Boris Akunin - She Lover of Death

‘We all remember that Caliban was the most zealous advocate of voluntary death. He waited impatiently for his own turn to come and was bitterly jealous of others’ “luck”. Every time the choice fell on someone else, he fell into black despair: Death still considered him unworthy to join the comrades whom he had killed and eaten. But had he not changed, purged himself through contrition, did he not serve Death faithfully, love and desire her passionately?

‘I became a member of the club too late, and it is hard for me now to tell how or why Papushin reached his decision to push certain of the aspirants into suicide. In Ophelia’s case, he probably simply wanted to get rid of her, to put an end to the spiritualist seances – he no longer believed that the angry spirits of the “lovers” would ever summon him. Here, as in Avaddon’s case, Caliban displayed an uncommon ingenuity, of which I would never have suspected him capable. It is, however, well known that individuals of a maniacal bent can be exceptionally cunning. I will not go into the technical details here, since they have no bearing on our immediate business.

‘Why did he decide to push the Lioness of Ecstasy over the edge? Possibly she irritated him with her excessively rapturous manner. The cruel joke that Papushin played on poor Lorelei probably seemed very witty to his sick, perverted mind. I cannot suggest any other motive.

‘In Gdlevsky’s case, however, everything is quite clear. The boy boasted too much about how greatly Death favoured him. The story of the Friday rhymes is genuinely astonishing – there are too many coincidences. I suspected foul play and tried to pursue the organ grinder whose song Gdlevsky had taken as his final Sign. But the tramp seemed to have disappeared into thin air. That evening I walked round all the streets in the vicinity, but failed to find him . . .

‘Caliban’s love for Death was genuine insanity. He loved her passionately, in the way that men love femmes fatales . In the way that José must have loved Carmen and Rogozhin loved Nastasya Filippovna – constantly tormented by desire and consumed by desperate envy of his more fortunate rivals. And the schoolboy actually boasted about his imaginary triumph! In killing Gdlevsky, Caliban eliminated a rival. He deliberately arranged things so that you others would realise it was no suicide and the boy was a usurper, Death did not walk to the altar with him. To use the language of the newspapers, it was a genuine crime of passion.’

The mention of newspapers reminded me of Lavr Zhemailo.

‘But what happened to Cyrano?’ I asked. ‘You said it was a murder. Papushin again?’

‘Certainly, Zhemailo’s death was no suicide,’ the Stammerer replied. ‘Caliban somehow discovered who Cyrano was. A few minutes before his death the journalist phoned his newspaper’s offices (it must have been from here, it couldn’t have been anywhere else) and promised to deliver an incredible news story. I don’t know what he had in mind, but I remember the events of that evening very clearly. Cyrano went across to the bookshelves, looked at the spines of the books, and took out one volume. Then he went out and didn’t come back again. That was at about ten o’clock in the evening. The autopsy established that he died no later than eleven.’

(So that was the meaning of the mysterious movement of the door that I observed in the study that evening! While I was eavesdropping on Cyrano from the corridor, at the same time Caliban was hiding on the other side, in the dining room. That was when he had seen through the correspondent’s mask!)

‘The police surgeon,’ continued the Stammerer, ‘determined that Zhemailo died of asphyxiation, even though, in addition to the furrow left by the rope, his neck bore the clear imprints of fingers. Papushin obviously followed the journalist, overtook him on the boulevard, which was completely deserted at that late hour, and strangled him, which would not be difficult, since nature had endowed the killer with such great strength. Short, flabby Cyrano could not possibly have offered any serious resistance to the enraged bookkeeper. Afterwards Caliban hung the body on a tree, using the victim’s trouser belt. This was no crime of passion but an act of revenge. Caliban regarded membership of the club as a sacred ministry, Cyrano was a villainous traitor. That was why he hung him on a Judas tree, an aspen.’

(At this point, to be quite honest, I broke into a cold sweat. I imagined what the madman would have done to me if he had found out about my correspondence with you. Do you at least understand the monstrous risk to which I exposed myself in carrying out your assignment?

My heart started pounding, my fingers started trembling and after that I listened less attentively, and so I will convey the conclusion of the speech in somewhat abbreviated form.)

‘The fact that he had got away with the two previous murders and his ever-increasing resentment drove Papushin into attempting yet another crime. He decided to kill Columbine, Death’s new favourite. The madman must have found it particularly hard to bear the humiliation he had suffered when his cherished message from the Eternal Bride was publicly declared a forgery. And Columbine had already stated that fire did not touch her Signs.

‘At this point I should really explain that it was Papushin’s profound conviction – a conviction that the Doge did everything possible to support and encourage – that suicide is the noblest manner in which to leave this life or, as Sterne put it, the aristocrat of deaths. By preventing Columbine from dying of her own free will, Caliban would have exposed her as a usurper – in exactly the same way as he had already done with Gdlevsky.

‘And that is exactly what would have happened yesterday if I had not felt concerned about Mademoiselle Columbine’s state of mind and decided to see her home. We said goodnight outside the house, but I decided to keep an eye on her windows so that I could intervene immediately if I noticed anything suspicious. Naturally, the idea of a murder never even entered my head – what I was afraid of was that the young woman intended to take her own life.

‘One of her windows was lit and every now and then I saw a shadow move across the curtain. It was already very late, but Mademoiselle Columbine had still not gone to bed. I wondered if I should go upstairs? But how would it look, a man visiting a solitary young woman at that time of night? No, it was absolutely unthinkable.

‘I didn’t see Caliban make his way into the entrance, he entered from the yard, through the back door. At a quarter past two I thought I heard muffled screams from somewhere above me, but I could quite well have been mistaken. I listened closely and a few seconds later I quite distinctly heard someone shout: “No! No! Skulls! Worms!” The shouts were coming from the entrance. I didn’t understand what the words meant, and I still do not understand why Mademoiselle Columbine uttered them, but I immediately dashed towards the front door. Just in time, as it turned out. A few moments later it would have been too late.’

(At this point Columbine had a fit of hysterics. She started sobbing, threw herself on the Stammerer’s chest, babbled incoherently and kissed him several times on the forehead and cheeks, inflicting some damage to the dandy’s coiffure and collar. After the distressed maiden had been given a drink of water and seated in an armchair, the Stammerer concluded his address.)

‘That is all, ladies and gentlemen. I hereby declare the club of “Lovers of Death” disbanded. There is no Death with a capital letter. That is one. The death that does exist has no need of lovers, male or female. That is two. Your turn to meet this boring lady will inevitably come, but all in good time. It is one meeting that you cannot avoid. That is three. Goodbye.’