A Razor Wrapped in Silk pp-3

by R. N. Morris

  If his own apartment was furnished comfortably rather than extravagantly, the public rooms of the bank evinced a discreet commitment to the aesthetic of wealth. The marble-clad walls breathed affluence from their mineral pores. Art hung over the marble, huge canvasses within massive gilt frames that hinted at the gold locked away in the vaults. This was a business calculation on Bakhmutov’s part. He had argued successfully to his board that such expenditure was necessary to inspire confidence in a financial institution.

  The back room of the bank, the counting house, was more functionally done out. The clerks’ stools were not upholstered in watered silk, nor were their desks carved from mahogany. But they served their purpose well enough.

  Velchaninov looked up and greeted his employer with a wincing smile. Bakhmutov gave a slight nod to acknowledge the other man’s solicitude.

  ‘Baron von Lembke is waiting for you, sir.’

  Bakhmutov wrinkled his mouth distastefully. ‘Ardalion Gavrilovich, there is a disreputable individual loitering outside the bank. Some kind of tramp. Kindly see to it that he is moved along.’

  ‘I shall see to it myself, Ivan Iakovich.’

  ‘No. That will not be necessary. Get one of the doormen to do it.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  Bakhmutov nodded to himself in satisfaction as his secretary sprang off his stool.

  In the boardroom, von Lembke sat alone at the far end of the long oval table. Placed in front of him was a silver tray bearing a pot of coffee and two small cups, together with some pastries. The aroma of the coffee was overpowered by the cigar that von Lembke had just lit. At Bakhmutov’s entrance, von Lembke began to pour the coffee. ‘You’re late.’ Baron von Lembke was a man of bulk and yet there was something essential about his size. It was impossible somehow to imagine him being reduced to anything less than he was. There was a hard-boiled quality to his physique, though perhaps this was suggested by the utter baldness of his head. He held a cup out to Bakhmutov without looking up. Bakhmutov took the cup and walked to the far end of the table.

  ‘Late? Well, what do you expect after last night?’

  ‘I was not late. And I was there.’ Von Lembke had a way of barking out his words as if he were evicting them. ‘Here at ten o’clock sharp. And I do not have the advantage of living over the premises.’

  ‘It has been a terrible strain. I did not sleep at all.’

  ‘Terrible business. Terrible for business, too. For the bank.’

  ‘I fail to see the business implications,’ said Bakhmutov irritably as he took the seat at the opposite end of the table. ‘It is a private tragedy.’

  ‘It’s a scandal! No banking house wishes to be associated with a scandal. Reputation is everything. Confidence comes from reputation.’

  ‘But the bank is not associated with the scandal. There is no connection between what has happened and us.’

  ‘Don’t be naive. She was your mistress.’

  ‘Was. But no longer.’

  ‘You continued to take care of her. She lived in the apartment you provided. You put a carriage at her disposal.’

  ‘I was not so rash as to have the bank crest on the side of that carriage.’

  ‘Nevertheless, your name is linked to hers.’

  ‘But not in the financial pages, surely?’

  ‘Investors …’ Von Lembke took several deep puffs from his cigar, as if the smoke fuelled his irascibility, ‘don’t just read financial pages.’

  ‘I refuse to accept there is a financial aspect to this.’

  ‘There’s a financial aspect to everything. You know that the Moscow Merchants and their propagandists are always whipping up public opinion against us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Outsiders. You, a Jew. Me, a foreigner.’

  ‘I am not a Jew. I am a Christian.’

  ‘In their eyes, you are a Yid. Always will be. You are Iakov’s son. Me, I’m no foreigner. I’m as Russian as you. But I have a foreign name. That’s enough for them.’

  ‘Your friends in the finance ministry will not back them. Which means the Tsar will not tolerate it. The Tsar is a father to all Russians.’

  ‘Don’t put your faith in this tsar. He lost heart after the reforms. They were meant to make everyone love him. Instead, they start taking potshots at him. We can all go to hell as far as he is concerned. And the next tsar — a real Jew-hater. Friend of the Slavophiles. Their campaign against foreign money — he’s on their side. Russian industry in Russian hands, that’s what they say. This affair gives them another stick to beat us with.’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘The decadent, sensualist Jew. Corrupter of Russian virgins.’

  ‘But I am not a Jew, I tell you.’

  ‘So, you do not deny the other charge.’ Von Lembke gave a smoky chuckle. ‘They are talking about founding a bank of their own. A Russian bank.’

  ‘This is a Russian bank. It has a Russian name on the plaque.’

  ‘The Tsar has already given his approval.’

  ‘Well, let them. There is room for another bank.’

  ‘And what if our Russian investors transfer their deposits to them?’

  ‘That will not happen. Our clients are our friends. Besides, we have reserves. And our loan business is turning over a good profit. We are a well-run bank.’

  ‘Owned by a Jew and a German.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that? The Finance Minister himself is a German. The Tsar surrounds himself with Germans.’

  ‘Public opinion is turning against the German influence at court.’

  ‘I care nothing about public opinion.’

  ‘Then you are a fool. At least be thankful we don’t have a French partner. However, if our aristocratic friends decide they prefer to pay interest into Russian pockets …’

  ‘My pockets are Russian. This suit was tailored here in St Petersburg!’

  ‘This is no laughing matter. The situation is grave.’

  ‘Our friends will not desert us.’

  ‘And our enemies? What if Mizinchikov was put up to it by our enemies?’

  ‘You’re being absurd. Mizinchikov loved her. He didn’t kill her because someone told him to. He killed her because she rejected him.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that. I don’t pretend to understand love.’

  ‘You, but even you …’

  ‘Business. That’s what we must concentrate on.’

  ‘I agree, up to a point. However, I fear there is nothing we can do.’

  ‘Not true. We must bring a Russian in. A true Russian. Not a Yiddish convert. An old Russian. Get a proper Russian name on the plaque. That’ll carry some weight.’

  Bakhmutov sipped his coffee without commenting on von Lembke’s proposal.

  12 The story of a love affair

  The following day, Porfiry Petrovich awoke to a sluggish depression. An obscure sense of guilt infected him, no doubt the emotional ripple of a dream he could not remember. He had overslept. Stabbing his arms into his dressing gown, he hurried from his bedroom into the main room of his private apartment. His depression sharpened into annoyance when he saw the table had not yet been laid for breakfast.

  ‘Zakhar!’ Immediately he realised his mistake. He slumped into a seat, his elbows on the table, face in his hands. Only the chiding tick of the grandfather clock disturbed the silence of the apartment.

  He heard the door to the kitchen open. There was a rattle of pots.

  ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but Zakhar …’ It was Katya, her voice strained to its usual unnaturally high pitch, in the way of so many Russian peasant women.

  ‘I know.’

  He heard her put the tray down heavily.

  ‘Will there be anything else?’

  Porfiry looked up, as though surprised by the question. She was the cook whose services he shared with the other residents of the apartments provided by the department, for the most part magistrates and senior police officers and their families. S
he prepared food for him every day, the food which Zakhar brought to him, but it was a long time since he had laid eyes on her. She had aged. He remembered her as a strong bustling woman, agile, despite her weight. She had filled out even more and there was an arthritic stiffness to her movements now. Though her face still shone with health, there were deep lines scoring the ruddy glow.

  ‘Thank you, no.’

  She nodded and left with a haste that saddened him. He half-raised an arm after her. The apartment was cold and gloomy; the chill of autumn had taken possession. The stove had not been lit. But it was not simply on account of the unlit stove that he regretted her departure. He wished he had been able to talk to her of Zakhar.

  The drapes were still open from the day before. He had not drawn them himself and there was no one else to do it. The windows were flat planes of grey, through which a meagre light seeped. Porfiry did not have the will to look out at the raw, damp day. He felt the saturated moisture of the air in his chest, and dwelt for the moment on the rattle and wheeze of his breathing; a precise dread of the inevitably worsening weather, of the inescapable winter ahead, entered him.

  What saved him from complete lethargy was the desire for a cigarette.

  Three cigarettes later, there was a knock at the door of his apartment. The intrusion seemed to set off a coughing fit, which served as his greeting to Virginsky, who pointedly wafted the fuggy air and frowned his bemusement at the sight of Porfiry in his dressing gown.

  ‘Are you unwell, Porfiry Petrovich?’

  ‘Perfectly well, Pavel Pavlovich,’ said Porfiry as he at last poured himself a cup of coffee. The cold bitter liquid caught at his throat and merely renewed his hacking fit. He sat down to absorb it.

  As Porfiry settled back in his chair, drawing a splayed hand across his face, he caught the indulgent amusement now in Virginsky’s eye. ‘What are you smiling at, Pavel Pavlovich?’

  ‘You remind me of Oblomov.’

  ‘How can you possibly say that! Oblomov is nothing like me!’

  ‘Goncharov describes him wearing a dressing gown just like yours.’

  ‘Nonsense. His is more oriental.’

  ‘Well, it’s a dressing gown. He wastes away the day in his dressing gown.’

  ‘This is nonsense. I am a man of action. Not a lethargic wastrel consumed by ennui and indecision.’

  Virginsky contented himself with a sceptical pinching of his lips.

  ‘I am surprised at you, Pavel Pavlovich. You of all people should know that when I am sitting still and smoking a cigarette, I am never simply sitting still and smoking a cigarette. I am at work, active. My mind races. The very thing I am not, however, is an Oblomov.’

  ‘Oblomov is a very lovable character. The Russian reading public took him to their heart.’

  ‘I am not lovable, Pavel Pavlovich. Not by any means. If I were lovable, then … there would be someone here, a loving creature, loving me.’ There was no self-pity in Porfiry’s voice as he offered this opinion. If anything, there was a triumphant delight in his own logic.

  ‘But I thought there was someone. Last night, you hinted …’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘I was sure … Perhaps I was mistaken.’

  ‘No doubt. I will see you in my chambers in ten minutes.’

  ‘Very well.’ Virginsky nodded and turned to go. At the door, he hesitated and added: ‘I thought you would be interested to know that Aglaia Filippovna regained consciousness.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘But only briefly.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She is in a coma now.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I think it would be best if you spoke to her doctor yourself. I cannot explain it.’

  ‘I am most eager to speak to him. An eagerness which I shall act upon … imminently, if not immediately.’ Porfiry took out another cigarette and lit it.

  Virginsky had the door open now, but a further thought detained him. He seemed unsure whether to express it.

  ‘Is there something else, Pavel Pavlovich?’

  ‘It just occurred to me. Wasn’t Oblomov’s servant called Zakhar?’

  Porfiry considered the burning cigarette as he rotated it between thumb and forefinger. A full inhalation and exhalation later, his gaze once again concentrated on the cigarette, he at last said: ‘Go.’ He did not look up as Virginsky left his apartment.

  *

  A little under half an hour later, Porfiry was seated at the desk of his chambers, his face razor-nicked and the bottle-green frock coat of his civil service uniform flecked with ash at the cuffs and dandruff at the shoulders. He smoked in silence as he again read through the witness statements taken at the Naryskin Palace.

  ‘Any news of Captain Mizinchikov?’ he asked at last, without any expectation in his voice.

  ‘According to his orderly, he did not come home,’ answered Virginsky from the brown sofa, its artificial leather cracked and threadbare. ‘Lieutenant Salytov found no sign of him at his apartment. He did, however, find this. In a drawer in Mizinchikov’s writing desk.’

  Virginsky rose and crossed to Porfiry’s desk to hand him the parcel of red silk, which he had been holding back, apparently for the pleasure of giving it to him.

  Porfiry took the mysterious parcel with a puzzled and vaguely recriminatory frown. He felt its weight before placing it on his desk to unwrap it. ‘I see. How interesting.’

  ‘You will notice the colour of the silk,’ said Virginsky.

  ‘Do not fear. The colour of the silk is not lost on me.’

  ‘It is frayed at one edge. A number of threads are loose and some almost detached.’

  ‘Yes. I have noticed that too.’

  ‘It is curious, is it not, that this razor should be wrapped in a material consistent with a thread found on the body of a woman whose throat was cut?’

  ‘Curious is not the word.’

  ‘Of course a man may possess a razor merely to shave himself. But why keep it in the drawer of a writing desk? Moreover, Captain Mizinchikov is not a clean-shaven gentleman. But perhaps he had simply put the razor away in a drawer in expectation of the day when he would take up shaving again.’

  ‘But this is not the murder weapon, Pavel Pavlovich,’ declared Porfiry with quiet, almost weary, emphasis.

  Virginsky seemed deflated. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Let me put it another way, if it is the murder weapon, then Captain Mizinchikov is not the murderer. I believe you said just now that the captain did not return to his apartment after leaving the Naryskin Palace — is that not correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well then. How could he have murdered Yelena Filippovna with this razor and then placed it in his drawer? Are we to imagine that he stole into his own apartment without being seen by his orderly? And if that is the case, then one is obliged to ask the rather bigger question, why? It is usual, in my experience, for murderers to dispose of murder weapons — preferably in places where they will never be found, or at least in places where they cannot be associated with them. It is not usual for them to take them home and put them in a drawer for the police to find.’

  Virginsky let out a defeated sigh. ‘So the razor is irrelevant?’

  ‘Of course it is not irrelevant. It is very relevant. It is a great triumph to have found it. Was anything else discovered in this drawer?’

  ‘These.’ Virginsky removed from a pocket the bundle of letters, which were once again tied up with the ribbon. Again he received a recriminatory spring of the brows from Porfiry. ‘They are letters to him from Yelena Filippovna.’

  ‘Are they indeed?’

  Porfiry took the letters from Virginsky and untied them. He flicked through them and saw from the dates that they spanned a period of about a year, although by far the majority of them had been written and sent within the last two months. Then he settled down to read them through.

  What emerged was the s
tory of a love affair, or rather a story of desire, seduction, manipulation, disillusionment and rejection. It was hard to tell whether there was love involved, on either side. On the side of the party who had no voice in the narrative, Mizinchikov, his love could only be inferred, along with the pain he must have suffered, and his brief, rare, but surely intense, moments of joy. Was there ever a moment in the story when Yelena Filippovna had loved him? Certainly she seemed to profess it on occasion, though in a careless or even conflicted way.

  If I do not proclaim my love for you in every line that I write — as I know you would have me — it is not because I do not love you, but rather because I naturally baulk at such a tedious task. I am a grown woman. You must believe that I love you, as much as I am able to love any man.

  To the besotted Mizinchikov, ‘you must believe’ might have read as a passionate entreaty. To Porfiry’s objective eye, it had about it a little too much of a command. Similarly, the qualification ‘as much as I am able’ could be taken two ways: it could be joyously expansive, an indication that her love for Mizinchikov was bounded only by her capacity to love, which after all might be infinite; or, far more likely, it was an admission that she was incapable of loving any man, including him.

  In the earlier correspondence, she certainly held out the possibility of loving him, though her preferred tone, after the first few highly formal letters, was flirtatious. She was more comfortable promising physical intimacy than emotional equivalence. Porfiry identified the point at which their relationship was consummated. A letter dated the twenty-eighth of July spoke of the heights of ecstasy to which he had taken her. It also spoke of Mizinchikov’s ‘skilful swordplay’. She declared that she eagerly awaited being ‘sweetly stabbed’ by him again. No doubt such passages gratified his male pride. No doubt they were intended to.

  Soon after, her letters began to talk of their engagement and something approaching a sense of hope entered her tone. I look forward to the day when you and I will be one in law and before God, and this time of tribulations will be at an end. At times, however, a note of resignation could be detected. We deserve one another. There is no one else for each of us. And so we must learn to be content with one another. Perhaps the fire of passion does not burn as it once did. What of it? I cannot live my life in a conflagration.