The Death of Achilles (28 page)

At the age of twenty Achimas Welde was a polite, taciturn young man who looked older than his years. For the visitors who came to the famous springs of Solenovodsk for the good of their health, and to local society in general, he was simply a well-brought-up young man from a rich merchant’s family, a student from Kharkov University on a long vacation to restore his health. But among people
in the know
, who shared their knowledge with very few others, Achimas Welde was regarded as a serious and reliable individual, who always finished what he began. Those
in the know
referred to him behind his back as Aksahir, which means the White Wizard. Achimas accepted the sobriquet as his due: He really was a wizard. Although his wizardry had nothing to do with magic, everything was determined by careful calculation, a cool head, and skillful psychology.

His uncle had bought him a student’s identity card for the Kharkov Imperial University for three hundred and fifty paper rubles — not a great price. The grammar school certificate, with the heraldic seal and genuine signatures, had been more expensive. After Chanakh, Chasan had sent his nephew to school in the quiet town of Solenovodsk, paid for a year in advance, and gone away into the mountains. Achimas had lived at the boarding school with the other boys, whose fathers were serving in distant garrisons or leading caravans west to east, from the Black Sea to the Caspian, or north to south, from Rostov to Erzerum. Achimas was not really close with any of his peers — he had nothing in common with them. He knew what they did not know and were unlikely ever to learn. This gave rise to a certain difficulty while Achimas was studying in the preparatory class at the grammar school. A stocky, broad-shouldered boy by the name of Kikin, who had subjugated the entire boarding school to his rule of fear, took a dislike to the pale-eyed ‘Finn’ and the other boys followed his lead and joined in the persecution. Achimas tried to put up with it, because he would not be able to deal with them all on his own, but it kept getting worse. One evening in his bedroom he discovered that his pillowcase had been smeared all over with cow dung and he realized that something had to be done.

Achimas considered all the possible solutions to his problem.

He could wait for his uncle to return and ask for his help. But he didn’t know when Chasan would be coming back. And it was extremely important to him that the spark of respectful interest that had appeared in his uncle’s eyes after Chanakh should not be extinguished.

He could try to give Kikin a beating, but he was unlikely to succeed — Kikin was older, stronger, and he would not fight one against one.

He could complain to his tutor. But Kikin’s father was a colonel, and Achimas was a nobody, the nephew of some wild mountain tribesman, who had paid for his board and lessons at the grammar school in Turkish gold coins out of a leather pouch.

The simplest and most correct solution would be for Kikin to die. Achimas racked his brain and thought up a neat and tidy way in which this could be done.

While Kikin delighted in kicking the ‘Finn,’ tipping thumbtacks down the back of his collar and blowing spitballs of chewed paper at him out of a little tube, Achimas was waiting for May to come. Summer began in May, and the pupils began running to the river Kumka to bathe. From the beginning of April, when the water was still scaldingly cold, Achimas began learning to dive. By the beginning of May he could already swim underwater with his eyes open, had studied the bottom of the river, and could hold his breath for an entire minute without any difficulty. Everything was ready.

It all turned out to be very simple, just as he had imagined it. Everybody went to the river. Achimas dived, tugged Kikin down by the leg, and dragged him underwater. Achimas was holding a piece of string, the other end of which was firmly attached to a sunken log. Chasan had once taught his nephew a Kabardinian knot — it is tied in a second, and there is no way that anyone who does not know the secret can possibly untie it.

In one swift movement Achimas tied the knot over his enemy’s calf, surfaced, and climbed out onto the bank. He counted to five hundred and then dived again. Kikin was lying on the bottom. His mouth was open, and so were his eyes. Achimas looked inside himself and discovered nothing apart from calm satisfaction with a job well done. He untied the knot and surfaced. The boys were shouting and splashing each other with water. It was some time before Kikin was missed.

After that particular difficulty was resolved, life in the boarding school improved greatly. Without Kikin as ringleader, there was no one left to persecute the pale- eyed ‘Finn’. Achimas moved on from one class to the next. He was neither a good pupil nor a poor one. He sensed that little of all this knowledge would be required in his life. Chasan came only rarely, but each time he took his nephew away into the mountains for a week or two — to hunt and spend the night under the starry sky.

When Achimas was about to finish sixth class, a new difficulty arose. Outside the town, three versts along the Stavropol highway, there was a bawdy house to which the men who had come to take the waters repaired in the evenings. And for some time Achimas, who at the age of sixteen had shot up and broadened in the shoulders so that he could quite easily be taken for a twenty-year-old, had also been making the three-verst journey. This was real life, not learning chunks of ancient Greek from the
Iliad
. One day Achimas was unlucky. In the public hall downstairs, where the painted girls drank lemonade while they waited to be taken upstairs, he ran into an inspector from the grammar school, Collegiate Counselor Tenetov — wearing a frock coat and a false beard. Tenetov realized from the boy’s glance that he had been recognized and although he said nothing to Achimas, from that day on he conceived a fierce hatred for the white-haired sixth-class pupil. It soon became clear what the inspector was aiming at — he was determined to fail Achimas in the summer examinations.

Staying back for a year would be shameful and boring. Achimas started pondering what he ought to do.

If it had been one of the other teachers instead of Tenetov, Chasan would have paid a bribe. But Tenetov did not take bribes and he was very proud of it. He had no need to take them — two years earlier, the collegiate counselor had married a merchant’s widow and taken as his dowry a hundred thousand rubles and the finest house in the entire town.

It was clearly not possible to improve relations with Tenetov: One glance at Achimas was enough to set the inspector trembling with fury.

Achimas ran through all the possible solutions and settled on the most certain.

That spring there were bandits operating in Solenovodsk; wicked men would approach a late stroller, stab him in the heart, and take his watch, his wallet, and — if he had any — his rings. Word was that it was the ‘Butchers,’ a famous gang from Rostov, working away from home.

One evening, when the inspector was walking back from Petrosov’s restaurant along the dark, deserted street, Achimas walked up to him and stabbed him in the heart with his dagger. He took a watch on a gold chain and a wallet from the fallen man, then threw the watch and the wallet in the river and kept the money — twenty-seven rubles — for himself.

He thought the difficulty had been resolved, but things turned out badly. The maidservant from the next house had seen Achimas walking quickly away from the scene of the murder and wiping a knife with a bunch of grass. The maidservant informed the police and Achimas was put in a cell.

It was fortunate for him that his uncle happened to be in town at the time.

His uncle threatened the maidservant that he would cut off her nose and ears, and she went to the superintendent of police and said that she had identified the wrong man by mistake. Then Chasan himself went to the superintendent and paid him five thousand rubles in silver — everything that he had amassed from his smuggling — and the prisoner was released.

Achimas felt ashamed. When Chasan sat Achimas down to face him, he could not look his uncle in the eye. Then he told him the whole truth — about Kikin and about the inspector.

After a long silence, Chasan sighed. He said: “Allah finds a purpose for every creature. No more studying, boy; we’re going to do real work.”

And a different life began.

Formerly Chasan had imported contraband goods from Turkey and Persia and sold them to middlemen. Now, instead, he began transporting them farther himself — to Ekaterinodar, Stavropol, Rostov, and the market at Nizhny Novgorod. His goods sold well, because Chasan did not ask a high price. He and his buyer would shake hands and drink to the deal. Then Achimas would catch up with the buyer, kill him, and bring the goods back again — until the next time they were sold.

Their most profitable trip of all was to Nizhny Novgorod in 1859, when they sold one and the same lot of lambskin — ten bales — three times over: the first time for one thousand three hundred rubles (Achimas overtook the merchant and his bailiff on the forest road and killed both of them with his dagger); the second time for one thousand one hundred rubles (the young gentleman barely had time to grunt in surprise when the polite student traveling with him thrust the double- edged blade into his liver); the third time for one thousand five hundred rubles (and by a stroke of good luck they found almost three thousand rubles more in the Armenian’s belt).

Achimas killed calmly and was only distressed if the death was not instantaneous. But that rarely happened — he had a sure hand.

Things continued in this way for three years. During this time Prince Baryatinsky captured the Imam Shamil and the great war in the Caucasus came to an end. Uncle Chasan married a girl from a good mountain-tribe family, then took a second wife from a poorer family — according to the official documents, she was his ward. He bought a house in Solen-ovodsk with a big garden, in which peacocks strutted and screamed. Chasan became fat and developed a taste for drinking champagne on his veranda and talking philosophy. He was too lazy now to travel into the mountains for contraband, so people
in the know
brought the goods to him themselves. They would sit drinking tea and arguing at length over prices. If the negotiations proved difficult, Chasan sent for Achimas, who entered with a polite touch of his hand to his forehead and gazed silently at the obstinate trader with his pale, still eyes. It was very effective.

One day in autumn, the day after the serfs were liberated in Russia, Chasan’s old friend Abylgazi came to tell him that a new man had appeared in Semigorsk, a baptized Jew whose name was now Lazar Medvedev. He had come the year before to take the cure for his stomach, and had taken a liking to the place and stayed. He married a beautiful girl without a dowry, built a house with columns up on a hill, and bought three springs. Now all the visitors drank only Medvedev’s water and bathed only in his baths, and it was said that every week he sent ten thousand bottles of mineral water to Moscow and St. Petersburg. This was interesting, but by far the most interesting thing was that Lazar Medvedev had an iron room. The baptized Jew did not trust banks — and he was wise not to do so, of course. He kept all his immense fortune in the basement under his house, where he had a chamber in which all the walls were made of iron, with a door so thick that not even a shot from a cannon could break it in. It was hard to get into such a room, said Abylgazi, and therefore he was not asking to be paid in advance for telling Chasan all this; he was prepared to wait as long as necessary, and the fee he was asking was modest — only ten kopecks from each ruble that Chasan managed to take.

“An iron room — that is very difficult,” said Chasan, nodding solemnly. He had never heard of such rooms before. “And therefore, if Allah assists me, you will receive five kopecks from each ruble, respected friend.”

Then he called his nephew, recounted old Abylgazi’s story to him, and told him: “Go to Semigorsk and see what this iron room is like.”

To see what the iron room looked like proved easier than Achimas had expected.

He went to Medvedev’s house, dressed in a gray morning coat and matching gray top hat. While still in his hotel he had sent on his card, which was printed with words in gold lettering:

Chasan Radaev’ Trading House.

AFANASY PETROVICH WELDE

Partner Medvedev had replied with a note saying that he had heard of the trading house of the respected Chasan Radaev and requested an immediate visit. And so Achimas had set out for the beautiful new house on the outskirts of the town, which stood at the top of a steep cliff and was surrounded on all sides by a high stone wall. It was a fortress, not a house. A place where you could sit out a siege.

When Achimas entered the oak gates, this impression became even stronger: There were two sentries with carbines strolling about in the yard, and the sentries were wearing military uniforms, only without shoulder straps.

His host was bald, with a bulging forehead, a firm potbelly, and shrewd black eyes. He sat the young man down at the table and offered him coffee and a cigar. After ten minutes of polite, leisurely conversation about politics and the price of wool, he asked how he could be of assistance to the estimable Mr. Radaev.

Achimas then expounded the business proposal that he had invented as an excuse for his visit. “An exchange of mineral waters between Solen-ovodsk and Semigorsk ought to be arranged,” he said. “Your springs heal the stomach and our springs heal the kidneys. Many visitors come here to take a cure for both. So that these people will not have to travel a hundred versts over bumpy mountain roads, why should the firm of Medvedev not set up a shop in Solenovodsk, and the firm of Radaev set up a shop in Semigorsk? It would be profitable for both of us.”

“A good idea,” the baptized Jew said approvingly. “Very good. Only there are many bandits on the road. How shall I transport my earnings here from Solenovodsk?”

“Why bring them here at all?” Achimas asked in surprise. “You can put them in the bank.” Medvedev stroked the thin wreath of curly hair surrounding his bald patch and smiled: “I don’t trust the banks, Afanasy Petrovich. I prefer to keep my money at home.”