The Diamond Chariot

by Boris Akunin

  The red one halted almost immediately with the 4 upwards, but the blue one clattered on to the very edge of the rice-straw mats.

  ‘Evens!’ thought Tanuki, and the next moment the dice stopped with the 2 upwards. Just as he thought! But if he’d placed a bet, the detestable little cube would have landed on 1 or 3. It had taken a dislike to Tanuki – that had been proved time and time again.

  Three players received their winnings and four reached into their pockets to get out new coins. Not a single word, not a single exclamation. The rules of the ancient noble game prescribed absolute silence.

  The hunchbacked host gestured to the waitress to pour sake for the players. The girl squatted down beside each one of them and filled their beakers. She squinted quickly at Semushi, saw that he was not looking, and quickly crawled across on her knees to Tanuki and poured some for him, although she was not supposed to.

  Naturally, he did not thank her, and even deliberately turned his back. You had to be strict with women, unapproachable, that roused their spirit. If only the rolling dice could be managed that easily!

  At the age of eighteen, Tanuki already knew that not many women could refuse him. That is, of course, you had to be able to sense whether a woman could be yours or not. Tanuki could sense this very clearly, it was a gift he had. If there was no chance, he didn’t even look at a woman. Why waste the time? But if – from a glance or the very slightest movement, or a smell – he could tell that there was a chance, Tanuki acted confidently and without any unnecessary fuss. The main thing was that he knew he was a good-looking man, he was handsome and knew how to inspire love.

  Then what could he want, one might wonder, with this skinny servant girl? After all, he wasn’t hanging about here for his own amusement, he was on an important job. A matter of life and death, you might say, but still he hadn’t been able to refrain. The moment he saw the girl, he realised straight away that she was his kind, and without even pausing to think, he had applied all his skill in the way he acted with her: he put on a haughty face with a sultry expression in his eyes. When she came closer, he turned away; when she was at a distance, he kept his eyes fixed on her. Women notice that straight away. She had already tried to talk to him several times, but Tanuki maintained his mysterious silence. On no account must he open his own mouth too early.

  It wasn’t so much that he was amused by the game with the servant girl – it was more that it helped to relieve the boredom of waiting. And then again, free sake was no bad thing either.

  He had been hanging about in Semushi’s dive since yesterday morning. He had already blown almost all the money he had been given by Gonza, even though he only placed a bet every one and a half hours at the most. The accursed blue die had gobbled up all his coins, and now he only had two left: a small gold one and a large silver one, with a dragon.

  Since yesterday morning he had neither eaten nor slept, only drunk sake. His belly ached. But his hara could endure it. Far worse was the fact that his head had started to spin – either from the cold or the sweetish smoke that came drifting from the corner where the opium smokers were lying and sitting: three Chinese, a red-haired sailor with his eyes closed and his mouth blissfully open, two rikshas.

  Foreigners – akuma take them, let them all croak, but he felt sorry for the rikshas. They were both former samurai, that was obvious straight away. Their kind found it hardest of all to adapt to a new life. These were changed times, the samurai weren’t paid pensions any more – let them work, like everyone else. Only what if you didn’t know how to do anything except wave a sword about? But they’d even taken away the poor devils’ swords …

  Tanuki guessed again – this time it would be ‘odds’, and it was! Two and 5!

  But the moment he put up the silver yen, the dice betrayed him again. As usual, the red one settled first, on a 5. How he implored the blue one: give me odds, give me odds! And of course, it rolled over into a 3. His last coin but one had gone for nothing.

  Snuffling in his fury, Tanuki put down his beaker, so that the servant could splash some sake into it, but this time the mischievous girl poured some for everyone except him – she was probably offended because he wasn’t looking at her.

  It was stuffy in the room, the players were sitting there naked to the waist, wafting themselves with fans. If only he had a snake tattoo on his shoulder. Maybe not with three rings, like Obake’s, and not five, like Gonza’s – just one would do. Then the rotten girl would look at him differently. But never mind, if he carried out his assignment diligently, Gonza had promised him not only a fiery-red snake on his right shoulder, but even a chrysanthemum on each knee!

  The very reason that Tanuki had been entrusted with this important mission was that he did not have a single decoration on his skin. He had not had any chance to earn them. But the hunchback would not have let in anyone with tattoos. That was why Fudo and Gundari had been put on the door, to prevent any Yakuza from other clans getting in. Fudo and Gundari told customers to roll up their sleeves and inspected their backs and chests. If they saw decorated skin, they threw the man out straight away.

  Semushi was cautious, it was not easy to reach him. His ‘Rakuen’ gambling den had a double door: they let you in one at a time, then the first door was locked with some cunning kind of mechanism; on guard behind the inner door were Fudo and Gundari, two guards named in honour of the redoubtable buddhas who guarded the Gates of Heaven. The heavenly buddhas were truly terrible – with goggling eyes and tongues of flame instead of hair, but this pair were even worse. They were Okinawans, skilled in the art of killing with their bare hands.

  There were another four guards in the hall as well, but there was no point in even thinking about them. Tanuki’s assignment was clear, he just had to let his own people in, and after that they would manage without him.

  Bold Gonza had been given his nickname in honour of Gonza the Spear-Bearer from the famous puppet play – he was a really great fighter with a bamboo stick. Dankichi certainly deserved his nickname of Kusari, or ‘Chain’, too. He could knock the neck off a glass bottle with his chain, and the bottle wouldn’t even wobble. Then there was Obake the Phantom, a master of the nunchaku, and Ryu the Dragon, a former sumotori who weighed fifty kamme1 – he didn’t need any weapon at all.

  Tanuki didn’t have anything with him either. First, they wouldn’t have let him in with a weapon. And secondly, he could do a lot with his hands and feet. He only looked inoffensive – short and round like a little badger (hence his nickname).2 And anyway, since the age of eight, he had practised the glorious art of jujitsu, to which, in time, he had added the Okinawan skill of fighting with the feet and legs. He could beat anyone – except, of course, for Ryu; not even a gaijin’s steam kuruma could shift him from the spot.

  The plan thought up by the cunning Gonza had seemed quite simple at first.

  Walk into the gambling den as if he wanted to play a bit. Wait until Fudo or Gundari, it didn’t matter which, left his post to answer a call of nature or for some other reason. Then go flying at the one who was still at the door, catch him with a good blow, open the bolt, give the prearranged shout and avoid getting killed in the few seconds before Gonza and the others came bursting in.

  It was a rare thing for a novice to be given a first assignment that was so complicated and so responsible. In the normal way of things, Badger should have remained a novice for at least another three or four years, he was much too young for a fully fledged warrior. But the way things were nowadays, sticking to the old customs had become impossible. Fortune had turned her face away from the Chobei-gumi, the oldest and most glorious of all the Japanese gangs.

  Who had not heard of the founder of the gang, the great Chobei, leader of the bandits of Edo, who defended the citizens against the depredations of the samurai? The life and death of the noble Yakuza were described in kabuki plays and depicted in Ukio-e engravings. The perfidious samurai Mizuno lured the hero, unarmed and alone, into his house by deception. But the Yakuza mad
e short work of the entire band of his enemies with his bare hands, leaving only the base Mizuno alive. And he told him: ‘If I escaped alive from your trap, people would think that Chobei was too afraid for his own life. Kill me, here is my chest’. And with a hand trembling in fear Mizuno impaled Chobei on his spear. How could you possibly imagine a more exalted death?

  Tanuki’s grandfather and his father had belonged to the Chobei-gumi. Since his early childhood, he had dreamed of growing up, joining the gang and making a great and respected career in it. First he would be a novice, then a warrior, then he would be promoted to the wakashu, the junior commanders, then to the wakagashira, the senior commanders, and at the age of about forty, if he survived, he would become the oyabun himself, a lord with the power of life and death over fifty valiant men, and they would start writing plays about his great feats for the kabuki theatre and the Bunraku puppet theatre.

  But over the last year the clan had almost been wiped out. The enmity between two branches of the Yakuza lasts for centuries. The Tekiya, to which the Chobei-gumi belonged, were patrons of petty trade: they protected the street vendors and peddlers against the authorities, for which they received the gratitude prescribed by tradition. But the Bakuto made their living from games of chance. Those treacherous bloodsuckers never stayed anywhere for long, they flitted from place to place, leaving ruined families, tears and blood in their wake.

  How well the Chobei-gumi had established themselves in the new city of Yokohama, which was positively seething with trade. But the predatory Bakuto had turned up, bent on seizing another clan’s territory. And how crafty they turned out to be! The hunchbacked owner of the ‘Rakuen’ didn’t act openly, with the two clans meeting in an honest fight and slashing away with their swords until victory is won. Semushi had proved to be a master at setting underhand traps. He informed against the oyabun to the authorities, then challenged the warriors to a battle, and there was a police ambush waiting there. The survivors had been picked off one by one, with ingenious patience. In a few short months the gang had lost nine-tenths of it membership. It was said that the hunchback had patrons in high places, that the top command of the police was actually in his pay – an entirely unprecedented disgrace!

  And that was how it happened that at the age of eighteen, long before the normal time, Tanuki had moved up from the novices to become a fully fledged member of the Chobei-gumi. True, at the present time there were only five warriors left in the clan: the new oyabun Gonza, Dankichi with his chain, Obake with his nunchaku, the man-mountain Ryu and himself, Tanuki.

  That wasn’t enough to keep watch over all the street trade in the city. But it was enough to get even with the hunchback.

  So here was Badger, exhausted by the fatigue and the strain of it all, waiting for the second day for the moment to arrive when there would be only one guard left on the door. He couldn’t deal with two, he knew that very well. And he could only deal with one if he ran at him from behind.

  Fudo and Gundari had gone away – to sleep, to eat, to rest – but the one who left was always immediately replaced by one of the men on duty in the gambling hall. Tanuki had sat there for an hour, ten hours, twenty, thirty – but all in vain.

  Yesterday evening he had gone out for a short while and walked round the corner to where the others were hiding in an old shed. He had explained the reason for the delay.

  Gonza told him: Go and wait. Sooner or later one man will be left on the door. And he gave Tanuki ten yen – to lose.

  In the morning Tanuki had gone out again. His comrades were already tired, of course, but their determination to avenge themselves had not weakened. Gonza gave him another five coins and said: That’s all there is.

  Now it was getting on for evening again, the entrance to the ‘Rakuen’ was still guarded as vigilantly as ever, and on top of everything else, Badger had only one final yen left.

  Surely he wouldn’t have to leave without completing his assignment? Such disgrace! It would be better to die! To throw himself at both terrifying monsters and take his chances!

  Semushi scratched his sweaty chest that was like a round-bellied barrel and jabbed a finger in Tanuki’s direction.

  ‘Hey, kid, have you moved in here to stay? You just keep on sitting there, but you don’t play much. Either play or get lost. Have you got any money?’

  Badger nodded and took out his gold coin.

  ‘Then stake it!’

  Tanuki gulped and put his yen down on the left of the line, where money was staked on ‘odds’. He changed his mind and moved it to ‘evens’. Then he changed his mind again and wanted to move it back, but it was too late. Semushi had raised his hand.

  The dice rattled in the little cup. The red one landed on 2. The blue one rolled round in a semicircle on the straw mats and landed on 3.

  Tanuki bit his lip to stop himself howling in despair. His life was ending, destroyed by a vicious little six-sided cube. Ending in vain, pointlessly.

  Of course, he would try to overpower the guards. Drift quietly towards the door, hanging his head low. He would strike the long-armed Fudo first. If he could hit the mineh point on the chin and put his jaw out of joint, Fudo would lose all interest in fighting. But then he wouldn’t take Gundari by surprise, and that meant that Tanuki’s life would simply be thrown away. He wouldn’t be able to able to open the door, or let Gonza in …

  Badger looked enviously at the smokers. They just carried on sleeping, and nothing mattered a damn to them. If he could just lie there like that, gazing up at the ceiling with a senseless smile, with a thread of saliva dangling out of his mouth and his fingers lazily kneading the fragrant little white ball …

  He sighed and got to his feet decisively.

  Suddenly Gundari opened the little window cut into the door. He glanced out and asked: ‘Who is it?’

  Three people came into the room one after another. The first was a Japanese with a foreign haircut and clothes. He grimaced fastidiously while the guards searched him and didn’t look around. Then a white woman came in, or maybe a girl – you could never tell how old they were, twenty or forty. Terribly ugly: huge big arms and legs, hair a repulsive yellow colour and a nose like a raven’s beak. Tanuki had already seen her here yesterday.

  Gundari searched the yellow-haired woman, while Fudo searched the third of the newcomers, an astoundingly tall, elderly gaijin. He looked round the den curiously: he looked at the players, the smokers, the low counter with the beakers and jugs. If not for his height, the gaijin would have looked like a human being: normal hair – black with venerable grey at the temples.

  But when the longshanks came closer, Tanuki saw that he was a monster too. The gaijin’s eyes were an unnatural colour, the same colour as the abominable die that had ruined unfortunate Badger.

  You do not toss it,

  You are the one who is tossed

  By the die of chance.

  1 A measure of weight equal to 3.75 kilograms

  2 In Japanese, ‘tanuki’ means badger

  THE BLUE DIE LOVES THE GAIJIN

  Things were not good at the house of Captain Blagolepov. And it was not even a matter of the departed lying on the table in his old patched tunic with the copper five-kopeck pieces over his eye-sockets (had he brought them with him from Russia, especially for this occasion?). Everything in this decrepit dwelling was permeated with the smell of poverty and chronic, mildewed misery.

  Erast Petrovich looked round the dark room with a pained air: tattered straw mats on the floor, the only furniture the aforementioned unvarnished table, two rickety chairs, a crooked cupboard and a set of shelves with just one book or, perhaps, an album of some kind. Under the icon in the corner a slim little candle was burning, the kind that were sold in Russia at five for half a kopeck. The most distressing elements were the pitiful attempts to lend this kennel at least some semblance of home comfort: the embroidered doily on the bookcase, the wretched curtains, the lampshade of thick yellow card.

  The spinster Sophia Di
ogenovna Blagolepova was well matched to her dwelling. She spoke in a quiet little voice, almost a whisper, sniffing with her red nose; she was swathed in a faded, colourless shawl and seemed to be on the point of breaking into protracted floods of tears.

  In order to avoid provoking this outpouring of grief, Fandorin comported himself sadly but sternly, as became a vice-consul in the performance of his official responsibilities. The titular counsellor felt terribly sorry for the spinster, but he was afraid of women’s tears and disliked them. Owing to inexperience, his condolences did not turn out very well.

  ‘P-please allow me for my part, that is, on behalf of the state of Russia, which I represent here … That is, of course, not I, but the c-consul …’ Erast Petrovich babbled unintelligibly, stammering more than usual in his agitation.

  When Sophia Diogenovna heard the state mentioned, she gaped at him in fright with her faded blue eyes and bit the edge of her handkerchief. Fandorin lost the thread of his thought and fell silent.

  Fortunately Shirota helped him out. It seemed that this kind of mission was nothing new to the clerk.

  ‘Vsevolod Vitalievich Doronin has asked us to convey to you his profound condolences,’ the clerk said with a ceremonial bow. ‘Mr Vice-Consul will sign the necessary documents and also present you with a financial subsidy.’

  Recollecting himself, Fandorin handed the spinster the five coins from the state and the two from Doronin, to which, blushing slightly, he added another handful of his own.

  This was the correct manoeuvre. Sophia Diogenovna ceased her sobbing, gathered the Mexican silver together in her palm, counted it quickly and also gave a low bow, displaying the plait arranged in a loop on the back of her head.

  ‘Thank you for not leaving a poor orphan without support.’

  Her thick hair was a beautiful golden-wheat colour. Blagolepova could probably have been rather good-looking, if not for her chalky complexion and the expression of stupid fright in her eyes.