Erast Petrovich also looked down. And there, dangling from the pink paper bag decorated with a ribbon, which he had been handed in the shop, he saw a ‘Sunrise over the Sea’ fishnet stocking.
The vice-consul returned to his quarters feeling dismal. He opened the door and froze on the spot, barely able to recognise his own hallway.
Hanging on the wall was a large mirror in a lacquered and painted mother-of-pearl frame. There were white and purple irises standing in a vase on a flirtatious little chest and perfuming the air with their scent. The coat stand on which Masa used to keep his master’s hats and outer garments was gone – standing in its place was a closed cupboard with doors of woven straw. Above it a large kerosene lamp in a paper shade radiated a soft pink light.
Astounded, Fandorin glanced into the drawing room. There were even more changes there – it was quite impossible to make out all the details, he just got a general impression of something bright, colourful and festive.
In the dining room the titular counsellor saw a table laid in a way that immediately made him feel terribly hungry (something that had not happened to Erast Petrovich at all in the last few days). There were fruits, cheeses, rice balls with red and white fish, pies and cakes, sweets, champagne in an ice bucket.
The vice-consul discovered the fairy who had cast such a miraculous spell on the official government residence in the bedroom. But no, this room could no longer be referred to in such a prosaic, everyday fashion. The broad but simple bed that had been quite adequate for Erast Petrovich was now decorated with a muslin canopy, curtains had appeared at the windows and there was a bright-coloured, fluffy rug on the floor. O-Yumi herself, clad only in her nightshirt (the same one in which she had fled from Bullcox’s lair), was standing on a chair, fastening a long scroll with some kind of hieroglyphic inscription to the wall.
‘Darling, are you back?’ she said, tossing a lock of hair off her forehead. ‘I’m so tired! You have a very strange servant. He refused to help me. I had to do everything myself. It’s a good thing I learned so much at the tea house. In that place, until you win respect, you do everything yourself – wash, iron, mend… But he really is strange! He stands in the corridor all the time and he wouldn’t let me look into the cupboard. What have you got in there? I heard some very odd sounds.’
‘That’s a secret room. Nothing very interesting, just all sorts of boring diplomatic d-documents,’ Fandorin lied. ‘I’ll order them to be removed tomorrow. But why didn’t you buy yourself any clothes?’
She jumped down off the chair without a sound.
‘I did. I just took them off so I wouldn’t get them dirty. Look, this will be enough for a start.’
She opened the door of the wardrobe, and Erast Petrovich saw that his frock coats and trousers had been squeezed right into the very corner, and four-fifths of the space was occupied by brightly coloured silk, velvet and satin. There were hatboxes on the upper shelf and shoeboxes down below.
‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ asked O-Yumi, reaching for the pink bag. ‘From Madame Bкtise? For me?’
She took out the stockings, turned them over in her hands and wrinkled up her nose.
‘Shumiwarui.’
‘What?’
‘How vulgar! You haven’t got a clue about ladies’ outfits. I’ll probably keep the black ones. But I’ll give the others to Sophie. She’s certain to like them.’
‘T-to whom?’ asked poor Erast Petrovich, unable to keep up with the news.
‘The yellow-haired fool who taps on that big iron machine.’
‘Have you already m-made her acquaintance?’
‘Yes, I made friends with her. I gave her a hat, and she gave me a shawl with big red flowers. And I got to know Obayasi-san, your boss’s mistress, even better. A sweet woman. I made friends with her too.’
‘What else have you managed to do in the three hours since we last saw each other?’
‘Nothing else. I bought a few things, started putting the apartment in order and met the neighbours.’
It could not be said that Fandorin was particularly good at counting money, but it seemed to him that there were an awful lot of purchases.
‘How did you stretch the money to all this?’ he asked admiringly when he spotted a little suede box with a delightful pearl brooch on a small table.
‘The money? I spent that in the first two shops.’
‘And… and how did you pay after that?’
O-Yumi shrugged one bare shoulder.
‘The same way as before, when I lived with Algie. I left your cards everywhere.’
‘And they gave you c-credit?’
‘Of course. By the time I reached the third shop, everybody knew that I was living with you now. Madame Bкtise (I was in her shop too, only I didn’t buy these terrible stockings) congratulated me, she said you were very handsome, far more handsome than Bullcox. He’s richer, of course, but that’s not very important if a man’s as handsome as you. I rode back with the blinds open. How everyone stared at me!’
And at me too, thought Erast Petrovich, recalling how people on the street had looked round at him.
Lord, oh Lord…
Late in the evening the two of them sat together, drinking tea. Erast Petrovich was teaching her to drink like a Russian cab driver: from the saucer, through a lump of sugar clutched in the teeth, blowing and puffing noisily. O-Yumi, wearing the Russian shawl, with her face glowing red, puffed out her cheeks, gnawed at the sugar with her white teeth and laughed. There was nothing exotic or Japanese about her at that moment, and it seemed to Fandorin that they had lived together in perfect harmony for many years; God grant that they would be together for as many again.
‘What is your jojutsu good for?’ he asked. ‘Why did you take it into your head to study that filth that turns something living, passionate and natural into m-mathematics?’
‘But isn’t that the essence of any art? To break down the natural into its component parts and reassemble them in a new way? I have studied the art of love since I was fourteen.’
‘Since you were f-fourteen? Surely that wasn’t your own decision?’
‘No. My father ordered me to study jojutsu. He said: “If you were my son, I would send you to develop your ability to think, your strength and cunning, because these are a man’s greatest weapons. But you are a woman, and your greatest weapon is love. If you can completely master this difficult art, the most intelligent, strongest and most cunning men will be like putty in your hands.” My father knew what he was talking about. He is the cleverest, strongest and most cunning man I know. I was fourteen years old, I was stupid and I really didn’t want to go to study with a mistress of jojutsu, but I loved my father, so I obeyed him. And of course, as always, he was right.’
Erast Petrovich frowned, thinking that in any civilised country a loving father who sold his juvenile daughter into a brothel would be packed off to serve hard labour.
‘Where is he now, your father? Do you see each other often?’
O-Yumi’s face suddenly darkened and her lips clamped firmly together, as if from suppressed pain.
He’s dead, the titular counsellor guessed, and, regretting that he had made his beloved suffer, he hastened to make amends for his blunder by gently stroking the hollow at the base of her neck (he had been wanting to do that for a long time anyway).
Much later, lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling, O-Yumi said with a sigh:
‘Jojutsu is a wonderful science. It is the only thing capable of making a woman stronger than a man. But only until the woman loses her head. I’m afraid that is exactly what is happening to me. How shameful!’