The Diamond Chariot

by Boris Akunin

  My God! The harlequinade wasn’t over yet, it was still going on!

  His fury suddenly receded, his convulsively clenched fingers unfolded. His heart was suddenly desolate and dreary.

  Erast Petrovich dropped the cloak on the floor, flung away the cane and leaned wearily against the wall.

  What sort of sickness was love? he wondered. Who was it that tortured a man with it, and for what? That is, it was perfectly possible that for other people it was essential and even beneficial, but this potion was clearly counter-indicated for a certain titular counsellor. Love would bring him nothing but grief and disenchantment, or even, as in the present case, humiliation. Such, apparently, was his fate.

  He shouldn’t go anywhere. What did he want with this alien woman anyway, why did he need her remorse, or fright or annoyance? Would that really make his heart easier?

  Time immediately stopped playing its idiotic tricks, the clock started ticking regularly and calmly. That alone was enough to indicate that the correct decision had been taken.

  Erast Petrovich spent the rest of the day reading The Diary of Sea Captain Golovin Concerning His Adventures as a Prisoner of the Japanese in 1811, 1812 and 1813, but shortly before midnight he suddenly put the book down and set out for Don Tsurumaki’s estate without any preparations at all, apart from putting on a peaked cap.

  Masa did not try to stop his master and did not ask any questions. He watched as the figure on the tricycle rode away at a leisurely pace, stuck his nunchaku into the waistband of his trousers, hung the little bag containing his wooden geta round his neck and trotted off in the direction of the Bluff.

  The huge cast-iron gates opened remarkably easily and almost soundlessly. As he walked towards the pond along the moonlit path, Erast Petrovich squinted in the direction of the house. He saw the telescope pointing up at the sky and a thickset figure in a dressing gown standing with his face glued to the eyepiece. Apparently today Don Tsurumaki was not interested in earthly spectacles, he was admiring the sky. And the stars really were larger and brighter than Fandorin had seen them since his grammar-school days, when he loved to sit in the planetarium and dream of flights to the moon or Mars. How strange to think that that was only four years ago!

  The titular counsellor was certain that he would be the first to arrive at the pavilion and would be sitting there alone in the darkness for a long time, since, no doubt, the sordid science of jojutsu required the enamoured fool to suffer the torments of anticipation. However, the moment he opened the door of the pavilion, Erast Petrovich caught the familiar scent of irises, at which his heart first tried to beat faster, but then submitted to the dictates of reason and reverted to its former rhythm.

  So O-Yumi had come first. Well, so much the better.

  It was quite light in the tiny hallway – the moonlight filtered in through the cracks of the wooden shutters. Fandorin saw paper partitions and two wooden sandals on the floorboards beside the straw mats on the raised platform. Ah yes, the Japanese custom required footwear to be removed before stepping on to the straw mats.

  But Erast Petrovich had no intention of removing his footwear. He crossed his arms and deliberately cleared his throat, although, of course, the ‘mistress of the art’ had already heard that the ‘target’ had arrived.

  The paper partitions slid apart. Standing behind them, holding the two screens, was O-Yumi – with the wide sleeves of a kimono hanging from her arms, which made the woman look like a butterfly. Dramatic, Fandorin thought to himself with a sneer.

  He couldn’t see the courtesan’s face, only her silhouette against a silvery, shimmering background.

  ‘Come in quickly!’ the low, husky voice called to him. ‘It’s so wonderful in here! Look, I’ve opened the window, there’s the pond and the moon. That bandit Tsurumaki knows a thing or two about beauty.’

  But Erast Petrovich didn’t move.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said, taking a step towards him. ‘Come!’

  Her fingers reached out for his face, but they were intercepted by a firm hand in a tight-fitting glove.

  Now he could see her face – unbearably beautiful, even now, when he knew everything.

  No, not everything.

  And Fandorin asked the question for which he had come here.

  ‘Why?’ he demanded in a severe voice. ‘What do you want from me?’

  Of course, a true professional would not have done that. He would have realised that he didn’t have a clue about anything, that he was still playing the part of a halfwit and a simpleton, and little by little he would have figured out the secret of this latter-day Circe who transformed men into swine. And at the same time he would have paid her back in the same coin.

  Erast Petrovich regarded himself as quite a good professional, but to dissemble with a dissembler was disgusting, and it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway – his rebellious heart was beating faster than it should in any case.

  ‘I am not as rich and certainly not as influential as your patron. I do not possess any important secrets. Tell me, what did you want from me?’

  O-Yumi listened to him in silence, without trying to free herself. He was standing on the wooden floor, she on the straw mats, so that their faces were almost on the same level, separated by only a few inches, but it seemed to Fandorin that he could never understand the expression of those long eyes that glittered so moistly.

  ‘Who knows the answer to that question?’ she asked in a quiet voice. ‘Why did I need you, and you me? You simply feel that it cannot be otherwise, and nothing else matters.’

  It was not so much the words that were spoken, but the tone in which they were spoken, which set Fandorin’s fingers trembling. O-Yumi freed one hand, reached out to his face and stroked his cheek gently.

  ‘Don’t ask any questions … And don’t try to understand – it can’t be done anyway. Listen to your heart, it will not deceive you …’

  It will deceive me! Oh yes it will! – the titular counsellor wanted to cry out the words, but he was incautious enough to catch O-Yumi’s eye, and after that he couldn’t look away again.

  ‘Is that what your art prescribes?’ Fandorin asked in a trembling voice, when her hand slid lower, slipping behind his collar and sliding gently across his neck.

  ‘What art? What are you talking about?’

  Her voice had become even lower and huskier. She seemed not to be paying any attention to the meaning of what he said, or to understand very well what she was saying herself.

  ‘Jojutsu!’ – Erast Petrovich shouted out the abhorrent word. ‘I know everything! You pretend to be in love, but all the time you are using jojutsu!’

  There, the accusation had been uttered, now her expression would change and the enchantment would be dispelled!

  ‘Why don’t you say anything. It’s t-true, isn’t it?’

  It was incredible, but she didn’t look even slightly disconcerted.

  ‘What is true?’ O-Yumi murmured in the same sleepy voice, still stroking his skin. ‘No, it’s not true, I’m not pretending … Yes, it is true – I love you according to the laws of jojutsu.’

  The vice-consul recoiled.

  ‘Aha! You admit it!’

  ‘What is bad about that? Do I take money or presents from you? Do I want something from you? I love as I know how to love. I love as I have been taught. And you can be sure that I have been taught well. Jojutsu is the best of all the arts of love. I know, because I have studied the Indian school, and the Chinese school. I will not even speak of the European school – that barbarous nonsense. But even the Chinese and the Indians understand almost nothing about love, they pay too much attention to the flesh …’

  As she spoke, her rapid, light fingers did their work – unbuttoning, stroking, sometimes sinking their nails into the body of the enchanted titular counsellor.

  ‘More jojutsu, is it?’ he murmured, hardly even resisting any more. ‘What do you call it when the victim has rebelled and you have to subdue him once again?
Something picturesque – “Plum Blossom Rain”, “Rampant Tiger”?’

  O-Yumi laughed quietly.

  ‘No, it’s called “Fight Fire with Fire”. The best way to extinguish a powerful flame is with a conflagration. You’ll see, you’ll like it.’

  Erast Petrovich at least had no doubt that she was right about that.

  A long time later, after both fires had fused together and consumed each other, they lay on the terrace, watching the shimmering surface of the pool. The conversation sprang up and then broke off again, because it was equally good to speak and to remain silent.

  ‘There’s one thing I forgot to ask Don,’ said Erast Petrovich, lighting up a cigar. ‘How does a course of jojutsu end? In Europe the lovers live happily ever after. It’s not the same here, I suppose?’

  ‘It isn’t.’ She rose slightly, propping herself up on one elbow. ‘A correctly constructed love does not end with death, but with a subtle finale, so that both parties are left with beautiful memories. We do not allow the feeling to die, we cut it, like a flower. This is slightly painful, but afterwards there is no resentment or bitterness left behind. I like you so much! For you I will think up something especially beautiful, you’ll see.’

  ‘Thank you with all my heart, but please don’t. What’s the hurry?’ said Erast Petrovich, pulling her towards him. ‘The wise old Don told me something very interesting about the stage that is called “The Bow String”.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is time …’ she replied in a voice trembling with passion, and took his hand between the palms of her own hands. ‘Lesson one. I am the bowstring, you are the shaft of the bow, our love is an arrow that we must shoot straight into the centre of the moon … Look at the moon, not at me. When we fire, it will fall and shatter into a thousand fragments …’

  And Fandorin started looking up into the sky, where the lamp of night was shining serenely – the poor wretch was quite unaware of the fate in store for it.

  Throughout the next week Erast Petrovich seemed to exist in two worlds with no connection between them – the world of the sun and the world of the moon. The former was hot, but insipid, almost spectral, since the titular counsellor constantly felt that he wanted to sleep. It was only as evening advanced and the shadows first lengthened and then disappeared altogether that Fandorin started to wake up: first the body, reaching out achingly for the night, and then the mind. The enervated, dreamy state seemed to disappear without trace and somewhere inside him a sweet chiming began, gradually growing stronger, and by the moment when the moon finally rolled out onto the sky, the lovesick titular counsellor was completely ready to immerse himself in the real world of the night.

  In this world everything was beautiful from the very beginning: the whispering flight of the tricycle along the deserted promenade, the metallic grating of the key in the lock of the gates and the rustling of the gravel on the path leading to the pavilion. And then came the most painful and most poignant part of all – would she come or not? Twice O-Yumi did not appear – she had warned him that this was possible, she might not be able to slip out of the house. He sat on the terrace, smoking a cigar, watching the water and listening to the silence. And then the sun peeped out from behind the tops of the trees, and it was time to go back. The titular counsellor walked back to the gates with his head lowered, but the bitterness of the tryst that never happened held a charm all of its own – it meant that the next meeting would be doubly sweet.

  But if Fandorin’s sharp hearing caught the squeak of the garden gate, and the sound of light footsteps, the world changed instantly. The stars blazed more brightly, but the moon shrank, already aware that it was to fall to earth again and again, shattering into sparkling dust.

  There were no words for what happened in those night hours, there could not be any – at least not in any of the languages known to Erast Petrovich. And it was not simply that European speech either falls silent or lapses into crudity when it has to talk of the merging of two bodies. No, this was something different.

  When they made love to each other – either greedily and simply, or subtly and unhurriedly – Fandorin’s entire being was possessed by the acute awareness, quite inexpressible in words, that death exists. From his early childhood he had always known that the life of the body was impossible without the life of the soul – this was what faith taught, it was written in a multitude of beautiful books. But now, in the twenty-third year of his life, under a moon that was falling from the sky, it was suddenly revealed to him that the opposite is also true – the soul will not live on without the body. There will not be any resurrection, or angels, or long-awaited encounter with God – there will be something quite different, or perhaps there will not be anything at all, because the soul does not exist without the body, just as light does not exist without darkness, just as the clapping of one hand does not exist. If the body dies, the soul will die too, and death is absolute and final. He felt this with every particle of his flesh, and it made him terribly afraid, but at the same time somehow very calm.

  That was how they loved each other, and there was nothing to add to this.

  Heat that knows no cold,

  Happiness that knows no grief –

  A one-handed clap

  A SPRAY OF ACACIA

  On one occasion O-Yumi left earlier than usual, when there was no moon any longer, but there was still a long time left until dawn. She didn’t give any explanations – she never explained anything anyway: she just said ‘It’s time for me to go’, dressed quickly, ran her finger down his neck in farewell and slipped out into the night.

  Erast Petrovich walked towards the gates along the white path that glowed faintly in the gloom, along the edge of the pond and then across the lawn. As he was walking past the house, he looked up, as he usually did, to see whether his host was on the terrace. Yes, there was the stargazer’s corpulent figure rising up above the balustrade. The Don politely doffed his fez, Fandorin bowed equally politely and went on his way. In the last few days this silent exchange of greetings had become something like a ritual. The jovial man with the beard had proved more tactful than could have been expected after that first conversation. The Japanese must have delicacy in their blood, thought the titular counsellor, who was in that state of relaxed bliss when one wants to love the entire world and see only the good in people.

  Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something strange, an odd, momentary glimmer that should not have been there in a moonless world. Intrigued, Fandorin glanced round at the dark windows of the house and quite clearly saw a spot of light flash across one of the windowpanes, between the curtains, which were not fully closed, and then disappear.

  Erast Petrovich stopped. That stealthy ray was very much like the light of a dark lantern, the kind used by window men, housebreakers and other professionals of a similar ilk. There were housebreakers in Russia and in Europe, why should there not be housebreakers in Japan?

  Or was it simply one of the servants who didn’t want to switch on the electricity, in order not to disturb his master’s nocturnal solitude?

  The servants at the estate were trained to such a supreme level of competence that they were not even visible, and everything needful seemed to do itself. When Fandorin arrived at his beloved pavilion, everything had always been tidied, there were hors d’oeuvres and fresh candles on the low table, and a vase with an intricately arranged bouquet – different every time – standing in the shadowy niche. When he walked back to the gates at dawn, the titular counsellor saw that the pathways had been thoroughly swept, and the grass of the English lawn was freshly trimmed, although he had not heard a single sound from a broom or garden shears. Only once did he actually see one of the servants. On his way out, he realised that he had dropped his key somewhere. He stood there at the locked gates, rifling through his pockets, and was about to go back to the pavilion, when suddenly a figure in a black jacket and black trousers emerged silently from the pink-coloured mist, bowed, handed him the lost key and i
mmediately dissolved into the haze – Fandorin didn’t even have time to thank him.

  Well, if it’s a servant, I’ll just go on my way, the titular counsellor reasoned. But what if it is a thief after all or, even worse, a killer? To save his host from a fiendish criminal plot would be the best possible way to repay him for his hospitality.

  He looked all around – naturally, there was not a soul in sight.

  He walked over quickly to the window and reviewed the situation. The wall was faced with slabs of undressed, rough-textured granite. Erast Petrovich braced the toe of his shoe in a small hollow, grasped the protruding windowsill with one hand, pulled himself up nimbly and pressed his face to the glass – at the point where the curtains were not drawn close together.

  At first he saw absolutely nothing at all – the room was pitch dark. But after about half a minute a trembling circle of light appeared in the far corner and started creeping slowly along the wall, first picking out a shelf with the golden spines of books, then the frame of a portrait, then a map. This was obviously a study or a library.

  Erast Petrovich could not make out the person holding the lantern, but since it was obvious that no servant would behave in such a suspicious manner, the vice-consul readied himself for more decisive action. He pressed cautiously on the left frame of the window – it was locked. But when he pressed the right frame, it yielded slightly. Excellent! Possibly this was the very route the uninvited visitor had used to gain access, or perhaps the window had been left half open to air the room, but that was not important now. The important thing was that this nightbird could be nabbed.

  If only the window frame didn’t creak.

  Fandorin started opening the frame slowly, a quarter of an inch at a time, keeping his eyes fixed on the wandering beam of light.

  It suddenly stopped, pointing at one of the shelves, which did not look remarkable in any way. There was a gentle thud and the beam stopped trembling.