Boris Akunin - He Lover of Death

Take Mr Nameless himself, for instance, Erast Petrovich. He wasn’t Japanese, was he, he looked like a normal person, but he had these foreign habits. When he was in his study, fiddling with the drawings or writing something, that seemed clear enough. But one time Senka glanced over his shoulder, out of curiosity, just to see what he was drawing, and he gasped out loud: the engineer wasn’t writing with a pen, he was holding a wooden brush, the kind you use for spreading glue, and he wasn’t drawing letters, but some strange-looking kind of squiggles that didn’t mean a thing to Senka.

Or else he might start striding across the room, clicking his green beads, and he could carry on striding about like that for ever.

And then he might sit down facing the wall and stare at a single spot. Once Senka tried to see what was there on the wall. He couldn’t see anything, nothing at all, not even a bedbug or some other little mite, and when he tried to ask what it was that Erast Petrovich found so interesting, Masa, who happened to be close by, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, dragged him out of the study and said: ‘When master contemprate, reave him arone.’ But then, what was he contemplating, if there was nothing there?

Apart from all the work involved in preparing the ‘Flying Carpet’ for its long-distance run, Mr Nameless had other mysterious business to deal with, something Senka wasn’t let in on. Erast Petrovich disappeared almost every evening at nine o’clock and didn’t come back until late, or sometimes he went missing until the next morning. When this happened, Senka was tormented with dark visions. Once he even took the engineer’s undershirt out of the laundry pile and sniffed to see whether it smelled of Death (that heady, minty smell that you could never confuse with anything else). It didn’t seem to.

Sometimes the master went out in the afternoon as well, but Senka didn’t know the reason for his absence.

Once, when Erast Petrovich took longer than usual straightening his collar and combing his hair in the mirror before he went out, Senka suffered an overwhelming fit of jealousy. He just couldn’t stop himself, he slipped out of the house as if he was going shopping, then out in the street he fell in behind the engineer and followed him, to see if he was going to meet a certain immoral individual.

He was indeed going to meet someone but, thank God, not the person on Senka’s mind.

Mr Nameless went into the Rivoli cafe´, sat down at a table and started reading the newspapers – Senka could see everything through the glass windows. After a while, Senka realised he wasn’t the only person interested in Erast Petrovich. There was a young lady standing not far away, in front of a fashionable shop window, and she was looking in the same direction as Senka. First he heard a quiet tinkling sound, but he couldn’t understand where it was coming from. Then he noticed that the girl had little bells sewn to her cuffs, and a necklace in the form of a snake; in fact it looked like it was alive. Clear enough, she was one of those decadents, lots of them had appeared in Moscow just recently.

At first Senka thought the young lady was waiting for someone, and he enjoyed taking a look at the lovely brunette, the way you do. But then she gave her head a shake, walked across the street and marched into the cafe´.

Erast Petrovich put down his newspaper, stood up to greet her and offered her a seat. They exchanged a couple of words, and the engineer started reading out loud from the newspaper.

Just what kind of halfwit was he?

Senka didn’t watch any more after that, because he felt calm now. Why get himself all worked up if Mr Nameless was so blind? He’d seen Death, he’d spoken to her, gazed into her shimmering eyes, and here he was chasing after some little street cat.

No, this particular individual was beyond Senka’s comprehension.

Take the move, for instance.

It was two days before Senka observed the rendezvous at the Rivoli Cafe´. All at once – completely out of the blue – Mr Nameless decided to move out of Asheulov Lane. Mr Nameless said they had to. They moved across to Sukharevka, into an officer’s apartment in the Spassky Barracks. No one explained to Senka why they had to go, what it was all for. They’d only just started settling in properly: he’d put up all those shelves in the study, hired floor-polishers to wax up the parquet so that it shone, half a carcass of veal had been ordered from the butcher – and suddenly this. And the rooms were paid for two months in advance – that was six hundred roubles down the drain!

They packed in a great hurry, threw everything higgledy-piggledy into two cabs and left.

The new apartment was pretty good too, with a separate entrance, only it was a little while before they could find a place for the three-wheeler. Senka spent two days cajoling the janitor Mikheich, drank four samovars of tea with him, gave him six roubles and then another three and a half before he got the key to the stable (there weren’t any horses there anyway, because the regiment had gone off to conquer China).

While Senka was trying to persuade the janitor, Masa-sensei persuaded the janitor’s wife – and more speedily too. So all in all, they settled in quite well, they couldn’t complain: they had a roof over their heads, the ‘Flying Carpet’ was in a warm, dry place, they had Mikheich’s respect, and pies and stewed fruit from his wife almost every single day.

On the last day of this peaceful life, before everything was sent spinning head over heels again, Senka received visitors at his new residence: his little brother Vanka and Judge Kuvshinnikov. As soon as they moved out of Asheulov Lane, Senka had sent a letter by the municipal post, saying that he was now living at such and such an address and would regard it as an honour to see his dear brother Ivan Trifonovich, please accept, etc., etc. The judge had replied by letter too: Thank you, we shall definitely come soon.

And he kept his word and came to visit.

At first he looked around suspiciously, wondering whether the place was some kind of thieves’ den. When Masa appeared in the hallway wearing nothing but his white underpants for renzu, the judge frowned and put his hand on Vanka’s shoulder. The youngster gaped wide eyed at the Oriental too, and when Masa slapped himself on the stomach and bowed, he gave a squeal of fright.

Things were looking bad. The judge had already turned towards the door, in order to leave (just to be on the safe side, he hadn’t let the cabby go), but then, fortunately, Erast Petrovich came out of his study, and one look at this respectable man in a velvet house jacket, holding a book in his hand, was enough to allay Kuvshinnikov’s fears. It was quite clear that a gentleman like that would never live in a den of thieves.

They introduced themselves to each other in the most respectable manner possible. Erast Petrovich called Senka his assistant and invited the judge into his study to smoke Cuban cigars. Senka never found out what they talked about in there, because he took Vanka to the stable to show him the automobile, and then drove his little brother round the yard. He moved all the levers and operated the crafty choke all on his own, and he turned the wheel himself too, while Vanka just hooted the horn and roared with delight.

They drove around like that for a long time and used up half a bucket of kerosene, but that was all right, no one would mind. Then the judge came out, to take Vanka home. He shook hands when he said goodbye to Senka and even gave him a cheery wink.

The judge and his brother drove away.

And in the evening, before he got into bed, Senka looked in the mirror to see whether he had any more hairs in his beard, and he discovered four new ones, three on the right cheek and one on the left. That made thirty-seven altogether, not counting the ones in his moustache.