The Winter Queen (20 page)

“Well, then,” said Franz, delighted. “You see what I mean. Choking on that filthy rotten swill—
brrrr
! I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Let’s do right by him: slit his throat first so he won’t suffer. One quick swipe, and it’s all over, eh?”

Such philanthropic sentimentality made Erast Fandorin feel quite ill, but dear, wonderful Mr. Morbid muttered discontentedly, “Oh, no, I’ll get my knife all bloody. And splatter blood on my sleeve. This young puppy’s caused enough trouble already. Never mind—he’ll croak anyway. If you’re so kindhearted, you strangle him with a piece of string—that’s your speciality—and meanwhile I’ll go and look for a lump of iron or something of the sort.”

His heavy footsteps receded, leaving Fandorin alone with the humanitarian Franz.

“I shouldn’t have tied any string ‘round the outside of the sack,” the latter mused thoughtfully. “I used it all up.”

Erast Fandorin lowed in approval—
never mind, don’t worry about it, I’ll manage somehow
.

“Eh, poor soul,” sighed Franz. “Listen to him groan. It fair breaks your heart. Okay, my lad, don’t you be frightened. Uncle Franz won’t begrudge you his belt.”

There was the sound of approaching steps.

“There you are, a piece of rail, the very thing,” boomed the butler. “Stick it in under the string. He won’t surface for a month at least.”

“Wait a moment. I’ll just slip this noose ‘round his neck.”

“Ah, to hell with all your mollycoddling! Time’s wasting—it’ll be dawn soon!”

“I’m sorry, son,” Franz said sympathetically. “Obviously that’s the way it’s meant to be.
Das host du dir selbst verdanken.*
”

They picked Erast Fandorin up again and began swinging him backward and forward.

“Azazel!” Franz cried out in a solemn, formal voice, and a second later the swaddled body plunged with a splash into the putrid water.

Fandorin felt neither the cold nor the oily weight of the water pressing down on him as he hacked through the soaking string with the stiletto. The most awkward part was freeing his right hand, but once it was loose, the job went swimmingly: one stroke and his left hand began assisting his right; another, and the sack was slashed from top to bottom; a third, and the heavy length of rail went plunging into the soft silt.

Now he just had to make certain not to surface too soon. Erast Fandorin pushed off with his legs, thrust his hands out in front of him, and groped about with them in the turbid water. Somewhere here, very close, there ought to be the supports that held up the pier. There—his fingers had come into contact with slippery, weed-covered timber. Quietly now, without hurrying, up along the pillar so there would be no splash, not a sound.

Under the wooden decking of the pier it was pitch-dark. Suddenly a round white blob was thrust up from the black, watery depths. Within this white circle a smaller dark one immediately took shape as Titular Counselor Fandorin greedily gulped in the air above the river. It smelled of decay and kerosene. It had the magical smell of life.

Meanwhile, up above on the pier, a leisurely conversation was in progress. Concealed below, Erast Fandorin could hear every word. He had sometimes reduced himself to sentimental tears by imagining the words with which friends and enemies would remember him, the hero who met an untimely end, by rehearsing the speeches that would be pronounced over the gaping pit of his grave. One might say that his entire youth had been spent in dreams of this kind. Imagine, then, the young man’s indignation when he heard what trivia formed the subject of the prattle between those who believed themselves his murderers! Not a word about the man over whose head the somber waters had only just closed! A man with a mind and a heart, with a noble soul and exalted aspirations!

“Oh,” sighed Franz, “I’ll pay for this little stroll with an attack of rheumatism. Feel how damp the air is. Well, what are we standing here for? Let’s go, eh?”

“It’s too soon.”

“Listen, what with all this running about I didn’t get any supper. What do you think—will they give us something to eat or think up some other job for us to do?”

“That’s not for us to worry our heads about. We’ll do whatever they tell us.”

“If I could just grab a nice piece of cold veal on the way. My stomach’s rumbling…Are we really going to uproot ourselves from the old familiar homestead? I’ve just settled in, got used to the place. What for? Everything worked out all right in the end.”

“She knows what for. If she’s given the order, there’s a reason.”

“That’s true enough. She doesn’t make mistakes. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her—I’d even shop my own dear old dad. That is, if I had one, of course. No mother would ever have done as much for us as she has.”

“That goes without saying…Right, that’s it. Let’s go.”

Erast Fandorin waited until the footsteps died away in the distance, counted to three hundred just to make sure, and only then began moving toward the shoreline.

When, after falling back several times, he finally hauled himself out with a great struggle onto the low but almost vertical parapet of the waterfront, the darkness was already beginning to melt away before the advancing dawn. The man who had failed to drown shuddered and shivered, his teeth chattered, and then he was seized by the hiccups as well. He must clearly have swallowed a lot of the putrid river water. But it was still wonderful to be alive. Erast Fandorin cast a loving glance across the wide expanse of the river (on the far side there were lights shining sweetly); smiled affectionately at the sheer solidity of a low, squat warehouse; gave his approval to the regular swaying of the tugboats and harbor launches lined up along the quayside. A blissful smile lit up the wet face of this man risen from the dead with a smear of fuel oil on his forehead. He stretched sweetly, and then froze motionless in that absurd pose—a low, agile silhouette had detached itself nimbly from the corner of the warehouse and begun scurrying toward him.

“What vile brutes they are, what villainous knaves,” the silhouette lamented in a thin voice clearly audible from a distance as it came toward him. “They can never be trusted to do anything—you always have to keep an eye on them. Where would you all be without Pyzhov, tell me that! You’d be as helpless as blind little kittens—you’d be done for.”

Fandorin dashed forward, overwhelmed by righteous fury. The traitor appeared to imagine that his Satanic apostasy had remained undiscovered.

However, a glimpse of the malevolent gleam of metal in the provincial secretary’s hand made Erast Fandorin first halt and then begin backing away.

“That’s a wise decision, my sweet strawberry,” Pyzhov said approvingly, and Fandorin saw what a catlike spring there was in his step. “You’re a sensible lad—I saw that straightaway. Do you know what it is I have here?” He waved his weapon in the air, and Fandorin saw a twin-barreled pistol of unusually large caliber. “A terrible thing. In the local criminal argot it is known as a smasher. Here, if you would care to take a look, is where you load the two little explosive bullets—the very ones forbidden by the St. Petersburg Convention of 1868. But criminals are genuine villains, my little Erast. What do they care for some philanthropic convention? And the bullet is explosive. Once it strikes the flesh, it unfolds its petals like a flower. It reduces flesh and bone to a bloody mush. So just you take it easy, my little darling, don’t go getting twitchy. If I’m startled I might just fire, then afterward I wouldn’t be able to live with what I’d done, I’d feel so guilty. It really is excruciatingly painful if it hits you in the belly or anywhere else around that area.”

Still hiccuping—no longer from the cold but from fear—Fandorin yelled out, “Judas Iscariot! You sold your homeland for thirty pieces of silver!” And he backed further away from the menacing muzzle of the gun.

“In the words of the immortal Derzhavin, inconstancy is the lot of mortal kind. And you do me a grave injustice, my little friend. I was not enticed by thirty shekels but by a far more substantial sum, transferred in the most immaculate manner to a Swiss bank—for my old age, to ensure that I do not die in the gutter. And what did you think you were doing, you little fool? Who did you think you were yelping and yapping at? Shooting at stone is merely a waste of arrows. This is a truly mighty structure, the pyramid of Cheops. You cannot butt it down with your forehead.”

In the meantime Erast Fandorin had shuffled back to the edge of the quayside and been obliged to halt on feeling the low curb press against the back of his heels. All appearances indicated that this was exactly what Pyzhov had been trying to achieve.

“That’s very good now—that’s quite splendid,” he intoned melliflu-ously, halting ten paces away from his victim. “It wouldn’t have been easy for me to drag such a well-nourished youth to the water afterward. Don’t you be alarmed, my rubicund little fellow, Pyzhov knows what he’s about. Bang—and it’s all over. No more red little face, just gooey red mush. Even if they fish you out they won’t identify you. And your soul will soar straight up to the angels. It hasn’t had a chance to sin yet, it’s such a young soul.”

With these words he raised his weapon, screwed up his left eye, and smiled in sweet anticipation. He was in no hurry to fire; he was clearly savoring the moment. Fandorin cast a despairing glance at the deserted shoreline illuminated by the bleary light of dawn. There was no one, not a single soul. This time it really was the end. He thought he saw something stirring over by the warehouse, but he had no time to make it out—a shot thundered out, appallingly loud, louder than the loudest of thunder. Erast Fandorin swayed backward, then with a bloodcurdling howl he plunged down into the river out of which he had clambered with such great difficulty only a few minutes earlier.

in which our hero discovers that he has a halo around his head

CONSCIOUSNESS DID NOT, HOWEVER, DESERT the executed man, and, strangely enough, there was absolutely no pain at all. Totally bemused, Erast Fandorin began flailing at the water with his arms. What had happened? Was he alive or dead? If he was dead, then why was everything so wet?

Zurov’s head appeared above the curb at the edge of the quay. Fandorin was not surprised in the least. In the first place, it would have been hard to surprise him with anything just at that moment, and in the second place, in the next world (if that was where he was) far stranger things might occur.

“Erasmus! Are you alive? Did I nick you?” Zurov’s head cried out in an anguished voice. “Give me your hand.”

Erast Fandorin thrust his right hand out of the water, and with one mighty heave he was dragged up onto terra firma. The first thing he saw when he rose to his feet was a small figure lying facedown on the ground with one hand extended forward, clutching a hefty pistol. In among the thinning, skewbald hair on the back of the figure’s head there was a black hole, beneath which a dark puddle was slowly spreading.

“Are you wounded?” Zurov asked anxiously, turning the wet Erast Fandorin around and feeling him all over. “I don’t understand how it could have happened. A perfect
révolution dans la balls tique
* No, it’s quite impossible.”

“Count Zurov, is that you?” Fandorin wheezed, finally grasping the fact that all this was not taking place in the next world but in this one.

“Don’t be so formal. Have you forgotten that we drank to
bruder-schaft
?”

“But why did you do it?” Erast Fandorin began shaking and shuddering again. “Are you absolutely determined to do away with me? Did that cursed Azazel of yours offer you a reward to do it? Shoot then, shoot, curse you! You make me feel sick, all of you, worse than cold semolina!”

How cold semolina came to be mixed up in the matter was not clear—no doubt it was something from his childhood, long ago forgotten. Erast Fandorin was about to rip open the shirt on his chest—
there you are, there’s my breast, shoot
!—but Zurov thumped him unceremoniously on the shoulder.

“Stop raving, Fandorin. What Azazel? What semolina? Let me bring you to your senses.” And thereupon he delivered two resounding slaps to the exhausted Erast Fandorin’s face. “It’s me. Hippolyte Zurov. It’s no wonder your brains have turned to jelly after such trying adventures. Prop yourself up against me.” He put his arm around the young man’s shoulders. “Now I’ll take you back to the hotel. I’ve got a horse tethered close by and he”—Zurov prodded Pyzhov’s motionless body with his foot—“has a droshky. We’ll fly back like the wind. You’ll get warmed up, down a dose of grog, and explain to me what kind of circus it is you’re involved in here.”

Fandorin pushed the count away violently. “Oh no, you explain to me! How did you come to be here? Why were you following me? Are you in collusion with them?”

Disconcerted, Zurov twirled his black mustache.

“I can’t tell you all that in a couple of words.”

“Never mind, I’ve got plenty
hie
—of time. I won’t budge from this spot.”

“Very well then, listen.”

And this is the story that Hippolyte told.

“Do you think I gave you Amalia’s address just like that, without thinking about it? No, brother Fandorin, there was an entire psychology behind it. I took a liking to you, a terribly strong liking. There’s something about you…I don’t know, perhaps you’re marked in some way. I have a nose for people like you. It’s as if I can see a halo above a man’s head, a kind of faint radiance. They’re special people, the ones with that halo. Fate watches over them—it protects them against all dangers. It never occurs to the man to think what fate is preserving him for. You must never fight a duel with a man like that—he’ll kill you. Don’t sit down to play cards with him—you’ll be cleaned out, no matter what fancy tricks you pull out of your sleeve. I spotted your halo when you cleaned me out at stoss and then forced me to draw lots to commit suicide. I don’t meet people like you often. Back in our unit, when we were crossing the desert in Turkestan, there was a lieutenant by the name of Ulich. He went wading straight into the thickest fighting and nothing ever happened to him—he just kept on grinning. Would you believe that near Khiva with my own eyes I saw the khan’s guardsmen fire a volley at him? Not a scratch. And then he drank some kumiss* that had turned sour and it finished him. We buried Ulich in the sand. Then why did the Lord watch over him in battle? It’s a riddle! So, Erasmus, you are one of those people, too—you can take my word for it. I’ve loved you since that moment when you put a pistol to your head without the slightest hesitation and pulled the trigger. But my love, brother Fandorin, is a subtle substance. I can’t love anyone who is inferior to me and I envy those who are superior to me with a deadly envy. I envied you, too. I felt jealous of your halo and your unnatural luck. Look at you—today you’ve come out of the water bone dry. Ha-ha, that is to say, you’ve come out wet, of course, but still alive and without a single scratch. And to look at, you’re a mere boy, a young whelp, nothing to look at at all.”