The driver looked round and must have determined in an instant that the individual before him was a person of no great significance (as everyone knows, cabbies are true psychologists in such matters), and being twice as broad across as his assailant, he snatched the stick out of the other man’s hand and snapped it in two, then grabbed him by the lapel and drew back a massive fist.
Half a century without the slavery of serfdom has blurred the boundaries between the social orders somewhat after all, Erast Petrovich thought distractedly. In 1911 a member of the lowest class no longer allows a gentleman in a hat to inflict punishment on him with impunity.
The gentleman in the hat started jerking about, trying to break free. When he turned his profile towards Fandorin, he turned out to be an acquaintance – Anton Ivanovich Mephistov, the actor who played the roles of villains and mischief-makers. Erast Petrovich decided it was his duty to intervene.
‘Hey, badge 38-12!’ he shouted, running across the street. ‘Keep your hands to yourself! It’s your own fault!’
The ‘psychologist’ required only one glance to see that this was a man who should not be wrangled with. The cabby released Mephistov and expressed the praiseworthy intention of fighting for his rights in a civilised manner.
‘I’ll take him to the magistrates’ court. Oho, fighting with a stick! That’s not in any rules!’
‘Q-quite right,’ Erast Petrovich said approvingly. ‘They’ll fine him for fighting and fine you for his ruined clothes and broken cane. You’ll be even.’
The cabby glanced at Anton Ivanovich’s trousers, figured something out, croaked and lashed at his horse.
‘Hello, Mr Mephistov,’ said Fandorin, greeting the pale-faced ‘villain’.
Mephistov brandished his fist at the receding carriage and exclaimed:
‘The brute! The proletarian! If not for you, I’d have smashed his face to pulp… But anyway, thank you for intervening. Hello.’
He wiped off his clothes with a handkerchief, his bony features shuddering in fury.
‘Mark my words, if Russia is destroyed by anything, it will be exclusively by loutishness! A lout sits on another lout and drives a lout along! Nothing but louts from top to bottom.’
However, he calmed down quite quickly – he was, after all, an actor, a creature with feelings that are tempestuous, but shallow.
‘I haven’t seen you for a long time, Fandorin.’ He looked Erast Petrovich up and down more closely and his sunken eyes glinted with curiosity. ‘My, but you certainly look the worse for wear. You’ve started looking like a human being. You used to be like a picture from a ladies’ magazine. Are you unwell, then? Your Japanese didn’t mention anything.’
‘I was a little unwell. I have almost recovered now.’
Fandorin found this encounter distasteful. He touched his fingers to his top hat, intending to take his leave, but the actor grabbed hold of his sleeve.
‘Have you heard our news? A scandal! Pornography!’ His lizard-like face glowed with happiness. ‘Our great touch-me-not beauty, our Egyptian princess, has utterly disgraced herself. I mean Eliza Altairsky, if you haven’t realised yet.’
But Fandorin had understood him perfectly well. He had also realised that this chance encounter had not come about entirely by accident. He was about to learn something important, and it might possibly accelerate his recovery. However, crude talk about her could not be permitted.
‘Why do you speak so spitefully about Madam Altairsky-Lointaine?’ he asked in a hostile tone.
‘Because I cannot bear beauties and all sorts of prettiness,’ Mephistov explained with great eagerness. ‘A certain ugly writer once spoke some stupid words that are repeated endlessly by all sorts of blockheads: “Beauty will save the world”. Gibberish, sir! It will not save it, but destroy it! This truth is expounded remarkably well in your little play. Genuine beauty does not assault the eye, it is concealed and accessible only to the chosen few. It is invisible to the blockhead and the lout! The first reaction to a powerful, innovative work of art is the fear and revulsion of the crowd. If I had my way, I would mark every pretty-pretty face with a fiery brand, to prevent it glowing with its chocolate-box prettiness! I would replace all the sumptuous palaces with structures of steel and concrete! I would shake all the mouldy old rubbish out of the museums and…’
‘I have no doubt that is precisely what you would do, if you had your way,’ Fandorin interrupted him. ‘But what, after all, has happened to Madam Altairsky-Lointaine?’
Anton Ivanovich started shaking with silent laughter.
‘She was caught with an admirer in a most titillating pose! In her hotel room! With Limbach, the cornet of hussars, the young Adonis. She wearing almost nothing, and her lover was down on his knees, with his head stuck right up under her nightshirt and kissing away for all he was worth. I told you – a pornographic postcard!’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Erast Petrovich said in a strangled voice.
‘I wouldn’t have believed it either. But the hussar didn’t sneak in to see her quietly, on the sly – he demolished half the hotel in his amorous fury. And the indecent scene was witnessed by people who wouldn’t make it up: Stern, Vaska Gullibin and Nonarikin.’
Fandorin’s face must have contorted in pain. In any case Mephistov said:
‘It seems strange now that I used to think of you as a saccharine-sweet pretty face. You have a rather interesting appearance, the face of a Roman patrician from the period of the empire’s decline. Only the moustache is superfluous. If I were you, I’d shave it off.’ Anton Ivanovich indicated his own upper lip as an example. ‘I just decided to stroll to the hotel after the rehearsal, to clear the fumes. Won’t you keep me company? We could drop into the buffet for a drink.’
‘Thank you. I’m busy,’ Erast Petrovich replied through his teeth.
‘And when will you come to see us in the theatre? We’ve made great progress, it would be interesting for you. Really, do come to a rehearsal.’
‘Most definitely.’
The damned ‘troublemaker’ finally left him in peace. Fandorin looked at the pieces of Mephistov’s cane lying on the pavement, then snapped his own entirely innocent stick of the strongest ironwood in half and snapped the pieces in half again.
He also recalled the idiotic compliment about his appearance. It was Dostoyevsky’s Fyodor Karamazov who had ‘the face of a Roman patrician from the period of the empire’s decline’! And as it happens, the repulsive old erotomaniac was about the same age as me, he thought. And in that very instant his blighted will shuddered and came to life, flooding his entire being with the strength he had been waiting for.
‘With red-hot iron,’ Fandorin declared out loud, and stuck the fragments of the broken stick in his pocket, in order to avoid littering the pavement.
And then he added:
‘Enough of this p-puerility.’
It was fate: a depraved actress, a sprightly cornet and a vicious-tongued ‘villain’ who turned up along his way at just the right moment had mercifully combined forces to return the sick man’s reason and calmness of mind.
It was over.
The world felt free, cool and spacious.
At breakfast the next day Fandorin read the newspapers that had accumulated and for the first time he listened to Masa’s chatter without feeling irritated. The Japanese clearly wanted to tell him about the disgusting incident with the cornet: he began delicately with comments regarding the special moral character of courtesans, geishas and actresses, but Erast Petrovich redirected the conversation to the astounding events in China, where a revolution was beginning and the throne of the Manchurian Qing dynasty had been shaken.