Boris Akunin - Murder on the Leviathan

The captain is a good man, a genuine old sea dog.

He speaks awkwardly, in short, clipped phrases, but it is clear that he is strong in spirit and he takes his job with serious enthusiasm. I once heard Truffosensei telling the commissioner that Captain Cliff is a widower and he dotes on his only daughter, who is being educated in a boarding school somewhere. I find that very touching.

I seem to be recovering my composure gradually.

The lines of writing are more even now and my

hand is no longer shaking. I can go on to the most unpalatable moment in all of this.

During my superficial examination of Kleber-san I noticed that she had no bruising. There were also several other observations which ought to be shared with the captain and the commissioner. But I wished above all to reassure a pregnant woman who was struggling to recover her wits after a shock, who seemed intent, in fact, on plunging into hysterics.

I said to her in a most soothing tone of voice:

‘Perhaps this black man had no intention of killing you, madam. You entered so unexpectedly and switched on the light and he was simply frightened. After all, he …’

Kleber-san interrupted before I could finish.

‘He was frightened?’ she hissed with sudden venom. ‘Or perhaps it was you who was frightened, my dear Oriental monsieur? Do you think I didn’t notice your nasty little yellow face peeping out from behind other people’s backs?’

No one has ever insulted me so outrageously. The worst thing of all was that I could not pretend these were the foolish words of a silly hysterical woman and shield myself from them with a smile of disdain.

Kleber-san’s thrust had found my most vulnerable spot!

There was nothing I could say in reply, I was badly hurt, and the grimace on her tear-stained face when she looked at me was humiliating. If at that moment I could have fallen through the floor into the famous Christian hell, I would certainly have pressed the lever of the trapdoor myself. Worst of all, my sight was veiled by the red mist of rage, and that is the condition which I fear most. It is in this state of frenzy that a samurai commits those deeds that are disastrous for his karma. Then afterwards he must spend the rest of his life seeking to expiate the guilt of that single moment of lost self-control. He can do things for which even seppuku will not be sufficient atonement.

I left the saloon, afraid that I would not be able to restrain myself and would do something terrible to a pregnant woman. I am not sure that I could have controlled myself if a man had said something like that to me.

I locked myself in my cabin and took out the sack of Egyptian gourds that I had bought at the bazaar in Port Said. They are small, about the size of a human head, and very hard. I bought 50 of them.

In order to disperse the scarlet mist in front of my eyes, I set about improving my straight chop with the edge of the hand. Because of my extreme agitation I delivered the blow poorly: instead of two equal halves, the gourds split into seven or eight pieces.

It is hard.

The Russian diplomat is a man of profound, almost Japanese intellect. Fandorin-san possesses the most un-European ability to see a phenomenon in all its fullness, without losing his way in the maze of petty details and technicalities. The Europeans are unsurpassed masters of everything that concerns doing, they have superlative understanding of how. But true wisdom belongs to us Orientals, since we understand why. For the hairy ones the fact of movement is more important than the final goal, but we never lower our gaze from the lodestar twinkling in the distance, and therefore we often neglect to pay due attention to what lies closer at hand. This is why time and again the white peoples are the victors in petty skirmishes, but the yellow race maintains its unshakeable equanimity in the certain knowledge that such trivial matters are unworthy of serious attention. In all that is truly important, in the genuinely essential matters, victory will be ours.

Our emperor has embarked on a great experiment: to combine the wisdom of the East with the intellect of the West. Yet while we Japanese strive meekly to master the European lesson of routine daily conquest, we do not lose sight of the ultimate end of human life - death and the higher form of existence that follows it. The red-hairs are too individualistic, their precious ego obscures their vision, distorting their picture of the world around them and making it impossible for them to see a problem from different points of view. The soul of the European is fastened tight to his body with rivets of steel, it cannot soar aloft.

But if Fandorin-san is capable of illumination, he owes it to the semi-Asiatic character of his homeland.

In many ways Russia is like Japan: the same reaching out of the East for the West. Except that, unlike us, the Russians forget about the star by which the ship maintains its heading and spend too much time gazing idly around them. To emphasize one’s individual T or to dissolve it in the might of the collective ‘we’ - therein lies the antithesis between Europe and Asia. I believe the chances are good that Russia will turn off the first road onto the second.

However, I have become carried away by my philosophizing. I must move on to Fandorin-san and the clarity of mind which he has demonstrated.

I shall describe events as they happened.

The Leviathan arrived in Aden before dawn. Concerning this port my guidebook says the following: The port of Aden, this Gibraltar of the East, serves England as her link with the East Indies. Here steamships take on coal and replenish their reserves of fresh water. Aden’s importance has increased immeasurably since the opening of the Suez Canal. The town itself, however, is not large. It has extensive dockside warehouses and shipyards, a number of trading stations, shipping offices and hotels. The streets are laid out in a distinctively regular pattern. The dryness of the local soil is compensated for by 30 ancient reservoirs which collect the rainwater that runs down from the mountains. Aden has a population of 34,000, consisting primarily of Indian Moslems.

For the time being I must be content with this scanty description, since the gangway has not been lowered and no one is being allowed ashore. The alleged reason is quarantine for medical reasons, but we vassals of the principality of Windsor know the true reason for the turmoil and confusion: sailors and police from ashore are combing the gigantic vessel from stem to stern in search of negroes.

After breakfast we stayed on in the saloon to wait for the results of the manhunt. It was then that an important conversation took place between the commissioner and the Russian diplomat in the presence of our entire company (even for me it has already become ‘ours’).

At first people spoke about the death of the negro, then as usual the conversation turned to the murders in Paris. Although I took no part in the discussion on that topic, I listened very attentively, and at first it seemed to me that they were trying yet again to catch a green monkey in a thicket of bamboo or a black cat in a dark room.

Stamp-san said: ‘So, we have nothing but riddles. We don’t know how the black man managed to get on board and we don’t know why he wanted to kill Mme Kleber. It’s just like the rue de Grenelle. More mystery.’

But then Fandorin-san said: ‘There’s no mystery there at all. It’s true that we still haven’t cleared up the business with the negro, but I think we have a fairly clear picture of what happened on the rue de Grenelle.’

Everyone stared at him in bewilderment and the commissioner smiled scornfully: ‘Is that so? Well then, out with it, this should be interesting.’