Still hiccuping—no longer from the cold but from fear—Fandorin yelled out, “Judas Iscariot! You sold your homeland for thirty pieces of silver!” And he backed further away from the menacing muzzle of the gun.
“In the words of the immortal Derzhavin, inconstancy is the lot of mortal kind. And you do me a grave injustice, my little friend. I was not enticed by thirty shekels but by a far more substantial sum, transferred in the most immaculate manner to a Swiss bank—for my old age, to ensure that I do not die in the gutter. And what did you think you were doing, you little fool? Who did you think you were yelping and yapping at? Shooting at stone is merely a waste of arrows. This is a truly mighty structure, the pyramid of Cheops. You cannot butt it down with your forehead.”
In the meantime Erast Fandorin had shuffled back to the edge of the quayside and been obliged to halt on feeling the low curb press against the back of his heels. All appearances indicated that this was exactly what Pyzhov had been trying to achieve.
“That’s very good now—that’s quite splendid,” he intoned melliflu-ously, halting ten paces away from his victim. “It wouldn’t have been easy for me to drag such a well-nourished youth to the water afterward. Don’t you be alarmed, my rubicund little fellow, Pyzhov knows what he’s about. Bang—and it’s all over. No more red little face, just gooey red mush. Even if they fish you out they won’t identify you. And your soul will soar straight up to the angels. It hasn’t had a chance to sin yet, it’s such a young soul.”
With these words he raised his weapon, screwed up his left eye, and smiled in sweet anticipation. He was in no hurry to fire; he was clearly savoring the moment. Fandorin cast a despairing glance at the deserted shoreline illuminated by the bleary light of dawn. There was no one, not a single soul. This time it really was the end. He thought he saw something stirring over by the warehouse, but he had no time to make it out—a shot thundered out, appallingly loud, louder than the loudest of thunder. Erast Fandorin swayed backward, then with a bloodcurdling howl he plunged down into the river out of which he had clambered with such great difficulty only a few minutes earlier.
CHAPTER TWELVE
in which our hero discovers that he has a halo around his head
CONSCIOUSNESS DID NOT, HOWEVER, DESERT the executed man, and, strangely enough, there was absolutely no pain at all. Totally bemused, Erast Fandorin began flailing at the water with his arms. What had happened? Was he alive or dead? If he was dead, then why was everything so wet?
Zurov’s head appeared above the curb at the edge of the quay. Fandorin was not surprised in the least. In the first place, it would have been hard to surprise him with anything just at that moment, and in the second place, in the next world (if that was where he was) far stranger things might occur.
“Erasmus! Are you alive? Did I nick you?” Zurov’s head cried out in an anguished voice. “Give me your hand.”
Erast Fandorin thrust his right hand out of the water, and with one mighty heave he was dragged up onto terra firma. The first thing he saw when he rose to his feet was a small figure lying facedown on the ground with one hand extended forward, clutching a hefty pistol. In among the thinning, skewbald hair on the back of the figure’s head there was a black hole, beneath which a dark puddle was slowly spreading.
“Are you wounded?” Zurov asked anxiously, turning the wet Erast Fandorin around and feeling him all over. “I don’t understand how it could have happened. A perfect rйvolution dans la balls tique* No, it’s quite impossible.”
“Count Zurov, is that you?” Fandorin wheezed, finally grasping the fact that all this was not taking place in the next world but in this one.
“Don’t be so formal. Have you forgotten that we drank to bruder-schaft?”
“But why did you do it?” Erast Fandorin began shaking and shuddering again. “Are you absolutely determined to do away with me? Did that cursed Azazel of yours offer you a reward to do it? Shoot then, shoot, curse you! You make me feel sick, all of you, worse than cold semolina!”
How cold semolina came to be mixed up in the matter was not clear—no doubt it was something from his childhood, long ago forgotten. Erast Fandorin was about to rip open the shirt on his chest—there you are, there’s my breast, shoot!—but Zurov thumped him unceremoniously on the shoulder.
“Stop raving, Fandorin. What Azazel? What semolina? Let me bring you to your senses.” And thereupon he delivered two resounding slaps to the exhausted Erast Fandorin’s face. “It’s me. Hippolyte Zurov. It’s no wonder your brains have turned to jelly after such trying adventures. Prop yourself up against me.” He put his arm around the young man’s shoulders. “Now I’ll take you back to the hotel. I’ve got a horse tethered close by and he”—Zurov prodded Pyzhov’s motionless body with his foot—“has a droshky. We’ll fly back like the wind. You’ll get warmed up, down a dose of grog, and explain to me what kind of circus it is you’re involved in here.”
Fandorin pushed the count away violently. “Oh no, you explain to me! How did you come to be here? Why were you following me? Are you in collusion with them?”
Disconcerted, Zurov twirled his black mustache.
“I can’t tell you all that in a couple of words.”
“Never mind, I’ve got plenty hie—of time. I won’t budge from this spot.”
“Very well then, listen.”
And this is the story that Hippolyte told.
“Do you think I gave you Amalia’s address just like that, without thinking about it? No, brother Fandorin, there was an entire psychology behind it. I took a liking to you, a terribly strong liking. There’s something about you…I don’t know, perhaps you’re marked in some way. I have a nose for people like you. It’s as if I can see a halo above a man’s head, a kind of faint radiance. They’re special people, the ones with that halo. Fate watches over them—it protects them against all dangers. It never occurs to the man to think what fate is preserving him for. You must never fight a duel with a man like that—he’ll kill you. Don’t sit down to play cards with him—you’ll be cleaned out, no matter what fancy tricks you pull out of your sleeve. I spotted your halo when you cleaned me out at stoss and then forced me to draw lots to commit suicide. I don’t meet people like you often. Back in our unit, when we were crossing the desert in Turkestan, there was a lieutenant by the name of Ulich. He went wading straight into the thickest fighting and nothing ever happened to him—he just kept on grinning. Would you believe that near Khiva with my own eyes I saw the khan’s guardsmen fire a volley at him? Not a scratch. And then he drank some kumiss* that had turned sour and it finished him. We buried Ulich in the sand. Then why did the Lord watch over him in battle? It’s a riddle! So, Erasmus, you are one of those people, too—you can take my word for it. I’ve loved you since that moment when you put a pistol to your head without the slightest hesitation and pulled the trigger. But my love, brother Fandorin, is a subtle substance. I can’t love anyone who is inferior to me and I envy those who are superior to me with a deadly envy. I envied you, too. I felt jealous of your halo and your unnatural luck. Look at you—today you’ve come out of the water bone dry. Ha-ha, that is to say, you’ve come out wet, of course, but still alive and without a single scratch. And to look at, you’re a mere boy, a young whelp, nothing to look at at all.”