‘My perpetual nightmare. They say that the great Sarah Bernhardt is never natural. That is the principle of her existence. At home she walks about in a Pierrot costume. She lies down to sleep in a coffin, not a bed, in order to imbue herself with the tragic spirit of existence. She is entirely feigned passion, entirely affectation. That is the terrible danger lying in wait for every actress – to lose oneself, to turn into a shadow, into a mask!’
And she burst into tears, putting her hands over her face. She wept bitterly and in earnest – until her nose turned red and her eyes puffed up – but she still kept glancing through her fingers to see how he was looking at her.
Oh, and how he was looking! She wouldn’t barter a look like that for an ovation from a full house!
Of course, the relationship could not remain at this stage for long. Friendship with a handsome man is something out of a romantic ballad. Such things don’t happen in real life.
On the third day, following the regular rehearsal, Eliza went to his house, to a small annexe hidden away in an old, quiet side street. The pretext for the visit was a respectable one: Erast had suggested that she choose a kimono for her role, as well as some fans and some other Japanese trinkets, of which he had a huge number at home. She didn’t have anything of that sort in mind at all, word of honour. She was simply curious to take a look at how this mysterious man lived. A house can tell a great deal about its inhabitant.
And the house did, indeed, tell her a great deal about Erast Petrovich – almost too much, in fact, she couldn’t make sense of all of it at once. There was ideal order everywhere here. You could even say there was lifeless order, as is often the way with inveterate, pedantic bachelors. There were no traces at all of permanent female inhabitation, but here and there Eliza’s keen glance spotted little bits and pieces that looked like keepsakes from previous passions: a miniature of a young blonde in the depths of a bookcase; an elegant comb of the kind that was fashionable about twenty years ago; a little white glove, seemingly forgotten under a mirror. Well, so he had not lived like a monk all his life, that was only natural.
There were no awkward silences. Firstly, in the company of this man, it was not uncomfortable in the least to say nothing. Erast Petrovich had a quite fantastic mastery of the difficult art of the pause; he simply looked at her and she no longer felt bored. And secondly, there were so many interesting things in the house, she wanted to ask him about everything, and he gladly started telling her, after which the conversation moved on of its own accord, in any direction.
Eliza felt absolutely safe – even with just the two of them alone in an empty house, a gentleman like Erast Petrovich would not stoop to doing anything improper. There was only one thing she had failed to take into account: intelligent conversations with an intelligent man always had an arousing effect on her.
How did it all happen?
It began with an absolutely innocent thing. She started examining some prints and asked about an outlandish creature: a fox in a kimono, with a tall hairstyle.
‘That’s a kitsuné, a Japanese werewolf,’ Fandorin explained. ‘A supremely guileful creature.’ She said that the kitsuné looked terribly like Xanthippe Vulpinova, and indulged herself by passing several pejorative comments about that rather unpleasant individual.
‘You speak of M-Madam Vulpinova with bitterness,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Is she your enemy?’
‘But surely you can see? That malicious, petty creature simply hates me!’
And then he delivered one of those little speeches, of which she had heard so many in the last three days and to which, although she thought of them ironically to herself as ‘sermons’, she had already become accustomed. She had even come to like them. They were, perhaps, even the most charming thing about talking to the ‘traveller’.
‘Never make that mistake,’ Fandorin said with a very serious air. ‘Don’t denigrate your enemies, don’t call them offensive names, don’t describe them as paltry and contemptible. By doing that, you demean yourself. Who are you in that case, if you have such a despicable enemy? If you respect yourself, you will not be the enemy of those who are not worthy of respect. If a stray dog barks at you, you won’t go down on all fours and b-bark back at it. Furthermore, if an enemy knows that you regard him with respect, he will respond in kind. This does not s-signify reconciliation, but it helps in avoiding mean tricks in the course of the struggle, and it also makes it possible to conclude the war with a peace, instead of killing.’
He was remarkably handsome when he talked this charming nonsense.
‘You are a man of genuine culture,’ Eliza said with a smile. ‘At first I took you for an aristocrat, but you are a classic member of the intelligentsia.’
Fandorin immediately launched into a diatribe against the intelligentsia – he was unusually talkative today. It was probably her nearness that affected him in that way. Although there was another possible explanation (it occurred to Eliza later). As an intelligent man and connoisseur of psychology, Erast Petrovich might have noticed how powerfully his ‘sermons’ affected his listener and deployed this weapon to the full. Ah, she still hadn’t learned to understand him!
The oration in the course of which Eliza finally melted completely was this:
‘I do not regard that as a compliment!’ Fandorin exclaimed heatedly. ‘The “classic member of the intelligentsia” is a b-being who is harmful, even ruinous, for Russia! The estate of the intelligentsia might seem likeable enough, but it possesses a fatal flaw, which was noted so accurately and mocked by Chekhov. A member of that estate is capable of bearing hardships with dignity, he is capable of maintaining his nobility in defeat. But he is absolutely incapable of winning in a battle with a boor or a blackguard, who are so numerous and so powerful here. Until such time as the estate of the intelligentsia learns to f-fight for its ideals, there will never be anything decent and worthwhile in Russia! But when I say “fight”, I do not mean a fight according to the rules of the boor and the blackguard. Or else you will become exactly the same as they are. It has to be a fight according to your own rules, the rules of an honourable individual! It is customary to think that Evil is stronger than Good, because it places no limitations on its means – it ambushes slyly, strikes furtively and below the belt, it attacks with odds of ten against one. So it would seem that if you fight Evil according to the rules, it is impossible to win. But assertions like that result from stupidity and, b-begging your pardon, impotence. The intelligentsia is a thinking estate, and that is where its power lies. If it loses, that is because it has made poor use of its main weapon, the intellect. One need only apply the intellect for it to become clear that the noble man has an arsenal more powerful and armour far more impregnable than those of even the most adroit conspirators from the Okhrana or revolutionary leaders who send altruistic young boys to their deaths. You will ask what they consist of, this arsenal and the armour of the noble m-man, who does not stoop to base means of struggle…’
Eliza had no intention of asking about anything of the sort. Erast Petrovich’s excitement as he spoke and his tone of voice affected her more powerfully than any aphrodisiac. She finally gave up trying to resist the weakness flooding through her body, closed her eyes and laid her hand on his knee with a gentle sigh. Eliza never did find out what the arsenal and armour of the honourable individual consisted of. Fandorin stopped speaking in mid-phrase and, naturally, drew her towards himself.
After that, in the way that things happened with her in such cases, she remembered snatches and separate images – mostly touches and smells, rather than visual impressions. The world of love was magical. In that world she became a completely different being, she did unimaginable things and was not even slightly embarrassed. Time altered its pace. Reason blanked out benignly, ineffably beautiful music played and she felt like a classical goddess, soaring on a cloud.