The Death of Achilles (35 page)

In Moscow, following his instructions, Achimas put up at the fashionable new hotel Metropole under the name of Nikolai Nikolaevich Klonov, a merchant from Ryazan.

Using the number provided by Monsieur NN, he telephoned his client’s representative in Moscow, whom he had been told to address as ‘Mr. Nemo’. Achimas no longer found these absurd aliases laughable — it was clear that these people were deadly serious.

“Hello,” said a crackling voice in the earpiece.

“This is Klonov,” Achimas said into the mouthpiece. “I would like to speak to Mr. Nemo.”

“Speaking,” said the voice.

“Please tell them to send me a verbal portrait of Ekaterina Golovina urgently.”

Achimas repeated the name of Sobolev’s mistress one more time and disconnected the telephone.

The defenders of the throne were evidently not very good conspirators. Achimas took the telephone directory from the koelner and looked to see which subscriber was registered under the number 211. Court Counselor Pyotr Parmyonovich Khurtinsky, head of the governor-general’s secret chancelry. Not bad.

Two hours later a courier delivered a sealed envelope to the hotel. The telegram was brief: “Blond, blue-gray eyes, slightly aquiline nose, thin, well-proportioned, height two arshins and four vershoks, small bust, slim waist, mole on right cheek, scar on left knee from a fall from a horse. NN.”

The information concerning the left knee and the mole was superfluous. The important thing was that the type was clearly denned: a short, slim blonde.

“Tell me, my dear fellow, what’s your name?”

Number 19 was regarding the koelner uncertainly, as if he were embarrassed. The koelner, a man of some experience, was well acquainted with that tone of voice and that expression. He wiped the smile off his face, in order not to embarrass the guest with his excessive perspicacity, and replied: “Timofei, Your Honor. Can I be of any service to you?”

Number 19 (according to the register, a merchant of the first guild from Ryazan) led Timofei away from the counter to the window and handed him a ruble.

“I’m feeling bored, brother. Lonely. I could do with a bit of… entertaining company.”

The merchant fluttered his white eyelashes and blushed a pale pink. How pleasant it was to deal with such a sensitive individual.

The koelner shrugged and raised his hands.

“Why, nothing could be simpler, sir. We have plenty of friendly young ladies here in Moscow. Would you like me to give you an address?”

“No, no address. What I’d like is someone special, who can think a bit. I don’t like the cheap ones,” said the merchant from Ryazan, taking heart.

“We have some like that, too.” Timofei began bending down his fingers as he counted. “Varya Serebryanaya sings at the Yar — a very preventable girl; she won’t go with just anyone. Then there’s Mam’selle Carmencita, a very modern individual; she makes her arrangements on the telephone. Mam’selle Wanda sings at the Alpine Rose, a young lady of very discriminating taste. There are two dancers at the French Operetta, Lisette and Anisette, they’re very popular, sir. And as for the actresses…”

“That’s it, I’d like an actress,” said number 19, brightening even further. “Only to suit my taste. I have no time for over-fleshy women, Timofei. What I like is a slim woman with a thin waist, not too tall, and she has to be blond.”

The koelner thought for a moment and said: “Then that means Wanda from the Rose. Blond and skinny. But very popular. Most of the others are on the fleshy side. Can’t be helped, sir, it’s the fashion.”

“Tell me what this Wanda’s like.”

“She’s a German. With the manners of an aristocrat. Thinks very highly of herself. Lives in grand style in a suite at the Anglia, with a separate entrance. She can afford it, sir, she takes five hundred for her services. And she’s choosy; she’ll only go with someone she likes.”

“Five hundred rubles? My goodness!” The merchant seemed to be interested. “And where could I take a look at this Wanda, Timofei? What is this place the Alpine Rose like?”

The koelner pointed out of the window.

“It’s just here, on Sofiiskaya Street. She sings there most evenings. The restaurant’s nothing special, doesn’t compare with ours or the Slavyansky Bazaar. It’s mostly Germans, begging your pardon, who go there. Our Russian men only go to gawk at Wanda. And engage her services, if their intentions are serious.”

“And how are her services engaged?”

“You have to go about it the right way,” said Timofei, amused, and he set about describing it. “First of all you have to invite her to your table. But if you just call her over, she won’t sit with you. The very first thing you do is send her a bunch of violets, and it has to be wrapped in a hundred-ruble note. The mam’selle will take a look at you from a distance. If she takes a dislike to you straightaway, she’ll send the hundred rubles back. But if she doesn’t, it means she’ll come and sit with you. But that’s only the half of it, sir. She might sit down and chat about this and that and still refuse you afterward. And she won’t give the hundred rubles back because she’s spent time on you. They say she earns more from the hundred-ruble rejects than the five-hundred-ruble fees. That’s the way this Miss Wanda’s set herself up.”

That evening achimas sat in the Alpine Rose, sipping a decent Rhine wine and studying the songstress. The young German woman really was attractive. She looked like a bacchante. Her face wasn’t German at all — it had a bold, reckless look to it, and there was a glint of molten silver in her green eyes. Achimas knew that special tint very well as the exclusive trait of the most precious members of the female species. It was not plump lips or a finely molded little nose that caught men’s fancy, it was that silver sheen that blinded them with its deceptive glimmer and drove them out of their minds. And what a voice! As an experienced connoisseur of female beauty, Achimas knew that half the enchantment lay in the voice. When it had that chesty resonance and that slight hint of hoarseness, as if it had been seared by frost or, on the contrary, scorched by fire, it was dangerous. The best thing you could do was follow Odysseus’s lead and tie yourself to the mast, otherwise you would drown. The bold general would never be able to resist this siren, not for the world.

However, Achimas still had a certain amount of time in hand. Today was only Tuesday and Sobolev would arrive on Thursday, so he had an opportunity to take Mademoiselle Wanda’s measure more precisely.

During the evening she was sent a bouquet of violets twice. One, from a fat merchant in a scarlet waistcoat; Wanda returned it immediately, without even touching it. The merchant left immediately, stamping his heels and cursing.

The second bouquet was sent by a colonel of the Guards with a scar across his cheek. The songstress raised the bouquet to her face and tucked the banknote into her lacy sleeve, but it was some time before she took a seat beside the colonel, and she didn’t stay with him for long. Achimas couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but the conversation ended with Wanda throwing her head back with a laugh, smacking the colonel across the hand with her fan, and walking away. The colonel shrugged his gold-trimmed shoulders philosophically and after a while sent another bouquet, but Wanda returned it immediately.

And yet when a certain red-cheeked, blond-haired gentleman, whose appearance was clearly far less impressive than the officer’s, casually beckoned the proud woman to him with his finger, she took a seat at his table immediately, without making him wait. The blond man spoke to her indolently, drumming on the tablecloth with his short fingers covered in ginger hairs, and she listened without speaking or smiling, nodding twice. Surely not her pimp, Achimas thought in surprise. He didn’t look the part.

However, when Wanda emerged from the side entrance at midnight (Achimas was keeping watch outside), it was the red-cheeked man who was waiting for her in a carriage and she drove away with him. Achimas followed them in a single- seater carriage, prudently hired in advance at the Metropole. They drove across the Kuznetsky Bridge and turned onto Petrovka Street. Outside a large building on the corner with a glowing electric sign that said ‘Anglia,’ Wanda and her companion got out of their carriage and dismissed the driver. The hour was late and the unattractive escort was clearly going to stay the night. Who was he, a lover? But Wanda didn’t look particularly happy.

He would have to ask ‘Mr. Nemo’ about this.

In order to avoid any risk of simply wasting his time, Achimas did not wrap his violets in a hundred-ruble note, but threaded them instead through an emerald ring bought that afternoon at Kuznetsky Most. A woman might refuse money, but she would never reject an expensive bauble.

Naturally, the ploy was successful. Wanda inspected the present curiously and then looked around, seeking out the giver with equal interest. Achimas bowed slightly. Today he was wearing an English dinner jacket and a white tie with a diamond pin, which lent him an appearance somewhere between an English lord and a modern entrepreneur — the new cosmopolitan breed that was just beginning to set the tone in Europe and Russia.

Yesterday’s peremptory blond gentleman, concerning whom Achimas had received exhaustive (and extremely interesting) information, was not in the restaurant.

When she finished her song, Wanda sat down across from Achimas, glanced into his face, and suddenly said: “What transparent eyes. Like a mountain stream.”

For some reason Achimas’s heart fluttered momentarily at that phrase. It had triggered one of those vague, elusive memories that the French call
dejd-vu
. He frowned slightly. What nonsense; Achimas Welde was not one to be hooked by cunning feminine wiles.

He introduced himself: “Merchant of the First Guild Nikolai Niko-laevich Klonov, chairman of the Ryazan Commercial Association.”

“A merchant?” the green-eyed woman asked in surprise. “You don’t look like one. More like a sailor. Or a bandit.”

She laughed gruffly and for the second time Achimas was caught off guard. No one had ever told him that he looked like a bandit before. He had to appear normal and respectable — it was a necessary condition of his profession.

The songstress continued to surprise him.

“And you don’t have a Ryazan accent,” she remarked with casual mockery. “You wouldn’t happen to be a foreigner, would you?”

Apparently Achimas’s speech was marked by an extremely slight, almost indistinguishable accent — a certain non-Russian metallic quality retained from his childhood, but to detect it required an extraordinarily subtle ear. Which made it all the more surprising to hear such a comment from a German.

“I lived in Zurich for a long time,” he said. “Our company has an office there. Russian linen and calico.”

“Well, and what do you want from me, Swiss-Ryazan businessman?” the woman continued, as if it were a perfectly ordinary question. “To strike some lucrative deal with me, perhaps? Have I guessed right?”

Achimas was relieved — the songstress was merely flirting.

“Precisely,” he said seriously and confidently, in the manner he always used when speaking to women of this type. “I have a confidential business proposition to put to you.”

She burst into laughter, exposing her small, even teeth.

“Confidential? How elegantly you express it, Monsieur Klonov. Generally speaking, the propositions put to me are extremely confidential.”

Then Achimas remembered that he had said the same thing in almost the same words to ‘Baron von Steinitz’ a week before. He smiled despite himself, but immediately continued in a serious voice: “It is not what you think, mademoiselle. The Ryazan Commercial Association, of which I have the honor to be the chairman, has instructed me to give an expensive and unusual present to a worthy and famous individual who hails from our district. I may choose the present at my own discretion, but our compatriot must be pleased with it. This person is greatly loved and esteemed in Ryazan. We wish to present our gift tactfully and unobtrusively. Even anonymously. He will never even know that the money was collected by subscription from the merchants of his hometown of Ryazan. I thought for a long time about what to give the fortunate man. Then when I saw you I realized that the very finest gift is a woman like yourself.”

It was amazing, but she blushed.

“How dare you!” Her eyes flashed in fury. “I am not a thing, to be given as a gift!”

“Not you, mademoiselle, only your time and your professional skills,” Achimas declared sternly. “Or have I been misled, and you do not trade in your time and your art?”

She looked at him with hatred in her eyes.

“Do you realize, Merchant of the First Guild, that one word from me would be enough to have you thrown out into the street?”

He smiled, but only with his lips.

“No one has ever thrown me out into the street, mademoiselle. I assure you that it is quite out of the question.”

Leaning forward and looking straight into those eyes glittering with fury, he said: “It is not possible to be only half a courtesan, mademoiselle. Honest business relations are best: work in exchange for money. Or do you ply your trade for the pleasure of it?”

The sparks in her eyes faded and the wide, sensuous mouth twisted into a bitter smile.

“What pleasure? Order me some champagne. It’s the only thing I drink. Otherwise in my ‘trade’ you’d never stop drinking. I’m not going to sing any more today.” Wanda made a sign to a waiter, who evidently knew her habits, for he brought a bottle of Clicquot. “You are quite right, Mr. Philosopher. It is only deceiving oneself to be half for sale.”

She drained her glass to the last drop, but would not allow him to fill it again. Everything was going well and the only thing that was causing Achimas any concern was the way everyone around them was staring at him, Wanda’s favored client. But never mind, he would leave the restaurant alone; they would think him just another loser and immediately forget him.

“People don’t often speak to me like that.” The champagne had not lent her gaze sparkle — on the contrary, it had rendered it sad. “They mostly cringe and fawn. At first. And then they start talking to me in a familiar fashion, trying to persuade me to be their kept woman. Do you know what I want?”