by Boris Akunin
‘Well, since you know who I am, don’t be impertinent with me. I don’t like it. And sew on your buttons, you’re improperly dressed.’
Good grief, a retired state councillor, a respectable man of fifty-five, and I behave like some pugnacious whippersnapper!
He had to give the scalper-in-chief credit. He obviously really had found out something about Fandorin, because he didn’t look for trouble. But there wasn’t even a hint of fear in his spiteful little eyes either. This time the whistle was mockingly respectful.
‘Jupiter is angry. So it’s an affair of the heart. Well, I wish you luck. No more, no more. I’m going to sew on my buttons.’
He tipped his hat and backed away.
This little outburst finally convinced Fandorin that his state of mind had not yet normalised.
Tomorrow, he told himself. I shall be in better form tomorrow.
He got into his automobile and drove away.
THE PREMIERE
The painful operation was carried out the next day, and on the whole it was a success. Only in the very first moment, when she glanced round, looked at the new arrival in the room and threw her hand up to her throat, as if she couldn’t catch her breath, Fandorin’s breath also faltered, but he controlled himself. Everyone dashed to shake his hand and greet him noisily, complaining about his pallor and rebuking ‘Mikhail Erastovich’ for not telling them that his ‘stepfather’ was unwell.
Erast Petrovich said hello to everyone, including even Eliza – politely and distantly. She didn’t look up. The aroma of her hair presented a clear and distinct danger. Catching the dizzying scent of Parma violets, the convalescent moved away quickly.
That’s it, he told himself in relief, it will be easier now.
But it didn’t get any easier. Every encounter, every accidental (and especially non-accidental) clash of glances, and in particular every exchange of even a couple of entirely insignificant words, paralysed his breathing and triggered a twinge in his chest. Fortunately Fandorin attended rehearsals infrequently. Only if the director asked him to come or the investigation required it.
After the embarrassment with Nonarikin and the enforced break of two weeks, he had to start over again almost from scratch and draw up his list of suspects anew.
He had no answer to the most important question: why had someone wanted to poison that fatuous popinjay Emeraldov? And was there any connection between the murder and the snake in the basket?
He had come up with about ten theories – effectively the number of members in the theatre company – but they were all unconvincing and contrived. On the other hand, in this strange world, many things seemed contrived: the actors’ behaviour, their manner of speaking, their relationships, the motivations for their actions. In addition to the ‘internal’ theories (those that were limited to the bounds of the Ark) there was one ‘external’ theory, which was rather more realistic, but a serious effort was required to elaborate it, and Erast Petrovich was not really in a fit state for serious effort. Although he regarded himself as recovered, he was still subject to fits of apathy and his brain was not working as well as usual.
Conducting the investigation in this condition, all on his own, without an assistant, was like rowing with one oar, setting the boat endlessly describing the same circle over and over again. Fandorin was used to discussing the progress of his deductions with Masa, it helped him to systematise and clarify the direction of his thinking. The Japanese often made useful comments, and in this grotesque case his common sense and close knowledge of the possible suspects would certainly have come in very useful.
But one of the proofs that Erast Petrovich was not yet fully recovered was the fact that he still found it hard to tolerate his old friend’s company. Why, oh why, had he spoken those words: ‘You can feel absolutely free’? The damned oriental Casanova had eagerly taken advantage of his permission and now hardly ever left Eliza’s side. It was more than Erast Petrovich could bear to see them rehearsing the passionate love scene. If he happened to be in the auditorium at the time, he immediately got up and left.
Thank God, the Japanese knew nothing about the investigation, or it would have been impossible to get rid of him. At the very beginning, when it was only a matter of the operetta viper in the basket of flowers, Fandorin had not seen any need to involve his assistant in such a frivolous case. And at the initial stage the matter of Emeraldov’s death had not seemed too complicated to him either. And, as we know, before the fiasco of the ‘Fishing with Live Bait’ operation, relations between master and servant were already ruptured – Masa had arrogantly usurped the role that Fandorin wrote for himself.
The days stretched out in this way. The theatre company was in a feverish state ahead of the premiere. Masa came back from rehearsals late in the evening – and invariably discovered that his master had already retired to the bedroom. And Fandorin, hating himself for the feebleness of his thinking, kept going round and round the same circle. He wrote out names and hypothetical motives on a sheet of paper.
‘Mephistov: pathological hatred of beautiful people?
‘Vulpinova: resentment: pathological psychology?
‘Aphrodisina: was she having a secret affair with the murdered man?
‘Reginina: extremely hostile relations with Emeraldov.
‘Stern: a pathological passion for sensationalism.
‘Gullibin: by no means as simple as he seems.’
And so on in the same vein.
Then he angrily crossed it all out: puerile babble! The word ‘pathological’ appeared in the list more frequently than was permissible in criminalistic theory. But then, beyond the slightest doubt, this environment was itself pathological. Stern loved to repeat Shakespeare’s phrase: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’. The actors really were convinced that the whole of life was one big stage, and the stage was the whole of life. Here appearance became immutable reality, the mask was inseparable from the face and dissimulation was the natural norm of behaviour. These people regarded as insignificant those things that constituted the meaning of greatest significance for an ordinary person; and vice versa, they were willing to lay down their lives for things to which everybody else attached no importance …
A few days before the premiere Noah Noaevich called Fandorin in for an urgent consultation. He wanted to know whether the author would object to the main accent of the ending being shifted slightly – from the text to a visual effect. Since in the final scene the heroine was sitting in front of an open jewellery casket, ‘the prop had to be put to work’, for in the theatre there should not be any guns that did not fire. And so Nonarikin had come up with an interesting idea. He spent a long time fiddling about with wires and hanging suspended from the ceiling in a cradle, tinkering with the casket before eventually presenting the fruits of his engineering concept to the director. Stern was ecstatic – the invention was exactly to his taste.
After the phrase with which the author concluded his play, a miracle would occur: two comets consisting of little light bulbs would suddenly blaze up above the hall. Throwing her head back and raising her right hand, to which the attention of the audience would be riveted, with her left hand the heroine would imperceptibly press a little button – and everyone would gasp.
Georges demonstrated his invention. The work had been carried out impeccably, and in the front of the casket, where the audience could not see it, the master craftsman had mounted an electrical panel that showed the time: hours, minutes and even seconds.
‘I was taught that on an electrical combat-engineering course,’ he said proudly. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘But what is the clock in the casket for?’ Eliza asked.
‘Not what is it for, but who is it for. It’s for you, my dear,’ Noah Noaevich told her. ‘So that you won’t drag out the pause. That’s a little fault that you do have. Watch the seconds, don’t get carried away. An excellent idea. Georges! It would be good to have a blinking clock, a
big one, to hang above the stage on the inside. For the actors. We have too many ladies and gentlemen who like to hog the limelight.’
His assistant was nonplussed.
‘Oh no, that’s not what I did it for … I thought that afterwards, when the play’s taken out of the repertoire, Eliza could keep the casket – as a souvenir. A clock is a useful thing … There’s a little wheel here at the side, you can turn it if the clock’s running too slow or too fast. There are lots of wires inside it now, but later on I’ll disconnect them all, and the casket can be used for various cosmetics and such … And it runs off an ordinary electrical adaptor.’
Eliza smiled tenderly at Nonarikin, who was blushing.
‘Thank you, Georges. That’s very sweet of you.’ She looked at Fandorin. ‘You won’t object if the performance ends with a light show, will you? Mr Nonarikin has made such an effort.’
‘Whatever you wish. It’s all the s-same to me.’
Erast Petrovich turned his eyes away. Why was she looking at him imploringly? Surely not because of this little trinket? It must be the usual actress’s affectation – if you have to make a request, then do it with a tear in your eye. And all she wanted to do was encourage the zeal of yet another admirer. After all, she had to be loved by everyone around her – including even ‘all the horses, cats and dogs’.
As far as the finale was concerned, that really was all the same to him. He would have been glad not to come to the premiere – and not at all because of author’s nerves. Erast Petrovich was still hoping that the show would be a resounding flop. If the audience felt even a hundredth part of the revulsion that this sloppy romantic melodrama now inspired in the dramatist, then the result was not in any doubt.
Alas, alas.
The premiere of Two Comets, which took place exactly a month after the company was first acquainted with the play, was a resounding triumph.
The audience ecstatically drank in the exoticism of the karyukai or ‘world of flowers and willow trees’, the Japanese name for the chimerical kingdom of tea houses where unbelievably elegant geishas indulge their demanding clients with ephemeral, recherché, incorporeal pleasures. The stage sets were miraculously good, the actors performed splendidly, transforming themselves into puppets and then back into living people. The mysterious chiming of a gong and the honeyed recitation by the Storyteller alternately lulled and galvanised the audience. Eliza was dazzling – there was no other word for it. Under cover of darkness, from his position as one of a thousand spectators, Fandorin could watch her unhindered and he relished the forbidden fruit to the full. A strange feeling! She had nothing to do with him, but at the same time she spoke in his words and obeyed his will – after all, he was the author of this play!
Altairsky-Lointaine was given a magnificent reception and after every scene in which she appeared there were cries of ‘Bravo, Eliza!’ However, the completely unknown actor playing the part of the fateful killer enjoyed even greater success. In the programme it simply said ‘The Inaudible One: Mr Swardilin’ – that was how Masa had translated his Japanese name, Shibata, which consisted of the hieroglyphs for ‘meadow’ and ‘field’. His somersaulting and pirouetting (performed in a very mediocre fashion in Erast Petrovich’s biased view) sent a theatrical public not pampered by acrobatic tumbling into raptures. And when, as the plot required, the ninja pulled off his mask and turned out to be a genuine Japanese, the auditorium erupted into shouts of acclaim. No one had been expecting that. Caught in the beam of the spotlight, Masa glowed and shimmered like a golden Buddha.
The audience was also astounded by Nonarikin’s electrotechnical invention. When the lights went out and the two comets blazed into life high above their heads, a sigh ran through the auditorium. The stalls were a solid expanse of white faces raised to the ceiling, which was quite an effect in itself.
‘Brilliant! Stern has outdone himself!’ said the influential reviewers in the director’s box, where Fandorin was sitting. ‘Where did he get this miraculous Oriental? And who is this “E.F.” who wrote the play? He must be Japanese. Or American. Our playwrights don’t know how to do this sort of thing. Stern is deliberately concealing the name, so the other theatres won’t poach the author. And what about that love scene? Bordering on the scandalous, but so powerful!’
Erast Petrovich had not seen the love scene. He lowered his eyes and waited until the audience stopped gasping and gulping. The repulsive sounds could be heard quite clearly in the shocked silence that filled the hall.
The curtain calls went on for absolutely ages. Some people in the hall tried calling out ‘Author! Author!’ – but rather uncertainly: no one knew for certain whether the author was even in the theatre. It had been agreed with Stern that Erast Petrovich would not be invited up onto the stage. The audience clamoured briefly and stopped. They had quite enough people to celebrate and shower with flowers without the dramatist.
Erast Petrovich looked through his opera glasses at Eliza’s face, glowing with happiness. Ah, if only just once in his life she would look at him with that expression, nothing else would matter … Masa bowed ceremoniously from the waist and immediately started blowing kisses to the audience like a regular leading man.
But that was not the end of Fandorin’s trials. He still had to survive the backstage banquet – it was absolutely impossible not to go.
A RUINED BANQUET
Erast Petrovich spent a long time smoking in the foyer after the public had gone home and the bustle in the cloakroom had faded away. Eventually he heaved a sigh and went up to the actors’ floor.
First Erast Petrovich walked along the dark corridor onto which the doors of the actors’ dressing rooms opened. He suddenly felt an irresistible urge to glance into the room where Eliza prepared for her entrances, transforming herself from a real, live woman into a role: sitting in front of a mirror and exchanging one existence for another, like a kitsuné. Perhaps the appearance of the space that she used for these metamorphoses would somehow help him to understand her mystery?
He looked round to make sure there was no one near by and tugged on the brass door handle, but the door didn’t yield, it was locked. That was strange. As far as Fandorin was aware, the actors of the ‘Ark’ were not in the habit of locking their dressing rooms. Erast Petrovich found this small fact symbolic. Eliza would not allow him into her secret world, she wouldn’t let him get even a brief glimpse of it.
He walked on, shaking his head. Not only were most of the dressing rooms not locked, their doors were actually standing ajar. The very last door was firmly closed, but when he turned the handle tentatively, it swung open immediately.
The scene revealed to Fandorin’s surprised gaze was in the spirit of the indecent Japanese shunga prints that are so popular with foreigners. Right there on the floor, between the make-up tables with their mirrors, Masa, wearing a close-fitting ninja jacket, but without the lower half of his costume, was intently turning up the kimono of Serafima Aphrodisina, who played the part of a trainee geisha in the show.
‘Oh!’ the ‘coquette’ exclaimed, jumping to her feet and adjusting her clothing. Erast Petrovich did not get the impression that she was seriously embarrassed. ‘Congratulations on the premiere!’
Gathering up the hem of her kimono, she darted out through the door.
The Japanese watched her go regretfully.
‘Do you need me, master?’
‘So you’re having an affair with Aphrodisina and not …?’ Fandorin didn’t finish his question.
Masa got up and said philosophically:
‘Nothing turns women’s heads like a Great Success. This beautiful girl showed no interest in me before, but after a thousand people applauded and shouted and cheered, Sima-san started making such wide eyes at me, it would have been stupid and impolite to leave the matter without any continuation. Many women in the hall were looking at me in exactly the same way,’ he concluded, examining himself in the mirror with satisfaction. ‘Some of them said: “How handsome he is! A genu
ine Buddha!”’
‘Put your trousers on, Buddha.’
Leaving the newborn star to admire his irresistibly handsome features and adjust his clothing, Fandorin walked on. He really had come to dislike Masa. The worst thing was that this puffed-up nobody was right: now he would become even more attractive to Eliza – after all, actresses were so susceptible to the tinsel glitter of success! He ought to tell her about Masa’s monkey business with Aphrodisina – but unfortunately, for a noble man, that was quite inconceivable …
Erast Petrovich was so consumed by his misery, it didn’t occur to him that he was also enveloped in the glittering cloud of a Great Success. This fact was only made clear to him when he entered the buffet quietly, trying not to attract any attention. No such luck!
‘Here he is, our dear author! At last! Erast Petrovich!’ Everyone came dashing towards him, vying with each other to congratulate him on the brilliant premiere, the superb triumph and his new-found fame.
Stern raised a glass of champagne.
‘Here’s to a new name on the theatrical Mount Olympus, ladies and gentlemen!’
Madam Reginina in her purple kimono, her eyes extended with mascara (all the actors were still in their stage costumes and make-up), declared with feeling:
‘I have always been an advocate of an author’s theatre, not a director’s or actors’ theatre! You are my hero, Erast Petrovich! Ah, if only you had written a play about a woman who is no longer young, but whose heart is still vibrant and filled with powerful passions!’
She was elbowed aside by her former husband, with his gleaming false bald patch and waxed samurai pigtail.
‘It is only now that I have really understood the concept of your work. It is majestic! You and I have a lot in common. Some day I shall tell you the story of my life …’
But the company’s female ‘intriguer’ was already pushing herself forward, her lips extended to reveal a small-toothed smile.