by Boris Akunin
Erast Petrovich tidied himself up, dressed with the most meticulous possible care and went out for a stroll.
It turned out that while he was lurking in his lair, sucking on his paw, autumn had made itself undisputed master of the city. It had recoloured the trees on the boulevard, washed down the road with rain, lightened the sky to a piercing azure and set ornamental flocks of birds flying southwards across it. For the first time in all these days Fandorin attempted to analyse what had happened.
There are two causes, he told himself, scattering the dry leaves about with his cane. Age – that is one. I decided to inter my feelings too soon. Like Gogol’s Pannochka, they have jumped out of the coffin and frightened me half to death. The strange coincidence – that is two. Erast and Liza, the anniversary year, St Elizaveta’s day, the white arm in the beam of light from the projector. And three is the theatre. Like the exhalations of a swamp, this world clouds the mind and distorts the outlines of all objects. I have been poisoned by this pungent air, it is contraindicated for me.
It was comforting to think and set out a line of logic. Erast Petrovich was feeling better with every minute that passed. And not far from Strastnoy Monastery (he had not even noticed that his stride had carried him all the way round the Boulevard Ring to this spot), a chance encounter occurred that finally set the sick man on the road to recovery.
He was distracted from his thoughts by a crude howl.
‘You boor! You swine! Watch where you’re going!’
The usual story; a cab driver had driven through a puddle close to the pavement and splashed a passer-by from head to foot. The splattered gentleman (Fandorin could only see a narrow back in a pepper-and-salt jacket and a grey bowler hat) broke into a torrent of abuse, jumped up on the running board and started lashing the gargantuan man around the shoulders with his stick.
The driver looked round and must have determined in an instant that the individual before him was a person of no great significance (as everyone knows, cabbies are true psychologists in such matters), and being twice as broad across as his assailant, he snatched the stick out of the other man’s hand and snapped it in two, then grabbed him by the lapel and drew back a massive fist.
Half a century without the slavery of serfdom has blurred the boundaries between the social orders somewhat after all, Erast Petrovich thought distractedly. In 1911 a member of the lowest class no longer allows a gentleman in a hat to inflict punishment on him with impunity.
The gentleman in the hat started jerking about, trying to break free. When he turned his profile towards Fandorin, he turned out to be an acquaintance – Anton Ivanovich Mephistov, the actor who played the roles of villains and mischief-makers. Erast Petrovich decided it was his duty to intervene.
‘Hey, badge 38-12!’ he shouted, running across the street. ‘Keep your hands to yourself! It’s your own fault!’
The ‘psychologist’ required only one glance to see that this was a man who should not be wrangled with. The cabby released Mephistov and expressed the praiseworthy intention of fighting for his rights in a civilised manner.
‘I’ll take him to the magistrates’ court. Oho, fighting with a stick! That’s not in any rules!’
‘Q-quite right,’ Erast Petrovich said approvingly. ‘They’ll fine him for fighting and fine you for his ruined clothes and broken cane. You’ll be even.’
The cabby glanced at Anton Ivanovich’s trousers, figured something out, croaked and lashed at his horse.
‘Hello, Mr Mephistov,’ said Fandorin, greeting the pale-faced ‘villain’.
Mephistov brandished his fist at the receding carriage and exclaimed:
‘The brute! The proletarian! If not for you, I’d have smashed his face to pulp … But anyway, thank you for intervening. Hello.’
He wiped off his clothes with a handkerchief, his bony features shuddering in fury.
‘Mark my words, if Russia is destroyed by anything, it will be exclusively by loutishness! A lout sits on another lout and drives a lout along! Nothing but louts from top to bottom.’
However, he calmed down quite quickly – he was, after all, an actor, a creature with feelings that are tempestuous, but shallow.
‘I haven’t seen you for a long time, Fandorin.’ He looked Erast Petrovich up and down more closely and his sunken eyes glinted with curiosity. ‘My, but you certainly look the worse for wear. You’ve started looking like a human being. You used to be like a picture from a ladies’ magazine. Are you unwell, then? Your Japanese didn’t mention anything.’
‘I was a little unwell. I have almost recovered now.’
Fandorin found this encounter distasteful. He touched his fingers to his top hat, intending to take his leave, but the actor grabbed hold of his sleeve.
‘Have you heard our news? A scandal! Pornography!’ His lizard-like face glowed with happiness. ‘Our great touch-me-not beauty, our Egyptian princess, has utterly disgraced herself. I mean Eliza Altairsky, if you haven’t realised yet.’
But Fandorin had understood him perfectly well. He had also realised that this chance encounter had not come about entirely by accident. He was about to learn something important, and it might possibly accelerate his recovery. However, crude talk about her could not be permitted.
‘Why do you speak so spitefully about Madam Altairsky-Lointaine?’ he asked in a hostile tone.
‘Because I cannot bear beauties and all sorts of prettiness,’ Mephistov explained with great eagerness. ‘A certain ugly writer once spoke some stupid words that are repeated endlessly by all sorts of blockheads: “Beauty will save the world”. Gibberish, sir! It will not save it, but destroy it! This truth is expounded remarkably well in your little play. Genuine beauty does not assault the eye, it is concealed and accessible only to the chosen few. It is invisible to the blockhead and the lout! The first reaction to a powerful, innovative work of art is the fear and revulsion of the crowd. If I had my way, I would mark every pretty-pretty face with a fiery brand, to prevent it glowing with its chocolate-box prettiness! I would replace all the sumptuous palaces with structures of steel and concrete! I would shake all the mouldy old rubbish out of the museums and …’
‘I have no doubt that is precisely what you would do, if you had your way,’ Fandorin interrupted him. ‘But what, after all, has happened to Madam Altairsky-Lointaine?’
Anton Ivanovich started shaking with silent laughter.
‘She was caught with an admirer in a most titillating pose! In her hotel room! With Limbach, the cornet of hussars, the young Adonis. She wearing almost nothing, and her lover was down on his knees, with his head stuck right up under her nightshirt and kissing away for all he was worth. I told you – a pornographic postcard!’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Erast Petrovich said in a strangled voice.
‘I wouldn’t have believed it either. But the hussar didn’t sneak in to see her quietly, on the sly – he demolished half the hotel in his amorous fury. And the indecent scene was witnessed by people who wouldn’t make it up: Stern, Vaska Gullibin and Nonarikin.’
Fandorin’s face must have contorted in pain. In any case Mephistov said:
‘It seems strange now that I used to think of you as a saccharine-sweet pretty face. You have a rather interesting appearance, the face of a Roman patrician from the period of the empire’s decline. Only the moustache is superfluous. If I were you, I’d shave it off.’ Anton Ivanovich indicated his own upper lip as an example. ‘I just decided to stroll to the hotel after the rehearsal, to clear the fumes. Won’t you keep me company? We could drop into the buffet for a drink.’
‘Thank you. I’m busy,’ Erast Petrovich replied through his teeth.
‘And when will you come to see us in the theatre? We’ve made great progress, it would be interesting for you. Really, do come to a rehearsal.’
‘Most definitely.’
The damned ‘troublemaker’ finally left him in peace. Fandorin looked at the pieces of Mephistov’s cane lying on the pavement, then
snapped his own entirely innocent stick of the strongest ironwood in half and snapped the pieces in half again.
He also recalled the idiotic compliment about his appearance. It was Dostoyevsky’s Fyodor Karamazov who had ‘the face of a Roman patrician from the period of the empire’s decline’! And as it happens, the repulsive old erotomaniac was about the same age as me, he thought. And in that very instant his blighted will shuddered and came to life, flooding his entire being with the strength he had been waiting for.
‘With red-hot iron,’ Fandorin declared out loud, and stuck the fragments of the broken stick in his pocket, in order to avoid littering the pavement.
And then he added:
‘Enough of this p-puerility.’
It was fate: a depraved actress, a sprightly cornet and a vicious-tongued ‘villain’ who turned up along his way at just the right moment had mercifully combined forces to return the sick man’s reason and calmness of mind.
It was over.
The world felt free, cool and spacious.
At breakfast the next day Fandorin read the newspapers that had accumulated and for the first time he listened to Masa’s chatter without feeling irritated. The Japanese clearly wanted to tell him about the disgusting incident with the cornet: he began delicately with comments regarding the special moral character of courtesans, geishas and actresses, but Erast Petrovich redirected the conversation to the astounding events in China, where a revolution was beginning and the throne of the Manchurian Qing dynasty had been shaken.
Masa tried to turn the conversation back to the theatre.
‘I shall call in there today. Later on,’ said Fandorin, and the Japanese fell silent, evidently trying to understand the change that had come over his master.
‘You don’t love her any more, master,’ he concluded after a moment’s thought, with his perennial perspicuity.
Erast Petrovich could not resist passing a spiteful comment.
‘No, I don’t. You can feel absolutely free.’
Masa didn’t reply to that. He sighed and started pondering.
Fandorin drove up to Theatre Square at two o’clock, counting on arriving exactly in time for the lunch break in the rehearsal. He was calm and collected.
Madam Lointaine is free to arrange her private life as she sees fit, that is her business. However, the investigation that has been interrupted by my psychological indisposition must be continued. The killer must be found.
Fandorin had barely emerged from his Isotta Fraschini before a nimble little man came scurrying up to him.
‘Sir,’ he whispered, ‘I have a ticket for the premiere of the new Noah’s Ark production. A superb play of oriental life. An original title – Two Comets in a Starless Sky. With quite incredible tumbling tricks and astoundingly frank scenes. The tickets have not reached the box office yet, but I have some. Fifteen roubles in the circle and thirty-five in the orchestra stalls. It will be more expensive later.’
So the title and the subject of the play were no longer a secret, and what was more, the day of the premiere had been set. Well, these matters did not concern Erast Petrovich now. To hell with the play.
As he walked to the entrance, hucksters pestered him again twice. They were doing a brisk trade. And some distance away, in the same spot as last time, the grand marshal of the touts was loitering with his perennial green briefcase under his arm. He kept glancing up at the autumn sky, stamping his shoe with its thick rubber sole on the ground and whistling absent-mindedly, but at the same time he seemed able to survey everything around him. Erast Petrovich caught the gaze of those little eyes boring into him with either curiosity or suspicion. God only knew why he had provoked such a lively reaction from this murky individual with a face of clay. Perhaps he had remembered about the pass for the box? What about it? But then, that was of no importance.
During the time since Fandorin had last been here, certain changes had taken place. A large photograph of the deceased Emeraldov was hanging to the left of the entrance – with a lighted icon lamp and a heap of flowers piled up directly on the pavement. There were two smaller photographs beside it, apparently of hysterical women who had taken their own lives in their inconsolable grief for their idol. An announcement in a flirtatious little mourning frame informed people that there would be an ‘Evening of Tears’ in the small auditorium ‘for a small circle of invited individuals’. Naturally, the prices had been raised.
Erast Petrovich felt a slight stabbing sensation in his heart when he saw the photograph on the other side of the entrance – the leading lady in a kimono, with a takashimada hairstyle. The curt caption read: ‘Mme ALTAIRSKY-LOINTAINE IN HER NEW ROLE AS A JAPANESE GEISHA’. There were flowers lying in front of the famous actress’s portrait too, although not as many.
I did feel a twinge nonetheless, Fandorin noted, and hesitated. Perhaps he should put off his visit until tomorrow? Apparently the wound had not yet healed over sufficiently.
A horse cab pulled up behind him and a ringing voice shouted out:
‘Wait!’
There was a jangle of spurs and a clatter of heels and a hand in a yellow glove set a basket of violets in front of the actress’s portrait.
At this point Erast Petrovich felt a more powerful stabbing sensation in his chest. He recognised the cornet whom he had once admitted to the box. Limbach recognised him too.
‘I put some here every day!’ The fresh, youthful face lit up in an ecstatic smile. ‘I consider it my duty. Have you brought flowers too? Don’t you recognise me? We were at Poor Liza together.’
Erast Petrovich turned away without speaking and walked off to one side, indignant at the furious pounding of his heart.
Sick, I’m still sick …
He had to wait a little and take himself in hand. Fortunately he was standing right in front of the announcement of the new production.
Just a theatre-lover, studying a poster. Nothing special.
TWO COMETS IN A STARLESS SKY
A play of Japanese life
The letters attempted to look like hieroglyphs. The artist had drawn some stupid little figures in a style that was more Chinese than Japanese. And for some incomprehensible reason the whole composition was crowned by a branch of sakura, although it was a blossoming apple tree that was mentioned in the play. But that didn’t matter. The most important thing was that the condition he set had not been broken: where the author’s name should have been, there were only the initials ‘E.F.’
I need to forget about this shameful episode as soon as possible, thought Fandorin. And in his own mind he prayed to the Russian and the Japanese gods and the muse Melpomene for the play to be a resounding failure, so that it would be excluded from the repertoire and expunged for ever from the annals of theatrical art.
Without even wishing to, every now and then Erast Petrovich squinted sideways at his fortunate rival. He felt furious and the humiliation of it tormented him, but the urge was too strong.
The boy still didn’t go away – the man with the briefcase moved closer to him and they started talking about something. The conversation gradually grew more animated. In fact, the leader of the ticket touts behaved calmly and didn’t raise his voice, and it was the cornet who did most of the shouting. Fragments of phrases reached Fandorin’s ears.
‘This is monstrous! You can’t dare to do that! I’m an officer of His Majesty’s guard!’
And then there was a phrase that sounded very strange, coming from ‘an officer of His Majesty’s guard’.
‘You and your Tsar can both go to hell!’
The man with the briefcase whistled again, not mockingly this time, but menacingly, and said something else in a quiet, insistent voice.
‘I’ll pay everything back! Soon!’ Limbach exclaimed. ‘On the word of a gentleman!’
‘You’ve given the word of a gentleman before!’ the other man finally exploded. ‘Either cough up the money, or …’
The tout-in-chief grabbed the cornet crudely by the shoulder
, and his hand was clearly not a light one – the youth’s knees even buckled slightly.
What a pity that she cannot see her lover grovelling to his creditor, Fandorin thought in a malicious impulse that was unworthy of a noble man. In my time an officer of the hussars didn’t behave like a stray puppy dog. He would have challenged him to pistols at five paces, and that would have been the end of it.
However, Limbach found a different way out of the scandalous situation. He shoved his assailant in the chest, took a run up, jumped into the horse cab and yelled:
‘Drive! Drive!’
The shove sent the creditor’s hat flying off his head and the briefcase fell out from under his arm. The lock came open and papers slid out onto the pavement, including a yellow cardboard folder that seemed familiar to Fandorin.
He took several steps forward to take a better look at it. He was right: Stern had handed out the parts to his actors in similar folders. Erast Petrovich’s keen glance made out the words printed in large capitals: ‘TWO COMETS …’
Rapidly stuffing the papers back into his briefcase, the whistling enthusiast scowled at Fandorin.
‘What are you doing always hanging around here, trying to sniff everything out, Nat Pinkerton?’
Now this was interesting.
‘So you kn-know me?’ Erast Petrovich asked, standing over the ruffian, who was squatting down on his haunches.
‘That’s the job – knowing everything.’ The other man stood up and turned out to be half a head taller than Fandorin. ‘What interests keep you hanging about here, Monsieur Sleuth? Professional matters, or perhaps affairs of the heart?’
These impudent words were accustomed by winking and derisive whistling.
Fandorin was in a foul mood today, and his nerves were not in good order. So he behaved in a manner that was less than absolutely worthy. Normally he considered it impossible to touch a gentleman of this type with his hands unless there was some urgent necessity to do so, but this time he broke his own prohibition. He took hold of a button on the man’s jacket between two fingers, tugged gently – and the button was left in his hand. He did the same with the other three buttons. Then he stuck them in the ruffian’s breast pocket.