The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense (2 page)

TABLE TALK, 1882

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY ANTHONY OLCOTT

Grigory Shalvivich Chkhartishvili (1956– ) took the pseudonym Boris Akunin as a tribute to Mikhail Bakunin (B. Akunin), the Russian anarchist, and the poet Anna Akhmatova, known as Akuna. Akunin is also the Japanese word for a bad guy. Born in Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia (then a part of the Soviet Union), his family moved to Moscow in 1958, where he attended the University of Moscow. Although now known worldwide as a writer of distinguished mystery fiction, as well as one of the most widely read authors in Russia (he was named the Russian writer of the year in 2000), he was a magazine editor and is also a linguist, critic, essayist and translator of Japanese. Because he refused to join the Communist Party, he had little success and, turning 40, decided to try writing crime fiction.

In his first novel,
Azazel
(published in English as
The Winter Queen
in 2003), he introduced Erast Fandorin, who has appeared in about a dozen novels. Those which followed his debut and have been translated into English are
Murder on the Leviathan
(2004),
Turkish Gambit
(2005),
The Death of Achilles
(2005),
Special Assignments
(2007),
The State Counsellor
(2008),
He Lover of Death
(2009) and
The Coronation
(2009). Fandorin began his career as a detective in Czarist Russia in 1876 (the year Bakunin died) but the time-frame shifted quickly into the twentieth century, so he is now about 50. He is brave, an accomplished kickboxer, and a dignified gentleman all at the same time, to which Akunin ascribes a large part of his popularity. He has also written several contemporary novels about Sister Pelagia, a crime-solving orthodox nun, including
Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog
(2006),
Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk
(2007) and
Sister Pelagia and the Red Rooster
(2008).

“Table Talk, 1882” was first published in the Russian edition of
Playboy
in 2000; it was first published in English in the February 2004 issue of
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
in a translation by Anthony Olcott.

A
fter the coffee and liqueurs, the conversation turned to mystery. Deliberately not looking at her new guest—a collegiate assessor
*
and the season’s most fashionable man—Lidia Nikolaevna Odintsova, hostess of the salon, remarked, “All Moscow is saying Bismarck must have poisoned poor Skobelev. Can it really be that society is to remain ignorant of the truth behind this horrible tragedy?”

The guest to whom Lidia Nikolaevna was treating her regulars today was Erast Petrovich Fandorin. He was maddeningly handsome, cloaked in an aura of mystery, and a bachelor besides. In order to inveigle Erast Petrovich into her salon, the hostess had had to bring off an extremely complex intrigue consisting of many parts—an undertaking at which she was an unsurpassed mistress.

Her sally was addressed to Arkhip Giatsintovich Mustafin, an old friend of the house. A man of fine mind, Mustafin caught Lidia Nikolaevna’s intention at the first hint and, casting a sideways glance at the young collegiate assessor from beneath his ruddy and lashless eyelids, intoned, “Ah, but I’ve been told our White General
*
may have been destroyed by a fatal passion.”

The others at the table held their breath, as it was rumored that Erast Petrovich, who until quite recently had served in the office of Moscow’s Governor-General as an officer for special missions, had had a most direct relation to the investigation into events surrounding the death of the great commander. However, disappointment awaited the guests, for the handsome Fandorin listened politely to Arkhip Giatsintovich with an air suggesting that the words had nothing whatever to do with him.

This brought about the one situation that an experienced hostess could not permit—an awkward silence. Lidia Nikolaevna knew immediately what to do. Lowering her eyelids, she came to Mustafin’s assistance. “This is so very like the mysterious disappearance of poor Polinka Karakina! Surely you recall that dreadful story, my friend?”

“How could I not?” Arkhip drawled, indicating his gratitude with a quick lift of an eyebrow.

Some of the party nodded as if also remembering, but most of the guests clearly knew nothing about Polinka Karakina. In addition, Mustafin had a reputation as a most exquisite raconteur, such that it would be no penance to hear even a familiar tale from his lips. So here Molly Sapegina, a charming young woman whose husband—such a tragedy—had been killed in Turkestan a year ago, asked with curiosity, “A mysterious disappearance? How interesting!”

Lidia Nikolaevna made as if to accommodate herself to her chair more comfortably, so also letting Mustafin know that she was passing nourishment of the table talk into his capable hands.

“Many of us, of course, still recall old Prince Lev Lvovich Karakin,”—so Arkhip Giatsintovich began his tale. “He was a man of the old sort, a hero of the Hungarian campaign. He had no taste for the liberal vagaries of our late Tsar, and so retired to his lands outside Moscow, where he lived like a nabob of Hindi. He was fabulously wealthy, of an estate no longer found among the aristocracy of today.

“The prince had two daughters, Polinka and Anyuta. I beg you to note, no Frenchified
Pauline
or English
Annie
. The general held the very strictest of patriotic views. The girls were twins. Face, figure, voice, all were identical. They were not to be confused, however, for right here, on her right cheek, Anyuta had a birthmark. Lev Lvovich’s wife had died in childbirth, and the prince did not marry again. He always said that it was a lot of fuss and he had no need—after all, there was no shortage of serving girls. And indeed, he had no shortage of serving girls, even after the emancipation. For, as I said, Lev Lvovich lived the life of a true nabob.”

“For shame. Archie! Without vulgarity, if you please,” Lidia Nikolaevna remonstrated with a stern smile, although she knew perfectly well that a good story is never hurt by “adding a little pepper,” as the English say.

Mustafin pressed his palm to his breast in apology, then continued his tale. “Polinka and Anyuta were far from being horrors, but it would also be difficult to call them great beauties. However, as we all know, a dowry of millions is the best of cosmetics, so that in the season when they debuted, they produced something like a fever epidemic among the eligible bachelors of Moscow. But then the old prince took some sort of offense at our honored Governor-General and withdrew to his piney Sosnovka, never to leave the place again.

“Lev Lvovich was a heavyset fellow, short-winded and red-faced, a man prone to apoplexy, as they say, so there was reason to hope that the princesses’ imprisonment would not last long. However, the years went on, Prince Karakin grew ever fatter, flying into ever more thunderous rages, and evinced no intention whatsoever of dying. The suitors waited and waited and in the end quite forgot about the poor prisoners.

“Although it was said to be in the Moscow region, Sosnovka was in fact in the deep forests of Zaraisky district, not only nowhere near the railroad, but a good twenty versts even from the nearest well-traveled road. The wilderness, in a word. To be sure, it was a heavenly place, and excellently established. I have a little village nearby, so that I often called on the prince as a neighbor. The black grouse shooting there is exquisite, but that spring especially the birds seemed to fly right into one’s sights—I’ve never seen the like in all my days. So, in the end, I became a habitué of the house, which is why the entire tale unfolded right before my eyes.

“The old prince had been trying for some time to construct a belvedere in his park, in the Viennese style. He had first hired a famous architect from Moscow, who had drawn up the plans and even started the construction, but then didn’t finish it—he could not endure the prince’s bullheaded whims and so had departed. To finish the work they summoned an architect of somewhat lower flight, a Frenchman named Renar. Young, and rather handsome. True, he was noticeably lame, but since Lord Byron our young ladies have never counted this as a defect.

“What happened next you can imagine for yourselves. The two maidens had been sitting in the country for a decade now, never once getting out. They both were twenty-eight years old, with absolutely no society of any sort, save for the arrival of the odd fuddy-duddy such as myself, come to hunt. And suddenly—a handsome young man of lively mind, and from Paris at that.

“I have to say that, for all their outward similarity, the two princesses were of totally different temperament and spiritual cast. Anyuta was like Pushkin’s Tatyana, prone to lassitude, a touch melancholic, a little pedantic, and, to be blunt, a bit tedious. As for Polinka, she was frolicsome, mischievous, ‘simple as a poet’s life, sweet as a lover’s kiss,’ as the poet has it. And she was far less settled into old-maidish ways.

“Renar lived there a bit, had a look around, and, naturally enough, set his cap at Polinka. I watched all this from the sidelines, rejoicing greatly, and of course not once suspecting the incredible way in which this pastoral idyll would end. Polinka besotted by love, the Frenchie giddy with the whiff of millions, and Anyuta smoldering with jealousy, forced to assume the role of vessel of common sense. I confess that I enjoyed watching this comedy at least as much as I did the mating dance of the black grouse. The noble father, of course, continued to be oblivious of all this, because he was arrogant and unable to imagine that a Princess Karakina might feel attracted to some lowly sort of architect.

“It all ended in scandal, of course. One evening Anyuta chanced … or perhaps there was nothing chance about it … Anyuta glanced into a little house in the garden, found her sister and Renar there in flagrante delicto, and immediately informed their father. Wrathful Lev Lvovich, who escaped apoplexy only by a miracle, wanted to drive the offender from his estate immediately. The Frenchman was able only with the greatest difficulty to plead to be allowed to remain at the estate until the morning, for the forests around Sosnovka were such that a solitary night traveler could well be eaten by wolves. Had I not intervened, the malefactor would have been turned out of the gates dressed in nothing but his frock coat.

“The sobbing Polinka was sent to her bedroom under the eye of her prudent sister, the architect was sent to his room in one of the wings to pack his suitcase, the servants scattered, and the full brunt of the prince’s wrath came to be borne precisely by your humble servant. Lev Lvovich raged almost until dawn, wearing me out entirely, so that I scarcely slept that night. Nevertheless, in the morning I saw from the window how the Frenchman was hauled off to the station in a plain flat farm cart. Poor fellow, he kept looking up to the windows, but clearly there was no one waving him farewell, or so his terribly droopy look seemed to say.

“Then marvels began to occur. The princesses did not appear for breakfast. Their bedroom door was locked, and there was no response to knocks. The prince began to boil again, showing signs of an inevitable apoplexy. He gave orders to splinter the door, and devil take the hindmost. Which was done, everyone rushed in, and … Good heavens! Anyuta lay in her bed, as if in deepest sleep, while there was no sign of Polinka whatsoever. She had vanished. She wasn’t in the house, she wasn’t in the park … it was as if she had slipped down through the very earth.

“No matter how hard they tried to wake Anyuta, it was to no avail. The family doctor, who had lived there on the estate, had died not long before, and no new one had yet been hired. Thus they had to send to the district hospital. The government doctor came, one of those long-haired fellows. He poked her, he squeezed her, and then he said she was suffering from a most serious nervous disorder. Leave her lie, and she would awake.

“The carter who had hauled off the Frenchman returned. He was a faithful man, his whole life spent at the estate. He swore to heaven that he had carted Renar right to the station and put him on the train. The young gentle-lady had not been with him. And anyway, how could she have gotten past the gate? The park at Sosnovka was surrounded by a high stone wall, and there was a guard at the gate.

“Anyuta did wake the following day, but there was no getting anything from her. She had lost the ability to speak. All she could do was weep, tremble, and rattle her teeth. After a week she began to speak a little, but she remembered nothing of that night. If she were pressed with questions, she would immediately begin to shudder and convulse. The doctor forbade such questions in the very strictest terms, saying that it endangered her life.

“So Polinka had vanished. The prince lost his mind utterly. He wrote repeatedly to the governor and even to the Tsar himself. He roused the police. He had Renar followed in Moscow—but it was all for naught. The Frenchman labored away, trying to find clients, but to no avail—nobody wanted a quarrel with Karakin. So the poor fellow left for his native Paris. Even so, Lev Lvovich continued to rage. He got it into his head that the villain had killed his beloved Polinka and buried her somewhere. He had the whole park dug up, and the pond drained, killing all his priceless carp. Nothing. A month passed, and the apoplexy finally came. The prince sat down to dinner, gave out a sudden wheeze, and
plop!
Facedown in his soup bowl. And no wonder, really, after suffering so much.