The newspaper rustled as it slid down off Fandorin’s knees.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ said the vilest, loveliest woman in the world. Spotting Erast Petrovich, she glanced at him with obvious embarrassment, even timidity. She hadn’t been expecting to meet him.
But Masa looked at his master with a most independent air and thrust his chin out proudly. The Japanese also had newspapers under his arm. He had only recently developed a passion for reading the press – since the journalists had started writing about the director Stern’s ‘oriental discovery’. Now Masa bought all the Moscow publications early in the morning.
‘Nothing today. They only write that the day after tomorrow is the second pu-er-o-form-ance,’ he enunciated painstakingly, placing the newspapers on the director’s little desk. ‘And that the pubric is waiting impatientry for the next triumph of Madam Rointaine and the inimitabur Swardirin. Look, here.’ He pointed out a tiny article circled in thick red pencil.
Some of the actors came over to see whether there was anything written about them as well. To judge from the expressions on their faces, no one was mentioned apart from the two leading artistes.
Fandorin gritted his teeth, feeling completely crushed by this new, double, betrayal. He no longer remembered that he had intended to patch things up with his friend. The only thing he wanted to do was to leave. But he could only do that without attracting attention to himself after the rehearsal began, and for some reason it simply didn’t begin.
Nonarikin walked out onstage.
‘Noah Noaevich telephoned. He apologised and said he was with Mr Shustrov and has been delayed.’
The actors, who had been about to take seats in the front row, got up again and scattered throughout the hall.
The ‘villainess’ Vulpinova walked over to the desk, beside which the two leading artistes were seated like a pair of turtle doves. She picked up The Capital Rumour and spoke to Masa in a sweet voice.
‘Dear Swardilin, please read us something interesting.’
‘Yes, yes, I love to listen to you too!’ Mephistov put in, smiling with his entire immense mouth.
The Japanese did not have to be asked twice.
‘What sharr I read?’
‘Anything you like, it doesn’t matter,’ said Vulpinova, winking at Mephistov. ‘You have such a resonant voice! Such enchanting delivery!’
At any other time Fandorin would not have permitted these spiteful characters to mock his comrade, but just at this moment, he experienced a repulsive gloating. Let this puffed-up turkey, this brand-new ‘star’, make a laughing stock of himself in front of Eliza and all the others! This wasn’t as easy as tumbling around the stage without a single line to speak!
Masa was very fond of the sound of his own voice, so he did not find the request surprising. He gladly opened the double page of newsprint, cleared his throat and with the intonation of a genuine orator started reading out everything, with no exceptions. There were advertisements in handsome frames at the top of the page – he didn’t even omit those.
He began with an advertisement for ‘Sobriety’ pastilles, which promised a cure for drinking bouts, and read the text expressively all the way to the end.
‘…A huge number of habituar drunkards have sent touching expressions of gratitude, enthusiasticarry praising the miracurous effects of the pastirres.’
‘We’ve tried these “Sobriety” pastilles,’ Sensiblin boomed in his deep voice. ‘They’re no good. Just give you heartburn.’
Masa read out with equal feeling an invitation by ‘the firus-crass artist V. N. Reonardov’ to enrol as one of his pupils in a course of painting and drawing.
‘What is “firus-crass”?’ he asked.
‘“Crass” means “very good”, “very beautiful”,’ Mephistov explained without batting an eyelid. ‘For instance, you could be called a “really crass actor”.’
Erast Petrovich frowned, seeing the grins on some of the actors’ faces as they listened to Masa. The jealous man was unable to take any pleasure in them.
However, not everyone was mocking the Japanese as he distorted his words. Aphrodisina, for example, was smiling wistfully. In the eyes of a woman of her character, infidelity probably only increased the value of a lover. The grande dame Reginina was also listening with a touching smile.
‘Ah, read something about animals,’ she requested. ‘I’m very fond of the “Zoological Gardens News” section on the last page.’
Masa turned over the sheet of newsprint.
‘“Pyton Attacks Doctor Sidorov”.’
And he did not simply read but in effect he reproduced the entire appalling scene of the python’s attack on the head of the terrarium. The doctor had been bitten on the arm and the reptile had only unclenched its teeth when it was doused with water.
‘How terrible!’ Vasilisa Prokofievna exclaimed, clutching at her ample bosom. ‘I immediately recalled the nightmarish snake in the basket! I can’t imagine how you survived that, dear Eliza. Really, I would have died on the spot!’
Madam Lointaine turned pale and squeezed her eyes shut. Masa (the scoundrel, the scoundrel!) got up, stroked her shoulder soothingly and carried on reading – about a newborn lion cub that had been rejected by its mother. The little mite had been saved by a stray mongrel bitch who agreed to feed it with her milk.
Reginina liked this article far more.
‘I can just imagine it, how charming – the tiny little lion cub! And that wonderful, magnanimous mongrel! Really, I could just go and take a look at that!’
Encouraged by his success, Masa said:
‘Farther on here there’s a very interesting rittur articur. “Bears’ Rives in Danger”.’ And he read out an article about the mysterious illness of two brown bears and how the mystery had been solved by the veterinarian Mr Tobolkin. It had been suspected that the animals were suffering from plague but, as Masa joyfully informed his listeners: ‘“In the doctor’s opinion, the irrness was the resurt of the intensive masturbation in which the bears indurged from morning untir evening. This fate is rare among bears, but it often affects monkeys and camers.” That’s absorutery true! In the jungur I myserf have often seen rittur monkeys…’
Masa stopped short, with an expression of incomprehension on his round face: why had Vasilisa Prokofievna turned away indignantly and the two ‘villains’ burst into hysterical laughter?
Fandorin suddenly felt sorry for the poor fellow. The difference in codes of education, in conceptions absorbed in childhood concerning what was decent and what was not, were an almost insuperable barrier. The callow youth from Yokohama had lived far away from Japan for almost thirty years, but he still could not completely accustom himself to the mores of the ‘redheads’: either he blurted out something that was scandalous from the viewpoint of a ‘grande dame’, or blushed bright red in shame at something which to the Western eye was entirely innocent – for instance, a seated woman has dropped her umbrella and pulled it closer with the toe of her little shoe (monstrous vulgarity!).
From sympathy it was only a single step to understanding. Erast Petrovich looked at Masa’s red face – and suddenly seemed to see the light. The Japanese had quite deliberately made up to Eliza, and the fact that he had arrived with her following his overnight absence was no coincidence either! This was not the action of a traitor; on the contrary, it was the action of a true and faithful friend. Knowing his master as well as he did and seeing the pitiful state that he was in, Masa had tried to cure him of his fatal obsession, using a method that was cruel but effective. He had not tried to persuade Erast Petrovich by wasting empty words on him – they would not have had any effect in any case. Instead of that he had graphically demonstrated the true worth of the woman who – exclusively through a perfidious concatenation of circumstances – had forced a breach in a heart encased for so long in horny defences. It was all the same to this artiste whom she conquered – just as long as the trophy was presentable. She had turned the boy-cornet’s head, but not allowed him into her bed – he was not a high enough flyer. A successful playwright or a fashionable Japanese actor, now that was a different matter. There was nothing surprising here, nothing to wax indignant about. Fandorin had intuitively sensed that from the very beginning, had he not, when he was figuring out the most reliable path to Madam Lointaine’s heart (no, only to her body)? Indeed it was Masa, that connoisseur of women’s hearts, who had prompted him to take that path.