‘You still have not told us what happened that evening,’ Genji reminded her sternly, and Lorelei’s aunt started blinking in fright.
‘I was sitting in the drawing room, reading the Home Doctor, Lyalechka subscribes to it for me. She’d just got back from somewhere or other and gone into her boudoir. Then suddenly she came running into the room with her eyes blazing and her cheeks bright red. “Aunty Rosa!” she cried. I was frightened, I thought it must be a fire or a mouse. But Lyalechka shouted: “The last Sign, the third one! He loves me! He loves me! There is no more doubt. I must go to him, to the Tsarevich! My Matvei has waited too long”. Then she put her hand over her eyes and said in a quiet voice: “No more, my torment is over. Now dost Thou release Thy servant, oh Lord. No more playing the jester for me.” I didn’t understand anything. You can never tell with Elena Semyonovna if something has really happened or she’s just fantasising. “Who is it who loves you?” I asked her. “Ferdinand Karlovich, Sergei Poluektovich or that one with the moustache, who arrived with the bouquet yesterday?” She had lots of admirers, you couldn’t remember them all. Only she didn’t care a brass farthing for any of them, so her raptures seemed strange to me. “Or has someone else turned up?” I asked her, “Someone completely new?” But Lyalechka laughed, and she looked so happy, for the first time in all those years. “Someone else, Aunty Rosa,” she said. “Someone quite different. The genuine one and only. I’m going to go to bed now. Don’t come into my room until the morning, whatever happens.” And she walked out. In the morning I went in, and she was lying on the bed in her white dress, and she was all white too . . .’
The aunt burst into tears again, but this time she didn’t go running out of the room.
‘How am I going to live now? Lyalechka didn’t think about me, she didn’t leave a single kopeck. And I can’t sell the furniture – it’s the landlord’s . . .’
‘Show me where Elena Semyonovna’s b-boudoir is,’ said Genji, getting to his feet.
Lorelei’s bedroom was startlingly different from Ophelia’s simple little room. It had Chinese vases as tall as a man, and painted Japanese screens, and a magnificent dressing table with a myriad bottles, jars and tubes standing in front of a triple mirror, and all sorts of other things too.
There were two portraits hanging above the luxurious bed. One was a perfectly ordinary photograph of a bearded man in a pince-nez (obviously the deceased husband Matvei himself), but Columbine found the second one intriguing: a swarthy, handsome man dressed in blood-red robes, with immense half-closed eyes, sitting astride a black buffalo and holding a club and a noose in his hands, and there were two terrifying four-eyed dogs huddling against the buffalo’s legs.
Genji walked up to the lithograph, but it was not the image that interested him, it was the three black roses on the top of the frame. One had not completely wilted yet, another was badly wrinkled, and the third was absolutely dry.
‘My God, who is that?’ Columbine asked, looking at the picture.
‘The Indian god of death, Yama, also known as the King of the Dead,’ Genji replied absentmindedly, staring hard at the gilded frame. ‘The dogs with four eyes are searching for p-prey among the living, and Yama uses the noose to pull their souls out.’
‘Tsarevich Death, come in your bloody-red apparel, give me your hand, lead me into the light,’ said Columbine, reciting two lines from Lorelei’s last poem. ‘So that was who she meant!’
But Genji failed to appreciate her astuteness.
‘What roses are these?’ he asked, turning to the aunt. ‘From whom?’
‘They . . .’ she said, and started blinking very, very fast. ‘How can I remember, when so many people used to give Lyalechka flowers? Ah yes, I do remember. She brought the bouquet home on that last evening.’
‘Are you sure?’
Columbine thought Genji was being too severe with the poor old woman. Rosalia Maximovna pulled her head down into her shoulders and babbled: ‘She brought them, she brought them herself.’
There seemed to be something else he wanted to ask her, but glancing at Columbine, he obviously realised that she disapproved of his manner and, taking pity on the unfortunate woman, left her in peace.
‘Thank you madam. You have been a g-great help.’
The Japanese gave a ceremonial bow, from the waist.
Columbine noticed that as Genji walked past the table he inconspicuously placed a banknote on the tablecloth. Was he feeling ashamed then? Yes, that must be it.
The expedition was over. Columbine had still not found out if Genji was in love with her, but that was not what she thought about on the way back. She suddenly felt quite unbearably sad.
She imagined how her mother and father would feel when they found out that she was gone. They would probably cry and feel sorry for their daughter, and then, like Ophelia’s mother, they would say: ‘She stayed in the world for a short time, and then she flew away.’ But it would be easier for them than for Serafima Kharitonovna, they would still have their sons, Seryozha and Misha. They’re not like me, Columbine comforted herself. They won’t get picked up by the wild east wind and carried away into the sunset to meet their doom.
She felt so moved that the tears started pouring down her cheeks.
‘Well, how did you like our excursion?’ Genji asked, looking into his companion’s wet face. ‘Perhaps you will l-live for a little longer after all?’
She rubbed her eyes, turned towards him and laughed in his face.
‘Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t,’ she said
In front of her house she jumped out of the carriage, gave a careless wave and ran into the entrance with a light clatter of heels.
Sitting down at the table without even taking off her beret, she dipped a pen in the inkwell and wrote a poem that came out in blank verse, like Lorelei’s. And for some reason it was in traditional folk style – could that be because of Ophelia’s mother, the old provincial secretary’s widow?
She wondered what Prospero would say about the poem.
III. From the ‘Agents’ Reports’ File
To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov
(Private and confidential)
Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,
I always knew that helping you was a risky and dangerous business – both for my reputation as a decent individual and, possibly, for my very life. Today my very worst fears have been confirmed. I really do not know what causes me greater torment, the physical suffering or the bitter realisation of how little you value my self-sacrificing efforts.