Boris Akunin - He Lover of Death

All right, let’s figure out how much that is, by weight. How many rods are there. . . God only knows. Five hundred at least. Five pounds of silver in each one, right? That makes . . . two and a half thousand pounds, right? Ashot Ashotovich said that a zolotnik of silver is twenty-four kopecks these days. One pound is ninety-six zolotniks . . . Multiply two and a half thousand by ninety-six zolotniks by twenty-four kopecks – that makes . . .

He groaned and started totting up figures on a piece of paper, like they’d taught him to do at commercial college. But they hadn’t had very long to teach him, and he’d forgotten a few things, he was rusty – so the sum didn’t work out.

He tried a different way, simpler. Samshitov said there was 155 roubles’ worth of pure silver in a bar. For five hundred bars that made . . . fifty thousand, right? Or was it five hundred thousand?

Hang on a minute, Senka thought. Ashot Ashotovich gave me four hundred for a rod, and I don’t suppose he was doing himself down. He might let those numismatists of his have them for a thousand each.

If the black sticks were worth that much, he’d be better off trading them himself, without Samshitov. Of course, it wasn’t an easy business. There were lots of things he’d have to figure out to get started. And the first thing of all was the real price. After that he could service all the Moscow buyers. Then the ones in Peter. And then, maybe, he could find a way to the foreign ones. He’d have to hang on to the rods and flog them one at a time, to the suckers willing to pay more than their weight in silver. Then later, when those fools had had their fill, he could sell the rest of the sticks for melting down.

Thinking like a merchant brought Senka out in a sweat. You needed real brains for a deal like this! For the first time he regretted he hadn’t done more studying. He couldn’t even work out the future takings properly.

So what did that mean?

Yes, it meant he had to catch up. Squeeze all that ignorance and bad manners out of himself, learn how to make fancy small talk, and it would be no bad thing if he could banter in foreign as well, so he could trade over in Europe.

The very thought of it took his breath away.

And that was only the earthly dream, not the most important one. The other dream, the heavenly one, set Senka’s head spinning good and proper.

Of course, if you thought about it, this was an earthly dream too, maybe even more earthly than the other, only it warmed his heart as well as his head, and the heart was where the soul was. Then again, it made Senka’s belly – and other parts of his body – feel hot too.

Before, he was a nobody, just a young pup, no kind of match for Death. But now, if he didn’t mess things up, he could be the richest man in Moscow. And then, Senka dreamed, he’d throw all those thousands and thousands at her feet and save her from the Prince and the Ghoul, cure her of the candy-cane sickness and carry her off to somewhere far, far away – to Tver (they said it was a fine town) or somewhere else. Maybe even all the way to Paris.

It didn’t matter that she was older. The fluff on his cheeks would sprout into a beard and moustache soon enough, and then he’d really come into his own. And he could touch up his temples with grey, like Erast Petrovich – and why not, it was very impressive.

Only when Senka and Death went to get married, it would have to be well away from any embankment where you could fall in and drown. God takes care of those as take care of themselves.

So there was Senka, already picturing the wedding, and the feast in the Hermitage dining hall, but he knew the money on its own wouldn’t be enough. Death had had beaus and lovers with huge fortunes before, that was nothing new for her. And he couldn’t win her over with presents. He had to turn himself from a grey sparrow into a white falcon and go soaring way up high before he could fly close to a swan like her.

His thoughts turned to education and cultured manners. He had no chance of being a falcon without them, even if he did have the riches.

There was a bookstall out on the square – Senka could see it from the window. He went out and bought a clever book that was called Life in Society, at Home and at Court – how to behave in decent society so you they wouldn’t boot you out.

When he started reading, he came out in a cold sweat. Holy saints, it was all so complicated! How to bow to who, how to kiss a woman’s hand – a lady’s, that is – how to give compliments, how to dress when and where, how to walk into a room and how to walk out. If he spent his whole life studying, he still wouldn’t remember it all!

‘One should never pay a visit earlier than two o’clock or later than five or six,’ Senka read, moving his lips and ruffling up his French coiffure. ‘Before two o’clock, one risks finding the master and mistress of the house engaged in domestic activities or arranging their toilette; at a later hour, one may appear to be angling for an invitation to dinner.’

Or there was this: ‘On arriving to pay a visit and not finding the master and mistress of the house at home, a well-bred individual leaves a card, creased at the upper left side; if the visit is on the occasion of a death or other sad event, the card is creased at the lower right, with the fold slightly torn.’

Blimey!

But the most frightening thing of all was reading about clothes. If you were poor, it was easy: just one shirt and one pair of trousers –nothing to rack your brains over. But oh, the hassle if you were rich! When to wear a jacket, when to wear a frock coat, when to wear tails: when you should take your gloves off, when you shouldn’t; what should be check, what should be striped, and what should be flowery. And it seemed, for cultured people, not every colour matched every other one!

But the hardest part of all, though, was the hats – Senka even had to make notes.

The rules went like this. In an office, shop or hotel, you took your hat off only if the owners and countermen were bareheaded too (ah, if only he’d known that back at the Grand Moscow!). When leaving after a visit, you put your hat on outside the door, not in the doorway. In an omnibus or carriage, you didn’t take your hat off at all, even in the presence of ladies. When you paid a visit, you held your hat in your hand, and if you were in tails, your top hat had to be the kind with a spring to keep it straight, not the simple kind. When you sat down, you could put your hat on a vacant chair or on the floor but never, God forbid, on a table.

Senka felt sorry for the poor hat, it would get dirty on the floor. He looked at the handsome boater on his table (twelve and a half roubles, that cost). Put it on the floor? Not a chance.

When he was tired of studying society manners, he took another look at his new clothes. A frock coat of fine camlet (nineteen roubles ninety), two pique´ waistcoats, one white and one grey (ten roubles the pair), pantaloons with a black and grey stripe (fifteen roubles), trousers with foot straps (nine roubles ninety), button-down half-boots (twelve roubles), and another pair, patent leather (he shelled out twenty-five for them, but they were a real sight for sore eyes). And there was a little mirror with a silver handle, and pomade in a gilded jar – to grease his quiff, so it wouldn’t dangle. He spent longest of all admiring the mother-of-pearl penknife. Eight blades, an awl, even a toothpick and a nail file too!

When he’d had his fun, he read a bit more of the book.

Senka went down to dinner, dressed according to the requirements of etiquette, in his frock coat, because ‘a simple jacket is only permissible at table in the family circle’.

In the dining room he bowed respectfully, said ‘Bonsoir’, and put his hat on the floor – so be it, but he put a napkin he’d taken from the kitchen underneath.