Boris Akunin - Special Assignments

No one in the whole wide world was more miserable than Anisii Tulipov. Well, perhaps someone somewhere in darkest Africa or Patagonia, but certainly not anywhere nearer than that.

Judge for yourself. In the first place, that forename - Anisii. Have you ever heard of a nobleman, a gentleman of the bedchamber, say, or at the very least, the head of some official department, being called Anisii? It simply reeks of icon-lamps and priests' offspring with their hair slicked with nettle oil.

And that surname, from the word 'tulip'! It was simply a joke. He had inherited the ill-starred family title from his great-grandfather. When Anisii's forebear had been studying in the seminary, the father rector had had the bright idea of replacing the inharmonious surnames of the future servants of the Church with names more pleasing to God. For the sake of simplicity and convenience, one year he had named all the seminarians after Church holidays, another year after fruits, and great-grandfather had found himself in the year of the flowers: someone had become Hyacinthov, someone Balzamov and someone else Buttercupov. Great-grandfather never did graduate from the seminary, but he had passed the idiotic surname on to his progeny. Well, at least he had been named after a tulip and not a dandelion.

But never mind about the name! What about Anisii's appearance! First of all, his ears, jutting out on both sides like the handles of a chamber pot. Tuck them in under your cap and they just turned rebellious, springing back so that they could stick out like some kind of prop for your hat. They were just too rubbery and gristly.

There had been a time when Anisii used to linger in front of the mirror, turning this way and that way, combing the long hair that he had grown specially at both sides in an attempt to conceal his lop ears - and it did seem to look a bit better, at least for a while. But when the pimples had erupted all over his physiognomy - and that was more than two years ago now - Tulipov had put the mirror away in the attic, because he simply couldn't bear to look at his own repulsive features any more.

Anisii got up for work before it was even light - in winter time you could say it was still night. He had a long way to go. The little house he had inherited from his father, a deacon, stood in the vegetable garden of the Pokrovsky Monastery, right beside the Spassky Gates. The route along Pustaya Street, across Taganskaya Square, past the ominous Khitrovka district, to his job in the Department of Gendarmes took Anisii a whole hour at a fast walk. And if, like today, there was a bit of a frost and the road was covered with black ice, it was a real ordeal - your tattered shoes and worn-out overcoat weren't much help to you then. It fair set your teeth clattering, reminding you of better times, your carefree boyhood, and your dear mother, God rest her soul.

A year earlier, when Anisii had become a police agent, things had been much better: a salary of eighteen roubles, plus extra pay for overtime and for night work, and occasionally they might even throw in some travel expenses. Sometimes it all mounted up to as much as thirty-five roubles a month. But the unfortunate Tulipov hadn't been able to hold on to his fine, lucrative job. Lieutenant-Colonel Sverchinsky himself had characterised him as a hopeless agent and in general a ditherer. First he'd been caught leaving his observation post (he'd had to: how could he not slip back home for a moment when his sister Sonya hadn't been fed since the morning?). And then something even worse had happened: Anisii had let a dangerous female revolutionary escape. During the operation to seize a conspirators' apartment he'd been standing in the back yard, beside the rear entrance. Because Tulipov was so young, just to be on the safe side they hadn't let him take part in the actual arrest. But then, didn't the arresting officers, those experienced bloodhounds, let a female student get away from them? Anisii saw a young lady in spectacles running towards him, with a frightened, desperate look on her face. He shouted 'Stop!' but he couldn't bring himself to grab her - the young lady's hands looked so terribly frail. He just stood there like a stuffed dummy, watching her run away. He didn't even blow his whistle.

For that outrageous dereliction of duty they had wanted to throw Tulipov out of the department altogether, but his superiors had taken pity on the orphan and demoted him to courier. Anisii's job now was a lowly, even shameful one for an educated man with five classes of secondary school. And worst of all, it had absolutely no prospects. Now he would spend his entire life rushing about like an errand boy, without ever earning a state tide.

To give up on yourself at the age of twenty is no easy thing for anyone, but it wasn't even a matter of ambition. Just you try living on twelve and a half roubles. He didn't really need much for himself, but there was no way to explain to Sonya that her younger brother's career was a failure. She wanted butter, and cream cheese, and she had to be treated to a sweet every now and then. And wood to heat the stove - that cost a rouble a yard now. Sonya might be an idiot, but she still moaned and cried when she was cold.

Before he slipped out of the house, Anisii had managed to change his sister's wet bed. She had opened her piggy little eyes and babbled, 'Nisii, Nisii.'

'You be good now; don't get up to any mischief,' Anisii told her with feigned severity as he rolled over her heavy body, still hot from sleep. He put a coin on the table, the ten kopecks he had promised to leave for their neighbour Sychikha, who kept an eye on the cripple. He chewed hastily on a stale bread-bun, following it with a gulp of cold milk, and then it was time to head out into the darkness and the blizzard.

As he trudged across the snow-covered vacant lot towards Taganskaya Square, with his feet constantly slipping, Tulipov felt very sorry for himself. It was bad enough that he was poor, ugly and untalented, but his sister Sonya was a burden for the rest of his life. He was a doomed man; he would never have a wife, or children, or a comfortable home.

As he ran past the Church of Consolation of All the Afflicted, he crossed himself as usual, facing towards the icon of the Mother of God, lit up by its little lamp. Anisii had loved that icon since he was a child: it didn't hang inside where it was warm and dry but out there on the wall, exposed to the elements, only protected from the rain and the snow by a small canopy, with a wooden cross above it. The little flame was burning, unquenchable in its glass cover; you could see it from a long way away. And that was good, especially when you were looking at it from out of the cold darkness and howling wind.

What was that white shape, up on top of the cross?

A white dove. Sitting there preening its little wings with its beak, and it couldn't care a straw for the blizzard. It was a sure sign - his dear departed mother had been a great authority on signs - a white dove on a cross meant good fortune and unexpected happiness. But where could good fortune come from to him?

The low wind swirled the snow across the ground. Oh, but it was cold.

Today, however, Anisii's working day could hardly have got off to a better start. You could say that Tulipov had a real stroke of luck. Egor Semenich, the collegiate registrar in charge of deliveries, cast a dubious glance at Anisii's unconvincing overcoat, shook his grey head and gave him a nice warm job, one that wouldn't have him running all over the place across the boundless, wind-swept city: all he had to do was deliver a folder of reports and documents to His Honour Mr Erast Petrovich Fandorin, the Deputy for Special Assignments to His Excellency the Governor-General. Deliver it and wait to see if there would be any return correspondence from Court Counsellor Fandorin.