Boris Akunin: Turkish Gambit

'I did not escape. Yusuf-pasha let me go.'

'Then what on earth brought you to Bulgaria?'

'A certain matter,' Fandorin replied curtly. 'Where were you heading yourself?'

'To Tsarevitsy, to the commander-in-chief's headquarters. And you?'

'To Bela. Rumour has it that His Majesty's staff is located there.' The volunteer paused, knitted his narrow eyebrows briefly in displeasure and sighed. 'But I could go to the commander-in-chief.'

'Really?' Varya exclaimed in delight. 'Oh, let's go together, shall we? I really don't know what I should have done if I hadn't met you.'

'There is really nothing t-to it. You would have ordered the landlord to deliver you into the custody of the nearest Russian unit, and that would have been the end of the matter.'

'Ordered? The landlord of a korchma! ’ Varya asked fearfully.

'This is not a korchma, but a mehana.'

'Very well, a mehana. But the village is Moslem, surely?'

'It is.'

'Then they would have handed me over to the Turks!'

'I have no wish to offend you, Varvara Andreevna, but you are not of the slightest interest to the Turks, and this way the landlord would m-most certainly have received a reward from your fiance.'

'I would much rather go with you,' Varya implored him. 'Oh, please!'

'I have one old nag, on its last legs. It cannot take two of us. And all the money I have is three kurus. Enough to pay for the wine and cheese, but no more . . . We need another horse or at least an ass. And that will require at least a hundred.'

Varya's new acquaintance paused while he pondered on something. He glanced across at the dice-players and sighed heavily once again: 'Stay here. I shall be back in a moment.'

He walked slowly over to the gamblers and stood beside their table for five minutes, observing. Then he said something (Varya could not hear it) at which all of them instantly stopped casting the dice and turned towards him. Fandorin pointed to Varya and she squirmed on her chair under the stares that were directed at her. Then there was a burst of general laughter - quite obviously ribald and insulting to Varya, but it clearly never even entered Fandorin's head to defend a lady's honour. Instead he shook the hand of some fat man with a moustache and sat down on the bench. The others made room for him and a knot of curious observers rapidly gathered round the table.

It seemed that the volunteer had ventured a bet. But with what money? Three kurus? He would have to play for a long time to win a horse. Varya began to worry, realising that she had put her trust in a man whom she did not know at all. He looked strange, spoke strangely, acted strangely . . . but on the other hand, what choice did she really have?

There was a murmur in the crowd of idle onlookers -the fat man had thrown the dice. Then they clattered once again and the walls shook as the crowd howled in unison.

'‘I-twelve,' Fandorin announced calmly in Bulgarian and stood up. 'Where are my winnings?'

The fat man also leapt to his feet, seized the volunteer by his sleeve and started speaking rapidly, his eyes bulging wildly.

He kept repeating: 'Another round, another round!'

Fandorin waited for him to finish then nodded decisively,- but his acquiescence apparently failed to satisfy the loser, who began yelling louder than before and waving his arms about. Fandorin nodded again, even more decisively, and then Varya recalled the Bulgarian paradox, by which if you nodded it meant 'No'.

At this point the loser decided to move from words to actions: he drew his arm well back and all the idle onlookers shied away; but Erast Fandorin did not budge, except that his right hand, seemingly inadvertently, slipped rapidly into his pocket. The gesture was almost imperceptible, but its effect on the fat man was magical. He wilted instantly, sobbed and uttered some plaintive appeal. This time Fandorin shook his head, tossed a couple of coins to the landlord, who had appeared beside him, and set off towards the exit. He did not even glance at Varya, but she had no need of an invitation - she was up from her seat and at her rescuer's side in an instant.

'The second l-last,' said Erast Fandorin, squinting in concentration as he halted on the porch.

Varya followed the direction of his gaze and saw a long row of horses, asses and mules standing along the hitching rail and calmly munching hay.

'There he is, your B-Bucephalus,' said the volunteer, pointing at a small brown donkey. 'Not much to look at, but then there's not so far to fall.'

'You mean you won it?' Varya asked in sudden realisation.

Fandorin nodded without speaking as he unhitched a scraggy grey mare.

He helped his travelling companion into the wooden saddle, leapt up on to his own grey with considerable agility and they rode out on to a country road brightly illuminated by the midday sun.

'Is it far to Tsarevitsy?' Varya asked, jolting in time to the short steps of her fluffy-eared mount.

'If we do not g-go astray, we shall reach it by nightfall,' the horseman replied grandly from above her.

He had become totally Turkicised in captivity, Varya thought angrily. He could at least have seated the lady on the horse. Typical male narcissism! A preening peacock! A vain drake, interested in nothing but flaunting himself before the dull grey duck. I already look like God only knows what, and now I have to play Sancho Panza to the Knight of the Mournful Visage.

'What have you got in your pocket?' she asked, remembering. 'A pistol, is it?'

Fandorin was surprised: 'In what pocket? Ah, in my p-pocket. Nothing, unfortunately.'

'I see, and what if he had not been frightened?'

'I would not have sat down to play with someone who would not be frightened.'

'But how could you win a donkey with a single throw?' Varya asked inquisitively. 'Surely that man didn't bet his donkey against three kurus?'

'Of course not.'

'Then what did you bet?'

'You,' Fandorin replied imperturbably. 'A girl for a donkey - now that is a worthwhile wager. I beg your gracious forgiveness, Varvara Andreevna, but there was no alternative.'

'Forgiveness!' Varya swayed so wildly in the saddle that she almost slipped over to one side. 'What if you had lost?'

'Varvara Andreevna, I happen to possess one unusual quality. I absolutely detest games of chance, but whenever I do happen to play I am sure to win without fail. Les caprices de la f-fortune! I even won my freedom from the pasha of Vidin at backgammon.'

Not knowing what reply to make to such a flippant declaration, Varya chose to be mortally offended, and therefore they rode on in silence. The barbarous saddle, a veritable instrument of torture, caused her a host of discomforts, but she endured them all, from time to time shifting her centre of gravity.

'Is it hard?' Fandorin asked. 'Would you like to place my jacket under you?'

Varya did not reply because, in the first place, his suggestion seemed to her not entirely proper and, in the second place, on a point of principle.

The road wound on for a long time between low wooded hills, then descended to a plain. In all this time the travellers encountered no one and Varya was beginning to feel alarmed. Several times she stole a sideways glance at Fandorin, but that blockhead remained absolutely imperturbable and made no further attempt to strike up a conversation.

Wouldn't she cut a fine figure, though, appearing in Tsarevitsy in an outfit like this? It wouldn't matter to Petya, she supposed: she could dress up in sackcloth as far as he was concerned - he wouldn't notice; but there would be the headquarters staff, society people. If she turned up looking like a scarecrow . . . Varya tore her cap off her head, ran her hand through her hair and felt really depressed. Not that her hair was anything special in any case: it was that dull, mousy colour which is called light brown, and her masquerade had left it all tangled and matted. It had last been washed over two days ago in Bucharest. No, she had better wear the cap. A Bulgarian peasant's outfit was not so bad after all; it was practical and even striking in its own way. The chalvars were actually rather like the famous 'bloomers' that the English suffragettes used to wear in their struggle with those absurd and humiliating drawers and petticoats. If only she could draw them in round the waist with a broad scarlet sash, like in Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (she and Petya had seen it last autumn at the Mariinsky Theatre), they would actually be rather picturesque.