Boris Akunin - He Lover of Death

‘Hello?’ Senka called, and took off his cap.

No one answered. But he had to keep the banter brief – he didn’t want the Prince to catch him here.

Senka lit one of the splinters and held it above his head. What was up with these Siniukhins, then? Why were they so quiet?

There was a woman lying on a bench by the wall, sleeping. And on the floor under the bench there was a kid – still a baby, only three, or maybe even two.

The woman was lying on her back, and she’d covered her eyes with something black. Uncle Zot’s wife used to put cotton wool soaked in sage tea on her eyes at night, so she wouldn’t get wrinkles. Women were fools, everyone knew that. They looked horrifying like that, as if they had holes in their faces, not eyes.

‘Hey, Auntie, get up! This is the no time for dozing,’ Senka said, approaching her. ‘Where’s the man of the house? I’ve got something to—’

He gagged. It wasn’t cotton wool on the woman’s eyes, it was mush. It had clotted in the hollows of her sockets and some had overflowed down her temple towards her ear. And it wasn’t black, no, it was red. And Mrs Siniukhin’s neck was all wet and shiny too.

Senka fluttered his peepers for a bit before he caught on: someone had slit the woman’s throat and gouged her eyes out – that was it.

He tried to scream, but all that came out was: ‘Hic!’

Then he squatted down on his haunches to take a look at the kid. He was dead too, and where his eyes should be there were two dark holes, only little ones – he wasn’t too big himself.

‘Hic,’ Senka went. ‘Hic, hic, hic.’

And he kept on hiccuping, he just couldn’t stop.

Senka backed away from that horrible bench, stumbled over something soft and almost fell.

When he held the light down, he saw a young lad, about twelve, lying there. He had no eyes either, they’d been gouged out too.

‘Blimey!’ Senka finally managed to say. ‘That’s awful!’

He was all set to dash back to the door, but suddenly he heard a voice coming from a dark corner.

‘Mitya,’ the voice called, all low and pitiful. ‘Has he gone? Did he hurt your mother? Eh? I can’t hear . . . Look what he did to me, the animal. . . Come here, come . . .’

There was a chintz curtain hanging across the corner. Should he run for it or should he go over there?

He went over. Pulled the curtain back.

He saw a wooden bed. There was a man on it, feeling his chest –it was soaked in blood. And he had no eyes, just like the others. This had to be the pen-pusher, Siniukhin.

Senka tried to explain that Mitya, and his mum, and the little kid, had all been slaughtered, but all he did was hiccup.

‘Shut up and listen,’ said Siniukhin, licking his lips. He looked like he was smiling, and Senka turned away, so as not to see that no-eyed smile. ‘Listen now, my strength’s almost gone. I’m on my way out, Mitya. But never mind, that’s all right. I lived a bad life, a sinful life, but at least I can die like a man. Maybe that will earn me forgiveness . . . I didn’t tell him, you know! He ripped my chest open with that knife of his, but I bore it all . . . I pretended to be dead, but I’m still alive!’ The pen-pusher laughed, and something gurgled in his throat. ‘Listen, son, remember . . . That secret place I told you about, this is how you get there: you know the underground hall with the vaulting and the brick pillars? You know it, of course you do . . . Well, in there, behind the last pillar on the right, right in the very corner, you can take the bottom stone out . . . I came across it when I was looking for a place to hide a bottle from your mother. You take the stone out, and then you can take some more out, from above the first one . . . Crawl in there, don’t be afraid. It’s a secret passage. After that, it’s easy: you just keep going . . . And you come out into the chamber where the treasure is. The important thing is, don’t be frightened . . .’ His voice had gone really quiet now, and Senka had to lean over him – the hiccups made it hard for him to listen properly too. ‘The treasure . . . There’s so much of it . . . It will all be yours. Live a good life. Don’t think too badly of your old dad . . .’

Siniukhin didn’t say anything else. Senka looked at him: his lips were set in a wide smile, but he wasn’t breathing any more. He’d passed over.

Senka crossed himself and reached out to the departed, like you were supposed to, to close his eyes, then jerked his hand away.

He wasn’t hiccuping any more, but he was trembling silently. And not from fear – he’d forgotten all about that.

Treasure! So much treasure!

Now of course, he was shaken up, after something like that.

He kept thinking: There’s a monster on the loose, he didn’t even spare the little baby, cut his eyes out too, the fiend! And what does that make the Prince! If he’s supposed to be an honest bandit, why does he keep a villain who gouges people’s eyes out when they’re still alive?

But his thoughts kept skipping from these terrible things to the treasure. He couldn’t imagine it properly, though: it was like the Holy Gate in the icon screen in church. With everything sparkling and shimmering, so you couldn’t make anything out. He imagined chests too, full of gold and silver, and all sorts of precious stones.

But then his thoughts turned to his brother Vanka, and how Senka would go to see him and give him a present – not a wooden horse with a string tail, and not some dwarf pony, like Judge Kuvshinnikov did, but a genuine thoroughbred Arab racer, and a carriage on springs to go with it.

And he thought about Death a bit too – well, of course he did. If Senka had all these huge riches, maybe she’d see him differently then. Not some gap-toothed, freckly kid, not a gnat or a swift, but Semyon Trifonovich Spidorov, a substantial squire. And then . . .

He didn’t really know what came ‘then’.

When he left that hideous room he ran back to the first cellar, with the fat-bellied pillars – that had to be the one Siniukhin was talking about.

Last pillar ‘on the right’ – was that this end or the other?

Probably the other, the one farthest from Siniukhin’s place

Senka was feeling a bit squiffy after everything that had happened, but he’d still grabbed the matches and a supply of splints off the table.

In the far corner he squatted down on his haunches and struck a match. He saw the dressed stonework of an ancient wall, every stone the size of a crate. Just try shifting one of those!

When the flame went out, Senka felt for the joint, tried pushing this way and that – a dead loss. He tried moving the next stone too –the same thing.

Right. He went over to the next corner on the right. This time he lit a splint, not just a match, and moved the light this way and that. The stones here looked the same, but one, at the bottom, was surrounded by black cracks. Was he in business?

He grabbed hold and pulled. The stone yielded, and quite easily too.

He tugged it out with a grunt and pushed it aside. The hole gave out a smell of damp and decay.

Senka started to shake again. Siniukhin was telling the truth! There was something there!

The next stone was even easier to get out – and a bit broader than the one underneath. The third was broader still, and it wasn’t held in by mortar either. He took out five stones altogether. The top one must have weighed seventy-five pounds, if not more.

Now Senka was peering into a narrow gap – a man could quite easily get through it if he turned sideways and bent crooked.

So he crossed himself and clambered in.

Once he’d squeezed through, there was much more room. He hesitated, wondering whether he ought to put the stones back. But he didn’t – what would anyone else want in the corner of the cellar? You’d never see the gap without a light, and the tenants in the Yerokha didn’t carry lights.