R. Morris: A Vengeful Longing

‘Mama!’ Her vision came and went. She saw eyes, his eyes, fearful and imploring.

‘It’s. . all. . right. . Grisha.’ She was amazed how clearly she was able to think as she recognised the panic in her own voice.

Raisa reached out towards where she believed her son’s hand must be. She could see a hand, but it divided into two hands, which circled one another in her failing vision. She grabbed for one of the hands but pulled only air towards her. Her hand went flying. She had no control over any part of herself. She watched her hand smash into the samovar. Strange, she did not feel its heat, or even its hardness. The samovar toppled over and fell apart with a loud clatter.

Raisa sank to her knees. It was as if a heavy weight was pushing down on her shoulders, and her legs were just not up to it. Grisha now was lying on his back, writhing.

‘Martin!’ It was as if the name was the articulation of her pain. She broke it down and cried it out again, at a higher, fiercer pitch: ‘Marrrr- tin! ’

She was aware of the girl, Polina, at the door, tried hard to focus on her. Horror quickly settled in Polina’s face.

‘Get my husband,’ Raisa managed, gripping the table edge. Then, more sharply, as she felt herself unable to control her bowels: ‘Get my husband!’

But Polina did not move. It seemed she could not take her eyes off the spectacle before her. At first she was dumbstruck by it, her mouth gaping idiotically. Then, when finally she stirred herself to act, it was to close her eyes, throw back her head, and scream. She screamed for a long time, a high, steady note, as clear and hard as steel.

‘I have come to see Porfiry Petrovich.’

Alexander Grigorevich Zamyotov, chief clerk of the Haymarket District Police Bureau in Stolyarny Lane, remained bent over the case notes he was sorting. He was reluctant to lift his face into the full force of the stench that permeated the receiving hall.

There was a light tapping on the counter. Zamyotov froze, but still did not look up.

‘My dear sir, respectfully, I request. .’

‘Respectfully?’ Zamyotov slowly straightened himself at last, wincing and blinking through the eye-watering smell. He subjected the clean-shaven young man before him to a withering scrutiny. The young man was crisply turned out in a brand-new civil service uniform, with a single-breasted coat of bottle green. Its nine silver buttons shone in admonition of Zamyotov’s own dull buttons, one of which hung by a loose thread. ‘Is it respectful to hammer thus?’ Zamyotov rapped his knuckles angrily on the counter. ‘Can you not see that I am engaged in important police duties here? I am not at the beck and call of the likes of you, even if you have come straight from the outfitters.’ Zamyotov’s face contorted into an impressive sneer, marred only by a slight pursing of his lips.

‘Forgive me. I was not sure that you had heard me.’

‘I am not deaf.’

‘But you did not acknowledge. .’

‘I am not here to acknowledge.’

The young man bowed deeply, and held his bow.

‘What are you doing now, you ridiculous individual?’

‘I am waiting. For you to finish your task.’

Zamyotov leant forward to hiss: ‘Get up! Before someone sees you! Think of your uniform, your rank. When you abase yourself, you abase us all.’

The young man obeyed.

‘Name?’ demanded Zamyotov.

‘Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky.’

Zamyotov started. He looked at the young man with new interest. ‘You’ve put on weight.’

Virginsky nodded.

‘And smartened yourself up. Well, well.’

The young man seemed embarrassed by the observation.

‘So,’ said Zamyotov, with a malicious grin, ‘what trouble have you got yourself into this time?’

‘I’m not in trouble. I joined the service. I’ve just graduated from the university.’

‘ You graduated? They are giving degrees to madmen now?’

‘Yes, I have a degree in law. I have decided to become an investigating magistrate. My father thought. .’

‘Your father?’ Zamyotov smirked sarcastically.

‘I thought,’ Virginsky corrected himself, ‘and my father agreed, that it would be good for me to train under Porfiry Petrovich. There is no doubt that he is one of the best investigating magistrates in St Petersburg.’

‘And who is your father? Tsar Alexander the Second?’

‘No. He is former Actual State Councillor Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky, a landowner of the Riga province.’

‘How was a provincial landowner able to pull strings in order to get you the position you had set your heart upon?’

‘It was not a question of pulling strings. Our family has no connections. Or very few.’

‘And yet, you decide something and it comes to pass. If only my career had run along such a track.’

‘My father wrote a letter.’

‘Ah! So that’s it!’

‘To the office of the prokuror .’

‘I see.’

‘Who passed it on to Porfiry Petrovich himself.’

‘I think I remember it now,’ said Zamyotov thoughtfully. ‘You have me to thank for putting it before him, you know.’

‘But it is your duty, surely, to pass on all his mail to him?’

‘No, it would be quite wrong of you to think that. If you are to work here you must get such nonsense out of your head. My duty is to exercise my discretion on his behalf. On behalf of them all.’

‘I see.’

‘Another clerk, remembering the disreputable, one might almost say contemptible, figure that you once cut — your matted hair, the parlous state of your clothes, indeed your apparent madness — as I say, another clerk would not have troubled the investigating magistrate with a petition on behalf of such an individual.’

‘Then I am grateful to you.’

‘ Are you?’ There was a testing petulance to Zamyotov’s tone.

‘I just said as much.’

‘But you have not said “thank you”.’

‘There’s a terrible smell in here,’ said Virginsky, sniffing the air.

‘Get used to it,’ said Zamyotov. ‘It is the Ditch. It always stinks in the summer. It’s full of excrement.’

‘Will you tell Porfiry Petrovich that I am here to see him? He is expecting me, I believe.’

Zamyotov sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. ‘If he is expecting you, then what are you waiting for? It is not advisable to keep the investigating magistrate waiting on your first day.’

Virginsky frowned in confusion. Zamyotov, now bent once again over his paperwork, waved him away impatiently, towards the door to Porfiry Petrovich’s chambers.

Porfiry Petrovich stood at the window, his back to the room. The window was high, narrow and arched, set in the furthest corner, at the very tip of the iron-shaped block. It overlooked the Yekaterininsky Canal, at the spot where the Kokushkin Bridge spanned it. A cloud of cigarette smoke hung around him; despite it, the underlying smell of raw sewage was just as strong in here as it was out in the main hall. The din of building work outside, the clash and rumble of hammers and falling masonry, was barely muted by the dust-coated panes.

The back of the investigating magistrate’s coat was stretched taut under the pressure of his squat form, which seemed shorter and fatter, even more like a peasant woman’s, than Virginsky remembered it. His head was close-cropped and protruded at the back like a bulbous tuber. His expression, as he turned, was severe, pained even, although there was something comical about the effect of this severity on his round, snub-nosed face. He looked like an angry pug. He was clean-shaven, his skin dark, so that his white eyelashes stood out strikingly, drawing attention to his eyes. If there was a danger of not taking Porfiry Petrovich seriously, it quickly passed when one looked into the penetrating force of those eyes.