Regent’s Park, however, is surrounded by expensive houses standing on land that also belongs to the Queen—and they can’t be bought, only rented, even though it may be for a hundred or two hundred years, so none of the residents in these luxurious mansions and apartments that cost millions can truly say “my home is my castle.” But that didn’t seem to bother anyone very much—at any rate, as I walked along the side of the park I spotted a parked Bentley with a number plate that read ARMANI and a couple of people with faces that I’d seen in films, or on the front pages of newspapers.
Well, anyway, if you’ve lived in this world for three hundred years and have still not accumulated enough money to settle anywhere you fancy—then you’re a total idiot. Of course, there are people like that to be found even among Prophets, but Erasmus was clearly not one of them. So of course he could afford a little mansion close to Regent’s Park.
However, the reality exceeded all my expectations.
Rather than using schematic tourist maps or the more detailed police variety, I relied on my phone with its built-in GPS system. I didn’t want to gape at the little screen like some crazy gadget-fanatic, so I simply clipped on the earphone and walked along, following the commands dictated by the pleasant female voice. As everyone knows, apart from the standard voices you can find hundreds of patches for GPS systems on the Internet: if you prefer, you can have your route indicated to you by a grandiloquent Gorbachev or a punch-drunk Yeltsin or a fussy Medvedev, and for the true connoisseur there is even Lenin—“You are on the right road, comrades!” and Stalin—“Deviate to the right!” My soundtrack imitated some old film: “To the left, milord,” “To the right, milord,” and I liked that—somehow it seemed to fit well with Erasmus.
Well, first I walked along Albany Street, glancing curiously at the expensive mansions and old buildings, either of redbrick with little towers and bay windows, or with white walls and columns. It was a very touristy district, so I also came across the famous red telephone booths (strangely enough, in this age of digital mobile phones, people were still using them) and the impressive cylindrical forms of the Royal Mail’s postboxes (and people dropped letters into them in front of my very eyes). All this retro that the tourists go dewy-eyed for really did look quite natural, not at all affected, and yet again I was stung by sad thoughts of Moscow. What could my city have been like if it had not been demolished, reconstructed, and torn to pieces in order to squeeze profit out of every single clod of earth? Completely different from this, of course, but also alive and interesting—not the present soulless agglomeration of bleak new developments and dilapidated Stalin-era blocks with only rare, usually completely reconstructed old buildings.
The GPS whispered: “To the left, milord.” Obediently walking in through one of the entrances to Regent’s Park, I found myself in a kingdom of mighty trees, fragrant flowers, and people strolling along paths. Probably less than a third of them were actual Londoners—most were tourists with cameras.
I wondered where Erasmus actually lived. In a little shack surrounded by his beloved plants?
I suppressed an urge to glance at the screen. It was more interesting to follow the commands. The system’s memory included even the narrowest little paths, and I followed them deeper and deeper into the park. There wasn’t any real wilderness here, of course, there couldn’t possibly be, but I encountered fewer and fewer tourists.
Then I saw a huge building that seemed to me to stand in the park itself, or right on its very edge. In actual fact, there was an avenue running along the boundary of the park, and a house had been built on it. It reminded me most of all of the finest examples of architecture from the Stalinist period—there were even statues on the cornice under the roof, only I couldn’t make out who exactly they represented: mythological characters, maybe, or important British cultural or political figures, or representatives of the various peoples of Britain. To judge from the cars parked by the building it was inhabited by people with millions in their bank accounts.
But the GPS led me further along the avenue.
So did he really live in a little shack, then?
“Straight ahead, milord,” said the GPS. “We’re arriving now, milord.”
I halted in bewilderment. There in front of me was an old church. Well, maybe not a church, but something ecclesiastical—an abbey, or a monastic building, constructed in a strange architectural style, with two wings, like a country-estate house but quite clearly some kind of religious edifice.
“To the right, milord.”
The right wing of the building looked rather different. Well, there were the same moss-covered walls, stained-glass windows, and tall, carved wooden doors. But it was a dwelling house. Or, rather, the residential section of the abbey or church.
Well, and why not, if I thought about it? Especially in England. If there’d been a church here it would have had a house for a priest—or, rather, a vicar. Let God have the church and the people have the house. No services would have been held here for a long, long time, and the vicar’s descendants—stop, could he have had any descendants? Probably he could, vicars weren’t celibate like Catholic priests—they had chosen a different path. And, sooner or later, someone had sold the house to Erasmus. Or perhaps the house had belonged to the Darwin family and he had inherited it.
The door opened just as I walked up to it and stopped, wondering what to do—press the button of the bell, or knock with the heavy bronze knocker. An elderly, fat, gray-haired gentleman in an old-fashioned tweed suit looked at me curiously.
“Mr. Darwin?” I asked.
“Monsieur Antoine?” He had either completely assimilated his image as a Frenchman or he couldn’t quite get used to the idea that I wasn’t a Gaul. But the archaisms had almost completely disappeared from his speech. “Come in. I’ve been waiting for you for ages.”
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I replied automatically.
A historical film could have been shot in Erasmus Darwin’s residence. Several, in fact. The kitchen into which I followed my host was equipped according to the very latest word in 1970s technology. Or, more precisely, the American 1970s, with lots of chrome and glass and touchingly naive design work. Darwin prepared coffee in a huge machine with a glass container for coffee beans on top of it. As it ground the beans, the machine rumbled like an airliner taking off. Standing on one of the tables under the colorful stained-glass windows was a bright, gleaming antique food processor, with CUISINART written on its side. The fridge was also a brand that I didn’t know.
Carrying a tray, on which he had placed coffee cups, a cream jug, and a sugar bowl, Erasmus led me into the sitting room. Here the 1970s capitulated ingloriously to the 1920s or 1930s—superbly polished leather furniture and dark wood everywhere—in the wall panels as well as the furniture—a marble fireplace . . . in which, to my amazement, genuine logs were burning! As far as I was aware, that was strictly forbidden—at one time, to combat the famous London smog, all the fireplaces in the city had been converted for gas. There was no TV, of course, but there was a valve radio, housed in a substantial wooden cabinet that looked like a small cupboard.
“Are you not feeling cold, Antoine?” Erasmus asked. “Perhaps a drop of porto with cognac?”
“But it’s summer outside,” I said, amazed. I don’t always grasp certain elementary things straight away. “Ah . . . but then . . . it’s so cool in here. Thick walls, right? Thanks, I’ll gladly take a drop of porto with cognac.”
A look of relief appeared on Erasmus’s face.
“Why, of course, you’re from Musco . . . Russia!” he said delightedly. “Drinking in the morning wouldn’t bother you!”
“It’s almost lunchtime already,” I said diplomatically, making myself comfortable in the deep leather armchair.
“Damn the porto!” Erasmus exclaimed. “Fine, old, warm-hearted Irish whisky!”
Well, after all, three centuries is quite long enough, not only to acquire part of an abbey in the center of London, but
also to become an alcoholic.
From out of a wide sideboard with shelves concealed by little doors of cloudy matte-glass, Erasmus took several bottles. He examined them fastidiously and selected one that had no label at all.
“A hundred and fifty years old,” he told me. “I have whisky older than that, but that’s not really important. What matters is that in those days petrol engines had not yet polluted nature with their stench, rye was rye, malt was malt, and peat was peat . . . Would you like ice, Antoine?”
“No,” I said, mostly out of politeness, in order not to make Erasmus go to the kitchen.
“Quite right!” Erasmus said approvingly. “Ice is for the uncouth yokels in the colonies. If required, I have pure Irish water . . .”
He splashed out a tiny drop of whisky for each of us. I touched my lips to the dark, almost black potation.
It tasted as if I had taken a sip from a peat bog.
And then it felt as if I had drunk liquid fire.
Erasmus watched me, chuckling quietly.
“It takes a bit of getting used to,” I said, putting down my glass. “It’s very . . . very unusual.”
“Do you like it?”
“I can’t say yet,” I admitted honestly. “But I can say one thing for certain—it’s a unique drink. Lagavulin doesn’t even come close.”
“Ha!” Erasmus snorted. “Lagavulin, Laphroaig—all that’s for pampered modern folk . . . But you’re forthright, Antoine. I like that.”
“What point is there in lying to a Prophet?” I asked, shrugging.
“Well, what kind of Prophet am I . . .” Erasmus said, and sipped on his powerful drink, suddenly embarrassed. “Just a petty Clairvoyant . . . Yes, I’ll try to talk in a way that you can understand, but I don’t see people very often—if I seem excessively old-fashioned, please tell me straight away.”
“All right.” I picked up the plastic bag I had brought and held it out to Erasmus. “The head of the Moscow Night Watch asked me to give you this.”
“His Eminence Gesar?” Erasmus asked curiously. “And what’s in it?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Erasmus took a small letter opener off the mantelshelf and started opening the bag with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old child who has found his long-awaited present on Christmas morning.
“How have I merited the attention of the great warrior of the Light . . .” Erasmus muttered. “And why have I been favored with a present . . .”
I realized that the retired Dark Other was playing the fool. But for someone who lived practically locked away from the world in the center of London, that was an entirely forgivable weakness.
Eventually the package was torn open and its contents displayed on the low coffee table. As I had anticipated, the plastic bag had contained far more than could have fitted into it naturally. There was a liter bottle of vodka—and old vodka at that: the spelling on the label was pre-Revolution. And there was also a three-liter glass jar, filled with grainy black caviar. Illegal, poached goods—no doubt about it. But then, that was hardly likely to bother Gesar, and it would bother Erasmus even less. And, finally, there was the flower pot that I was used to seeing on the windowsill in the boss’s office. Growing in the pot was a terribly ugly, crooked little tree that any bonsai master would have grubbed up out of pity. I recalled with some embarrassment that during a certain meeting that had dragged on for a long time, when Gesar had said that anyone who wanted to smoke could do so, I’d stubbed my cigarette ends out in the tree’s pot, for lack of an ashtray. And I wasn’t the only one.
Erasmus set the vodka and caviar on the floor without a second glance. Then he placed the pot with the little tree in it at the center of the small table and sat down on the floor to gaze at this botanical misunderstanding.
The tree stood about fifteen centimeters high. As gnarled as an ancient olive and almost completely bare—there were only two little leaves protruding optimistically from one branch.
Erasmus sat there, looking at the little tree.
I waited patiently.
“Astounding,” said Erasmus. He reached for his glass and took a sip of whisky. He turned the pot slightly and looked at it from a different angle. Then he screwed up his eyes—and I could tell that the old Other was looking at the little tree through the Twilight.
“You’re not aware of the essential significance of this gift, are you?” Erasmus asked, without looking at me.
“No, sir,” I answered with a sigh. And suddenly it occurred to me that Erasmus was probably a Sir in the original meaning of the word.
Erasmus stood up, walked round the plant pot, and muttered: “Well, damn me . . . Anton, please step back or protect yourself . . . I’m going to use my powers a bit.”
I thought it best to move back and also put up a Magician’s Shield, taking the glass of whisky with me, just to be on the safe side. This proved to be the correct decision—it was a quarter of an hour before I moved back to the little table. Erasmus spent all that time tussling with the bonsai. He plunged search spells into the plant, observed it through the Twilight, even withdrawing as far as the third level. He crumbled a pinch of soil from the pot between his fingers and ate it, sniffed at the leaves for a long time—and actually seemed delighted at that: his face lit up, but then he gestured in annoyance and poured himself another whisky. He spent the last minute standing there, toying with a fireball on the palm of his hand as if he was struggling against the temptation to incinerate the pot and the bonsai, together with the table.
But he restrained himself.
“I give up,” Erasmus growled. “Your Gesar is truly great . . . I can’t work out the meaning of his message. Are you sure he didn’t ask you to communicate anything in words?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Erasmus took off his jacket and threw it across an empty armchair. He sat down in another chair, rubbed his face with his hands, and muttered: “I’m getting old . . . Well then, you wished to talk about tigers, Antoine?”
“Yes, and you were expecting me, Erasmus?”
“It’s all interconnected . . .” he said, still unable to take his staring eyes off the bonsai. Then he said: “Antoine, move the plant to the mantelshelf. I’ll deal with it later, try everything I possibly can . . . I’m sure I’ll be able to solve Gesar’s riddle eventually. But meanwhile I can’t bear to look at it, it annoys me. Tell me, how did you find me?”
“The story of your childhood is no secret, esteemed Erasmus,” I said.
“But it is not so very widely known . . .”
“It’s described in a little book that my daughter was reading.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Erasmus, keenly interested. “Did you think to bring it with you?”
“Damn,” I said, embarrassed. “You know, somehow it never occurred to me—I could send it to you.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Erasmus said, with a nod. “Forgive an old man’s vanity, I enjoy collecting every reminder of the human period of my life . . . But how did you discover my address? I didn’t think the Night Watch of London had that information.”
“It wasn’t the Watch,” I admitted. “I acquired the address from private sources . . .”
Erasmus waited.
“Anna Tikhonovna works in our Watch . . .”
“Anna!” Erasmus exclaimed. “What a fool I am—I should have guessed . . .” He gave me a sideways glance. “Well, does she still laugh when she remembers how she caught me?”
“Pride and Prejudice . . .” I said pensively.
“What?”
“She doesn’t find it amusing at all. She’s still distressed that your relations were severed so abruptly. Of course, she was interested in the story of the Tiger—she collects all sorts of oddities that are ignored by official science, but she enjoyed being in touch with you.”
Erasmus shrugged. Then he muttered: “I found it interesting too . . . she was so delicate in the way she made it clear that she was an Other, and she knew who
I was . . . but at the same time she displayed such a deep knowledge of botany. The article she published in that journal was most interesting . . . a most agreeable lady, it was quite surprising that she was from Musco . . . I beg your pardon, of course, Antoine, but I didn’t really like Russian women before that.”
“That’s quite all right, I’m not very taken by the English ones,” I replied vengefully.
“We really ought to have met,” Erasmus went on. “We could have looked into each other’s eyes and understood each other better.”
“Yes, the Internet doesn’t allow for genuine contact,” I said profoundly.
“What Internet, Antoine?” Erasmus laughed. “It was more than thirty years ago! The USSR still existed then! Letters on paper—with just a little spell, so that the censor wouldn’t examine them and they would arrive more quickly . . .”
Yes, I’d really put my foot in it. Sometimes I forget just how recently all these mobile phones and computers appeared.
“So the publication was in a real journal, then?” I said, taking the point. “A scholarly one, on paper? And I thought it was a ‘live’ journal . . .”
Erasmus laughed until he cried, and then he said: “There you are, Antoine. Even you will start feeling like a dinosaur soon, decorating your home with Soviet posters and red banners! Never mind, one can get accustomed to the way time flies . . . Well then, let me tell you about the Tiger. About my Tiger. And then you can explain to me what you’re so agitated about.”
Chapter 3
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WAS NOT AN AGE WELL EQUIPPED to ensure a happy childhood. But then, it wasn’t all that great for an active prime of life and a peaceful old age either. It was easy to die; in fact it was very easy. Life was merely the prelude to death and the life after death—the existence of which only very few doubted.
Sometimes this prelude was a long one, but far more often it was short.
Both for humans and for Others.
“Are you listening to me or sleeping, boy?”