The Diamond Chariot

THE LOVE OF TWO MOLES




There was a dull rumbling sound from somewhere above them.

Erast Petrovich raised his head. A thunderstorm?

Another peal, but this time the rumbling was accompanied by a crackling sound.

‘What is it?’ asked Fandorin, jumping to his feet.

‘It is Kamata starting to fire his cannon,’ said Tamba, also getting up, but without hurrying. ‘He didn’t wait until dawn. He must have realised that you and your servant are here with us.’

So the jonin knew all about Kamata’s plan!

‘You know everything? How?’

‘These are my mountains. Every tree has ears and every blade of grass has eyes. Let us go, before these stupid people hit one of the houses by accident.’

Tamba stood under the hatch, squatted down on his haunches and then sprang up into the air – so high that he landed sitting on the edge of the opening. There was a flash of white socks and the old man was already upstairs.

Fandorin looked round for Midori and started – the next room was empty. When had she managed to disappear?

Tamba leaned down out of the opening in the ceiling.

‘Give me your hand!’

But the titular counsellor didn’t give him his hand – it would have been humiliating. He pulled himself up clumsily, banging his elbow against a plank in the process. The jonin was wearing black trousers and a loose black shirt. Darting out on to the veranda, he put on black leather stockings, pulled a mask over his face, and became almost invisible. In the darkness a pillar of fire soared up into the air and stones and clods of earth went flying in all directions.

Tamba was no longer anywhere close, he had dissolved into the darkness. A black shadow jumped down from somewhere (was it off the roof?), touched the ground silently with its feet, performed a forward roll, tumbled aside, got up weightlessly and a second later disappeared. The titular counsellor noticed the air trembling in several other places as well and caught a few brief glimpses of dark silhouettes.

Shells were exploding as often as if an entire artillery battery was bombarding the forest. The rapid-firing Krupps gun had a rate of three shots a minute, recalled Fandorin, a veteran of the Turkish War. Judging from the sound, the Black Jackets must have taken up a position on the summit of the mountain. Watching the intervals closely, the vice-consul understood Kamata’s tactics. His gunner was laying down the shells in a chessboard pattern, at intervals of two or three sazhens. He obviously intended to plough up the entire forest island. Sooner or later he would hit the houses too. And one of the pines had already caught fire – a bright crimson flower blossomed in the darkness.

What should he do, where should he run?

One of the shadows stopped beside the titular counsellor, grabbed his hand and dragged him after it.

They had already run to the middle of the wood when a shell struck a tree close by. The trunk gave a crack, splinters went flying and they both fell to the ground. Following the pattern, the next explosion tore up the ground ten steps away, and the eyes in the ninja’s black face flared up – long and moist, full of light.

It was her!

Midori half-rose and took Erast Petrovich’s hand again, in order to run on, but he didn’t yield – he pulled her back to him.

The next explosion roared on the other side of them and Fandorin saw her eyes again, very close – so beautiful and full of life.

‘Do you really love me?’ he asked.

A thunderous rush drowned out his words.

‘Do you love me?’ Erast Petrovich roared.

Instead of answering, she pulled off her mask, took his face between her hands and kissed him.

And he forgot about the rapid-firing cannon, about death’s whistling and rumbling, about everything in the world.

The pine tree blazed brighter and brighter, red shadows flickered across the trunks of trees and the ground. Panting, the titular counsellor tore the clothes from his beloved’s shoulders and her body changed from black to white.

Midori made no attempt at all to stop him. Her breathing was as fast as his, her hands were tearing off his shirt.

Around them the flames blazed, the earth split open, the trees groaned and Fandorin felt as if Night itself, wild and hot, were making love to him.

Pine needles pricked his back and his elbows by turns – the grappling lovers were rolling across the ground. Once a piece of shrapnel buried itself in the earth where their bodies had been just a second earlier, but neither of them noticed it.

It all ended suddenly. Midori pushed her beloved off with a jerk and darted in the opposite direction.

‘What are you doing?’ he exclaimed indignantly – and saw a burning branch falling between them, showering out sparks.

Only then did Erast Petrovich come to his senses.

There was no more artillery fire, just blazing trees crackling in two or three places.

‘What is this called in your jojutsu?’ he asked hoarsely, gesturing round at the forest.

Midori was tying her tangled hair in a knot.

‘There’s never been anything like this in jojutsu. But there will be now. I’ll call it “Fire and Thunder”.’

She was already pulling on her black costume, turning from white to black.

‘Where is everybody?’ asked Fandorin, hastily putting his own clothing in order. ‘Why is it quiet?’

‘Let’s go!’ she called, and ran on in front.

Half a minute later they were at the fissure – in the very spot where the vice-consul and his servant had thrown the lasso across. The dead tree was still there, but Erast Petrovich couldn’t see any sign of the rope.

‘Where to now?’ he shouted

She pointed across to the other side, then went down on all fours and suddenly disappeared over the edge of the cliff. Fandorin dashed after her and saw a cable woven from dry plant stems hanging down. It was thick and strong enough to hold any weight, so the young man followed Midori without hesitation.

She moved on a long way ahead of him, slithering down easily and confidently. But he found the descent difficult.

‘Quickly, quickly, we’ll be late!’ Midori urged him on from down below.

Erast Petrovich tried his very best, but she still had to wait for quite a long time.

The moment he jumped down on to the grass-covered ground, his guide dragged him on into dense, prickly undergrowth.

There, between two boulders, he saw a black crevice in the sheer wall. The titular counsellor squeezed into it with great difficulty, but after that the passage widened out.

‘Please, please, quickly!’ he heard Midori’s voice pleading out of the darkness.

He dashed towards her – and almost fell when he stumbled over a root or a rock. There was a strong draught blowing from somewhere above him.

‘I can’t see a thing!’

A glowing thread appeared in the darkness, emittting a weak, trembling glow.

‘What’s that?’ asked Fandorin, enchanted.

‘A yoshitsune,’ Midori replied impatiently. ‘A falcon’s feather, it has mercury in it. It doesn’t go out in the rain and wind. Come on! I’ll die of shame if I’m late!’

Now, with the light, it became clear that the underground passage had been equipped very thoroughly: the ceiling and walls were reinforced with bamboo, and there were wooden steps underfoot.

Struggling to keep up with Midori, Erast Petrovich barely looked around at all, but he did notice that every now and then there were branches running off the passage in both directions. It was an entire labyrinth. His guide ran on, turning several corners without slowing down for a moment. The titular counsellor was starting to feel exhausted from the long, steep uphill climb, but the slim figure ahead of him seemed incapable of tiring.

Eventually the steps came to an end and the passage narrowed again. The light went out, something creaked in the darkness and a grey rectangle opened up ahead, admitting the damp, fresh breath of the dawn.

Midori jumped down on to the ground. Following her example, Erast Petrovich discovered that he was clambering out of the trunk of an old, gnarled oak tree.

The secret door closed, and the vice-consul saw that it was absolutely impossible to make out its edges on the rough, moss-covered bark.

‘I’m too late!’ Midori exclaimed despairingly. ‘It’s all your fault!’

She darted forward into an open meadow where black silhouettes were moving about slowly. There was a smell of gunpowder and blood. Something long glinted in the morning twilight.

The barrel of the gun, Fandorin realised, looking more closely and then turning his head in all directions.

The underground passage led to the summit of the mountain. The ideal spot for a bombardment – Kamata must have chosen it in advance.

The skirmish was already over. And from the looks of things, it hadn’t lasted long. Pouring out of the passage, the shinobi had taken the Black Jackets by surprise, from behind.

Tamba was sitting on a stump in the middle of the clearing, smoking his pipe. The other ninja were bringing the dead to him. It was an eerie sight, like something out of the afterlife: silent shadows gliding in pairs above the mist that was creeping across the ground, lifting up the dead men (also black, but with white faces) by their arms and legs and laying them out in rows in front of their leader.

The titular counsellor counted: four rows with eight bodies in each, and another body started moving, this time a little one – no doubt the old bandit Kamata. Not one had escaped. Don Tsurumaki would never know what had happened to his brigade …

Shaken by this grim picture, Fandorin didn’t notice that Midori had come back to him. Her husky voice whispered right in his ear.

‘I was late anyway, and we hadn’t finished.’

A lithe arm slipped round his waist and pulled him back towards the entrance of the underground passage.

‘I shall go down in the history of jojutsu as a great pioneer,’ Midori whispered, pushing the titular counsellor into the hollow of the tree. ‘I’ve just had an idea for a very interesting composition. I shall call it “The Love of Two Moles”.’

Even lovelier

Than two flamingos’ loving –

The love of two moles.





THE NOCTURNAL MELDING OF THE WORLD




Tamba said:

‘I know a lot about you, you know little about me. From this there arises mistrust, mistrust produces misunderstanding, misunderstanding leads to mistakes. Ask me everything you wish to know, and I will answer.’

The two of them were sitting in the open clearing in front of the house and watching the sun rising from behind the plain, filling the world with a rosy glow. Tamba was smoking his little pipe, every now and then stuffing it with a new pinch of tobacco. Fandorin would gladly have smoked a cigar with him, but the box of excellent manilas had been left behind with the baggage, on the side of the crevice that divided the shinobi village from the rest of the world.

‘How many of you are there?’ the titular counsellor asked. ‘Only eleven?’

He had seen eleven people at the site of the massacre. When the earth-stained lovers crawled out of their underground burrow, the shinobi had already concluded their sombre task. The dead had been counted, tipped into a pit and covered over with rocks. Tamba’s people took off their masks and Fandorin saw ordinary Japanese faces – seven male and four female.

‘There are four children too. And Satoko, Gohei’s wife. She wasn’t in the battle, because she is due to give birth soon. And three young people, out in the big wide world.’

‘Spying for someone?’ asked Erast Petrovich. If the jonin wanted a straight-talking conversation, then to hell with ceremony.

‘Studying. One in Tokyo University, studying to be a doctor. One in America, studying to be a mechanical engineer. One in London, studying to be an electrical engineer. We can’t get by without European science nowadays. The great Tamba said: “Be ahead of everyone else, know more than everyone else”. We have been following that precept for three hundred years. And he also said: “The ninja of the Land of Iga are dead, now they are immortal”.’

‘But surely Tamba the First was killed together with the others? I was told that their enemies wiped them out to the l-last man.’

‘No, Tamba got away, and he took his best pupils with him. He had sons, but he didn’t take them, and they were killed, because Tamba was truly great, his heart was as hard as diamond. The final jonin of the land of Iga chose the worthiest, so that they could revive the Momochi clan.’

‘How did they manage to escape from the besieged temple?’

‘When the shrine of the goddess Kannon was already burning, the last of the ninja wanted to take their own lives, but Tamba ordered them to hold out until dawn. The day before, one of his eyes had been put out by an arrow and all his men were also covered in wounds, but such is the power of the jonin that the shinobi did not dare to disobey. At dawn Tamba released three black ravens into the sky and left through an underground passage with his two chosen companions. But the others took their own lives, cutting off their faces at the last moment.’

‘If there was an underground passage, then why didn’t they all leave?’

‘Because then Nobunaga’s warriors would have pursued them.’

‘And why was it absolutely necessary to wait until dawn?’

‘So that the enemy would see the three ravens.’

Erast Petrovich shook his head, totally bamboozled by this exotic oriental reasoning.

‘What have the three ravens got to do with it? What were they n-needed for?’

‘Their enemies knew how many warriors were ensconced in the temple – seventy-eight men. Afterwards they would be certain to count the corpses. If three were missing, Nobunaga would have guessed that Tamba had got away and ordered a search for him throughout the empire. But this way the samurai decided that Tamba and two of his deputies had turned into ravens. The besieging forces were prepared for every kind of magic, they brought with them dogs, trained to kill rodents, lizards and snakes. They had hunting falcons with them as well. The falcons pecked the ravens to death. One raven had a wound instead of its right eye and so the ninjas’ enemies, knowing of Tamba’s wound, stopped worrying. The dead raven was displayed at a point where eight roads met and a sign was nailed up: “The Wizard Momochi Tamba, defeated by the Ruler of the West and the East, Protector of the Imperial Throne, Prince Nobunaga”. Less than a year later, Nobunaga was killed, but no one ever discovered that it was Tamba who did it. The Momochi clan was transformed into a ghost, that is, it became invisible. For three hundred years we have preserved and developed the art of ninjutsu. Tamba the First would be pleased with us.’

‘And none of the three lines has been interrupted?’

‘No, because the head of the family is obliged to select a successor in good time.’

‘What does “select” mean?’

‘Choose. And not necessarily his own son. The boy must have the necessary abilities.’

‘Wait,’ Fandorin exclaimed in disappointment. ‘So you are not a direct descendant of Tamba the First?’

The old man was surprised.

‘By blood? Of course not. What difference does that make? Here in Japan, kinship and succession are based on the spirit. A man’s son is the one into whom his soul has migrated. I, for instance, have no sons, only a daughter. I do have nephews, though, and cousins, once removed and twice removed. But the spirit of the great Tamba does not dwell in them, it dwells in eight-year-old Yaichi. I chose him five years ago, in a village of untouchables. In his grubby little face I saw signs that I thought looked promising. And it seems that I was not mistaken. If Yaichi continues to make the same kind of progress, after me he will become Tamba the Twelfth.’

Erast Petrovich decided to wait a little with the other questions – his head was already spinning as it was.

Their second conversation took place in the evening, at the same spot, only this time the two of them sat facing the opposite direction. Watching the sun slipping down on to the summit of the next mountain.

Tamba sucked on his eternal pipe, but now Fandorin was also smoking a cigar. The selfless Masa, who was suffering morally because he had slept right through the night battle, had spent half the day supplying all of his master’s needs by bringing his baggage from the ravaged camp through the underground passage, as well as using a cable hoist (it turned out that there was one of those too). The only thing left on the other side was the untransportable Royal Crescent Tricycle, and there was nowhere to ride that in the village in any case. The mule, set free, wandered through the meadows, dazed and delighted by the luscious mountain grass.

‘I have a request for you,’ said Erast Petrovich. ‘Teach me your art. I will be a zealous student.’

He had spent most of the day observing the shinobi training and had seen things that left his face frozen in an expression of dumb bewilderment entirely alien to him in normal life.

First Fandorin had watched the children playing. A little six-year-old had demonstrated quite incredible patience in training a mouse – teaching it to run to a saucer and come back again. Every time the mouse coped with its mission successfully, he moved the saucer a bit farther away.

‘In a few months’ time the mouse will learn to cover distances of four hundred or even five hundred yards. Then it can be used for delivering secret notes,’ explained the ninja called Rakuda, who had been attached to the vice-consul.

‘Rakuda’ meant ‘camel’, but the ninja was nothing at all like a camel. He was a middle-aged man with a plump, extremely good-natured face, the kind of man that people say ‘wouldn’t hurt a fly’. He spoke excellent English – which was why he had been assigned to accompany Erast Petrovich. He suggested that the titular counsellor call him ‘Jonathan’, but Fandorin liked the resounding ‘Rakuda’ better.

Two little girls were playing at funerals. They dug a little pit, one of them lay down in it and the other covered her with earth.

‘Won’t she suffocate?’ Fandorin asked in alarm.

Rakuda laughed and pointed to a reed protruding from the ‘grave’.

‘No, she’s learning to breathe with a quarter of her chest, it’s very useful.’

But of course, the young man was interested most of all in eight-year-old Yaichi, whom Tamba had designated as his successor.

The skinny little boy – nothing exceptional to look at – was clambering up the wall of a house. He fell off, scraping himself so that he bled, and climbed back on the wall again.

It was incredible! The wall was made of wooden planks, there was absolutely nothing to cling to, but Yaichi dug his nails into the wood and pulled himself up, and in the end he climbed on to the roof. He sat there, dangled his legs and stuck his tongue out at Fandorin.

‘It’s some kind of witchcraft!’ the vice-consul exclaimed.

‘No, it’s not witchcraft. It’s kakeume,’ said Rakuda, beckoning to the boy, who simply jumped straight down from a height of two sazhens. He showed them his hands and Erast Petrovich saw iron thimbles with curved talons on his fingers. He himself tried using them to climb a wall, but he couldn’t. What strength the fingertips must have to support the weight of the body!

‘Come on, come on,’ Rakuda called to him. ‘Etsuko is going to kill the daijin.’

‘Who is the daijin?’ asked Fandorin, following his guide into one of the houses.

There were four people there in a large empty room: two men, a girl with broad cheekbones and someone wearing a tunic and cap, sitting over by the wall at one side. When he looked more closely, Fandorin saw it was a life-sized doll with a painted face and luxurious moustache.

‘“Daijin” means “big man”,’ Rakuda explained in a whisper. ‘Etsuko has to kill him, and Gohei and Tanshin are his bodyguards. It’s a kind of test that she has to pass before she can move on to the next level of training. Etsuko has already tried twice and failed.’

‘A sort of exam, right?’ the titular counsellor asked curiously as he observed what was happening.

Pock-faced Gohei and sullen, red-faced Tanshin searched the girl thoroughly – she was obviously playing the part of a petitioner who had come for an audience with the ‘big man’.

The search was so scrupulous that Erast Petrovich blushed furiously. Not only was the ‘petitioner’ stripped naked, all the cavities of her body were explored. Young Etsuko played her part diligently – bowing abjectly, giggling timidly, turning this way and that. The ‘bodyguards’ felt the clothing she had taken off, her sandals, her wide belt. They extracted a tobacco pipe from a sleeve and confiscated it. In her belt they found a small cloth bag with hashi – wooden sticks for eating – and a jade charm. They gave back the sticks, but turned the charm this way and that and then kept it, just in case. They made the girl let down her hair and took out two sharp hairpins. Only then did they allow her to get dressed and go through to the daijin. But they wouldn’t let her get really close – they stood between her and the doll: one on the right, one on the left.

Etsuko bowed low to the seated doll, folding her hands together on her stomach. And when she straightened up there was a wooden hashi in her hand. The ‘petitioner’ made a lightning-swift movement and the stick sank straight into the daijin’s painted eye.

‘Ah, well done,’ Rakuda said approvingly. ‘She carved the hashi out of hard wood, sharpened the end and smeared it with poison. She has passed the test.’

‘But they wouldn’t have allowed her to get away! The bodyguards would have killed her on the spot!’

‘What difference does that make? The commission has been carried out.’

Then Erast Petrovich saw training in unarmed combat, and this, perhaps, made the strongest impression of all on him. He had never imagined that the human body was capable of such things.

By this time Masa had finished carrying things about and he joined his master. He observed the acrobatic tricks of the Stealthy Ones with a sour face and seemed thoroughly envious.

The training was supervised by Tamba himself. There were three students. One of them, the youngest, was not very interesting to watch: he kept getting up and falling, getting up and falling – backwards, face down, sideways, somersaulting over his head. The second one – the pock-faced Gohei, who was one of the gaijin’s ‘bodyguards’ – hacked at the jonin with a sword. He attacked with extremely subtle and cunning thrusts, swung from above and below, and at the legs, but the blade always sliced through the empty air. And Tamba didn’t make a simple superfluous movement, he just leaned slightly to the side, squatted down or jumped up. This entertainment was frightening to watch. The third student, a fidgety fellow of about thirty (Rakuda said his name was Okami), fought with his eyes blindfolded. Tamba held a bamboo board in front of him, changing its position all the time, and Okami struck it with unerringly accurate blows from his hands and feet.

‘He has intuition,’ Rakuda said respectfully. ‘Like a bat.’

In the end Masa could no longer bear the expressions of admiration that Fandorin uttered from time to time. With a determined sniff, he walked over to the jonin, bowed abruptly and made a request of some kind.

‘He wishes to fight with one of the pupils,’ Erast Petrovich’s guide translated.

Tamba cast a sceptical eye over the former Yakuza’s sturdy figure and shouted:

‘Neko-chan!’

A wizened little old woman emerged from the hut near by, wiping flour off her hands with her apron. The jonin pointed at Masa and gave a brief order. The old woman smiled broadly, opening a mouth that had only one yellow tooth, and took off her apron.

It was clear from Masa’s face just how terribly insulted he felt. However, Fandorin’s faithful vassal demonstrated his self-control by walking up politely to the matron and asking her about something. Instead of answering, she slapped him on the forehead with her hand – it looked like a joke, but Masa squealed in pain. His flour-dusted forehead turned white and his face turned red. Fandorin’s servant tried to grab the insolent hag by the scruff of her neck, but she took hold of his wrist, twisted it slightly – and the master of jujitsu and connoisseur of the Okinawa style of combat went tumbling head over heels to the ground. The amazing old woman didn’t give him time to get up. She skipped towards the defeated man, pressed him down against the ground with her knee and squeezed his throat with her bony hand – he gave a strangulated wheeze and slapped his palm on the ground in a sign of surrender.

Neko-chan immediately opened her fingers. She bowed to the jonin, picked up her apron and went back to her duties in the kitchen.

And that was the moment, as Fandorin looked at the dejected Masa, who didn’t dare raise his own eyes to look at his master, that the titular counsellor decided he had to learn the secrets of ninjutsu.

When Tamba heard the request, he was not surprised, but he said:

‘It is hard to gain insight into the secrets of ninjutsu, a man must devote his entire life to it, from the day he is born. But you are too old, you will not achieve complete mastery. To master a few skills is all that you can hope for.’

‘Let it be a f-few skills. I accept that.’

The jonin cast a quizzical glance at the stubborn jut of the titular counsellor’s jaw and shrugged.

‘All right, let’s try.’

Erast Petrovich beamed joyfully, immediately stubbed out his cigar and jumped to his feet.

‘Shall I take my jacket off?’

Tamba breathed out a thin stream of smoke.

‘No. First you will sit, listen and try to understand.’

‘All right.’

Fandorin obediently sat down, took a notebook out of his pocket and prepared to take notes.

‘Ninjutsu consists of three main arts: monjutsu, the art of secrecy, taijutsu, the art of controlling the body, and bujutsu, the art of controlling a weapon …’

The pencil started scraping nimbly across the paper, but Tamba laughed, making it clear that he was imitating the manner of a typical lecturer only in fun.

‘But we shall not get to all that for a long, long time. For now, you must make yourself like a newborn child who is discovering the world and studying the abilities of his own body. You must learn to breathe, drink, eat, control the functioning of your inner organs, move your arms and legs, crawl, stand, walk, fall. We teach our children from the cradle. We stretch their joints and muscles. We rock the cradle roughly and rapidly, so that the little child quickly learns to shift its centre of gravity. We encourage what ordinary children are punished for: imitating the calls of animals and birds, throwing stones, climbing trees. You will never be like someone raised in a shinobi family. But do not let that frighten you. Flexible limbs and stamina are not the most important things.’

‘Then what is most important, sensei?’ asked Erast Petrovich, using the most respectful Japanese form of address.

‘You must know how to formulate a question correctly. That is half of the task. And the second half is being able to hear the answer.’

‘I d-don’t understand …’

‘A man consists of questions, and life and the world around him consist of answers to these questions. Determine the sequence of the questions that concern you, starting with the most important. Then attune yourself to receive the answers. They are everywhere, in every event, in every object.’

‘Really in every one?’

‘Yes. For every object is a particle of the Divine Body of the Buddha. Take this stone here …’ Tamba picked up a piece of basalt from the ground and showed it to his pupil. ‘Take it. Look at it very carefully, forgetting about everything except your question. See what an interesting surface the stone has; all these hollows and bumps, the pieces of dirt adhering to it, the flecks of other substances in it. Imagine that your entire life depends on the structure and appearance of this stone. Study this object for a very long time, until you feel that you know everything about it. And then ask it your question.’

‘Which one, for instance?’ asked Erast Petrovich, examining the piece of basalt curiously.

‘Any. If you should do something or not. If you are living your life correctly. If you should be or not be.’

‘To be or not to be?’ the titular counsellor repeated, not entirely sure whether the jonin had quoted Shakespeare or whether it was merely a coincidence. ‘But how can a stone answer?’

‘The answer will definitely be there, in its contours and patterns, in the forms that they make up. The man who is attuned to understanding will see it or hear it. It might not be a stone, but any uneven surface, or something that occurs purely by chance: a cloud of smoke, the pattern of tea leaves in the bottom of a cup, or even the remains of the coffee that you gaijins are so fond of drinking.’

‘Mmm, I see,’ the titular counsellor drawled. ‘I’ve heard about that in Russia. It’s called “reading the coffee grounds”.’

At night he and she were together. In Tamba’s house, where the upper rooms existed only to deceive and real life was concentrated in the basement, they were given a room with no windows.

Following lingering delights that were not like either ‘Fire and Thunder’ or ‘The Love of Two Moles’, as he looked at her motionless face and lowered eyelashes, he said:

‘I never know what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking about. Even now.’

She said nothing, and he thought there was not going to be any answer.

But then sparks glinted under those eyelashes and those scarlet lips stirred:

‘I can’t tell you what I’m thinking about. But if you want, I’ll show you what I’m feeling.’

‘Yes, I do want, very much!’

She lowered her eyelashes again.

‘Go upstairs, into the corridor. It’s dark there, but close your eyes as well, so you can’t even see the shadows. Touch the wall on the right. Walk forward until you find yourself in front of a door. Open it and take three big steps forward. Then open your eyes.’

That was all she said.

He got up and was about to put on his shirt.

‘No, you must not have any clothes on.’

He walked up the stairway attached to the wall. He didn’t open his eyes.

He walked slowly along the corridor and bumped into a door.

He opened it – and the cold of the night scalded his skin.

It’s the door with the precipice behind it, he realised.

Three big steps? How big? How long was the little bridge? About a sazhen, no longer.

He took one step, and then another, trying not to keep them short. He hesitated before the third. What if the third step took his foot into the void?

The precipice was here, right beside him, he could feel its fathomless breathing.

With an effort of will he took a step – exactly as long as the first ones. His toes felt a ribbed edge. Just one more inch and …

He opened his eyes – and he saw nothing.

No moon, no stars, no lights down below.

The world had melded into a single whole, in which there was no heaven and no earth, no top and no bottom, There was only a point around which creation was arranged.

The point was located in Fandorin’s chest and it was sending out a signal full of life and mystery: lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

Sunlight parts all things,

Darkness unites everything.

The night world is one