Boris Akunin - She Lover of Death

‘That’s it, now you’re one of us,’ Petya murmured behind her back. ‘I was so nervous for you!’

He looked just as if it was his birthday. Obviously he thought that now the candidate he had proposed had passed the examination, his own status among the ‘lovers’ would be enhanced.

‘Well then,’ said Prospero, gesturing invitingly towards the table. ‘Please be seated. Let us listen to what the spirits will tell us today.’

Ophelia took the seat to the right of the Doge. The others also sat down, placing their hands on the tablecloth so that their little fingers touched each other.

‘This is a spiritualist figure,’ Petya explained. ‘It’s called “the magic wheel”.’

Spiritualist seances were known even in Irkutsk. Columbine had done a little table-spinning herself, but that had been more like a jolly game of Yuletide fortune-telling: there was always someone tittering, gasping or giggling, and Kostya always tried to squeeze her elbow or kiss her cheek under the cover of darkness.

But here everything was deadly serious. The Doge extinguished the candles, leaving only the dull glow of the brazier, so that the faces of everyone sitting there were red below and black above – as if they had no eyes.

‘Ophelia, your time has come,’ their chairman said in a deep, resonant voice. ‘Give us a sign when you hear the Beyond.’

So that’s who Ophelia is, Columbine realised. A genuine medium, and that’s why she seems so much like a sleepwalker.

The blonde nymph’s face was still and absolutely expressionless, her eyes were closed and only her lips were trembling slightly, as if she were soundlessly whispering some incantation.

Suddenly Columbine felt a tremor run across her fingers and a cold draught blow on her cheeks. Ophelia raised her long eyelashes and threw her head back, and her pupils were so wide that her eyes were completely black.

‘I see you are ready,’ the Doge declared in the same solemn tone. ‘Summon Moretta to us.’

Columbine remembered that was the name of the girl whose vacancy she had filled. The poor creature who had shot herself together with that other one, Lycanthrope.

Ophelia was absolutely still for a few seconds, and then she said: ‘Yes . . . Yes . . . I hear her . . . She is far away, but coming closer every moment . . . It is I, Moretta. I have come. What do you want to know?’ she suddenly said in a quite different voice – a low, breathy contralto.

‘That’s Moretta’s voice!’ Lorelei Rubinstein exclaimed. ‘Do you hear?’

The people at the table stirred and their chairs creaked, but Prospero shook his head impatiently and everyone was still again.

‘Moretta, my girl, have you found your happiness?’ he asked. ‘No . . . I don’t know . . . It all feels so strange . . . It’s dark here, I can’t see anything. But there is someone beside me, someone who touches me with his hands and breathes in my face . . .’

‘It is he! The Eternal Bridegroom!’ Lorelei whispered passionately.

‘Quiet!’ the bookkeeper Caliban bellowed at her.

The Doge’s voice was gentle, almost unctuous.

‘You are not yet accustomed to the World Beyond, it is hard for you to speak. But you know what you must tell us. Who will be next? Who should expect the Sign?’

The silence was so intense that they could hear the coals crackling in the brazier.

Ophelia didn’t say anything. Columbine noticed that Petya Lileiko’s little finger was trembling rapidly – he was sitting on her right – and she suddenly started trembling herself: what if the spirit of this Moretta were to name her, the new aspirant? But her sense of grievance was stronger than her fear. How unjust that would be! Before she had really even become a member of the club, before she had really understood anything properly. There, take that!

‘A . . . A-a-a . . . A-va . . . Avaddon . . .’ Ophelia said very quietly.

Everyone turned towards the unhandsome student, and the people beside him – the anatomist by the name of Horatio and one of the twins (Columbine couldn’t remember which one it was) involuntarily jerked their hands away. A bewildered smile appeared on Avaddon’s face, but he was looking at Prospero, not the medium.

‘Thank you, Moretta.’ the Doge said. ‘Return to your new dwelling place. We wish you eternal happiness. Send Lycanthrope to us.’

‘Teacher . . .’ Avaddon said with a gulp, but Prospero jerked his chin peremptorily.

‘Be quiet. This does not mean anything as yet. We shall ask Lycanthrope.’

‘I am already here,’ Ophelia responded in a hoarse young man’s voice. ‘Greetings to the honest company from the newly-wed.’

‘I see you are still a joker, even there,’ the Doge chuckled.

‘Well why not, this is a jolly place. Especially looking at you lot.’

‘Tell us who should be next,’ Prospero told the spirit sternly. ‘And no jokes.’

‘Ah, yes, that’s no joking matter . . .’

Columbine was gaping wide-eyed at Ophelia. It was incredible! How could this delicate girl’s lips speak in such a confident, natural baritone?

Lycanthrope’s spirit said quite clearly: ‘Avaddon. Who else?’ And then he concluded with a laugh: ‘The wedding bed is already made up and waiting . . .’

Avaddon cried out, and the strange guttural sound roused the medium from her trance. Ophelia shuddered, fluttered her eyelids and rubbed her eyes, and when she took her hands away, her face was as it had been before: absentminded and illuminated by a faint, timid smile. And her eyes were no longer black, but quite normal – bright and moist with tears.

Someone lit the candles and soon the chandelier was lit too, making the drawing room very bright.

‘What’s his real name?’ Columbine asked, unable to take her eyes off the Chosen One (in fact, everyone else had eyes only for him).

‘Nikisha. Nikifor Sipyaga,’ Petya murmured in confusion.

Avaddon got up and looked at the others with a strange expression on his face, a mixture of fear and superiority.

‘Straight in off the red!’ he laughed, then sobbed and laughed again.

‘Congratulations!’ Caliban exclaimed with sincere feeling, shaking the condemned man firmly by the hand. ‘Phoo, your hand’s covered in cold sweat. Turned coward? Eh, the fools have all the luck!’

‘What . . . What now?’ Avaddon asked the Doge, ‘I can’t seem to gather my thoughts . . . my head’s spinning.’

‘Calm down,’ said Prospero, going over and putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘We know the spirits like to play tricks on the living. Without the Sign all this means absolutely nothing. Wait for the Sign, and make sure you don’t do anything stupid . . . That is all, the meeting is over. Leave now.’

He turned his back to the aspirants and one by one they made their way to the door.

Shaken by what she had seen and heard, Columbine watched Avaddon’s unnaturally straight back as he left the room first.

‘Let’s go.’ said Petya, taking her by the hand. ‘There won’t be anything else.’

Suddenly they heard a low, imperious voice.

‘Let the new girl stay!’

Columbine immediately forgot about Avaddon and Petya. She turned round, afraid of only one thing – that she might have misheard.

Without looking round, Prospero raised one hand and beckoned with his finger for her to approach.

Petya, the false Harlequin, looked plaintively into Columbine’s face and saw it was flushed with happiness. He shuffled his feet, sighed and meekly walked out.

A minute later, Columbine was left alone with the master of the house.

A discarded chrysalis

This is how it was. The wind was howling outside the windows, bending down the trees. The metal sheeting of the roof was clattering. Nature was rampaging in the grip of titanic passions.