by Pavel Kornev
"Woah! So, it’s yet another fair lady, then?"
"There's no 'yet another.' She's the only lady for me! Irreplaceable! I've been waiting my whole life for her. Her and only her. She has a beauty that stops your heart in a sweet languor. The entrancing sounds of her voice make you pray that you will meet again..."
The symptoms were very familiar, so I took a seat on the ottoman and, with a condescending smile, asked:
"And how do you call this new lady of your heart?"
"She didn't introduce herself," Albert fell into a gloomy state, as if he had remembered a very unpleasant fact. "Can you imagine it, Leo? She didn't even tell me her name! She said only that she was bound not by a wedding ring but by some other, higher calling."
"Well, did you set up a date?" I clarified, knowing the answer in advance.
"Well, sure," the poet confirmed calmly and leaned his elbows on the table: "And how are things with you?"
"You won't believe it."
"So that good, then?"
"Actually, it's that bad." I laid back on the ottoman and reminded him: "You told me you knew a guy who could get a cane?"
"You're still limping? Alright, we can pay him a visit tomorrow morning, if you've got time."
"I do," I replied and, in my turn, asked: "The barkeep told me you've been working all day. What are you working on?"
"I'm working?" Albert drew out the words pensively, stroking his straight-parted wig. "Oh, yeah! Poetry is hard work, especially when all your thoughts are occupied with the image of..."
"Your mystery girl," I sighed. "But aren't you writing odes for her then?"
"As I said before," Albert frowned, "I’m working on the poem Inhabitant of the Night!"
I squirmed.
"The one about Procrustes?"
The poet nodded.
"Right now, he's all the city can talk about. The craze hasn't passed me by either. We creative people are sway to the mood of the masses, after all..."
"And you took a run at turning it into a whole poem?"
"Well, sure," Albert laughed. "It's all conjecture, devil beat me, but I need to pay the bills somehow, as you well understand."
"You're selling your talent."
The poet's eyes lit up with an unnatural light, and he laughed hoarsely:
"I'll sell my whole soul one piece at a time. The people like it! They always call for an encore! At midnight, I'm performing for a most respectable audience..."
I frowned involuntarily.
All of Albert's performances without exception ended with one and the same: debauchery and fisticuffs. The poet had the talent to charm people with the sounds of his voice, but when his inborn talent for performance combined with his finely honed gift as a poet, it caused people to fall into ecstasy, and not only his exalted ladies, but hoar-headed gentlemen as well. The Illustrious Mr. Brandt's recitals were always accompanied by a true hullabaloo, but the owner of the Charming Bacchante invited Albert back to perform again and again, because it got her establishment in the society pages of most local papers almost every time.
It seemed that I wouldn't be able to get a good night's sleep tonight.
Albert rolled an empty bottle under the couch, trying to hit the place where he'd heard a mouse rustling around, and suggested:
"Will you come down to watch me?"
Normally, I would have watched the poet with pleasure, but today I wanted to refuse.
"I'm afraid, a poem about Procrustes is not going to sit well with me tonight..."
"Drop it!" Albert cut me off, not accepting my refusal. "Don't be such a narrow-minded moralist! Come watch my reading..."
I could have just stood up and gone down stairs, as I had often subjected myself to love poems for the sake of Albert's amusement, but now the weariness was pressing down on me with a fully tangible weight, and I waved my hand against my desire.
"Go on!" I allowed and, threw back my head and stared at the ceiling.
Albert cleared his throat and recited expressively:
"Inhabitant of the night,
Mindful of the light,
I cannot figure,
Whose body you now wear,
But find you I will, killer,
And I’ll give you there,
Bullets of silver,
Thirteen sounds fair..."
Strange intonations came through in the poet's voice. They cut into my soul and re-awoke old memories, so I couldn't hold back from a short chuckle.
"What?" Albert shuddered, his concentration gone in an instant. "What are you whinnying about?"
"Who's whinnying?"
"You're whinnying like a mare, Leopold!" My friend flared up, reacting very squeamishly to my opinion of his paltry rhymes. "Could you explain what exactly you found so funny?"
The poet reminded me of an angry school teacher, telling off a bad student, but I didn't use that analogy and bring him to white-hot rage, I just waved my hand ambiguously:
"It just gave me dirty associations. What was it... 'The human form, a fiery forge...'?"
"Blake?!" Albert exclaimed. "You're saying it reminds you of William Blake?"
"I'm just saying the association came to mind..."
"Association!" Albert drew out the word, puckered up and turned away. "That was just the introduction," he grumbled back some time later.
"Don't get mad," I begged him in a conciliatory manner.
The poet turned away, preparing to break out in a hateful rant, but just then bottles started clanking in the liquor cabinet.
"Damned rats!" Albert growled out in a fit of anger, grabbing a dueling saber from an elephant-foot umbrella holder.
I got up on an elbow expecting free entertainment, but there weren't any rats in the liquor cabinet. The rustling was now coming from the clothes cabinet.
The poet swore prodigiously, cursing the whole species in one go, opening the door and recoiling quickly when, out from under his legs jumped an albino leprechaun in a green frock coat, an accordion-ed top hat and boots with the tips cut off.
A moment later, the small man was next to the liquor cabinet, grabbing the nearest bottle and, with the deftness of a marmoset, he flew up onto the mezzanine. There, he yanked out the cork with his teeth, took a sniff and melted into an entranced smile:
"Absinthe!" He stuck it down his throat, and gasped loudly: "Bugger, that's good stuff!" And looked at me with unhidden superiority: "This is ambrosia, Leo! The nectar of the gods!"
A sharp pain shot through my skull. I pressed my palms to my temples dolefully and closed my eyes tight in the hope that the apparition would go away on its own, but it was in vain.
"Leopold," Albert said with a quivering voice, "my absinthe!"
"Pig!" The leprechaun stuck out his long pale tongue, took out a tobacco pouch and started rolling a cigarette. "You vile, odious pig!" he muttered, spitting out the bits of tobacco that came into his mouth.
The poet fell down on the couch in depression and turned to me:
"I'm raving, aren't I? Leo, don't just sit there, say something!"
The leprechaun called back instead of me.
"Have you got a light?" He bellowed, chewing on the rollie in the corner of his mouth.
"Get out of here!" I demanded.
I didn't have to ask twice; in a blink of the eye, the albino was down from the mezzanine and jumping out the door.
"So you saw him too? I'm not crazy," Albert noted judiciously and, clinking the neck of a bottle on the edge of his glass, poured himself some wine. "What was that, Leo?"
I sighed.
"Sometimes, children have imaginary friends that no one can see but them," I said, looking at a crack in the white paint on the ceiling. "That is nothing to be afraid of. It's normal. You run into problems, though, when other people also start to see your imaginary friends."
The poet choked on his wine and stared at me with a large degree of amazement.
"That ugly mug is your imaginary friend?!"
"Childh
ood friend," I told him. "I hadn't seen him since I was five. I have no idea why he's back now. It must be related to my chronic stress."
Chronic stress and an aggravated case of the Diabolic Plague.
"Was he always so... indulgent?" Albert asked, dabbing his wine-drenched shirt.
"Not really. We used to just play chess," I smiled at the half-forgotten memories. "Or go up on the roof and look at the city. We used to make bark boats and play with them in the fountain. We would run in the garden, and play hide and go seek. I didn't often win..."
"Aw hell," the poet gasped. "But why a leprechaun?"
"I have no idea," I confessed. "Perhaps it's got to do with my Irish roots. One of my grandmas was from there. She used to read me fairytales at night."
"And what's wrong with his shoes?"
"Sandals used to hurt my feet. And don't ask about the top hat. I don't know where he got that thing from."
At that moment, the music below went quiet; Albert finished his wine and started getting the papers scattered over his table together in one pile.
"You're full of surprises, my friend," he shook his head.
"Says the guy who's trying to woo a mystery girl?" I couldn't resist joking back.
The poet waved his hand, carelessly tied his bright neckerchief and got his morning coat from the cabinet.
"As far as I understand, I shouldn't count on your presence, then?" Standing before a mirror, he shot me a sidelong glance.
"No!" I let out.
"I just don't understand how you can be so mundane..." Albert snorted and set off to read his poems.
But I remained there on the ottoman. I lied there and looked at the ceiling, wracking my brains over where to search for the banker's murderer before the police did. The investigators from Department Three wouldn't get distracted by the mythical return of Procrustes. They would study the evidence and begin very soon – if they hadn't begun already! – to look for a left handed out-of-towner who was tall and thin. And, unlike me, the police had enough force and capability to blow through all the hotels and tenements a werebeast from out of town might lay its head in.
All I could do now was stay ahead of the investigation – figure out exactly what the murderer took from the banker and how it was connected with the bank robbery.
With only that thought in mind, I fell asleep.
I WOKE UP LATE, my neck stiff from the uncomfortable position.
I sat up on the ottoman and noted with surprise that Albert had already managed to leave the house. Then I walked past it to the window, pulled back the curtain and nodded, having received confirmation of my guess. It would rain soon. The sky was saturated with gray clouds. It seemed like it was late at night outside.
Albert couldn't bear direct sunlight, but felt truly alive and alert in weather like this. The back of my head was aching though.
I stood before the mirror, and looked cantankerously at my haggard physiognomy and decided with a significant degree of relief that the crimson tinge in my eyes was starting to turn back to its former colorless shade. I clipped my dark glasses onto my nose, buttoned up my jacket and, pea-coat in hand, looked out the door for my boots.
My boots had been cleaned and polished.
When I went down to the first floor, I caught the heavy smell of old booze. Even the flung-wide windows were no help. My injured leg giving out, I limped to the door, but the tables of the street cafe hadn't been set yet, so I had to send a boy playing around nearby to the nearest coffee shop and go back to the bar.
"Where did Albert get off to?" I asked the owner's nephew who was wiping down the bar. "Has yet another suitor stolen him away?"
"I don't know," the young boy with curly black hair shook his head, "but before he left, he sent out for a bouquet of roses."
"Prodigal spender," I chuckled and asked him to pour me some coffee.
The boy ran up, I took an apple strudel from him and went up into the poet's apartment. I did not want to spend any more time than I had to in the aroma of old perfume, booze and sweat that reigned there.
ALBERT BRAND RETURNED after I'd already finished breakfast, and was speculating on where to start the investigation. The poet looked very unhappy, and I couldn't hold back from paraphrasing a Russian classic:
"Now you've become another's wife, eh?"
"And I'll be true to him for life," Albert caught my reference, but immediately winked: "No, Leo, it's not all so bad. What's more, my show last night was a phenomenal success! I would even call it breathtaking!"
"They'll forget about Procrustes soon," I assured the poet.
"Nonsense!"
"He's dead, Albert!"
"Where did you get that idea? They write about him in all the papers!"
I could have tried to convince the poet, or joked that even Houdini couldn't get out of the grave without moving the slab, but I stayed silent and just frowned:
"It's all just ballyhoo." and immediately stopped myself. "Hold on! When did it all start again? It wasn't with the banker at all, was it? There were other stories!"
"There was another murder, yes," said the poet. "Do you remember the day we were walking to the hippodrome?"
That's right!
I snapped my fingers and walked over to a bedside table, with a towering pile of newspapers on it.
"Did you throw that issue away?" I asked, leafing through the yellowed pages.
"No, I didn't. Look, it's there somewhere."
Soon, I actually did find the paper I needed and immersed myself in reading.
The murder from two nights ago in the area of the Emperor's Park had caught the attention of the newspapermen for its animalistic cruelty: a strong thirty-year-old man had his limbs and throat ripped out. Expert opinion was that even the strongest man on earth wouldn't have been able to cause such mutilation as the dead man suffered.
On the grainy photograph, I could see the wall of a house, its grayed whitewash streaked with blood. There was a very large amount of blood. And no one had heard or seen a thing.
The poet walked up and looked over my shoulder.
"What scheme are you hatching now?"
"I'll start by taking a look at the crime scene. Albert, can we go get the cane?"
The poet did not refuse me the help.
"It isn't far from here. I'll take you there and get to work." The poet tried on a straw boater hat and added acridly: "I need to finish the poem about Procrustes before you stomp this legend into the ground."
I sighed heavily:
"Believe me, Albert. You wouldn't want to meet this legend if it came in a bad mood."
"Procrustes in a bad mood?" The poet laughed, adjusting his neckerchief before the mirror. "Leopold, your sense of humor gets darker every day!"
I waved it off and went out the door without waiting for my friend. I went down to the first floor, stood under the awning and immediately noted a free self-propelled carriage with a thin Chinese driver in a pair of foppish white gloves. Next to him, leaning on an expensive cane, there stood a withered old man in a military-cut field jacket.
Curses! Mr. Chan had decided to have a personal conversation with his listless debtor!
A nervous trembling came over me, but I immediately got myself together and calmly walked up to the moneylender. He got into the back seat of the self-propelled carriage and issued an order to the driver:
"Leave us!"
When his servant was outside, I closed the door and leaned my elbows against it in silence. I wasn't going to be the one to start this conversation.
"Mr. Orso," the moneylender then said, and pursed his lips. "Mr. Orso! Look at me! I'm talking to you!"
With a quiet, slightly whistling voice, I would normally put my debtors into a state of horrified fear. Normally – but not today.
"New Babylon is a surprising city," I drawled out slowly, continuing to look at the calm surface of the canal, "the wonderful and the horrible are so closely intertwined here that it can be hard to tell them apart. And t
here are no angles or sharp edges, either. It it's all just shades and blurred half-tones. A solid gray."
"Have you lost your mind?" Mr. Chan grew surprised. "I didn't say you could speak!"
"Gray," I nodded, agreeing with my own thoughts, "just a solid gray. Above it is a small layer of white, too small to be visible. Below, everything is identically black. There is a bit more of the good, but the evil is more active. It throws itself in your eyes more forcefully."
"Stop it!"
I removed my glasses and looked at the moneylender.
"Mr. Chan! When you sent your cutthroat out with an order to remove my ear, you went so far under that you can no longer be considered part of that gray. You are evil. And no matter what I do to you, I will have a clean conscience."
"What impudence!" The old man grinned.
But he looked away before I did. His smooth pampered face fractured like a porcelain tea cup, and gave way to innumerable wrinkles.
Mr. Chan had left the Celestial Kingdom fleeing the rage of the immortal Emperor. He was flattered to have an illustrious gentleman among his debtors. He liked raising my interest rates and setting all kinds of new and interesting conditions, but at the base of his predilection lie normal fear.
Fears poison you. I already said that, right?
I smiled and went on:
"Now, there's nothing stopping me from saying out loud that I think it was you, Mr. Chan, who poisoned the werebeast against my partner Isaac Levinson."
"That's a lie!" the old man quickly retorted.
I chuckled.
"I suppose you will be able to convince the Judeans of that, but imagine how many boots you'll have to lick!"
Mr. Chan did imagine it, and false blood ran down his face.
"Don't joke around with me, boy!"
"One thing you should never do is send cutthroats out after me."
"Pay your debt!"
"I'll pay it when the time comes."
"The time has come!"
"Mr. Chan," I said with all possible respect, "look at the documents we signed. There are no dates mentioned in them. I will pay the debt as soon as I get control over the fund, and no sooner. That was the condition of our deal."
"My reputation is suffering..."
"We can talk about compensation when I come into my inheritance," I cut him off. "Incidentally, would you like to become my fiduciary? My last one, unfortunately, met a sudden end..."