Boris Akunin - All the World's a Stage

When, following some complicated manoeuvring, Eliza once again succeeded in directing the conversation to the subject of Erast and asked what he actually did, Masa replied briefly.

‘He rescues.’

‘Whom does he rescue?’ she asked, astounded.

‘Whoever he has to, he rescues them. Sometimes he rescues his homerand.’

‘Who?’

‘His homerand. Mother Russia. He has saved it about ten times arready. And he has saved the whore worrd three or four times,’ Masa declared, dumbfounding her and continuing to glow with his usual smile.

Well now , Eliza said to herself. It could well be that the information about the princesses and revolutionaries is from the same category.

September came to an end. The city turned yellow and was pervaded with a smell of tears, sadness and nature’s dying. How well this matched the condition of her own soul! At night Eliza hardly slept at all. She just lay there with her hands set behind her head. The pale orange rectangle on the ceiling, a projection of the window illuminated by a street lamp, looked like a cinema screen, and on it she saw Genghis Khan and Erast Petrovich, the geisha Izumi and the Japanese assassins, pale images of the past and the blackness of the future.

During the second night of the month of October the regular ‘screening’ concluded in a sudden shock.

As usual, she was running through the events of the day and the course of today’s rehearsal. She counted the number of days since she had seen Fandorin (an entire fifteen!) and sighed. Then she smiled, recalling the latest scandal in the theatre company. Someone had played the hooligan again and written an idiotic entry in the ‘Tablets’: ‘SEVEN 1S UNTIL THE BENEFIT PERFORMANCE’. No one knew when it had appeared – they hadn’t looked into the log for a long time, since there were no performances. But then some ‘phenomenal aphorism’ had occurred to Stern and he opened the book – and there were the scribbles in indelible pencil on the page for 2 October. The director threw a hysterical fit. His target was the venerable Vasilisa Prokofievna, who had only just recalled what magnificent benefit performances she used to have in the old days: with silver trays, and grandiloquent addresses, and box-office takings of thousands. Only Noah Noaevich could possibly have imagined Reginina secretly slavering over the indelible pencil and vandalising the sacred book with those crooked letters. How amusingly he had pounced on her! And how thunderously she had expressed her outrage! ‘Don’t you dare to insult me with your suspicions! I’ll never set foot in this den of iniquity again!’

Suddenly two immense black legs appeared, aimlessly swinging to and fro, on the ‘ceiling screen’ that Eliza was watching. She squealed and jerked upright on the bed. It was a moment before she thought of looking in the direction of the window. And when she did look, her fear turned to fury.

The legs were not chimerical, but perfectly genuine, in cavalry boots and jodhpurs. They were descending slowly, with a sword scabbard beating against them; then came a hitched-up hussar’s jacket and finally Cornet Limbach in toto , lowering himself down on a rope. He hadn’t shown up for two weeks after the previous incident – no doubt he had been sitting in the guardhouse. But now here he was back again, out of the blue.

This time the brat had prepared more thoroughly for his invasion. Standing on the windowsill, he took out a screwdriver or some other tool (Eliza couldn’t see it very well) and started fiddling with the window frame. The closed catch grated quietly and started turning.

This was just the last straw!

Jumping up off the bed, Eliza repeated the same trick as the last time: she pushed opened the window flaps. But this time the result was different. While he was twisting his screwdriver or whatever it was that he had, Limbach must have loosened his grip on the rope, or perhaps he had let go of it completely. In any case, he cried out pitifully at the sudden blow, turned a somersault in mid-air and went flying downwards.

Transfixed with horror, Eliza leaned out over the windowsill, expecting to see a motionless body on the pavement (after all, it was a high first floor, a good fifteen feet), but the cornet proved as agile as a cat and landed on all fours. Spotting the empress of his heart leaning out of the window, he pressed his hands imploringly to his breast.

‘To fall to my death at your feet is happiness!’ he shouted out in a ringing voice.

Eliza laughed despite herself and closed the window.

However, things could not go on like this. She would have to swap rooms with someone after all. But with whom?

It could be with Comedina. The ‘leading boy’ was always given the worst accommodation. And if Limbach climbed in the window again, Zoya, tiny little thing that she was, would still be able to see him off. If she wanted to, of course, Eliza thought slyly. And if she didn’t want to, then two birds would be killed with one stone: Zoya would have her amusement, and the little officer would leave Eliza alone.

She spluttered with laughter as she imagined the brash cornet’s amazement when he discovered the substitution. And there was probably no need to warn Zoya. It would turn out more interesting that way – a little scene from the commedia dell’arte . It was only one short step from the appalling to the comic in life.

Only was there a mirror in Zoya’s little kennel? She could ask to have the one here moved.

Eliza couldn’t live in a room without any mirrors. If she didn’t look at herself at least once every two or three minutes, she got the feeling that she didn’t really exist. This psychosis, rather common among actresses, goes by the name of ‘reflectiomania’.

Eliza herself observed the events that transpired in the ‘Louvre-Madrid’ the following night only in part, and so she had to reconstitute the overall picture from the accounts of eyewitnesses.

It should be mentioned that late that evening the electricity went off in the hotel and the lodging rooms. It was too late to call the electricians and the dramatic events took place either in complete darkness or by the uncertain light of kerosene and candles.

The best place to start is with Zoya Comedina’s account.

‘I always fall asleep like a cat. As soon as my head touches the pillow, I’m gone. And this was an imperial bed, you could say. A bed of swan’s down! Pillows of angels’ feathers! And before that I lounged in a hot bath to my heart’s content. Anyway, there I am, sleeping sweetly and dreaming that that I’m a frog, sitting in a swamp and it’s warm and damp there, but I’m lonely. I swallow unappetising mosquitoes and croak. What are you laughing at, Eliza? It’s true, honestly! Suddenly – thwack! – an arrow thrusts itself into the ground. And then I realise that I’m not just any amphibian, I’m a frog-princess, and now a handsome prince will appear to get his arrow back. If I grab hold of that arrow and hold on tight, it will bring me good fortune.

‘The prince immediately appears and puts me on the palm of his hand. “Oh,” he says, “how green you are and how pretty! And what wonderful little warts you have! Let me give you a kiss!” And he really does kiss me, hotly and passionately.

‘Then I suddenly wake up and what do you think? The prince isn’t a prince, but some fop or other with a little moustache and he’s panting into my face and slavering my lips with kisses. Oh, did I yell! He tried to put his hand over my mouth – and I sank my teeth into his finger.

‘I sat up and I was going to yell again, only when I looked, I saw I knew him. That cornet of hussars. The one who showers you with flowers. The window was wide open and there were tracks on the windowsill.