by Boris Akunin
Erast Fandorin remembered the night before last. He had been so afraid of losing sight of Morbid that he had not given a thought to looking behind him, but now it appeared that the shadower had been shadowed.
“When you climbed in through her window, a volcano started bubbling up inside me,” Hippolyte continued. “I bit my hand until it bled. Here, look.” He thrust his strong, well-proportioned hand under Fandorin’s nose, and indeed, there between the thumb and the forefinger was the perfect half-moon mark of a bite. “That’s it, I said to myself, now three souls will go flying off at once—one to heaven (I meant you) and two straight to hell…You dithered a little bit by the window until you summoned up enough impudence to climb in. My last hope then was that she might throw you out. She doesn’t like being taken unawares like that—prefers to order everyone else around herself. I wait, and I’m shaking in my boots. Suddenly the light goes out, there’s a shot, and she screams! Oh, I think, Fandorin’s shot her, the hothead. Landed himself in a fine mess, a fine pickle! And then suddenly, brother Fandorin, I felt so miserable, as if I were completely alone in the whole wide world and there was no point in going on living…I knew she would come to a bad end, I wanted to do away with her myself, but even so…You saw me, didn’t you, when you went running past? But I was frozen, just as if I were paralyzed. I didn’t even call out to you. It was as if I were surrounded by a haze…Then very queer things started happening, every one queerer than the last. First of all, it became clear that Amalia was alive. You must have shot wide in the darkness. She was howling and cursing the servants so loudly that the walls shook. She was giving some orders or other in English. The lackeys were running around in circles, poking about in the garden. I hopped into the bushes and lay low. My head was full of the most terrible muddle. I felt like the dummy in a game of preference. Everybody’s making their bids, and I’m just sitting there with the discards. Oh no, I think, you’ve got the wrong man. Zurov’s never been anybody’s duffer. There’s a little boarded-up hut in the garden, about the size of two dog kennels. I rip the plank off it and hide inside. It’s not the first time I’ve had to do that kind of thing. I observed events, kept a sharp eye out, pricked up my ears. A satyr lying in wait for Psyche. And meanwhile they’re kicking up a real rumpus! Just like at corps HQ before an imperial inspection. The servants come dashing out of the house, then dash back in again. Amalia shouts something every now and then. There are postmen bringing telegrams. I can’t make sense of it all—what kind of rumpus has my Erasmus started in there? He seems such a well-mannered young man, too. What did you do to her, eh? Did you spot a lily on her shoulder, or what? She hasn’t got any lily, not on her shoulder or anywhere else. Well, tell me. Don’t tease.”
Erast Fandorin merely gave an impatient wave of his hand, as if to say, get on with it, I have no time for such nonsense.
“Well, anyway, you stirred up an anthill. Your dead man”—Zurov nodded in the direction of the river where Porfirii Martynovich Pyzhov had found his final resting place—“came calling twice. The second time it was almost evening already.”
“You mean to say you sat there all night and all day?” Fandorin gasped. “With no food or drink?”
“Well, I can go without food for a long time, just as long as there’s drink. And there was.” Zurov slapped his hand against his flask. “Of course, I had to introduce rationing. Two sips an hour. It’s hard, but I put up with worse during the siege of Mahram—I’ll tell you about that later. To stretch my legs I got out and went to check the horse a couple of times. I’d tied her to the fence in a nearby park. I pulled her some grass and spoke to her a bit so she wouldn’t get too lonely, and then went back to the hut. Back at home people would have led off an unguarded filly like that in an instant, but the people here are a bit slow on the uptake. It never occurred to them. In the evening my dun filly came in very handy. When the dead man drove up”—Zurov nodded in the direction of the river again—“for the second time, your enemies began gathering to launch their campaign. Imagine the scene. Amalia at the head in her coach like a genuine Bonaparte, with two sturdy fellows on the box. The dead man following her in a droshky. Then a pair of servants in a carriage. And a little distance behind, concealed in the black of night there am I on my dun filly, like Denis Davidov*—just four towels moving to and fro in the dark.” Hippolyte gave a short laugh and shot a brief glance at the red strip of dawn that already lay along the river. “They drove into some dismal dump, just like the Ligovka slums: lousy little houses, warehouses, and mud. The dead man climbed into Amalia’s coach—obviously in order to hold a council of war. I tethered my filly in a gateway and watched to see what would happen next. The dead man went into a house with some kind of signboard and stayed there about half an hour. Then the climate began to deteriorate, cannonades in the sky, rain lashing down. I’m soaked, but I wait—I’m curious. The dead man appeared again and hopped up into Amalia’s coach. They’re probably holding another consultation. But the water’s pouring down my neck and my flask’s getting empty. I wanted to give them Christ appearing to the multitude, scatter the whole rotten gang of them and demand an explanation from Amalia, but suddenly the door of the coach opened and I saw such an ungodly sight…”
“A ghost?” asked Fandorin. “Glowing?”
“Precisely. Brrr. It made me shiver. I didn’t realize straightaway that it was Amalia. That made me feel curious again. She behaved strangely. First she went into the same door, then she disappeared in the next gateway, then she flitted back in the door again. Her servants followed her. A little while after that they led out a sack walking on legs. It was only later that I realized they’d nabbed you. At the time I was puzzled. After that, their army divided up: Amalia and the dead man got into the coach, the droshky followed them, and the servants with the sack—with you, that is—drove off in the opposite direction. All right, I think, the sack’s no business of mine. I have to save Amalia—she’s got herself mixed up in some dirty business or other. I ride after the carriage and the droshky, my hooves making a gentle clippety-clop, clippety-clop. They hadn’t gone very far before they stopped. I dismounted and held the dun by the muzzle, so she wouldn’t whinny. The dead man climbed out of the coach and said (it was a quiet night, you could hear things from a long way off): “Oh no, my sweetheart, I’d better go and check. I have an uneasy feeling somehow. This youth of ours is a bit too sharp altogether. If you should need me, you know where to find me.” At first I felt indignant: what kind of ‘sweetheart’ is she to you, you dratted old rogue? And then it dawned on me. Could they possibly be talking about Erasmus?” Hippolyte shook his head, clearly proud of his own shrewdness. “Well, after that it’s simple. The driver from the droshky moved across to the box of the coach. I followed the dead man. I was standing way over there behind that corner, trying to understand what you’d done to rile him. But the two of you were talking so quietly I couldn’t hear a damned thing. I hadn’t been thinking of shooting, and it was a bit dark for a good shot, but he would have killed you for sure—I could see that from his back. I have a good eye for such things, brother. What a shot! Now tell me Zurov wastes his time making holes in five-kopeck pieces! From forty paces straight into the back of the head, and you have to take the poor light into account.”
“Let us assume it wasn’t forty,” Erast Fandorin said absentmindedly, thinking of something else.
“How so not forty?” Hippolyte said, growing excited. “You try counting it!” And he actually started pacing out the distance (the paces were perhaps a little on the short side), but Fandorin stopped him.
“Where are you going to go now?”
Zurov was amazed. “How d’you mean, where? I’ll get you back into decent shape, you’ll explain to me properly what all this hullabaloo of yours is about, we’ll have some breakfast, and then I’m going to see Amalia. I’ll shoot the slippery serpent, to hell with her. Or I’ll carry her off somewhere. Just you tell me, are we two allies or rivals?”
“I’l
l tell you how things are,” said Erast Fandorin, rubbing his eyes wearily. “There’s no need to help me—that’s one. I’m not going to explain anything to you—that’s two. Shooting Amalia is a good idea, but just make sure they don’t shoot you instead—that’s three. And I am no rival of yours, she turns my stomach—that’s four.”
“I expect it would be best to shoot her after all,” Zurov said thoughtfully in reply to that. “Good-bye, Erasmus. God willing, we’ll meet again.”
AFTER THE SHOCKS and upheavals of the night, for all its intensity Erast Fandorin’s day turned out strangely disjointed, as if it were composed of separate fragments poorly connected with one another. It seemed as if Fandorin was thinking and taking meaningful decisions, even putting them into action, and yet all of this was taking place in isolation, outside the general scenario. The last day of June was preserved in our hero’s memory as a sequence of vivid isolated pictures suspended against an empty void.
MORNING ON THE BANKS of the Thames in the dockland district. The weather is calm and sunny, the air fresh after the thunderstorm. Erast Fandorin sits on the tin roof of a squat warehouse, clad only in his undergarments. Laid out beside him are his wet clothes and his boots. The top of one of the boots is torn. His open passport and banknotes are drying in the sun. The thoughts of the escapee from a watery grave grow confused and wander but always return to the main channel.
They think that I’m dead, but I’m alive—that’s one. They think that nobody else knows about them, but I know—that’s two. The attaché case is lost—that’s three. Nobody will believe me—that’s four. They’ll put me in a madhouse—that’s five…
No, from the beginning. They don’t know that I am alive—that’s one. They’re no longer looking for me—that’s two. It will take time for them to miss Pyzhov—that’s three. Now I can pay a visit to the embassy and send a coded message to the chief—that’s four…
No, I can’t go to the embassy. What if Pyzhov is not the only Judas there? Amalia will find out and then everything will start all over again. I must not tell anyone at all about this whole business. Except the chief. And a telegram is no good for that. He’ll think Fandorin’s impressions of Europe have driven him crazy. Shall I send a letter to Moscow? I could do that, but it will get there too late.
What shall I do? What shall I do?
Today is the last day of June by the local calendar. Today Amalia will draw a line under the bookkeeping for June and the envelope will go off to Nicholas Croog in St. Petersburg. The first to die will be the full state counselor, a distinguished man, with children. He is there somewhere in St. Petersburg’, they will find him and dispose of him in a moment. It is rather stupid of them to write from St. Petersburg to London in order to get an answer back to St. Petersburg. One of the penalties of conspiratorial secrecy. Obviously the branches of the secret organisation do not know where the head quarters is located. Or perhaps the headquarters shifts from country to country? Today it is in St. Petersburg, but in a month’s time it will be somewhere else? Or perhaps there is no HQ, just a single individual? Who, Croog? That would be too simple, but Croog has to be arrested with the envelope.
How can I stop that envelope?
I can’t. It’s impossible.
Stop! I can’t stop it, but I can overtake it! How many days does the post take to reach St. Petersburg?
THE NEXT ACT is played out a few hours later, in the office of the East Central postal district of the City of London. The director is feeling flattered—Fandorin has introduced himself as a Russian prince—and he calls his visitor ‘Prince’ and ‘Your Highness,’ enunciating the title with undisguised relish. Erast Fandorin is wearing an elegant morning coat and carrying a cane, an accessory without which any real prince is quite inconceivable.
“I very much regret, Prince, that your wager will be lost,” the postal director explains for the third time to the slow-witted Russian. “Your country is a member of the International Postal Union which was founded the year before last, uniting twenty-two states with a total population of more than three hundred and fifty million. Standard regulations and rates are in effect across this entire area. If the letter was sent from London today, the thirtieth of June, for urgent delivery, then you cannot overtake it—in exactly six days’ time, on the morning of the sixth of July, it will arrive at the post office in St. Petersburg. Well, not on the sixth, of course, but whatever the date would be by your calendar.”
“Why will it be there, but I won’t?” the ‘prince’ asks, failing entirely to grasp the situation.
The director explains with an air of grave seriousness. “You see, Your Highness, packages with an ‘urgent’ stamp are delivered without a single minute of delay. Let us suppose that you board the same train at Waterloo station on which an urgent letter has been dispatched. You board the same ferry at Dover. And you also arrive at the Gare du Nord in Paris at the same time.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“The problem,” the director says triumphantly, “is that there is nothing faster than the urgent post! You have arrived in Paris, and you have to change to a train going to Berlin. You have to buy a ticket—since, after all, you have not booked one in advance. You have to find a cab and travel all the way across the city center to a different station. You have to wait for the Berlin train, which departs once a day. Now, let us return to our urgent letter. From the Gare du Nord it travels by special postal handcar around the circular railway line and is delivered to the first train traveling in an easterly direction. It may not even be a passenger train but a freight train with a postal wagon.”
“But then I can do the very same!” Erast Fandorin exclaims excitedly.
The reply of the patriot of the postal service is strict. “Perhaps in Russia such a thing might be feasible, but not in Europe. Hmm, let us suppose it is possible to suborn a Frenchman, but at your change of trains in Berlin all your efforts will come to nothing—the postal and railway workers in Germany are famous for their incorruptibility.”
“Can everything really be lost?” the despairing Erast Fandorin exclaims in Russian.
“I beg your pardon?”
“So you believe that I have lost my wager?” the ‘prince’ asks dejectedly, switching back into English.
“At what time was the letter sent? But it really doesn’t matter. Even if you dash straight to the station from here, it is already too late.”
The Englishman’s words produce a quite magical effect on the Russian aristocrat.
“At what time? Why, of course! Today is still June! Morbid will not collect the letters until ten o’clock. While she is copying them out…and encoding them! She can’t send them just like that, in plain Russian! She will definitely encode them—but of course! And that means that the envelope will only go off tomorrow! And it will arrive not on the sixth, but on the seventh! On the twenty-fifth of June by our calendar!”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand a thing, Prince,” says the director, gesturing helplessly with his hands, but Fandorin is no longer in the office. The door has just closed behind him.
A plaintive voice calls after him. “Your Highness, your cane! Oh my, these Russian boyars!”
AND FINALLY, the evening of this arduous day that seems to have been shrouded in fog but has seen such important developments: The waters of the English Channel. The final sunset of June flaunting its outrageous colors above the sea. The ferry The Duke of Gloucester holding course for Dunkirk, with Fandorin posed at the prow like a true Briton, in a cloth cap, checked suit, and Scottish cape. He gazes fixedly ahead, toward the shore of France that is approaching with such agonizing slowness. Not once does Erast Fandorin glance back toward the white cliffs of Dover.
His lips whisper, “Only let her wait until tomorrow to send it. Only let her wait…”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
which narrates events that transpired on the twenty-fifth of June
THE LUSH SUNSHINE OF SUMMER PAINTED golden squares on the f
loor of the operations hall of the Central Post Office in St. Petersburg. As evening drew near, one of them, elongated by this time into an irregular oblong, reached the poste restante window and instantly warmed the counter. The atmosphere became stifling and soporific. A fly droned drowsily, and the attendant sitting at the window was overcome by sudden fatigue—thank goodness his stream of customers was gradually drying up at last. Another half hour and the doors of the post office would be closed; then all he would have to do was hand in his register and he could go home. The attendant—but let us give him his own name, he was Kondratii Kondratievich Shtukin, who in seventeen years of service in the postal department had risen from simple postman to the glorious heights of a formal state rank—Kondratii Shtukin handed over a package from Revel to an elderly Finnish woman with the amusing name of Pyrvu and looked to see whether the Englishman was still sitting there.