by Boris Akunin
And so she had. Not immediately, but she had thought of a way. She had failed to get a job as a nurse in a temporary military infirmary or a field hospital—they refused to take her incomplete midwifery studies into consideration. Nor were female telegraphists being taken on for active army service. Varya had been on the point of succumbing to despair when a letter arrived from Romania: Petya complained that he had not been allowed to join the infantry because of his flat feet and had been retained at headquarters on the staff of the commander-in-chief, the grand duke Nikolai Nikolaievich—because volunteer Yablokov was a mathematician and the army was desperately short of cryptographers.
It would not be too difficult to find some kind of work at general headquarters, Varya had decided, or, if worst came to worst, simply to lose herself in the hurly-burly at the rear, and she had immediately formulated The Plan, of which the first two stages had worked so wonderfully, but the third had culminated in disaster.
Meanwhile, events were moving to a conclusion. The crimson-nosed landlord mumbled something menacing and began waddling toward Varya, wiping his hands on a gray towel and looking, in his red shirt, much like an executioner approaching the block. Her mouth went dry and she felt sick. Perhaps she should pretend to be deaf and dumb?
The dejected type sitting with his back to her rose unhurriedly to his feet, walked over to Varya’s table, and sat down across from her without a word. She saw a pale face, almost boyish despite the graying temples, with cold blue eyes, a thin mustache, and an unsmiling mouth. It was a strange face, quite unlike the faces of the other peasants, although the stranger was dressed in the same way they were—except that his jacket was a little newer and his shirt cleaner.
The blue-eyed stranger did not even glance round at the landlord; he merely waved his hand dismissively and the menacing executioner immediately withdrew behind his counter. Varya, however, felt none the calmer for it. On the contrary, indeed, the most terrifying part was only just about to begin.
She wrinkled her forehead, readying herself for the sound of foreign speech. Better if she didn’t talk but merely nodded or shook her head. Only she mustn’t forget that the Bulgarians did everything in reverse: When you nodded it meant “no,” when you shook your head it meant “yes.”
The blue-eyed man, however, did not ask her any questions. He sighed dejectedly and spoke to her with a slight stammer in perfect Russian: “Ah, m-mademoiselle, you would have done better to wait for your fiancé at home. This is not a novel by Mayne Reid. Things could have t-turned out very badly.”
CHAPTER TWO
In which many
interesting men appear
THE RUSSIAN INVALID (St. Petersburg)
2 (14) July 1877
Following the conclusion of an armistice between the Sublime Porte and Serbia, many patriots of the Slavic cause, valiant knights of the Russian land who served as volunteers under the leadership of the courageous General Chernyaev, have hearkened to the call of the Tsar-Liberator and at the risk of their lives are making their way over wild mountains and through dark forests to the land of Bulgaria, in order to be reunited with the Orthodox Christian forces and crown their sacred feat of arms with the long-awaited victory.
VARYA DID NOT IMMEDIATELY GRASP the meaning of what had been said. Out of inertia she first nodded, then shook her head, and only after that did she open her mouth wide in amazement.
“Don’t be surprised,” the strange peasant said in a dull voice. “The fact that you are a g-girl is immediately obvious—a strand of your hair has crept out from under your cap on that side. That is one.” (Varya furtively tucked the mutinous curl back into place.) “The fact that you are Russian is also obvious: the snub nose, the Great Russian line of the cheekbones, the light brown hair, and most important—the absence of any suntan. That is two. As for your fiancé, that is equally simple: You are p-proceeding on your way surreptitiously, so you must be on private business. And what private business could a young woman of your age possibly have with an army in the field? Only romance. That makes three. Now for number f-four: That mustachioed fellow who brought you in here and then disappeared was your guide? And, of course, your money was hidden among your things? F-foolish. You should keep everything of importance about your p-person. What is your name?”
“Varya Suvorova, Varvara Andreevna Suvorova,” Varya whispered, frightened. “Who are you? Where are you from?”
“Erast Petrovich Fandorin. A Serbian volunteer. I am making my way home from Turkish captivity.”
Thank God! Varya had already decided he must be a hallucination. A Serbian volunteer! From Turkish captivity! Glancing reverentially at his gray temples, she was unable to refrain from asking, and even pointing impolitely with her finger: “Is that because they tortured you there? I’ve read about the horrors of Turkish captivity. And I suppose that’s what caused your stammer, too?”
Erast Fandorin frowned and replied reluctantly. “Nobody tortured me. They plied me with coffee from morning till night and conversed exclusively in French. I lived as a guest with the k-kaimakam of Vidin.”
“With whom?”
“Vidin is a town on the Romanian border. And a kaimakam is a governor. As for the stammer, that is a c-consequence of an old concussion.”
“So you escaped?” she asked enviously. “And you’re on your way to the active army to continue the fight?”
“No, I have done quite enough fighting already.”
Varya’s face must have expressed extreme bewilderment. In any event, the volunteer felt it necessary to elucidate.
“War, Varvara Andreevna, is abominable and disgusting. In war no one is right and no one is wrong. And there are good men and bad on both sides. Only the good are usually k-killed first.”
“Then why did you go to Serbia as a volunteer?” she asked heatedly. “Nobody forced you to, I suppose?”
“Out of egotistical considerations. I was unwell and in need of treatment.”
Varya was astonished.
“Can people be healed by war?”
“Yes. The sight of others’ p-pain makes it easier to bear one’s own. I found myself at the front two weeks before Chernyaev’s army was routed. After that I had more than my fill of wandering through the mountains and shooting. Thank God, I don’t th-think I hit anybody.”
He’s either trying to strike a pose or he’s just a cynic, Varya thought, rather annoyed, and she remarked caustically: “You should have stayed with your kaimakam until the war was over. What point was there in escaping?”
“I did not escape. Yusuf Pasha let me go.”
“Then what on earth brought you to Bulgaria?”
“A certain matter,” Fandorin replied curtly. “Where were you heading yourself?”
“To Tsarevitsy, to the commander in chief’s headquarters. And you?”
“To Bela. Rumor has it that His Majesty’s staff is located there.” The volunteer paused, knitted his narrow eyebrows briefly in displeasure, and sighed. “But I could go to the commander in chief.”
“Really?” Varya exclaimed in delight. “Oh, let’s go together, shall we? I really don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met you.”
“There is really nothing t-to it. You would have ordered the landlord to deliver you into the custody of the nearest Russian unit, and that would have been the end of the matter.”
“Ordered? The landlord of a korchma?” Varya asked fearfully.
“This is not a korchma, but a mehana.”
“Very well, a mehana. But the village is Muslim, surely?”
“It is.”
“Then they would have handed me over to the Turks.”
“I have no wish to offend you, Varvara Andreevna, but you are not of the slightest interest to the Turks, and this way the landlord would m-most certainly have received a reward from your fiancé.”
“I would much rather go with you,” Varya implored him. “Oh, please!”
“I have one old nag, on its last legs. It cannot t
ake two of us. And all the money I have is three kurus. Enough to pay for the wine and cheese, but no more. . . . We need another horse, or at least a mule. And that will require at least a hundred.”
Varya’s new acquaintance paused while he pondered something. He glanced across at the dice players and sighed heavily once again.
“Stay here. I shall be back in a moment.”
He walked slowly over to the gamblers and stood beside their table for five minutes, observing. Then he said something (Varya could not hear it) that made all of them instantly stop throwing the dice and turn toward him. Fandorin pointed to Varya, who squirmed on her chair under the stares directed at her. Then there was a burst of general laughter—quite obviously lewd and insulting to Varya, but it clearly never even entered Fandorin’s head to defend a lady’s honor. Instead he shook the hand of one fat man with a mustache and sat down on the bench. The others made room for him and a knot of curious observers rapidly gathered round the table.
It seemed that the volunteer had ventured a bet. But with what money? Three kurus? He would have to play for a long time to win a horse. Varya began to worry, realizing she had put her trust in a man she didn’t know at all. He looked strange, spoke strangely, acted strangely—but, on the other hand, what choice did she really have?
There was a murmur in the crowd of idle onlookers—the fat man had thrown the dice. Then they clattered once again and the walls shook as the crowd howled in unison.
“T-twelve,” Fandorin announced calmly in Bulgarian and stood up. “Where are my winnings?”
The fat man also leapt to his feet, seized the volunteer by his sleeve, and started speaking rapidly, his eyes bulging wildly.
He kept repeating: “Another round, another round!”
Fandorin waited for him to finish before nodding decisively, but his acquiescence apparently failed to satisfy the loser, who began yelling more loudly than before and waving his arms around. Fandorin nodded again, even more decisively, and then Varya recalled the Bulgarian paradox in which a nod meant “no.”
At this point the loser decided to move from words to actions—he drew his arm well back and all the idle onlookers shied away, but Erast Fandorin didn’t budge, except that his right hand, seemingly inadvertently, slipped rapidly into his pocket. The gesture was almost imperceptible, but its effect on the fat man was magical. He wilted instantly, sobbed, and muttered some plaintive appeal. This time Fandorin shook his head, tossed a couple of coins to the landlord, who had appeared beside him, and set off toward the door. He did not even glance at Varya, but she had no need of an invitation—she was up from her seat and at her rescuer’s side in an instant.
“The second l-last,” said Erast Fandorin, squinting in concentration as he halted on the porch.
Varya followed the direction of his gaze and saw a long row of horses, mules, and donkeys standing along the hitching rail, calmly munching hay.
“There he is, your B-Bucephalus,” said the volunteer, pointing at a small brown donkey. “Not much to look at, but then there’s not so far to fall.”
“You mean you won it?” Varya asked in sudden realization.
Fandorin nodded without speaking as he unhitched a mangy gray mare.
He helped his traveling companion into the wooden saddle of the donkey, leapt up on to his own gray with considerable agility, and they rode out onto a country road brightly illuminated by the midday sun.
“Is it far to Tsarevitsy?” Varya asked, jolting in time to the short steps of her fluffy-eared mount.
“If we do not g-go astray, we shall reach it by nightfall,” the horseman replied grandly from above her.
He had become totally Turkified in captivity, Varya thought angrily. He could at least have seated the lady on the horse. Typical male narcissism! A preening peacock! A vain drake, interested in nothing but flaunting himself before the dull gray duck. I already look like God only knows what, and now I have to play Sancho Panza to the Knight of the Mournful Visage.
“What have you got in your pocket?” she asked, remembering. “A pistol, is it?”
Fandorin was surprised.
“In what pocket? Ah, in my p-pocket. Nothing, unfortunately.”
“I see, and what if he had not been frightened?”
“I would not have sat down to play with someone who would not be frightened.”
“But how could you win a donkey with a single throw?” Varya asked inquisitively. “Surely that man didn’t bet his donkey against three kurus?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what did you bet?”
“You,” Fandorin replied imperturbably. “A girl for a donkey—now that is a worthwhile wager. I beg your gracious forgiveness, Varvara Andreevna, but there was no alternative.”
“Forgiveness!” Varya swayed so wildly in the saddle that she almost slipped over to one side. “What if you had lost?”
“Varvara Andreevna, I happen to possess one unusual quality. I absolutely detest games of chance, but whenever I do happen to play, I am sure to win without fail. Les caprices de la f-fortune! I even won my freedom from the pasha of Vidin at backgammon.”
Not knowing what reply to make to such a flippant declaration, Varya chose to be mortally offended, and therefore they rode on in silence. The barbarous saddle, a veritable instrument of torture, caused her a host of discomforts, but she endured them all, from time to time shifting her center of gravity.
“Is it too hard?” Fandorin asked. “Would you like to place my jacket under you?”
Varya did not reply because, in the first place, his suggestion seemed to her not entirely proper and, in the second place, it was a point of principle.
The road wound on for a long time between low wooded hills, then descended to a plain. In all this time the travelers encountered no one, and Varya was beginning to feel alarmed. Several times she stole a sideways glance at Fandorin, but the oaf remained absolutely imperturbable and made no further attempt to strike up a conversation.
Wouldn’t she cut a fine figure, though, appearing in Tsarevitsy in an outfit like this? It wouldn’t matter to Petya, she supposed—she could dress in sack cloth as far as he was concerned. He wouldn’t notice, but there would be the headquarters staff, society people. If she turned up looking like a scarecrow. . . . Varya tore her cap off her head, ran her hand through her hair, and felt really depressed. Not that her hair was anything special in any case—it was that dull, mousy color called light brown, and her disguise had left it all tangled and matted. It had last been washed over two days ago in Bucharest. No, she had better wear the cap. A Bulgarian peasant’s outfit wasn’t so bad after all; it was practical and even striking in its own way. The chalvars were actually rather like the famous bloomers English suffragettes used to wear in their rebellion against those absurd and humiliating drawers and petticoats. If only she could draw them in round the waist with a broad scarlet sash, like in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (she and Petya had seen it last autumn at the Mariinsky Theater), they’d actually be rather picturesque.
Suddenly Varvara Suvorova’s musings were interrupted in a most unceremonious fashion. The volunteer leaned over and seized the donkey’s bridle, the dumb animal came to an abrupt halt, and Varya was almost sent flying over its long-eared head.
“What’s wrong with you, have you gone mad?”
“Whatever happens now, do not say a word,” Fandorin said in a quiet and very serious voice, gazing forward along the road.
Varya raised her head and saw an amorphous throng galloping toward them, enveloped in a cloud of dust—a group of riders, probably about twenty men. She could see their shaggy caps and the bright spots of sunlight glinting on their cartridge belts, harnesses, and weapons. One of the horsemen was riding ahead of the rest and Varya could make out a scrap of green cloth wound around his tall fur hat.
“Who are they, Bashi-Bazouks?” Varya asked in a low, tremulous voice. “What will happen now? Are we done for? Will they kill us?”
He had completely stopped stammering, which alarmed Varya greatly.
Erast Fandorin took the donkey by the bridle once again and moved over to the edge of the road, then he tugged Varya’s hat right down over her eyes and whispered: “Keep your eyes on the ground and don’t make a sound.”
However, she was unable to resist darting a furtive glance at these famous cutthroats about whom all the newspapers had been writing for more than a year.
The one riding ahead (probably the bek), with the ginger beard, was wearing a tattered and dirty quilted beshmet, but his weapons were silver. He rode past without so much as a glance at the wretched pair of peasants, but his gang proved less standoffish. Several of the riders halted beside Varya and Fandorin, talking among themselves in guttural voices. The Bashi-Bazouks wore expressions that made Varvara Andreevna want to squeeze her eyes tightly shut—she had never suspected that people could have such horrible masks for faces. Then, suddenly, in among these nightmarish visages she caught a glimpse of an entirely normal human face. It was pale, with one eye swollen and bruised, but the second brown eye was staring directly at her with an expression of mortal anguish.