The Gentle Axe Paperback (8 page)

Dr. Pervoyedov nodded solicitously.

“For all you know, I killed them.”

“Is that a confession?”

“I know how you people work. The fact that I knew them both makes me a suspect.”

“You are sick. I will arrange for you to be taken home.”

Virginsky fell off the stool and staggered forward, grabbing the trolley for balance. “I can find my own way home. I don’t need any help from you.” He gave the trolley a push. The two heads glided away, rotated, then slowed to a halt. “Thank you for showing me this, these…You have shown me myself.”

“You hate me at this moment. You would do better to hate whoever killed your friends.”

“You are quite the psychologist.”

“Who is Borya?”

“Whatever he was, he is nothing anymore.”

“Please. Sit down. You can’t go like this.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“I’m asking for your help. “

“Aha!”

“Borya…?”

“Was the yardkeeper at Goryanchikov’s building. Now will you let me go?”

“And the address? Of Goryanchikov’s building.”

“How can I be expected to remember these details? What difference do these details make, now, after all this?”

“It’s very important. It may help us find whoever killed these men.”

“He lodged with Anna Alexandrovna and her daughter. In a house on Bolshaya Morskaya Street.”

“The number?”

“Yes, there was a number.” Virginsky pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are quite right, there was a number.”

“Did you go to the house?”

Virginsky looked down disconsolately at his feet. “I need new shoes.”

Porfiry followed his gaze. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“Seven. The number of the house. It’s come back to me. It has a seven in it. It’s either seven or seventeen, or seventy. Or seven hundred and seventy-seven.” Virginsky laughed wheezily. “No. There’s only one seven, I’m sure of that. At any rate there is a sign.”

“Thank you.”

“Will you write to my father and tell him that I’ve done my duty as a good citizen?”

“Do you wish me to?”

“Not particularly.”

“You should go home now.”

“And the shoes?”

“Don’t worry about the shoes.”

“He was my friend, Goryanchikov. As for Borya…Borya was an innocent. Of course, they hated each other. It’s strange that it should end like this.” Virginsky bowed farewell, took one step toward the door, and fainted.

T
HE TWO MEN
came toward Virginsky and bent over him.

“How are you feeling?” asked Dr. Pervoyedov.

“What a shock you gave us, Pavel Pavlovich,” said Porfiry.

Virginsky began to lift himself up.

“Please,” protested Dr. Pervoyedov. “Don’t try and get up.”

“I’m quite all right,” insisted Virginsky. “It was the shock.”

“Of course. A quite understandable reaction,” said Porfiry.

“I was not expecting—” Virginsky broke off. His face was gray. He was standing now. He turned to Porfiry with a look of hatred. “You didn’t warn me. That it would be heads. Just heads. In jars. Was that how they were found?”

“No. The heads were removed and preserved by Dr. Pervoyedov. I’m sorry if it shocked you.”

“It was cruel of you. Why did you do it? Is it part of your technique?”

“I’m truly sorry,” said Porfiry. “This is what we deal in. This is our currency. Perhaps we become inured to it and forget the effect it has on others.”

“I do not believe you are one to forget anything, sir. I know what you were trying to do. You were trying to shock me into revealing something.”

“You speak as though I suspect you. But surely you see I can have no reason to suspect you of anything.”

“And did it work? Your nasty little trick? Did I reveal anything?”

“Very well, I’ll be honest with you. You’re an intelligent young man. I like you, Pavel Pavlovich. I did hope to break down any barriers you might have erected in your mind, which might have prevented you from cooperating fully with the investigation. Not because I suspect you, but because you see me as a figure of authority and it’s natural for you to resist me. In the same way that you resist your father. There may be something you know that could be crucial to the solution of this case, but you may not realize you know it, or you may not realize that you are keeping it from me. I hoped, in the aftershock of this discovery—”

“It’s not that. It’s just that you’re cruel.”

Porfiry did not answer this charge.

Virginsky addressed his silence: “I would have told you what I know about the damned house.”

“I believe you would. I had to be sure. However, I’m not required to explain myself to you.” Porfiry narrowed his eyes. “You remind me of someone. A student. He was poor. And proud. Perhaps too proud.”

“A poor student has no grounds for pride at all? Is that your opinion?”

“Pride can be a dangerous thing.”

“You’re wrong about me. I have no pride.”

“There are other similarities. A certain tension in your demeanor. A certain unpredictability. A wildness, you might almost call it.”

“May I go now?”

“Of course. I will look in on you tomorrow.”

“You have already said as much. There is no need. But I understand you have your own motives for wanting to do so.”

Virginsky gave a curt bow to Dr. Pervoyedov. He then strode with surprising firmness of step to the door.

Porfiry felt the doctor’s disapproval. With some annoyance he said: “So, Dr. Pervoyedov, what have you discovered concerning the causes of death? You were eager to tell me, I believe.”

The physician seemed startled by the demand, as if he could not understand its relevance.

At last Porfiry turned his gaze toward Pervoyedov. Unusually, he held it without blinking. “There is something you wish to say?”

“Very well, very well. I will say it. With all respect, with the utmost respect indeed, I wish it to be known that I detest your methods.”

“Naturally. You are a doctor. I am a criminal investigator. We have different purposes, after all. But I ask you, as a physician, would you rather I employed the old methods of extracting information?”

“To replace one form of brutality with another is not progress.”

“I wish I could afford the luxury of your fastidiousness. But when you are investigating brutalities—”

“Do you think he is the murderer?”

Porfiry smiled and now fluttered his eyelids. He took out and lit a cigarette. “Now, Dr. Pervoyedov, what were you saying about your discoveries?”

“Ah. I understand. Yes, yes, of course. I am merely the physician. You are the investigator.” Dr. Pervoyedov shook his head ruefully. He moved along the workbench and opened a drawer set beneath its surface. “It’s true, I have discovered something interesting,” he said, taking out a cardboard file.

Porfiry nodded encouragement.

Looking down at his notes, Dr. Pervoyedov continued: “Well, let us start with the big fellow.”

“Borya.”

“Yes, yes. Indeed. You remember I drew attention to the absence of bruising around the neck. That naturally made me suspicious. When examining the lungs, I noticed that although the lungs themselves appeared to be healthy, the covering of the lungs was inflamed. And then, when I came to test the stomach contents—”

“What did you find?” interrupted Porfiry eagerly.

“Vodka. A hell of a lot of vodka in there. That of course masked the smell.”

“The smell of what?”

“Of prussic acid.”

“I see.”

“Yes. The test for prussic acid was positive. A deep and rather beautiful blue.”

“He was poisoned.”

“It appears so.”

“How was it administered, do you know?”

“I’m inclined to think it was in the vodka.”

“His own flask was full,” mused Porfiry.

“Exactly. The vodka in his stomach could have been given to him by person or persons unknown.”

“Who then strung him up on the tree in an attempt to make it look like suicide. I wonder if the line of bruising around his abdomen has anything to do with that?”

“Very likely, Porfiry Petrovich. Very likely.”

“Excellent work, Doctor. And what about Goryanchikov?”

“I am more or less certain that the wound in the head was administered post-mortem.”

“The lack of blood over his face led me to suspect as much. How did he die, then? Was he poisoned too?”

“I have detected no traces of any known poison. However, sections of the lung parenchyma reveal ductal overinsufflation consistent with asphyxia. And I retrieved something very interesting from his larynx.” The doctor held up a small feather, taken from the file.

Porfiry crossed to where the trolley had stopped its glide. He bent down and stared into the first of the jars. Goryanchikov’s head stared back at him, its mouth and the mouthlike wound in its forehead gaping in supplication. “Someone held a pillow over his face,” said Porfiry.

V
IRGINSKY TRUDGED THROUGH
the wet snow lying along the southern Fontanka bank, heading northeast. The sprawl of the Apraxin Market lay ahead of him, across the frozen river. The ice seeped into his soul from his feet, through his gaping uppers.

It would be so easy to end it all. One letter to his father was all it required. If the old man knew what misery he was living in, he would be sure to send him some money. There would be no need to grovel for forgiveness, or—even more unthinkable—grant it. Merely to explain the facts, that was all that was required.

That was all that needed to be said. Perhaps he could add, in a spirit as it were of magnanimity:

Yes, that seemed to hint at reconciliation. He was throwing out a few crumbs of hope to the old man, without committing himself to any concessions or admissions.

But of course, he knew that he would never write the letter.

Perhaps the investigator was right. He was too proud after all. He often felt himself humiliated, especially in his present circumstances. The two things went together, he believed: a heightened sensitivity to humiliation and excessive pride. If only he could shake off them both. Independence of means was the only way to do it, and a letter to his father would not help him there. He could not bear to owe his father anything, not now, not after all that had happened. If he could not have independence of means, he would at least have independence of spirit or, failing that, independence of behavior. No one would tell him what to do.

He imagined composing a different letter to his father:

How he hated his name.

Of course, there was another way to end it all. It had been in his mind all along. Simply to lie down in the snow now and wait for the cold and hunger to do their work. The end would come soon enough, and there would be no pain.

It was a comforting fantasy, but he kept on walking. He realized he was walking away from the investigator’s damnable jars and all that they entailed.

He was suddenly certain that the whole ridiculous, tawdry mess had gone on long enough. It
was
time to bring it to an end; and what was more, he would do it by the second of the two means he had considered. But first there were matters to attend to. He hastened his step as he turned onto Gorokhovaya Street, crossing the Fontanka by the Semenovsky Bridge.

I
T WAS DARK
by the time he reached Sadovaya Street.

He walked with his head bent down, not meeting any face, looking only at his shoes kicking through the sludge. It was easy to imagine that those feet did not belong to him. He didn’t feel the cold anymore, nor his exhaustion, his hunger, or his pain. His certainty of purpose had overridden everything.

He had to see Lilya.

But it was harder than he had imagined to find the milliner’s shop. Admittedly, he had hoped that a mysterious force would draw him straight to it. The one other time, long ago, that he had been there, it had been dark and he had been drunk. He was as good as blindfolded. When he had fled from it, he quickly became lost in this city, which had never truly been his home.

He was aware of a presence ahead of him. His cowed glance took in a dark, bulky figure. He had a sense of a dim orange glow bobbing around it and then soaring up into the darkness. A streetlamp flared and lit the workman beneath. In his refusal to look the city’s lamplighter in the eye, Virginsky recognized a puzzling mixture of defiance, humility, and fear. The lamplighter passed on into the darkness at Virginsky’s back, leaving a trail of illumination. The transformation wrought by his restless wick was so sudden and complete that it was difficult to believe in it. Virginsky felt himself to be entering a realm of deception. His instinct was to shun it. But to speak to Lilya—as another, more urgent imperative demanded—he had to press on into the light, crunching diamonds underfoot.

He knew from Lilya that Fräulein Keller’s establishment was on Sadovaya Street, but where exactly she had never revealed. She didn’t like to talk about the place, to the extent that she had begged him never to mention it.

He thought he remembered a side entrance to the shop he was looking for, and iron steps there leading down to the basement. None of the shops he saw now had that configuration.

He heard voices. A group of young cavalry officers, already in their cups, were exchanging ribald jokes. The deceptive light glinted coldly on the buttons and decorations of their greatcoats. He recognized in their voices and their leering grins the same harsh appetite that had once drawn him to Fräulein Keller’s, in the company of a similar group. Perhaps, he conjectured, they were heading to that very place now! He hung back before following them.

Their progress was slow and interrupted, but Virginsky matched their pace, careful always to remain at the same distance from them. He kept to the edge of the streetlamp’s glow, out of its brilliance. All the same he felt sure that they would notice him. He tried to imagine what he would say if he became the object of their contemptuous attention. But no words came to mind, and the only outcome of the adventure he could envisage was a beating for himself. He would not resist. He would surrender himself to their violence, as if he deserved it. He wondered, in fact, if he were not trying to provoke it by following them. He seriously considered calling out insults to them. A belief in his own invisibility suddenly overcame him. It was a giddy and dangerous moment. He was prevented from doing anything reckless by a sudden outburst from one of their number, who fell to his knees and began singing “One Night of Gladness” in a perfectly acceptable tenor voice.

The interlude was enough to give Virginsky pause. He remembered his original purpose and was amazed how close he had come to jeopardizing it. He was following the cavalry officers because he believed they would lead him to Lilya. The thought of Lilya in connection with these young men inspired in him an overpowering disgust. At the same time it confirmed him in his mission. He had to find Lilya, now. There were questions he had to ask her.

He had come close to asking her questions before: “How many men? How many times?” And other questions, which he could barely frame in his mind. But her anguished reticence had always touched him. And yet if he was honest, he would say that part of what touched him was anger and part of that anger was directed against her.

The musical soldier began the next verse:

These men, these drunken, loathsome men, with their grins and buttons, to say nothing of their sentimental hypocrisy—it was men like these Lilya went with. (How he hated the euphemism—he knew full well what it stood for!) Perhaps tonight, this very night, they would be her customers. His mind forced an image of Lilya into the midst of these privileged hooligans, her clothes falling away beneath their manicured pawings. Her face fluctuated between childlike innocence and meretricious depravity. He had only ever seen the former expression on Lilya, his Lilya. He had seen it the first time he met her, even there, in the depths of Fräulein Keller’s establishment. But he did not doubt the existence of another Lilya, with another face. He hated that Lilya as much as he hated these men.

The singer was hoisted to his feet and cajoled into moving on. His fellows were evidently impatient. Virginsky continued to track them as they made their veering way along the Prospect, the lyrics of the folk song trailing in the crisp air:

Virginsky was disproportionately agitated by the words. Of course, the river was not flowing at this time of the year. But allowing for that one small change of detail, he could almost believe that the oaf had read his mind and sung his thoughts.

It wasn’t long before they came to a stop again. A new tone to their laughter, a gunshot excitement, alerted Virginsky to a significant change in their mood and roused him from his preoccupations. He looked around to see hats floating in a callously illuminated shopwindow. He could hear the officers discussing money. Virginsky was in no doubt. This was the place. And there to confirm it was the wrought-iron stairway at the side.

The financial negotiations became heated and drew in all the officers. Virginsky took the opportunity to slip past the jostle of smooth backs and down the stairs. He sank into darkness, stumbling the last few steps. Was this really the place? He heard the cavalry officers move on and felt the certainty drain from him.

A paneled door formed itself in front of him as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom in the stairwell. He groped for and found the bellpull. There was no answering sound.

He filled the silence with doubts. The questions now were for himself. Why had he allowed himself to be led by the cavalry officers? He saw that there was no logic or consistency to his behavior. This irritated him, and yet he got some satisfaction from the fact that he was still capable of objectivity in his self-analysis. If this did turn out to be the place, perhaps it would also turn out that he had always known how to get here. He had wanted to involve the cavalry officers in his own guilty knowledge; he had wanted, in fact, to pass it on to them and in so doing absolve himself. But it was possible that they had never had any intention of coming to Fräulein Keller’s. It was merely another coincidence that they had led him here. The sinfulness and hypocrisy were all his. They, perhaps, were as innocent as babes, at least in this respect. If so, he hated them even more.

A panel in the door opened, and a beam of light projected into Virginsky’s face. There was a scornful cackle.

“Hello?” Virginsky called out, shielding his eyes.

“What you want?” came a deep, heavily accented female voice.

“Is Lilya there? I must speak to her.”

This was met with more of the same laughter. Virginsky suddenly felt that the beam of light and the laughter were one and the same. The laughter existed only inside the beam of light. With their harsh, corrosive force on his face, he had never felt himself more exposed.

“Tell her it’s Virginsky.”

The panel closed; a moment later the door itself was opened, and the small frail figure of a girl was pushed out.

“Pavel Pavlovich, what are you doing here?”

“Lilya? It is you, Lilya, isn’t it?” Virginsky had only caught a glimpse of her, momentarily silhouetted in the doorway. But even in that moment he had noticed something different about her appearance.

“Yes, of course it’s me. What’s the matter? Why do you ask?”

“You have a new coat.”

“Yes.”

“It’s trimmed with fur.”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Business must be good.”

“Please, Pavel Pavlovich. Please don’t be cruel. It’s not what you think.”

“How does it feel when they touch you?”

“Please, Pavel Pavlovich.”

“You must get some pleasure from it. I can’t see that you would be able to do it at all if you didn’t get some pleasure from it.”

“Why do you want to make me suffer?”

“Nonsense! Can there never be candor between a man and a woman about such things? Can’t you see? It’s not my intention to judge you. I have no right. It’s just hypocrisy I hate. I want to understand. I want to know the truth. The truth about it all.”

“And then? When you have the truth? What will become of me?”

“No, Lilya, you can’t ask me that. Or rather, you can’t hold me to my answer. But you must understand this: we cannot proceed on the basis of lies and hypocrisy. I must have the truth.”

“And what do I get?” The force of her anger surprised him. “There’s only one thing I will tell you. This door has closed behind me for good. I am never coming back to this place or this life. I will kill myself and my darling Vera before I go back in there.”

Her weight was nothing as she pushed past him, and yet he was buffeted by the force of her repulse. He noted, with that remarkable objectivity that he had already admired in himself, that he wanted to hurt her even more than before.

“Goryanchikov!” he called after her.