True love and true friendship are incompatible, Erast Petrovich ruminated bitterly. It’s either one or the other. This is a rule which admits no exceptions…
THE COURSE OF THE ILLNESS
What had happened to Fandorin is what happens to every strong-willed, cerebral man who is accustomed to keeping his feelings on a tight rein when his prancer suddenly zooms off, flinging its abhorrent rider out of the saddle. This had already happened to Erast Petrovich twice before, on both occasions because of love that had been broken off tragically. Of course, this time the finale appeared farcical, rather than tragic, but that only made the helpless condition that had overwhelmed the former rationalist all the more humiliating.
His will had evaporated, not a trace remained of his mental harmony, his reason had declared a strike. Fandorin sank into a shameful apathy that dragged on for many days.
He didn’t leave the house, but just sat there for hours, staring at an open book without even seeing the letters. And when a period of agitation set in, he started exercising furiously, to the point of physical exhaustion. Only when he had drained his strength completely could he get to sleep. Then he woke up at some unpredictable time of day – and everything started all over again.
I am unwell, he told himself. Some day this will end. The other times were far, far worse, and it passed off after all. Ah, but then, he protested, he had been young. A long life made the heart grow weary and weakened its capacity for recovery.
Perhaps the illness would have passed off more quickly if not for Masa.
Every day he returned from the rehearsal at the theatre exhilarated and greatly pleased with himself, and started reporting on his success: what he had said to Eliza and what she had said to him. Instead of telling him to shut up, Erast Petrovich couldn’t help listening, and that was bad for him.
The Japanese was not surprised by his master’s pitiful condition. In Japanese it was called koi-wazurai, ‘love disease’, and was considered perfectly respectable for a samurai. Masa advised him not to fight against the melancholy, to write poetry and ‘water his sleeves with tears’ as often as he could, in the way that the great hero Yoshitsune did when parted from the beautiful Shizuka.
On that fateful night when Eliza had made Fandorin the happiest and then the unhappiest man in the world (in his sick condition Erast Petrovich thought in precisely such ludicrously stilted expressions), Masa had seen everything. The Japanese had slipped out discreetly through the rear entrance and loitered in the courtyard for several hours. When the heavy rain set in, Masa had hidden under the archway of the gates. He had only come back into the house when Fandorin was left alone. And he had immediately begun pressing him with questions.
‘What did you do to her, master? Thank you for not closing the curtains, it was interesting. But at the end it turned really dark and I could not see anything any more. She ran off wildly and aimlessly, sobbing loudly and even slightly unsteady on her feet. You must have permitted yourself something quite exceptional. Tell me, in the name of our friendship – I am dying of curiosity!’
‘I don’t know what I did,’ Fandorin replied in bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand what happened.’
His expression was wretched, and his servant stopped pestering him. He patted the tormented man on the head and made him a promise,
‘Never mind. I will set everything right. She is a special woman. She is like an American mustang. Do you remember the American mustangs, master? They have to be tamed gradually. Trust me, all right?’
Fandorin nodded listlessly – and condemned himself to the torment of listening to Masa’s stories every day.
If the Japanese could be believed, he went to the theatre exclusively in order to ‘tame’ Eliza. Supposedly he did nothing else there but describe his master’s virtues to Eliza as advantageously as possible. And supposedly she was gradually mellowing. She had begun asking after Fandorin without displaying any resentment or animosity. Her heart was thawing day by day.
Fandorin listened morosely, without believing a single word. He found the sight of Masa abhorrent. Envy and jealousy choked him. The Japanese spoke to her and as part of his role he hugged her tight, kissed her and touched her body (damn it!). Was it possible to imagine a man who would not submit to the necromantic charms of this woman in those circumstances?
September came to an end and October began. There was no difference between one day and another. Fandorin waited for the next report about Eliza in the way that a totally degraded opium addict waits for the next dose of his drug. And when he got it, he didn’t feel any relief, he merely despised himself and hated the supplier of this poison.
The first sign of a recovery appeared when it occurred to Erast Petrovich to take a look at himself in the mirror. In normal life he paid a considerable amount of attention to his appearance, but now it was more than two weeks since he had combed his hair.
He looked – and was horrified (also an encouraging symptom). His limply dangling hair was almost completely white, while his beard, on the contrary, was completely black, without even a single thread of grey. Not a face, but a drawing by Aubrey Beardsley. A noble man does not descend to the crudeness of the brute even in the most onerous of circumstances, said the sage. And there is nothing onerous about your circumstances, Fandorin told his reflection reproachfully. Merely a temporary paralysis of the will. And he immediately realised the first step that must be taken in order to restore his self-control.
Leave the house, in order not to see Masa and not listen to what he said about Eliza.
Erast Petrovich tidied himself up, dressed with the most meticulous possible care and went out for a stroll.
It turned out that while he was lurking in his lair, sucking on his paw, autumn had made itself undisputed master of the city. It had recoloured the trees on the boulevard, washed down the road with rain, lightened the sky to a piercing azure and set ornamental flocks of birds flying southwards across it. For the first time in all these days Fandorin attempted to analyse what had happened.
There are two causes, he told himself, scattering the dry leaves about with his cane. Age – that is one. I decided to inter my feelings too soon. Like Gogol’s Pannochka, they have jumped out of the coffin and frightened me half to death. The strange coincidence – that is two. Erast and Liza, the anniversary year, St Elizaveta’s day, the white arm in the beam of light from the projector. And three is the theatre. Like the exhalations of a swamp, this world clouds the mind and distorts the outlines of all objects. I have been poisoned by this pungent air, it is contraindicated for me.
It was comforting to think and set out a line of logic. Erast Petrovich was feeling better with every minute that passed. And not far from Strastnoy Monastery (he had not even noticed that his stride had carried him all the way round the Boulevard Ring to this spot), a chance encounter occurred that finally set the sick man on the road to recovery.
He was distracted from his thoughts by a crude howl.
‘You boor! You swine! Watch where you’re going!’
The usual story; a cab driver had driven through a puddle close to the pavement and splashed a passer-by from head to foot. The splattered gentleman (Fandorin could only see a narrow back in a pepper-and-salt jacket and a grey bowler hat) broke into a torrent of abuse, jumped up on the running board and started lashing the gargantuan man around the shoulders with his stick.