He had definitely darted out into the corridor with his blade bared. A bevy of agitated actors had already congregated there: Anton Ivanovich Mephistov, Kostya Shiftsky, Sima Aphrodisina and Nonarikin. At the sight of an armed villain, everyone except the bold Georges hid in their rooms.
By that time these incredible reversals of fortune had rendered Volodya half berserk.
He dashed at the deputy director, brandishing his sabre.
‘Where is she? Where is Eliza? Where have you hidden her?’
Georges – a bold heart, but not the brightest of intellects – backed away towards the door of room number three, blocking it off.
‘Only over my dead body!’
But it was all one to Limbach at this stage – so be it, over a dead body. He knocked Nonarikin to the floor with a blow of his sword hilt to the forehead and found himself facing the room that had previously been occupied by Zoya.
Subsequent events required no reconstruction, because Eliza had observed them herself and been directly involved.
Exhausted by her chronic lack of sleep, the previous evening she had drunk a tincture of laudanum and slept through the entire ruckus. She was only woken by the loud toing and froing right outside her room. Eliza lit a candle, opened the door – and found herself face to face with Limbach, anguished and crimson-faced from all his running about.
He flung himself at her with tears in his eyes.
‘I’ve found you! My God, all the torments I’ve suffered!’
Still drowsy and not thinking clearly, she moved out of the way and the cornet evidently took this as an invitation.
‘This whole place is full of erotomaniacs!’ he complained (these words explain Eliza’s subsequent assumptions concerning Reginina and Vulpinova). ‘But I love you! Only you!’
The explanation in the doorway of her room was interrupted when Vasya Gullibin came running out from round the corner. He was a heavy sleeper and the last inhabitant of ‘Madrid’ to wake up.
‘Limbach, what are you doing here?’ he shouted. ‘Leave Eliza alone! Why is Georges on the floor? Did you strike him? I’m going to call Noah Noaevich!’
Then the cornet nimbly darted inside, locking the door behind him. Eliza and he were left alone together. One couldn’t exactly say that she was frightened by this. In her time she had seen all sorts of hotheads. Some of them, especially officers and students, had committed worse antics than this. And in any case, Volodya behaved rather meekly. He went down on his knees, dropped his sword on the floor, grasped the hem of her negligee and pressed it reverently to his breast.
‘Let me be killed for your sake… Let them even throw me out of the regiment… My aged parents will never survive it, but even so, there is no life for me without you,’ he declaimed rather inarticulately but with true feeling. ‘If you spurn me, I shall slit my stomach open, as the Japanese did during the war!’
At the same time his fingers seemingly inadvertently crumpled up the fine silk fabric, so that it gathered into folds, rising higher and higher. The hussar broke off his tearful lament in order to lean down and kiss Eliza on her bare knee – and there he stayed, his kisses creeping higher and higher.
A chilly shudder suddenly ran through her. Not from the shamelessness of his touches, but from a terrible thought that had occurred to her.
What if fate has sent him to me? He is desperate, he is in love. If I tell him about my nightmare, he will simply challenge Genghis Khan to a duel and kill him. And I shall be free!
But immediately she felt ashamed. To risk the boy’s life for egotistical considerations of her own was a shameful idea.
‘Stop,’ she said in a weak voice, putting her hands on his shoulders (Limbach’s head was already completely hidden under the negligee). ‘Get up. I need to talk to you…’
She herself did not know how it would all have ended: whether she would have had the courage or, on the contrary, the cowardice to embroil the boy in a deadly intrigue.
Things never reached the stage of an explanation.
The door was torn off its hinges by a mighty blow. The hotel doorman, Gullibin and Nonarikin – with a crimson lump on his forehead and his eyes blazing – jostled in the doorway. They were moved aside by Noah Noaevich, who ran an outraged gaze over the indecent scene. Eliza smacked Limbach in the teeth with her knee.
‘Get out from under there!’
The cornet got up, tucked his cold weapon under his arm, ducked under the outstretched arms of the doorman and darted out into the corridor, howling: ‘I love you! I love you!’
‘Leave us,’ Stern ordered.
His eyes hurled lightning bolts.
‘Eliza, I was mistaken in you. I regarded you as a woman of the highest order, but you take the liberty…’ And so on and so forth.
She didn’t listen, but just looked down at the toes of her slippers.
Terrible? Yes. Shameful? Yes. But it is more forgivable to risk the life of a stupid little officer than the life of a great dramatist. Even if the duel were to end with Limbach being killed, Genghis Khan would still disappear from my life. He would go to prison, or flee to his khanate, or to Europe – it doesn’t matter where. I would be free. We would be free! This happiness can be paid for with a crime… Or can it?
Five 1s
UNTIL THE BENEFIT PERFORMANCE
FISHING WITH LIVE BAIT
Some wise man, Erast Petrovich thought it was La Rochefoucauld, had said that very few people know how to be old. Fandorin had assumed that he belonged to that happy minority – and he had turned out to be mistaken.
Where has the rational, dignified equilibrium disappeared to? Where are you, calm and liberty, detachment and harmony?
Fandorin’s own heart had played him a trick that he had never expected. Life had been turned upside down, and all the immutable values had been reduced to dust. He felt twice as young as before and three times as stupid. The latter assertion was perhaps not entirely true. His intellect seemed to have deviated from its established course and lost its singleness of purpose, but it had retained its perpetual acuity, relentlessly noting all the stages and twists and turns of his illness.
At the same time, Fandorin was not certain that what was happening to him should be considered an illness. Perhaps, on the contrary, he had recovered his health.
It was a philosophical question, and he was helped in finding the answer to it by the very best of philosophers – Kant. The philosopher had been sickly from the day he was born, he was constantly unwell and this distressed him very badly, until one fine day the sage was struck by the excellent idea of regarding his sickly condition as good health. Being unwell was normal, there was nothing here to be sad about, das ist Leben. And if it suddenly happened that nothing was hurting in the morning – that was a gift of fate. And life was immediately filled with the light of joy.