The Fallen (The Sublime Electricity Book #3)

by Pavel Kornev

  But who was behind this and why? And was it connected with the burning of my dirigible?

  There were no answers to these questions. What was more, when it came down to it, all my suspicions and guesses were of only marginally greater worth than Turkish-coffee fortune telling. The thieving bartender might have simply taken a shine to my gold timepiece and tried to poison me, taking me for a simpleton, then panicked and ran before he could be charged with a crime.

  The mountain air and all this walking around were really working up an appetite. I bought a biscuit from a street vendor, which was filled with melted cheese, fried meat and vegetables. I gobbled it down right outside his stall, wiped my fingers with a kerchief and drank a glass of plain carbonated water.

  After that, I crossed the rails and started for the center of town. The sun was hovering right over my head. The shadows were pressed up against the walls of the buildings. It was hot. I would have gladly paid for an electric streetcar ticket to the place we’d arranged to meet, but it only went around the city, and I needed to go straight through. What was more, it went only in one direction, but there were no more than three or four cars. Here, I could either walk or take a cab.

  I preferred the former. Not so much because of constrained funds, as wanting to keep my movements around town secret. Too many witnesses in my position would really be too much. There was no reason for that.

  For a start, I walked toward the address shown in The Morning News publisher's imprint. The offices of the gazette were located not far from the telegrapher’s. That was the point of reference I'd been given by the shopkeeper at a carbonated water stand. I decided to send another telegram, this one to my former coworker Ramon Miro. I asked him to meet Mr. Roshan at the train station and provide me with the ability to speak with him face to face. Not wanting to cause suspicions with the telegrapher, I didn't get into details, but details weren't particularly needed. I also told my attorney the approximate time of my arrival to New Babylon, so he could meet me right at the station with the passport and funds.

  After that, I headed for the newspaper office. Most likely, the time for submitting materials for tomorrow's release was growing near – there were disheveled reporters running down the halls, their eyes bloodshot from constant abuse of coffee and cigarettes. In the advertising department, despite the wide-open window, it was uncomfortably smoky. The clerk didn't even raise his eyes from the machine when I walked in and started digging through the brochures and advertising materials on the table.

  After finding Marek Faret's business card, I left the office and headed down the Via Antique, to number seven, building two. Images of this boulevard were quite often depicted on postcards, and finding the street was no difficulty. Finding building two, house number seven was another matter. The three-story structure was built in the very middle of the block, and views of that area were certainly not among this city’s tourist attractions.

  Not wanting to catch the eye of the concierge, I walked in from the yard. Thankfully, the gate had been left wide open. Unlike it, the back door was locked, but that was no problem. I just leaned into it with my shoulder and pressed. The frame gave with a light shudder, followed by a screech of the hinges. This clearly wasn't the first time this lock had been broken.

  I walked up the rickety stairs to the second floor. In the dark hallway, I looked around and kept going. The entrance to the photographer's residence was found on the third floor, directly opposite the stairs.

  I walked up to the door with unevenly screwed-in copper numbers and put my ear to it. A typewriter was working feverishly nearby. A floor down, someone was hammering nails into a wall with such force that the whole building shook. No sound at all came from the photographer's rooms.

  I turned the round brass handle and walked inside. The door didn't budge. I had to knock, but no one answered.

  The remaining choices weren’t great: either leave as I came in, or start committing the crime known as breaking and entering.

  Without particular hesitation, I decided to repeat the trick that had allowed me to enter the building: I turned the handle, leaned my shoulder into the panel and pressed carefully, expecting to hear a cracking and creaking. This door, though, was not locked, and flew open just a crack.

  Not by much, just ten centimeters, but that was enough. The stench was unbearable. The photographer's face was purplish blue and rocking from side to side. His tongue was lolling down freely. The yellow silk tie fastened around his neck had its other end tied to the inner handle of the door. His head hanging from the slipknot, his stiff corpse was lying on the piss-covered floor.

  Suicide? My talent couldn't seriously have convinced the photographer to lay hands on himself, right?

  I felt like I’d been given an electric shock, but I immediately tossed the thought from my mind, took out a handkerchief and used it to grasp the door handle, wiping off my prints. There would certainly be an investigation when this suspicious death was uncovered; the last thing I needed was for my own stupidity to land me in the field of view of the police!

  After getting rid of the prints, I tried to crack open the door, but the corpse's leg got caught on the leg of the desk and would not budge. Exhaling a soundless curse, I gave another pull, and then the clacking of the typewriter ceased. A second later, I heard the lock of the neighboring door click open.

  I jumped quickly back onto the stairwell landing and hurried down, hoping the dead man's neighbors weren't very observant. But as soon as I reached the second floor, a piercing woman's shriek flew through the building. Immediately thereafter, a police whistle blew out on the street. I had to run like a madman, jumping down several steps at once.

  As soon as I jumped past the receptionist's room, a young constable hopped out of the back-door hallway. His peaked cap in one hand and a copper whistle clenched in the other, he was in such a hurry that he would have ran straight into me if I hadn't grabbed him by the chest and slammed his head into the wall.

  The boy's legs grew weak. I grabbed him, not letting him fall and hid between the open door and wall. The back door gave another clap. Heavy footsteps thundered quickly past us. I heard the stairs creak. Up above, I started hearing alarmed voices.

  I carefully set the unconscious constable on the floor and jumped out into the back yard. There, I looked around and ran as fast as my legs would take me. As soon as I turned the corner past the next house, I started walking. As I went, I dried my sweaty face with a kerchief, returned to the Via Antique and, now in no hurry, started walking toward downtown.

  I heard the trill of a police whistle once again when I was a few blocks away. I didn't even turn.

  As I walked, I thought over the death of the photographer. I didn't seriously consider the possibility of suicide. Such cynics won’t do themselves in, even under threat of inevitable prison time. And though other peoples’ souls are generally quite opaque, I did manage to dig around a bit in the fears of this snoop and was firmly convinced that he would never have strangled himself, not in a moment of desperation, and not in a drunken fit. If the photographer had suddenly decided to end his own life, he would have gone with poison or a revolver, but never the noose.

  I was never wrong in these matters, which meant Marek Faret had been murdered.

  Murdered the day after I had stopped him from taking a photo of Black Lily. And the bartender fled as well. In some tangential way, he must have been involved in my arrival to the vicinity of the cabaret.

  Coincidence, or someone's sneaky game?

  Devil! No one could know that I had been in that den of sin that evening. No one had accompanied me. I had decided to visit the cabaret on my own. All on my own!

  But still, was it a coincidence? Coincidences don't happen. Everything in this world is connected in one way or another.

  Like this unprincipled photographer – he was tracking the self-appointed priestess of Kali, trying to take a picture. And the thieving Indian was mad at the snake charmer, because he was pretending to
be a fakir from India. So, maybe the bartender put the newspaperman on to when the self-appointed priestess of Kali would be leaving? But Marek Faret hadn't seemed like some mere simpleton to me. If he had paid the bartender off in advance, it would have only been partially. And when the Indian didn't get what he was promised the next day, maybe he lost control and strangled the photographer. Then, he made it look like a suicide.

  But the photographer had gotten an advance from someone. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he possessed enough funds on his own to bribe the coachman and the bartender, which is to say nothing of hiring the pair of musclemen. The money was wasted. There were no photographs. The client may have lost his temper, as well.

  My poisoning could have been explained by the Indian's greed. Perhaps he intended to steal my gold timepiece and skip town.

  Thoughts turned in my head. Pieces of the mosaic came together, came apart and came back together in a different order. On my way to the square, I managed to run through around ten possibilities, but none of them could fully satisfy me. I couldn't rid myself of the conviction that I must have been overlooking a key fact. But what it was, I couldn't figure.

  Soon, over the roofs of the buildings, I saw the belly of a dirigible shining like a beacon with ropes coming down off the gondola to the earth. After that, I saw the walls of the restored amphitheater. But only on Maxwell Square was I able to fully appreciate the scale of the ancient structure, which was just barely smaller than the Coliseum in Rome. At one time, the stones of this amphitheater had been stripped to aid in the construction of nearby buildings, and the antique stadium had spent long centuries in a state of complete disrepair. But now, it had been returned to its initial appearance with high arches and narrow window gaps in the outside halls, marble columns and bas-reliefs. I couldn't even imagine how much the restoration must have cost.

  Maxwell Square itself was semi-circular. One side had the amphitheater jutting into it and the other had medieval buildings pressed up one against the next. I had another half hour until my meeting with Liliana, so I didn't go onto the shady restaurant veranda, just ambled over to the Maxwell statue. Its base had a fountain built in, and clear water was splashing in the light of the sun. I wanted to wash up.

  Unlike the traditional image engraved on countless canvases, the stone Maxwell here was depicted alone, without his constant companion. But I didn't even really look at the statue. My gaze naturally caught on a dirigible hovering over the square. The flying machine made an onerous impression with its dimensions, muting the pomposity of the monument and the majesty of the amphitheater. The restoration and ceremonial grand opening were actually a subtle advertising tactic by the foreign millionaire. It wasn't for nothing that the name of his corporation was written on the side of the dirigible in huge script: "Malone and Partners."

  Getting to the fountain wasn't all so simple: on the marble-faced parapet, there were lots of portraits, looking like they came from students of the Imperial Arts Academy. They were drafts of the amphitheater; some in its former state, and others with the scaffolding and flying machine in the sky. Others still had drawn views of the square and monument to the great man of science.

  Their older associates approached the matter on a bit more solid footing. Artists sitting under parasols were taking portrait orders from wealthy vacationers. They were also selling souvenirs: either the touched-up sketches of their students or their own works, but made in studios and based on photographs.

  I walked over to the water and washed up. After that, I wiped off my palms with a kerchief and had already started on my way back when I saw the flicker of a familiar profile under one of the spacious parasols. It was a tall gray-haired old man with the gaunt face of a stoic, and eyes hidden behind dark black lenses like those a blind person might wear. But at that, he was drawing something with confident pencil strokes.

  It was Charles Malacarre. This blind illustrator had an illustrious talent that allowed him to dig in the subconscious of his clients and transfer the brightest images there to paper. Now, he was working for a middle-aged woman with unnatural blush on her cheeks. She was in a gentle repose on a fold-out sofa. Her eyelids were closed, and she had a light smile playing on her lips.

  The distinct smell of camphor with notes of anise didn't surprise me one bit. Opium decoctions were sold in pharmacies without a prescription and had long been popular among well-to-do ladies, tormented by migraines and boredom – often both at the same time.

  I walked up soundlessly and stood behind the artist. Usually, he limited his drawings to black and white, but now, he was using pencils of several colors, creating a wonderful rendition of an angular perspective on a wheat field. His client had golden hair and was riding through the field atop a golden rhinoceros. The canvas overflowed with bright yellow tones.

  "Take a look at the sketches, Leo," Charles said in his ever-creaking voice. "I'll be free in five minutes."

  I snorted in surprise.

  "Shoo!" the artist hissed. "Your gaze is boring a hole in my head! Take your talent away from here."

  "Alright, I'll stop," I promised and picked up a stack of pencil drawings attached together with an iron ring.

  Most of it was views of the city square as it looked to the artist's clients, but there were also plenty of very imaginative ones as well. One of them had a figure of Maxwell on the statue base, taking control of his companion: there was a chain spooled around the arm of the great scientist, and its other end was attached to a collar around the neck of an otherworldly creature, rendered with just a few sparse strokes. It gave the impression of an unfinished work although, most likely, the man simply had no idea what Maxwell's famous demon looked like. Or, to be more accurate, his fallen one.

  Charles was telling the complete truth about how long he would take. The color pallet of the picture put the lady into a state of total elation. After paying the artist generously, she headed off back home. I took the sofa and nodded toward the gray-haired woman:

  "Opium?"

  "And absinthe, Leo. Don't forget the absinthe. I'm still seeing everything in shades of green."

  "You don't even have eyes, Charles."

  "Don't go poking holes!" the artist rebuffed. "Where'd you disappear to, Leo? I haven't heard a thing from you for over a year."

  "I've been travelling," I answered evasively. "What fates have brought you here? I thought you'd have grown into your spot under the statue of Michelangelo."

  "I have not, as you see," the old man cackled. "New Babylon is a hellish furnace right now. Smoke and char. The only thing missing is acid rain. I landed a paid contract, and I couldn't say no. I'm spending my summer in the clean air of Montecalida."

  "What kind of work?" I asked in surprise. Typically, Charles couldn't bear restrictions and regulations.

  The artist pointed behind himself, as if he was sure what was there. And he was right.

  "After the concert-gala, I'll be drawing a picture of how the event looked to the audience. Artistic folks love opium and absinthe, so I'm sure it will be an unforgettable piece," the artist told me and laughed: "It was worth agreeing just for that!"

  "I'm happy for you!"

  "And are you all wrapped up in business and worries as usual, Leo?"

  "A bit, yes," I sighed, tossing my head to the side and closing my eyes. "Could you do me a little favor?"

  "No!" Charles refused outright. "No, Leo! I'm not drawing another one of your passions. Unrequited love gives me heartburn. And that's to say nothing of the fact that your talent makes my head want to explode. And also, you know, I have lots and lots of work today. The sun is high in the sky."

  "Come off it, Charles," I chuckled. "It isn't a matter of unhappy love. I need a portrait of a man. I barely remember him, to be honest. No strong emotions."

  "Just a simple portrait?"

  "Very simple. Like a police sketch artist would make. You'd be able to do it with a blindfold on."

  "You just had to bring up my eyes, didn’t yo
u?"

  "Apologies, Charles."

  "You were always unrestrained at the tongue, Leo," the illustrator reproached me. "You talk faster than you think."

  "I hadn't noticed that."

  "Well now you know," Charles told me and attached a new sheet of paper to his easel. "Let's begin, please."

  I tried to restore the image of the Indian man standing behind the bar. I felt a slight pressure in my temples when the artist's talent penetrated my head, and tried to relax to let my own illustrious talent run free. But Charles suddenly hissed:

  "Get yourself together! What's the matter with you?"

  "I'm trying!"

  I really was trying but the Indian man now looked totally faceless to me.

  "What are you on, Leo?" the old man asked. "I've never seen stuff this strong before!"

  "I'm not on anything! On that day, I was slipped something, and I’m trying to find the bastard that did it!"

  "Then concentrate!"

  "There's no pleasing you!" I snarled and tried to remember how I felt taking a sip of the astonishingly tasty and cold lemonade after spending so long in the sultry air of the cabaret.

  My imagination, which had been dozing off until that point, awoke in an instant, as if I had pressed down on a trigger buried in my memory. Shhp! With a crystal clarity, the face of the Indian man appeared before my eyes.

  Charles hissed in vexation and started very quickly scraping away with his slate pencil at the piece of paper. Not long after, he threw the pencil into a cup in annoyance and said:

  "Here you go!"

  When I opened my eyes, the blind artist was wiping a trickle of blood from his nose.

  "You're gonna send this old man to the grave one day..." he muttered.

  "Someday, I'll pay it all back."

  "Aha. When are you robbing the bank?"

  "I've got money," I laughed. "I just need to get my hands on it."

  "Come off it," Charles Malacarre said with a wave of his hand. He picked up a bottle of drinking water from a bucket of chopped ice and took a few greedy swallows. His large Adam's apple moved up and down on his thin neck. "Here’s your sketch!"