Boris Akunin - He Lover of Death

No, said Masa. I’m afraid the master will put his trust in me and I’ll disappoint him, let him down. Because of my stupidity or circumstances beyond my control. I’m terribly afraid of that, he said. All right, stupidity lessens as the years go by. But only the Buddha has power over circumstances.

‘Who does?’ Senka asked.

Masa pointed one finger towards the sky. ‘Buddha.’

‘Ah-ha, Jesus Christ.’

The Japanese nodded. That’s why, he said, I pray to him every day. Like this.

He closed his narrow eyes, folded his hands and started droning something through his nose. Then he translated it: ‘I trust in the Buddha and do everything I can.’ That was their prayer in Japan, he said.

‘That ain’t Japanese. Trust in God and do right yourself.’

They talked divine matters one other time too.

A lot of flies had appeared in Senka’s room. They’d obviously come in for crumbs – he’d become a real fiend for guzzling fancy pastries.

Masa didn’t like flies. He caught them, like a cat with its paw, but as for squashing or swatting them – not on your life. He always carried them to the window and let them fly away.

Senka asked him: ‘Why do you take all that trouble with them, Sensei? Just swat them, and the job’s done.’

And the answer was: You shouldn’t kill anyone if you don’t have to kill them.

‘Not even a fly?’

It makes no difference, Masa said. A soul is always a soul, no two ways about it. Now it’s a fly, but if it leads a good life as a fly, in the next it could be a man. Someone like you, for instance.

Senka took offence.

‘What’s that mean, like me? Maybe like you.’

What Masa said to that was: ‘If you go giving your teacher lip, you’ll definitely be a fly after you die. Come on now, he said, dodge. And he smacked Senka in the face so fast, there was no way you could dodge it. It fair set his ears ringing.’

That was how Senka learned Japanese wisdom.

And every day, at the end of the session, his strange teacher would ask the same thing: Didn’t he have a message for his master?

Senka batted his eyelids and kept mum. He couldn’t figure out what the master was getting at. Was it about the treasure? Or was it something else?

Masa didn’t pester him, though. He waited for about half a minute, nodded, said his ‘sayonara’ and went off home.

The days flew by fast. A lesson of gymnastics, a lesson of French, reinforced by a session in a French restaurant, then a stroll round the shops and another lesson, on elegant manners, with George, and then it was time for dinner and the practical class. ‘Practical class’ was what George called trips to the operetta, the dance hall, the bordello or some other society gathering place.

In the mornings Senka slept late, and by the time he had got up and washed, Masa was ready and waiting. And off he went again, just like a squirrel in a cage.

A couple of times, instead of his practical class, he dropped into Khitrovka to see Tashka – after dark, and not wearing any frock coat or tails, of course, but in his old clothes. Apache style, as George said.

This was how he did it.

He hired a steady, sober cabby on Trubnaya Street – the cabby had to have a number – and drove to Lubyanka Square with him. He got changed right there in the cab, with the leather hood pulled right down low.

Transformed from a merchant trader into an Apache, he left the driver to wait. Not a bad deal –just sit there, sleep if you like, for a rouble an hour. The only condition was, he mustn’t move from the box, or the clothes would be nicked off the seat in a flash.

Stubborn Tashka wouldn’t take any of the money Senka tried to give her. And she wouldn’t give up her whore’s trade, because she was proud. Who takes money from men, she said – not for working, but just like that? A moll or a wife. I can’t come and be your moll, because you and me, we’re mates. And I won’t be your wife, on account of the frenchies (not that Senka had asked her to marry him – Tashka thought that up all by herself). I’ll earn as much as I need. And if it’s not enough, then you can help me, as a mate.

But Senka’s tales of the high life had sparked Tashka’s ambition or, rather, her vanity. She’d decided she wanted to make a career as well – move up from a street mamselle to a ‘grammar school girl’, especially since she was the right age for it.

‘Grammar school girls’ didn’t walk the streets, a madame supplied their clients for them. Compared with a street whore’s work, it was much easier and the money was far better.

The first thing she had to do was buy a grammar school uniform, with a cape, but Tashka had money set aside for that.

She already knew a madame too. An honest woman, reliable, who took only a third as her cut. And there was no end of clients who set store by grammar school girls. All respectable men, getting on a bit, men with money.

She had only one problem, the same one as Senka had: not enough culture to conduct a classy conversation. After all, the client had to believe he’d been brought a genuine grammar school girl and not a dressed-up mamselle, didn’t he?

That was why Tashka had started learning French words and all sorts of elegant expressions. She’d made up her life story, and she started reciting it to Senka. She wasn’t sure of all the words yet, so she kept glancing at a piece of paper. Tashka was supposed to be in the fourth class at grammar school, and an inspector had seduced her and plucked the flower of her innocence, taught her all sorts of tricks, and now, behind Mama and Papa’s back, she was earning money for sweets and cakes with her female charms.

Senka listened to the story and, as a man with experience of society, suggested a few improvements. He advised her most ardently to take out the swear words.

Tashka was surprised by this advice. As a Khitrovka girl, she couldn’t tell the difference between decent expressions and obscene ones. Then he wrote down all the dirty words on a piece of paper for her, so she could remember them. Tashka took her head in her hands and started repeating *****, *****, *****, *****, *****. Senka’s ears had got used to cultured or, to put it even better, civilised conversation, and they fairly wilted on his head.

Tashka had bought herself a poodle with the last money Senka had given her. The dog was small and white, very frisky, and he sniffed at absolutely everything. He recognised Senka the second time he saw him and started jumping up at him in delight. He could tell all Tashka’s flowers apart and had a special way of yapping for each one. His name was Pomponius, or just plain Pomposhka.

When Senka called round to see Tashka the second time – to tell her about how he’d seen his little brother and show her his new tooth (and there was one other thing, a money matter), the working girl lashed out: ‘What have you shown up here for? Didn’t you see I’ve got a red poppy in the window? Have you forgot what that means? I taught you! Danger, that’s what! Don’t come to Khitrovka, the Prince is looking for you!’

Senka knew that already, but how could he not come? After his society studies, and especially George’s practical classes, he had barely a quarter of the two thousand roubles left. He’d blown fifteen hundred in a week – that was an absolute disaster for him. He needed to restore his financial status urgently.

So he went down underground and restored it.

He wanted to take two rods, but changed his mind and took only one. No point in flashing it about just for the sake of it. Money to spare needs good care. It was time he started following that principle.

The jeweller Ashot Ashotovich greeted Senka like his long-lost brother. He left the parrot to keep an eye on the shop, took his guest in behind the curtain and treated him to cognac and biscuits. Senka gnawed on his biscuits and sipped on his cognac in a most cultured fashion, then he showed the jeweller the rod, but he didn’t led him hold it. Instead of four hundred roubles, he asked for a thousand. Now, would this shark pay up or not?