The Saint Petersburg apartment was beyond squalid. In these slums, “Squalid” was a moderately sized apartment poorly kept by a lazy man, or a small apartment inhabited by ten. This room was not too large for the inhabitant to be bothered cleaning, nor too cluttered for such a thing to be possible. It was merely beyond redemption.
Redemption. The man would have scoffed at the term, if one could scoff at one’s own thoughts. As it was he sat there in the musty armchair, though rancid was probably a more fitting adjective, and listened to the weak little man in front of him jabber on.
“It is not my fault of course, I told you about my landlady, and the lieutenant at the office.” The bowler hat the supplicant wrung in his hands was almost worn down to its felt rim and wire frame, but still the little man rubbed at it absentmindedly with his thumbs.
Ignorant people. Stupid, greedy people, but this one’s fault was his own.
“Yes, yes of course Ilych, it is the rent of the former and the nepotism of the latter, I believe you.”
…rub, rub, rub…
“But we are here to settle the matter of the contract. Now when I offered five originally, you were more than content, and now I hear from your letter that you ask for ten?”
The rubbing grew more insistent; it was as if Ilych was trying to hide from the man in front of him through sheer concentration on that repeated, monotonous, action.
“You want ten Ilych?” he repeated, the hint of a reassuring note in the tone of the question.
The rubbing continued, but Ilych took a moment to glance up his finely dressed counterpart. “Yes” he squeaked, before lowering his eyes, scared of the cold stare that bore into him whenever he dared to meet the twin coals sitting in the chair opposite him.
Ilych’s richly dressed counterpart leant back in his chair, comfortable in his position now that they were down to the bargaining. Or rather that is to say that for a moment the man broadened his slightly hunched shoulders, unclasped the hands he held in his lap and moved to put them on the arms of the chair, and inclined backwards a hair’s breadth. Then the man stopped and resumed a position between that which he had held before and that which he had thought to move into, shrieking inwardly at what this armchair would probably be doing to his fine suit.
“Well that simply will not do Ilych. I hate to tell you this, but this is simply a buyer’s market, and the supply of goods of the quality you possess easily outstrips demand. It is simply not worth ten! I will offer you six.”
...rub...rub…rub...
“But I mean, surely it is not so great a price…” the little man wheedled, as the forefinger of each hand joined their neighbours in the rubbing of the hat.
“But if I make an allowance for you, then others might expect the same, and then the bottom would fall out of the business my good friend.” Though the words rolled smoothly off a well oiled tongue, the man spat them in his mind. No fool, whore or idiot would be this man’s friend of their own unfettered volition.
What remained of Ilych's receding blonde hairline was matted with grime, and was interlaced with the frayed hood of a cloak made from strips of material of various muted colours. His clothes were equally dishevelled; what remained of a uniform was mismatched with whatever the man could pay for with alms. At the same time he looked part beggar, soldier, circus clown and part aging idiot, though the latter was the most fitting epithet.
…rub…rub…rub…
The well-dressed man grabbed the faded hat and tore it apart with his hands. Ilych shrieked and almost fell out of the stool he was sitting in, whimpering in terror. Undone by his own pathetic nature. Though, the well dressed man thought, that undoing had begun weeks ago when he had been contacted by this Ilych, and was only beginning to culminate now. In place of the hat, the man placed a fine sheet of vellum, inscribed with great care with line after line of written script.
“Seven years Ilych. I will give you seven glorious years if you sign this paper. I will give you seven years if you sign the paper and let me leave this wasteland of an apartment in this cesspool of a city!”
Shaking, both with terror and the beginning of a feverish delight, Ilych took the pen from the man’s hand and signed the paper. On any other parchment, any other contract, the scrawl that emerged in the wake of that spasmodic scribble of a hand movement would not be legally binding. Here, the well-dressed man thought, legality was a mere fading memory, and reality was emerging to the fore.
As soon as what looked like the echo of a shadow of Ilych’s signature deigned to blight the contract’s symmetrical perfection with its chaos, the well-dressed man whipped the paper from between Ilych’s kneading thumbs. Grasping the pen in a similarly dexterous denouement, the man rose from his chair and in a moment was standing by Ilych’s door, the rotten frame of which was barely standing in its rusted hinges.
“I will return in seven years to this apartment Ilych. If, in your heart of hearts, you actually believe that I have not delivered everything I promised of those seven years, then nothing will occur but the destruction of this contract,” he indicated the paper. “If, on the other hand, you know; you need not speak it you need merely acknowledge it to yourself, that those seven years were all I promised they would be, then you will deliver on your end of our bargain.”
With that final announcement, the figure wearing the rich suit of a gentlemanly fop ripped the rotten door from its hinges and threw it aside. He strode aristocratically from the room, never giving Ilych another look.
The small, dirty (no, fetid was perhaps the adjective most suiting), man with a receding hairline waited until he was sure his landlady had not heard the door collapse. He rose from his stool like a vulture ascending into the clouds on wings of pure self-satisfaction. Standing, he began a jig, laughing to himself. Seven years! He had assumed the noble would rebuke him at five, perhaps even leave in outrage, but seven years!”
The jig became a caper, aging joints loosened and he moved with a grace he had not felt in years. In that multi-coloured robe he looked the caricature of a circus harlequin, but he did not even care. Seven years of perfection!
And all it had cost him was his soul.
---------- “You want ten Ilych?” he repeated, the hint of a reassuring note in the tone of the question.