She Lover of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin Read Online Free PDF Page B

. . .’ he exclaimed in fright. ‘I’m a poet and I despise the opinion of the crowd. It’s just really very unusual . . . Anyway, that’s not important.’
    Could he really be embarrassed by me? she wondered in amazement. Did harlequins even know how to be embarrassed? She glanced round at her reflection in a brightly lit shop window and flinched inwardly – it was a very impressive outfit indeed – but the attack of shyness was dismissed as disgraceful. That pitiful feeling had been left behind for ever beyond the branching Ural mountains.
    In the tram, Petya told her in a low voice about the place where they were going.
    ‘There isn’t another club like it in the whole of Russia, even in St Petersburg,’ he said, tickling her ear with his breath. ‘Such people, you’ve never seen anyone like them in Irkutsk! We use special names, everyone invents his own. And some are given their names by the Doge. For instance, he christened me Cherubino.’
    ‘Cherubino?’ Columbine echoed in a disappointed voice, thinking that Petya really was more like a curly-haired page-boy than a self-confident, imperious Harlequin.
    Petya misinterpreted the intonation of her voice and drew himself upright haughtily.
    ‘That’s nothing. We have more bizarre aliases than that. Avaddon, Ophelia, Caliban, Horatio. And Lorelei Rubinstein . . .’
    ‘What, you mean Lorelei Rubinstein herself goes there?’ the young provincial gasped. ‘The poetess?’
    There was good reason to gasp. Lorelei’s sultry, shamelessly sensual poems had only reached Irkutsk after a considerable delay. Progressive young ladies who understood modern poetry knew them off by heart.
    ‘Yes,’ said Cherubino-Petya, nodding portentously. ‘Her alias in our group is the Lioness of Ecstasy. Or simply Lioness. Although, of course, everyone knows who she really is.’
    Ah, what a sweet tightness she felt in her chest! Liberal-handed Fortune had flung open before her the doors into the most select possible society, and she looked at Petya far more affectionately now.
    He continued. ‘The leader of the club is Prospero. There aren’t many men like him – not one in a thousand, or even a million. He’s already getting on, his hair is completely grey. But you forget that straight away, he has such strength in him, such energy and magnetism. In biblical times the prophets were probably like him. And he is a kind of prophet, if you think about it. He’s one of the old prisoners from the Schliesselburg Fortress; he spent a long time in a cell for revolutionary activity, but he never talks about his former views, because he has abandoned politics completely. He says politics is for the masses, and nothing of a mass nature can be beautiful, for beauty is always unique and inimitable. Prospero looks rather severe and he is often abrupt, but in actual fact he is kind and magnanimous, everybody knows that. He secretly helps those aspirants who need money. He used to be a chemical engineer before he was in the fortress, but now he has been left an inheritance and is rich, so he can afford it.’
    ‘Who are these “aspirants”?’ she asked.
    ‘That’s what the members of the club are called. We’re all poets. There are twelve of us, always twelve. And Prospero is our Doge. That’s the same thing as a chairman, only a chairman is elected, and in this case it’s the other way round: the Doge himself chooses who to accept as a member and who not.’
    Columbine was alarmed.
    ‘But if there always have to be twelve of you, what about me? That makes me superfluous.’
    Petya replied mysteriously: ‘When one of the aspirants marries, we can fill the place that is vacated with someone new. Naturally, the final decision is taken by Prospero. But before I take you into his home, you must swear that you will never tell anyone else what I have told you.’
    Married? Vacated place? Columbine didn’t understand a thing but, of course, she immediately exclaimed: ‘I swear by