by Boris Akunin
On the way to Virgin’s Field the concussed man no longer spoke about Sima and inconstant women, but about himself and heroic men.
It began with Fandorin apologising for his unsuccessful leap and praising his assistant for the alacrity he had displayed.
‘Yes,’ Masa replied solemnly. ‘I’m a hero.’
Erast Petrovich remarked guardedly:‘Quite possibly. But let others decide whether you are a hero or not.’
‘You are mistaken, master. Every man decides whether he is a hero or not. You have to make the choice and then not betray it afterwards. A man who has first decided to be a hero, but then changed his mind, is a pitiful sight. And a man who, in the middle of his life, has suddenly changed from being a non-hero to being a hero risks damaging his karma.’
Raising his automobile goggles onto his forehead, Erast Petrovich squinted at his passenger in alarm to see whether he was delirious.
‘Can you clarify that?’
‘A man who is a hero devotes his life to the service of some idea. It is not important what or whom he serves. A hero can have a wife and children, but it is better to do without that. The lot of a woman who has bound her destiny to a hero is a sad one. The children are even more to be pitied. It is terrible to grow up, feeling that your father is always ready to sacrifice you for the sake of his service.’ Masa sighed bitterly. ‘It is a different matter if you are a non-hero. A man like that chooses his family and serves that. He must not play the hero. That is the same as if a samurai betrays his lord in order to show off to the crowd.’
Fandorin listened carefully. Masa’s philosophising could sometimes be intriguing.
‘And what do you serve?’
The Japanese looked at him in resentful amazement.
‘Can you still ask? Thirty-two years ago, I chose you, master. One choice for the rest of my life. Women sometimes – quite often – bring solace to my life, but I do not promise them much and I never become involved with those who expect me to be faithful. I already have someone to serve, I tell them.’
And Erast Fandorin suddenly felt ashamed. He coughed in embarrassment, trying to clear away the lump that had risen in his throat. Masa saw that his master was embarrassed, but he misunderstood the reason for it.
‘Are you reproaching yourself for your love for Eliza-san? There is no need. My rule does not apply to you. If you wish to love a woman with all your heart and do not feel that it hinders your service, then go ahead.’
‘And … what, in your opinion, does my service consist of?’ Fandorin asked cautiously, recalling that only a quarter of an hour ago he had been thinking about those who ‘watch over the house’.
The Japanese shrugged nonchalantly.
‘I have no idea. That is all the same to me. It is enough that you have some idea and you serve it. But my idea is you, and I serve you. It is all very simple and harmonious. Of course, to love with all your heart is a very great risk. But if you wish to know the opinion of a man who knows women well, one like Eliza-san would suit us best of all.’
‘Us?’
Erast Petrovich gave his servant a severe look, but Masa’s expression was clear and open. And it was immediately obvious that there had never been anything between Eliza and the Japanese, that there never could have been. Only with his reason clouded could Fandorin have imagined that Masa was capable of regarding his master’s chosen one as an ordinary woman.
‘Surely you don’t want a jealous woman to come between us, who will hate me because you and I are bound together by so many things? That is the way any normal wife would act. But an actress is a different matter. In addition to her husband, she has the theatre. She doesn’t need a hundred per cent of your shares, she’s happy with forty-nine.’
The automobile crossed the Garden Ring Road, skipping over the tramlines.
‘Have you seriously decided to marry me off?’ Fandorin asked. ‘But what f-for?’
‘So there will be chirdren and I will teach them,’ Masa replied. After a moment’s thought he added: ‘I probably can’t teach a little girl anything useful.’
‘And what would you teach my son?’
‘The most important thing. What you cannot teach him, master.’
‘Interesting. What is that I can’t teach my own son?’
‘How to be happy.’
Fandorin was so terribly surprised, he couldn’t think of anything to say at first; he had never thought that from the outside his life could seem unhappy. Surely happiness was the absence of unhappiness?
‘There is no happiness, but there is peace and freedom,’ he said, recalling Pushkin’s famous formula, which he had always liked so much.
Masa thought for a few moments and disagreed.
‘That is the mistaken reasoning of a man who is afraid to be happy,’ he said, switching back to his own language. ‘It is probably the only thing that you are afraid of, master.’
His condescending tone of voice infuriated Fandorin. ‘Go to hell, you home-grown philosopher! That’s a line from Pushkin, and the poet is always right!’
‘Pushkin? Oooo!’
Masa put on a reverential face and even bowed. He respected the opinions of authorities.
In the reception room of the university clinic, as the Japanese was being led away for examination, he suddenly looked at Erast Petrovich with his piercing little eyes.
‘Master, I can see from your face that you are going out on business again without me. Please do not punish me like this. My ears are ringing and my thoughts are a little confused, but that does not make any difference. You will do the thinking, and I will only act. For a genuine samurai, a concussion is a mere trifle.’
Fandorin prodded him in the back.
‘Go on, go on, let the professor-sensei cure you. A genuine samurai should be yellow, and not green. And anyway, my business is quite trivial, there’s nothing to talk about.’
However, Erast Petrovich did not set out on his business immediately. First he called into the telegraph office, and the long-distance telephone station. It was twilight before the Isotta drove up to Abrikosov’s tenement building on Kuznetsky Most Street.
Khan Altairsky lived in the bel étage, occupying the entire left half of it.
‘How shall I announce you?’ Fandorin was asked by the doorman, a sturdy black-haired young fellow with a black moustache wearing a long-waisted Circassian coat with a massive dagger in the belt. He looked Fandorin up and down suspiciously and announced: ‘His High Dignity is busy. He is dining.’
‘I’ll announce m-myself,’ Erast Petrovich replied good-naturedly.
He took the young fellow by the neck, pressed simultaneously on the sui point with his thumb and the min point with his index finger and supported the limp body so that it wouldn’t make too much noise. This manipulation guaranteed an unhealthy but deep sleep lasting from fifteen to thirty minutes, depending on the strength of the organism.
Fandorin left his top hat and coat in the entrance hall, and checked in the mirror to make sure that his parting was straight. Then he set off along the corridor towards the melodic jingling of silver.
His High Dignity was indeed dining.
A balding man with dark hair and bushy eyebrows, with puffy facial features that seemed vaguely familiar to Fandorin, was chewing food and sipping on red wine. To judge from the beverage, and also from the carved piglet and Dutch ham, the khan did not adhere to the sharia law in his diet.
At the sight of the stranger the khan forgot to close his mouth and froze with a piece of the bread that he had just bitten off between his teeth. A manservant, who looked like the twin brother of the sleeping doorman, also froze, holding a jug in his hands.
‘Who are you? Why did they let you in?’ the khan rumbled menacingly, spitting the bread out onto the tablecloth. ‘Musa, fling him out!’
Fandorin shook his head. How was it possible to marry a crude oaf like his, even if only for a short while? This woman quite definitely had to be saved – not from her enemies,
but from herself.
The servant put down the wine and dashed at Fandorin, hissing like a goose. The visitor gave Musa the same treatment as his presumptive brother: he put him to sleep and gently laid him out on the floor.
The blood drained away from the abandoned husband’s bald patch. Expecting the uninvited guest to be bundled out immediately, the khan had taken a gulp of wine, but had not yet swallowed it, and now it flowed down over his chin onto his starched napkin. It was an appalling sight – as if the man had suffered a stroke with haemhorraging from the throat.
‘Who are you?’ he repeated, but in a quite different tone of voice. Not with outrage, but in fear.
‘My name is Fandorin. But perhaps for you I shall be Azrail,’ said Erast Petrovich, naming the Muslim archangel of death. ‘Everything will depend on the outcome of our c-conversation.’
‘Fandorin? Then I know who you are. You’re the author of that idiotic play and also an amateur detective with big contacts. I have made enquiries about you.’
The khan tore off his stained napkin and grandly folded his hands, glittering with rings, together on his chest.
‘I see you have calmed down a little.’ Fandorin sat down beside him and toyed absent-mindedly with a dessert fork. ‘That’s a mistake. I’ll be b-brief … You stop persecuting Madam Lointaine. That is one. You immediately grant her a divorce. That is two. Otherwise something nasty will happen to you.’ Erast Petrovich considered it unnecessary to specify the meaning of the threat. His opponent was clearly not worthy of having pearls scattered before him, and the tone of the voice and glance of the eye are always more eloquent than words.
The khan was mortally afraid, that was clear. A little more of this and he would keel over in a faint.
‘I have already decided that I shall never go near that madwoman again,’ His Most High Dignity exclaimed. ‘She tried to shoot me with a pistol!’
This was the first time Fandorin had heard about the pistol, but the news did not surprise him. It is dangerous to drive a woman of artistic temperament to extremes.
‘You have only yourself to blame. You should not have pretended to be a murderer. So on the first point we are agreed. That leaves the second.’
Altairsky thrust out his chest.
‘I shall never give her a divorce. It is out of the question.’
‘I know,’ said Fandorin, screwing up his eyes thoughtfully, ‘that you told Eliza that the wife of a khan cannot have lovers and cannot marry anyone else. But the widow of a khan is a different matter.’
The other man was perhaps not really frightened enough. Erast Petrovich took him firmly by the scruff of the neck and set the silver fork against his throat.
‘I could kill you in a d-duel, but I won’t fight a scoundrel who frightens helpless women. I’ll simply kill you. Like this p-piglet here.’
The khan’s bloodshot eye squinted at the dish.
‘You won’t kill me,’ the stubborn man hissed in a choking voice. ‘That’s not your line of business, rather exactly the opposite. I told you. I’ve made enquiries about you. I make enquiries about everyone who hangs around Eliza … But then, kill me if you like. I still won’t give her a divorce.’
Such firmness aroused distinct respect. Evidently Erast Petrovich’s first impression of His High Dignity had not been entirely accurate. He took the fork away and moved back.
‘Do you love you wife so very much?’ he asked in surprise.
‘What the hell has love got to do with it!’ Altairsky slammed his fists down on the table and started choking on his hate. ‘Eliza, that bi …’
Fandorin’s face twitched furiously and the khan bit off the swear word.
‘… That lady destroyed my life! My father deprived me of the rights of the firstborn! And if I get divorced, he’ll leave me without any support! A hundred and twenty thousand a year! And what would I do then – go and get a job? Khan Altairsky will never blacken his hands with labour. It would be better if you killed me.’
This was a weighty argument. Erast Petrovich pondered it. Perhaps he really should kill this weak potentate and cunning, balding fop.
‘As far as I understand it, you wish to marry Eliza. And does a civil marriage not suit you?’ the husband asked ingratiatingly. He evidently also wanted very much to find a compromise. ‘It’s fashionable now. She would like it. And you would never hear anything about me again. I swear it! Do you want me to go away to Nice, for ever? Only don’t demand the impossible from me.’
Fandorin went back from Kuznetsky Most Street on foot. He had to gather his thoughts and prepare for the conversation with Eliza. The November evening attempted to tear the hat off his head and he had to hold it on.
Something trivial has happened to me, Erast Petrovich told himself. Probably every second man goes through it. Where did I get the idea that this cup would pass me by? Of course, in other men this sickness that is commonly referred to as ‘no fool like an old fool’ seems to occur for other reasons. I’ve read about it. Some suddenly get the feeling that they do not have much time left to be a man, and so they start panicking. Some suddenly realise that they didn’t sow enough wild oats in their young days. Neither the former nor the latter would appear to have anything to do with my case. What has happened to me is not a sickness, it is more like a trauma. It is well known that a bone breaks more easily at the site of a previous break. In the same way, owing to a chance confluence of circumstances, the old break in my heart snapped again.
But does it really matter what whim of fate is responsible when love overwhelms you? It comes and it swings the door wide open. Your usual dwelling place is suddenly illuminated with unbearably bright light. You see yourself and your life differently, and you don’t like what you see. You can pretend to be an experienced gallant and turn the whole thing into a courtly adventure; but at any moment the glow might fade. You can shove the uninvited guest back out of the door and turn the key; in a little while the dwelling will once again be immersed in its customary gloom. You can turn frantic, jump out of the window, go running off to the ends of the earth. I have actually tried to do both of those things. But now I have to try another method – simply take a step forward and not turn my eyes away. This requires courage.
Such was the rational monologue that Erast Petrovich rehearsed to himself, but the closer he approached to the hotel, the more agonisingly nervous he felt. In the foyer a cowardly thought even occurred to him: ‘Perhaps Eliza is not in her room?’
But the porter sad that Madam Lointaine was in and politely telephoned upstairs and enquired:
‘How shall I introduce you?’
‘Fandorin …’
His throat turned dry. Was this the puerility starting all over again?
‘She says to go up.’
In any case I am obliged to tell her that her husband offers her complete freedom! Erast Petrovich shouted at himself. And as for everything else … That is her business.
In this same angry mood he began the conversation.
He said that there was nothing more to be afraid of.
That Khan Altairsky was a villain and a petty wretch, but not a murderer. That in any case from henceforth he would disappear from her life. He would not give her a divorce, but he offered her complete freedom.
He told her that the matter of the two deaths in St Petersburg had been clarified. Following the death of the Kiev entrepreneur Boleslav Ignatievich Furshtatsky, as always in such cases, an autopsy had been carried out on the body. From the telegrams sent by the coroner’s office, it followed that the cause of death had been heart failure, and no traces of poison had been discovered. Khan Altairsky had only exploited the sad event for his own purposes.
The case of the tenor Astralov was different. In a telephone conversation with the investigator who had conducted the case, it had transpired that the marks of the razor were almost identical to the wounds that had broken off the life of Mr Shustrov. A sliding blow with a light inclination from left to right. A blow like th
at could be struck either by someone sitting in a chair, or by someone who was standing behind the victim. On 11 February, the day Astralov died, Eliza was already a member of the Noah’s Ark theatre company; she was acquainted with Nonarikin and, as was not in the least surprising (Fandorin felt it possible to put that in), he had immediately conceived a passionate love for her. Exactly how the murderer had managed to approach first Astralov and then Shustrov with a razor was not yet entirely clear, but the maniac himself could be asked about that. After everything that had happened, he had no reason to conceal anything; and in addition people of a certain kind adored boasting of their great feats. Nonarikin would be glad to tell them everything.
Eliza listened to his report without interrupting, with her hands folded on the table in front of her, like a diligent grammar school girl. She kept her eyes fixed on Erast Petrovich, but he preferred to look away. He was afraid of losing the thread.
‘I believe you,’ Eliza said in a quiet voice. ‘I believe you. But the fact remains that all these men were killed because of me! It’s appalling!’
‘Read Dostoyevsky, my lady. “Beauty is a terrible and appalling thing”.’ Fandorin deliberately started talking more drily. ‘It makes some strive for the heights and drives others down into the depths of hell. Megalomania led Nonarikin implacably along the path to self-destruction. However, if the madman had found his feelings for you to be requited, he would have stopped wishing to r-rule the world. He would have been willing to settle for your love. As I am …’
The final phrase slipped out involuntarily. Fandorin finally looked into Eliza’s eyes – and what he had been intending to come round to only after a thorough introduction simply spoke itself. It was too late to retreat. And in any case, it was actually better without any diplomacy and tactical preludes.
Erast Petrovich gave a deep sigh and started speaking, not like a boy, but like a potential husband (even if only a civil law one).