She Lover of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin Read Free

question called itself ‘The Club of the Aware’ and its membership numbered at least fifty. They gathered in the evenings to draw lots, each of them selecting a card from the pack until someone drew the death’s head. The person who received the fateful card had to die within twenty-four hours. One young Hungarian told his comrades that he was leaving the club, because he had fallen in love and wanted to get married. They agreed to let him out on condition that he take part in the drawing of lots for one last time. In the first round the young man drew the ace of hearts – the symbol of love – and in the second round the death’s head. As a man of his word, he shot himself. The inconsolable fiancée denounced ‘The Aware’ to the police, and as a result the whole business became public knowledge.
    To judge from what has been happening in Moscow in recent weeks, our death-worshippers have no fear of public opinion and are not too concerned about publicity – at least, they do not take any measures to conceal the fruits of their activities.
    I promise the Courier’s readers that the investigation will be continued. If a secret league of madmen who toy with death really has appeared in Russia’s old capital, society must know of it.
    Lavr Zhemailo
Moscow Courier , 22 August
(4 September) 1900, p.1,
continued on p.4
     

II. From Columbine’s Diary
     
    She arrived in the City of Dreams on a quiet lilac evening
     
    Everything had been thought through in advance, down to the smallest detail.
    After alighting from the Irkutsk train at the platform of Moscow’s Ryazan station, Masha stood there for half a minute with her eyes squeezed shut, breathing in the smell of the city – the mingled scent of flowers, fuel oil and bagels. Then she opened her eyes and in a voice loud enough for the whole platform to hear, proclaimed the quatrain that she had composed two days earlier, on crossing the border between Asia and Europe.
Like a shipwrecked vessel foundering
While the billows rage and roar
No words or tears, regretting nothing,
To fall, to soar aloft and fall once more!
     
    People glanced round over their shoulders at the young lady with the clear voice and thick plait – some in curiosity, some in disapproval, and one tradeswoman even twirled a finger beside her temple. Generally speaking, the first public act of Masha’s life could be considered a success – and just you wait!
    It was a symbolic step, marking the beginning of a new era, adventurous and uninhibited.
    She had left quietly, without any public display. Left a long, long letter for papa and mama on the table in the drawing room. Tried to explain about the new age, and how unbearable the tedium of Irkutsk was, and about poetry. She had dropped tears all over every page, but how could they really understand? If it had happened a month earlier, before her birthday, they would have gone running to the police – to bring back their runaway daughter by force. But now, I beg your pardon, Marya Mironova has reached the age of majority and may arrange her life as she herself thinks fit. And she was also free to use the inheritance from her aunt as she thought best. The capital sum was not very large, but it would suffice for half a year, even with Moscow’s famously high prices, and trying to see further than that was common and prosaic.
    She told the cabby to drive to the Hotel Elysium. She had heard about it even in Irkutsk, and been captivated by the name that flowed like silvery mercury.
    As she rode along in the carriage, she constantly looked round at the large stone buildings and signboards and felt desperately afraid. A huge city, with an entire million people, and not one of them, not one, had anything to do with Marya Mironova.
    Just you wait, she threatened the city, you’re going to hear about me. I’ll make you gasp in delight and indignation, but I don’t need your love. And even if you crush me in your stone jaws, it doesn’t matter.