The Doge folded his hands together prayerfully: ‘Not only do I not object, I implore you to help me. I feel as if I’m going insane!’
‘So, we are allies. Tell the others what you were going to say. That I drank the wine and fell asleep on the boulevard, and then some intrusive wellwisher called an ambulance.’
They shook hands, and I hurriedly retreated to the hallway, and from there into the street.
Need I explain the feelings that I am experiencing now? I am sure you will agree, Lieutenant-Colonel, that there is no need to arrest Mr Blagovolsky. On the contrary, he should not be hindered under any circumstances. Let him carry on with his good work. For now the ‘lovers’ are in good hands, but if they should each go their own way, they might do more than simply take their own lives – they might even start up their own suicide clubs.
As far as the ‘evil force’ is concerned, that is pure hysteria, Mr Blagovolsky’s imagination has become inflamed and his nerves are playing him false.
And I, naturally, will continue to keep an eye on this ‘Ward No. 6’. If Prospero is the head doctor, then I (ha-ha) am the inspector.
With assurances of my most sincere respect,
ZZ
Written on the night of 4 September 1900
1. Probability
2. A pity
CHAPTER 3
I. From the Newspapers
This is the Only Way?
In memory of Lorelei Rubinstein (1860–1900)
Hang your heads low, all you lovers of Russian literature. Your hearts will surely be filled not only with grief, but with the even more sombre feelings of bewilderment and despair. For a star that shone brightly in the firmament of Russian poetry in recent years has been tragically extinguished: it has fallen and, in falling, carved a bloody furrow across our hearts.
Suicide always has a terrible effect on those who are left behind. It is as though the person who leaves us spurns and rejects God’s world and all of us who dwell in it. We are no longer necessary or interesting to him. And it is a hundred times more unnatural when the person who acts in this way is a writer, whose bonds with the life of the spirit and society ought, one would think, to be especially strong.
Poor Russia! Her Shakespeares and Dantes seem to be marked down for some special deadly fate: those who are not slain by an enemy’s bullet, like Pushkin, Lermontov and Marlinsky, contrive to carry out the malevolent verdict of destiny themselves.
And now yet another resounding name has been added to the martyrology of Russian literary suicides. We have only just commemorated a bitter anniversary – a quarter of a century since the death of Count A.K. Tolstoy and the effervescent Vassily Kurochkin. They both poisoned themselves. The noble Garshin threw himself down a stairwell, while in his despair Nikolai Uspensky cut his own throat with a blunt knife. Each of these losses has left an open wound on the body of our literature.
And now a poetess, the woman they called the Russian Sappho.
I knew her. I was one of those who believed in her talent, which blossomed at a mature age but promised so very much.
The reason that prompted Lorelei Rubinstein to take up the pen at an age when the first blush of youth was already behind her is well known: it was the death from consumption of the husband she passionately adored, the late M.N. Rubinstein, whom many recall as the most noble and worthy of men. Deprived of the only being dear to her heart, the childless Lorelei turned to poetry for salvation. She opened that passionate, long-suffering heart to us, her readers – opened it unhesitatingly, even shamelessly, because sincere, genuine feeling knows no shame. It was the first time in Russian poetry that sensuality and passion had spoken so boldly through the lips of a woman – following the death of her beloved husband these natural impulses could find no other outlet except in her poems.
Young provincial ladies and schoolgirls secretly copied these spicy lines into their cherished albums. The poor souls were abused for it, sometimes even punished for this enthusiasm for ‘immoral’ poetry that could teach them nothing good. But that was only poetry! Now Lorelei has set these romantic maidens languishing in neurotic passion a far more terrible and tempting example. I fear that many will wish to copy not only her poems, but also her own terrible end . . .
I know quite certainly that she was a member of the ‘Lovers of Death’, where she was known as the ‘Lioness of Ecstasy’. In recent weeks I was fortunate enough to become more closely acquainted with this astounding woman and was an involuntary witness of the fiery fall of her brilliant star.
No, I was not with her at that crucial moment when she took the fatal dose of morphine, but I could see that she was sinking, irrevocably sinking. I could see it, but I was powerless. Not long ago she confided to me in secret that the ‘Tsarevich Death’ was sending her secret signs, and she would not have to suffer the torment of life for much longer. I do not think I was the only one she told about this, but everyone regarded this confession as the fruit of her irrepressible fantasy.
Alas, fantasies can give rise to phantoms: the hard-hearted Tsarevich has come for Lorelei and taken her away from us.
Before she made the transition from this life to the history of literature, the Lioness of Ecstasy left a farewell poem. How little remains in these incoherent, impatient, final lines of the heady brilliance that captivated her female admirers!
What terrible words of farewell! ‘This is the only way.’ Are you not afraid, ladies and gentlemen? I am, very.
Lavr Zhemailo
Moscow Courier, 7 (20)
September 1900, p.1
II. From Columbine’s Diary
Puzzles
I really am terribly fortunate to depart this life in the year that marks the boundary between the old and new centuries. It is as if I have glanced through a door that has opened a crack and seen nothing deserving enough of my attention to open the door wider and walk in. I shall halt on the threshold, flutter my wings and fly away. You can have your cinematograph, self-propelled carriages and tunics à la grecque (terribly vulgar, in my opinion). Live in the twentieth century without me. To depart without looking back – that is beautiful.