Of course I did not know anything about any passionate sounds supposedly produced by Izabella Felitsianovna, and even if I had, I would not have revealed what I knew about such matters. I tried to indicate this by assuming the appropriate expression.
Endlung sighed in disappointment.
‘So it’s a lie? Or are you just being cagey? All right, don’t tell me if you don’t want to, although that’s not the way good comrades behave. Sailors don’t play cagey like that. You know, when you don’t see dry land for months at a time, it’s good to sit in the mess, telling each other all sorts of stories . . .’
There was a mighty rumbling of bells from somewhere far away, as if it was coming from the very bowels of the earth.
‘Half past nine,’ I said excitedly, interrupting the lieutenant. ‘It has begun!’
‘I’mso unlucky,’ Endlung complained bitterly. ‘I’mnever going to see a tsar crowned, even though I am a gentleman of the bedchamber. I was still in the Corps at the last coronation, and I won’t live until the next one – the tsar’s younger than I am. I really wanted to see it! I even have a ticket for a good spot put away. Right opposite the porch of the cathedral. I expect they’re coming out of the Cathedral of the Assumption right now, aren’t they?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘they’ll be coming out of the cathedral later. I know the entire ceremony off by heart. Would you like me to tell you about it?’
‘I should say so!’ the lieutenant exclaimed, pulling his legs up under him, Turkish style.
‘Well then,’ I began, trying to recall the schedule of the coronation. ‘At the present moment Sergii, the Metropolitan of Moscow, is addressing His Majesty and explaining to him the heavy burden of serving as the tsar, and also the great mystery of anointment. In fact he has probably already finished. In the place of honour, by the royal gates, among the gold-embroidered court uniforms and pearl-trimmed ceremonial dresses, there are simple white peasant shirts and modest crimson kokoshnik head-dresses – these are the descendants of the heroic Ivan Susanin, saviour of the Romanov dynasty, who have been brought here from the province of Kostroma. And now the emperor and empress proceed along the scarlet carpet towards the thrones, set high up facing the altar, and a special throne has been installed for Her Majesty the dowager empress. Today the emperor is wearing his Preobrazhensky Regiment uniform with a red sash over his shoulder. The empress is wearing silver-white brocade and a necklace of pink pearls, and her train is carried by four pages of the bedchamber. The tsar’s throne is an ancient piece of work, made for Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and it is known as the Diamond Throne because there are eight hundred and seventy diamonds embedded in it, as well as rubies and pearls. The foremost dignitaries of the empire hold the state regalia on velvet cushions: a sword, a crown, a shield and a sceptre surmounted by the illustrious Orlov diamond.’ I sighed, closed my eyes and saw the sacred stone there in front of me, as large as life. ‘It is absolutely clear, as transparent as a teardrop, with a very slight greenish-blue tinge, like seawater in sunlight. Weighing almost two hundred carats and shaped like half an egg, only larger, there is no more beautiful diamond in the entire world.’
Endlung listened as if he were spellbound. I must confess that I also got carried away and went on for a long time describing to my appreciative listener the entire great ceremony, occasionally checking my watch in order not to get ahead of events. And just at the very moment when I said ‘And now the emperor and empress have come out onto the porch and are performing the low triple bow to the ground before the entire people; and now there will be an artillery salute,’ there really was a rumble of thunder in the distance, and it lasted for several minutes for, according to the ceremonial, the cannon had to fire one hundred and one times.
‘How wonderfully you described it all,’ Endlung said with feeling. ‘As if I had seen it all with my own eyes. I just didn’t understand about the lacquered box and the man turning the handle.’
‘I don’t understand that toowell myself,’ I admitted.’ However, I have seen with my own eyes the announcement in the Court Gazette that the coronation will be recorded using the very latest cinematographic apparatus, for which a special handler has been hired. He will turn the handle, and that will produce something like moving pictures.’
‘What will they think of next?’ said the lieutenant, squinting wistfully at the grey window. ‘Well, now they’ve stopped their clattering, I can hear the gurgling in my belly.’
I remarked guardedly: ‘Yes, indeed. I feel really hungry. Are we really going to die of hunger?’
‘Oh, come on, Ziukin,’ my fellow prisoner protested. ‘We won’t die of hunger; we’ll die of thirst. A man can live two or even three weeks without food. Without water we won’t even last three days.’
Mythroatwas indeed feeling dry, and meanwhile itwas getting rather stuffy in our little cell. Endlung had taken off his woman’s dress a long time ago, leaving himself in nothing but his drawers and a close-fitting undershirt with blue and white stripes – what is known as a singlet. Now he even took off his singlet, and I saw a tattoo on his powerful shoulder – an entirely natural representation of a man’s privates with varicoloured dragonfly wings.
‘They drew that for me in a Singapore brothel,’ the lieutenant explained when he noticed my embarrassed glance. ‘I was still a warrant officer at the time. I did it for a bet, to show off. Now I can never marry a respectable woman. It looks as though I’m going to die a bachelor.’
This last sentence, however, was spoken without the slightest trace of regret.
I spent the entire second half of the day walking around the cell, with the torments of hunger, thirst and inactivity becoming worse and worse all the time. From time to time I tried shouting out of the window or banging on the door, but with no result.
In his gratitude for my description of the coronation, Endlung entertained me with endless stories of shipwrecks and uninhabited islands where sailors of various nationalities had died slow deaths without food or water. It had been dark for a long timewhen he started a heart-rending story about a French officer who was forced to eat his companion in misfortune, the ship’s quarter-master.
‘And what do you think?’ the half-naked gentleman of the bedchamber said brightly. ‘Afterwards Lieutenant Du Bellet testified in court that the quartermaster’s meat was wonderfully tender, with a fine layer of fat, and tasted like young pork. The court acquitted the lieutenant, of course, taking into account the extreme circumstances and also the fact that Du Bellet was the only son of an aged mother.’