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

empty-headed and capricious lord has bartered her for a cold, snake-eyed rival. Let the new queen hold sway in her marble halls with mirrors that reflect the waters of the Baltic. The old queen wept clear, transparent tears, and when her tears dried up, she was reconciled to her simple life. She passes her days in spinning yarn and her nights in prayer. My place is with her, abandoned and unloved, and not with the one who turns her pampered face to the wan sun of the north.
I am Columbine, frivolous and unpredictable, subject only to the caprices of my own whimsical fantasy and the fey wafting of the wind. Pity the poor Pierrot who will have the misfortune to fall in love with my candy-box looks, for my destiny is to become a plaything in the hands of the scheming deceiver Harlequin and be left lying on the floor like a broken doll with a carefree smile on my little porcelain face . . .
    She read it through again and was satisfied, but did not carry on writing for the time being, because she started thinking about Harlequin – Petya Lileiko (Li-lei-ko – what a light, jolly name, like the sound of a sleigh bell or drops of meltwater in spring!). And he really had appeared in the spring, come crashing into the dreary life of Irkutsk like a red fox into a sleepy henhouse. He had cast a spell on her with the halo of fiery-red curls scattering across his shoulders, his loose-fitting blouse and intoxicating poems. Before then, Masha had only sighed over the fact that life was an empty, stupid joke, but he had commented casually – as if it were perfectly obvious – that the only true beauty is in fading, wilting and dying. And the provincial dreamer had realised how true that was! Where else could Beauty be? Not in life! What was there in life that could be beautiful? Marry a tax assessor, have a crowd of children and sit by the samovar in your mob-cap for sixty years?
    Beside the arbour on the high riverbank, the Moscow Harlequin had kissed the swooning young lady and whispered, ‘Out of pale and accidental life I have made a single endless thrill.’ And then poor Masha really was completely lost, because she realised that was the whole point. To become a weightless butterfly fluttering your rainbow wings and giving no thought to autumn.
    After the kiss beside the arbour (there had been nothing else) she had stood in front of the mirror for a long time, looking at her reflection and hating it: a ruddy, round face with a stupid thick plait. And those terrible pink ears that flamed up like poppies when she was even slightly flustered!
    And then, when Petya’s visit to his great-aunt, the deputy-governor’s widow, was over, he had ridden away again on the Transcontinental and Masha had started counting the days until she came of age – it turned out to be exactly one hundred, just like Napoleon after the Elbe. She remembered she had felt terribly sorry for the emperor in history lessons – it was hard, to return to fame and glory for only a hundred days, but now she realised just how long a hundred days really was.
    However, everything comes to an end sooner or later. When her parents handed their daughter her birthday present – a set of silver teaspoons for her future family home – they did not even suspect that the hour of their Waterloo was upon them. Masha had already cut out the patterns for unbelievably bold outfits of her own design. Another month of secret nights spent hunched over the sewing-machine (the time passed quickly then) and the Siberian captive was absolutely ready for her transformation into Columbine.
    Through all that long week on the railway she imagined how astounded Petya would be when he opened the door and saw her there on the threshold – not the timid goose from Irkutsk in a boring little dress of white muslin, but the bold Columbine in a scarlet cape that fluttered in the breeze and a pearl-embroidered cap with an ostrich feather. Then she would give him a devil-may-care smile and say,