Boris Akunin: The Diamond Chariot

The second bell pealed out.

The female passenger’s delicately defined nostrils started fluttering. Her lips whispered:

‘Ah, get a move on, do!’ but the exclamation was clearly not addressed to her companion in the compartment.

Newspaper boys dashed, gabbling, along the corridor – one from the respectable Evening Russia , the other from the sleazy Russian Assembly . They were both howling at the tops of their voices, trying to out-yell each other.

‘Woeful news of the drama in the Sea of Japan!’ called the first one, straining his lungs to bursting point. ‘Russian fleet burned and sunk!’

The second one yelled: ‘Famous “Moscow Daredevils” gang strikes in Petersburg! High society lady undressed!’

‘First lists of the dead. Numerous names dear to all hearts! The whole country will be weeping!’

‘Countess N. put out of a carriage in the costume of Eve! The bandits knew she had jewels hidden under her dress!’

The staff captain bought Evening Russia with its huge black border of mourning and the lady bought Russian Assembly , but before they could start reading, the door burst open, and in charged a huge bouquet of roses that wouldn’t fit through the frame, immediately filling the compartment with unctuous fragrance.

Protruding above the rosebuds was a handsome man’s face with a well-groomed imperial and a curled moustache. A diamond pin glinted and sparkled on his necktie.

‘Anddd who is thissss!’ the new arrival exclaimed, eyeing Rybnikov intently, and his black eyebrows slid upwards menacingly, but after only a second the handsome fellow had had his fill of observing the staff captain’s unprepossessing appearance and lost all interest in him, after which he did not deign to notice him again.

‘Lycia!’ he exclaimed, falling to his knees and throwing the bouquet at the lady’s feet. ‘I love only you, with all my heart and soul! Forgive me, I implore you! You know my temperament! I am a man of sudden enthusiasms, I am an artiste.’

It was easy to see that he was an artiste. The owner of the imperial was not at all embarrassed by his audience – in addition to the staff captain glancing out from behind his Evening Russia , this interesting scene was also being observed by spectators in the corridor, attracted by the mind-numbing scent of the roses and the sonorous lamentations.

Nor did the lovely lady’s nerve fail her in front of an audience.

‘It’s over, Astralov!’ she declared wrathfully, throwing back her veil to reveal her glittering eyes. ‘And don’t you dare show up in Moscow!’ She waved aside the hands extended in supplication. ‘No, no, I won’t even listen!’

Then the penitent did something rather strange: without rising from his knees, he folded his hands together on his chest and started singing in a deep, truly magical baritone:

‘ Una furtive lacrima negli occhi suoi spunto …’

The lady turned pale and put her hands over her ears, but the divine voice filled the entire compartment and flowed far beyond – the entire carriage fell silent, listening.

Donizetti’s entrancing melody was cut short by the particularly long and insistent trilling of the third bell.

The conductor glanced in at the door:

‘All those seeing off passengers please alight immediately, we are departing. Sir, it’s time!’ he said, touching the singer’s elbow.

The singer dashed over to Rybnikov:

‘Let me have the ticket! I’ll give you a hundred roubles! This is a drama of a broken heart! Five hundred!’

‘Don’t you dare let him have the ticket!’ the lady shouted.

‘I can’t do it,’ the staff captain replied firmly to the artiste. ‘I would gladly, but it’s urgent government business.’

The conductor dragged Astralov, in floods of tears, out into the corridor.

The train set off. There was a despairing shout from the platform:

‘Lycia! I’ll do away with myself! Forgive me!’

‘Never!’ the flushed lady passenger shouted, and flung the magnificent bouquet out of the window, showering the little table with scarlet petals.

She fell back limply on to the seat, covered her face with her fingers and burst into sobs.

‘You are a noble man,’ she said through her sobbing. ‘You refused his money! I’m so grateful to you! I would have jumped out of the window, I swear I would!’

Rybnikov muttered:

‘Five hundred roubles is huge money. I don’t earn a third of that, not even with mess and travelling allowances. But I’ve got my job to do. The top brass won’t excuse lateness …’

‘Five hundred roubles he offered, the buffoon!’ the lady exclaimed, not listening to him. ‘Preening his feathers for his audience! But he’s really so mean, such an economiser !’ She pronounced the final word with boundless contempt and even stopped sobbing, then added: ‘Refuses to live according to his means.’

Intrigued by the logical introduction inherent in this statement, Vasilii Alexandrovich asked:

‘Begging your pardon, but I don’t quite understand. Is he thrifty or does he lives beyond his means?’

‘His means are huge, but he lives too far within them!’ his travelling companion explained, no longer crying, but anxiously examining her slightly reddened nose in a little mirror. She dabbed at it with a powder puff and adjusted a lock of golden hair beside her forehead. ‘Last year he earned almost a hundred thousand, but he barely spent even half of it. He puts it all away “for a rainy day”!’

At this point she finally calmed down completely, turned her gaze on her companion and introduced herself punctiliously.

‘Glyceria Romanovna Lidina.’

The staff captain told her his name too.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ the lady told him with a smile. ‘I must explain, since you have witnessed this monstrous spectacle. Georges simply adores histrionic scenes, especially in front of an audience!’

‘Is he really an artiste, then?’

Glyceria Romanovna fluttered her almost inch-long eyelashes incredulously.

‘What? You don’t know Astralov? The tenor Astralov. His name is on all the show bills!’

‘I’m not much for theatres,’ Rybnikov replied with an indifferent shrug. ‘I don’t have any time to go strutting about at operas, you know. And it’s beyond my pocket, anyway. My pay’s miserly, they’re delaying the pension, and life in Petersburg is too pricey by half. The cabbies take seventy kopecks for every piddling little ride …’

Lidina was not listening, she wasn’t even looking at him any more.

‘We’ve been married for two years!’ she said, as if she were not addressing her prosaic companion, but a more worthy audience, which was listening to her with sympathetic attention. ‘Ah, I was so in love! But now I realise it was the voice I loved, not him. What a voice he has! He only has to start singing and I melt, he can wrap me round his little finger. And he knows it, the scoundrel! Did you see the way he started singing just now, the cheap manipulator? Thank goodness the bell interrupted him, my head was already starting to spin!’

‘A handsome gentleman,’ the staff captain acknowledged, trying to suppress a yawn. ‘Probably gets his fair share of crumpet. Is that what the drama’s all about?’

‘They told me about him!’ Glyceria Romanovna exclaimed with her eyes flashing. ‘There are always plenty of “well-wishers” in the world of theatre. But I didn’t believe them. And then I saw it with my own eyes! And where? In my own drawing room! And who with? That old floozy Koturnova! I’ll never set foot in that desecrated apartment again! Or in Petersburg either!’

‘So you’re moving to Moscow, then?’ the staff captain summed up. It was clear from his tone of voice that he was impatient to put an end to this trivial conversation and settle into his newspaper.