety – and see the year 1969! Or perhaps to a hundred, and then you will even catch a glimpse of 1979! Just imagine it! Don’t those n-numbers take your breath away? Sheer curiosity should be enough to compensate for all the ordeals that the start of the new century apparently has in store for us. We must negotiate the narrows and rapids of history in order later to enjoy its smooth, even flow.’
How beautifully he spoke! Despite herself, Columbine listened admiringly. He’s right, she thought, a thousand times right. And she also wondered why he had mentioned love. Was it simply a figure of speech, or was there a special meaning in his words, one intended specially for her?
From that point her thoughts started off in a different direction, far removed from philosophising and attempts to guess the future.
What is Mr Erast Petrovich Neimless’s personal life like, Columbine wondered, squinting sideways at her companion. All the signs indicated that he was an inveterate bachelor, one of those who, as her nanny used to say, would rather strangle himself than get married. Was he really content to live year after year with only his Japanese for company? Oh, hardly, he was far too handsome.
She suddenly felt it was a terrible pity that she had not met him earlier, before Prospero. Perhaps then everything would have turned out quite differently.
They parted at the corner of Staropansky Lane. Genji removed his top hat and kissed the thoughtful young lady’s hand. Before walking into the entrance, she glanced round. He was standing in the same place, under a streetlamp, holding the top hat in his hand while the wind ruffled his black hair.
As Columbine climbed the stairs, she imagined how everything would have been if she had met Genji earlier. And as she unlocked her door she was humming a song to herself.
But five minutes later she had shaken off all this maudlin folly and knew that none of the things Genji had spoken about had ever existed – life was not good and wise, there was no love. There was only one thing – a great magnet that was drawing her to itself like a little iron filing. It had already caught her, and it would never let her go.
What happened during those five minutes?
She sat down at the desk as usual, to write down all the events of the day in her diary, and then, suddenly remembering Gorgon’s mean joke, she angrily jerked open the drawer, grabbed the two little rectangles of cardboard and held a lighted match to them, in order to destroy the evidence of her shameful gullibility.
Less than a minute later, Columbine was convinced that the messages would not burn. She had used up several matches and singed the tips of her fingers. But the paper had not even darkened at all!
She grabbed her handbag in order to take out her cigarette case. She needed to smoke a papirosa and gather her thoughts. The handbag fell from her trembling hands, its contents scattered across the floor and Columbine’s eye was caught by a small piece of white card, exactly like the two previous ones. She picked it up and read the single word that was written on it:‘Komm’.2
So there it was. Irrefutable.
Columbine sat there for a few minutes without moving, and thought. Not about the One who had sent her this summons, but about the Japanese prince. ‘Thank you, dear Genji,’ she thought, taking leave of him. ‘You are clever and handsome. You wished me well. I would certainly have fallen in love with you – everything was leading to that, but an even more impressive admirer than you has put in an appearance. Everything has finally been decided. It’s time for me to go.’
Enough of that.
All she still had to do was write the concluding chapter in her diary. The title simply wrote itself.
How tenderly Columbine departs from the City of Dreams
Tenderly, because tenderness is precisely the feeling that now suffuses the traveller’s entire being as her voyage approaches its brilliant conclusion. And this feeling is both sweet and sad.
Columbine sat at the desk for a long time as the three white candles on it slowly burned down. She thought about various ways in which she could make her departure, as if she were searching through the dresses in her wardrobe for one to wear at a ball, measuring them against herself, looking in the mirror, sighing and tossing each rejected outfit on to a chair. No good, no good. Somehow she did not really feel afraid. The three white cards, neatly laid out on the desk, radiated a calm strength that supported her. Columbine knew for certain that it would hurt a little bit at first, but after that everything would be very, very good: the vain girl was more concerned with something that was not really so important – how she would look when she was dead. But then, perhaps this was the most important problem that she still had to decide in her short life that was now rushing rapidly to its finale. After her departure she wanted to look like a beautiful doll laid out in an elegant box, so the quick means like a rope or a jump from the balcony were not suitable. The best way, of course, would be to take a sleeping draft – to swallow an entire crystal phial of opium, then wash it down with sweet tea and blackcurrant jam. Columbine had tea, and she had blackcurrant jam. But she did not have any soporific substances in her apartment, because she had never suffered from insomnia: as soon as she put her head on the pillow and parted her golden tresses to both sides, she immediately fell into a sound sleep.
Finally the difficult choice was made.
Fill the bath with warm water. Add a few drops of lavender oil. Anoint her face and neck with miraculous Lanoline cream – ‘the ideal way to preserve attractive skin’ – from the little tin tube (she only needed to preserve it for two or three days, until the funeral, after that she wouldn’t need attractive skin). Put on her white lace dress, which was a bit like a wedding dress. Tie back her hair with a scarlet ribbon that would match the colour of the water. Lie down in the bath, run a sharp knife across her veins (under the water, so that it wouldn’t hurt too much), and slowly go to sleep. Whoever found Columbine would say: She was like a white chrysanthemum floating in a glass of vin rosé.
Now there was one last thing she had to do: write a poem. And that would conclude the story of Columbine, who flew into the City of Dreams from the magical distance, spread her ethereal wings there for a short while and then darted from the light into the shadow.
From light into shadow she flitted,
Then the little fairy was gone.
There was nothing she regretted,
We shall miss her rapturous song.
No, that’s no good at all. The first line is from a poem by someone else, and God only knows what that last line means.
I have no faith in any God or Devil
I know to die is no more than to sleep.
A letter has informed me I must travel,
Now I have an appointment I must keep.
That’s no better. I simply can’t stand that third line, it makes me feel sick. ‘Travel’ – what sort of word is that for a poem? This is really hard. And the water’s getting cold. I’ll have to let it out and fill the bath again. Come on now!
How vain the Prince of Denmark’s hesitations,
His ponderings ‘To be or not to be?’
No. It has to be less heavy, without any irony. Light and airy.
Death is not sleep and not oblivion
I shall be greeted on awakening
By a delightful flowering garden
Where falling water sweetly sings.
Pinch yourself hard until it hurts
And waken in an open forest glade.
Leave all your dreams of prison in the past
Die into freedom and be not afraid.
Will they realise that the falling water is the sound of the tap filling the bath? Ah, never mind if it’s not clear! I’ve wasted enough paper already. Whoever said that a farewell poem has to be long? Columbine’s will be short, absurd and break off when it has hardly begun, just like her short and absurd (but nonetheless beautiful, very beautiful) li . . .
Before Columbine could finish writing the word, the silence of the night was broken by the ringing of her doorbell.
Who could it be at this hour, after two in the morning?
At any other time she would have been afraid. Everyone knew that a doorbell rung in the middle of the night boded no good. But what should she be afraid of, when she had already settled her final account with life?
Maybe she shouldn’t answer? Let them ring away.
Lucifer was warming himself on her bosom: she settled his little head more comfortably in the hollow over her collarbone and tried to concentrate on her diary, but the continuous ringing would not let her.
All right, she would have to go and see what surprise life had in store for her just before it came to an end.
Columbine didn’t bother to turn on the gas lamp in the hallway. She had already guessed who had come to visit her so late – Genji, it couldn’t be anyone else. He had sensed something. Now he would start remonstrating with her again, trying to convince her. She would have to pretend that she agreed with everything, wait for him to go and then . . .