by Boris Akunin
She opened the door.
It was dark on the stairway too. Someone had turned off the light. She could make out a vague silhouette. Tall and massive – no, it wasn’t Genji.
Her visitor didn’t say anything, all she could hear was loud, fitful breathing.
‘Did you want to see me?’ Columbine asked, peering into the darkness.
‘Yes, you!’ a hoarse voice rasped – it sounded so savage and malevolent that she took a sharp step back.
‘Who are you?’ she cried out.
‘Your death! With a small letter.’
Columbine heard gruff, throaty laughter. She thought she recognised the voice, but she was so frightened that she couldn’t understand a thing, and before she could gather her wits the shadow stepped into the hallway and seized her round the neck with fingers of iron.
The voice hissed: ‘You’ll be black and blue, with your tongue hanging out. A fine Chosen One!’
The terrible visitor laughed again, wheezing like a decrepit old dog barking.
The reply to his laughter was an angry hiss from Lucifer, who had woken up. The bold little snake had grown a lot in the last few weeks of feeding on milk and minced meat. He sank his fangs into the attacker’s hand.
The attacker growled, grabbed the grass snake by the tail and smashed it against the wall. It only took a second, but that was enough for Columbine to dart away. She didn’t make a decision or choose her moment, she simply went away, following her instinct like an animal.
She ran down the corridor with her mouth wide open, but not uttering a sound. She ran blindly, with no idea of where she was going or why, urged on by the most effective goad of all – the fear of death, vile and loathsome. It was not Death lumbering along after her, but death – filthy, foul-smelling and terrifying. The death from her childhood. With the rich, thick soil of the graveyard. The white death-worms. The grinning skull with holes instead of eyes.
A sudden thought occurred to her: she should run into the bathroom, bolt the door and then shout and hammer on the steel pipe so that the neighbours would hear. The bathroom door opened outwards, the handle was flimsy, if he tugged hard, it would break off, and the door would stay locked.
It was a wonderful idea, good enough to save her. But it would take three seconds, or at least two, for her to do it, and she didn’t have them.
In the doorway of the room a hand grabbed her sleeve from behind. Columbine jerked away as hard as she could, sending buttons flying. But she recovered her voice.
‘Help!’ she shouted at the top of her lungs. And then she carried on shouting. As loud as she could manage.
She darted out of the room to the left, into the kitchen. There was the door of the bathroom, she could hear the water splashing out of the tap. No, not enough time.
Left again out of the kitchen, into the corridor. The circle was completed. Where to now? Back into the room or out on to the stairs? The front door was still open.
Better on to the stairs. Maybe someone would look out of their door?
She flew out on to the dark landing with a scream and went dashing down the steps. If only she didn’t stumble!
Columbine’s long skirt hampered her. She tugged it up above her knees with a jerk.
‘Stop, thief! Stop!’ the hoarse voice roared behind her.
Why ‘thief’? Columbine wondered, and at that very moment, just before the final flight of steps, the heel of her shoe slipped sideways with a crunch.
The fugitive screeched and fell, landing with her chest and stomach on the steps, and slid downwards. She hit her elbows against the stairs, but she didn’t feel any pain, she was just very afraid.
Realising she wouldn’t have time to get up, she pressed her forehead against the floor. It was cold and smelled of dust. She squeezed her eyes shut.
The door of the entranceway banged loudly and someone shouted out: ‘Don’t move! I’ll fire!’
The hoarse voice answered: ‘Here, take this!’
There was a deafening crash and Columbine’s ears were suddenly blocked. She hadn’t been able to see anything in the dark, and now she couldn’t hear anything either.
As well as the dust, there was another smell now. An acrid smell, vaguely familiar. She remembered what it was – gunpowder. When her brother Misha used to shoot crows in the garden it had smelled like that.
She heard a faint voice in the distance.
‘Columbine! Are you alive?’
Genji’s voice.
Hands that were strong but gentle, not rough like those others, turned her over on to her back. She opened her eyes and then squeezed them shut again.
There was an electric torch shining straight into them.
‘That’s blinding,’ Columbine said.
Then Genji put the torch down on a step and she could see that he was leaning against the banisters with a smoking revolver in his hand; his top hat had slipped to one side and his coat was unbuttoned.
Columbine asked in a whisper: ‘What was all that?’
He picked up the torch again and pointed the beam to one side. Caliban was sitting by the wall, with his dead eyes staring down at the floor. There was a trickle of something dark running from his half-open mouth and another trickle, absolutely black, running from the round hole in his forehead.
He’s dead, Columbine guessed. The bookkeeper was still clutching a knife in his hand, holding it by the blade instead of the handle.
‘He was about to throw it,’ Genji explained. ‘He must have learned that from his shipmates while he was still sailing the seas. But I fired first.’
Even though her teeth were chattering and she had hic-cups, Columbine asked: ‘W-why? What f-for? I was g-going to do it anyway, myself . . .’
How strange, she thought, now I’m stammering, but he isn’t.
‘Later, later,’ Genji said to her.
He carefully picked the young lady up in his arms and carried her up the stairs. Columbine pressed her head against his chest. She felt very content just then. He was holding her so comfortably, just right. As if he had made a special study of how to carry enervated and exhausted young women.
She whispered: ‘I’m a doll, I’m a doll.’
Genji leaned his head down and asked: ‘What?’
‘You’re carrying me like a broken doll,’ she explained.
A quarter of an hour later Columbine was alone in her flat, sitting with her feet pulled up on to the armchair, wrapped in a rug and crying.
Alone because, after wrapping her in the rug, Genji had gone to get a doctor and the police.
With her feet pulled up because the entire floor was wet – the bath had overflowed.
But she was not crying because she was afraid (Genji had told her there would be nothing more to be afraid of). She was crying in grief: brave Lucifer was lying on her knees still and lifeless, like a patterned ribbon.
Columbine sobbed and sniffed as she stroked the rough scales on her rescuer’s back.
But she stopped crying when she turned to look in the mirror and saw the crimson graze on her forehead, her swollen nose and red eyes and the blue stripes on her neck.
She ought to tidy herself up a bit before Genji got back.
III. From the ‘Agents’ Reports’ File
To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov
(Private and confidential)
Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,
You may consider the epic story of the ‘Lovers of Death’ at an end. I shall try to set forth for you the events of this evening without omitting anything of significance.
When we all gathered at the usual time at Prospero’s apartment, I immediately realised that something quite exceptional had happened. The meeting was not chaired by Blagovolsky, but the Stammerer, and it soon became clear that our Doge had been overthrown and the reins of power had been taken up by the strong hands of a new dictator, although not for long and only in order to declare the society disbanded.
It was from the Stammerer that we learn
ed of the quite incredible events of the previous night. I will not retell them here, because you have undoubtedly been informed about everything by your own sources. I presume that the Moscow police and your people are searching for the Stammerer in order to question him about what happened, however, I cannot help you with that. It is absolutely obvious to me that the man acted correctly, and if he does not wish to meet representatives of the law (and his words certainly gave me that impression), that is his right.
The necessity for the killing, which was committed in self-defence, was also confirmed by Columbine, who almost met her end at the hands of the insane Caliban (the aspirant to whom I have referred in previous reports as the Bookkeeper – his real name is no doubt already known to you). The poor girl’s neck, which still bore the signs of the violence done to her, was covered with a scarf, a bruise was clearly visible under a thick layer of powder on her forehead, and her voice, usually so clear, was quite hoarse from crying desperately for help.
The Stammerer began his lengthy speech by denouncing the idea of suicide, a matter in which I am entirely in agreement with him. However, with your permission, I shall not reproduce this inspired monologue, since it is of no interest to your department. I will only note that the speaker was remarkably eloquent, although he stammered more than usual.
However, the information that the Stammerer provided will probably be of some use to you. This part of his speech I shall relate at length and even in the first person, without reproducing the stammer, in order to be able to interpose my own comments from time to time.
The Stammerer began as follows, or pretty much so.
‘I live abroad for most of the time and only rarely visit Moscow, since for some time now the climate of my native city (I thought he was a Muscovite, from his accent) has not been very good for my health. But I follow events here carefully: I receive letters from friends and read the major Moscow newspapers. Reports of an epidemic of suicides and the “Lovers of Death” could not fail to attract my attention, since not too long ago I happened to deal with the case of the “Nemesis” club in London – a criminal organisation which had mastered the rare criminal speciality of driving people to commit suicide in order to profit from their deaths. It is hardly surprising that the news from Moscow made me prick up my ears. I suspected that there might be a perfectly natural and practical reason for the unusually high frequency of motiveless suicides. Was the story of the “Nemesis” club being repeated, I wondered. What if certain malevolent individuals were deliberately pushing gullible or easily influenced people to take the fatal final step?
‘Two days after I arrived in Moscow yet another versifier, Nikifor Sipyaga, took his own life. I went to examine his flat and became convinced that he had indeed been a member of the “Lovers of Death”. The police did not even bother to enquire who paid for this poor student’s quite decent accommodation. I, however, ascertained that the deceased’s flat was rented for him by a certain Sergei Irinarkhovich Blagovolsky, a man who had led an unusual and rather eccentric life. My conjecture was confirmed by observation of Mr Blagovolsky’s home: it was the place where the secret meetings were being held.
‘Having managed to become one of you without any great difficulty, I was able to continue my investigations from within the club. At first all the evidence definitely pointed to one particular individual. (The Stammerer cast an eloquent glance at Prospero, who was sitting there hunched over pitifully.) However, more thorough investigation of the string of suicides and, in particular, the most recent events – the murders of Gdlevsky and Lavr Zhemailo (yes, yes, Mr Zhemailo was also murdered), as well as the attempt on Mademoiselle Columbine’s life – have thrown a completely different light on this whole story. It is a strange story, so tangled and confused that there are many details I have still not untangled completely, but yesterday’s events served me as the sword with which to slice through this Gordian knot. The details have ceased to be important, and it will in any case not be very difficult to establish them now.
‘Lorelei Rubinstein poisoned herself with morphine after three black roses appeared in her bedroom in some mysterious fashion, one after another, and this woman obsessed with the idea of suicide took them as a summons from Death. I was able rather easily to establish that the black roses had been put in Lorelei’s room by the aunt who lived with her, an avaricious and stupid individual. She had no idea that she was doing anything wrong. She thought she was helping the latest admirer of the poetess’s talent. For performing this rather strange but, at first glance, innocent errand, the stranger paid her five roubles on each occasion, making it a condition of payment that she keep the matter secret. During my first conversation with this woman, I could see that she was frightened – she already knew what her simple assistance had led to. And when she told me that the dead roses were a single bouquet, I knew immediately that she was lying – the three flowers were at different stages of withering.
‘I went back to the woman again, with no witnesses, and made her tell me the truth. She confessed everything and gave me a very rough description of the mysterious admirer, saying that he was tall, uncouth and clean-shaven with a coarse voice. I was unable to get any more out of her – she is unintelligent, unobservant and has weak eyesight. It is clear now that it was Caliban who visited her, but at the time I still suspected Mr Blagovolsky and only realised later that my theory was wrong. If I had demonstrated a little more astuteness, the schoolboy and the reporter and, probably, Caliban himself would still be alive.’
He paused in order to rein in his feelings. One of us took advantage of the silence to ask: ‘But why did Caliban want to drive some to suicide and kill others, and in such a cruel manner?’
The Stammerer nodded, as if acknowledging the reasonableness of the question.
‘You are all aware that he was not an entirely normal individual. (I thought this remark amusing. As if all the other ‘lovers’ were normal!) However, there were circumstances in his life of which I have become aware only now, after his death. Caliban, or Savely Akimovich Papushin (that is his real name), worked as a bookkeeper on board a merchant vessel in the Volunteer Fleet. His ship was travelling on the route from Odessa to Shanghai when it was caught in a typhoon. Only three members of the crew survived and managed to reach a small deserted island in a life boat. To be precise, it was not so much an island as a series of rocky cliffs protruding from the surface of the ocean. A month and a half later a British tea clipper that happened to be in those waters discovered a single survivor – Papushin. He had not died of thirst because it was the rainy season. He did not explain how he had managed to survive for so long without food, but the remains of his two comrades were discovered on the sand: skeletons that had been gnawed absolutely clean. Papushin said that crabs had devoured the corpses. The English did not believe him and held him under lock and key until they arrived at their first port of call and then handed him over to the police authorities. (I myself have absolutely no doubt that our bookkeeper killed his two comrades and gobbled them up – it is enough to remember the bloodcurdling verse that he composed, which always included cliffs, waves and skeletons searching for their own flesh.) Papushin was held in a psychiatric clinic for more than a year. I spoke with his psychiatrist, Dr Bazhenov, today. The patient was plagued by constant nightmares and hallucinations, all connected with the subject of cannibalism. During the first week of treatment he swallowed a spoon and a shard of a broken plate, but he did not die. He did not make any further attempts at suicide, having decided that he was unworthy of death. Eventually Papushin was released on condition that he report for regular examinations and interviews with his doctor. At first he came, but then he stopped. During his final interview he seemed calmer and said that he had found people whom would help him “solve his problem”.
‘We all remember that Caliban was the most zealous advocate of voluntary death. He waited impatiently for his own turn to come and was bitterly jealous of others’ “luck”. Every time the choice fell on s
omeone else, he fell into black despair: Death still considered him unworthy to join the comrades whom he had killed and eaten. But had he not changed, purged himself through contrition, did he not serve Death faithfully, love and desire her passionately?
‘I became a member of the club too late, and it is hard for me now to tell how or why Papushin reached his decision to push certain of the aspirants into suicide. In Ophelia’s case, he probably simply wanted to get rid of her, to put an end to the spiritualist seances – he no longer believed that the angry spirits of the “lovers” would ever summon him. Here, as in Avaddon’s case, Caliban displayed an uncommon ingenuity, of which I would never have suspected him capable. It is, however, well known that individuals of a maniacal bent can be exceptionally cunning. I will not go into the technical details here, since they have no bearing on our immediate business.
‘Why did he decide to push the Lioness of Ecstasy over the edge? Possibly she irritated him with her excessively rapturous manner. The cruel joke that Papushin played on poor Lorelei probably seemed very witty to his sick, perverted mind. I cannot suggest any other motive.
‘In Gdlevsky’s case, however, everything is quite clear. The boy boasted too much about how greatly Death favoured him. The story of the Friday rhymes is genuinely astonishing – there are too many coincidences. I suspected foul play and tried to pursue the organ grinder whose song Gdlevsky had taken as his final Sign. But the tramp seemed to have disappeared into thin air. That evening I walked round all the streets in the vicinity, but failed to find him . . .
‘Caliban’s love for Death was genuine insanity. He loved her passionately, in the way that men love femmes fatales. In the way that José must have loved Carmen and Rogozhin loved Nastasya Filippovna – constantly tormented by desire and consumed by desperate envy of his more fortunate rivals. And the schoolboy actually boasted about his imaginary triumph! In killing Gdlevsky, Caliban eliminated a rival. He deliberately arranged things so that you others would realise it was no suicide and the boy was a usurper, Death did not walk to the altar with him. To use the language of the newspapers, it was a genuine crime of passion.’