Her fingers reached out for his face, but they were intercepted by a firm hand in a tight-fitting glove.
Now he could see her face – unbearably beautiful, even now, when he knew everything.
No, not everything.
And Fandorin asked the question for which he had come here.
‘Why?’ he demanded in a severe voice. ‘What do you want from me?’
Of course, a true professional would not have done that. He would have realised that he didn’t have a clue about anything, that he was still playing the part of a halfwit and a simpleton, and little by little he would have figured out the secret of this latter-day Circe who transformed men into swine. And at the same time he would have paid her back in the same coin.
Erast Petrovich regarded himself as quite a good professional, but to dissemble with a dissembler was disgusting, and it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway – his rebellious heart was beating faster than it should in any case.
‘I am not as rich and certainly not as influential as your patron. I do not possess any important secrets. Tell me, what did you want from me?’
O-Yumi listened to him in silence, without trying to free herself. He was standing on the wooden floor, she on the straw mats, so that their faces were almost on the same level, separated by only a few inches, but it seemed to Fandorin that he could never understand the expression of those long eyes that glittered so moistly.
‘Who knows the answer to that question?’ she asked in a quiet voice. ‘Why did I need you, and you me? You simply feel that it cannot be otherwise, and nothing else matters.’
It was not so much the words that were spoken, but the tone in which they were spoken, which set Fandorin’s fingers trembling. O-Yumi freed one hand, reached out to his face and stroked his cheek gently.
‘Don’t ask any questions… And don’t try to understand – it can’t be done anyway. Listen to your heart, it will not deceive you…’
It will deceive me! Oh yes it will! – the titular counsellor wanted to cry out the words, but he was incautious enough to catch O-Yumi’s eye, and after that he couldn’t look away again.
‘Is that what your art prescribes?’ Fandorin asked in a trembling voice, when her hand slid lower, slipping behind his collar and sliding gently across his neck.
‘What art? What are you talking about?’
Her voice had become even lower and huskier. She seemed not to be paying any attention to the meaning of what he said, or to understand very well what she was saying herself.
‘Jojutsu!’ – Erast Petrovich shouted out the abhorrent word. ‘I know everything! You pretend to be in love, but all the time you are using jojutsu!’
There, the accusation had been uttered, now her expression would change and the enchantment would be dispelled!
‘Why don’t you say anything. It’s t-true, isn’t it?’
It was incredible, but she didn’t look even slightly disconcerted.
‘What is true?’ O-Yumi murmured in the same sleepy voice, still stroking his skin. ‘No, it’s not true, I’m not pretending… Yes, it is true – I love you according to the laws of jojutsu.’
The vice-consul recoiled.
‘Aha! You admit it!’
‘What is bad about that? Do I take money or presents from you? Do I want something from you? I love as I know how to love. I love as I have been taught. And you can be sure that I have been taught well. Jojutsu is the best of all the arts of love. I know, because I have studied the Indian school, and the Chinese school. I will not even speak of the European school – that barbarous nonsense. But even the Chinese and the Indians understand almost nothing about love, they pay too much attention to the flesh…’
As she spoke, her rapid, light fingers did their work – unbuttoning, stroking, sometimes sinking their nails into the body of the enchanted titular counsellor.
‘More jojutsu, is it?’ he murmured, hardly even resisting any more. ‘What do you call it when the victim has rebelled and you have to subdue him once again? Something picturesque – “Plum Blossom Rain”, “Rampant Tiger”?’
O-Yumi laughed quietly.
‘No, it’s called “Fight Fire with Fire”. The best way to extinguish a powerful flame is with a conflagration. You’ll see, you’ll like it.’
Erast Petrovich at least had no doubt that she was right about that.
A long time later, after both fires had fused together and consumed each other, they lay on the terrace, watching the shimmering surface of the pool. The conversation sprang up and then broke off again, because it was equally good to speak and to remain silent.
‘There’s one thing I forgot to ask Don,’ said Erast Petrovich, lighting up a cigar. ‘How does a course of jojutsu end? In Europe the lovers live happily ever after. It’s not the same here, I suppose?’
‘It isn’t.’ She rose slightly, propping herself up on one elbow. ‘A correctly constructed love does not end with death, but with a subtle finale, so that both parties are left with beautiful memories. We do not allow the feeling to die, we cut it, like a flower. This is slightly painful, but afterwards there is no resentment or bitterness left behind. I like you so much! For you I will think up something especially beautiful, you’ll see.’
‘Thank you with all my heart, but please don’t. What’s the hurry?’ said Erast Petrovich, pulling her towards him. ‘The wise old Don told me something very interesting about the stage that is called “The Bow String”.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is time…’ she replied in a voice trembling with passion, and took his hand between the palms of her own hands. ‘Lesson one. I am the bowstring, you are the shaft of the bow, our love is an arrow that we must shoot straight into the centre of the moon… Look at the moon, not at me. When we fire, it will fall and shatter into a thousand fragments…’
And Fandorin started looking up into the sky, where the lamp of night was shining serenely – the poor wretch was quite unaware of the fate in store for it.
Throughout the next week Erast Petrovich seemed to exist in two worlds with no connection between them – the world of the sun and the world of the moon. The former was hot, but insipid, almost spectral, since the titular counsellor constantly felt that he wanted to sleep. It was only as evening advanced and the shadows first lengthened and then disappeared altogether that Fandorin started to wake up: first the body, reaching out achingly for the night, and then the mind. The enervated, dreamy state seemed to disappear without trace and somewhere inside him a sweet chiming began, gradually growing stronger, and by the moment when the moon finally rolled out onto the sky, the lovesick titular counsellor was completely ready to immerse himself in the real world of the night.
In this world everything was beautiful from the very beginning: the whispering flight of the tricycle along the deserted promenade, the metallic grating of the key in the lock of the gates and the rustling of the gravel on the path leading to the pavilion. And then came the most painful and most poignant part of all – would she come or not? Twice O-Yumi did not appear – she had warned him that this was possible, she might not be able to slip out of the house. He sat on the terrace, smoking a cigar, watching the water and listening to the silence. And then the sun peeped out from behind the tops of the trees, and it was time to go back. The titular counsellor walked back to the gates with his head lowered, but the bitterness of the tryst that never happened held a charm all of its own – it meant that the next meeting would be doubly sweet.
But if Fandorin’s sharp hearing caught the squeak of the garden gate, and the sound of light footsteps, the world changed instantly. The stars blazed more brightly, but the moon shrank, already aware that it was to fall to earth again and again, shattering into sparkling dust.