‘P-please allow me for my part, that is, on behalf of the state of Russia, which I represent here… That is, of course, not I, but the c-consul…’ Erast Petrovich babbled unintelligibly, stammering more than usual in his agitation.
When Sophia Diogenovna heard the state mentioned, she gaped at him in fright with her faded blue eyes and bit the edge of her handkerchief. Fandorin lost the thread of his thought and fell silent.
Fortunately Shirota helped him out. It seemed that this kind of mission was nothing new to the clerk.
‘Vsevolod Vitalievich Doronin has asked us to convey to you his profound condolences,’ the clerk said with a ceremonial bow. ‘Mr Vice-Consul will sign the necessary documents and also present you with a financial subsidy.’
Recollecting himself, Fandorin handed the spinster the five coins from the state and the two from Doronin, to which, blushing slightly, he added another handful of his own.
This was the correct manoeuvre. Sophia Diogenovna ceased her sobbing, gathered the Mexican silver together in her palm, counted it quickly and also gave a low bow, displaying the plait arranged in a loop on the back of her head.
‘Thank you for not leaving a poor orphan without support.’
Her thick hair was a beautiful golden-wheat colour. Blagolepova could probably have been rather good-looking, if not for her chalky complexion and the expression of stupid fright in her eyes.
Shirota was making signs to the functionary: he had pinched his finger and thumb together and was running them through the air. Ah, he meant the receipt.
Erast Petrovich shrugged, as if to say: It’s too awkward, later. But the Japanese himself presented the lady with the paper, and she signed with a pencil in a curly flourish.
Shirota sat down at the table, took out a sheet of paper and a travelling inkwell and prepared to write out the death certificate.
‘What were the cause and the circumstances of the demise?’ he asked briskly.
Sophia Diogenovna’s face instantly melted into a tearful grimace.
‘Papa came home in the morning at about seven o’clock. He said, I feel bad, Sophia. I’ve got this aching in my chest…’
‘In the morning?’ Fandorin asked. ‘Was he working at night, then?’
He was sorry he had asked. The tears poured down in torrents from Blagolepova’s eyes.
‘No-o,’ she howled. ‘He’d been in the “Rakuen” all night long. It’s a place like a tavern. Only in our taverns they drink vodka, and in theirs they smoke a noxious weed. I went there at midnight and implored him: “Father, let’s go home. You’ll spend everything on smoking again, and our apartment isn’t paid for, and the oil for the lamp has run out…” He wouldn’t come, he drove me away. He almost beat me… And when he dragged himself home in the morning, there was nothing in his pockets, they were empty… I gave him tea. He drank a glass. Then he suddenly looked at me and said: “That’s that. Sophia, I’m dying. Forgive me, my daughter”. And he put his head on the table. I started shaking him, but he was dead. He was staring sideways, with his mouth open…’
At that point the sad narrative broke off, drowned in sobbing.
‘The circumstances are clear,’ Shirota declared solemnly. ‘Shall we write: “Sudden death from natural causes”?’
Fandorin nodded and shifted his gaze from the sobbing spinster to the deceased. What a strange fate! To die at the end of the world from the heady Chinese poison…
The clerk scraped his pen over the paper, Sophia Diogenovna cried, the vice-consul gazed morosely at the ceiling. The ceiling was unusual, faced with planks. So were the walls. As if they were inside a crate. Or a barrel.
For lack of anything else to do, Erast Petrovich walked over and touched the rough surface with his hand.
‘Papa put that up with his own hands,’ Blagolepova said in an adenoidal voice. ‘So it would be like in a mess room. When he was a cabin boy, the ships were still all wood. One day he looked at the wall and suddenly waved his hand and shouted out: “A name is a mortal’s fate, and there’s no getting away from it! The name you’re given decides the way you live your whole life. Haven’t I flapped about all over the place? I ran away to sea from the seminary, I’ve sailed the seven seas, but even so I’m ending my life as Diogenes – in a barrel”.’
And. moved by her reminiscences, she started gushing even more profusely. The titular counsellor, wincing in sympathy, handed Sophia Diogenovna his handkerchief – her own needed to be wrung out.
‘Thank you, kind man,’ she sobbed, blowing her nose into the fine cambric. ‘And I should be even more grateful, grateful for ever, if you could only liberate my property.’
‘What property?’
‘The Japanese man Papa sold the launch to didn’t pay him all the money. He didn’t give him it all at once, he said: “You’ll smoke yourself to death”. He paid it out in parts, and he still owed seventy-five yen. That’s a lot of money! There was no paper contract between them, that’s not the Japanese custom, so I’m afraid that the hunchback won’t give me it, he’ll deceive a poor orphan.’
‘Why hunchb-back?’
‘Why, he has a hump. He’s got one at the front and another one at the back. A genuine monster and a bandit. I’m afraid of him. Couldn’t you go with me, Mr Vice-Consul, since you’re a diplomat from our great homeland, eh? I’d pray to God for you with all my strength!’
‘The consulate does not engage in the collection of debts,’ Shirota said quickly. ‘It is not appropriate.’
‘I could go in a private capacity,’ the soft-hearted vice-consul suggested. ‘Where can I find this man?’
‘It’s not far, just across the river,’ said the spinster, immediately stopping her crying and gazing hopefully at Fandorin. ‘“Rakuen”, it’s called, that means “Heavenly Garden” in their language. Papa worked for the boss there. He’s called Semushi, it means Hunchback. Papa gave everything he earned at sea to that bloodsucker, for the drug.’
Shirota frowned.
‘The “Rakuen”? I know it. An absolutely infamous establishment. The Bakuto (they are very bad men) play dice there, and they sell Chinese opium. It is shameful, of course,’ he added in an apologetic tone of voice, ‘but Japan is not to blame. Yokohama is an open port, it has its own customs. However, a diplomat cannot appear in the “Rakuen” under any circumstances. There could be an Incident.’
The final word was pronounced with special emphasis and the clerk even raised one finger. Erast Petrovich did not wish to be involved in an Incident, especially not on his first day of work as a diplomat, but how could he abandon a defenceless young woman in distress? And then again, it would be interesting to take a look at an opium den.
‘The regulations of the consular service enjoin us to render assistance to our compatriots who find themselves in extremity,’ Fandorin said sternly.
The clerk did not dare to argue with the regulations. He sighed and resigned himself to the inevitable.
They set out for the den on foot. Erast Petrovich had refused in principle to take a riksha from the consulate, and he did not yield now.
The young man found everything in the native quarter curious: the hovels nailed together haphazardly out of planks, and the paper lanterns on poles, and the unfamiliar smells. The Japanese people seemed exceptionally ugly to the young functionary. Short and puny, with coarse faces, they walked in a fussy manner with their heads pulled down into their shoulders. The women were especially disappointing. Instead of the wonderful, bright-coloured kimonos that Fandorin had seen in pictures, the Japanese women were dressed in washed-out, formless rags. They walked in tiny little steps on their monstrously bandy legs, and their teeth were absolutely black! Erast Petrovich made this appalling discovery when he saw two busybodies gossiping on a corner. They bowed to each other every second and smiled broadly, looking like two black-toothed witches.