Boris Akunin - She Lover of Death

She opened the door.

It was dark on the stairway too. Someone had turned off the light. She could make out a vague silhouette. Tall and massive – no, it wasn’t Genji.

Her visitor didn’t say anything, all she could hear was loud, fitful breathing.

‘Did you want to see me?’ Columbine asked, peering into the darkness.

‘Yes, you!’ a hoarse voice rasped – it sounded so savage and malevolent that she took a sharp step back.

‘Who are you?’ she cried out.

‘Your death! With a small letter.’

Columbine heard gruff, throaty laughter. She thought she recognised the voice, but she was so frightened that she couldn’t understand a thing, and before she could gather her wits the shadow stepped into the hallway and seized her round the neck with fingers of iron.

The voice hissed: ‘You’ll be black and blue, with your tongue hanging out. A fine Chosen One!’

The terrible visitor laughed again, wheezing like a decrepit old dog barking.

The reply to his laughter was an angry hiss from Lucifer, who had woken up. The bold little snake had grown a lot in the last few weeks of feeding on milk and minced meat. He sank his fangs into the attacker’s hand.

The attacker growled, grabbed the grass snake by the tail and smashed it against the wall. It only took a second, but that was enough for Columbine to dart away. She didn’t make a decision or choose her moment, she simply went away, following her instinct like an animal.

She ran down the corridor with her mouth wide open, but not uttering a sound. She ran blindly, with no idea of where she was going or why, urged on by the most effective goad of all – the fear of death, vile and loathsome. It was not Death lumbering along after her, but death – filthy, foul-smelling and terrifying. The death from her childhood. With the rich, thick soil of the graveyard. The white death-worms. The grinning skull with holes instead of eyes.

A sudden thought occurred to her: she should run into the bathroom, bolt the door and then shout and hammer on the steel pipe so that the neighbours would hear. The bathroom door opened outwards, the handle was flimsy, if he tugged hard, it would break off, and the door would stay locked.

It was a wonderful idea, good enough to save her. But it would take three seconds, or at least two, for her to do it, and she didn’t have them.

In the doorway of the room a hand grabbed her sleeve from behind. Columbine jerked away as hard as she could, sending buttons flying. But she recovered her voice.

‘Help!’ she shouted at the top of her lungs. And then she carried on shouting. As loud as she could manage.

She darted out of the room to the left, into the kitchen. There was the door of the bathroom, she could hear the water splashing out of the tap. No, not enough time.

Left again out of the kitchen, into the corridor. The circle was completed. Where to now? Back into the room or out on to the stairs? The front door was still open.

Better on to the stairs. Maybe someone would look out of their door?

She flew out on to the dark landing with a scream and went dashing down the steps. If only she didn’t stumble!

Columbine’s long skirt hampered her. She tugged it up above her knees with a jerk.

‘Stop, thief! Stop!’ the hoarse voice roared behind her.

Why ‘thief’? Columbine wondered, and at that very moment, just before the final flight of steps, the heel of her shoe slipped sideways with a crunch.

The fugitive screeched and fell, landing with her chest and stomach on the steps, and slid downwards. She hit her elbows against the stairs, but she didn’t feel any pain, she was just very afraid.

Realising she wouldn’t have time to get up, she pressed her forehead against the floor. It was cold and smelled of dust. She squeezed her eyes shut.

The door of the entranceway banged loudly and someone shouted out: ‘Don’t move! I’ll fire!’

The hoarse voice answered: ‘Here, take this!’

There was a deafening crash and Columbine’s ears were suddenly blocked. She hadn’t been able to see anything in the dark, and now she couldn’t hear anything either.

As well as the dust, there was another smell now. An acrid smell, vaguely familiar. She remembered what it was – gunpowder. When her brother Misha used to shoot crows in the garden it had smelled like that.

She heard a faint voice in the distance.

‘Columbine! Are you alive?’

Genji’s voice.

Hands that were strong but gentle, not rough like those others, turned her over on to her back. She opened her eyes and then squeezed them shut again.

There was an electric torch shining straight into them.

‘That’s blinding,’ Columbine said.

Then Genji put the torch down on a step and she could see that he was leaning against the banisters with a smoking revolver in his hand; his top hat had slipped to one side and his coat was unbuttoned.

Columbine asked in a whisper: ‘What was all that?’

He picked up the torch again and pointed the beam to one side. Caliban was sitting by the wall, with his dead eyes staring down at the floor. There was a trickle of something dark running from his half-open mouth and another trickle, absolutely black, running from the round hole in his forehead.

He’s dead, Columbine guessed. The bookkeeper was still clutching a knife in his hand, holding it by the blade instead of the handle.

‘He was about to throw it,’ Genji explained. ‘He must have learned that from his shipmates while he was still sailing the seas. But I fired first.’

Even though her teeth were chattering and she had hic-cups, Columbine asked: ‘W-why? What f-for? I was g-going to do it anyway, myself . . .’

How strange, she thought, now I’m stammering, but he isn’t.

‘Later, later,’ Genji said to her.

He carefully picked the young lady up in his arms and carried her up the stairs. Columbine pressed her head against his chest. She felt very content just then. He was holding her so comfortably, just right. As if he had made a special study of how to carry enervated and exhausted young women.

She whispered: ‘I’m a doll, I’m a doll.’

Genji leaned his head down and asked: ‘What?’

‘You’re carrying me like a broken doll,’ she explained.

A quarter of an hour later Columbine was alone in her flat, sitting with her feet pulled up on to the armchair, wrapped in a rug and crying.

Alone because, after wrapping her in the rug, Genji had gone to get a doctor and the police.

With her feet pulled up because the entire floor was wet – the bath had overflowed.

But she was not crying because she was afraid (Genji had told her there would be nothing more to be afraid of). She was crying in grief: brave Lucifer was lying on her knees still and lifeless, like a patterned ribbon.

Columbine sobbed and sniffed as she stroked the rough scales on her rescuer’s back.

But she stopped crying when she turned to look in the mirror and saw the crimson graze on her forehead, her swollen nose and red eyes and the blue stripes on her neck.

She ought to tidy herself up a bit before Genji got back.

To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov

(Private and confidential)

Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,

You may consider the epic story of the ‘Lovers of Death’ at an end. I shall try to set forth for you the events of this evening without omitting anything of significance.

When we all gathered at the usual time at Prospero’s apartment, I immediately realised that something quite exceptional had happened. The meeting was not chaired by Blagovolsky, but the Stammerer, and it soon became clear that our Doge had been overthrown and the reins of power had been taken up by the strong hands of a new dictator, although not for long and only in order to declare the society disbanded.