Dmitry Matteovich Adoratsky arrived at sunrise to Leonid’s manor without having slept at all since they had met during the night. To rest would have been difficult, considering the short amount of time he had to sleep and, obviously, the hectic events he had just been a witness to. He was also increasingly more aware of his debt as time went on; he knew that if it weren’t paid in just a few days now, people would come to take his belongings, or perhaps to take his life. None of this he mentioned to Romanovich, though in the early hours of the morning the serpent gazed with a touch of jealousy— and perhaps desperation— on the well-decorated living room of Kuznetsov’s manor, thinking that just two of the antique portraits hanging on the walls would be enough to raise him out of his inherited debt. Leonid descended the staircase, wearing an elegant suit of a satiny black color, hanging around his neck a silver-beaded rosary. Dmitry wondered in a distant way how many rosaries this peculiar man owned. Dmitry had dressed in black himself, since they were having a funeral today— though it would be a rather singular funeral, being a few years late. “Good morning, Leonid.” “Good morning,” the prince returned with a slight incline of his head. Dmitry doubted that Kuznetsov had been able to sleep, though to an untrained eye the man appeared as distinguished as ever, save for the way his hair remained rumpled and unkept from the night before. “You’re ready?” For a moment Leonid paused and Dmitry feared he might go back on his word, but he merely nodded his head and descended the stairs further down into the laboratory basement where the corpse was being kept. The woman’s skin was cool to the touch and her joints had just begun to stiffen in years late rigor mortis, a strange phenomenon. At the sight of these beginning stages of decomposition he had worked so hard to fend off, a shadow passed over Kuznetsov’s sharp features, but he soon collected himself. Bravely, gently, the prince took the shoulders of his late wife in his hands as Dmitry lifted her on the opposite end by the ankles. They walked for a long time in a thoughtful sort of silence, Leonid walking backwards along a path apparently intimately familiar to him and Dmitry following, bearing half of the weight, unsure of their destination. They left the manor and walked through the tall grasses between Leonid’s house and the distant ocean. A harsh wind had begun to blow in from over the waves, thrashing at the grass and sending a chill through Adoratsky’s overcoat straight through to his heart. He had no way of knowing, but he would have figured it was around half an hour before Leonid stopped, a good thirty or so meters from where the sand of the beach began, and set down the body with Dmirty’s assistance. “This is your property?” Dmitry asked, though he was unsure Leonid heard him over the howl of the wind and the crashing of the waves. “I own all of this land, and a good portion of the ocean around it, too.” “All of it? Really? Some of the people in town say you’re a fool to buy land that won’t grow anything but this wretched grass.” Leonid Kuznetsov gave a faint, thoughtful smile at those words, casting his eyes over the grassy field which rippled like the waves under the force of the wind. His inky black hair was tossed about, too, messing it up further. He breathed a sigh, the noise of which too soft to reach Dmitry’s ears, though they stood only the length of Asyia’s body away from each other. “Shall we dig a hole?” Dmitry asked, nearly shouting. “No, I don’t believe we shall.” Leonid said, making no attempt to raise his voice for Dmitry’s benefit. “I have deprived her of nature’s processes for a long time now, I admit. I would like her to go now as naturally as possible. She would have wanted to feed the scavengers and the birds as well as the insects— she always harbored an affinity for them.”
“Not much of a burial, then, is it?” “More of a goodbye.” “Should I leave you to it, then?” Asked the serpent, believing he might want a bit of privacy for his farewells. “I think it’s better we leave now. There is nothing to say.” The walk back to the manor seemed to last longer, but the wind seemed to let up a bit. The mind of the serpent was far away; lingering as it typically did on the money he owed still. As they walked on in silence, Dmitry had begun to warm himself to the idea that he would flee Russia and start a new life elsewhere, thinking to himself that his grasp of German was good enough— “Something preys on your mind,” Leonid observed, not at all a question. “What makes you think that?” “I was told so by a deity.” “What? Really?” Dmitry exclaimed with a start. “No,” Leonid said, with a slight smile, “I was joking. It was a mere guess, based on the pensive expression which you were wearing— though you’ve wiped it from your features now that you realize it was noticeable enough to inquire upon, I see.” “Joking doesn’t suit you,” Dmitry said, more than a bit sourly. “Nothing weighs on my mind.” “You lie,” he said. “Well then… it is certainly none of your business. It does not concern you.” “You do not trust me, Mitya?” “I never said that, Leonid. I just said that it’s none of your business.” “It bothers you, thus it is my business.” “What for?” Leonid stopped walking and fixed Matteovich with such an intense stare that the young man stopped in his tracks, too, and listened intently. “You are my best friend, Mitya. Further, my only friend. I owe my life to you. If something troubles you, by extension it troubles me, and until I hear of it, I shall grieve a cause which I am ignorant to. Do I make myself clear?” “Extraordinarily,” Dmitry muttered. “So?” “I was born here in Russia, and in my heart I am a Russian as good as any other, but my father was an Italian by the name of Matteo Adorno. Well… My father’s heart was a corrupt thing, and though he was at once a wealthy man, he lost it to the other gambling-men of Italy. To escape these sharks, he moved to Eastern Russia, where he met my mother. I was born soon after their matrimony. “Matteo soon picked up his cards again, and my proud mother would rather die than be dishonored by his imminent bankruptcy. She fell terribly ill and died not long after the last ruble was spent. By this time, I was perhaps eleven. My father taught me many things, for— his vices aside— he was a wise man. I learned that to survive a man must use his hands, but to thrive a man must use his wits. “By the time I turned sixteen, my father died, leaving his debts, along with his few belongings and heirlooms, to me. I sold them all. I allotted myself a small budget to live on and used the rest of the money to pay the majority of the debt. “So I moved westward, and along the way I assumed many titles— Maxim Alexov, Anatoly Mikhailov, Kirill Pavlov— ah, familiar to you, Kirill?” Dmitry paused in his story as Kuznetsov had gone deathly pale at the mention of the last name. “Kirill Pavlov? The assassin of St. Petersburg?” “The very same, I presume. It was by a clever trick that I escaped the clutches of the police. In fact, the more I think about it, the more confused I become— the more I believe in the idea of fate. I was a desperate man, you see, eager to pay off the debt of his father and to regain the honor of his name… Yes, I never forgot my true name, even after all those years of wearing the faces of different men.” “Your real name is, then, Dmitry Matteovich Adoratsky?” “Indeed. I assumed it again upon settling in our town here, just shy of the city. I was sure I needed documentation of my identity, should the police come questioning, so I put on the finest disguise of all: the truth. You ask me what weighs on my mind now— it is only that I fear these are my final days to slither about the side streets of the motherland, for nearly four thousand roubles remain unpaid, and those cursed men begin now to thirst for my blood, rather than my wallet! What will become of me then, now that I am at the end of my sharp wit? Shall I declare bankruptcy, as my father? Shall I fall ill at the thought like my darling mother, too proud to give up her ballgowns?” Dmitry made a sound of despair and turned his face away from his friend. The prince Kuznetsov had listened to the tale, wearing the whole time a pensive expression (though he had gone pale for a moment at the revelation of the blood which stained the hands of the serpent), but presently he reached to his neck, lifted the rosary off of his head, and gave it to Dmitry. “You will be saved,” he said, lowering the rosary around the neck of Adoratsky, who stared in bewilderment at the heavy silver beads. “You will permit me to continue the rest of our journey in silence, for I must think.” ---- > Chapter 7/8 > Next: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1259720701
