HOW SENKA GOT TO
KNOW DEATH
It happened about ten days after Senka saw Death that first time.
He was hanging about on the Yauza Boulevard, in front of her house, spitting at the bollard they tied the horses to and staring at the half-open windows.
He already knew where she lived, the lads had shown him and, to tell the truth, this wasn’t the first day he’d spent cooling his heels here. Twice he’d been lucky and caught glimpses of her from the distance. One time, four days before, Death had come out of the house wearing a black shawl on her head and a black dress, got into the fancy gig that was waiting for her and driven off to church for mass. And just yesterday he’d seen her arm in arm with the Prince: dressed up like a lady, wearing a hat with a feather in it. Her beau was taking her somewhere – to a restaurant, maybe, or the theatre.
He took a gander at the Prince at the same time. Well, what was there to say, a superb figure of a man. After all, he was the most important hold-up artist in all of Moscow, and that’s no small potatoes. The governor-general, Simeon Alexandrovich, had it easy, he was born the tsar’s uncle, no wonder he was a governor and a general, but just you try climbing up to the top of the heap and making yourself mister big, number one, out of all the crooks in Moscow. It was a real rags-to-riches story. And his sidekicks were all really grand lads, everyone said so. They said some of them were really young too, not much older than Senka. Would you believe some people’s luck, ending up in the Prince’s gang straight off like that, when you were still green and sappy! They had respect, any girls they wanted, more money than they could ever count, and they dressed up like real fancy dandies.
When Senka saw him, the famous bandit was wearing a red silk shirt, a lemon satin waistcoat, and a crimson velvet frock coat. He had a boater perched on the back of his head, gold rings with precious stones on his fingers and calf boots that shone like mirrors. A real sight for sore eyes! A dashing light-brown forelock, blue eyes with a bold stare to them, a gold crown glinting in his red teeth, and a chin like chiselled stone, with a dimple right in the middle of it. They’re not just a couple – a real picture, that’s what they are, Senka thought, and sighed.
Not that he had any stupid dreams in his head that should give him reason to sigh, God forbid. He wasn’t trying to get Death to notice him either. He just wanted to get another look at her, so he could properly make out what was so unusual about her and why his insides clenched up tight, like a fist, the moment he laid eyes on her. So he’d been wearing down his soles here on the boulevard for days now. As soon as he finished thieving with the lads, he went straight to the Yauza.
He’d examined the house thoroughly from the outside. And he knew what it was like on the inside too. The plumber Parkhom, who fixed Death’s washbasin, told him the Prince had set up his lady love in real classy style, even laid in water pipes. If Parkhom wasn’t lying, then Death had a special room with a big china tub that was called a bath, and the hot water flowed into it straight out of a pipe, from this boiler up on the wall – gas-heated, it was. Death got washed in that tub almost every day that God sent. Senka imagined her sitting there all pink and steamy, scrubbing her shoulders with the sponge, and the fantasy made him feel all hot and steamy too.
The house was pretty impressive from the outside too. There used to be some general’s manor house here, but it burned down, and just this wing was left. It was pretty small, with only four windows along the boulevard. But this was a special spot, right smack on the boundary line between the Khitrovka slums and the well-heeled Serebryaniki district. On the other side of the Yauza, the houses were taller and cleaner, with fancier plastering, but here on the Khitrovka side, they weren’t so smart. Like the horses they sold at the horse market: look at it from the rump, and it seems like a horse all right, but from any other angle it’s definitely an ass.
And so the front of Death’s house that overlooked the boulevard was neat and dignified, like, but the back led out into a really rotten passage, and a gateway only spitting distance from Rumyantsev’s flophouse. You could see what a handy home the Prince had found for his girl – if anything happened, if he was ambushed at her place, he could dash out the back way, or even jump out of a window and make a beeline for the flophouse, and there was no way anyone could ever find him in all the underground collidors and passages there.
But from the boulevard, where the well-bred people strolled about between the trees, you couldn’t see the back passage, let alone Rumyantsev’s place. Khitrovkans couldn’t go out past the fancy railings – the coppers would sweep them up with their broom in a flash and stick them in their rubbish cart. Even here, on the Khitrovka waterside, Senka tried not to make himself too obvious, he stuck close to the wall of the house. He was behaving himself proper too, not like some kind of riff-raff, but even so, Boxman spotted him with his eagle eye as he was walking past and stopped.
‘What are you doing skulking over there?’ he asked. ‘You better watch yourself, Speedy, I’m warning you.’
Now that was him all over! He already knew who Senka was and what his moniker was, even though Senka was still new in Khitrovka. That was Boxman for you.
‘Don’t you dare nick a thing,’ he said, ‘you’re out of your jurisdiction, because this ain’t Khitrovka, it’s a civil promenade. You look out, young Speedy, you sly little monkey, I’ve got you under special observation until the first contravention of legality, and if I catch you, or even suspect you, I’ll issue you a reprimand across that ugly mug of yours, fine you a clout round the ear and sanction you round the ribs with my belt.’
‘I’m not up to nothing, Uncle Boxman,’ Senka whined, pulling a face. ‘I just, you know, wanted to take the air.’
And for that he got a cast-iron mitt across the back of his head, smack crunch between the ears.
‘I’ll teach you what for, snarling “Boxman” like that. What a damned liberty! I’m Ivan Fedotovich to you, all right?’
And Senka said meekly:
‘All right, Uncle Ivan Fedotovich.’
Boxman stopped scowling then. ‘That’s right, you snot-nosed little monkey.’ And he walked on – big, solemn and slow, like a barge floating off down the Moscow river.
So Boxman went and Senka stayed right where he was, looking. But now he wanted more so he tried to figure out how to get Death to come to the window.
He had nothing better to do, so he took the green beads out of his pocket, the ones he’d snaffled just that morning, and started studying them.
What happened with the beads was this.
As Senka was walking away from Sukharevka through the little lanes around Sretenka Street. . .
No, first you need to be told why he went to Sukharevka. Now that was really something to be proud of. . .
Senka didn’t just go off to Sukharevka for no reason, he went on good honest business – to get even with his Uncle Zot. He lived according to the laws of Khitrovka now, and those laws said you should never let a bad man get away with anything. You had to settle every score, and it was best to pay it back with interest, otherwise you weren’t really one of the lads – just some wet-tailed little minnow.
So Senka set out, and Mikheika the Night-Owl tagged along as well, to keep him company. If not for Mikheika, he probably wouldn’t have dared try anything like that in broad daylight, he would have done the job at night, but now he had no choice, he had to play the hard man.
And it all turned out fine, really grand in fact.
They hid in the attic of the Möbius pawnshop, opposite his uncle’s shop. Mikheika just sat and gawped, it was Senka that did everything, with his own two hands.
He took out a lead pellet, aimed his catapult and shot it right into the middle of the shop window – crash! Uncle Zot had three of those huge glass windowpanes with ‘Haberdashery’ written across them in silver letters. And he was very proud of them. Sometimes he would send Senka to scrub those rotten panes as many as four times a day, so Senka had a score to settle with the windows as well.
The jangling and the spray of broken glass brought Uncle Zot running out of the shop in his apron, holding a tray of Swedish ivory buttons in one hand and a spool of thread in the other – he’d been serving a customer all right. He turned his head this way and that, and his jaw dropped open – he just couldn’t figure out how this awful thing could have happened to his window.
Then Senka fired again – and the second window shattered into jagged splinters. His uncle dropped his wares, flopped down on his knees and started collecting up the splinters of glass, like a total fool. It was just hilarious!
But Senka already had the third window in his sights. And the way it smashed was a real delight. There you go, dear Uncle Zot, take that, for all the care and affection you gave a poor orphan.
Feeling all giddy, Senka fired the last pellet, the biggest and heaviest, right at the top of his uncle’s head. The bloodsucker collapsed off his knees onto his side and just lay there, with his eyes popping out of his head. He stopped yelling completely – he was so astonished by it all.
Mikheika was cock-a-hoop at Senka’s daring: he whistled through four fingers and hooted like an owl – he was great at that, that was how he got the moniker Night-Owl.
And on the way back, as they were walking along Asheulov Lane, up behind Sretenka Street (Senka all calm and composed, Mikheika rattling away twenty to the dozen in admiration), they saw two carriages in front of some house there. They were carrying in suitcases with foreign labels on them, and some kind of boxes and crates. It seemed like someone had just arrived and was moving in there.
Senka was on a roll. ‘Shall we lift something?’ he said, nodding at the luggage. Everybody knew the best time for thieving was during a fire or when someone was moving house.
Mikheika was keen to show what he was made of too. ‘Yeah, why not?’ he said
The first to walk in through the doorway was the gent. Senka didn’t really get a proper look at him – all he saw were the broad shoulders and straight back, and a grey-haired temple under a top hat. But from the sound of his voice the gent wasn’t old, even if he did have grey hair. He shouted from inside the hallway, with a slight stammer.
‘Masa, t-take care they don’t break the headlamp!’
The servant was left in charge. A Chinee, or some kind of Turk-estani, he was – squat and bandy-legged with narrow eyes. And he was wearing a weird outfit – a bowler hat and a shantung silk three-piece, and instead of shoes on his feet he had white stockings and funny wooden sandals like little benches. An Oriental all right.
The porters with their leather aprons and their badges (that meant they were from the station, so the gent must have arrived by railway) carried all sorts of stuff into the building: bundles of books, some wheels with rubber tyres and shiny spokes, a shiny copper lamp, pipes with hoses.
Standing beside the Chinee, or whoever he was, was a man with a beard, obviously the landlord of the apartment, watching politely. He asked about the wheels: what did Mr Nameless need them for, and was he a wheel-maker by any chance?
The Oriental didn’t answer, just shook his fat face.
One of the drivers, clearly fishing for a tip, barked at Senka and Mikheika: ‘Hey, keep out of it, you little cretins!’
Let him yell, he’d never be bothered to get down off the box.
Mikheika asked in a whisper: ‘Speedy, what shall we nick? A suitcase?’
‘A suitcase? Don’t be daft,’ Senka hissed, curling up his lip. ‘Take a gander at the tight hold he’s keeping on that stuff.’
The Chinee was holding a travelling bag and a little bundle –chances were they were the most valuable things, which couldn’t be trusted to anyone else.
Mikheika hissed back: ‘But how do we get it? Why would he let go, if he’s holding on so tight?’
Senka thought about that for a bit and had an idea.
‘Just don’t you start snickering, Night-Owl, keep a straight face.’
He picked a small stone up off the ground, flung it and knocked the Oriental’s hat straight off his head – smack! Then he stuck his hands in his pockets and opened his mouth – a real angel, he was.
When Slanty-Eyes looked round, Senka said to him, very respectful, like:
‘Uncle Chinaman, your hat’s fallen off.’
And good for Mikheika – he didn’t even twitch, just stood there, batting his eyelids.
Righto, now let’s see what this pagan puts down on the step so he can pick up his hat – the travelling bag or the bundle.
The bundle. The travelling bag stayed in the servant’s left hand.
Senka was at the ready. He leapt forward like a cat pouncing on a sparrow, grabbed the bundle and shot off down the lane as fast as his legs could carry him.
Mikheika set off too, hooting like an eagle owl and chortling so much he dropped his cap. But it was a rubbishy old cap anyway, with a cracked peak, he wouldn’t miss it.
The Chinee stuck with them, though, he didn’t fall behind for a long while. Mikheika soon darted off into a gateway, so the Oriental had only Senka to chase after. He obviously wasn’t going to give up. Those little wooden benches kept clacking along the roadway, getting closer all the time.
By the corner of Sretenka Street, Senka felt like flinging that damn bundle away (he wasn’t feeling quite so bold without Mikheika), but then there was a crash behind him – the Chinee had caught one of his stupid sandals on a bottle and gone sprawling flat out.
Oho!
Senka carried on, dodging and twisting through the alleys for a while, before he stopped and untied the bundle to see what precious treasures were hidden inside. He found a set of round green stones on a string. They didn’t look like much, but who could tell, maybe they were worth a thousand.
He took them to a dealer he knew. The dealer fingered them and tried gnawing on them. ‘Cheap stuff,’ he said. ‘Chinese marble, jade stone it’s called. I can give you seventy kopecks.’
Senka didn’t take the seventy kopecks, he kept them for himself instead. The way those little stones clicked together was much too dainty altogether.
But never mind the blasted stones, we were talking about Death.
So, Senka was mooning around in front of the house, still trying to think of a way to lure Death to the window.
He took out the string of green beads and clicked them together –clack, clack, clack, they went. Like little china hammers, he thought, but what kind of hammers could you make out of china?
Then suddenly something clicked inside his head – clear and crisp just like those beads. Right, that’ll catch her eye! Dead simple.
He looked round and picked up a piece of glass. Then he caught a ray of late summer sunlight and shot a bright beam in through the gap in the curtains.
And who’d have thought it? Less than a minute later the curtains parted and Death herself glanced out.
Senka was so dazzled by the suddenness of it all, he forgot to hide the hand that was holding the piece of glass and the patch of sunlight started dancing about on Death’s face. She put her hand over her eyes, peered out and said:
‘Hey, boy!’
Senka took offence: I ain’t a boy, he thought. I ain’t even dressed like one: with my shirt and my belt, corduroy pants, these fancy new boots and a decent cap too, I took it off a drunk just two days back.
‘You can stick your boy up your . . . joy,’ Senka hissed back, although he didn’t like rude words, and almost never used them –they used to laugh at him for that. But this time the phrase just slipped out by itself – he was so blinded by the sight of Death, as if she was the one taunting him with the patch of sunlight.
She didn’t get embarrassed or angry – no, she just laughed.
‘Well, we’ve got a real Pushkin here. Do you live in Khitrovka? Come in, I’ve got a job for you. Come in, don’t be afraid, it’s not locked.’
‘What’s to be afraid of?’ Senka muttered, and set off towards the porch. He couldn’t rightly tell whether he was dreaming or awake. But his heart was hammering away.
He didn’t get a proper look at what Death had in her porch. She was standing in the doorway of the sitting room, leaning against the doorpost. Her face was in shadow, but her eyes still sparkled, like the light glinting on a river at night.
‘Well, what d’you want?’ Senka asked even more rudely, he was feeling so nervous.
He didn’t even look at the lady of the house, just stared down at his feet or glanced around.
It was a fine room. Big and bright. With three white doors, one across from the entrance and two more, one on each side. A Dutch stove with tiles, embroidered doilies all over the place, and the tablecloth was covered in fancy needlework too, so bright it was almost dazzling. The pattern was amazing: butterflies, birds of paradise, flowers too. Then he took another look and saw that all the butterflies and birds, and even the flowers, had human faces – some were crying, some were laughing, and some were snarling viciously with their sharp teeth.
Death asked him: ‘Do you like it? That’s my embroidery work. I have to do something with my time.’
He could feel her looking him up and down, and he desperately wanted to take a look at her from close up, but he was afraid – even without looking at her he was feeling hot one minute and cold the next.
Eventually he got up the courage to raise his head. Death was the same height as him. And he was surprised to see her eyes were black all over, like a gypsy girl’s.
‘What are you staring at, freckle-face? Why did you shine sunbeam light in through my window? I spotted you ages ago, hanging around outside. Fallen in love, have you?’
Then Senka saw her eyes weren’t completely black, they had thin rims of blue round them, and he guessed her pupils were open wide, the way his uncle’s favourite cat’s eyes went when they gave him valerian to drink for a laugh. And that eerie black stare was really frightening.
‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you.’
And he twisted his bottom lip up into a sneer. She laughed again.
‘Ah, you’re not just freckly, you’re gap-toothed too. You don’t want me, but maybe you wouldn’t mind some of my money. Just run an errand for me, I’ll tell you where to go. It’s not far, just the other side of Pokrovka Street. And when you get back, I’ll give you a rouble.’
Senka was so shaken, he blurted out:
‘I don’t want your rouble either.’
He was petrified, or he’d have come up with some smarter answer.
‘Then what do you want? Why are you skulking around outside? I swear to God, you’re in love. Come on, look at me.’ And she took hold of his chin with her fingers.
He slapped her hand away – don’t you paw me!
‘I ain’t in love with you, no way. What I want from you is . . . different.’ He had no idea what to come out with, and then suddenly, like an inspiration from God, it just slipped out. ‘I want to join the Prince’s gang. Put in a word for me. Then I’ll do anything for you.’
He was really pleased with himself for saying something so smart. For starters, it wasn’t anything shameful – and she’d been going on and on: ‘You’re in love, you’re in love’. And what’s more, he’d shown he was someone to be taken seriously, not just some young scruff. And then – what if she really did set him up with the Prince? Wouldn’t Prokha be green with envy!
Her face went dead and she turned away.
‘That’s no place for you. So that’s all the little beast wants!’
She grasped her shoulders in her hands, as if she was feeling chilly, although it was warm in the room. She stood like that for about half a minute, then turned back to Senka and pleaded with him, even took hold of his hand.
‘Go for me, will you? I’ll give you three roubles, not one. Do you want five?’
But by now Senka had realised he was the one in charge here, he had the power, although he didn’t have a clue why. He could see Death wanted something from Pokrovka Street very, very badly.
He snapped back:
‘No, you can give me a twenty-five note, and I still won’t go. But if you whisper in the Prince’s ear, I’ll be there and back in a flash.’
She pressed her hands to her temples and twisted up her face. It was the first time Senka had ever seen a dame wrinkle herself up like that and still look beautiful.
‘Damn you. Do what I tell you then we’ll see.’
And she told him what she wanted.
‘Go to Lobkovsky Lane, the Kazan boarding house. There’s a cripple with no legs at the gate. Whisper this special word to him, “sufoeno”. And don’t you forget it, or you’ll be in big trouble. Go into the boarding house and let them take you to a man, his name’s Deadeye. Tell him quietly, so no one else hears: “Death’s waiting, she’s desperate”. Take what he gives you and get back here quick. Do you remember all that? Repeat it.’
‘I’m no parrot.’
Senka stuck his cap on his head and dashed out into the street.
And he set off down the boulevard so fast, he even overtook two cabs.