by R. N. Morris
‘Good God! Is that what this is about? A man has died because he would not get out of your way on the Nevsky Prospekt!’
‘It is a question of honour. He failed to show me the respect that was due to me.’
‘You will come with us now.’
‘But I have confessed to nothing. And even if I had, I would get off. No jury would convict me. To have been so possessed by vengeance over such a trifle proves my insanity. Thank God and the Tsar for the new juries!’
Yefimov began to laugh. There was a strangled cry behind him. One of the clerks broke away from his companions, moving with great difficulty, as though running through soft sand. He held one hand out stiffly in front, clenched around a flicker of steel. This hand jerked forwards, at the soft flank of Yefimov’s lower back, and came away empty. Yefimov’s face lurched upwards, spasms of pain distorting it. Blood darkened the bottle-green frock coat of his civil service uniform around the projecting handle of a penknife. His fingers flexed in time with the draining pulse of his blood. He strained his head back to fix his imploring eyes on Porfiry. A plea for help shaped his lips but did not sound. Porfiry did not move.
Yefimov staggered towards him, at the last throwing himself upon the magistrate. Porfiry caught him and held his full weight in a tight embrace. Over Yefimov’s shoulder he saw the clerk back away, awed by his own action. The phalanx of scribes closed around him. In a moment, he was lost to sight.
‘Who was that man?’ cried Porfiry, still clinging on to Yefimov. The fingers of one hand felt the dampness of the other man’s blood. ‘Surrender him now.’
The clerks stared back at him, blank-faced and silent. Before long, the memory of the assassin’s face mingled with those of his colleagues.
‘Which one of them was it, Pavel Pavlovich? Can you say?’ The strain of his burden gave Porfiry’s voice a desperate edge.
Virginsky shook his head, his face wide open with wonder. ‘What about him?’ He held a shaking finger towards Yefimov. Porfiry felt the civil servant writhe in his arms; his cheek brushed Yefimov’s grimace.
‘I’ll stay with him. You go and raise the alarm.’
Virginsky watched as Yefimov’s groping hand closed its fingers around the handle of the penknife and pulled. The awkward yanking motion failed to bring the blade out cleanly. It pivoted the knife on its axis and churned the blade through the ruptured kidney. When the knife did come away, falling with a mocking clatter to the floor, the unstoppered blood chased through the fabric of his coat.
‘Quickly, Pavel Pavlovich! If there is to be any hope of saving him, you must go now!’ It had not seemed possible, but the body in Porfiry’s arms grew suddenly heavier.
But all Virginsky could do was cast a hesitating glance towards the knot of clerks. Something in their enlivened defiance held him.
They stood on the steps of the ministry, looking across Chernyshov Square, their thoughts clogged in the faltering traffic. A restive dray horse stamped and snorted between the shafts of an ambulance carriage, unable to proceed. It seemed to sense the urgency of the moment, perhaps scenting blood in the air. Its eye stood out with animal panic.
Porfiry looked down at his right hand and saw it stained with Yefimov’s blood. He could not bring himself to light the cigarette between his lips.
‘I am not cut out for this.’
Porfiry looked up sharply. ‘Nonsense.’
‘He may die because of me.’ There seemed to be no great conviction to Virginsky’s words.
Porfiry shrugged. ‘You did not plunge the knife in.’
‘I couldn’t move!’ It was as if Virginsky was pleading to be blamed.
‘You’re not the only one, it seems,’ said Porfiry, frowning at the stationary ambulance. He added, more gently: ‘Next time, you will move. You will be prepared.’
‘There won’t be a next time.’
‘So, what would you do instead? Go back to Riga with your father?’ The sarcasm in Porfiry’s voice was harsher than he intended.
Virginsky’s response was quick with affront: ‘There is work for me on the estate. I have ideas about more efficient methods of agricultural management. My father would be amenable, I’m sure.’
‘You think you will escape the memory of what you have seen? Rostanev in his bed? It will go with you. It will haunt you and there will be nothing you can do about it. Something has been awoken in you, Pavel Pavlovich. You cannot leave it now. It will not leave you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Porfiry sighed heavily. He found he was clutching his cigarette case, which he offered to Virginsky. Virginsky declined. At last Porfiry lit his own cigarette. He gave Virginsky a long, assessing look. ‘The appetite. There is only one way to appease it. And that is to give in to it. You will work in the department, not because it is a way for you to serve the Russian people, not because it will make you happy, or bring you honour, nor, indeed, for any reason that you can admit to. You will work with us because you need to. We have spoilt you for anything else.’
‘I cannot get the sight of that man out of my head.’
‘Rostanev? You will see other things. Some may even be worse than that. I cannot promise you otherwise.’ Porfiry emptied his lungs of smoke.
A slight smile played on his lips as he held Virginsky with his gaze. His nod released them.
They turned their backs guiltily on the ambulance, as its driver shouted at the three coaches blocking his way. They walked away from the frantic whinnying of his horse.
13
In the secret heart of the city
‘For you.’ The letter that Zamyotov handed him was battered and dusty, split along the folds. It was post-marked ‘Terek’.
He felt a strange emptiness as he read the single line of the message.
‘Bad news, Porfiry Petrovich?’
Porfiry could hear the insincerity of Zamyotov’s smile without having to look up. His own words came out heavily: ‘If only this had arrived two days ago. Rostanev would still be alive. As would Kheruvimov and Pestryakov. Indeed neither Ilya Petrovich nor any of our men would have been injured.’
‘Good heavens. What on earth does it say?’
Porfiry handed the letter to Zamyotov.
‘Ah, it is a reply to the telegram I sent to the Caucasus on your behalf. So it has come at last!’ Zamyotov read the brief message out loud: ‘“Sir, the scoundrel you are referring to went by the name Yefimov. Your servant, Devushkin.” Well, there you are, Porfiry Petrovich! Your case is solved. You should be pleased.’
Porfiry breathed in the cleansing scent of linseed oil. It came from the unmoving figure on the bed: he had to believe it was a man, given that it was a patient in the Obukhovsky Men’s Hospital. However, the face was covered in bandages, holding in place the scented, liniment-soaked gauze. Through a slit in the bandages, Porfiry could see that the eyes were closed. The eyelids had a strangely naked appearance. It was a moment before he realised that the lashes were missing. There was another gap in the bandages for the mouth, and vents for nostrils.
The crisp white sheet folded over the man’s chest seemed like an infinite weight pinning him down. His bandaged arms and hands lay stiffly on top of his covers.
‘Ilya Petrovich?’ Porfiry spoke gently, taking a seat next to the bed.
Salytov’s eyes opened and sought Porfiry out. The slit of his mouth opened on to blackness, as he swallowed drily. ‘Did you get the bastards?’
‘It was not the boy from Ballet’s who did this to you, Ilya Petrovich, or any of his associates. The bomb was thrown by the civil servant Yefimov. It was not a revolutionary plot, merely a mask for his personal vendettas. It was intended to distract and confuse us.’
Salytov closed his eyes. ‘Yefimov.’ His mouth as he said the name appeared disembodied, giving its pronouncements a strangely oracular authority. It seemed that it was not Salytov speaking, but some unseen force, blind, yet all-knowing.
‘He’s dead . . . now,’ said Porfiry, faltering
ly. ‘He escaped justice in this life, but he will not in the next.’
‘Your faith is touching, Porfiry Petrovich. I wish I shared it.’ Salytov opened his eyes again. ‘How did he die?’
‘He was stabbed. One of his subordinates attacked him. In a fury of revenge, it seems, for the way Yefimov treated Rostanev. There are . . . complications surrounding the attack.’
‘What complications?’
‘The perpetrator is being protected by his colleagues. They will not give him up and we - that is to say, Pavel Pavlovich and I - cannot positively say which one of them it was. These civil servants tend to look alike, you know,’ he added in an abashed aside.
‘You witnessed it?’
‘N-yes.’
The figure on the bed began to shake. The eyes gleamed with mirth. ‘You witnessed the attack, but you cannot identify the attacker!’
‘It happened very quickly and in great confusion. Yefimov did not die immediately. We had to . . . we had a responsibility to tend to him. It took some time to get help. He died on the way to hospital, it seems.’
Salytov’s eyes became suddenly serious. ‘How many of our men died in the blast?’
‘Two. Kheruvimov and Pestryakov.’
‘I led them into it.’
‘You could not have known. And besides, the operation was approved by Nikodim Fomich.’ After a moment Porfiry added: ‘I too must bear some responsibility.’
Salytov did not answer. His eyes were closed again and he seemed to have drifted off into sleep.
Porfiry was in no hurry to get back to the bureau. He allowed himself to be led by the city, following an echoed shout, or the glimpse of something moving through an entry. He felt himself drawn into the secret heart of St Petersburg, passing through it by the chain of interlocking courtyards. He felt himself privileged. He found that he didn’t mind the dust of construction, or the summer stench. He had been released from his hatred of his city. Every step took him away from one set of lives and towards another, lives overlooking lives, each one mingling with the next.
Occasionally he would emerge on to one of the city’s broad thoroughfares, or the stone embankment of one of its waterways. He would follow that course for as long as the whim took him, until the enticement of another entrance beckoned.
He found himself, at last, on Nevsky Prospekt. It was late morning. The sun burned down from a clear sky. It seemed that, after being cloistered within a hidden city, he had now emerged into a public one. In some way, it seemed like he had rejoined his fellow citizens after a long, enforced separation. He welcomed his immersion in the cries of street vendors, the clatter of carriages, the snatches of conversation.
He stood in the middle of the pavement, forcing the streams of pedestrians coming in both directions to part around him. Now and then he was buffeted by a passing shoulder. His strange obduracy attracted puzzled backward glances and, from those who were coming straight at him, threatening glares. He was disdainfully ignored by cavalry officers and frowned upon by civil servants. Young ladies averted their gaze, something in their eyes suggesting a suspicion of madness. But Porfiry held his ground, the sole constant in the ceaseless cross-tides of unbound humanity. He let them flow away from him without regret.
He looked into faces, the healthy, the lean, the sallow, the consumptive, some beautiful, some haughty, faces distorted by suffering or set in determination, faces empty of everything apart from a simple enjoyment of the day’s warmth; he searched these faces, recognising none, but feeling somehow that he knew them all. Was he also looking for some flicker of reciprocal recognition, some acknowledgement of how things stood between them?
At last he shook his head, as if trying to shake off his folly. A smile broke into his face as he turned his back on the vanity that had detained him.
It was time to get back to Stolyarny Lane.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Andrei Travinin for so generously showing me his city and for his guidance over Russian names; Virginia Rounding for her adjudication on transliteration issues; Justin Zamora for help with Church Slavonic; and Yaroslav Tregubov of the St Petersburg Historical Society for the maps. Any mistakes I acknowledge as my own.
My greatest debt, of course, is to Fyodor Dostoevsky, in whose masterpiece Crime and Punishment the original Porfiry Petrovich made his appearance.
Born in Manchester in 1960, R. N. Morris now lives in North London with his wife and two children. A Vengeful Longing follows A Gentle Axe as the second in a series of St Petersburg novels featuring Porfiry Petrovich, the character created by Fyodor Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment. Taking Comfort was published by Macmillan under the name Roger Morris in 2006.
