Alas, the medic who seeks to treat epidemic illnesses runs the risk of contracting the plague himself. But perhaps a different comparison is appropriate here, with those devotees of the public health who quite deliberately inoculate themselves with the bacillus of some deadly ailment in order to study its infectious mechanism more closely, so that they can save others.
God only knows what turmoil ravaged our colleague’s soul on the final evening of his life. We know only one thing – he remained a journalist right up to the very last minute. The day before yesterday he phoned the makerup at the Moscow Courier, Mr Bozhovsky, and told him to hold the morning edition because he had ‘a bombshell’ for the front page.
Now we know what ‘bombshell’ the deceased had in mind – his own suicide. Well, the conclusion of Lavr Zhemailo’s career was certainly dramatic. It is only a pity that the horrific news failed to make the morning edition of the Moscow Courier. Fate played a final trick on the journalist – his body was only discovered at dawn, after the newspaper had already been printed, even though the spot he chose for his suicide was very visible – Rozhdestvensky Boulevard, which is only a stone’s throw from Trubnaya Square. The body hanging on an aspen tree really ought to have been noticed by some late passerby or the local constable, or a night cabby, especially since it was lit up by a nearby gas lamp, but it hung there until after five in the morning, when it was spotted by a street sweeper who came out to start clearing away the leaves.
Sleep well, passionate soul. We shall finish the job that you began. Our paper solemnly vows to raise the fallen banner anew and carry it forward. The demon of suicide will be banished from the streets of our Christian city. The Moscow Gazette will continue the journalistic investigation begun by our colleagues from the Courier. Watch out for our forthcoming articles.
The Editors
Moscow Gazette, 19
September (2 October) 1900,
front page
II. From Columbine’s Diary
Chosen!
After I discovered in my handbag a second card with the single word ‘Bald’1 written in the familiar Gothic letters, absolutely no doubt remained: I have been chosen, chosen!
Yesterday’s effusive outpourings on the subject of this realisation were laughable – the cluckings of a frightened hen. I have not simply crossed them out. I have torn out the two pages. I shall insert something more appropriate later.
Later? When later, if I have been told ‘Bald’?
The short word echoes inside my head, setting it ringing. When I go out I am not myself, I stumble into people on the pavement, I feel terrified and delighted by turns. But the main feeling I have is one of pride.
Columbine has changed completely. Perhaps she is no longer Columbine at all, but the alluring Distant Princess, far beyond the reach of any simple mortal.
All other interests and contingencies have been set aside, lost all meaning. Now I have a new ritual that sets my heart trembling: in the evening, when I get back from Prospero’s house, I take out the two small white rectangles, look at them, kiss them reverently and put them away in a drawer. I am loved!
The change that has taken place in me is so great that I feel no need to conceal it. Everyone in the club knows that Death is writing notes to me, but when I am asked to show these messages I always refuse. Genji is particularly persistent. As a man of intelligence, he realises that I am not fantasising, and he is very concerned – but I do not know if his concern is really for me or for the threat to his materialist views.
I cherish these messages and will not show them to anyone, they are mine and mine alone, addressed to me and meant for my eyes only.
I behave like a real queen at our meetings now. Or if not a queen, then at least the favourite or bride of the king. I am betrothed to the Royal Bridgroom. Iphigenia and Gorgon are green with envy, Caliban hisses in spite and the Doge looks at me with the melancholy eyes of a beaten dog. He is no Prospero, no master of the spirits of the earth and the air. He is not even Harlequin. He is the same kind of Pierrot as the mummy’s boy Petya, who once turned the head of a little fool in Irkutsk with his curly locks and bombastic versicles.
The evenings at the Doge’s apartment are my triumph, my benefit performance. But there are other times when I feel weakness creeping up on me. And then I am almost overcome by doubts.
No, no, I do not doubt the authenticity of the Signs. It is a different question that torments me: am I ready? Will I not feel regret, be unwilling to leave the light for the darkness?
The outcome is always the same. Perhaps I do feel regret, but the choice will be made with no hesitation. To fall into the abyss, into the dark embrace of my mysterious, ardently desired Beloved.
After all, it is now absolutely clear that death does not exist – at least, not the kind of death that I used to imagine: non-existence, absolute blackness, nothingness. There is no death, but there is Death. His kingdom is a magical land, great, mighty and beautiful, where such great bliss and wonderful new insights await me that the mere anticipation of it sets my heart aching sweetly. Ordinary people crawl into this magical land howling in terror, whimpering and afraid, broken by fatal disease or the ravages of age, with their physical and spiritual powers exhausted. But I shall enter the halls of Death, not as some pitiful dependent, but as a precious favourite, a long-awaited guest.
Fear hinders me. But what is fear? The sharp nails with which the foolish, pitiful, treacherous flesh clutches at life in order to wheedle a respite out of fate – for a year, a week, even a minute.
Yes, I am afraid. I am very afraid. Especially of pain at the final moment. And even more afraid of the pictures painted by my cowardly brain: a hole dug in the ground, the thud of dry lumps of earth against the lid of a coffin, death-worms in eye-sockets. And there is something from my childhood, from Gogol’s Horrific Revenge: ‘In the bottomless pit the dead gnaw on the dead man, and the dead man lying under the earth grows, gnawing on his own bones in terrible torment and shaking the ground horrifyingly.’
Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.
‘It’s time for me to go’
They argued heatedly, trying to shout each other down.
‘The place where the meetings are held is an open secret,’ the anatomist Horatio declared. ‘Cyrano must have given the address to his editors! I wouldn’t be surprised if we were being observed by newspaper hacks from the windows of nearby houses. And one day we’ll go out after a meeting and be met by flashing magnesium. We should stop the meetings temporarily.’
‘Shtupid nonsense!’ retorted Rosencrantz. ‘You haf no faith! Ve must trust in Schicksal!’