Free The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin, Andrew Bromfield Page B

been fairer than ours. When two men face up to each other, there’s almost always some deception in it—one is a better shot and the other a worse, or else one is fat and makes an easier target, or else one spent a sleepless night and his hands are shaking. But Pierre and I did everything without any deception. She said—it was in Sokolniki, on the round alley, the three of us were out for a drive in the carriage —she said: “I’m fed up with the pair of you rich, spoiled little brats. Why don’t you kill each other or something?” And Kokorin, the swine, said to her, “I will kill him, too, if only it will earn me a reward from you.” I said, “And for a reward I would kill. Such a reward as can’t be divided between two. So it’s a quick road to a damp grave for one of us if he doesn’t back down.” Things had already gone that far between Kokorin and me. “What, do you really love me so much, then?” she asked. “More than life itself,” he said. And I said the same. “Very well,” says she, “the only thing I value in people is courage—everything else can be counterfeited. Hear my will. If one of you really does kill the other he shall have a reward for his bravery, and you know what it shall be.” And she laughs. “Only you are idle boasters,” she says, “both of you. You won’t kill anybody. The only interesting thing about you is your fathers’ capital.” I flew into a rage. “I cannot speak,” I said, “for Kokorin, but for the sake of such a reward I will not begrudge either my own life or another man’s.” And she says, angry now, “I’ll tell you what. I’m sick and tired of all your crowing. It’s decided: you shall shoot at each other but not in a duel or else we shall never be rid of the scandal. And a duel is too uncertain. One of you will shoot a hole in the other’s hand and turn up at my house as the victor. No, let it be death for one and love for the other. Let fate decide. Cast lots. And the one the lot falls to—let him shoot himself. And let him write a note so that no one will think that it might be because of me. Have you turned coward now? If you have turned coward, then at least out of shame you will stop visiting me—at least then some good will come of it.” Pierre looked at me and said, “I don’t know about Akhtyrt-sev, but I won’t funk it.”…And so we decided…”
    Akhtyrtsev fell silent and hung his head. Then he shook himself, filled his glass up to the brim, and gulped it down. At the next table the girl in the red stockings broke into peals of laughter. The white-eyed fellow was whispering something in her ear.
    “But what about the will?” Erast Fandorin asked, then bit his tongue, since he was not, after all, supposed to know anything about it. However, Akhtyrtsev, absorbed in his reminiscences, merely nodded listlessly.
    “Ah, the will…” She thought of that. “Didn’t you want to buy me with money?” she said. “Very well, then, let there be money, only not the hundred thousand that Nikolai Stepanich promised” (it’s true, I did make her an offer once—she almost threw me out). “And not two hundred thousand. Let it be everything you have. Whichever one of you must die, let him go to the next world naked. Only I,” she says, “have no need of your money. I can endow anyone you like myself. Let the money go to some good cause—a holy monastery or something of the sort. For prayers for forgiveness of the mortal sin. Well, Petrusha,” she said, “your million should make a good thick candle, don’t you think?” But Kokorin was an atheist, a militant. He was outraged. “Anybody but the priests,” he said. “I’d rather leave it to all the fallen women—let each of them buy herself a sewing machine and change her trade. If there’s not a single woman of the street left in all Moscow, that’ll be something to remember Pyotr Kokorin by.” But then Amalia objected, “Once a woman’s become debauched, you can