Fandorin did return it, but so powerfully that the ball would certainly have flown out of the court if only it hadn’t struck Her Highness on the forehead.
Xenia Georgievna looked rather shaken, and Fandorin seemed frightened. He dashed to the net and applied a handkerchief to Her Highness’s forehead.
‘It’s all right, it’s nothing,’ she murmured, holding Fandorin’s wrist. ‘It doesn’t hurt at all. You are a lucky beggar, though. Love–thirty. But now I’ll show you.’
The third serve was one of those that are quite impossible to get. I didn’t even see the ball properly – only a streak of lightning that flashed above the court. By some miracle Fandorin managed to catch the ball with his racket, but extremely awkwardly: the small white sphere flew up onto the air and began falling back down straight onto the net.
Xenia Georgievna ran forward with a triumphant exclamation, prepared to hammer the ball into the court. She swung and smashed the ball hard, and once again it caught the top of the net, only this time it did not tumble over on to the opponent’s side, but fell back to Her Highness’s feet
The grand princess’s face expressed confusion at the strange way the game was turning out. No doubt it was this confusion that caused Her Highness to miss twice on her last serve, a thing that had never happened before, and the game was lost ‘to love’, as the sportsmen say.
I felt my first twinge of dislike for Fandorin as his valet coolly stuffed his substantial winnings into his bright-coloured purse. It would take me quite a while to get used to the idea of losing fifty roubles in such an absurd fashion.
And I did not like the scene that was now played out on court at all.
As it had been agreed that the losing party would do, Her Highness went down on all fours and crawled under the net. Fandorin bent down hastily to help Xenia Georgievna get up. She looked up at him and she froze in that absurd pose. Embarrassed, Erast Petrovich took her by the hand and pulled, but too strongly – the grand princess fell against him with her chest and her hat went flying to the ground, taking her hairpins with it, so that her thick locks scattered loose across her shoulders.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Fandorin mumbled. ‘Thank you for the lesson. I must be going.’
He bowed awkwardly and strode off towards the house, with the Japanese waddling after him.
‘Lucky devil,’ said Mr Freyby.
Then he translated it: ‘
S-cha-stlivy . . . chort.’
And he began counting the money remaining in his wallet with an obvious air of regret.
But I was no longer thinking about the money I had lost. My heart was wrung by a feeling of alarmand a sense of foreboding.
Ah, how Xenia Georgievna gazed after Fandorin as he moved away from her! The cunning beast walked as if nothing at all had happened and only looked round at the very last moment – just before he turned the corner. He glanced briefly at Her Highness and immediately turned away. A low trick, very low, perfectly calculated for its effect on a young, inexperienced girl!
The grand princess flushed bright red at that lightning-fast glance, and I realised that something monstrous, something quite scandalous had occurred – one of those events that shake the very foundations of the monarchy. An individual of the imperial blood had fallen in love with a person who was inappropriate. There could be no mistake about it, although I can certainly not be considered an expert on the subject of women and their feelings.
Afanasii is an old bachelor and will evidently remain one. Our honourable dynasty is destined to end withmebecause, although I have a brother, he has forfeited the right to continue the Ziukin line of court servants.
My father, Stepan Filimonovich, and before him his father, Filimon Emelyanovich, were married at the age of seventeen to girls from similar court servant families and at the age of eighteen they had already produced their eldest sons. God grant to everyone the respect and love in which they lived with their spouses. But with me our family’s good fortune faltered and stumbled. The Ziukins will die out because I was given a feeble soul incapable of love.
I have not known love for the female sex. Adoration, though, is a different matter: I experienced that feeling when I was still a youth, and it was so powerful that afterwards I seemed to have no strength left for ordinary love.
From the age of fourteen I was a servant at a certain grandducal house too well known for me to name it. One of the grand princesses, whose name I will also not mention, was the same age as myself, and I often accompanied her when she went riding. In all my life since then I have never met a girl or a lady who could even remotely compare with Her Highness – not in beauty, although the grand princess was quite indescribably lovely, but in that special glow that radiated from her face and her entire person. I cannot explain it any better than that, but I saw that radiance quite clearly, as others see the moon’s rays or the light from a lamp.
I do not recall ever making conversation with Her Highness or asking her a question. I simply dashed to carry out any order that she deigned to give me without saying a word. In those years my life consisted of days that happened and days that somehow didn’t. When I saw her, it was a good day; when I did not see her, it was as if there was no day, nothing but blackness.
She must have thought that I was dumb, and she either pitied or simply grew used to me, but sometimes she would look at me with such an affectionate smile that I simply froze. It happened once during a horse race through the forest. Her Highness looked round at me and then smiled in that way, and in my happiness I let go of my reins. When I came round I was lying on the ground with everything swimming around me and Her Highness’s radiant face bending down over me, with tears in her eyes. I believe that was the happiest moment in my entire life.
I was a boy servant at that court for two years, seven months and four days, and then the grand princess was married to a German prince, and shewent away. It did not happen all at once – in imperial households marriages are arranged slowly – and all that time I had only one dream – to be among the staff of servants that would go to Germany with Her Highness. There was a vacancy for a junior footman.
But it did not happen. My father, the wise man, would not allow it.
I never saw Her Highness again. But at Christmas that year I received a letter she had written to me in her own hand. I still keep it to this day, with my parents’ wedding rings and my bank book, but I never open it to look at it – I know it off by heart in any case. It is not even a letter really, more of a note. Her Highness sent one like it to all her former servants who had stayed at home.
Dear Afanasii
All is well with me, and soon I shall have a little baby – a son or a daughter. I often remember our rides together. Do you remember the time you fell and I thought you had been killed? Not long ago I dreamed of you, and you were not a servant but a prince, and you told me something very happy and very nice, only I don’t remember what it was.
Be happy, Afanasii, and remember me sometimes.
That was the letter that I received from her. But there were no more letters because Her Highness passed away during her first labour and for almost thirty years now she has been with the angels, which is certainly a more suitable place for her than our sinful earth.
And so my father was proved right all round, although for a long time, right up until his death, I was unable to forgive him for not letting me go to Germany. Soon after Her Highness’s departure I turned seventeen, and my parents wished to marry me to the daughter of the senior doorman at the Anichkov Palace. Shewas a fine girl, but Iwould have nothing of it. Despite my equable and accommodating character, I would sometimes be overcome by stubbornness like that. My father struggled and struggled with me, and then finally gave up. He thought that in time I would come to my senses. And so I did, but I never did feel the desire for family life.