He Lover of Death (20 page)

‘But when you sleep,’ he said, ‘you know you’re going to wake up in the morning.’

‘An’ wake up afta death too. If you rive good rife, waking up wirr be good.’

So now he was playing the priest! That was a bit much, a heathen preaching to a baptised Christian about heaven and resurrection!

With the window so close now, Senka felt a bit bolder: ‘How did you find me?’ he asked. ‘Do you know some magic word?’

‘I know. It carred “roubur”. I gave boy roubur, an’ he forrow you.’

‘What boy?’ asked Senka, startled.

Masa pointed to a spot about two and a half feet off the floor. ‘Rittur boy. Snot face. But run fast.’

The Japanese glanced round the room and nodded approvingly. ‘Werr done, Senka-kun, for moving here. It crose to Asheurov Rane.’

Senka twigged – he meant Asheulov Lane, where he and Erast Petrovich had their lodgings. It really wasn’t far.

‘What do you want from me? I gave back the beads, didn’t I?’ he whined.

‘Master tord me to come,’ Masa explained sternly, almost solemnly, then sighed. ‘An’ you, Senka-kun, rike me. When I was rike you, I was rittur bandit too. If I not meet Master, I woul’ grow into big bandit. He is my teacher. And I wirr be your teacher.’

‘I’ve already got a teacher,’ Senka growled (he’d lost his fear of death).

‘What lessons he give you?’ Masa asked, livening up. (Well, actually, he said ‘
ressons’,
but Senka had already learned to make out his queer way of talking.)

‘Well, there’s good manners . . .’

The short-ass was delighted at that. That was the most important thing, he said. And he explained about genuine politeness, which was based on sincere respect for every person.

At the very height of the explanation, a fly started buzzing about over Senka’s head. The rotten pest kept flying round and round, it just wouldn’t leave him alone. The Japanese jumped up in the air, waved his arm and caught the insect in his fist.

His agile speed made Senka squeal out loud and squat right down – he thought Masa was trying to kill him.

Masa looked down at Senka doubled up on the floor and asked what he was doing. ‘I was afraid you’d hit me.’

‘What for?’

Senka said with a sob in his voice: ‘Everyone wants to hurt a poor orphan.’

The Japanese raised one finger like a teacher. You need to know how to defend yourself, he said. Especially if you’re an orphan.

‘Yeah, but how do I learn?’

The Japanese laughed. Who was it, he asked, who said he didn’t need a teacher? Do you want me to teach you how to defend yourself?

Senka recalled the way the Oriental flung his arms and legs about, and he wanted to do that too. ‘That wouldn’t be bad,’ he said. ‘But I reckon nifty battering’s difficult, ain’t it?’

Masa walked over to the window and set the captured fly free. No, he said, battering people’s not difficult. Learning the Way, that’s what difficult.

(It was only later Senka realised he’d said the word ‘Way’ like it was written with a big letter, but at the time he didn’t twig.)

‘Eh?’ he asked. ‘Learning what?’

Masa started explaining the Way. He said life was a road from birth to death and you had to walk that road the right way, or else at the end of the journey you wouldn’t have got anywhere and afterwards it was too late to complain. If you crawled along the road like a fly, then in the next life you’d be born a fly, like the one that was just buzzing round the room. And if you crept along through the dust, you’d be born a snake.

Senka thought that was just fancy talk. He didn’t know then that Masa was serious when he talked about flies and snakes.

‘And what’s the right way to walk the road?’ asked Senka.

It turned out that doing it right was a kind of self-torture. First of all, when you woke up in the morning, you had to say to yourself: ‘Today death is waiting for me’ – and not feel afraid. And you had to think about it – death, that is – all the time. Because you never knew when your journey would come to an end, and you always had to be ready.

Senka closed his eyes and said the special words, and he wasn’t frightened at all, because he saw Death in front of him, looking incredibly beautiful. (Why be afraid, if she was waiting for you?)

But the more he learnt, the worse it got.

You couldn’t tell lies, you couldn’t doss about doing nothing, you couldn’t sleep on a feather bed (no mollycoddling yourself at all!) and you had to torture and torment yourself, toughen yourself up and in general really put yourself through it.

Senka listened and listened, and decided he didn’t want to go through all that agony. He’d already seen more than enough poverty and hunger – in fact he’d only just got a whiff of real life.

‘Ain’t there any simpler way, without
the
Way? Just so you can fight?

Masa was upset by that question, he shook his head. There is, he said, but then you’ll never beat a tiger, only a jackal.

‘Never mind, a jackal’s good enough for me,’ Senka declared. ‘I can walk round a tiger, me legs won’t fall off.’

Well, that made the Japanese even more sorrowful. ‘Damn your lazy soul,’ he said. ‘But take off your jacket and you can have your first resson.’

And he started teaching Senka the right way to fall if someone smashed you hard in the face.

Senka learned the skill quickly: he fell correctly, tumbled right over backwards and back up on his feet, and all the time he was waiting for Masa to ask him where a Khitrovka ragamuffin got so much money.

He never did.

But before he left, Masa said: ‘The master asks if you want to tell him anything, Senka-kun? No? Then sayonara.’

That was how they said ‘see you later’.

And he got into the habit of coming to the boarding house, never missed a day.

If Senka went down to breakfast, Masa was already there, sitting by the samovar, all red from drinking tea, and the landlady was serving him more jam. When he was there, strict Madam Borisenko went all soppy and started blushing. How come he affected her like that?

Then afterwards the Japanese gymnastics lesson began. Truth be told, Masa spent more time jabbering away than teaching him anything useful. The wily Oriental was obviously still trying to drag Senka on to that Way of his.

For example, he was teaching Senka to leap down off the roof of the shed. Senka had climbed up all right, but he couldn’t jump, he was afraid. It was fifteen feet! He’d break his leg!

Masa stood beside him, preaching. It’s the fear that’s stopping you, he said. Drive it away, a man doesn’t need it. All it does is stop your head and your body doing their job. You know how to jump, don’t you? I showed you, I explained. So don’t be afraid, your head and your body will just do it if fear doesn’t stop them.

Easily said!

‘So isn’t there anything in the world you’re afraid of, Sensei?’ That was what Senka had to call him, ‘sensei’. It meant ‘teacher’. ‘I didn’t think there was anybody who didn’t have any fear.’

The answer was: There are some people, but not many. The master, for instance, he’s not afraid of anything. But there is one thing that I am very much afraid of.

Senka felt a bit better when he heard that. ‘What? Dead men?’

No, said Masa. I’m afraid the master will put his trust in me and I’ll disappoint him, let him down. Because of my stupidity or circumstances beyond my control. I’m terribly afraid of that, he said. All right, stupidity lessens as the years go by. But only the Buddha has power over circumstances.

‘Who does?’ Senka asked.

Masa pointed one finger towards the sky. ‘Buddha.’

‘Ah-ha, Jesus Christ.’

The Japanese nodded. That’s why, he said, I pray to him every day. Like this.

He closed his narrow eyes, folded his hands and started droning something through his nose. Then he translated it: ‘I trust in the Buddha and do everything I can.’ That was their prayer in Japan, he said.

‘That ain’t Japanese. Trust in God and do right yourself.’

They talked divine matters one other time too.

A lot of flies had appeared in Senka’s room. They’d obviously come in for crumbs – he’d become a real fiend for guzzling fancy pastries.

Masa didn’t like flies. He caught them, like a cat with its paw, but as for squashing or swatting them – not on your life. He always carried them to the window and let them fly away.

Senka asked him: ‘Why do you take all that trouble with them, Sensei? Just swat them, and the job’s done.’

And the answer was: You shouldn’t kill anyone if you don’t have to kill them.

‘Not even a fly?’

It makes no difference, Masa said. A soul is always a soul, no two ways about it. Now it’s a fly, but if it leads a good life as a fly, in the next it could be a man. Someone like you, for instance.

Senka took offence.

‘What’s that mean, like me? Maybe like
you.’

What Masa said to that was: ‘If you go giving your teacher lip, you’ll definitely be a fly after you die. Come on now, he said, dodge. And he smacked Senka in the face so fast, there was no way you could dodge it. It fair set his ears ringing.’

That was how Senka learned Japanese wisdom.

And every day, at the end of the session, his strange teacher would ask the same thing: Didn’t he have a message for his master?

Senka batted his eyelids and kept mum. He couldn’t figure out what the master was getting at. Was it about the treasure? Or was it something else?

Masa didn’t pester him, though. He waited for about half a minute, nodded, said his ‘sayonara’ and went off home.

The days flew by fast. A lesson of gymnastics, a lesson of French, reinforced by a session in a French restaurant, then a stroll round the shops and another lesson, on elegant manners, with George, and then it was time for dinner and the practical class. ‘Practical class’ was what George called trips to the operetta, the dance hall, the bordello or some other society gathering place.

In the mornings Senka slept late, and by the time he had got up and washed, Masa was ready and waiting. And off he went again, just like a squirrel in a cage.

A couple of times, instead of his practical class, he dropped into Khitrovka to see Tashka – after dark, and not wearing any frock coat or tails, of course, but in his old clothes.
Apache style,
as George said.

This was how he did it.

He hired a steady, sober cabby on Trubnaya Street – the cabby had to have a number – and drove to Lubyanka Square with him. He got changed right there in the cab, with the leather hood pulled right down low.

Transformed from a merchant trader into an Apache, he left the driver to wait. Not a bad deal –just sit there, sleep if you like, for a rouble an hour. The only condition was, he mustn’t move from the box, or the clothes would be nicked off the seat in a flash.

Stubborn Tashka wouldn’t take any of the money Senka tried to give her. And she wouldn’t give up her whore’s trade, because she was proud. Who takes money from men, she said – not for working, but just like that? A moll or a wife. I can’t come and be your moll, because you and me, we’re mates. And I won’t be your wife, on account of the frenchies (not that Senka had asked her to marry him – Tashka thought that up all by herself). I’ll earn as much as I need. And if it’s not enough, then you can help me, as a mate.

But Senka’s tales of the high life had sparked Tashka’s ambition or, rather, her vanity. She’d decided she wanted to make a career as well – move up from a street mamselle to a ‘grammar school girl’, especially since she was the right age for it.

‘Grammar school girls’ didn’t walk the streets, a madame supplied their clients for them. Compared with a street whore’s work, it was much easier and the money was far better.

The first thing she had to do was buy a grammar school uniform, with a cape, but Tashka had money set aside for that.

She already knew a madame too. An honest woman, reliable, who took only a third as her cut. And there was no end of clients who set store by grammar school girls. All respectable men, getting on a bit, men with money.

She had only one problem, the same one as Senka had: not enough culture to conduct a classy conversation. After all, the client had to believe he’d been brought a genuine grammar school girl and not a dressed-up mamselle, didn’t he?

That was why Tashka had started learning French words and all sorts of elegant expressions. She’d made up her life story, and she started reciting it to Senka. She wasn’t sure of all the words yet, so she kept glancing at a piece of paper. Tashka was supposed to be in the fourth class at grammar school, and an inspector had seduced her and plucked the flower of her innocence, taught her all sorts of tricks, and now, behind Mama and Papa’s back, she was earning money for sweets and cakes with her female charms.

Senka listened to the story and, as a man with experience of society, suggested a few improvements. He advised her most ardently to take out the swear words.

Tashka was surprised by this advice. As a Khitrovka girl, she couldn’t tell the difference between decent expressions and obscene ones. Then he wrote down all the dirty words on a piece of paper for her, so she could remember them. Tashka took her head in her hands and started repeating *****, *****, *****, *****, *****. Senka’s ears had got used to cultured or, to put it even better,
civilised
conversation, and they fairly wilted on his head.

Tashka had bought herself a poodle with the last money Senka had given her. The dog was small and white, very frisky, and he sniffed at absolutely everything. He recognised Senka the second time he saw him and started jumping up at him in delight. He could tell all Tashka’s flowers apart and had a special way of yapping for each one. His name was Pomponius, or just plain Pomposhka.

When Senka called round to see Tashka the second time – to tell her about how he’d seen his little brother and show her his new tooth (and there was one other thing, a money matter), the working girl lashed out: ‘What have you shown up here for? Didn’t you see I’ve got a red poppy in the window? Have you forgot what that means? I taught you! Danger, that’s what! Don’t come to Khitrovka, the Prince is looking for you!’