‘Burning so bright in the darkness …’ I said and rubbed the bridge of my nose. ‘Tiger, tiger …’
‘Quoting poetry now, are you?’ asked Svetlana, glancing out of the kitchen.
‘What do you mean?’
‘ “Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes?” Blake. William Blake. His poem The Tiger.’
‘You wouldn’t know if he happened to be acquainted with Charles Darwin’s grandfather, would you?’ I asked.
‘Erasmus?’ Svetlana asked brightly. ‘The one who was an Other?’
I nodded and got up off the sofa.
‘He was more than a mere chance acquaintance. Blake even illustrated his books. Something about the love of plants.’
‘So Blake didn’t just write poetry?’
‘Well, actually he illustrated heaps of books and is just as famous as an artist as he is as a poet. And, by the way, he wasn’t an Other in the literal sense of the word, but he did possess the rare ability—’ Svetlana suddenly stopped dead.
‘Well?’ I asked wearily, opening the cupboard that Nadya was strictly forbidden to touch. Locks would be useless against her, unfortunately, but Nadya’s a bright girl and she keeps her word.
‘He could see Others. Dark Ones and Light Ones.’
‘Like my polizei acquaintance,’ I said. ‘Svetlana, I’ve got to go to work.’
‘Are you going to have some borsch?’ my wife asked.
I just sighed as I stuck all sorts of magical trinkets into my various pockets. I was a hundred per cent certain that none of these amulets would actually be any use to me, but the habit was too strong.
‘Anton …’ Svetlana called to me when I was already in the doorway.
‘What?’
‘I once left the Watch, so that we could be together.’
‘I remember.’
‘I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time …’
I looked at her. Svetlana paused for a moment, then lowered her eyes.
‘Take care.’
I raced up to Gesar’s office on the third floor like a lunatic. Considering that I was waving a book on the childhood of outstanding Others in the air, I must have looked like someone who has discovered a coded prophecy for the next two hundred years in Pinocchio, together with a report of an encounter with aliens from another planet, the formula of a cure for the common cold and an obscene acrostic at the beginning of chapter two.
‘Where’s the fire?’ asked Gesar.
He was sitting on the edge of the desk, and the boy-Prophet was lounging in his office chair. The chair was rather spacious for the boy, to put it mildly. Judging from the fact that Kesha was sitting in a clumsy imitation of the simplest meditation pose, Gesar must have been trying to teach him to control his gift. There was no one else there.
‘The Tiger!’ I exclaimed wildly.
‘He’s far away,’ Gesar replied calmly. ‘I believe we’ll be okay until the morning.’
I cited Blake’s poem:
‘You could at least quote the entire poem,’ Gesar replied, and continued:
Kesha gaped at us wide-eyed. Nowadays you don’t often see two grown men suddenly start reciting verse. Then he closed his eyes again. Such diligence – incredible!
‘Is the full version any more help to us?’ I asked sullenly.
‘I just think it suggests that we have time until the morning,’ Gesar explained.
‘You know everything already,’ I said. ‘The Prophet Erasmus Darwin. The only Prophet who ever got away from the Twilight Creature.’
‘I don’t know,’ Gesar replied simply. ‘That’s one version of the story. But I regard it as poetic licence in an account of one of the standard squabbles between the Light Ones and Dark Ones of Ireland.’
‘Is the Tiger something like a Mirror?’ I asked.
‘No. By no means is every Prophet pursued by Twilight Creatures. And they’re not concerned in the least about the balance between the Watches. If … if the legends are to be believed … they try to prevent the utterance of prophecies that foretell unprecedented disasters and catastrophes. And they eliminate anyone who stands in their way …’
‘You knew,’ I said. ‘You knew everything, Boris Ignatievich …’
‘I didn’t know!’ Gesar retorted gruffly. ‘Do you think I’m some kind of computer that remembers everything? Zabulon hinted at Twilight Creatures. I’d never heard of anything of the kind, but I put on a brave face – as if I understood what he was talking about. I set the analysts onto it, they combed the databases and half an hour ago they came up with the same book you have there … plus two hundred pages of analysis and theories. Was it Tolik who tipped you off? I’ll strip him of his bonuses until the end of the century!’
‘No one leaked any information to me,’ I said, leaping to my friend’s defence. ‘The book’s on Nadya’s extracurricular reading list and she came to me with a question. I read it. And after that … after that we guessed the whole thing as a family. About Erasmus, about Blake and the Tiger …’
‘Apparently the Twilight Creature didn’t come to Erasmus in human form,’ Gesar laughed. ‘And afterwards he said something about it to someone he knew, who wasn’t an Other, but could see …’
‘Boris Ignatievich, we have to ask the Inquisition for help,’ I said. ‘If all this about the Tiger is true, then how can we—’
Gesar didn’t let me finish. ‘They refused, Anton.’
‘What?’ I asked, bewildered.
‘The recommendation of the Inquisition is not to get involved in a conflict and let the Tiger take the boy.’
That was the first time he pronounced the word ‘Tiger’ so that it sounded like a name.
‘But he …’ I said, glancing sideways at Kesha.
‘Yes, the Tiger will kill him,’ Gesar said with a nod.