had dragged it away, for sure: they’d taken off the clothes and shoes and flung the naked corpse out in the street, that was the way of Khitrovka.
Senka didn’t feel afraid with Erast Petrovich and Death there. He held up the paraffin lamp and showed them how to take out the stones.
‘It’s a tight squeeze here, but it’s all right after that. You just keep going to the end.’
The engineer glanced into the hole, rubbed his fingers on one of the blocks and said: ‘Old stonework, a l-lot older than the building of the d-dosshouse. This part of Moscow is like a c-cake with many layers: new f-foundations were laid on top of the old ones, and then n-new ones on top of those. They’ve been b-building here for almost a thousand years.’
‘Are we going in, then?’ asked Senka, who couldn’t wait to show off his treasure.
‘There’s no n-need,’ answered Mr Nameless. ‘We can admire the sight t-tomorrow night. And so,’ he said, turning to Death, ‘be here, in this hall, at p-precisely a quarter past three in the m-morning. The Prince and Deadeye will come. When they see you, they will be s-surprised and start asking questions. No explanations. Show them the p-passage without saying anything, the stones will already be m-moved aside. Then s-simply lead them through, that’s all you have to do. I’ll be here soon after that, and that will be the b-beginning of Operation . . . I haven’t thought of a n-name for it yet. The main thing is, k-keep calm and don’t be afraid.’
Death kept her eyes fixed on the engineer all the time. Fair do’s, even in the flickering light of the paraffin lamp he was a handsome devil.
‘I’m not afraid,’ she said in a slightly hoarse voice. ‘And I’ll do everything you say. And now let’s go.’
‘Where t-to?’
She smiled bitterly and teased him: ‘No explanations, keep calm and don’t be afraid of anything.’
And she walked out of the hall without saying another word. Erast Petrovich gave Senka a confused look and dashed after her. So did Senka, but he grabbed the lamp first. Now what idea had she got into her head?
On the porch of the house, right in front of the door, Death turned round. Her face wasn’t mocking now, like it had been in the basement, it seemed to be distorted by suffering, but still unbearably beautiful at the same time.
‘Forgive me, Erast Petrovich. I can’t hold out any longer. Perhaps God will take pity on me and work a miracle . . . I don’t know . . . But what you wrote was true. I am Death, but I am alive. It may be wrong, but I can’t carry on like this. Give me your hand.’
Mr Nameless didn’t say a thing, he seemed overcome by shyness as she took him by the hand and pulled him towards her. He walked up one step, then another.
Senka went up after him. Something was about to happen here!
But Death hissed at him: ‘Will you go away, for God’s sake! You just can’t leave me alone, can you?’
And she slammed the door right in his face – bang! Senka was struck dumb by the cruel injustice of it all. From behind the door he heard a strange sound, a kind of knocking, then a rustling, and something like sobbing, or maybe groaning. No words were spoken – he would have heard, because he had his ear pressed to the keyhole.
But when he realised what was going on in there, the tears started streaming from his eyes.
Senka banged the lamp down on the pavement, squatted on his haunches and put his hands over his ears. He squeezed his eyes tight shut too, so as not to hear or see this lousy rotten world, this bitch of a life in which some got everything and others got damn all. And God didn’t exist, because if he could allow someone to be mocked as cruelly as this, the world would be better off without him.
But his woeful blaspheming didn’t last very long, no more than a minute, in fact.
The door swung open, and Erast Petrovich came flying out on to the porch as if he’d been pushed from behind.
The engineer’s tie knot had been pulled askew, the buttons on his shirt were open, and Mr Nameless’s expression was hard to describe, because Senka had never seen anything like it on that self-possessed face before, he’d never even suspected that anything of the kind was