R. Morris - The Cleansing Flames

Virginsky at last understood: ‘That’s why you smashed the icon! You wanted to draw out the priest.’

Dolgoruky’s look was abashed.

‘You want to be exorcised, is that it? You want a priest to cast out your demon?’

Dolgoruky seemed to buckle under Virginsky’s questions, as if he could not bear to have his intentions made explicit.

‘You don’t need a priest, Dolgoruky. You need someone who will understand you. A kindred spirit.’

‘Do you imagine yourself to be such a one?’

‘I too have committed a crime. I may yet turn out to be a murderer. This morning you asked me why I shot Porfiry Petrovich. Perhaps the true reason, the most honest reason, is that I did it to fulfil my destiny. To become the man I am meant to be.’

‘And then what? What happens when you have fulfilled your destiny?’

‘I don’t know,’ confessed Virginsky heavily. ‘I suppose once a man has fulfilled his destiny, there is nothing left for him to do but die.’

‘Do you want to die now? Here?’

‘Not particularly. It’s harder than you think to fulfil your destiny.’

Dolgoruky’s hand delved into a pocket and came out holding a penknife. He peeled open a blade that caught the hanging light, glinting like a new-forged idea.

‘You would kill me with a pocket knife?’ Virginsky’s voice quivered. It seemed that he was more outraged at the proposed weapon than at the prospect of being murdered.

Dolgoruky shook his head, a smile flexing briefly in a spasm of irony. ‘I am not going to kill you. I am going to show you something that may make you want to kill me. You may even use this knife if you wish.’

Dolgoruky began to unpick the lining of his coat, skilfully nicking the stitches with the tip of the blade. He teased out a small sheet of paper from the hole he had created and handed it to Virginsky.

‘What is this?’

‘My confession.’

‘Are you sure you want me to read it?’

Dolgoruky closed his eyes. His head dipped in an almost imperceptible gesture of assent.

Virginsky’s hands were shaking when he held the sheet back to Dolgoruky. Dolgoruky was slumped on the floor, his back against the iconostasis. He looked up but made no move to take the manifesto.

‘Do you understand now?’ Dolgoruky’s voice was a rasping whisper.

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell me what I should do?’

‘It is not for me to say.’

‘This was not the end of it, you know.’

‘I know. You killed Pseldonimov because he printed this for you. You could not bear that he knew your secret.’

‘Do you think I would care about that? Why would I have it printed if I cared who saw it?’

‘A change of heart? Your original intention was to distribute the confession to all and sundry, but when the documentation of your crimes was there in front of you, you lost your nerve. More than that, you panicked.’

‘It was not like that.’

‘But you did kill Pseldonimov?’

‘What is this, Magistrate? Have I not confessed to enough crimes for your liking?’

‘You said this was not the end of it. I am merely trying to find out what you meant by that.’

‘The girl. . the child. . I raped. You read that part?’

Virginsky swallowed, it seemed with great difficulty, as if the process of swallowing was entirely unnatural to him, something he had to force himself to do. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘She. . she killed herself.’ Dolgoruky watched Virginsky closely to see how he absorbed this information. His own face seemed to mirror the revulsion he imagined Virginsky was feeling. ‘And I knew. I knew that was what she was going to do. I saw it in her eyes. She said she was going to the storeroom. But I knew she was going to hang herself. And I did nothing to prevent it.’

‘Of course you didn’t. There was nothing you could do. You had already killed her when you. .’ Virginsky released his grip on the printed confession. It fell with a swooping, distraught flutter. There was hatred in Dolgoruky’s eye as he tracked its descent. ‘. . did this,’ completed Virginsky.

‘I thought you were a kindred spirit,’ said Dolgoruky, his voice laden with bitter disappointment.

‘Why did you not put the child’s suicide in your confession?’

‘I. . could not! ’ Dolgoruky began to sob.

‘Yes, of course. There is a limit to what we are able to face up to in ourselves. But tell me, did you really show this document to Marfa Timofyevna?’

Dolgoruky nodded, wincing at the memory.

‘Ah! There you have it. You wanted her to think badly of you, but not so badly as all that! You censored the account for her consumption.’

‘You don’t know what it cost me to show her even this. And is this not bad enough, Magistrate? It does not require a great leap of the imagination to go from this to the child’s suicide. What else was left for her? What else is left for me?’

Virginsky looked away, deliberately evading Dolgoruky’s final question. ‘Why did you show it to her?’

‘She loved me!’ cried Dolgoruky. ‘At least, she said she loved me. But she didn’t know who I was.’

‘In the end, she could not believe you capable of this. That is a sign of her love, is it not?’

‘But it is a false love, based on falsity.’

‘And you would rather have her hatred, so long as it is based on truth?’

‘I would rather have her love, based on truth. But it seems that is not possible.’

Virginsky stared intently at the discarded handbill. ‘What kind of woman could love a man capable of that ?’ The question escaped without thought. But they had passed the point where tact was necessary or even possible.

Dolgoruky gave a bitter laugh. ‘Tatyana Ruslanovna, perhaps.’

Virginsky declined to answer. He suddenly felt an overwhelming revulsion for Dolgoruky, who appeared to him like an insect, deserving only to be crushed. He imagined himself picking up the manoualia once more, this time bringing it down on Dolgoruky’s head. His feelings were entirely without pity now. He would do this, he imagined, purely to rid himself of Dolgoruky’s existence, which had become suddenly intolerable to him. Instead, he satisfied himself with humiliating Dolgoruky: ‘One speaks of a woman’s ruin. Certainly, you brought about the ruin of that child. But it seems to me that you have also caused your own ruin, Dolgoruky.’ He paused before finally answering the question Dolgoruky had asked earlier: ‘There is nothing left for you.’

Dolgoruky drew his head up with a perverse pride. ‘Thank you.’ It seemed that he had reached a decision. Virginsky felt strangely reticent to discover what it was. He turned from the Prince and walked out of the church.

As he headed back along Kalashnikovsky Prospect, Virginsky felt, for the first time that day, exposed. More than that, he felt bereft. It was as if Dolgoruky’s presence had acted like a talisman, and although he could not bear to be in the man’s company any longer, he missed the strange invulnerability that the Prince inspired. A sudden ache of loneliness and longing came over him. He realised he was tiring of these people, tiring of the position in which he had placed himself. He looked down the muddy lane where the workshop was located. Should he go back in there? What would he find if he did? Totsky and Tatyana Ruslanovna locked in a filthy embrace? It was absurd. He could not imagine anything more unlikely in that chill shed. And yet, her broken laugh, and Dolgoruky’s suggestion that she was capable of loving a man such as him, a child-rapist, no less, not to mention all the rest of his insinuations. . But Totsky? Surely she would draw the line at Totsky?