A Razor Wrapped in Silk

by R. N. Morris

  ‘Well then, what’s the fuss about, your honour? I mean to say, if the point of book-learning was to get him away from here, then it seems to have succeeded tremendously.’

  ‘You’re a clever fellow.’

  ‘Yes, and I haven’t had no book learning. I picked it all up myself.’

  ‘I congratulate you.’

  The gatekeeper grinned complacently.

  ‘Where exactly was Mitka employed in the factory?’

  ‘He worked for Oleg Sergeevich.’

  ‘Who is this Oleg Sergeevich?’

  ‘Ustyantsev. The spinner.’

  ‘And where will I find this spinner Ustyantsev?’

  ‘In the spinning-shop, I should think.’

  ‘Will you take me there?’

  ‘I cannot leave my post.’ The gatekeeper sucked self-importantly on his pipe, to remind Virginsky of the vital work he had to do there.

  ‘I shall make it worth your while.’

  ‘If I leave my post I shall lose my post, and nothing you can give me will make that worth my while. You’ll have no trouble finding Oleg Sergeevich. Everybody knows him. Mind, I would warn you that he will not take kindly to your intrusion. Oleg Sergeevich is a piece worker. He won’t appreciate you taking him away from his work, not unless you intend to compensate him.’

  ‘It is his civic duty to talk to me, as it is yours.’

  ‘If you rely on that, then I wish you luck.’ The gatekeeper at last granted Virginsky the privilege of his gaze. His eyes were narrowed almost to points, as if he were squeezing the life out of whatever vision came into them.

  *

  What struck Virginsky first was the noise. It was a resistant force that he had to walk into and through; it possessed and defined the room he had entered far more than anything else in it. There was a raw energy to it. It attacked his ears, took over his body, and drowned out all his other senses. The machines screeched like angry demons, their spinning parts whirling with the frenzy of the possessed.

  The agitation of production was everywhere: the particles of white dust that filled the hot air danced and trembled in its vibrations; in fact, it was easy to believe they were particles of noise.

  The rows of machines, mysterious in their purpose, solemnly tended by their human ministers, daunted him. This was a world he had not glimpsed before. That so much energy and unswerving concentration, so much hard metal and speed, should go into the production of fine cotton thread, was somehow both inspiring and shaming. He had the sense that he was staring into the future. He felt it drain the hope from his heart at the same time as he acknowledged its allure.

  A man in a checked suit and bowler hat, evidently some kind of foreman, shouted something incomprehensible into Virginsky’s face. Virginsky shouted back the name Ustyantsev. The foreman replied with further shouts. It was a moment before Virginsky realised he was being asked, in bad Russian, ‘Who are you?’

  He shouted back, ‘Magistrate.’

  He was led between two rows of clattering machinery, some parts of which were pent with such violent force that it seemed that they would fly apart at any moment; or that the whole suite of machines would break loose from the bolts that fixed them to the floor and spin like massive seed pods into the air, to disseminate their monstrous din.

  The man he was led to was dressed in a loose white shirt, with a garishly patterned waistcoat open over it. He wore his hair long, swept back from a face that could have been aristocratic, for all the arrogance of his expression. He was slowly walking a moveable frame of spinning bobbins away from a squatting, thread-spewing bulk, with the patience of a man leading an animal. There was a yelled conference between the foreman and the spinner, the details of which were lost to Virginsky. The outcome was a dark, suspicious glance in his direction.

  An upward nod from the foreman invited Virginsky to draw near.

  ‘Ustyantsev?’ shouted Virginsky.

  The man walking the frame confirmed his identity with the most minimal of nods, his eyes darting all the time along the lines of thread stretched across the widening jaws of the machine.

  ‘Can you stop the machine?’ Virginsky pointed at his ears and gave a wince of distress. His request and the gesture went ignored. ‘I need to talk.’ He nodded energetically. ‘And hear!’

  The spinner gave a shrug that indicated eloquently how little this concerned him.

  ‘Mitka,’ shouted Virginsky, stepping backwards to keep pace with the spinner’s progress. ‘You know Mitka?’

  ‘Mitka’s gone.’ The spinner’s reply was clear enough.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Let me down, the bastard.’

  ‘Let you down? How?’

  ‘Ran off.’

  ‘Where? Where’d he go?’

  Ustyantsev shook his head, his mouth set in a non-committal down-turn. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  The moving frame clanked as it reached the outward extent of its track. There was a slight lull in the noise of the machine, or at least a modulation of its frequency which seemed to hold out the promise of a more sustained conversation. However, Virginsky was distracted by the appearance of a small boy who darted out from under the vast skein of threads. Ustyantsev launched himself at the boy and landed a heavy blow across the side of the head. His face as he returned to the frame was defiant and grim.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ demanded Virginsky.

  ‘Keeps them on their toes.’

  ‘Do you not consider that they might work with more enthusiasm and effectiveness if you treated them more kindly?’

  Ustyantsev’s expression was one of brutish incomprehension.

  ‘You are a working man yourself. Does it not shame you to oppress your fellow labourers? Especially as they are children?’

  ‘How dare you call me a labourer? I am a spinner, I’ll have you know.’ Ustyantsev’s affront was genuine.

  ‘Can I speak to the boy?’

  ‘The boy?’

  Virginsky looked around but the boy had disappeared.

  ‘Be my guest,’ said Ustyantsev with a malicious grin.

  ‘Will you call him out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You expect me to get in there?’

  ‘He’s not in there. He’s in this one now.’ Ustyantsev turned to the machine opposite. ‘Mark you, if you distract him from his work and a single thread wants tying, I shall beat him mercilessly. And you shall not stop me.’

  ‘I see. Very well. In that case, I shall wait till the end of his shift.’

  ‘You’ll have a long wait.’ Ustyantsev turned his back on Virginsky and began to open the machine up. The noise, once again, was deafening.

  *

  By the time the whistle blast heralded the end of the morning shift, Virginsky’s legs were aching. His throat and lungs were clogged with cotton dust. A film of sweat lay between his skin and his underclothes. He was worn out and he had done nothing but stand and wait. To be fair, he had not been entirely idle. He had been monitoring the abuses perpetrated by the spinner against the boys in his employ, entering the number and severity of assaults into a notebook. This had failed to inhibit Ustyantsev. Far from it: as soon as he noticed what Virginsky was about, he seemed to increase the frequency of his attacks, flaunting his brutality with a perverse pride. It even occurred to Virginsky that the spinner might be acting in the misguided belief that he would gain his approval by such displays.

  Released by the whistle, the boys came out from under the machines as dazed and hesitant as uncaged rats. Habituated to hold themselves hunched, and to walk with a flinching gait, they readied themselves for further blows. None came. It seemed that Ustyantsev refrained from such exertions during his lunch break.

  Virginsky beckoned to the boy he had spotted earlier. The boy shied away with an instinctive suspicion of authority, deferring instead to Ustyantsev. The spinner tilted his head in a minute gesture of permission. With a heavy shuffle, and head bowed, the boy presented hims
elf to Virginsky.

  ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Pasha.’

  ‘I am Pasha too! Pleased to meet you, Pasha.’ Virginsky shook hands with the boy. He flashed a glance towards Ustyantsev, who was watching them with a sullen glower. ‘He treats you pretty roughly, that fellow.’

  ‘Mr Ustyantsev’s a good boss.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘There’s worse.’

  ‘I dare say, but …’

  The boy looked up, his eyes wide with questions. Then a weight of disappointment settled on him, bowing his head back down. He had looked for something in Virginsky and not found it.

  ‘Do you know Mitka? The boy who used to work here?’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Do you have any idea where he might be?’

  The boy shrugged and shifted his feet unhappily. ‘Please, sir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have to go now. I’ll miss my lunch.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  Puzzlement rippled across the boy’s face.

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to miss your lunch.’

  ‘There won’t be none for you.’

  ‘That’s all right. I … don’t want to eat anything. I just want to talk to you, and perhaps some of the other children.’

  ‘I only have half an hour.’

  ‘We’d better go then.’

  The boy’s eyes widened in alarm, as his confusion spiked into fear. He looked Virginsky up and down uneasily.

  ‘There’s no need to be afraid. I’m a magistrate. Do you know what a magistrate is?’

  The boy shook his head forlornly.

  ‘It’s a gentleman who looks into things. At this present moment I am looking into why Mitka disappeared and where he might have gone. I need you to help me.’

  ‘I shall have to ask Granny Kvasova.’

  ‘Who is Granny Kvasova?’

  ‘She looks after us at the ’prentice house.’

  ‘Well, that’s very good of her. She sounds like an excellent woman. May I meet her?’

  The boy nodded, the twist of a smile at last flickering onto his lips. ‘She gives us our lunch.’

  ‘Well, what are we waiting for? Lead the way, my friend.’

  The boy’s shrug took Virginsky back to his childhood. He had seen precisely such a shrug animate the shoulders of his school friends when he was Pasha’s age, and had felt its jounce in his own. It was a shrug of fellowship and good humour, a shrug of acceptance and understanding. It was the way you met a world you little understood and were powerless to control, not so much a gesture of indifference or resignation, as a recognition of kinship. He smiled as he followed Pasha through the factory.

  Around them the machines idled like predatory beasts feeding. It would not be long before their hunger for production was re-awakened.

  ‘Was Mitka your friend?’

  The same shrug jerked Pasha’s shoulders and Virginsky realised that there was another aspect to it that he had not acknowledged: it was a way of expressing things for which the child had no words, that perhaps would always remain beyond words. But it was capable of nuances even so, almost as much as any verbal language.

  ‘Did you go to the school with him? You know that Mitka went to school?’

  Pasha shook his head fiercely. ‘Granny Kvasova told us that Satan would get us if we went to that school.’

  ‘I can assure you that that’s not true.’

  ‘She says the lady teacher is a witch who consorts with the devil.’

  ‘Does she indeed? Well, I know the lady teacher and I can tell you she’s not a witch.’

  Pasha looked unconvinced. ‘Did Satan get Mitka? Granny Kvasova says he did. She says the lady teacher lay with Mitka and then fed him to Satan, her husband.’

  ‘That really is the most outrageous lie!’ cried Virginsky. ‘You don’t believe her, do you?’

  The shrug now had a different meaning. It seemed steeped in wilful ignorance and left Virginsky depressed.

  *

  The apprentice house was a low, brick-built outhouse, on the other side of the yard but still within the precincts of the factory and beneath its sprawling shadow.

  So this had been Mitka’s home, thought Virginsky as he crossed the threshold. They entered through the canteen, a large open room arrayed with benches, the air thick with the vinegary smell of cabbage soup. The floor was bare, the boards gaping and grubby, soft wood crumbling away; walls of whitewashed brick.

  Pasha’s face fell immediately. The other children, about fifty in number, of varying ages, were already seated, clustered around a series of communal bowls from which they spooned their meagre nourishment with competitive haste. He dashed away from Virginsky and forced his way into a circle of backs. His intrusion was not resisted, merely met with distracted resentment. Virginsky knew he had lost him.

  A settled stupor possessed the diners, though whether of exhaustion or hunger – or both – Virginsky could not say. No one spoke. The clatter of cutlery was eloquent enough. There was none of the wheeling liveliness and laughter that is usually found when children congregate. They spooned the soup into their mouths with determined concentration, the same kind of concentration they applied to their tasks in the factory.

  None of the children paid him any attention, though his presence was noted by the one adult in the room, a bonneted woman with the scrawny head of a turkey, who stood guard over the children. She wiped her palms combatatively on a filthy apron and began to move in his direction.

  Virginsky gave a distant bow and stepped forward to meet her halfway. ‘You must be Granny Kvasova. Pasha told me all about you.’

  The woman gave him a sharp look that set her dewlap trembling. ‘And who might you be?’ Her voice was high and piercing.

  ‘I am Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky. A magistrate. I am investigating the disappearance of a boy who was until recently employed at the factory, and indeed may still be considered an employee. Dmitri Krasotkin. I presume you know him?’

  ‘You had better speak to Oleg Sergeevich about him. Mitka worked for Oleg Sergeevich.’

  ‘Yes, I am aware of that. I have already interviewed that gentleman. I wish to speak to you now. Mitka lived here at the apprentice house?’

  Granny Kvasova’s head twitched in what may have been a nod of assent.

  ‘Under your care?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It’s a lot of children for one person to look after.’

  ‘I have help. But they ain’t too bad. They’re good children. Always behave themselves.’

  Virginsky glanced around. ‘They seem too exhausted to do otherwise. Were you not concerned when Mitka went missing?’

  ‘He always was a wilful one.’

  ‘Did you report his disappearance to the factory management?’

  ‘I told Oleg Sergeevich.’

  ‘And the police?’

  ‘The police have better things to do than chase runaways.’

  ‘Runaways? The boy was not a slave here, I hope. He was free to leave.’

  ‘Exactly. He was free to leave. And he did.’

  ‘Were you not afraid for his safety?’

  ‘I dare say he can look after himself.’

  ‘Why did you spread malicious rumours about the young gentlewoman who runs the school Mitka attended?’

  ‘Malicious? Who says they’re malicious?’

  ‘You called her a witch, I believe.’

  ‘She came round here, poking her nose where it wasn’t wanted. I could see right through her. Godless and depraved, she is. That’s why she was after Mitka. She likes them young.’

  ‘Are you aware there are laws to protect people from such slander?’

  ‘Slander, is it?’ The woman’s voice rose to a pitch at the limit of human hearing. ‘I saw the way she looked at the children. Licking her lips. I sent her packing, I can tell you.’

  ‘I advise you to curtail such vile allegations or you may fi
nd yourself in deep trouble.’

  Granny Kvasova’s face contracted in distaste. However, she seemed to take in Virginsky’s threat. She calmed down enough for her voice to drop several tones to a more comfortable register. ‘A friend of hers, are you?’

  Virginsky noted the malice in her cold eyes. ‘I am here as a magistrate, on official business.’ He looked about him dismissively. ‘This place … what kind of a home life do you provide the children here?’

  ‘It’s a roof over their heads, warm grub in their bellies. A bed to sleep in.’

  ‘Where do they sleep?’

  ‘You want to see their beds, do you?’ There was something unspeakably disgusting about the intonation with which she managed to invest the question.

  Virginsky looked away from the woman, suppressing an impulse to strike her. The children were beginning to rise from their hurried meal. ‘I repeat, I am a magistrate. I am investigating the disappearance of a child who was in your care. The more I can learn about his life before he went missing, the better our chances of finding him.’

  ‘I don’t see how looking at his bed will help.’

  ‘I have not come here to discuss my methods with you, old woman. Show me where he slept, before I haul you in and charge you with obstructing a magistrate in the execution of his duties.’

  ‘There’s nothing much to see, I tell you,’ said Granny Kvasova, undaunted.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ insisted Virginsky.

  The children were now filing out to return to work, each one enclosed in his or her own morose silence. They were not like children, but like shrunken adults, already worn down and defeated by the treadmill of their existence. What was most shocking to Virginsky was the blankness of their expressions. He saw no trace of the outrage or horror that they should by rights have displayed at the prospect of the afternoon ahead of them. In one or two, perhaps, there was a look of puzzled awe, as if they were struggling to comprehend the mystery of their lives. But that may simply have been the expression their faces naturally fell into when they were exhausted.