The Diamond Chariot

The third syllable, in which Vasilii Alexandrovich visits the WC

There was a lady passenger sitting in the first-class compartment – presumably the one who had been prevented from travelling in solitude by the rules of the railway.

The staff captain greeted her glumly, evidently still smarting over his fifteen roubles. He hardly even glanced at his travelling companion, although the lady was good-looking – in fact more than merely good-looking, she was quite exceptionally attractive: a delicate watercolour face, huge moist eyes behind a misty veil, an elegant travelling suit in a mother-of-pearl hue.

The lovely stranger took no interest in Rybnikov either. In reply to his ‘hello’ she nodded coldly, cast a single brief glance over her companion’s common features, his baggy uniform tunic and gingerish scuffed boots and turned away towards the window.

The second bell pealed out.

The female passenger’s delicately defined nostrils started fluttering. Her lips whispered:

‘Ah, get a move on, do!’ but the exclamation was clearly not addressed to her companion in the compartment.

Newspaper boys dashed, gabbling, along the corridor – one from the respectable Evening Russia, the other from the sleazy Russian Assembly. They were both howling at the tops of their voices, trying to out-yell each other.

‘Woeful news of the drama in the Sea of Japan!’ called the first one, straining his lungs to bursting point. ‘Russian fleet burned and sunk!’

The second one yelled: ‘Famous “Moscow Daredevils” gang strikes in Petersburg! High society lady undressed!’

‘First lists of the dead. Numerous names dear to all hearts! The whole country will be weeping!’

‘Countess N. put out of a carriage in the costume of Eve! The bandits knew she had jewels hidden under her dress!’

The staff captain bought Evening Russia with its huge black border of mourning and the lady bought Russian Assembly, but before they could start reading, the door burst open, and in charged a huge bouquet of roses that wouldn’t fit through the frame, immediately filling the compartment with unctuous fragrance.

Protruding above the rosebuds was a handsome man’s face with a well-groomed imperial and a curled moustache. A diamond pin glinted and sparkled on his necktie.

‘Anddd who is thissss!’ the new arrival exclaimed, eyeing Rybnikov intently, and his black eyebrows slid upwards menacingly, but after only a second the handsome fellow had had his fill of observing the staff captain’s unprepossessing appearance and lost all interest in him, after which he did not deign to notice him again.

‘Lycia!’ he exclaimed, falling to his knees and throwing the bouquet at the lady’s feet. ‘I love only you, with all my heart and soul! Forgive me, I implore you! You know my temperament! I am a man of sudden enthusiasms, I am an artiste.’

It was easy to see that he was an artiste. The owner of the imperial was not at all embarrassed by his audience – in addition to the staff captain glancing out from behind his Evening Russia, this interesting scene was also being observed by spectators in the corridor, attracted by the mind-numbing scent of the roses and the sonorous lamentations.

Nor did the lovely lady’s nerve fail her in front of an audience.

‘It’s over, Astralov!’ she declared wrathfully, throwing back her veil to reveal her glittering eyes. ‘And don’t you dare show up in Moscow!’ She waved aside the hands extended in supplication. ‘No, no, I won’t even listen!’

Then the penitent did something rather strange: without rising from his knees, he folded his hands together on his chest and started singing in a deep, truly magical baritone:

‘Una furtive lacrima negli occhi suoi spunto …’

The lady turned pale and put her hands over her ears, but the divine voice filled the entire compartment and flowed far beyond – the entire carriage fell silent, listening.

Donizetti’s entrancing melody was cut short by the particularly long and insistent trilling of the third bell.

The conductor glanced in at the door:

‘All those seeing off passengers please alight immediately, we are departing. Sir, it’s time!’ he said, touching the singer’s elbow.

The singer dashed over to Rybnikov:

‘Let me have the ticket! I’ll give you a hundred roubles! This is a drama of a broken heart! Five hundred!’

‘Don’t you dare let him have the ticket!’ the lady shouted.

‘I can’t do it,’ the staff captain replied firmly to the artiste. ‘I would gladly, but it’s urgent government business.’

The conductor dragged Astralov, in floods of tears, out into the corridor.

The train set off. There was a despairing shout from the platform:

‘Lycia! I’ll do away with myself! Forgive me!’

‘Never!’ the flushed lady passenger shouted, and flung the magnificent bouquet out of the window, showering the little table with scarlet petals.

She fell back limply on to the seat, covered her face with her fingers and burst into sobs.

‘You are a noble man,’ she said through her sobbing. ‘You refused his money! I’m so grateful to you! I would have jumped out of the window, I swear I would!’

Rybnikov muttered:

‘Five hundred roubles is huge money. I don’t earn a third of that, not even with mess and travelling allowances. But I’ve got my job to do. The top brass won’t excuse lateness …’

‘Five hundred roubles he offered, the buffoon!’ the lady exclaimed, not listening to him. ‘Preening his feathers for his audience! But he’s really so mean, such an economiser!’ She pronounced the final word with boundless contempt and even stopped sobbing, then added: ‘Refuses to live according to his means.’

Intrigued by the logical introduction inherent in this statement, Vasilii Alexandrovich asked:

‘Begging your pardon, but I don’t quite understand. Is he thrifty or does he lives beyond his means?’

‘His means are huge, but he lives too far within them!’ his travelling companion explained, no longer crying, but anxiously examining her slightly reddened nose in a little mirror. She dabbed at it with a powder puff and adjusted a lock of golden hair beside her forehead. ‘Last year he earned almost a hundred thousand, but he barely spent even half of it. He puts it all away “for a rainy day”!’

At this point she finally calmed down completely, turned her gaze on her companion and introduced herself punctiliously.

‘Glyceria Romanovna Lidina.’

The staff captain told her his name too.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ the lady told him with a smile. ‘I must explain, since you have witnessed this monstrous spectacle. Georges simply adores histrionic scenes, especially in front of an audience!’

‘Is he really an artiste, then?’

Glyceria Romanovna fluttered her almost inch-long eyelashes incredulously.

‘What? You don’t know Astralov? The tenor Astralov. His name is on all the show bills!’

‘I’m not much for theatres,’ Rybnikov replied with an indifferent shrug. ‘I don’t have any time to go strutting about at operas, you know. And it’s beyond my pocket, anyway. My pay’s miserly, they’re delaying the pension, and life in Petersburg is too pricey by half. The cabbies take seventy kopecks for every piddling little ride …’

Lidina was not listening, she wasn’t even looking at him any more.

‘We’ve been married for two years!’ she said, as if she were not addressing her prosaic companion, but a more worthy audience, which was listening to her with sympathetic attention. ‘Ah, I was so in love! But now I realise it was the voice I loved, not him. What a voice he has! He only has to start singing and I melt, he can wrap me round his little finger. And he knows it, the scoundrel! Did you see the way he started singing just now, the cheap manipulator? Thank goodness the bell interrupted him, my head was already starting to spin!’

‘A handsome gentleman,’ the staff captain acknowledged, trying to suppress a yawn. ‘Probably gets his fair share of crumpet. Is that what the drama’s all about?’

‘They told me about him!’ Glyceria Romanovna exclaimed with her eyes flashing. ‘There are always plenty of “well-wishers” in the world of theatre. But I didn’t believe them. And then I saw it with my own eyes! And where? In my own drawing room! And who with? That old floozy Koturnova! I’ll never set foot in that desecrated apartment again! Or in Petersburg either!’

‘So you’re moving to Moscow, then?’ the staff captain summed up. It was clear from his tone of voice that he was impatient to put an end to this trivial conversation and settle into his newspaper.

‘Yes, we have another apartment in Moscow, on Ostozhenka Street. Georges sometimes takes an engagement for the winter at the Bolshoi.’

At this, Rybnikov finally concealed himself behind Evening Russia and the lady was obliged to fall silent. She nervously picked up the Russian Assembly, ran her eyes over the article on the front page and tossed it aside, muttering:

‘My God, how vulgar! Completely undressed, in the road! Could she really have been stripped totally and completely naked? Who is this Countess N.? Vika Olsufieva? Nelly Vorontsova? Ah, it doesn’t matter anyway.’

Outside the windowpane, dachas, copses of trees and dreary vegetable patches drifted by. The staff captain rustled his newspaper, enthralled.

Lidina sighed, then sighed again. She found the silence oppressive.

‘What’s that you find so fascinating to read?’ she eventually asked, unable to restrain herself.

‘Well, you see, it’s the list of officers who gave their lives for the tsar and the fatherland in the sea battle beside the island of Tsushima. It came through the European telegraph agencies, from Japanese sources. The scrolls of mourning, so to speak. They say they’re going to continue it in forthcoming issues. I’m looking to see if any of my comrades-in-arms are there.’ And Vasilii Alexandrovich started reading out loud, with expression, savouring the words. ‘On the battleship Prince Kutuzov-Smolensky: junior flagman, Rear Admiral Leontiev; commander of the vessel, Commodore Endlung; paymaster of the squadron, State Counsellor Ziukin; chief officer, Captain Second Rank von Schwalbe …’

‘Oh, stop!’ said Glyceria Romanovna, fluttering her little hand. ‘I don’t want to hear it! When is this terrible war ever going to end!’

‘Soon. The insidious enemy will be crushed by the Christian host,’ Rybnikov promised, setting the newspaper aside to take out a little book, in which he immersed himself with even greater concentration.

The lady screwed her eyes up short-sightedly, trying to make out the title, but the book was bound in brown paper.

The train’s brakes screeched and it came to a halt.

‘Kolpino?’ Lidina asked in surprise. ‘Strange, the express never stops here.’

Rybnikov stuck his head out of the window and called to the duty supervisor.

‘Why are we waiting?’

‘We have to let a special get past, Officer, it’s got urgent military freight.’

While her companion was distracted, Glyceria Romanovna seized the chance to satisfy her curiosity. She quickly opened the book’s cover, held her pretty lorgnette on a gold chain up to her eyes and puckered up her face. The book that the staff captain had been reading so intently was called TUNNELS AND BRIDGES: A concise guide for railway employees.

A telegraph clerk clutching a paper ribbon in his hand ran up to the station supervisor, who read the message, shrugged and waved his little flag.

‘What is it?’ asked Rybnikov.

‘Don’t know if they’re coming or going. Orders to dispatch you and not wait for the special.’

The train set off.

‘I suppose you must be a military engineer?’ Glyceria Romanovna enquired.

‘What makes you think that?’

Lidina felt embarrassed to admit that she had peeped at the title of the book, but she found a way out – she pointed to the leather tube.

‘That thing. It’s for drawings, isn’t it?’

‘Ah, yes.’ Vasilii Alexandrovich lowered his voice. ‘Secret documents. I’m delivering them to Moscow.’

‘And I thought you were on leave. Visiting your family, or your parents, perhaps.’

‘I’m not married. Where would I get the earnings to set up a family? I’m dog poor. And I haven’t got any parents, I’m an orphan. And in the regiment they used to taunt me for a Tatar because of my squinty eyes.’

After the stop at Kolpino the staff captain brightened up somewhat and became more talkative, and his broad cheekbones even turned slightly pink.

Suddenly he glanced at his watch and stood up.

‘Pardon, I’ll just go out for a smoke.’

‘Smoke here, I’m used to it,’ Glyceria Romanovna told him graciously. ‘Georges smokes cigars. That is, he used to.’

Vasilii Alexandrovich smiled in embarrassment.

‘I’m sorry. When I said a smoke, I was being tactful. I don’t smoke, an unnecessary expense. I’m actually going to the WC, on a call of nature.’

The lady turned away with a dignified air.

The staff captain took the tube with him. Catching his female companion’s indignant glance, he explained in an apologetic voice:

‘I’m not allowed to let it out of my hands.’

Glyceria Romanovna watched him go and murmured:

‘He really is quite unpleasant.’ And she started looking out of the window.

But the staff captain walked quickly through second class and third class to the carriage at the tail of the train and glanced out on to the brake platform.

There was an insistent, lingering blast on a whistle from behind.

The conductor-in-chief and a gendarme sentry were standing on the platform.

‘What the hell!’ said the conductor. ‘That can’t be the special. They telegraphed to say it was cancelled!’

The long train was following them no more than half a verst away, drawn by two locomotives, puffing out black smoke. A long tail of flat wagons cased in tarpaulin stretched out behind it.

The hour was already late, after ten, but the twilight had barely begun to thicken – the season of white nights was approaching.

The gendarme looked round at the staff captain and saluted.

‘Begging your pardon, Your Honour, but please be so good as to close the door. Instructions strictly forbid it.’

‘Quite right, old fellow,’ Rybnikov said approvingly. ‘Vigilance, and all the rest of it. I just wanted to have a smoke, actually. Well, I’ll just do it in the corridor here. Or in the WC.’

And he went into the toilet, which in third class was cramped and not very clean.

After locking himself in, Vasilii Alexandrovich stuck his head out of the window.

The train was just moving on to an antediluvian bridge, built in the old Count Kleinmichel style, which spanned a narrow little river.

Rybnikov stood on the flush lever and a hole opened up in the bottom of the toilet. Through it he could clearly see the sleepers flickering past.

The staff captain pressed some invisible little button on the tube and stuffed the narrow leather case into the hole – the diameter matched precisely, so he had to employ a certain amount of force.

When the tube had disappeared through the hole, Vasilii Alexandrovich quickly moistened his hands under the tap and walked out into the vestibule of the carriage, shaking the water from his fingers.

A minute later, he was already walking back into his own compartment.

Lidina looked at him severely – she still had not forgiven him for that ‘call of nature’ – and was about to turn away, when she suddenly exclaimed:

‘Your secret case! You must have forgotten it in the toilet!’

An expression of annoyance appeared on Rybnikov’s face, but before he could answer Glyceria Romanovna there was a terrifying crash and the carriage lurched and swayed.

The staff captain dashed to the window. There were heads protruding from the other windows too, all of them looking back along the line.

At that point the line curved round in a small arc and they had a clear view of the tracks, the river they had just crossed and the bridge.

Or rather, what was left of it.

The bridge had collapsed at its precise centre, and at the precise moment when the line of heavy military flat wagons was crossing it.

The catastrophe was an appalling sight: a column of water and steam, splashed up into the air as the locomotives crashed down into the water, upended flat wagons with massive steel structures tumbling off them and – most terrible of all – a hail of tiny human figures showering downwards.

Glyceria Romanovna huddled against Rybnikov’s shoulder and started squealing piercingly. Other passengers were screaming too.

The tail-end carriage of the special, probably reserved for officers, teetered on the very edge of the break. Someone seemed to jump out of the window just in time, but then the bridge support buckled and the carriage went plunging downwards too, into the heap of twisted and tangled metal protruding from the water.

‘My God, my God!’ Lidina started screaming hysterically. ‘Why are you just looking? We have to do something!’

She dashed out into the corridor. Vasilii Alexandrovich hesitated for only a second before following her.

‘Stop the train!’ the small lady gabbled hysterically, throwing herself on the conductor-in-chief, who was running towards the leading carriage. ‘There are wounded men there! They’re drowning! We have to save them!’

She grabbed him by the sleeve so tenaciously that the railwayman had no choice but to stop.

‘What do you mean, save them? Save who? In that shambles!’ Pale as death, the captain of the train crew tied to pull himself free. ‘What can we do? We have to get to a station, to report this.’

Glyceria Romanovna refused to listen and pounded him on the chest with her little fist.

‘They’re dying, and we just leave them? Stop! I demand it!’ she squealed. ‘Press that emergency brake of yours, or whatever you call it!’

Hearing her howling, a dark-complexioned man with a little waxed moustache put his head out of the next compartment. Seeing the captain of the train hesitate, he shouted menacingly:

‘Don’t you dare stop! I’ve got urgent business in Moscow!’

Rybnikov took Lidina gently by the elbow and started speaking soothingly:

‘Really and truly, madam. Of course, it’s a terrible disaster, but the only thing we can do to help is telegraph as soon as possible from the next …’

‘Ah, to hell with all of you!’ shouted Glyceria Romanovna.

She darted to the emergency handle and pulled it.

Everyone in the train went tumbling head over heels to the floor. The train gave a hop and started screeching sickeningly along the rails. There were howls and screams on every side – the passengers thought their train had crashed.

The first to recover his senses was the man with the dark complexion, who had not fallen, but only banged his head against the lintel of the door.

With a cry of ‘You rrrotten bitch, I’ll kill you!’ he threw himself on the hysterical woman, who had been stunned by her fall, and grabbed her by the throat.

The small flames that glinted briefly in Vasilii Alexandrovich’s eyes suggested that he might possibly have shared the swarthy gentleman’s bloody intentions to some extent. However, there was more than just fury in the glance that the staff captain cast at Glyceria Romanovna as she was being strangled – there was also something like stupefaction.

Rybnikov sighed, grabbed the intemperate dark-haired man by the collar and tossed him aside.