by Boris Akunin
‘This is the third time.’ Her eyes, as always, looked at him and past him at the same time. ‘About a month ago someone wrote about 1s again. The first time there were eight 1s, the second time there were seven, and today, for some reason, there are five. The joker has probably lost count …’
‘Three times?’ Fandorin frowned. ‘That’s rather too m-many for a joke, even a stupid one. I’ll ask Noah Noaevich to show me the Tablets.’
‘And you know,’ Eliza said suddenly. ‘I’ve had a proposal.’
‘What kind of proposal?’ he asked, although he had guessed immediately what she meant.
Ah, his heart, his heart! Supposedly he and it had agreed about everything, but still it betrayed him and started fluttering.
‘Of the hand and the heart.’
He forced himself to smile.
‘And who is this bold fellow?’
I should not have spoken ironically, it sounded bitter!
‘Andrei Gordeevich Shustrov.’
‘Aha. Well now, a serious man. And young.’
Why did I say ‘young’? As if I were complaining that I am no longer young myself!
So that was what she had wanted to talk about. She was going to ask his advice, was that it? Well, no, thank you very much.
‘An excellent match. Accept.’
Now that sounded bad.
Her face took on such an unhappy look that Erast Petrovich felt ashamed. He had played the little boy again after all. A genuine adult would have given the lady the satisfaction of feigning jealousy, while inwardly remaining unperturbed.
An actress and a millionaire – an ideal couple. Talent and money, beauty and energy, feeling and calculation, flower and stone, ice and flame. Shustrov will make her a ‘star’ right across Russia, even right round the world, and in her gratitude she will transform the entrepreneur’s arithmetical life into a festival of fireworks.
Everything inside him was seething and bubbling.
‘I b-beg your pardon, it is time for me to go.’
‘You’re leaving again? Will you not go into the hall?’
‘A business matter. I completely forgot. I’ll call in tomorrow,’ he said abruptly.
‘I have to do more work on myself. Self-control, restraint, discipline. And it’s a very good thing that she is getting married. Every happiness to them. Now everything is completely finished,’ Fandorin whispered as he walked down the steps. ‘There was something I was going to do, wasn’t there?’
But his thoughts were in a tangle.
All right, then. Everything later.
Four 1s
UNTIL THE BENEFIT PERFORMANCE
WHAT A FOOL!
‘An excellent match. Accept.’ How indifferently he had said it!
What a fool she was! How many days she had waited for this conversation, fantasising about all sorts of melodramatic scenes. She would announce her imminent marriage – and his face would be flooded with deadly pallor, he would start speaking fervent words of passion. She would say: ‘My darling, my infinitely dear one, if you only knew …’ and then a pause, that would be all. After that there would only be the trembling of her lips, the teardrop on her eyelashes, the pain in her eyes and the faint smile. Eliza had even glanced into the mirror to see how it would look. The effect was very powerful. The artistic half of her soul recorded the expression for future use. But the pain was genuine, and the tears even more so.
Oh God, oh God, how long he had been away! She had invented this love for herself, it didn’t exist and it never had. If a man loves you, he cannot fail to sense that you need him desperately, madly. Never mind what you might have said or how you might have acted. Words were no more than words, and actions could be impulsive.
There could only be one explanation. He did not love her and he never had. It was all trivial. As Sima would have said: ‘There’s only one thing men want from our sister’. This Mr Fandorin had got what he wanted, he had gratified his male vanity, added a famous actress to his list of conquests, like a true Don Juan – and there was nothing more he needed. Naturally, he had been relieved to hear of her imminent marriage.
It had been stupid of her to wait for his return as if it could change something. It was enough to recall how Erast had behaved on that nightmarish evening when Limbach was killed. Not a word of sympathy, not a single affectionate touch, nothing. A few strange questions, asked in a cold, hostile tone of voice. And afterwards, before the rehearsal … She had been all tenderness, all eagerness to greet him, and he hadn’t even come across to her.
There could be no doubt about it. He blamed her, as so many others did. He thought she had driven the poor youth insane with her flirting and he had laid hands on himself.
And the most horrific thing of all was that she couldn’t tell the truth. Not to anyone. Especially to the man whose advice and sympathy she needed most of all …
Genghis Khan’s fourth blow had been the cruellest.
Eliza had not seen the entrepreneur Furshtatsky and the tenor Astralov die with her own eyes. She had glanced into the dressing room where Emeraldov was lying, but had not yet guessed that he had been poisoned. But this time death – violent and crude – had presented itself to her in all its bloody hideousness and barbarous suddenness. What a spectacle! And the smell, the sickening, raw smell of a life that has just been eviscerated! She could never forget that.
How cruelly the khan had chosen his moment! As if Satan himself had prompted him, whispering when would be the best time to catch her unawares, so that she would be full of the joy of life, in festive mood, open to the entire world.
A premiere is a special day. If the performance has been a success, if you have acted well and the audience has been yours, totally and completely yours, then there is nothing that can compare with it, no other pleasure. To feel that you are the most loved, the most desired! On that evening Eliza, like her Japanese heroine, had felt herself shooting through the sky like a comet.
She had lived the role, but at the same time her eyes and ears had existed in their own right, able to follow the audience. Eliza had seen everything – even things that she could not possibly have seen: the rainbow waves of empathic feeling and rapture, shimmering above the rows of seats. She had even spotted Erast, sitting in the box for important guests. When Eliza was on the stage, he had hardly ever taken the opera glasses away from his eyes, and that had aroused her even more powerfully. She wanted to be beautiful for everybody, but for him more than for anyone else. At moments like that Eliza felt like an enchantress, showering her invisible spells on the audience – and that was what she truly was.
She also sought out her constant admirers. Several of them had come from St Petersburg especially for the premiere. But Limbach wasn’t there. That had seemed strange to her. He had probably landed in the guardhouse again. What bad timing! She had been sure that the cornet would come to congratulate her, and then she could arrange a meeting with him. Not for any stupid nonsense, but for a serious conversation. If he was a paladin or a knight, let him free a lady’s heart from the Dragon, from the vile Pagan Monster!
The monster, of course, was also in the hall. He deliberately came late to draw attention to himself. Khan Altairsky had walked in during her dance and demonstratively stood in the doorway, looking like Mephistopheles with his square, neatly outlined figure. In the reddish light of the little lamp glowing above the exit his bald cranium had gleamed like Satan’s scarlet halo. According to the rules of Noah’s Ark, no one was allowed in after the beginning of a performance, and the terrifying man did not flaunt himself in the doorway for long. An usher hurried over to the late arrival and asked him to go out. Eliza had seen this as a good omen that no one would cast a shadow over the premiere. Oh God, how appallingly mistaken she had been …
Following the performance, during the banquet, she had given herself a present: she had hugged Erast, kissed him, called him ‘darling’ and quietly asked him to forgive her for what had happened. He hadn’t answered, b
ut at that moment he loved her – Eliza had felt it! Everybody loved her! And the inspired speech about the mystery of the theatre that she had extemporised had been incredibly successful. To produce an impression like that on her fellow actors (and especially on her fellow actresses) – that was really a triumph!
When Shustrov asked her to go out to talk about ‘something important’, she had realised immediately that he was going to tell her he loved her. And she had gone, because she wanted to hear how he would say it – he was so very clever and level headed, and Stern himself wagged his tail for him. He had given her a rose, processed in some cunning technological fashion. How funny he was!
Andrei Gordeevich had surprised her. He had not said anything at all about feelings. The very moment they emerged into the corridor, he had immediately blurted out: ‘Marry me. You won’t regret it.’ And he had looked at her with those eyes that never smiled, as if to say: Why waste words, the question has been asked, let’s have an answer, if you please.
But of course, she hadn’t let him off that easily.
‘You have fallen in love with me?’ She had raised the corners of her mouth slightly in a faint suggestion of a smile and lifted her eyebrows – just a tiny little bit. As if she were about to chuckle. ‘You? As Stanislavsky would have said: “I don’t believe it”!’
Shustrov had started detailing the points, as if he were at a meeting of his management committee or board of directors.
‘To be honest, I don’t know what people mean when they talk about love. Probably everyone invests his or her own meaning in that idea. But it is good that you have asked. Honesty is the essential condition of that long and fruitful collaboration called “marriage”.’ He had dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. Evidently the millionaire found it hard to talk about feelings. ‘What I love most of all is the work that I engage in. I would give my life for it. I need you both as a woman and as a great actress. Together we will move mountains. Would I give my life for you? Undoubtedly. Will I love you, if you cease to be of interest to my business? I do not know, I tell you that in all honesty, because without honesty …’
‘You have already explained about honesty,’ she had said, trying as hard as she could not to burst out laughing. ‘When you gave me the formula of marriage.’
They were walking along the corridor of the artistes’ floor, with only a few steps remaining to the door of her dressing room.
‘I am not only offering you myself.’ Shustrov took her hand and stopped her. ‘I will lay the entire world at your feet. It will be ours – mine and yours. It will love you, and I shall milk it.’
‘What do you mean, “milk” it?’ She thought she had misheard.
‘Like a cow, by the udder. And we shall drink the milk together.’
They had walked on. Eliza’s mood had suddenly changed. She no longer found this funny. And she no longer wanted to tease Shustrov.
What if he has been sent to me by God? Eliza had thought. In order to save me from a terrible sin. After all, I am intending, out of sheer egotism, to risk the life of a boy who is in love. Andrei Gordeevich is no green youth. He will be able to protect his intended. She had turned the door handle and been surprised – the room was locked.
‘The cleaner must have locked it. I have to get the key from the board.’
The millionaire had waited patiently for her answer, seeming perfectly calm.
‘There is one complication,’ Eliza had said when she came back, without raising her eyes. ‘Formally speaking, I am married.’
‘I know, I was informed. Your husband, a retired guards officer, will not give you a divorce.’ Shustrov shrugged slightly with one shoulder. ‘That is a problem, but every problem has a solution. A very difficult problem may have a very expensive solution, but it always has one.’
‘Are you thinking of buying him off?’
But, really? Genghis Khan is accustomed to living on a grand scale, he loves luxury … No, he’ll refuse. His malice is stronger than his cupidity …
Out loud she had said:
‘You won’t get anywhere with that.’
‘That never happens,’ he had replied confidently. ‘I always get somewhere with everything. Usually precisely the place that I am trying to get to.’
Eliza had recalled the rumours circulating in the company: about the ruthless determination with which this merchant’s son had accumulated his immense wealth. He must have seen all sorts of things and overcome a host of obstacles and dangers. A serious man! A man like that wouldn’t waste time on idle talk. This was probably someone to whom she could tell the truth about Genghis Khan …
‘I’ll start dealing with the question of your legal freedom as soon as I have the right to do so – as your fiancé.’
He had taken hold of her hand again and looked at it, as if trying to decide whether to kiss it or not. But he hadn’t kissed it – he had squeezed it.
‘I need to consider all this… Carefully,’ she had said in a weak voice.
‘Naturally. Every important decision should be weighed thoroughly. Will three weeks be sufficient for your deliberations?’
He had released her hand – like a thing to which he had not yet acquired the rights of ownership.
‘Why three weeks exactly?’
‘Twenty-one days. That is my lucky number.’
Andrei Gordeevich had smiled for the first time since she had known him. And she had been as astounded as if the sun had suddenly peeped out from behind a cloud in the middle of the night.
Only at that moment had Eliza’s heart faltered.
He’s not an arithmometer! He’s a live human being! He will have to be loved. And what if he should want children! After all, ‘the fruitful collaboration called marriage’ really does bring forth fruit. Millionaires always want to have heirs.
‘Very well. I’ll think about it …’
Eliza had turned the key and opened the door – and her nostrils had been assaulted by the smell of death. She had cried out and squeezed her eyes shut, but they had already read the bloody message sent to her by the monster. It said: ‘You are mine. Anyone who dares to become close to you will die a terrible death.’No one apart from Eliza had understood, or could have understood, what had really happened. As usual, Genghis Khan had arranged everything with diabolical ingenuity. Everyone around had gasped, spoken about suicide and pitied the poor boy driven insane by love. They had offered Eliza words of sympathy that were mostly false and stared at her avidly, as if something about her had changed. Noah Noaevich, who was also horrified, had said: ‘Well, Eliza, my congratulations. The suicide of an admirer is the supreme accolade for an actress. At the next performance they’ll be storming the theatre to get seats.’ There really was something frightening about a man who was so obsessed with theatrical effects.
She had sat in the green room, waiting to be summoned by the investigator; Sima had given her drops, Vasya had wrapped her in a shawl. Outwardly she had behaved as the situation and the nature of an actress required: she had sobbed with moderate ugliness, allowed her shoulders to tremble, wrung her hands, pressed them to her temples and so on. But it was the woman in her, not the actor, who was thinking. And in fact there had been only one thought running incessantly through her mind: There’s no choice, I’ll have to marry a man I don’t love. If there was anyone in the world who could save her from this fiend of hell, it was only Shustrov, with his millions, with his confidence and his power.
How longingly Eliza had looked at Erast when he asked her his questions and tried to make sense of a mystery to which only she knew the answer. Fandorin had been magnificent. He was the only one who had not lost his head when everyone else was shouting and running around. Everyone had instinctively started to do as he said. How could it have been otherwise? He had so much innate, natural gravitas! It had always been palpable but it had manifested itself especially clearly at the moment of crisis. Ah, if only he had power and influence, like Shustrov! But Erast was only a ‘traveller�
�, a solitary. He couldn’t cope with Genghis Khan. In any case, nothing in the world could have made her agree to put Fandorin’s life in danger. Let him live, let him write plays. Marrying Andrei Gordeevich was a way to save not only herself, but also Erast! If the khan, with his satanic ubiquity, should get wind of the fact that she had been intimate with the dramatist, it would be the end of him. She had to stay as far away as possible from Fandorin, although the only thing she wanted to do was bury her face in his chest and cling to him as tightly as possible, with all her strength, and then let come what may.
This criminal desire had become almost unbearable after a long conversation with the Japanese. In the evening, after the rehearsal (it was the seventeenth of October, a Monday), Eliza had asked Masa to see her to the hotel. She hadn’t wanted to ride in the automobile, because it was a glorious autumn evening, and she was afraid to walk on her own – she fancied that Genghis Khan was lurking behind every corner. She had also been frightened by the idea of an evening in an empty room and a sleepless night. And she had wanted to talk about him.
The conversation begun on the way to the hotel had been continued at dinner in the Massandra restaurant and then in the hotel vestibule. Eliza had not invited her stage partner to her room – so that Genghis Khan, if he was following her, would not have any grounds for jealous suspicions. She had no right to endanger darling Mikhail Erastovich’s life. She was very fond of him, and the longer she knew him, the fonder she became. That likeable, slightly lisping accent did not seem funny to her. After five minutes she stopped noticing that Masa pronounced some Russian sounds incorrectly. And the Japanese himself had proved to be more than just a capable actor, he was an extremely pleasant individual. Erast had been lucky to find such a friend.
Ah, how many new and important things Eliza had learned from him about her beloved! She had not even noticed how the night flew by. Following the restaurant, they had reached the ‘Louvre’ after midnight, settled into comfortable armchairs, ordered tea (Masa had asked for Danish pastries with his) and talked and talked. Then when they had looked, it was already getting light outside. She had gone up to her room, tidied herself up and changed her clothes, then they had taken breakfast together in the hotel buffet, and it had been time for the rehearsal. Eliza had never spoken so frankly and confidentially with anyone. And, moreover, about the one thing that concerned her most of all. What a pleasure it was to talk to a man who didn’t look at her lustfully or strike poses, or try to produce an impression. Vasya Gullibin was also a member of the non-philandering tribe, but he was a poor conversation partner, no match for the Japanese in intellect or knowledge of life or aptness of observation.