R. Morris - A Vengeful Longing

‘As I think I have made clear, it is no concern of mine how you manage your affairs.’

‘But no, you are right to be interested.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ said Virginsky. ‘I have no interest. Not in the way you imagine. I am merely trying to understand your connection with Setochkin. Perhaps there was a quarrel over the price? Perhaps Setochkin was cheating you?’

‘You think I killed him over the sale of a birch coppice?’

‘These are the questions my superiors will ask.’

‘But why should they? How will they ever know that I visited Setochkin? Unless you tell them?’

‘Are you suggesting that I suppress information which may prove relevant to the case?’

Virginsky’s father smiled. His tone became silky. ‘But isn’t that what you have already done? You haven’t told them yet. Why need you ever?’

‘I may find that I have a duty to do so.’

Now his father put on a wounded air. ‘That could only be if you suspected me of some involvement.’

‘There are other details.’

‘So you have hinted. Perhaps if you shared these details with me, I could set your mind at rest regarding them too.’

‘They cannot be divulged. The case is at a critical point.’

‘Then you have me at a disadvantage. Will you at least inform me what you intend to do?’

‘Regarding?’

‘Regarding my connection with Setochkin.’

‘I fear that I may have no choice but to notify Porfiry Petrovich of it. I advise you, Father, not to leave St Petersburg.’

Virginsky’s father said nothing. Instead, he waved his son from the room, with a sharp, upward flick of his hand, and averted his gaze to the window where the blithe summer light streamed in.

Porfiry held one hand over his nose and mouth as he hurried over Kokushkin Bridge towards Stolyarny Lane, dipping his head into the noxious air of the canal. He felt the foulness against his eyes and blinked away the moisture that sprang to meet it. The rising arch of the bridge seemed to be shaped by a repulsion for what passed beneath. The pink-hued granite embankments that it spanned were streaked with dark stains, pointed fingers of filth around a slovenly tidemark. In the stone’s permeability he saw the city’s weakness. Here the stone was subtly, but inescapably, breached and into it seeped the water’s malign influence, the turgid darkness Porfiry glimpsed and flinched from.

The thought came to him: Everything is connected.

Embankments linked by bridges, canals connecting rivers, rivers encompassing islands, islands coupled by bridges. . and over this matrix was superimposed the network of buildings and courtyards, connected by passageways. You could cross the city on foot through the courtyards of apartment buildings.

As he stepped off the bridge, his head still stooped, eyes half-closed, he felt his shoulder hit by the weighted momentum of another human being coming in the opposite direction. Half-turned by the impact, his pardon already begged, he looked up to see Dr Meyer, buffeted and dazed.

‘It’s you,’ said Meyer.

‘Yes.’

‘They let me go.’

‘I know. I ordered it.’

‘But you were the one who had me arrested.’

‘Yes. I am afraid that is sometimes necessary. Before we can apprehend the guilty, we must process the innocent.’

‘Process. That is an interesting euphemism.’

‘What will you do now, Dr Meyer?’

‘I don’t know. Work. There is always work.’

‘Yes. I find that is the case.’

‘You know,’ said Meyer. ‘I loved her once.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean, she was everything to me. It is true that recently. .’ Meyer frowned at the dirty canal. ‘It is difficult to talk of these things.’

‘Yes,’ said Porfiry.

‘And Grigory.’ Meyer looked up at the investigator in puzzlement. ‘They were all I had. And now they are gone.’

‘What about. . Polina?’

‘No,’ said Meyer, simply and sharply.

Porfiry nodded. ‘You have your work. Your work is important.’

‘Yes,’ said Dr Meyer. His tone was strange and distant, as if he were thinking of something else entirely, some new thought that had suddenly captivated him. ‘My work is important.’

A residue of despondency from his encounter with Dr Meyer dogged Porfiry as he climbed the stairs to the Haymarket District Police Bureau. As he opened the door to the bureau itself, the din of human crisis and confusion, of people pushed to the edges of tolerance, was released, and other smells and other despondencies mingled with those he had brought with him. Of course, there were those who held themselves aloof from this, who remained silent and impassive and unmoving, who simply waited, with either meek or cunning eyes, as they calculated their fate.

The voice of one man cut through it all.

Lieutenant Salytov’s reflex rage against the daily intrusion of humanity was part of the rhythm of the bureau, especially in the summer. They would come, in all their untidy, unruly variety, the wicked, the indigent, the worthless, victims and villains alike, and he, outraged at their presence, indignant at his own inability to hold them back, would produce from somewhere deep inside himself his snarling, half-strangled commands. And the more he shouted, the less attention they paid him. He may as well have issued orders to the flies that competed for air in the sweltering hall. Of course, this was a lesson that Salytov never learnt.

Porfiry knew from weary experience the difficulty of trying to conduct his own work, which amounted to nothing more or less than thinking, during one of Salytov’s summer storms. This was not to say that he required, or even desired, absolute silence: the answering voice of another, whether an imagined other in his head or, preferably, a physical other in the room with him, was the vehicle by which his thought progressed, stoked of course by the endless supply of cigarette smoke. But now Porfiry felt the looming of a blank despair. He felt it pointless even to go into his chambers, where only the ripening stench from the Ditch and an insidious plague of flies awaited him. He even experienced a sympathetic intimation of Salytov’s anger, and looked about him for an object on which to vent it.

Zamyotov was at his counter, sorting files, his face set in its habitual expression of detached superiority.

‘Alexander Grigorevich.’ Porfiry dispensed with his usual efforts to win over the head clerk. He felt a sense of liberation at the brusqueness of his tone. ‘Have we received a reply to my letter about the Yekaterininsky Canal yet?’

Zamyotov looked up slowly, his startled disdain suggesting that all the impertinence was on Porfiry’s side. He said nothing.

‘I cannot be expected to work in these conditions,’ continued Porfiry, unwisely, he knew.

‘And I cannot be expected to do anything about it.’ Zamyotov looked down dismissively.

‘I merely asked you whether you were in receipt of a response from the authorities concerning my complaint.’

‘Correct me if I am wrong, Porfiry Petrovich, but is it not the case that you make the same complaint every year? You know as well as I do how long it takes for the department responsible to process such complaints. If previous years are anything to go by, I am confident that we will receive a response, but not before the Yekaterininsky Canal has frozen over. By which time, of course, it will no longer be a problem.’

‘You will inform me as soon as the official response comes in.’

‘My my, it seems this weather is affecting everyone’s — ’

‘In the meantime, I wish to send a telegram to the Caucasus,’ said Porfiry sharply, cutting in on Zamyotov’s pert remark. He handed Zamyotov a slip of paper. ‘The details are here. You will arrange it.’ Just at this point, there was a blazing outburst from Salytov. ‘Something must be done about that man,’ said Porfiry, turning his back on Zamyotov.