He Lover of Death (27 page)

But Masa didn’t give up. Fat, he said, is a bodily substance, and the essence of a man is spiritual – the soul. Progress will lead to the soul being smothered in fat.

No, Erast Petrovich objected. Why despise the body? It is life, and the soul, if it exists at all, belongs to eternity – that is, to death. It’s no accident that the Slavonic word for life,
‘zhivot’,
means ‘stomach’ in Russian. And by the way, you Japanese also happen to locate the soul in the stomach, in the
‘hara’.

Or there was this other time when Erast Petrovich and the sensei started arguing about whether progress changed values or not.

Mr Nameless said that they did change – they moved to a higher level, primarily because a man started to value himself, his time and his effort more highly, but Masa didn’t agree. He said it was just the opposite: nowadays hardly anything depended on the individual human being and his efforts, and so all values were in decline. When progress does half your work for you, you can live your whole life without your soul ever waking up and without understanding anything about true values.

Senka listened, but he couldn’t decide whose side he was on. On the one hand, Erast Petrovich seemed to be right. Just look at all the progress there was in Moscow: electric trams would start running soon, and they’d put up bright street lamps all over the place, and there was the cinematograph too. Values were getting higher and higher every day. Eggs at the market used to cost two kopecks for ten, and now they cost three. The cabbies used to take half a rouble to drive from Sukharevka to Zamosvorechie, but now they wanted at least seventy or eighty kopecks for the pleasure. Or just look at the price of
papyroses.

Only, it wasn’t that simple. Progress did bring some good of its own. Look at the difference between a shoe made by hand and one from a factory. Of course, the first kind worked out dearer, that’s why there were hardly any of them left.

But Senka soon realised that Erast Petrovich didn’t understand a thing about values.

They were giving the ‘Flying Carpet’ a test run on Mytnaya Street. They went round a corner at speed – Erast Petrovich was turning the wheel and Senka was honking the horn – and there was a herd of cows. What did a horn mean to those dumb beasts? So they crashed into the one at the back at full pelt.

It didn’t even have time to moo, just flipped over with its hooves in the air, and lay there dead.

Senka felt sorry for the front of the car, not the cow. They’d only just put on a new lamp to replace the one that was smashed against the wall. And a lamp was fifty roubles, that was no joke.

While Senka groaned and gathered up the broken glass, the engineer counted out his recompense to the cowherd for his cow. And how much do you think he gave the man? A hundred roubles! Whoever heard of such a thing? For an old brown cow that wouldn’t fetch more than thirty on market day!

And that wasn’t the half of it. As soon as that shameless rogue of a cowherd had stuck the hundred note in his cap, the cow got up and walked off, none the worse for wear, its udders wobbling to and fro.

Naturally, Senka took the cowherd by the sleeve and told him to cough up the money.

‘In the first place, not “cough up”, but “please return”. And in the second place, there’s no need. Consider it a payment for moral injury.’

So whose moral injury was that? The cow’s?

This
incident
had important consequences, and the important consequences led to
epoch-making results.

Senka was responsible for the consequences, and Erast Petrovich was responsible for the results.

That same day Senka sketched a metal bracket on a piece of paper. It was meant to be attached in front of the lamp, so that cows, goats or dogs could be knocked down without any damage to the automobile. And after supper he subjected Mr Nameless and the Japanese to an interrogation about what prices they paid for things and how much money they paid various people. He was flabbergasted by what they said. Erast Petrovich might be an American engineer, but when it came to simple business matters, he was the biggest fool you could imagine. He paid way over the odds for everything, just gave whatever he was asked, never bothered to bargain. He’d taken the apartment in Asheulov Lane for three hundred a month! And the sensei was no better. Apart from his Way and the women he simply didn’t have a clue. Some valet he was.

Senka taught the scatterbrained pair a bit of sound sense about the value of things, and the ‘experts’ listened open mouthed.

The engineer looked at Senka and shook his head respectfully. ‘You’re a remarkable young man, Senya,’ Erast Petrovich said solemnly. ‘You have so many talents. Your idea for a shock-absorbing bracket on the automobile is excellent. The accessory should be patented and named in your honour – say “Spidorov’s damper”. Or the “antishocker”, or “bumper”, from the English “bump”. You are a born inventor. That is one. And your economic skill is quite astounding too. If you will agree to be my treasurer, I shall gladly entrust you with the management of all my expenditure. You are a born financial manager. That is two. And I am also struck by your technical savvy. You ventilate the carburettor so skilfully, you change a wheel so quickly! I tell you what, Semyon Spidorov: I offer you the position of mechanic until I depart for Paris. And that is three. Take your time before you answer, think it over.’

It’s a fact well known that when good luck comes, it doesn’t come in dribs and drabs. The sky’s pitch black, there’s not a single star to be seen, and you could just howl at the misery of it. But then, when the stars do come out, they fill the entire vault of heaven.

Who was Speedy Senka only a little while ago? No one, a dung beetle. But now he was everything: Death’s lover (yes, that did happen, it wasn’t a dream), and a rich man, and an inventor, and a treasurer, and a mechanic. What a career he’d fallen into now – a much plummier position than a lowly sixer in the Prince’s deck.

*

Senka really had his hands full now. He never even thought about how he ought to go and see Tashka, and how afraid he was, except in the evenings, just before he went to sleep. During the day he didn’t have the time.

The three-wheeler had to be cleaned and tuned, didn’t it?

He had to go round the shops and buy everything, didn’t he?

He had to keep an eye on the cleaner, the yard-keeper, the cook (he’d hired an old woman to cook proper human food, they couldn’t keep eating nothing but raw stuff) – didn’t he?

With Senka managing everything, the sensei turned into a total idler. He’d spend the best part of an hour on his knees with his eyes closed (that was a way the Japanese had of praying). Or else he’d disappear off somewhere with Erast Petrovich. Or else he had an
assignation.
Or else he would suddenly decide to teach Senka Japanese gymnastics.

And then Senka was supposed to drop all his important business and go running round the yard with him, almost naked, go climbing up a drainpipe and wave his arms and legs around.

Maybe this was all nice and useful, very good for his health, or for defending himself against bad people, but, for starters, he didn’t have the time, and what was worse, his bones ached so badly afterwards that he couldn’t even straighten up.

Back in Khitrovka there was this old grandfather who used to be an orderly in an asylum. When he talked about the people in there, with all their quirks and whimsies, it was absolutely fascinating. Well now, Senka sometimes felt a bit like that orderly. As if he was living with madmen. They looked like normal enough people, with all their wits about them, but sometimes you could just see the place was a loony bin.

Take Mr Nameless himself, for instance, Erast Petrovich. He wasn’t Japanese, was he, he looked like a normal person, but he had these foreign habits. When he was in his study, fiddling with the drawings or writing something, that seemed clear enough. But one time Senka glanced over his shoulder, out of curiosity, just to see what he was drawing, and he gasped out loud: the engineer wasn’t writing with a pen, he was holding a wooden brush, the kind you use for spreading glue, and he wasn’t drawing letters, but some strange-looking kind of squiggles that didn’t mean a thing to Senka.

Or else he might start striding across the room, clicking his green beads, and he could carry on striding about like that for ever.

And then he might sit down facing the wall and stare at a single spot. Once Senka tried to see what was there on the wall. He couldn’t see anything, nothing at all, not even a bedbug or some other little mite, and when he tried to ask what it was that Erast Petrovich found so interesting, Masa, who happened to be close by, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, dragged him out of the study and said: ‘When master contemprate, reave him arone.’ But then, what was he contemplating, if there was nothing there?

Apart from all the work involved in preparing the ‘Flying Carpet’ for its long-distance run, Mr Nameless had other mysterious business to deal with, something Senka wasn’t let in on. Erast Petrovich disappeared almost every evening at nine o’clock and didn’t come back until late, or sometimes he went missing until the next morning. When this happened, Senka was tormented with dark visions. Once he even took the engineer’s undershirt out of the laundry pile and sniffed to see whether it smelled of Death (that heady, minty smell that you could never confuse with anything else). It didn’t seem to.

Sometimes the master went out in the afternoon as well, but Senka didn’t know the reason for his absence.

Once, when Erast Petrovich took longer than usual straightening his collar and combing his hair in the mirror before he went out, Senka suffered an overwhelming fit of jealousy. He just couldn’t stop himself, he slipped out of the house as if he was going shopping, then out in the street he fell in behind the engineer and followed him, to see if he was going to meet a certain immoral individual.

He was indeed going to meet someone but, thank God, not the person on Senka’s mind.

Mr Nameless went into the Rivoli cafe´, sat down at a table and started reading the newspapers – Senka could see everything through the glass windows. After a while, Senka realised he wasn’t the only person interested in Erast Petrovich. There was a young lady standing not far away, in front of a fashionable shop window, and she was looking in the same direction as Senka. First he heard a quiet tinkling sound, but he couldn’t understand where it was coming from. Then he noticed that the girl had little bells sewn to her cuffs, and a necklace in the form of a snake; in fact it looked like it was alive. Clear enough, she was one of those decadents, lots of them had appeared in Moscow just recently.

At first Senka thought the young lady was waiting for someone, and he enjoyed taking a look at the lovely brunette, the way you do. But then she gave her head a shake, walked across the street and marched into the cafe´.

Erast Petrovich put down his newspaper, stood up to greet her and offered her a seat. They exchanged a couple of words, and the engineer started reading out loud from the newspaper.

Just what kind of halfwit was he?

Senka didn’t watch any more after that, because he felt calm now. Why get himself all worked up if Mr Nameless was so blind? He’d seen Death, he’d spoken to her, gazed into her shimmering eyes, and here he was chasing after some little street cat.

No, this particular individual was beyond Senka’s comprehension.

Take the move, for instance.

It was two days before Senka observed the rendezvous at the Rivoli Cafe´. All at once – completely out of the blue – Mr Nameless decided to move out of Asheulov Lane. Mr Nameless said they had to. They moved across to Sukharevka, into an officer’s apartment in the Spassky Barracks. No one explained to Senka why they had to go, what it was all for. They’d only just started settling in properly: he’d put up all those shelves in the study, hired floor-polishers to wax up the parquet so that it shone, half a carcass of veal had been ordered from the butcher – and suddenly this. And the rooms were paid for two months in advance – that was six hundred roubles down the drain!

They packed in a great hurry, threw everything higgledy-piggledy into two cabs and left.

The new apartment was pretty good too, with a separate entrance, only it was a little while before they could find a place for the three-wheeler. Senka spent two days cajoling the janitor Mikheich, drank four samovars of tea with him, gave him six roubles and then another three and a half before he got the key to the stable (there weren’t any horses there anyway, because the regiment had gone off to conquer China).

While Senka was trying to persuade the janitor, Masa-sensei persuaded the janitor’s wife – and more speedily too. So all in all, they settled in quite well, they couldn’t complain: they had a roof over their heads, the ‘Flying Carpet’ was in a warm, dry place, they had Mikheich’s respect, and pies and stewed fruit from his wife almost every single day.

On the last day of this peaceful life, before everything was sent spinning head over heels again, Senka received visitors at his new residence: his little brother Vanka and Judge Kuvshinnikov. As soon as they moved out of Asheulov Lane, Senka had sent a letter by the municipal post, saying that he was now living at such and such an address and would regard it as an honour to see his dear brother Ivan Trifonovich, please accept, etc., etc. The judge had replied by letter too: Thank you, we shall definitely come soon.

And he kept his word and came to visit.

At first he looked around suspiciously, wondering whether the place was some kind of thieves’ den. When Masa appeared in the hallway wearing nothing but his white underpants for
renzu,
the judge frowned and put his hand on Vanka’s shoulder. The youngster gaped wide eyed at the Oriental too, and when Masa slapped himself on the stomach and bowed, he gave a squeal of fright.

Things were looking bad. The judge had already turned towards the door, in order to leave (just to be on the safe side, he hadn’t let the cabby go), but then, fortunately, Erast Petrovich came out of his study, and one look at this respectable man in a velvet house jacket, holding a book in his hand, was enough to allay Kuvshinnikov’s fears. It was quite clear that a gentleman like that would never live in a den of thieves.