Boris Akunin - She Lover of Death

‘A snakeskin collar?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Very bon ton .’

He suddenly gave a quiet cry.

Columbine turned her head and saw Petya’s pupils rapidly expanding .

‘There . . . there . . .’ he whispered, unable to move a muscle. ‘What is it?’

‘An Egyptian cobra,’ she explained. ‘Live. You know, Cleopatra killed herself with one like that.’

He shuddered and pressed himself back against the window, clasping his hands against his chest.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Columbine. ‘Lucifer doesn’t bite my friends.’

Petya nodded, with his eyes fixed on the moving black collar, but he didn’t come close again.

They got off on a green street running up a steep incline, which Petya said was Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. Then they turned into a side street.

It was after nine and dark already, the streetlamps had been lit.

‘There, that’s Prospero’s house,’ Petya said in a quiet voice, pointing to a single-storey detached building.

All that Columbine could really make out in the darkness were six curtained windows filled with a mysterious reddish glow.

‘What have you stopped for?’ asked Petya, trying to hurry his companion along. ‘Everyone’s supposed to arrive exactly at nine, we’re late.’

But at that precise moment Columbine was overcome by an irresistible urge to run back on to the boulevard, and then down to the broad, dimly lit square, and on, and on. Not to that cramped little flat in Kitaigorod, to hell with it, but straight to the station and straight on to a train. The wheels would start to hammer, reeling the stretched thread of the rails back up into a ball, and everything would just be like it was before . . .

‘You were the one who stopped,’ Columbine said angrily. ‘Come on, take me to these “lovers” of yours.’

Columbine hears the voices of the spirits

Petya opened the street door without knocking and explained: ‘Prospero doesn’t hold with having servants. He does everything himself – it’s a habit from his time in exile.’

It was completely dark in the hallway, and Columbine couldn’t make anything out properly, apart from a corridor that led on into the house and a white door. The spacious salon located behind the door proved to be not much brighter. There were no lamps lit, only a few candles on the table and, a little to one side, a cast-iron brazier with coals glowing scarlet. Crooked shadows writhed on the walls, the gilded spines of books gleamed on shelves, and the pendants of an unlit chandelier twinkled up under the ceiling.

It was only after Columbine’s eyes had adjusted a little to the dim lighting that she realised there were quite a few people in the room – probably about ten, or even more.

The aspirants did not seem to regard Petya as a very significant individual. Some nodded in response to his timid greeting, but others simply carried on talking to each other. Columbine found this cool reception offensive, and she decided to maintain an independent line. She walked up to the table, lit a papirosa from a candle and, projecting a loud voice right across the room, asked her companion: ‘Well, which one here is Prospero?’

Petya pulled his head down into his shoulders. It went very quiet. But, noticing that the glances directed at her were curious, Columbine immediately stopped being afraid. She set one hand on her hip, just like in the advertisement for Carmen papiroses , and blew a stream of blue smoke up into the air.

‘Oh come now, lovely stranger,’ said a pasty-looking gentleman in a shantung cotton morning coat, with his hair combed across a bald spot in true virtuoso fashion. ‘The Doge will arrive later, when everything’s ready.’

He walked closer, stopped two paces away from her and began unceremoniously examining Columbine from top to bottom. She replied by looking at him in precisely the same way.

‘This is Columbine, I’ve brought her as a candidate,’ Petya bleated guiltily, for which he was immediately punished.

‘Cherubino,’ the new candidate said in a sweet voice. ‘Surely your mama must have taught you that you should introduce the man to the lady, and not the other way round?’

The man in the morning coat immediately pressed his hand to his chest, bowed and introduced himself: ‘I am Kriton. You have a quite insane face, Mademoiselle Columbine. It possesses a ravishing amalgam of innocence and depravity.’

The tone of his voice indicated that this was a compliment, but Columbine felt offended by the ‘innocence’.

‘Kriton – that’s something chemical, isn’t it?’ It was an attempt to mock, to show this shabby, well-worn individual that he was not dealing with some kind of ingénue , but a mature, self-confident woman. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, it was even worse than that time in the literature exam when she called Goethe Johann-Sebastian instead of Johann-Wolfgang.

‘It is from “Egyptian Nights”, the man in shantung cotton replied with a condescending smile. ‘Do you remember this?’

No, Columbine didn’t remember that at all. She couldn’t even remember who the Graces were.

‘Do you like to make wild, abandoned love in the night, on the roof, to the hurricane’s roar, with the teeming rain lashing your naked body?’ Kriton enquired without lowering his voice, ‘I truly love it.’

The poor Irkutsk girl was unable to find an answer to that. She looked round at Petya, but the rotten traitor moved away with a preoccupied air, striking up a conversation with a poorly dressed young man of very unattractive appearance: bright, bulging eyes, a wide, mobile mouth and blackheads scattered across his face.

‘You must have a fine taut body,’ Kriton surmised. ‘Whiplash-lean, like a young predator. I can just see you in the pose of a panther prepared to pounce.’

What should she do? How should she answer?

According to the Irkutsk code of conduct, she ought to slap the impudent fellow across the face, but here, in this club of the elect, that was unthinkable – they would think her a hypocrite or, even worse, a prim and proper provincial. And what was so insulting anyway, Columbine thought to herself. After all, this man said what he thought, and that was more honest than striking up a conversation about music or the various ills of society with a woman who had taken your fancy. Kriton looked absolutely nothing like a ‘young sage’, but even so the audacious things he said made Columbine quite feverish – no one had ever spoken to her like that before. However, on looking more closely at the outspoken gentleman, she decided that he probably did bear a certain resemblance to the god Pan.

‘I wish to teach you the terrible art of love, young Columbine,’ the goat-hoofed seducer cooed and squeezed her hand – the same one that Petya had recently squeezed. Columbine stood there woodenly and submissively allowed him to knead her fingers. A long stub of ash fell from her papirosa on to the carpet.

But just then a rapid whispering ran across the salon, and everybody turned towards a tall leather-upholstered double door.

It went absolutely quiet and she heard measured footsteps approaching. Then the door swung open without a sound and a figure – improbably broad, almost square – appeared on the threshold. But the next moment the man stepped into the room, and it was clear that his build was absolutely normal, he was simply wearing a wide gown like those worn by European university professors or doctors of philosophy.