The Gentle Axe

by R. N. Morris

  “You have found Ratazyayev?” Now Prince Bykov’s expression shone with trusting expectation.

  Not for the first time, the young man’s emotional openness embarrassed Porfiry. He gestured for the prince to sit down. “No,” he said, taking his own seat behind the desk. He averted his eyes, so as not to have to witness the disappointment that would inevitably cloud the prince’s features. “But we have tracked down Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov. Do you remember that I asked you about him?”

  Prince Bykov frowned at the name. “Has he told you what happened to Ratazyayev?”

  “Ah. The fact is, we haven’t actually spoken to him yet. But we know where he lives. We are hoping to speak to him very soon. The yardkeeper at his apartment is very cooperative. He will inform us the moment Govorov returns.”

  “What if he doesn’t return?”

  “Let us hope that he does,” said Porfiry with a strained smile. He leaned back in his seat to light a cigarette.

  Prince Bykov watched him disapprovingly. “You said you wanted to ask me a question.”

  Porfiry closed his eyes. “The student Virginsky described both Govorov and Ratazyayev as actors. Please think back to the circumstances in which you heard the name Govorov. I believe you once told me that you had heard the name. Is it possible that it was in connection with Ratazyayev’s acting career?”

  “I really don’t know. I suppose it’s possible.”

  “You will have to do better than that,” said Porfiry sharply. In truth, he was weary. “For instance, can you tell me the last professional production in which Ratazyayev performed?”

  Prince Bykov seemed hurt rather than offended by Porfiry’s harsh tone. He composed himself and considered his answer. “It was hard for him to come by roles in recent years. His friends, or rather former friends, had turned against him.”

  “Why was that?”

  “He was thought to be unreliable. But it was…not fair. There had really only ever been one incident.”

  “What incident was this?”

  “But surely you know?”

  Porfiry shook his head, his mouth turned down.

  “He got drunk once. Very drunk. During a production. He went on stage drunk and—oh, I can’t believe you’ve never heard of the time the famous Ratazyayev…” Prince Bykov placed a pale hand over his eyes. “They have never forgiven him for it.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Must I say it?”

  “It may be significant. It may very well be significant.”

  “He relieved himself into the orchestra pit during the performance.”

  “I see.”

  “And then he fell off the stage. It caused a scandal. He…ran away. He was not seen or heard of for a year.”

  “So he has disappeared before?”

  “Yes, but this was a long time ago. Before I met him. Of course, I had heard the story—who has not?”

  “I had not, until now. But tell me, what was the production in which this unfortunate incident occurred?”

  “It was a revival of The Government Inspector, at the original Mariinsky Theater.”

  Porfiry was silent for a moment. “In ’fifty-six?” he asked distractedly.

  “So you do remember it?”

  Porfiry didn’t answer the question. “That was a long time ago. Ten years. How has he managed to earn a living since then, if not through acting?”

  “He has relied, to a large extent, on the goodwill of his friends. He still has friends.”

  “Govorov?”

  A wrinkled anguish disfigured Prince Bykov’s face. “I see, sir, that you are determined to force me to speak about that individual. Let me say first that I have never met him, that I will not meet him. I do not approve of him. I will say that he has been loyal to Ratazyayev. However, I also believe that his is a loyalty Ratazyayev would have been better off without. The loyalty of a viper is poisonous.”

  “You admit that he is a friend from Ratazyayev’s acting days?”

  “He was to blame! It was he who got Ratazyayev drunk! More than that, he goaded him on.”

  “I see. And recently?”

  Prince Bykov closed his eyes on a shudder. “Through Govorov, he became involved in certain…vile activities.”

  Porfiry opened a drawer in his desk and produced the photographs Salytov had taken from the innkeeper. He spread them out and pushed those that featured male participants toward Prince Bykov.

  The prince compressed his lips in disgust and nodded. “Yes. That is Ratazyayev. It is Ratazyayev in them all.”

  Porfiry gathered the photographs up.

  Prince Bykov looked away, trembling. “He also occasionally acted as a distribution agent for a publishing company. This was through Govorov also.”

  “Athene?” The name escaped without conscious thought. Porfiry did not know why he made the assumption.

  “No.” Prince Bykov was definite. “I have heard of them,” he added thoughtfully. “But this was not a respectable house.”

  “Priapos.” It was not offered as a question.

  The prince dropped his eyelids in confirmation.

  LEONID SEMENOVICH TOLKACHENKO felt the turmoil of too many pickled cucumbers eaten too hastily.

  He was sitting in his armchair reading The Northern Bee. He had to hold the candle close to the newspaper. There was no light from the window. It was past three in the afternoon. Soon he would have to go outside and attend to his duties.

  Tolkachenko lived alone in a small apartment at 3 Spassky Lane, the building where he worked as yardkeeper. He had never married. Once, many years ago, when he was still a young man, he had come close to declaring his feelings for the daughter of Devushkin. This Devushkin was a clerk in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where Tolkachenko worked at the time as a courier. Tolkachencko had also lodged with the family, sub-renting a room hardly bigger than a cupboard in their tiny apartment. The girl, Mariya Alexeyevna, was sixteen when it started. He left gifts for her that he could ill afford and feigned an interest in literature. But despite the family’s poverty and the father’s alcoholism, her parents were proud. They talked frequently and loudly of a very important personage from whom they imminently expected a proposal. Tolkachenko grew discouraged, even though the proposal from the important personage was not forthcoming. He stopped buying bonbons and lace. He went back to reading The Northern Bee. Mariya Alexeyevna ceased to be sixteen. In his eyes, she ceased to be many things. Her father lost his position. Her mother died, it was said, from disappointment. Mariya Alexeyevna began to look at Leonid Semenovich with big pleading eyes. Now she left gifts for him, books that he never read. She suggested a walk along the Fontanka in one of the city’s white summer nights. But he had remembered, with a mixture of shame and revulsion, the estrangement from himself that he had suffered at the height of his passion. Perhaps he had wished to punish her for that. Perhaps he had been afraid of experiencing such feelings again or, even worse, of not experiencing them. Or perhaps he had simply awakened from a strange dream. He did not meet her at the appointed time. Instead he put his few belongings into a carpetbag and walked away from the Fontanka. He did not look up once into the brilliant night sky. Nor did he ever make inquiries to find out what became of her.

  Thirty years on Leonid Semenovich Tolkachenko sat alone in the dark, reading The Northern Bee by candlelight. Since the policeman’s visit, he felt a more direct connection with the news accounts. Until now the wives beaten to death, the trampled drunks, the fathers murdered by their sons had existed at one remove, contained within the surface of the newspaper as if behind a looking glass. Now such dangers and terrors were spilling out into the world he occupied. He could vouch personally for their reality. Reading the paper was no longer a comfortable sensation; the anxieties it inspired, with its fulminating editorials against the new law courts, were no longer vicarious.

  A murder investigation, that was what the policeman had said.

  “Dangerous” was the word he had used.


  In other words, Govorov was a murderer.

  Tolkachenko swallowed back a dyspeptic, vinegary belch and read:

  There has never been any doubt as to Protopopov’s guilt. On several occasions, in the presence of witnesses, he threatened to kill the victim. He was seen going into her apartment. A revolver was heard to discharge. When the police arrived, he was sitting calmly next to the dead body of his landlady with the murder weapon in his hand. He confessed immediately to the crime. And now, thanks jointly to the cleverness of his defense lawyer and the stupidity of the new juries—not to mention the incompetence of the police authorities—this man, a cold-blooded murderer, has walked free. In the process, the victim has been transformed into the criminal. Subject to the vilest slander and innuendo, none of it material to the case, her character has been publicly traduced. The inference we are meant to draw is that she deserved everything that came to her. Naturally, she cannot speak in her own defense. (You may reasonably ask: Why should she have to?) She is dead. Protopopov murdered her. He has never denied it. But this same Protopopov is acquitted, and his acquittal is greeted with rapturous applause. This may be the way it is done in France, but when the innocent become the guilty, when murderers walk free, none of us is safe.

  Tolkachenko heard the street door click. He sat up with a jolt and strained to listen. Footsteps reverberated on the stairs. The old boards shrieked and cracked like fireworks. Tolkachenko’s senses tingled unpleasantly. He was used to listening to the comings and goings of the residents. He could recognize them each by their step. But this time it was difficult. Footfalls overlapped. He narrowed his eyes and discerned two separate step patterns. Was one of them Govorov’s? It was hard to tell. He imagined, in fact, two Govorovs climbing the stairs.

  Tolkachenko’s arms began to ache from holding the paper still. He knew the footsteps were heading away from him. Even so, he was afraid of making the slightest sound. It could be a trick. Somehow the beat of his heart had fallen in rhythm with the steps. Every time there was a pause in the sounds of climbing, his heart seemed to stop beating. He imagined the two Govorovs turning around and coming back for him.

  At last, a door above closed.

  It was some time before Tolkachenko stirred. He folded the newspaper carefully and leaned forward to place it noiselessly on the floor. The throb of his pulse echoed in his head. His knees creaked as he rose from the seat. Partially digested pickled cucumbers gurgled in his stomach. He winced as if these minute interior noises were in danger of reaching the apartment above.

  Tolkachenko moved slowly, lowering his feet with tense precision. He waited, listening, after each step. Then stood, listening, at his own door before grasping the handle with a grip that tightened the whole of his arm. He pushed his shoulder into the door as he eased it open.

  Even in the dark he knew where to place his feet so that he could climb the stairs without setting off too many alarms from the floorboards. As he ascended, the low rumble of voices grew louder.

  A light showed under Govorov’s door. The voices he had heard were coming from inside. Tolkachenko couldn’t make out what was being said, but he recognized Govorov’s booming theatrical bass. There was one other man in there, he judged, whose voice was higher and lighter. They seemed to be arguing, but there was something detached, almost disjointed, about their exchange. It had not reached the point where both parties were shouting over each other.

  Without questioning what he was doing, Tolkachenko took the heavy ring of keys from his pocket and fumbled for the key to Govorov’s door. The metallic jangling prompted a break in the discussion within. But Tolkachenko moved quickly. He thrust the key into the lock and turned it. Then he slipped it off the chained ring and stepped back. He turned the key in the door so that it was at a slight angle to the keyhole. He heard footsteps hurry toward him. The door shook in the frame.

  “Wha’s this?” came Govorov’s slurred cry.

  “Murderer!” shouted Tolkachenko back.

  “What are you talking about, you old fool? You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. It’s not me who’s the murderer. Besides, you can’t lock me in.”

  Tolkachenko now heard Govorov try to insert his own key into the lock. But the keyhole was of course blocked.

  “This is an outrage!”

  “I’ll tell you what an outrage is. Murder.”

  “There he is again with his murder. Good heavens! All he ever talks about is murder. Have you ever heard such a thing?” But there was no answer from whoever was in the apartment with Govorov.

  “The police were here,” cried Tolkachenko. “That’s what I’m talking about. The police were here, looking for you. Let them come back and decide. That’s what I say.”

  “Very well, let them come. I have nothing to—” Govorov’s speech decayed abruptly into a strangled scream. There was a heavy, complicated crash, which resonated musically at the end. Now Tolkachenko heard a desperate thrashing about as if there was a struggle going on inside. Then a stifled gurgling of fluid in flesh and a panicked gasping for breath that would not come. It was a sound he could barely accept as human in origin. He wanted to run from it, to get as far away from that sound as he could. And yet the terrible novelty of it held him.

  Then it stopped.

  There was only silence now, or rather an oppressive buzzing emptiness.

  Tolkachenko rapped his knuckles hesitantly on the door. When that produced no answer, he called out: “Hey! You! Konstantin Kirillovich! What are you up to?”

  Tolkachenko heard footsteps behind him, coming down from the landing above. He turned and blinked into the gloom. At the same moment the door from the apartment across the landing opened, leaching a soft yellow light. Iakov Borisovitch, the young civil servant who lived there, peered out nervously. The footsteps on the stairs had stopped. Whoever was there seemed to be hanging back.

  “Leonid Simonovich?” Iakov Borisovitch’s face was white, his eyes wide with fear. He was a sickly, nervous young man at the best of times.

  “Iakov Borisovitch! You must go to the police station on Stolyarny Lane. Alert Lieutenant Salytov. Tell him that Tolkachenko sent you. Tell him I have captured Govorov.”

  “You have captured Konstantin Kirillovich? But why?”

  “There isn’t time to explain that now. You must go! Immediately!”

  “But Leonid Simonovich, I’m unwell. I couldn’t go to the ministry today. As you can see”—Iakov Borisovitch stepped out onto the landing—“I’m still in my dressing gown.”

  “You must get dressed. It’s the middle of the afternoon. You shouldn’t be in your dressing gown in the middle of the afternoon.”

  “But I’m not well. It’s the old problem. Nerves. I’m feeling terrifically depressed.”

  “Well, you must pull yourself together and go to the police station. Otherwise…he will murder us all.”

  There was a strange sound, a kind of rasping hiss, from the darkness above them. Iakov Borisovitch leaped back into his apartment.

  “What was that?”

  “Who’s there?” Tolkachenko called up the stairs.

  There was no answer.

  “You must go,” Tolkachenko insisted to Iakov Borisovitch. “Besides, I believe you will be safer at the police station than here.”

  There was a moment while Iakov Borisovitch took this in. Then he nodded and hurried back inside.

  As soon as the door was closed, the landing was plunged back into darkness. The footsteps on the stairs began again. Instinctively, Tolkachenko stepped back and pressed himself against the wall. He was able to make out an indistinct figure as it stepped down onto the landing, but the features remained obscure. The figure seemed to turn toward him and then bow. “Good day to you” came from it, in a light, ironic, and half-familiar voice.

  Tolkachenko could say nothing in return. He felt a climactic churning in his besieged stomach. His cheeks bulged and a loud, reverberating burp escaped.

  The figure crossed the
landing and continued down the stairs.

  TOLKACHENKO WAS STILL positioned outside Govorov’s door when he heard Iakov Borisovitch return. He felt as though the darkness had solidified around him.

  “Leonid Simonovich!” cried the young civil servant from below. “It’s I, Iakov Borisovitch. I have brought the policeman. And another gentleman.”

  “Can we not have a light here?” This voice was unknown to Tolkachenko. A moment later a match flared, and Iakov Borisovitch lit the gas in the hall. The police lieutenant and the “other gentleman” came up the stairs. Their expressions denied Tolkachenko the reassurance he might have hoped for from their presence. Iakov Borisovitch stayed downstairs, close to the front door.

  “So he is in there?” whispered Salytov.

  “Yes,” confirmed Tolkachenko, also speaking in a low voice. “I have not moved from here. He has not come out. Neither of them has come out.”

  “Neither of them?” whispered the other man, whose colorless eyelashes flickered energetically. “So there are two men in there?”

  “Yes,” said Tolkachenko. “I heard two men come up the stairs. And two voices inside.”

  “Open the door,” demanded Salytov.

  Tolkachenko hesitated, deferring to the gentleman who had come with Salytov.

  “One moment, Ilya Petrovich. Does it not occur to you that they might be armed?”

  Lieutenant Salytov opened his greatcoat and pulled an American revolver from a holster. The gun’s long barrel probed the air like a sleek snout. “I have come prepared, Porfiry Petrovich,” he said.

  “Oh!” moaned Tolkachenko.

  “We should give them the chance to surrender, I think,” said Porfiry Petrovich. “It is possible we may conclude this business without a shot being fired—or a drop of blood shed.”

  Salytov hammered on the door with the butt of his revolver. “You in there! This is the police. You are under arrest. Do you understand?”

  There was no answer.

  “I should tell you, I heard something,” hissed Tolkachenko. “Before. It sounded like a struggle. A crash. Someone falling over.” Tolkachenko fell silent. His eyes flitted desperately, as though fleeing from something that was forcing itself on his imagination. “Then nothing.”