Turkish Gambit (8 page)

They embraced and kissed, entirely naturally, with no awkwardness, in a way they never had before. It was a joy to see Petya's dear, plain face so radiant with happiness. He had lost weight and acquired a tan and he stooped more than he used to. The black uniform jacket with the red shoulder straps hung on him like a loose sack, but his smile was the same as ever, wide and beaming in adoration.

'So you accept, then?' he asked.

'Yes,' Varya replied simply, even though she had been planning not to accept his proposal immediately, but only after a long and serious discussion, only after she had laid down certain conditions of principle.

Petya gave a childish squeal of joy and tried to hug her again, but Varya had already come to her senses. 'But we still have to discuss everything in detail. In the first place . . .'

'Of course we'll discuss everything, of course we will. Only not now, this evening. Why don't we meet in the journalists' tent? They have a kind of club there. You've met the Frenchman, haven't you? I mean Paladin. A splendid fellow. He's the one who told me you had arrived. I'm terribly busy right now; I just dashed away for a moment. If they notice, I'll really be for it. Till this evening, this evening!'

He ran off back the way he had come, kicking up the dust with his heavy boots and glancing back at every second.

However, they were not able to meet that evening. An orderly brought a note from the staff building: 'On duty all night. Tomorrow. Love, P.'

There was nothing to be done - he was in the army now - so Varya began settling in. The nurses had taken her in to live with them. They were wonderful, caring women, but they were quite elderly - all about thirty-five - and rather dull. They collected together everything necessary to replace the baggage appropriated by the enterprising Mitko - clothes, shoes, a bottle of eau de cologne (instead of her wonderful Parisian perfume!), stockings, underwear, a comb, hairpins, scented soap, powder, salve to protect against the sun, cold cream, emollient lotion to counteract the effect of wind, essence of camomile for washing her hair and other essential items. Of course, the dresses were quite awful, with the possible exception of only one, which was light blue with a little white-lace collar. Varya removed the old-fashioned cuffs and it actually turned out rather nice.

But first thing in the morning she already found herself at a loose end. The nurses had gone to the field hospital to tend two wounded men brought in from near Lovcha. Varya drank her coffee alone, then went to send a telegram to her parents: firstly, so that they wouldn't go insane with worry; and secondly, to ask them to send some money (purely as a loan - let them not start thinking that she had voluntarily returned to her cage). She went for a stroll round the camp, on her way gazing in fascination at a bizarre train with no tracks - a military transport drawn by traction engines that had arrived from the opposite bank of the river. The iron locomobiles with the huge wheels puffed heavily and panted out steam as they tugged along the heavy field-guns and wagons of ammunition. It was an impressive spectacle, a genuine triumph of progress.

After that, for want of anything better to do, she called in on Fandorin, who had been assigned a separate tent in the staff sector. Erast Petrovich was also idling the time away, lying on his camp bed and copying out words from a book in Turkish.

'Protecting the interests of the state, Mister Policeman?' Varya asked. She had decided that it would be most appropriate to address the secret agent in a casually sarcastic tone of voice.

Fandorin stood up and threw on a military tunic with no shoulder straps (he had obviously had himself kitted out somewhere too). Varya caught a glimpse of a thin silver chain in the opening of his unbuttoned collar. A cross? No, it looked more like a medallion. It would be interesting to take a glance at what it was exactly. Could our sleuth possibly be of a romantic disposition?

The titular counsellor buttoned up his collar and replied seriously: 'If you live in a state, you should either ch-cherish it or leave it - anything else is either parasitism or mere servants'-room gossip.'

'There is a third possibility,' Varya parried, stung by the phrase 'servants'-room gossip'. 'An unjust state can be demolished and a new one built in its place.'

'Unfortunately, Varvara Andreevna, a state is not a house,- it is more like a tree. It is not built, it grows of its own accord, following the laws of nature, and it is a long business. It is not a stonemason who is required, but a gardener.'

Completely forgetting about her appropriate tone of voice, Varya exclaimed passionately: 'But the times we live in are so oppressive and so hard! Honest people are oppressed, sinking beneath the burden of tyrannical arrogance and stupidity, but you reason like an old man, with your talk about gardeners!'

Erast Petrovich shrugged. 'My dear Varvara Andreevna, I am tired of listening to whining about

"these difficult times" of ours. In Tsar Nicholas's times, which were far more oppressive than these, your "honest people" marched in tight order and constantly sang the praises of their happy life. If it is now possible to complain about arrogance and tyranny, it means that times have begun getting better, not worse.'

'Why, you are nothing but . . . nothing but . . . a lackey of the throne!’ Varya hissed out this worst of all possible insults through her teeth, and when Fandorin did not even flinch, she explained it in words that he could understand: 'A servile, loyal subject with no mind or conscience of his own!'

Immediately she had blurted it out, she took fright at her own rudeness,- but Erast Petrovich was not angry in the least. He merely sighed and said: 'You are unsure of how to behave with me. That is one. You do not wish to feel grateful, and therefore you get angry. That is two. If you will simply forget about your damnable gratitude we shall g-get along very well. That is three.'

Such blatant condescension only made Varya even more furious, especially since the cold-blooded secret agent was absolutely right. 'I noticed yesterday that you talk like a dancing teacher: one-two-three, one-two-three. Where did you learn such a stupid mannerism?'

'I had my teachers,' Fandorin replied vaguely and rudely stuck his nose back into his Turkish book.

The marquee where the journalists accredited to central headquarters gathered was visible from a distance. The entrance was festooned with the flags of various countries hanging on a long string, the pennants of magazines and newspapers, and even a pair of red braces with white stars.

'I expect they were celebrating the success at Lovcha yesterday’ volunteered Petya. 'Someone must have celebrated so hard that he lost his braces.'

He pulled aside the canvas flap and Varya glanced inside.

The club was untidy but quite cosy in its own way: wooden tables, canvas chairs, a bar counter with rows of bottles. It smelled of tobacco smoke, candle wax and men's eau de cologne. There were heaps of Russian and foreign newspapers lying on a separate long table. The newspapers looked rather unusual, because they were made up of telegraph tapes glued together. On taking a closer look at the London Daily Post, Varya was surprised to see that it was that morning's issue. Evidently the newspaper offices forwarded them everything by telegraph. How wonderful!

Varya was particularly gratified to note that there were only two women present, both wearing pince-nez and no longer in the first flush of youth; but there were lots and lots of men, and she spied her acquaintances among them.

First of all there was Fandorin, still with his book. That was rather stupid - he could have read it in his tent.

In the opposite corner a session of simultaneous chess was in progress. McLaughlin was striding up and down on one side of the table, smoking his cigar with a condescendingly good-natured expression, while seated along the other side, all concentrating intensely, were Sobolev, Paladin and two other men.

'Bah, it's our little Bulgarian!' exclaimed General Michel, getting up from the chessboard with relief. 'Why, how you have changed! All right, Seamus, we'll call it a draw.'

Paladin smiled affably at the new arrivals and his gaze lingered on Varya (which was very pleasant), but then he continued with his game.

However, a dark-complexioned officer in a positively dazzling uniform came dashing up to Sobolev, set a finger to one point of his over-exuberant waxed moustache and exclaimed in French: 'General, I implore you, introduce me to your enchanting acquaintance! Extinguish the candles, gentlemen! They are needed no longer, for the sun has risen!'

Both the elderly ladies cast glances of extreme disapproval in Varya's direction, and in fact even she was rather taken aback by such a headlong assault.

'This is Colonel Lukan, the personal representative of our invaluable ally His Highness Prince Karl of Roumania,' said Sobolev with a smile. 'I must warn you, Varvara Andreevna, that when it comes to ladies' hearts the colonel is more deadly than any upas tree.'

It was clear from his tone of voice that it would be best not to lead the Roumanian on, and Varya replied stand-offishly, leaning demonstratively against Petya's arm: 'Pleased to meet you. My fiance, volunteer Pyotr Yablokov.'

Lukan took Varya's wrist gallantly between his finger and thumb (a ring studded with a very substantial diamond glittered on his hand), but when he attempted to kiss her fingers, he was instead duly rebuffed.

'In St Petersburg one does not kiss modern women's hands.'

Nonetheless, the company here was certainly intriguing, and Varya took a liking to the correspondents' club. The only annoying thing was that Paladin was still playing his stupid game of chess. But the end was obviously close now: all of McLaughlin's other opponents had already capitulated, and the Frenchman's position was clearly hopeless. Even so, he did not seem downhearted, and he kept glancing in Varya's direction, smiling light-heartedly and whistling a fashionable little chansonette.

Sobolev stood beside him, looked at the board and absent-mindedly took up the refrain: 'Folichon-folichonet . . . Give in, Paladin, this is your Waterloo.'

'The guards die before they surrender,' said the Frenchman, tugging on his narrow, pointed beard, and finally decided on a move that made the Irishman frown and heave a sigh.

Varya went outside for a moment to admire the sunset and enjoy the cool of the evening, and when she went back into the marquee, the chessboards had been cleared away and the conversation had moved on to the exalted topic of man's relations with God.

'Any kind of mutual respect is entirely out of the question,' McLaughlin was saying passionately, evidently in response to some remark made by Paladin. 'Man's relations with the Almighty are founded on the conscious acknowledgement of inequality. After all, children would never think of claiming equality with their parents! The child unconditionally accepts the supremacy of the parent and its dependence on him,- it feels reverence for him and therefore it obeys him - for its own good.'

'Permit me in replying to employ your own metaphor,' said the Frenchman, smiling as he drew on a Turkish chibouk. 'All this is only correct with regard to little children. When a child grows somewhat older, it inevitably begins to query the authority of its parent, even though the latter is still incomparably more wise and powerful. This is natural and healthy, for without it man would remain a little infant for ever. This is the very stage to which mankind has progressed at the present time. Later, when mankind becomes even more mature, it will most certainly establish new and different relations with God, based on equality and mutual respect. And at some stage the child will grow sufficiently mature not to have any further need of a parent at all.'

'Bravo, Paladin, you speak as elegantly as you write!' Petya exclaimed. 'But the whole point is surely that God does not exist, while matter and the elementary principles of decent behaviour do. I recommend you use your concept for a feuilleton in the Revue Parisienne-, it would make an excellent topic'

'One does not need a topic in order to write a good feuilleton,' the Frenchman declared. 'One simply needs to know how to write well.'

'Now that's going a bit too far,' McLaughlin objected. 'Without a topic even a verbal acrobat such as yourself cannot produce anything worthwhile.'

'Name any object you like, even the most trivial, and I will write you an article about it that my paper will be delighted to print,' said Paladin, holding out his hand. 'Shall we have a wager? My Spanish saddle for your Zeiss binoculars.'

Everybody livened up remarkably at that.

'Two hundred roubles on Paladin,' declared Sobolev.

'Any subject?' the Irishman said slowly. 'Absolutely any subject at all?'

'Absolutely. Even that fly over there sitting on Colonel Lukan's moustache.'

The Roumanian hastily shook his moustache and said: 'I bet three hundred on Monsieur McLaughlin. But what will the subject be?'

'Well, why not those old boots of yours?' said McLaughlin, jabbing a finger in the direction of the Frenchman's ancient calf-leather footgear. 'Try writing something about those that will send the reading public of Paris into raptures.'

Sobolev threw his hands up in the air. 'Before they shake hands on it, I pass. Old boots are just too outlandish altogether.'

In the end a thousand roubles was bet on the Irishman and the Frenchman was left without any backers. Varya felt sorry for poor Paladin, but neither she nor Petya had any money.