HOW SENKA WAS
DEATH’S LOVER
Of all the lessons taught by Masa, Senka paid the most avid attention to that supreme branch of learning – how to conquer the hearts of women.
The Japanese proved to be a genuine expert in this area, both in the language of courtship, and the actual horsing around. No, it would be better to put it this way: in theory and in practice.
For a long time Senka couldn’t understand why the slanty-eye Jap made Madam Borisenko go all bashful like that, why she was so fond of him. One time he came down to breakfast early, before the other guests arrived – and well, well! There was the landlady sitting on Masa’s knees, lavishing kisses on his thick neck, and he was just screwing his eyes up in pleasure. When she saw Senka, she squealed and blushed and darted out of the room like a young miss – but she must have been at least thirty.
Senka couldn’t resist it, so he asked Masa – that very day, during the break after the morning scuffle. Sensei, he said, how come you have such great success with women? Do a poor orphan the kindness of sharing your savvy.
Well, the Japanese read him an entire lecture, it was just like that time George took Senka to his institute. Only Masa was easier to understand than the professor, even if he was from foreign parts.
In summary, the wisdom came out like this.
In order to unlock a woman’s heart, you needed three keys, Masa taught. Confidence in yourself, an air of mystery and the right approach. The first two were easy, because they only depended on you. The third was harder, because you had to work out what sort of woman you were dealing with. This was called knowledge of the soul or, in scientific terms, psychology.
Women, Masa explained, were not all alike. They could be divided into two species.
‘Only two?’ Senka asked in amazement. He was listening very attentively, and really regretted that he didn’t have a piece of paper handy to take notes.
Only two, the sensei repeated gravely. Those who needed a father, and those who needed a son. The important thing was to determine the correct species, and without practice this was not easy, because women loved to pretend. But once you had determined this, the rest was simple. With a woman of the first species you had to be a father: not ask her about her life, and in general talk as little as possible –show her the strictness of a father. With a woman of the second you had to make sad eyes, sigh and look up at the sky all the time, so she would understand that you would be completely lost without her.
But if you did not want a woman’s soul, and her body was enough, the teacher continued, then it was more straightforward.
Senka exclaimed eagerly: ‘Yes, yes, that’s enough!’
In that case, Masa said with a shrug, you didn’t need words at all. Breathe loudly, make eyes like this, don’t answer clever questions. Don’t show her your soul. Otherwise it’s not fair – you don’t want the woman’s soul, after all. For her you must be a rittur animur, not a person.
‘Who?’ asked Senka, confused at first. ‘Ah, a little animal.’
Masa repeated the phrase with relish. Yes, he said, a rittur animur. Who will come running, sniff her under the tail and climb up on her straight away. Everybody wants women to be shy and seem virtuous – women get fed up of that. But why be shy of a little animal? It’s only an animal, after all.
The sensei spent a long time teaching Senka about this kind of thing, and even though Senka didn’t take notes, he remembered every last word.
And the very next day, an appropriate opportunity for a practical lesson came along.
George invited him to go to Sokolniki Park for a picnic (that was when you went into the woods and sat on the grass and ate with your hands, without making any fuss). He said he would bring along two girl students. He’d been after one of them for ages and, he said, the other will be just right for you (by that time they’d already drunk to Bruderschaft and were on intimate terms). A modern miss, he said, with no prejudices.
‘A tramp, is she?’ Senka asked.
‘Not exactly,’ George answered evasively. ‘But you’ll see for yourself.’
They got into a fancy gig, and off they went. Senka soon realised the student had bamboozled him. George’s girl was plump and jolly, and she kept laughing all the time, but he’d lumbered his comrade with some kind of dried fish with glasses and tight-pursed lips. And he’d done it on purpose, too, so this miserable specimen wouldn’t interfere with him trying to get off with her girlfriend.
While they rode along, Four-eyes yammered on about things Senka didn’t understand. Nietzsche-schmietzsche, Marx-schmarx.
Senka wasn’t listening, he was thinking about something else. According to Masa’s science of women, if you made the right approach, with psychology, you could get any woman, even a bighead like this one. What was it Masa had taught him? Simple women love gallant manners and clever words, but with the educated ones, on the contrary, you had to be simpler and rougher.
Maybe he should try it –just to check.
So he did.
She said: ‘Tell me, Semyon, what do you think about the theory of social evolution?’
He didn’t say a word, just laughed.
She started getting nervous and batting her eyelids. I suppose, she said, you probably support the violent overthrow of social institutions. And he just cocked his head and pulled a face – that was his only response.
In the park, when George took his gigglebox for a ride in a boat (Senka’s girl didn’t want to go, said the water made her feel dizzy), the time came for action.
Senka’s mysterious behaviour had driven the young lady into a real state – she kept jabbering on and on, just couldn’t stop. In the middle of an endless speech about someone called Proudhon and someone called Bakunin, he leaned forward, put his arms round Four-eyes’ bony shoulders and kissed her real hard on the lips. Didn’t she squeal! She pushed her hands against his chest, and Senka almost let go – he was no rapist, no sirrah. He was bracing himself for a slap round the face – though with those dainty little hands, she probably wouldn’t even make him flinch.
She resisted all right, but she didn’t push him off. Senka was surprised, and he carried on kissing her, feeling her ribs with his hands and unfastening the buttons on the back of her dress: maybe she’d come to her senses?
The girl student murmured: ‘What are you doing, Semyon, what is this . . . Is it true what George says, that you’re . . . Ah, what are you doing! . . . That you’re a proletarian?’
Senka growled to make himself seem more like an animal and got really cheeky, slipping his hand in under her dress where it was unbuttoned. The young lady’s back was bare at the top, where her backbone stuck out, but lower down he could feel silk underwear.
‘You’re insane,’ she said, panting. Her specs had slipped offside-ways and her eyes were half closed.
Senka ran his hands over her this way and that for about a minute, just to make absolutely sure that Masa’s theory was correct, and then backed off. She was awfully bony, but then he hadn’t started this out of mischief – it was a scientific experiment, as they said in cultured circles.
While they were driving back from Sokolniki, the scholarly girl didn’t open her mouth once – she kept staring hard at Senka, as if she was expecting something, but he wasn’t thinking of her at all, he was having a real epiphany.
So that was the power of learning for you! Knowledge could overcome any obstacle!
The next day at first light he was waiting at the door for Masa.
When his teacher arrived, he led him straight to his room, didn’t even let him take his tea.
And he begged Masa in the name of Christ the Lord: Teach me, Sensei, how to win the heart of the creature I adore.
Masa was fine about it, he didn’t mock Senka’s feelings. He told him to explain in detail what kind of creature they were dealing with. Senka told him everything he knew about Death, and at the end he asked in a trembling voice: ‘Well, Uncle Masa, is there really no way I can smite a swan like that with Cupid’s arrow?’
His teacher folded his hands on his belly and smacked his lips. Why, he asked, is there no way? For the true admirer all things are possible. And then he said something Senka didn’t understand: ‘Death-san is a woman of the moon.’ There are women of the sun and women of the moon, he explained, they’re born into the world like that. I prefer women of the sun, he said, but that’s a matter of taste. Women of the moon, like your Death-san, he said, have to be approached like this – and he went through the whole thing with Senka, blow by blow, may God grant him the very best of health.
That very evening Senka set out to see Death – and seek his good fortune.
He didn’t dress the way he’d had been planning to earlier – in a white tie with a bouquet of chrysanthemums. He kitted himself out in line with Masa’s teachings.
He put on the old shirt that Death had once darned for him, and deliberately tore it under one arm. He bought a pair of patched boots at the flea market, and sewed a patch on a pair of trousers that were perfectly sound.
When he took a look at himself in the mirror, it even made him feel all weepy. He was just sorry that he’d put that tooth in the day before – the gap would have made him look even more pitiful. But he reckoned that if he didn’t open his mouth too wide, the gold wouldn’t glitter too brightly.
Everything was washed and clean, and he’d been to the bathhouse too. Masa had impressed that on him: ‘Poor, but crean, they don’ rike dirty admirers.’
Senka got out of the cab on the corner of Solyanka Street and walked up along the Yauza Boulevard. He knocked loudly, but his heart was pounding away even louder.
Death opened the door without calling out, just like she did the time before.
Senka thought she was glad to see him, and the vice gripping his heart loosened a bit. Remembering that tooth, he didn’t open his mouth – anyway, the sensei had told him not to wag his jaw unless he really needed to. He was supposed to gaze at her with a pure, trusting look and keep blinking – that was all.
They went into the room and sat down on the sofa, side by side (Senka thought this was a good sign).
He’d had a special haircut done on Neglinnaya Street – ‘mon ange’, it was called: mop-headed and fluffy on top, with a strand hanging down over his forehead, pathetic but appealing.
‘I’ve been thinking about you,’ Death said. ‘Wondering if you were alive, if you were starving. Don’t stay here long. Someone might tell the Prince. That savage is furious with you.’
Senka had an answer ready. He looked at her through his flaxen strand and sighed. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye to you. I’m not going to get out of this alive anyway, they’ll find me and kill me. Let them kill me, I can’t bear to be involved in their murderous doings. It contradicts my principles.’
Death was really surprised: ‘Where did you pick up fancy words like that?’
Ah, he’d said it all wrong. This was no time to be clever and show off his learning, he had to play on her pity.
‘I’m famished, Death, from all this wandering around like a vagabond,’ Senka said, and he fluttered his eyelashes – could he coax out a tear? ‘My conscience won’t let me thieve and I’m ashamed to go begging. The nights have turned cold, it’s autumn already. Let me warm up a bit and have a bite to eat and I’ll go on my way.’
He was even moved to pity himself, he sobbed out loud. It had worked! Death’s eyes were wet and gleaming too. She stroked his hair and jumped up to put food on the table.
Even though Senka was full (before he came out, he’d put away a plate of poulardes and artichokes), he still guzzled the fine white bread with sausage and gulped the milk down noisily. Death sat there, resting her cheek on her hand. Sighing.
‘You’re really nice and clean,’ she said in a soulful voice. ‘And your shirt’s fresh. Who washed it?’
‘Who’d wash for me? I get by on my own,’ said Senka, looking at her with his eyes glowing. ‘In the evening I wash my shirt and pants in the river, and they’re dry by morning. ’Course, it’s a bit chilly with no clothes on, but I have to look out for myself. Only the shirt’s getting a bit shabby. I wouldn’t mind, but it’s a pity about your needlework.’ He stroked the flower sewn on his shirt and turned weepy. ‘Look, the shirt’s torn under my arm.’
Just like she was supposed to, Death said: ‘Take it off, I’ll sew it up.’
He took it off.
Mamselle Loretta, the one from the practical class, had said: You’ve got lovely shoulders, sweetheart, pure sugar, and your skin’s so soft and tender, I could just eat it. So now Senka straightened up his sugary shoulders and hugged his sides like a poor orphan.
Death’s needle flashed in and out, but she kept glancing at Senka’s creamy white skin.
‘There was only one moment in my whole miserable life, in all my wretched destiny,’ Senka said in a quiet, soulful voice. ‘When you kissed me, a poor orphan . . .’
‘Really?’ Death said in astonishment; she even stopped sewing. ‘That was such great happiness for you?’
‘There’s no words to say what it. . .’
She put down the shirt. ‘Lord,’ she said, ‘then let me kiss you again, what’s it to me?’
He turned all pink (that happened quite naturally).
‘Ah, then I won’t be afraid to snuff it
But he kept his hands to himself for the time being and just fluttered his eyes – timidly, not brazenly.
Death walked up to him and leaned down. Her eyes were tender and moist. She stroked his neck and his shoulder, then pressed her lips against Senka’s so tenderly, so kindly.
He felt like he’d been tossed into a hot stove, right into the flame. He forgot all about his sensei’s teachings and jerked upwards towards Death, hugged her as tight as he could and tried to keep kissing her, but in his passion, all he could do was breathe in the minty, dizzying scent of her hair – ah! ah! – and he couldn’t breathe it out, he wanted to keep it in.
And something happened, honest to God, it did! Not for long, only a few little seconds, but Death’s body responded, it was filled with the same heat, and her gentle, motherly kiss was suddenly firm, greedy and demanding, and her hands slipped round Senka’s back.
But those impossible seconds ended – she unhooked Senka’s arms and sprang back.
‘No,’ she said, ‘no. You little devil, don’t tempt me. It’s impossible, and that’s an end of it.’
She started shaking her head, like she was trying to drive away some kind of phantasmagorical vision (that was what people said when they saw something that wasn’t really there).
‘Ooh, you snake, only knee high to a grasshopper, and already as cunning as the devil. You’ll make the girls cry all right.’
But Senka was still in the stove, he still hadn’t realised it was over, and he reached out to hug Death again. She didn’t move away, but she didn’t respond either – it was just like hugging a statue.
‘Ah, so that’s who you do it with, you whore!’
Senka looked round and froze in horror.
The Prince was standing in the doorway with his handsome mug all twisted out of shape and his eyes glittering. Of course – the street door wasn’t locked, so he’d just walked in, and they hadn’t heard anything.
‘Who’s this you’ve taken as a lover, you rotten bitch! A whelp! A lousy little tapeworm! Just trying to mock me, are you?’
He took a step towards Senka, grabbed his numb victim by the neck and jerked him up so that he had to stand on tiptoe.
‘I’ll kill you,’ he said. ‘I’ll wring your neck.’
And Senka could see he was going to wring it, there and then. At least there was one good thing about that, Senka wouldn’t suffer. The Prince could have done what he did with that huckster, cut off his ears and stuck them in his mouth, or even worse, gouged his eyes out.
Senka turned his eyes away so as not to see the Prince’s face – he was terrified enough without that. He decided it would be better to look at Death in his final moment, before his soul went flying out of his body.
And what he saw then was wonderful, miraculous: Death picking up the jug with the leftover milk and smashing it down on the bandit’s head.
The Prince was startled. He let go of Senka and sank to the floor. Holding his head in his hands, with blood and milk running through his fingers.
Death shouted: ‘Don’t just stand there! Run.’
And she pushed the shirt she hadn’t finished darning into his hand.
But Senka didn’t run. Someone else, like a second Senka, said from inside him: ‘You come with me. He’ll kill you.’
‘He won’t kill me,’ she answered, and so calmly that Senka believed her straight away.
The Prince turned his face towards Senka. His eyes were murky and wild. He jumped to his feet with a jerk, then staggered and clutched at the table – he hadn’t properly recovered his wits and his legs wouldn’t hold him. But he managed to wheeze out: ‘I’ll find you, if I have to turn Moscow upside down. Even underground, I’ll find you. I’ll rip your sinews out with my teeth!’
He was so terrifying Senka just screamed out loud. He shot off as fast as his legs would carry him, tumbled off the porch arse over tip, then dashed this way and that, wondering which way to run.
The second Senka, the one buried farther down, proved cleverer and stronger than the first. Go where the Prince told you to go, it said, go underground. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to emigrate from Moscow. The Prince would never calm down now until he’d done for the poor orphan.
And if that was how it was looking, he’d better put some money away.
He paid another visit to the treasure vault. And he took a fair lot this time, five rods. He’d decided not to haggle with the jeweller and let him have them for a thousand each. Ashot Ashotovich was welcome to his good fortune.
Only Samshitov never got the chance to relish Senka’s generosity.
When Senka came out on to Maroseika Street, he saw two constables in front of the jewellery shop and inside – he could see through the display window – there was a whole crowd of blue uniforms.
Oh blimey! Ashot Ashotovich had traded his last rod of government silver. Someone must have squealed on him. Or maybe Judge Kuvshinnikov was even sharper than he seemed. He’d found out which of the numismatists had picked up Yauza rods and enquired who they bought them from –just like that.
But then, that wasn’t so terrible, was it? Senka hadn’t given the judge his address. And apart from Senka, no one knew where the treasure was.
The coppers might as well try to catch the wind.
Ah, but no! He’d told the Armenian about Madam Borisenko’s boarding house. Big nose would give him away, he was bound to!
Senka didn’t hang about making himself obvious in the wrong place. He ran to get a cab.
He had to move out of the boarding house before he was nabbed.
The outlines had emerged of a tendency towards a deterioration in the conditions of Senka’s existence, or, to put it simply, things were totally loused up: the Prince was on his tail, so were the police, and there was no one to sell the rods to, but Senka was feeling so cock-a-hoop that he couldn’t care less.
The hoofs clip-clopped along the road, the horse twitched its tail, the headwind ruffled the final traces of ‘mon ange’ from his hair and, in spite of everything, life was wonderful. Senka bobbed along on the seat of the cab, feeling perfectly content.
Maybe not for long, only a few moments, but he had been Death’s lover, and almost for real.