Boris Akunin - All the World's a Stage

Her second marriage fell apart even more quickly than the first – immediately after the wedding and the wedding night. And the reason was not that in his exorbitant excitement her husband was incapable of proving himself in the appropriate manner (that was actually quite touching, in fact), but the conditions that he propounded to her the following morning. Altairsky’s status as a khatun entailed certain obligations, Iskander told her strictly: ‘I promised not to interfere with your passion for the theatre and I will keep my word. But you must avoid plays in which you will have to embrace men or, even worse, kiss them.’ Eliza had laughed, thinking that he was joking. When it became clear that her husband was absolutely serious, she spent a long time trying to make him see sense. She explained that it was impossible to play a heroine’s roles without embraces and kisses; and furthermore, it was now becoming fashionable to show the act of carnal triumph explicitly on the stage.

‘What triumph?’ the man of the Caucasus had asked, screwing up his face so expressively that Eliza realised immediately that any explanations would be quite useless.

‘The triumph that you failed to achieve!’ she had exclaimed, imitating the great Zhemchuzhnikova in the role of Cleopatra. ‘And now you never will! Goodbye, Your Most Exalted Dignity, the honeymoon is over! There will not be any honeymoon trip. I am applying for a divorce!’

It was appalling to recall what happened then. This scion of an ancient line, a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, sank to the level of base physical assault and foul barracks language, and then went dashing to the writing desk to take out a revolver and shoot his affronter on the spot. Of course, Eliza ran away while he was fiddling with the key, and after that she refused to meet the crazy Chingizid unless her lawyers were present.

In front of witnesses, Iskander behaved in a civilised manner. He explained politely that he would not agree to any divorce, because in his family this was regarded as a grave sin and his father would take away his allowance. He raised no objections to living separately and even declared his willingness to pay his wife alimony, provided that she observed ‘the proprieties’ (Eliza rejected the offer disdainfully – thank God, she earned quite enough in the theatre).

The khan displayed his savage nature when they met face to face. He must have had his wife followed, because he appeared in front of her in the most unexpected places, always without any warning. He just popped up like a jack-in-the-box.

‘Ah, so that’s it!’ he would say with a malign glint in those bulging eyes that she had once found handsome. ‘So the theatre means more to you than my love? Excellent. On the stage you can behave like a harlot. That is your business. But since you are still formally my wife, I will not permit you to drag my ancient name through the mud! Bear in mind, madam, that you can only have lovers in the glow of the footlights and in full view of an audience. Anyone you let into your bed will die. And you will die after him!’

To be quite honest, she wasn’t really very frightened at first. On the contrary, life became a little more exciting. When there was a love scene during a show, Eliza deliberately looked round the auditorium, and if she encountered the withering gaze of her abandoned husband, she played her part with redoubled passion.

Things continued like this until the entrepreneur Furshtatsky became seriously enraptured with her. A distinguished individual with good taste, and the owner of the finest theatre in Kiev, he made her an incredibly generous offer to join his theatre company, showered her with flowers, paid her compliments and tickled her ear with his fragrant moustache. He also made her a proposal of a different kind – of matrimony.

She was prepared to accept both of these proposals. The world of theatre was all abuzz with the news, and once again her rivals were absolutely green with envy.

Then all of a sudden, at a ceremonial banquet held in Furshtatsky’s honour by the trustees of the Theatre Society, he died! Eliza herself was not at the banquet, but she was given a very graphic description of the way the entrepreneur turned crimson, started wheezing and slumped over with his face in a plate of thick country soup.

Eliza cried that evening, of course. She felt sorry for poor Furshtatsky and told herself: ‘It wasn’t meant to be’ and so on. But then the telephone rang and a familiar voice with a breathy Caucasian intonation whispered in the receiver: ‘I warned you. This death is on your conscience’. Even then she didn’t start taking Iskander seriously; he seemed to her like an operetta villain with a bristling moustache and goggling eyes that aren’t really frightening. To herself she thought of him mockingly as ‘Genghis Khan’.

Oh, how cruelly fate had punished her for her flippancy!

About three months after the entrepreneur’s death, which everyone had accepted, without the slightest doubt, as natural, Eliza allowed herself to develop a passion for another man, the heroic tenor at the Mariinsky Theatre. This time no career considerations were involved. The singer was quite simply handsome (oh, that eternal weakness of hers for the good-looking Adonis type!) and he had a breathtaking voice that sent a warm, heady languor flooding through her entire body. At that time Eliza was already working in Noah’s Ark, but was still concluding her concert engagements. And then one day she and the tenor (he was called Astralov) were giving a little one-act play-cum-duet called ‘Redbeard’. A delightful little piece of nonsense: she declaimed and danced a bit and Astralov sang – and he was so fine and handsome that afterwards they went to Strelna and what was bound to happen sooner or later happened there. And indeed, why not? She was a free, adult, modern woman. He was an attractive man – no great intellect, to be sure, but very talented and gallant. Eliza left in the morning because she had to get to a rehearsal at eleven, and her lover stayed in their hotel room. He was very particular about his appearance and always carried around a toiletry case with a manicure set, all sorts of little brushes, nail scissors and a mirror-bright razor for trimming his beard.

They found him with that razor in his hand. He was sitting in a chair, dead, with his shirt and his beard stained completely red with blood. The police came to the conclusion that after spending the night with a woman, the tenor had slit his own throat while sitting in front of the mirror. Eliza had been wearing a veil and the hotel staff had not seen her face, so it had all passed off without a scandal.

She wept at the funeral (there were quite a number of ladies with tear-stained faces there), tormented by miserable bewilderment: what could she have said or done? This was so unlike the bon vivant Astralov! Suddenly she saw Genghis Khan there in the crowd. He looked at her, grinned and ran one finger rapidly across his throat.

Eliza’s eyes were finally opened.

Murder! It was murder! In fact, two murders; there was no doubt that Furshtatsky had been poisoned. For a few days she was completely bewildered and confused, as if she were delirious. What should she do? What should she do?

Go to the police? But, in the first place, there was no proof. They would think it was all the wild ravings of a hysterical young woman. In the second place, Astralov had a family. And in the third place… In the third place, she was absolutely terrified.

Genghis Khan had gone insane, his jealousy had become a paranoidal obsession. Everywhere – in the street, in a shop, in the theatre – she sensed that she was being followed. And this was no persecution mania! In her muff, in her hatbox, even in her powder compact, Eliza discovered little scraps of paper. There was not a word on them, not a single letter, only drawings: a skull, a knife, a noose, a coffin… In her suspicious state of mind she dismissed several maids because she thought they had been bribed.