Boris Akunin - He Lover of Death

That gave Senka the shakes, and he forgot all about Yids.

‘But I reckon the Prince is more frightening than the Ghoul,’ he said casually, with a slight yawn.

That was what it said to do in the book on society life: ‘If the subject of conversation has stung you to the quick, you should not betray your agitation. Pass some neutral remark on the matter in a casual voice, to show the other person that you have not lost your composure. Even a yawn is permissible but, naturally, only a very modest one, and the mouth must be covered with the hand.’

‘That depends on how you l-look at it,’ the engineer retorted. ‘The Prince, of course, spills far more b-blood, but the most dangerous criminal is always the one to whom the f-future belongs. And the future of criminal Moscow undoubtedly d-does not belong to the hold-up men, it belongs to the m-milkers. The arithmetic p-proves it. The Ghoul’s b-business undertaking is less dangerous, because it is less irritating to the authorities, it is actually p-profitable for some representatives of authority. And the milkers make m-more profit anyway.’

‘What do you mean? The Prince lifts three thousand a time, and the Ghoul only collects a rouble a day from the shops.’

Masa brought the clothes: down-at-heel shoes, patched trousers, a tattered little jacket. Senka wrinkled up his face in disgust and started putting them on.

‘A rouble a d-day,’ Mr Nameless agreed. ‘But f-from every shop, and every day. And the Ghoul has about t-two hundred of these sheep that he shears. How m-much does that make in a month? Twice as m-much as the loot the Prince takes from an average j-job.’

‘But the Prince doesn’t lift loot just once a month,’ Senka persisted.

‘How many t-times, then? Twice? Three times at the m-most? But then the Ghoul doesn’t just take a rouble off everyone. For instance, he’s d-decided to take no less than twenty th-thousand off the people we’re g-going to see now.’

Senka gasped.

‘What kind of people are they, if you can take that much money off them?’

‘Jews,’ Erast Petrovich replied, stuffing something into a sack. ‘A long time ago n-now they built a synagogue not far from Khitrovka. When the present g-governor general was appointed to Moscow nine years ago, he f-forbade them to consecrate the synagogue and d-drove most of the Hebrews out of the old c-capital. But the Jewish c-community has recovered its strength again, its n-numbers have increased, and it is trying to open its house of p-prayer. Permission has been obtained f-from the authorities, but now the Jews have run into p-problems with the bandits. The Ghoul is threatening to b-burn down the building that was erected at the c-cost of immense sacrifice. He is demanding a p-pay-off from the community.’

‘What a lousy snake!’ Senka exclaimed indignantly. ‘If you’re a good Orthodox Christian and you don’t want their Yiddish chapel anywhere near you, then just burn it down, but don’t take their pieces of silver, right?’

Erast Petrovich didn’t answer the question, he just sighed. Then Senka thought for a moment and asked: ‘So why don’t these Jews complain to the police, then?’

‘The police are d-demanding even more money for protection against the b-bandits,’ Mr Nameless explained. ‘And so the m-members of the board of t-trustees have decided to reach an agreement with the Ghoul, and for that they have appointed special representatives. You and I, Senya, I mean M-Motya, are those special representatives.’

‘What do I have to do?’ Senka asked as they were walking down Spaso-Glinishshchevsky Lane. He didn’t like this fancy-dress party nearly as much as the first one, when he was a beggar. It wasn’t too bad in the cab, but since they’d got out they’d been called ‘filthy Yids’ twice, and one tattered ragamuffin had flung a dead mouse at them. He would have boxed his ears, to teach him not to go annoying people for no good reason, but he had to put up with it for the sake of the important job they were on.

‘What d-do you have to do?’ Mr Nameless echoed as he exchanged bows with the synagogue’s caretaker. ‘Keep quiet and l-leave your mouth hanging wide open. Do you know how to d-drool?’

Senka showed him.

‘Oh, well done.’

They went into a house beside the Jewish chapel. Two nervous gents in frock coats and skullcaps, but without side locks, were waiting in a clean room with decent furniture. One was grey, the other had black hair.

Only it didn’t look like they’d been waiting for Erast Petrovich and Senka. The grey-haired one waved his hand at them and said something angrily in a language that wasn’t Russian, but the meaning was clear enough: Clear off out of it, I’ve no time for you right now.

‘It is I, Erast Petrovich N-Nameless,’ the engineer said, and the two men (they had to be those ‘trusties’) were terribly surprised.

The black-haired one raised a finger: ‘I told you he was a Jew. The name’s Jewish too, it’s a distorted form of “Nahimles”.’

The grey-haired one gulped, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He looked at the engineer in alarm and asked: ‘Are you sure you can manage this, Mr Nameless? Perhaps it would be better to pay this bandit? To avoid worse. We don’t want any trouble.’

‘There won’t be any t-trouble,’ Erast Petrovich assured him, sticking his sack under a table. ‘But it’s t-two o’clock already. The Ghoul will be here soon.’

At that very moment someone wailed from outside the door: ‘Oi, he’s coming, he’s coming!’

Senka looked out of the window. The Ghoul was strolling casually up the street from the direction of Khitrovka, puffing on a papyrosa and glancing around with an evil smile on his face.

‘He’s come alone, without his d-deck,’ Mr Nameless remarked calmly. ‘He’s confident. And he doesn’t want to sh-share with his own men, the haul’s too b-big.’

‘Please, after you, Mr Rosenfeld,’ said the black-haired man, pointing to a curtain that closed off a corner of the room where there were sofas (an ‘alcove’ it was called). ‘No, I insist, after you.’

The trustees hid behind the curtain. The grey-haired one just had time to whisper: ‘Ah, Mr Nameless, Mr Nameless, we put our trust in you, please don’t lead us to ruin!’

The Ghoul pushed the door open without knocking and walked in, squinting after the bright daylight of the street. He said to Erast Petrovich: ‘Right, you mangy kikes, have you got the crunch? You’re the one who’s going to cough up, are you, Grandad?’

‘In the first place, good afternoon, young man,’ Mr Nameless intoned in a trembling voice. ‘In the second place, you can stop eyeing the room like that – there isn’t any money here. In the third place, have a seat at the table and we’ll talk to you like a reasonable man.’

The Ghoul lashed out with his boot at the chair offered to him, and it flew off into the corner with a crash.

‘Spieling and dealing?’ he hissed, narrowing his watery eyes. ‘We’ve done all that. The Ghoul’s word is solid as cast iron. Tomorrow you’ll be baking your matzos on charred embers. Well, what’s left of the synagogue. And to make sure your brothers get the idea, I’ll carve you up a bit too, you old goat.’

He pulled a hunting knife out of the top of his boot and edged towards Erast Petrovich.

The engineer stayed put. ‘Ai, Mr Extortioner, don’t waste my time on all this nonsense. The life left to me is no longer than a piglet’s tail, cursed be that unclean creature.’ And he spat fastidiously off to one side.

‘You’ve hit the bull’s-eye there, Grandad,’ said the Ghoul, grabbing the engineer by his false beard and raising the tip of the knife to his face. ‘For a start I’ll gouge your eyes out. Then I’ll straighten up your nose. What do you want a great big hook like that for? And then I’ll snuff you and your stinking little brat.’