‘Candurs,’ said the Japanese.
Columbine raise her eyes to the ceiling, assuming that this simple-minded son of the Orient named every object that he saw – she had read somewhere that primitive peoples had that habit. Now he would say: ‘Table. Bed. Window.’ But Masa glanced sideways at his master and repeated: ‘Candurs.’
‘Yes, yes. I see,’ Genji said with a nod. ‘Well done. Tell me, Serafima Kharitonovna, did you put new candles in the candelabra?’
‘I didn’t put them in. They hadn’t been touched.’
‘So when your daughter came in here she d-didn’t light them?’
‘I suppose so. I’ve left everything just as it was, I haven’t disturbed anything. That book lying open on the windowsill – let it stay there. Her slippers under the bed. The glass of pear compote – she loved that. Perhaps her soul will look in every now and then to take a rest . . . Sashenka’s soul has no place of its own. Father Innokentii wouldn’t allow her to be buried in hallowed ground. They buried my daughter outside the fence, like a little dog. And he wouldn’t let me put up a cross. Your daughter’s sin is unforgivable, he said. But what sort of sinner is she? She was an angel. She stayed on earth for a little while and brought me joy, and then flew away again.’
As they walked back to the carriage and then drove along the streets shrouded in the shadows of early evening, Masa kept muttering angrily in his strange squawking language.
‘Why has he suddenly forgotten how to speak Russian?’ Columbine asked in a whisper.
Genji said: ‘He is being t-tactful. He does not wish to offend your religious sensibilities. He is roundly abusing the Christian Ch-church for its attitude to suicides and their families. And he is absolutely right.’
Black roses
At the entrance to the wing of a building on Povarskaya Street, where Lorelei Rubinstein had still lived only three days earlier, there were three heaps of flowers lying on the pavement. Most of them were black roses, which she had mentioned in a poem written shortly before her death – the one she had read for the first time one evening at Prospero’s apartment and then printed shortly afterwards in The Refuge of the Muse. There were notes, too – white spots against the background of the flowers. Columbine picked one out, opened it and read the inscription in small girlish handwriting:
T.R.
She picked up another: ‘Oh, how right you are, dear, dear one! Life is vulgar and unbearable! Olga Z.’
Genji also read it, looking over her shoulder. He knitted his elegant black eyebrows and sighed. Then he resolutely rang the bronze doorbell.
The door was opened by a rather wizened lady with an anxious, tearful face who kept dabbing at her red, wet little nose with a handkerchief. She introduced herself as Rosalia Maximovna, one of ‘poor Lyalechka’s’ relatives, although the subsequent conversation made it clear that she had lived with Lorelei as her housekeeper, or simply as a dependent.
Genji spoke to her quite differently from the way in which he had spoken to Ophelia’s mother. He was dry and businesslike. Masa didn’t open his mouth at all, he sat down at the table and didn’t move, staring straight at Rosalia Maximovna through narrowed eyes.
The pitiful creature gazed at the severe gentleman in the black tails and the taciturn Oriental with a mixture of fright and obsequiousness. She answered Genji’s questions at length, with masses of detail, and from time to time he was obliged to bring her back to the point. Every time Rosalia Maximovna became flustered and began batting her eyelids helplessly. The conversation was also seriously impeded by a lapdog – a vicious dwarf bulldog that kept yapping at Masa and snapping at his trouser leg.
‘Had you lived with Madam Rubinstein for a l-long time?’ was the first question that Genji asked.
It turned out that she had been there for seven years, ever since Lorelei (whom she also referred to as ‘Lyalechka’ and ‘Elena Semyonovna’) had been widowed.
When she was asked whether the deceased had ever attempted to take her own life before, the answer was very long and confused.
‘Lyalechka never used to be like this. She was cheerful, she used to laugh a lot. She loved her husband Matvei very much. They had an easy, happy life together. They didn’t have any children – they were always going to the theatre and at-homes, they often went to resorts and to Paris, and all sorts of places abroad. But when Matvei Natanovich died, it was as if she lost her mind, the poor thing. She even took poison,’ Rosalia told him in a whisper, ‘only not enough to kill her that time. But after that she was all right, she seemed to have got used to things. Only her character had changed, completely changed. She started writing poems and in general . . . she wasn’t quite herself, somehow. If not for me, she wouldn’t have eaten properly, she just drank coffee all the time. Do you think it was easy for me keeping house for Elena Semyonovna? She spent all the money that Matvei Natanovich left on the memorial for his grave. She was only paid a pittance for her poems at first, then it was more and more, but that was still no help. Lyalechka used to send tenrouble wreaths to the cemetery every single day, and sometimes there wasn’t a crust of bread in the house. The number of times I told her: “You should put something aside for a rainy day!” But would she listen? So now there isn’t anything. She’s dead, and what am I supposed to live on? And the flat’s only paid up until the first of the month. I have to move out, but where to?’ She buried her face in the handkerchief and started sobbing. ‘Zhu . . . Zhuzhechka is used to eating well – a bit of liver, marrow bones, cottage cheese . . . But who needs us now? Oh, I’m sorry, just a moment . . .’
And she ran out of the room in floods of tears.
‘Masa, how did you manage to m-make the dog shut up?’ Genji asked. ‘Thank you, it was bothering me rather badly.’
Columbine suddenly realised that the bulldog had not barked once, but only grunted malevolently under the table during the entire monologue, which had been extended to some considerable length by nose-blowing and sobbing.
Masa replied in a steady voice: ‘Dog sirent because eating my reg. Masta, have you arready asked everyfin you want? If not I can howd for ronger.’
Columbine glanced under the table and gasped. The mean little beast had grabbed poor Masa by the ankle and was growling viciously and shaking its round head from side to side! No wonder the Japanese looked a bit pale and he was smiling painfully. He was a real hero! Just like the Spartan boy with the fox cub!
‘Oh, Lord, Masa,’ Genji sighed. ‘That’s g-going too far.’
He leaned down swiftly and squeezed the dog’s nose between his finger and thumb. The little beast snorted and immediately opened its jaws. Then Genji took it by the scruff of the neck and tossed it into the hallway with a remarkably accurate throw. There was a squeal, followed by hysterical barking, but Masa’s tormentor didn’t dare come back into the room.
And at that point Rosalia Maximovna returned, a little calmer, but Genji had already assumed a relaxed pose, leaning back slightly in his chair, with his fingers clasped across his stomach in a most innocent fashion.
‘Where’s Zhuzhechka?’ Rosalia Maximovna asked in a voice hoarse from sobbing.