Boris Akunin - He Lover of Death

On the porch of the house, right in front of the door, Death turned round. Her face wasn’t mocking now, like it had been in the basement, it seemed to be distorted by suffering, but still unbearably beautiful at the same time.

‘Forgive me, Erast Petrovich. I can’t hold out any longer. Perhaps God will take pity on me and work a miracle . . . I don’t know . . . But what you wrote was true. I am Death, but I am alive. It may be wrong, but I can’t carry on like this. Give me your hand.’

Mr Nameless didn’t say a thing, he seemed overcome by shyness as she took him by the hand and pulled him towards her. He walked up one step, then another.

Senka went up after him. Something was about to happen here!

But Death hissed at him: ‘Will you go away, for God’s sake! You just can’t leave me alone, can you?’

And she slammed the door right in his face – bang! Senka was struck dumb by the cruel injustice of it all. From behind the door he heard a strange sound, a kind of knocking, then a rustling, and something like sobbing, or maybe groaning. No words were spoken – he would have heard, because he had his ear pressed to the keyhole.

But when he realised what was going on in there, the tears started streaming from his eyes.

Senka banged the lamp down on the pavement, squatted on his haunches and put his hands over his ears. He squeezed his eyes tight shut too, so as not to hear or see this lousy rotten world, this bitch of a life in which some got everything and others got damn all. And God didn’t exist, because if he could allow someone to be mocked as cruelly as this, the world would be better off without him.

But his woeful blaspheming didn’t last very long, no more than a minute, in fact.

The door swung open, and Erast Petrovich came flying out on to the porch as if he’d been pushed from behind.

The engineer’s tie knot had been pulled askew, the buttons on his shirt were open, and Mr Nameless’s expression was hard to describe, because Senka had never seen anything like it on that self-possessed face before, he’d never even suspected that anything of the kind was possible: the eyelashes were fluttering in bewilderment, there was a strand of black hair hanging down over the eyes, and the mouth was gaping wide in total amazement.

Erast Petrovich swung round and exclaimed: ‘B-But . . . What’s wrong!’

The door slammed, even louder than the last time, when it slammed in Senka’s face. He heard the sound of muffled weeping behind it.

‘Open up!’ the engineer shouted, and almost tried to push the door open, but then he pulled his hands away as if it was red-hot iron. ‘I don’t wish to f-force my attentions on you, b-but . . . I don’t understand! Listen ...’ and then he added in a low voice: ‘Oh God, I c-can’t even address her by name! Tell me what it is that I d-did wrong!’

The bolt clanged shut implacably.

Senka watched and he could barely believe his eyes. There was a God, after all! This was it, a genuine Miracle of the Prayer that was Heard!

So how do you like that bitter taste, Mr Handsome?

‘Erast Petrovich,’ Senka asked in a very sympathetic voice, ‘why don’t we switch the transmission to reverse?’

‘Go t-to hell!’ roared the engineer, who had misplaced his habitual courtesy.

But Senka wasn’t offended at all.

In the morning he was shaken awake by Masa, who was dirty and smelled of sweat, and his eyes were red, as if he’d been loading bricks all night instead of sleeping.

‘What’s this, Sensei?’ Senka asked in surprise. ‘Just back from a date, are you? Were you with Fedora Nikitishna, or have you got someone new?’

It seemed like a perfectly normal question, quite flattering to a man’s vanity, but for some reason the Japanese was very angry.

‘I was whe’ I had to be! Get up, razybones, it’ midday orready!’

And he even waved his fist at Senka, the heathen. And him the one so fond of preaching politeness!

After that things went from bad to worse. The sleepy young man was sat on a chair and his face was lathered with soap.

‘Hey, hey!’ Senka yelled when he saw a razor in his sensei’s hand. ‘Leave me alone! I’m growing a beard!’

‘Masta’s ordas,’ Masa replied curtly. With his left hand he grabbed the poor orphan by the shoulder so that he couldn’t wriggle and then with his right hand he shaved off all fifty-four of his beard hairs, and his moustache into the bargain.

Senka was afraid of getting cut, so he didn’t budge. As the Japanese scraped away the final traces of his nascent male adornments, he muttered: ‘Ver’ just. “Some have orr fun and othas break their backs”.’ Senka didn’t understand what he was talking about, or what he meant about backs, but he didn’t bother to ask. In fact, he decided that for this outrageous attack he was never going to talk to the slanty-eyed pagan again. He was going to declare a boycott, like in the English parliament.

But the mockery of Senka’s dignity had only just begun. After the shave, he was ushered into Erast Petrovich’s study. The engineer wasn’t there. Instead, there was an old Yid in a skullcap and long coat sitting in front of the pier glass, admiring the big nose in the middle of his face and combing out his eyebrows, which were bushy enough already.

‘Have you shaved him?’ the old man asked in Mr Nameless’s voice. ‘Excellent. I’m almost f-finished. Sit here, Senya.’

Erast Petrovich was unrecognisable in this get-up. Even the skin on his hands and neck was wrinkled and yellow, with dark spots like old men had. Senka was so delighted, he even forgot about his boycott and grabbed hold of the sensei’s arm.

‘Oh, fantastic! Make me into a gypsy, will you?’

‘We don’t need any g-gypsies today,’ said the engineer, standing behind Senka’s back and rubbing some oil into his hair – it made it stick to his head so that he looked lop eared.

‘Let’s add a f-few freckles,’ Erast Petrovich said to the Japanese.

Masa handed his master a little jar. A few smooth strokes of the hand, and Senka’s mug was freckly all over.

‘The n-number fourteen wig.’

Masa handed over something that looked like a red bundle of fibres for scrubbing yourself in the bathhouse, but on Senka’s head it turned into a tangled mop of ginger hair that hung down over his temples in two matted bunches. Then the engineer tickled Senka’s eyebrows and eyelashes with a little brush, and they turned ginger too.

‘What shall we d-do with the Slavic n-nose?’ Mr Nameless asked himself thoughtfully. ‘Add a hump? Yes, I think s-so.’

He stuck a lump of sticky wax on the bridge of Senka’s nose, gave it a lick of flesh colour and sprinkled it with freckles. The resulting conk was a work of real beauty.

‘What’s all this for?’ Senka asked merrily, admiring himself in the mirror.

‘You’re going to b-be the Jewish boy Motya,’ Erast Petrovich replied, clapping a skullcap like his own on Senka’s head. ‘Masa will g-give you the appropriate costume.’

‘I’m not going to be no kike!’ Senka protested indignantly, suddenly realising that the ginger bunches were Jewish side locks. ‘I don’t wish to.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t like them! I hate their ugly hook-nosed mugs! Faces, I mean!’

‘What kind of f-faces do you like?’ the engineer asked him. ‘With snub n-noses? If someone’s Russian, do you adore him straight away j-just for that?’

‘Well, that depends what he’s like, of course.’

‘That’s right,’ Erast Petrovich said approvingly, wiping his hands. ‘One should be ch-choosy about whom one loves. And even m-more so about whom one hates. In any case, one shouldn’t l-love or hate someone for the shape of his n-nose. But that’s enough d-discussion. In an hour we have a m-meeting with Mr Ghoul, the most dangerous b-bandit in Moscow.’