Erast Petrovich gave a deep sigh and started speaking, not like a boy, but like a potential husband (even if only a civil law one).
‘You remember I said that I was in love, enamoured with you? Well, I was mistaken, I love you,’ he began in a gloomy, almost accusatory voice, and then paused in order to give her a chance to react.
‘I know, I know!’ she exclaimed.
Having once assumed a morose tone, Fandorin could no longer abandon it.
‘It is splendid that you know everything. But I had hoped to hear something else. For instance: “I love you too”.’
‘I have loved you all this time,’ Eliza exclaimed immediately with tears in her eyes. ‘I love you madly and desperately.’
She reached her arms out to him, but Erast Petrovich did not yield to temptation. He had to tell her everything that he had been intending to.
‘You are an actress, you cannot manage without exaggerations, I accept you as you are, I hope that you will take the same attitude to me. Please listen to everything I have to say and then decide.’
Until this moment Erast Petrovich had been standing, Now he sat down at the opposite side of the table, as if establishing a barrier between them, and now the conditions for crossing would have to be negotiated.
‘I have lived in this world for a long time. I behaved with you like an absolute idiot… Don’t object, just listen,’ he said when she shook her head and threw her hands up in the air. ‘I knew from the very beginning what I could expect and what I could not. You see, it is always written on a woman’s face whether she is capable of a great love or she is not. The way she will behave if life forces her to choose between her beloved and herself, between her beloved and children, between her beloved and an idea.’
‘What choice do you think I will make?’ Eliza asked timidly.
‘You will choose a role. That part of you suits me. We are cut from the same cloth, you and I. I will also choose a role. My role is not a theatrical one, certainly, but that does not matter. Therefore I suggest an honest alliance, without any lies or self-deception. You and I shall have a marriage of convenience.’
‘That is the same thing that Shustrov offered me,’ she said with a shudder.
‘Possibly. But our convenience will not be one of commerce, but of love. To put it in entrepreneurial terms, I propose a love with limited liability. Don’t frown. We love each other, we want to be together. But at the same time, we are both invalids of love. I am not willing to abandon my manner of life for your sake. You will not sacrifice the stage for me. Or if you do, you will soon regret it and become unhappy.’
He thought he had managed to break through her habit of affectation. Eliza listened to him seriously and attentively – without wringing her hands, without assuming an air of glowing love.
‘You know, I think we are ideally suited for each other,’ said Fandorin, moving on to the second point, which was no less delicate. ‘I am a mature man and you are a mature woman. There is an ancient formula that can be used to calculate the correct combination of a man’s and a woman’s ages at the moment of their alliance. The number of years that the bride has lived should be equal to half of the bridegroom’s years, plus seven. So according to the Chinese rule you are slightly younger than the ideal age for my chosen one. You are thirty, and according to the formula you should be thirty-four and a half. This is not a great difference.’
As he had expected, Eliza was interested by this dubious Chinese wisdom. She wrinkled up her forehead and worked her lips.
‘Wait… I can’t count it up. How old are you, then? Thirty-four and a half minus seven, multiply by two…’
‘Fifty-five.’
She was upset.
‘As old as that. I didn’t think you were more than forty-five!’
This was a painful subject for Erast Petrovich, but he had prepared well for it.
‘A man has three ages, and their link to the number of years he has lived is only relative. The first is the age of the mind. There are old men with the intellectual development of a ten-year-old child, but some youths have a mature intellect. The older a man’s mind is, the better. The second age is spiritual. The supreme achievement on this path of life is to reach wisdom. It can only descend on a man in old age, when the vain commotion has receded and the passions are exhausted. As I see now, I still have a long way to go to get there. In the spiritual sense, I am younger than I would like to be. And finally, there is physical age. Everything here depends on the correct use of the body. The human organism is an apparatus that is amenable to endless improvement. The wear and tear is more than made up for by acquired skills. I assure you that now I have much better control of my body than I did in my youth.’
‘Oh, I saw how in just two minutes you ran up onto the gallery gangway and climbed down the cable!’ Eliza lowered her eyes demurely. ‘And I have had other opportunities to appreciate how well you control your body…’
Erast Petrovich, however, did not allow the conversation to be diverted from its serious vein.
‘What do you say, Eliza?’ He felt his voice breaking and coughed. ‘What do you think of my p-proposal?’
Now everything depended, not so much on her words, as on the way she pronounced them.
If his sincerity had not broken though the actress’s defensive guise, nothing worthwhile would come of their union.
Eliza turned pale and then blushed. Then she turned pale again. And a terrible thing – her eyes seemed to have rid themselves of their perpetual squint, and they were both looking straight at Fandorin.
‘One condition.’ She also seemed to have suddenly turned hoarse. ‘No children. May God allow me not to be torn apart between you and the stage. If we cannot get along with each other, it will be painful for us, but we will manage somehow. But I would feel sad for the children.’
This is not a mask speaking, Erast Petrovich thought with immense relief. This is a real, live woman. The way she speaks to me is already an answer. And he also thought that there was a disappointment in store for Masa. It was not the Japanese servant’s destiny to teach a little Fandorin how to be happy.
‘That’s reasonable,’ Erast Petrovich said out loud. ‘I wanted to ask you about that myself.’
Here, however, Eliza’s reserves of reason and restraint ran out. She jumped up, knocking over her chair, dashed to Fandorin, huddled up against him and murmured devotedly.
‘Hold me tight, never let me go! Otherwise I shall be torn off the earth, blown away, up into the sky. I shall be lost without you! God sent you to me to be my salvation! You are my only hope, you are my anchor, my guardian angel. Love me, love me, as much as you can! And I shall love you as well as I know how and with all the strength I have.’
And now he couldn’t tell whether she was being genuine just at that moment or whether, without even noticing, she had slipped into some role. If she had, then how magnificently it had been played, how magnificently.
But Eliza’s face was wet with tears, her lips were trembling and her shoulders were shaking, and Fandorin felt ashamed of his scepticism.
Essentially, whether she was acting or not was not really important. Erast Petrovich was happy, unconditionally happy. And now come what may.
APPENDIX
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
OKASAN