He Lover of Death (35 page)

Erast Petrovich arose immediately from his slumbers, but instead of interrupting the clamouring trustees, he got on with his own business: he took off the skullcap and the grey wig, peeled off his beard, took a little glass bottle out of the sack, soaked a piece of cotton wool and started rubbing it over his skin. The liver spots and flabbiness disappeared as if by magic.

When there was a pause in the clamour, he said briefly: ‘No, I didn’t m-make it all up. The treasure really d-does exist.’

The trustees stared at him, wondering if he was joking or not. But from Mr Nameless’s face it was quite clear that he wasn’t.

‘But . . .’ the black-haired one said to him cautiously, as if he was talking to a madman, ‘ . . . but do you realise that this bandit will trick you? He’ll take all the treasure and not give you anything?’

‘Of course he’ll t-try to trick me,’ the engineer said with a nod as he removed his long coat, faded plush trousers and galoshes. ‘And then what Naum Rubinchik p-prophesied will come to pass. They’ll carry the Ghoul off in his c-coffin. Only not to St Petersburg. To a common g-grave in the Bozhedomka cemetery.’

‘Why have you taken your clothes off?’ the grey-haired man asked in alarm. ‘You’re not going to walk down the street like that, are you?’

‘Apologies for my state of undress, g-gentlemen, but I have very little time. This young man and I have to m-make our next visit.’ Erast Petrovich turned towards Senka. ‘Senya, don’t just st-stand there like a monument to Pushkin l-lost in thought, get undressed. Good d-day to you, gentlemen.’

The trustees exchanged glances, and the one who was older said: ‘Well then, we will trust you. Now we have no other choice.’

They both bowed and left, and the engineer turned to the sack and took out a long Caucasian kaftan with rows of little slots for bullets, a pair of soft leather shoes, a tall astrakhan hat and a belt with a knife. In a jiffy Mr Nameless was transformed into a visitor from the Caucasus. Senka watched wide eyed as he covered his neat and tidy moustache with a different one as black as tar and glued on a beard that was in the same bandit colour.

‘You look just like Imam Shamil!’ Senka exclaimed in delight. ‘I saw him in a picture in a book!’

‘Not Shamil, but K-Kazbek. And I’m not an imam, I’m a warrior c-come down from the mountains to conquer the c-city of the infidels,’ Erast Petrovich answered as he changed his grey eyebrows for black ones. ‘Are you undressed yet? No, no, c-completely.’

‘Who are we going to visit now?’ asked Senka, hugging himself –it felt pretty chilly standing around in the buff.

‘His Excellency, your f-former patron. Put this on.’

‘What Excell . . .’ Senka didn’t finish what he was saying, he gagged and froze, holding the silky, flimsy something that the engineer had taken out of his sack. ‘The Prince? Are you crazy? Erast Petrovich, he’ll do me in! He won’t listen to anything! He’ll drop me the moment he sees me! He’s a wild man!’

‘No, n-not that way.’ Mr Nameless turned the short silk and lace underpants round. ‘First the d-drawers, then the stockings and s-suspenders.’

‘Women’s underwear?’ said Senka, eyeing the clothes. ‘What do I want that for?’

The engineer took a dress and a pair of tall lace-up boots out of the sack.

‘You mean you want to dress me up like a bint? I’d rather die first!’

Mr Nameless and Masa had had it all worked out from the start, Senka realised. That was why they’d scraped his face with that razor. Well, sod that! Just how long could they go on mocking a poor orphan?

‘I won’t put it on, no way!’ he declared stubbornly.

‘It’s up t-to you,’ Erast Petrovich said with a shrug. ‘But if the Prince recognises you then he’ll d-drop you, as you p-put it, no doubt about it.’

Senka gulped. ‘But can’t you get by without me?’

‘I can,’ said the engineer. ‘Although it will m-make my job more difficult. But the real p-point is that you’ll be ashamed afterwards.’

Senka sniffed for a bit, then he pulled on the slippery girl’s pants, the fishnet stockings and the red dress. Erast Petrovich put a light-coloured wig with dangling curls on his victim’s head, wiped all the Jewish freckles off his face and blackened his eyebrows.

‘Come on, p-push those lips out for me.’

And he smeared Senka’s mouth with a thick layer of sweet-smelling lipstick. Then he held out a little mirror. ‘Take a l-look at yourself now. A real b-beauty.’

Senka didn’t look, he turned his face away.

HOW SENKA WAS A MAMSELLE

‘Whoah, whoah, you pests,’ the driver barked at his blacks, and the beautiful horses stopped dead on the spot. The lead horse curved his elegant neck, squinted at the driver with a wild eye and stamped his metal-shod hoof on the cobblestones, sending sparks flying.

That was how they drove up to the ‘Kazan’ lodging house, in grand style. The Bosun selling his whistles and the small fry jostling around him turned to look at the classy landau (three roubles an hour!) and stared at the Abrek, or Caucasian warrior, and his female companion.

‘Wait here!’ the Abrek told the driver, tossing him a glittering gold imperial.

He jumped down without stepping on the footboard, took hold of Senka the mamselle by the sides and set him down lightly on the ground, then made straight for the gates. He didn’t even say the magic word
‘sufoeno’
that Senka had taught him, just declared portentously:

‘I am Kazbek.’

And the Bosun accepted that, he didn’t blow his whistle, just narrowed his eyes a bit and nodded to this handsome Southerner, as if to say: Go on in. He gave Senka a fleeting glance, too, but didn’t really take any notice of him – and the tight knot in Senka’s belly loosened up.

‘More g-gracefully,’ Erast Petrovich said in his normal voice in the courtyard. ‘Don’t wave your arms about. Move with your hips, n-not your shoulders. Like that, that’s g-good.’

When he knocked, the door opened slightly and a young lad Senka didn’t know stuck his nose out. The new sixer, Senka guessed, and – would you believe it? – he felt something like a pin pricking at his heart. Could it be jealousy?

Senka didn’t like the look of the lad at all. He had a flat face and yellow eyes, like a cat.

‘What you want?’ the lad asked.

Mr Nameless said the same thing to him: ‘I am Kazbek. Tell the Prince.’

‘What Kazbek?’ the sixer asked with a sniff, and his nose was immediately grabbed between two fingers of iron.

The Caucasian warrior swore in a guttural voice, smacked the flat-faced lad’s head against the doorpost and gave him a push. The lad collapsed on the floor.

Then Kazbek stepped inside, strode over the boy on the floor and set off determinedly along the corridor. Senka hurried after him, gasping. Looking round, he saw the sixer holding his forehead and batting his eyelids in a daze.

Oh Lord, Lord, now what was going to happen?

In the big room Maybe and Surely were playing cards, as usual. Lardy wasn’t there, but Deadeye was lying on the bed with his boots up on the metal bars, cleaning his fingernails with a little knife.

The Caucasian made straight for him. ‘Are you the Jack? Take me to the Prince, I want to talk. I am Kazbek.’

The twins stopped slapping their cards down on the table. One of them (Senka had never learned to tell which was which) winked at the young lady, the other gaped stupidly at the silver dagger hanging from the visitor’s belt.

‘Kazbek is above me. Alone up on high,’ Deadeye said with a serene smile, and bounced up to his feet. ‘Let’s go, now that you’re here.’

He didn’t ask any questions, just led them through. Oh, this didn’t look good at all.

The Prince was sitting at the table, looking terrible, all puffy – he must have drunk a lot. He wasn’t very much like the handsome fellow Senka had seen that first time (only a month ago!). His fine satin shirt was all crumpled and greasy, his curly hair was tangled and his face hadn’t been shaved. As well as empty bottles and the usual jar of pickled cucumbers, there was a golden candlestick on the table, with no candles in it.

Senka’s enemy looked up at the newcomers with bleary eyes. He asked the Caucasian: ‘Who are you? And what do you want?’

‘I am Kazbek.’

‘Who?’

‘He must be the one who arrived from the Caucasus not long since with twenty horsemen,’ Deadeye said in a low voice, leaning against the wall and folding his arms. ‘I told you about him. They showed up three months ago. Put the bite on the Maryina Roshcha bandits, took over all the girls and the paraffin shops.’

The Caucasian warrior chuckled, or rather, he twitched the corner of his mouth.

‘You Russians came to our mountains and you do not leave. And I have come to you and I shall not leave soon either. We shall be neighbours, Prince. Neighbours can get along – or not. They can talk with their knives, we know how to do that. Or they can be
kunaks –
blood brothers, you call it. Choose which you like.’

‘It’s all the same bollocks to me,’ the Prince replied languidly. He downed a glass of vodka, but didn’t take a cucumber to follow it. ‘Live any way you like, as long as you don’t get under my feet, and if you annoy me, we can get the knives out.’

Deadeye warned him in a low voice: ‘Prince, you can’t deal with them like that. He’s come alone, but we can be certain the others are hiding somewhere not so far away. He only has to whistle and there’ll be daggers everywhere.’

‘Let them bring on the daggers,’ the Prince hissed. ‘We’ll see who comes off best. All right, Deadeye, don’t be so gutless’ – and he laughed. ‘What are you glowering at, Kazbek? I’m laughing. The Prince is a jolly man. Right then,
kunaks
it is. Let’s shake on it.’

He stood up and held out his hand. That made Senka feel a bit better – he’d been preparing his soul to join the holy saints in heaven.

But the Abrek didn’t want to shake hands.

‘In our mountains just squeezing fingers is not enough. You have to prove yourself. One
kunak
must give the other the thing most precious to him.’

‘Yeah?’ The Prince swung his arm out from the shoulder. ‘Well, ask for anything you like. The Prince’s heart is as open as a Khitrovka mamselle. Look at this candlestick here, it’s pure gold. I took it off this merchant just the other day. Like me to give it to you.’

Kazbek shook his head in the shaggy astrakhan hat.

‘Then what do you want? Tell me.’

‘I want Death,’ the Caucasian said in a low, passionate voice.

‘Whose death?’ the Prince asked, startled.

‘Your Death. They say that is the most precious thing you have.

Give me that. Then we shall be
kunaks
to the grave.’

Senka was the first to catch on. Well, that was it now, for sure. Now there’d be fountains of blood, and some of it Senka’s:
dear old mum, welcome your poor son Senya into heaven with the angels.

Deadeye caught on too. He stayed where he was, but the fingers of his right hand slipped quietly into his left sleeve. And inside that sleeve there were little knives on a leather cuff. He had only to fling a couple, and that would be the end of the visitors.

The Prince was the last to twig. He opened his mouth wide and tore open his collar so they could see the veins on his neck, but the shout couldn’t force its way out – his fury strangled it in his throat.

Kazbek went on as if nothing had happened. ‘Give me your woman, Prince. I want her. And for you, see, I have brought the best of my mamselles. As slim and supple as a mountain goat. Take her. I give her to you.’

And he pushed Senka out into the middle of the room.

‘A-a-agh!’ Senka squealed. ‘Mum!’

But his whimper was drowned by the Prince’s loud roar: ‘I’ll rip your throat out! With my teeth! You carrion!’

He picked up the big two-pronged fork for getting cucumbers out of the jar and was about to throw himself on the Abrek, but suddenly out of nowhere a small black revolver glinted in the Caucasian’s hand.

‘You – hands on your shoulders!’ Kazbek said to the Jack. He didn’t say a word to the Prince, but his eyes were blazing.

Deadeye raised one eyebrow as he contemplated the black hole of the gun barrel. He showed the Caucasian his empty hands and put them up. The Prince swore obscenely and flung the fork down on the floor. He didn’t look at the gun, he stared into the eyes of the man who had insulted him and chewed on his lips in a fury – a trickle of red blood ran down his chin.

‘I’ll kill you anyway!’ he shouted hoarsely. ‘I’ll get you, even in Maryina Roshcha. I’ll rip your guts out for this, and make sausages with them!’

Kazbek clicked his tongue. ‘You Russians are like women. A man does not shout, he talks quietly.’

‘So she’s been with you too, with you!’ the Prince shouted, not listening to a word. He wiped away an angry tear and grated his teeth. ‘The whore, the bitch, I’ve no more patience for her!’

‘I came to you like a man, honestly,’ said the Abrek, knitting his black brows, and his blue eyes glinted with a cold flame. ‘I could have stolen her, but Kazbek is not a thief. I ask you like a friend: give her to me. If you do not give her, I shall take her like an enemy. Only think first. I do not take her for nothing.’

He pointed to Senka cringing in the middle of the room.

The Prince gave poor innocent Senka a shove that sent him flying against the wall and sliding down on to the floor:

‘I don’t want your painted whore!’

Senka had hurt his shoulder and he was terrified, but those words that were meant to be insulting were sweet music to his ears. The Prince didn’t want him, Jesus be praised!

‘I throw the mamselle into the bargain, so you will not be left without a woman.’ The Abrek laughed. ‘But the most precious thing I have, the thing I will give you, is silver, much silver. You have never had so much ...’

‘I’ll ram that silver down your throat, you filthy swine!’ the Prince retorted. And he ranted for a long time, shouting incoherent threats and obscenities.

‘How much is “much”, my dear fellow?’ Deadeye asked when the Prince finally choked on his hatred and fell silent.