The Cleansing Flames (11 page)

Back in Stolyarny Lane, Porfiry Petrovich called in on Nikodim Fomich. The chief superintendent seemed surprised to see him.

‘I will not keep you long,’ said Porfiry.

‘Please, stay as long as you like.’

Porfiry seated himself on the government-issue sofa, identical to the one in his chambers. ‘The other day we were talking about the fires, do you remember?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘It seems that the individual I was to have met at the Summer Garden may have perished in the fire at the apartment building on Monday night. The fire which claimed six dead in all.’

‘I see.’

‘Do you know who is conducting the investigation into that? Is it a police matter, or has it been handed over to other authorities?’

‘The Third Section, you mean?’

‘That is what I am wondering.’

‘I can find out for you.’

‘Thank you. Either way, I wish to see the file.’

‘If it is still under the jurisdiction of the police and an investigating magistrate, that won’t be a problem. If it has gone to the Third Section, then I am not sure I will be able to help you.’

Porfiry nodded tersely in acknowledgement.

‘Do you not have your own contacts there?’ wondered Nikodim Fomich. ‘I seem to remember you were on amicable terms with one of the officers?’

Porfiry gave a startled look. ‘You are referring to Major Verkhotsev?’

‘That’s the fellow.’

‘He is hardly to be trusted.’

‘My dear Porfiry, none of them is to be trusted.’

Porfiry’s smile as he took his leave was guarded.

*

Porfiry sorted through an array of magazines and newspapers on his desk.

‘It is hard to distinguish all these various publications, is it not, Pavel Pavlovich? We’ve had
The Russian Voice
,
The Russian Word
– there is a
Russian World
too, I believe. Not to mention a
Russian
Messenger
,
Russian Soil
,
Russian Era
. . . They all lay claim to speak for Russia, and yet they have such contrary things to say on her behalf! Pity the poor readers, who must find it awfully confusing.’

‘I don’t find it confusing.’ Virginsky had pulled up a chair to the opposite side of Porfiry’s desk, so that he could more easily browse the newspapers spread out there.

‘No? I suppose the trick is to ignore the
Russian
part of the title, which we may take for granted. So then it becomes a question of distinguishing between a
Voice
, a
Word
, a
Messenger
, the
Soil
and an
Era
.’

‘
Russian Soil
and
Russian Era
are essentially the same paper – they are published from one address and edited by the same Trudolyubov that Blagosvetlov mentioned.
Era
is a daily and
Soil
a monthly.
Soil
is little more than an omnibus, or digest, of
Era
. It often repeats editorials.’

‘And so Kozodavlev was reviewing
Swine
for the novel’s publisher? No wonder that version of his review was so favourable!’ Porfiry smiled and shook his head. ‘My, my, that’s the lowest kind of hackwork, is it not?’

‘One moment, Porfiry Petrovich. We cannot be certain that R. E. does in fact refer to
Russian Era
. And even if it does, we do not know that Kozodavlev truly intended to submit the article. He may have written it as an intellectual exercise. To amuse himself, or perhaps even as a piece of satire aimed against
Russian Era
.’

‘A curious waste of his time.’

‘But not impossible.’

‘The easiest way to resolve this would be to talk to this Mr Trudolyubov. He should know whether he was expecting a review of
Swine
from Kozodavlev. He may even be able to shed some light on the identity of the book’s mysterious author. I see that
Russian Soil
is not at all reticent about its whereabouts. It prints its address for everyone to see. Liteiny Prospect.’

‘Of course. It often serves as a mouthpiece for the Tsarevich. It is recognised as the means by which he airs his criticisms of his father’s regime.’

‘Ah.’ Porfiry placed a hand wearily over his eyes. ‘Please don’t drag me back into those troubled waters.’

‘I shall not drag you anywhere. But I cannot control where the case may take us.’

Porfiry nodded a distracted acknowledgement. He turned the pages of a copy of
Russian Soil
until he came to the first episode of the novel
Swine
. ‘Have you read it, Pavel Pavlovich?’

It was a moment before Virginsky replied. ‘Yes.’

‘There is no need to be reticent. I will not think any the less of you for reading it. Indeed, I intended to read it myself. I cannot remember now why I did not. Certainly it is a work that must be of interest to an investigating magistrate. So . . . what did you think? That is to say, with which of Kozodavlev’s judgements did you concur?’

‘I judged it a poor piece of work.’

‘You think it fails, as a warning to society?’

‘I think it fails as a novel.’

‘And the author? Do you have any opinions regarding his identity?’

‘I do not see that it is at all material to the case we are investigating.’

‘The novel concerns the activities of a group of would-be revolutionaries, is that not so?’

‘Yes.’

‘It seems likely that Kozodavlev was involved in revolutionary politics. I mean actively, rather than just observing from the sidelines and occasionally cheering on in editorials. His letter to me hints at that. He was worried about spies in the department. It is not inconceivable that there may be individuals employed by the state whose true loyalties lie elsewhere, is it, Pavel Pavlovich?’

‘You are accusing me?’

‘Not at all. I know you are far too sensible to get involved with any of that.’ There was an undoubted hint of irony in Porfiry’s voice, that could only be infuriating to Virginsky. ‘To return to Kozodavlev. He went to the bridge over the Winter Canal on Monday, the day the thaw began, because he had a terrible presentiment that the body was going to come to light. He knew this because he had been present when it had been cast in the canal. We can speculate that our man from the canal was a member of a closed cell murdered by his fellows, one of whom may well have been Kozodavlev. The resurfacing of this old crime stings Kozodavlev’s conscience, which had never been easy about the murder, and he writes to me. A spy in the department sees his letter, notifies the Central Revolutionary Committee, and an assassin is sent round to torch his apartment building. In the process, killing five other innocent residents.’

‘Kozodavlev was not innocent. Not if he was an informer.’

‘You think he deserved to be killed?’

Virginsky dipped his gaze, abashed. ‘I had not meant to say that.’

‘And what of the body in the canal? If he too was an informer, he too deserved to die?’

‘We don’t know what he was, or who.’

‘These men . . . these men of the shadows.’ Porfiry’s sudden rage rendered him inarticulate. He was forced to light a cigarette to calm himself. ‘Who gave them the right to take another’s life?’

‘No one . . .
gave
it to them.’

The faltering emphasis of Virginsky’s answer implied a world of meaning that Porfiry was reluctant to explore. He looked at his junior colleague for a moment warily before inhaling deeply on his cigarette. ‘There are two things that I would like to know for certain. The first being whether Kozodavlev was the man on the bridge who watched the sailors bring up the body.’

‘The
Peter the Great
has sailed, has she not?’

‘Regrettably.’

‘And so we have missed our chance to present the photograph of Kozodavlev to Apprentice Seaman Ordynov?’

‘We shall have a photographic copy made and sent on to Helsingfors. The authorities there will question Ordynov when the ship docks, in a few days’ time.’

‘And the second thing?’

Porfiry’s expression clouded suddenly, and he looked away from Virginsky. He snatched up the copy of
Russian Soil
. ‘Whether this . . . novel . . . has any merit at all.’

Virginsky’s frown made it clear he had detected the lie in Porfiry’s voice.

*

*

By the middle of the following afternoon, that of Friday, 21 April, Porfiry had finished reading all four instalments of
Swine
. He put the last copy of
Russian Soil
to one side with a dissatisfied expression. He could not say with any certainty what he had just read. Despite the assertions of that preface, much of the main narrative read as a novel, and a bad novel at that. It was full of cheap novelistic tricks. Indeed, the preface itself could be taken as the first of them. What more transparent novelistic trick could there be than to assert the truth of what is to follow?

And yet, the force of the preface gave him pause. The apparent authenticity of the sentiments expressed seemed to sit at odds with the lurid and contrived narrative that followed. The plot displayed a laughable reliance on coincidence and a lamentable taste for melodrama. The ‘personalities’ portrayed were flat and unconvincing.

That said, it did occur to Porfiry that perhaps individuals in such situations find themselves speaking and acting like characters in a bad novel; if a true account of their acts were written down, the result would be indistinguishable.

He had read the serial half in the hope that it might shed some light on the case he was investigating. On that front, he was not entirely disappointed, although he remained suspicious of the parallels he found. He was looking for a man shot through the head and cast into a canal, and he found him, or something similar. In point of fact, in
Swine
, the body was thrown into a lake, rather than a canal, and one located on a remote country estate and not in the centre of St Petersburg. Striking as any similarities were, Porfiry was not unduly excited by them. The crime in the novel was clearly modelled on a notorious case of a few years earlier, which had been widely reported when it came to trial. The body in that case, also shot through the head, had been disposed of in a lake.

Besides, when it came to disposing of their victims’ bodies, there was a limited number of choices open to murderers. Immersion in water was not so unique that its occurrence in the novel and in the current case could be seen as significant. More significant, as far as Porfiry was concerned, was the location chosen for disposal: in the case he was investigating, this was the Winter Canal, right under the Tsar’s nose. Nothing in
Swine
resembled this in any way.

More generally, he had hoped to gain some insight into the ‘men of the shadows’ who organised and controlled the types of grouping described in the novel. In
Swine
, such figures were given names that left one in no doubt as to their role in the narrative. The cruel and ruthless taskmaster who drove the revolutionaries to murder was ‘Tatarin’; the shadowy mastermind whose fiendish plans set their crimes in motion was simply ‘Dyavol’, or
Devil
. To Porfiry, these characters had no humanity beyond the traits encompassed by their names, which made it difficult for him to believe that they were based on real personalities. In fact, they reminded him of identifiable characters from other books; they were a little too much the stock villains of low literature.

This thought prompted him to turn his attention to the other novel found in Kozodavlev’s drawer, Chernyshevsky’s
What Is to Be Done?
The Peculiar Man of that novel, Rakhmetov, seemed to have provided the model for one of the characters of
Swine
, an ascetic called Monakh. Porfiry had read the book before, soon after its publication in 1863; almost ten years ago, he realised. The character of Rakhmetov, sleeping on a bed of nails to prepare for the struggle ahead, had struck him at the time as a rather preposterous construction. But then again, he was no less realistic than any of the other characters in the book. If the danger of such creations was that they might lead the youth of Russia to emulate them, then really there was no danger. One had to give the youth of Russia more credit. When it came down to it, they were just too sensible to fall for all that idealised nonsense, or so Porfiry believed. The self-negating sacrifice of Chernyshevsky’s improbable hero Lopukhov (which, under the tortuous rationalising of the novel, was an act of supreme self-interest), faking his own suicide in order to leave his wife free to marry her lover – who in their right mind would wish to emulate
him
?

At the very moment Porfiry formulated that question, Virginsky came into his chambers. He was holding a large sheet of paper, the blank side of which was directed towards Porfiry.

‘Ah, it has come in already, has it? The revised poster. And I see that everything is in order, this time.’

‘But I haven’t shown it to you yet,’ said Virginsky, somewhat crestfallen.

‘You don’t need to. I can tell by the eagerness of your step, and by your smile, which though slight manages to transmit both relief and satisfaction. In addition, the fact that you are withholding the printed side of the poster, making ready to reveal it to me with a grand flourish, as if you were unveiling a masterpiece – all this leads me to suspect that the Imperial State Printing Works has not let us down this time.’

‘Yes, well, here it is.’ Virginsky turned the poster over. ‘Do you approve it for release?’

Porfiry barely glanced at it. ‘Is the wording correct?’

‘It is.’

‘Very well. Release it. Have it posted in all the city’s police bureaux, and in the usual public places.’

‘Do you not wish to check it?’

‘I trust you, Pavel Pavlovich.’

The casually issued statement seemed to take Virginsky aback.

‘Before you go,’ continued Porfiry. ‘This book.’ He held up the copy of
What Is to Be Done?
‘You have read it, of course.’

‘Of course. We have talked of it before, I believe. You have mocked me for admiring it too much.’

‘You do admire it, don’t you?’ Porfiry’s surprise at this fact was renewed in his voice. ‘And bound up in your admiration of the novel is your admiration of the characters? These new men and women.’

‘Yes.’

‘You see it as a . . . how can I put it? As a programme . . . a manual . . . or even a manifesto? It is not a novel, it is a guide to how one may live one’s life?’

‘Certainly, I believe that it may point the way to a better basis for relationships between the sexes.’

‘But this character, Lopukhov, the one who fakes his own suicide . . .’ Porfiry flicked through the pages. ‘Let me find it. The note he left. Ah, yes. Here it is. “I was disturbing your peace and quiet. I am quitting the scene. Don’t pity me; I love you both so much that I am very pleased with this decisive act. Farewell.” I ask you, Pavel Pavlovich! How would you describe the man who wrote that? A doormat, perhaps? I mean to say . . . the way he just takes himself off like that! Can we really believe it? Would you do that?’

‘If I believed that my disappearance was the only way to bring about the happiness of the woman I loved, and if I truly loved her, then, yes . . . I would like to think that I would be capable of such an act. It is not so strange. It is logical. He loves Vera Pavlovna. She loves another. He makes way for the man she loves.’

‘But a real man would not act like that. You would not act like that. Not in that situation. Love is not logical, Pavel Pavlovich.’

‘There are men – and women – who are living their lives in accordance with the precepts of that book. Marriage is the only way for many women to escape the control of their families. But traditional marriage only replaces one form of control with another. It is not true freedom for the woman. Therefore, many young people are entering into a new kind of marriage, a marriage of friendship and equality, in which the woman is not expected to bow down before the man. Such a marriage truly does bring about the liberation of the woman, because she is free to live her life as she wishes, not as her husband wishes. And if she wishes to take a lover, she is free to do so.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s all very well. But is it really possible to imagine a husband so devoid of jealousy that he negates his own life, faking his suicide and assuming a new identity, solely to allow his wife’s future happiness?’

There was a pause before Virginsky answered: ‘Yes.’

‘Well, he is a fool.’

‘I shall see to the distribution of the poster.’

‘And really, does the author take us for fools? The police and the judicial authorities, I mean? That we would not see through the manifest fraud of that supposed suicide! A bullet in a cap! The cap was fished out of the water near Liteiny Bridge! The cap belonged to Lopukhov! Therefore, Lopukhov must have killed himself on Liteiny Bridge and fallen in the river!’

‘Unfortunately, Chernyshevsky did not think to make you a character in his novel, Porfiry Petrovich.’

‘Well, I would have seen right through it if he had.’

‘I have no doubt.’

‘I see that I must read this tiresome book again,’ grumbled Porfiry. ‘We cannot overlook the possibility that it may have some bearing on the case. But, good God, I do not find the company of these new men and women at all congenial!’ He flashed a sour glance to Virginsky, as if he counted him one of their number.

*

Porfiry finished reading
What Is to Be Done?
on Sunday morning. He put the book down and left his apartment.

He headed straight for Haymarket Square, where he joined the traffic of worshippers flowing to and from the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The cathedral stood like a bastion over the square, its minaret-like towers asserting the essential orientalism of the Orthodox religion. It both drew and repelled: it drew the faithful, the true believers, the true Russians, eastern- and inward-looking; and it repelled all those who would look to the west, outside Russia, for their ideas and influences.

Porfiry was drawn. He felt the simple need to be in an Orthodox church. Perhaps it was a reaction against the book he had just finished reading. He had never considered himself as a Slavophile; on the contrary, he had prided himself on being receptive to new ideas, from wherever they came. He knew that if Russia was to progress, as she must, she could not afford to isolate herself from the rest of Europe. It was simply that, increasingly as he grew older, he found himself comforted by the overwhelming scent of incense and the warm dazzle of the candle-lit icons. And the only God he could believe in was the Russian God.

Porfiry crossed himself as he entered.

The throng inside the church was lively, almost excitable. As always, there was a loose informality to the congregation. People came and went all the time, while the priests and monks continued to chant and drone. There was a soft murmur of chatter which echoed and overlapped, giving the impression that the multitude of saints and celestial beings depicted on the tiers of icons all around were joining in the conversations. The priests took a dim view of all this talking in church, but there was little they could do to stop it. The Church invited its flock to be as children in their Father’s house. It could hardly be surprised if some of them behaved like naughty children.