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sighed. 'You're a fortunate man, Tulipov. At such a young age you already have reason to respect yourself - something you can be proud of. The Lord has given you a firm core for the whole of your life.'
    Anisii was still trying to grasp the meaning of these strange words when the Court Counsellor continued: 'Do not be concerned about your sister. Hire a nurse for her for the period of the investigation. At public expense, naturally. From this moment on until the case of the Jack of Spades is closed you will be at my disposal. We shall be working together for a while. I hope you won't find it too b-boring.'
    This was his unexpected happiness, Tulipov suddenly realised. This was his good fortune.
Praise be for the white dove!
    CHAPTER 2
    The Science of Life According to Momos
    In recent years he had changed his name so often that he had almost forgotten the original one, the one he had been born with. And in his own mind he had long since referred to himself as 'Momos'.
    Momos is the name of a spiteful ancient Greek jester, the son of Nyx, the goddess of night. In a prophecy of the 'Egyptian Pythia', the same name is given to the jack of spades, a bad card that promises a meeting with a scoffing fool or a malicious trick of fortune.
    Momos was fond of cards and even had a profound respect for them, but he didn't believe in fortune-telling and the meaning he invested in his chosen name was quite different.
    It is well known that every mortal plays a game of cards with destiny. The cards that are dealt do not depend on man; you have to take what you are given: some will get nothing but trumps, others nothing but twos and threes. Nature had dealt Momos middling cards - rubbish, you could say: tens and jacks. But a good player will make a fight of it even with cards like that.
    In terms of the human hierarchy, too, it was the jack that suited him best. Momos's assessment of himself was a sober one: he was no ace, of course, and no king, but he was no worthless card either. So he was a jack. But not some boring old jack of clubs or respectable jack of diamonds or - God forbid -sentimental, drooling jack of hearts, but a special jack, the jack of spades. Spades were a complex suit, the most junior suit in all the games except for bridge, in which they outranked clubs and hearts and diamonds. The conclusion was: decide for yourself what game you are going to play with life, and your suit will be the main one.
    In his early childhood Momos had been obsessed by the Russian saying about chasing two hares at once. Why, he used to wonder in bewilderment, was it not possible to catch both of them? Did you just have to abandon one of them, then? Little Momos (he wasn't Momos yet; he was still Mitenka Sawin) definitely did not agree with that. And he had turned out to be absolutely right. The saying had proved to be a stupid one, designed for the dull-witted and lazy. On occasions Momos had managed to catch not just one or two long-eared, fluffy grey animals at once, but many of them. For that he had his own psychological theory, which he had developed specially.
    People had invented many sciences, and most of them were of no benefit to a normal man, but they carried on writing treatises, defending their master's and doctoral dissertations, becoming members of academies. Ever since he was very little, Momos had been able to sense with his very skin, his bones, his spleen that the most important branch of learning was not arithmetic or Latin, but the ability to please. That was the key with which it was possible to open any door. It was strange, though, that this most important knowledge was never imparted by tutors or grammar-school teachers. He had had to discover its laws for himself. But if you thought about it for a moment, that was actually to his advantage. The boy had shown a talent for this most important branch of learning early on, and he could only thank God that others were unaware of the advantages of this discipline.
    For some