The Diamond Chariot (3 page)

The previous year he had applied to retire – and why not, he had a bit of money put by, and a little homestead bought, in a fine area for mushrooms, out on the Gulf of Finland. And then this war happened. The head of the Special Section, the director of the Department and the minister himself had implored him: Don’t betray us, Evstratii Pavlovich, don’t abandon us in dangerous times like these. You can’t refuse!

The court counsellor forced himself to focus his thoughts on more pressing matters. He tugged on his long Zaporozhian Cossack moustache, then drew two circles on the paper, a wavy line between them and a question mark up above.

Two little facts, each on its own more or less clear.

So, Maximenko had died, his overworked heart had given out under the stresses and strains of the service. It happened.

Honorary citizen Komarovsky, whoever the hell he was (the Moscow lads had picked up his trail the day before yesterday at a secret Socialist Revolutionary meeting place), had hanged himself. That happened with some neurasthenic revolutionaries too.

But for two existences that were to some degree interconnected, two, so to speak, intersecting earthly vales, both to be broken off abruptly and simultaneously? That was too queer by half. Evstratii Pavlovich had only the vaguest idea of what an earthly vale was, but he liked the sound of the words – he had often imagined himself wandering through life as just such a vale, narrow and tortuous, squeezed in between bleak, rocky cliffs.

Who was this Kalmyk? Why did he go to see Twitchy – on business or, perhaps, by mistake (he was only there for four minutes)? And what took Maximenko into a dead-end courtyard?

Oh, Mylnikov didn’t like this Kalmyk at all. He was more like the Angel of Death than a plain staff captain (the court counsellor crossed himself at the thought); he left one man, and he promptly hanged himself; another man followed the Kalmyk, and he died a dog’s death in a filthy passageway.

Mylnikov tried to draw a slant-eyed Kalmyk face beside the crest, but the likeness turned out poorly – he didn’t have the knack of it.

Ah, Kalmyk-Kalmyk, where are you now?

And Staff Captain Rybnikov, so accurately nicknamed by the agents (his face really was rather Kalmykish), was spending the evening of this troublesome day hurrying and scurrying more intensely than ever.

After the incident on Mitavsky Lane, he dropped into a telegraph office and sent off two messages: one was local, to the Kolpino railway station, the other was long-distance, to Irkutsk, and he quarrelled with the telegraph clerk over the rate – he was outraged that they took ten kopecks a word for telegrams to Irkutsk. The clerk explained that telegraphic communications to the Asiatic part of the empire were charged at a double rate, and he even showed Rybnikov the price list, but the staff captain simply wouldn’t listen.

‘What do you mean, it’s Asia?’ he howled, gazing around plaintively. ‘Gentlemen, did you hear what he said about Irkutsk? Why, it’s a magnificent city, Europe, the genuine article! Oh, yes! You haven’t been there, so don’t you talk, but I served three unforgettable years there! What do you make of this, gents? It’s daylight robbery!’

After raising a ruckus, Vasilii Alexandrovich moved to the queue for the international window and sent a telegram to Paris, at the urgent rate, that is to say, all of thirty kopecks for a word, but he behaved quietly here, without waxing indignant.

After that the irrepressible staff captain hobbled off to the Nicholas station, where he arrived just in time for the departure of the nine o’clock express.

He tried to buy a second-class ticket, but the ticket office didn’t have any.

‘Sorry, it’s not my fault,’ Rybnikov informed the queue with obvious satisfaction. ‘I’ll have to travel in third, even though I am an officer. Government business, I’ve no right not to go. Here’s six roubles. My ticket, please.’

‘There’s no more places in third class,’ the booking clerk replied. ‘There are places in first, for fifteen roubles.’

‘How much?’ Vasilii Alexandrovich gasped. ‘My father’s not called Rothschild, you know! If you’re really interested, I happen to be an orphan!’

They started explaining to him that there weren’t enough places, that the number of passenger trains to Moscow had been reduced because of the military traffic. And even that one ticket in first class had only become free by sheer chance, just two minutes ago. A lady had wanted to travel in a compartment alone, but this was forbidden by decree of the director of the line, and the passenger had been forced to return the extra ticket.

‘Well, are you taking it or not?’ the booking clerk asked impatiently.

Cursing plaintively, the staff captain bought the hugely expensive ticket, but he demanded ‘a paper with a seal’ stating that there hadn’t been any cheaper tickets available. They barely managed to get rid of him by sending him off to the duty station supervisor for a ‘paper’, but the staff captain didn’t go to him, instead he called into the left luggage office.

There he retrieved a cheap-looking suitcase and a long, narrow tube, the kind used for carrying blueprints.

And then it was already time to go to the platform, because they were ringing the first bell.

The third syllable, in which Vasilii Alexandrovich visits the WC

There was a lady passenger sitting in the first-class compartment – presumably the one who had been prevented from travelling in solitude by the rules of the railway.

The staff captain greeted her glumly, evidently still smarting over his fifteen roubles. He hardly even glanced at his travelling companion, although the lady was good-looking – in fact more than merely good-looking, she was quite exceptionally attractive: a delicate watercolour face, huge moist eyes behind a misty veil, an elegant travelling suit in a mother-of-pearl hue.

The lovely stranger took no interest in Rybnikov either. In reply to his ‘hello’ she nodded coldly, cast a single brief glance over her companion’s common features, his baggy uniform tunic and gingerish scuffed boots and turned away towards the window.

The second bell pealed out.

The female passenger’s delicately defined nostrils started fluttering. Her lips whispered:

‘Ah, get a move on, do!’ but the exclamation was clearly not addressed to her companion in the compartment.

Newspaper boys dashed, gabbling, along the corridor – one from the respectable
Evening Russia
, the other from the sleazy
Russian Assembly
. They were both howling at the tops of their voices, trying to out-yell each other.

‘Woeful news of the drama in the Sea of Japan!’ called the first one, straining his lungs to bursting point. ‘Russian fleet burned and sunk!’

The second one yelled: ‘Famous “Moscow Daredevils” gang strikes in Petersburg! High society lady undressed!’

‘First lists of the dead. Numerous names dear to all hearts! The whole country will be weeping!’

‘Countess N. put out of a carriage in the costume of Eve! The bandits knew she had jewels hidden under her dress!’

The staff captain bought
Evening Russia
with its huge black border of mourning and the lady bought
Russian Assembly
, but before they could start reading, the door burst open, and in charged a huge bouquet of roses that wouldn’t fit through the frame, immediately filling the compartment with unctuous fragrance.

Protruding above the rosebuds was a handsome man’s face with a well-groomed imperial and a curled moustache. A diamond pin glinted and sparkled on his necktie.

‘Anddd who is thissss!’ the new arrival exclaimed, eyeing Rybnikov intently, and his black eyebrows slid upwards menacingly, but after only a second the handsome fellow had had his fill of observing the staff captain’s unprepossessing appearance and lost all interest in him, after which he did not deign to notice him again.

‘Lycia!’ he exclaimed, falling to his knees and throwing the bouquet at the lady’s feet. ‘I love only you, with all my heart and soul! Forgive me, I implore you! You know my temperament! I am a man of sudden enthusiasms, I am an artiste.’

It was easy to see that he was an artiste. The owner of the imperial was not at all embarrassed by his audience – in addition to the staff captain glancing out from behind his
Evening Russia
, this interesting scene was also being observed by spectators in the corridor, attracted by the mind-numbing scent of the roses and the sonorous lamentations.

Nor did the lovely lady’s nerve fail her in front of an audience.

‘It’s over, Astralov!’ she declared wrathfully, throwing back her veil to reveal her glittering eyes. ‘And don’t you dare show up in Moscow!’ She waved aside the hands extended in supplication. ‘No, no, I won’t even listen!’

Then the penitent did something rather strange: without rising from his knees, he folded his hands together on his chest and started singing in a deep, truly magical baritone:

‘
Una furtive lacrima negli occhi suoi spunto
…’

The lady turned pale and put her hands over her ears, but the divine voice filled the entire compartment and flowed far beyond – the entire carriage fell silent, listening.

Donizetti’s entrancing melody was cut short by the particularly long and insistent trilling of the third bell.

The conductor glanced in at the door:

‘All those seeing off passengers please alight immediately, we are departing. Sir, it’s time!’ he said, touching the singer’s elbow.

The singer dashed over to Rybnikov:

‘Let me have the ticket! I’ll give you a hundred roubles! This is a drama of a broken heart! Five hundred!’

‘Don’t you dare let him have the ticket!’ the lady shouted.

‘I can’t do it,’ the staff captain replied firmly to the artiste. ‘I would gladly, but it’s urgent government business.’

The conductor dragged Astralov, in floods of tears, out into the corridor.

The train set off. There was a despairing shout from the platform:

‘Lycia! I’ll do away with myself! Forgive me!’

‘Never!’ the flushed lady passenger shouted, and flung the magnificent bouquet out of the window, showering the little table with scarlet petals.

She fell back limply on to the seat, covered her face with her fingers and burst into sobs.

‘You are a noble man,’ she said through her sobbing. ‘You refused his money! I’m so grateful to you! I would have jumped out of the window, I swear I would!’

Rybnikov muttered:

‘Five hundred roubles is huge money. I don’t earn a third of that, not even with mess and travelling allowances. But I’ve got my job to do. The top brass won’t excuse lateness …’

‘Five hundred roubles he offered, the buffoon!’ the lady exclaimed, not listening to him. ‘Preening his feathers for his audience! But he’s really so mean, such an
economiser
!’ She pronounced the final word with boundless contempt and even stopped sobbing, then added: ‘Refuses to live according to his means.’

Intrigued by the logical introduction inherent in this statement, Vasilii Alexandrovich asked:

‘Begging your pardon, but I don’t quite understand. Is he thrifty or does he lives beyond his means?’

‘His means are huge, but he lives too far within them!’ his travelling companion explained, no longer crying, but anxiously examining her slightly reddened nose in a little mirror. She dabbed at it with a powder puff and adjusted a lock of golden hair beside her forehead. ‘Last year he earned almost a hundred thousand, but he barely spent even half of it. He puts it all away “for a rainy day”!’

At this point she finally calmed down completely, turned her gaze on her companion and introduced herself punctiliously.

‘Glyceria Romanovna Lidina.’

The staff captain told her his name too.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ the lady told him with a smile. ‘I must explain, since you have witnessed this monstrous spectacle.
Georges
simply adores histrionic scenes, especially in front of an audience!’

‘Is he really an artiste, then?’

Glyceria Romanovna fluttered her almost inch-long eyelashes incredulously.

‘What? You don’t know Astralov? The tenor Astralov. His name is on all the show bills!’

‘I’m not much for theatres,’ Rybnikov replied with an indifferent shrug. ‘I don’t have any time to go strutting about at operas, you know. And it’s beyond my pocket, anyway. My pay’s miserly, they’re delaying the pension, and life in Petersburg is too pricey by half. The cabbies take seventy kopecks for every piddling little ride …’

Lidina was not listening, she wasn’t even looking at him any more.

‘We’ve been married for two years!’ she said, as if she were not addressing her prosaic companion, but a more worthy audience, which was listening to her with sympathetic attention. ‘Ah, I was so in love! But now I realise it was the voice I loved, not him. What a voice he has! He only has to start singing and I melt, he can wrap me round his little finger. And he knows it, the scoundrel! Did you see the way he started singing just now, the cheap manipulator? Thank goodness the bell interrupted him, my head was already starting to spin!’

‘A handsome gentleman,’ the staff captain acknowledged, trying to suppress a yawn. ‘Probably gets his fair share of crumpet. Is that what the drama’s all about?’

‘They told me about him!’ Glyceria Romanovna exclaimed with her eyes flashing. ‘There are always plenty of “well-wishers” in the world of theatre. But I didn’t believe them. And then I saw it with my own eyes! And where? In my own drawing room! And who with? That old floozy Koturnova! I’ll never set foot in that desecrated apartment again! Or in Petersburg either!’

‘So you’re moving to Moscow, then?’ the staff captain summed up. It was clear from his tone of voice that he was impatient to put an end to this trivial conversation and settle into his newspaper.

‘Yes, we have another apartment in Moscow, on Ostozhenka Street.
Georges
sometimes takes an engagement for the winter at the Bolshoi.’

At this, Rybnikov finally concealed himself behind
Evening Russia
and the lady was obliged to fall silent. She nervously picked up the
Russian Assembly
, ran her eyes over the article on the front page and tossed it aside, muttering: