by Boris Akunin
Erast Fandorin was not afraid of conversing in English. He had grown up in the charge of Nanny Lizbet (at moments of strictness Mrs. Johnson), a genuine English nanny. She was a warmhearted and considerate but extremely prim and proper old maid, who was nonetheless supposed to be addressed not as ‘miss’ but as ‘missus,’ out of respect for her venerable profession. Lizbet had taught her charge to rise at half past six in summer and half past seven in winter, to perform calisthenic exercises until he just began to sweat and then sponge himself down with cold water, to count to two hundred as he cleaned his teeth, never to eat his fill, and all sorts of other things absolutely essential for a gentleman to know.
A gentle woman’s voice responded to his knock at the door. “Come in! Entrez.”
Erast Fandorin handed the doorkeeper his peaked cap and went in.
He found himself in a spacious, richly furnished study, in which pride of place was given to an extremely wide mahogany desk. Seated behind the desk was a gray-haired lady with an appearance that was not merely pleasant but extremely agreeable. Behind the gold pince-nez her light blue eyes sparkled with lively intelligence and affability. Fandorin took an immediate liking to the mobile features of the plain face, the duckbill nose, and broad, smiling mouth.
He introduced himself in English but did not immediately mention the purpose of his visit.
“Your pronunciation is splendid, sir,” Lady Astair praised him in the same language. “I trust our formidable Timoth…Timofei did not give you too bad a fright? I confess I am a little bit afraid of him myself, but officials often call at the office, and then Timofei is quite invaluable, better than an English manservant. But take a seat, young man. Better sit over there in the armchair—you’ll be more comfortable. So you are in the criminal police? That must be very interesting work. And what does your father do?”
“He is dead.”
“I am very sorry to hear it, sir. And your mother?”
“Also dead,” Fandorin blurted out, unhappy with the direction the conversation had taken.
“My poor boy. I know how lonely you must be. For forty years I have been helping unfortunate boys like you escape their loneliness and find their path.”
“Find their path, my lady?” Erast Fandorin did not quite follow.
“Oh, yes,” said Lady Astair, becoming animated as she quite clearly mounted her pet hobbyhorse. “Finding one’s own path is the most important thing for anyone. I am profoundly convinced that every individual possesses a unique talent—everyone is endowed with a divine gift. The tragedy of mankind is that we do not seek to discover this gift in the child and nurture it—we do not know how. A genius is a rare event among us, even a miracle, but what is a genius? It is simply a person who has been lucky. Fate has decreed that the circumstances of life themselves nudge the individual toward the correct choice of path. The classical example is Mozart. He was born into the family of a musician, and from an early age he found himself in an environment that ideally nurtured the talent with which nature had endowed him. But just try to imagine, my dear sir, that Wolfgang Amadeus was born into the family of a peasant. He would have become a crude rustic herdsman, amusing his cows by the magic trilling of his reed flute. If he had been born into the family of a rough military man, he would have become a mediocre officer with a love of military marches. Believe me, young man, within every child, every single one without exception, there lies a hidden treasure. One simply needs to know how to reach that treasure! There is a very nice North American writer by the name of Mark Twain. I suggested to him the idea for a story in which people are judged not according to their actual achievements but according to the potential and the talent with which nature has endowed them. And then it will turn out that the very greatest general of all time was some unknown tailor who never served in the army and the very greatest artist of all never held a brush in his hand because he worked as a cobbler all his life. The basis of my system of education is to ensure that the great general is certain to find his way into the army and the great artist will be provided with paints in good time. My teachers patiently and persistently probe the mental constitution of each of their wards, searching in him for the spark of God, and in nine cases out of ten they find it!”
“Aha, then it is not there in everyone!” said Fandorin, raising his finger in triumph.
“In everyone, my dear young man, in absolutely everyone. It is simply that we pedagogues are not sufficiently skillful, or else the child is endowed with a talent for which the modern world has no use. Perhaps this person was needed in primordial society, or his genius will be required in the distant future—in a sphere that we today cannot even imagine.”
“Concerning the future—all right, I cannot undertake to judge,” Fandorin prefaced his argument, enthralled by the conversation despite himself. “But concerning primordial society the issue is not quite clear. Exactly what talents did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know that myself, my boy,” said Lady Astair with a disarming smile. “Well, let us suppose the gift of guessing where there is water under the ground. Or the gift of sensing game in the woods. Perhaps the ability to distinguish edible roots from nonedible ones. I know only one thing: in those distant times precisely such people were the main geniuses, and Mr. Darwin or Herr Schopenhauer, had they been born in a cave, would have found themselves relegated to the position of tribal idiots. As a matter of fact, those children who today are regarded as mentally backward also possess a gift. It is, of course, not a gift of a rational nature but is nonetheless precious for all that. In Sheffield I have a special Astair House for those whom traditional pedagogy has rejected. My God, what miracles of genius those boys demonstrate! There is a child there, who at the age of thirteen has barely learned to talk, but he cures any migraine with the touch of his hand. Another, who is entirely incapable of verbal communication, can hold his breath for an entire four and a half minutes. A third can heat a glass of water simply by looking at it—can you imagine?”
“Incredible! But why only boys? What about girls?”
Lady Astair sighed and spread her hands. “You are right, my friend. Of course, one should work with girls as well. However, experience has taught me that the talents with which the female nature is endowed are often such that modern society is not yet ready to understand them appropriately. We live in the age of men, and we are obliged to take that into consideration. In a society where men are the bosses, an exceptionally talented woman arouses suspicion and hostility. I would not wish my foster daughters to feel unhappy.”
“But then how is your system arranged? How is the sorting, so to speak, of the children accomplished?” Erast Fandorin inquired with keen curiosity.
“Do you really find it interesting?” the baroness asked in delight. “Let us go to the teaching building and you will see for yourself.”
Rising to her feet with an agility quite amazing for her age, she was ready to take him there and show him immediately.
Fandorin bowed, and her ladyship led the young man at first along the corridor, and then through the long gallery to the main building.
Along the way she told him about her work. “Our institution here is quite new. It is only three weeks since it opened, and the work is still in its earliest stage. My people have taken from the orphanages, and some times directly from the street, a hundred and twenty orphan boys aged from four to twelve years. If a child is older than that, it is hard to do anything with him—his personality is already formed. To begin with, the boys were divided into groups by age, each with its own teacher, a specialist in that particular age. The teacher’s main responsibility is to observe the children closely and gradually begin setting them various simple assignments. These are like a game, but by using them it is easy to determine the general tendency of a child’s character. At the initial stage one has to divine where a particular child’s greatest talent lies—in the body, the head, or the intuition. After that, the children will be divided into groups, not according to
age but according to type: rationalists, artistes, craftsmen, leaders, sportsmen, and so on. Gradually the profile of the type is narrowed more and more, and the oldest boys are quite often tutored individually. I have been working with children for forty years, and you cannot imagine how much my alumni have achieved, in the most varied of spheres.”
“Why, that is quite magnificent, my lady,” Erast Fandorin exclaimed in delight. “But where can one find so many expert teachers?”
“I pay my teachers very well, because pedagogy is the most important of all the sciences,” the baroness said with profound conviction. “And apart from that, many of my former pupils express a desire to remain in the Astair Houses as teachers. This is really quite natural—after all, the Astair House is the only family they have ever known.”
They entered a wide recreation hall onto which the doors of several classrooms opened.
“Now, where should I take you?” Lady Astair pondered. “I think at least to the physics laboratory. My splendid Dr. Blank, an alumnus of the Zurich Astair House and a physicist of genius, is giving a demonstration lesson there at the moment. I lured him here to Moscow by setting up a laboratory for his experiments with electricity. And while he is here he has to show the children all sorts of clever physics tricks in order to stimulate their interest in that science.”
The baroness knocked on one of the doors, and they stepped into the classroom. Sitting at the desks were about fifteen boys aged eleven and twelve wearing blue uniforms with a golden letter A on the jacket collar. All of them were watching with bated breath as a sullen young gentleman with immense side-whiskers, dressed in a rather untidy frock coat and a shirt that was none too fresh, spun some kind of glass wheel that was sputtering out bright blue sparks.
’Ich bin sehr beschäftigt, milady!”. Blank shouted angrily. “Später, später!’* Then he began speaking in broken Russian, addressing the children. “Und now, zhentlemen, you vill zee a zhenuine little rainbow! It’s name is Blank Regenbogen, “Blank’s rainbow.” I invent it ven I vas young as you are now.”
Suddenly a small, unusually bright rainbow arced across from the strange wheel to the table that was crammed with all sorts of physics apparatus, and the boys began buzzing with delight.
“Just a little bit crazy, but a genuine genius,” Lady Astair whispered to Fandorin.
At that moment a child screamed loudly in the next classroom.
“Good Lord!” said her ladyship, clutching at her heart. “That’s from the gymnastics room! Let’s go, quickly!”
She ran out into the corridor with Fandorin following her. Together they burst into an empty, bright auditorium in which the floor was laid with leather mats and the most varied pieces of equipment were set along the walls, including wall bars, rings, thick ropes, and trampolines. Rapiers and fencing masks lay cheek by jowl with boxing gloves and dumbbells. A small group of seven- and eight-year-old boys was clustered around one of the mats. Pushing his way through the children, Erast Fandorin saw a boy writhing in pain and, bending over him, a young man about thirty years of age dressed in gymnast’s tights. The man had fiery ginger curls, green eyes, and a determined-looking face covered with freckles.
“All right, my dear chap,” he said in Russian with a slight accent. “Show me your leg—don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you. Be a man and bear it. Fell from the rings, m’lady,” he explained to the baroness in English. “Weak hands. I am afraid the ankle is broken. Would you please tell Mr. Izyumoff?”
Her ladyship nodded without speaking and, gesturing to Erast Fandorin to follow her, walked quickly out of the hall.
“I’ll go for the doctor, Mr. Izyumov,” she told him, speaking rapidly. “This kind of thing happens frequently. Boys will always be boys…That was Gerald Cunningham, my right-hand man. An alumnus of the London Astair House. A brilliant teacher. He is in charge of the entire Russian branch. In six months he has mastered your difficult language, which is quite beyond me. Last autumn Gerald opened the Astair House in St. Petersburg and now he is here temporarily, helping to get things going. Without him I am like a woman with no hands.”
She stopped in front of a door bearing the inscription DOCTOR.
“I do beg your pardon, sir, but I shall have to cut short our conversation. Some other time, perhaps? Come tomorrow and we’ll talk. You have some business to discuss with me?”
“Nothing of any importance, my lady,” said Fandorin, blushing. “Indeed I really…some other time. I wish you success in your noble profession.”
Erast Fandorin bowed awkwardly and walked quickly away. He felt very ashamed.
“WELL, DID YOU CATCH the villainess red-handed?” Fandorin’s chief greeted his shamefaced subordinate merrily, raising his head from some complicated diagrams. The curtains in the office were closed and the lamp on the desk was lit, for it had already begun to grow dark outside. “Let me guess. Her ladyship had never even heard of Mr. Kokorin, let alone Miss Bezhetskaya, and the news of the suicide’s bequest upset her terribly. Is that right?”
Erast Fandorin merely sighed.
“I met the lady in St. Petersburg. In the Third Section we considered her request to be allowed to conduct teaching activities in Russia. Did she tell you about the morons who are geniuses? Right, then, let’s get to work. Take a seat at the desk,” said Fandorin’s chief with a wave of his hand. “You have a fascinating night ahead.”
Erast Fandorin felt a pleasant tingling sensation of anxious anticipation in his breast—such was the effect produced on him by his dealings with State Counselor Brilling.
“Your target is Zurov. You have already seen him, so you have a certain notion of the man. Getting into the count’s house is easy enough—no recommendations are required. He runs something in the nature of a gambling den in his home, none too well disguised. The accepted style is all hussars and guards, but all sorts of good-for-nothing riffraff turn up as well. Zurov maintained a house of a precisely similar kind in St. Petersburg, but after a visit from our police he moved to Moscow. He is entirely his own master, listed at his regiment as being on indefinite leave for more than two years now. Let me state your task: try to get as close to him as possible and get a good look at his entourage. Perhaps you might come across your white-eyed acquaintance there? But no amateur heroics—you can’t possibly deal with a type like that on your own. Anyway, he is hardly likely to be there. I do not exclude the possibility that the count may himself take an interest in you. After all, you did meet at Bezhetskaya’s house, and he is evidently not indifferent to her. Act in accordance with the situation. But don’t get carried away. This gentleman is not to be trifled with. He cheats at cards, or as they say in that company, he ‘fixes the odds,’ and if he is caught in the act he deliberately provokes a scandal. He has a dozen or so duels to his account, and there are others we know nothing about. And he can crack your skull open without the excuse of a duel. For instance, in seventy-two at the Nizhni Novgorod Fair Zurov got into an argument over cards with a merchant, Svyshchov, and threw that bearded gentleman out of a window. From the second floor. The merchant was badly smashed up and couldn’t speak for a month—he could only mumble. But nothing happened to the count. He squirmed his way out of it. He has influential relatives in high places. What are these?” asked Ivan Brilling, as usual without any transition as he placed a deck of playing cards on the desk.
“Cards,” Fandorin answered in surprise.
“Do you play?”
“I don’t play at all. Papa forbade me even to touch cards. He said he’d already played enough for himself and me, and for the next three generations of Fandorins.”
“A pity,” said Brilling, concerned. “Without that you’ll get nowhere at Zurov’s. All right, take a piece of paper and make notes.”
A quarter of an hour later Erast Fandorin could already distinguish the suits without hesitation and he knew which card was higher and which was lower, except that he still confused the picture cards a little. He kept forgetting which
was higher, the queen or the jack.
“You’re hopeless,” his chief summed up. “But that’s nothing to worry about. At the count’s house they don’t play preference and other such intellectual games. The more primitive the better for them—they want as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Our agents report that Zurov prefers stoss, and the simplified version at that. I’ll explain the rules. The one who deals the cards is called the banker. The other player is the punter. Each has his own deck of cards. The punter selects a card from his deck, let’s say a nine. He puts it facedown in front of him.”
“The face—is that the side with the numbers on?” Fandorin inquired.
“Yes. Now the punter places a bet—let’s say, ten rubles. The banker begins dealing. He lays the top card from his deck faceup to the right (that’s called the ‘forehead’) and the next card to the left (that’s called the ‘dreambook’).”
Forehead—R., dreambook—L., Erast Fandorin wrote down diligently in his notepad.
“Now the punter reveals his nine. If the forehead also happens to be a nine, no matter what the suit, then the banker takes the stake. That’s called ‘killing the nine.’ Then the bank, that’s the sum of money that is being played for, increases. If the dreambook turns out to be a nine, then that’s a win for the punter, he’s ‘found the nine.”
“What if there’s no nine in the pair?”
“If there doesn’t happen to be a nine in the first pair, the banker lays out the following pair of cards. And so on until a nine does show up. That’s all there is to the game. Elementary, but you can lose your shirt on it, especially if you’re the punter and you keep doubling up. So get it into your head, Fandorin, that you must only play as the banker. It’s simple: you deal a card to the right, a card to the left; a card to the right, a card to the left. The banker will never lose more than the first stake. Don’t play as the punter, and if you have to because you’ve drawn lots, then set a low stake. In stoss you can’t have more than five rounds, and then the remainder of the bank goes to the banker. Now you can go and collect two hundred rubles from the cashier’s office to cover your losses.”