R. Morris - A Vengeful Longing

It was this thought that caused him to remember Virginsky’s presence.

The boy’s face — for in this moment Virginsky appeared to him as a lost and terrified boy — was white. His head was shaking in a tremble of denial. His arms began to shake too, violently. Porfiry held him firmly by both forearms, feeling the vibrations of his distress pass into him.

‘He’s. . d-d-d-dead.’

Porfiry nodded.

‘This is bad,’ said Virginsky. ‘This is bad.’ He repeated the phrase several more times, his eyes staring in wild distraction into Porfiry’s.

‘Yes,’ said Porfiry calmly. ‘But it will not always be as bad as this.’

‘Who’s done this to him?’

‘I think he did it to himself.’ Porfiry’s voice sounded distant and weak, empty of everything apart from puzzlement.

‘Why would he?’

Porfiry looked down at the wreckage of a man on the bed. He frowned, as if squeezing an emotion out through his brows. ‘It’s a renouncement. Is this not what members of the skoptsy sect do to themselves?’

‘How can you?’ cried Virginsky, accusingly.

Porfiry’s frown thickened.

‘Here you are, even now, thinking it over, puzzling it out, reducing it to a mystery to be solved. Can you not see?’ Virginsky’s face was appalled. ‘The blood?’

‘You have to learn to look beyond the blood,’ said Porfiry, quietly. ‘There will always be blood. If you cannot see beyond the blood, you will see nothing.’

‘It’s just an intellectual exercise to you, a game!’

‘I cannot stop myself thinking. And I am not sure what purpose would be served if I did.’

‘How can you be so cold?’ said Virginsky.

‘You are in shock,’ answered Porfiry. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’ He released his hold on Virginsky’s arms and took out his cigarette case. ‘Here.’

Virginsky looked at the opened case with unexpected avidity. He grabbed a cigarette and took it shaking to his lips. Porfiry lit it for him, steadying the bobbing cigarette with one hand. Virginsky immediately began to cough. He held the cigarette away from his face, wincing out the smoke. He looked again at Rostanev. ‘Are you sure he is dead? Should we not try to help him — to a hospital?’

‘He is dead,’ said Porfiry. ‘The severed artery has stopped pumping. ’ He lit a cigarette for himself.

A floorboard creaked in the next room. There were footsteps in the corridor. Porfiry shut the door on the faces of Rostanev’s neighbours, catching inquisitiveness turn to horror in the closing sweep.

Virginsky attempted to smoke his cigarette once more. His face darkened to a hue that brought to mind the flesh of a pickled cucumber. Then he lurched forward and vomited, turning his face from Porfiry though he held on to him to stop himself falling over.

‘It’s all right,’ said Porfiry. ‘There is no shame in it. No shame in it at all.’ It was out of tact that he avoided Virginsky’s eye as he patted his shoulder gently.

Footsteps receded outside the room and everything was quiet. Porfiry listened to the air and smoke pass through his cigarette and the comforting crackle of burning tobacco.

It is strange , thought Porfiry in the drozhki back to Stolyarny Lane, how such discoveries disrupt one’s experience of time.

How long they waited in Rostanev’s room before the arrival of the yardkeeper, he could not have said. As long as it took to smoke a cigarette through was one answer. But on this occasion the cigarette in his hand had burnt with such exquisite, vegetal slowness that it had not been possible to conceive of its extinction. At the time, he had been conscious to a heightened degree of his presence in a moment of infinite elasticity and power. He looked back on it now with nostalgia and incredulity. And then it occurred to him that he was in another such moment now, and that what such upheavals as Rostanev’s death brought about was a dislocation of every moment from its neighbour. Undoubtedly, it was the propinquity of death that caused the effect. Each moment’s ending was like a tiny death in itself, an intimation, as well as a reminder, of mortality. Life became transformed into a series of segmented deaths.

Perhaps too the act of smoking, in which he was engaged now, contributed.

The lapping clatter of the horse’s hooves imposed an alternative patterning of time and reminded Porfiry that, however much he might desire to, he could not postpone the headlong rush of the present away from itself. It was as if a spell had been broken. The flow of time returned, marked off now by the passing apartment buildings.

The drozhki came to a halt. They had reached their destination in no time at all. It seemed incumbent upon them to leap from the carriage as if propelled by the momentum of the tragedy.

Porfiry looked at Virginsky. The younger man gave every appearance of having recovered from his earlier slip. He drew himself up and breathed through his nostrils with eager, savage attack, as if to show he was ready for anything. His eyes flashed fiercely. Porfiry nodded grimly then looked up towards the block that housed the bureau.

‘We must concentrate on the meaning of the act,’ said Porfiry. It calmed him to be back in his chambers, positioned once again behind his desk. However chaotic and senseless events outside that room became, here was one place where he could order his thoughts and clarify his perception. He inhaled deeply from his cigarette; his eyelids flickered half-closed. ‘Rostanev excised his generative organs by his own hand. Perhaps it is a judgement on the act of generation itself? An expression of disgust at something he has fathered? Alternatively, we might imagine that he has found himself, a solitary man, to be tortured by his sexual drive, which he has no hope of requiting, except through self-administration or through visits to prostitutes — a class of woman he despises. That brings us back to Raisa Meyer, does it not?’

‘Perhaps it is simply the by-product of his madness,’ said Virginsky, seated at his desk by the window. ‘A random act, wholly without meaning.’

‘Everything has meaning,’ said Porfiry. ‘This could be interpreted as an act of self-hate, or perhaps more accurately, a symbol of what we might call life-hate. We could even consider it to be an act of childish petulance directed against — whom? women? or a particular woman? — in return for what we may imagine to have been a lifetime of rejection. As if to say, “They will be sorry now!” Of course, we have already alluded to the skoptsy sect. With them, I believe, the removal of the genitalia is understood to be a spiritual act, a commitment to the spiritual life, chosen over a more worldly existence — the life of the flesh we might say — which is utterly renounced.’ Porfiry broke off to consider the swirls of smoke from his cigarette. ‘He spoke of being defiled by women, I seem to remember.’

‘But you are proceeding as if you believe Rostanev to be the murderer,’ objected Virginsky.

‘I have a strong sense that someone wants me to believe Rostanev is the murderer. It would be convenient for this person were we now, with Rostanev dead, to consider these cases closed. If I want to get closer to this person, I must take a moment to follow the path he has laid out for me.’

‘But now you’re talking as if you believe this other person responsible for Rostanev’s death. And yet I thought you were of the opinion that that came about as a result of self-mutilation? There is a contradiction, surely?’ Virginsky seemed almost belligerent.

‘My dear boy,’ said Porfiry cheerfully, ‘the two hypotheses you mention are not mutually exclusive. Yes, I am certain that Rostanev mutilated himself. Otherwise, I believe he would have named his assailant when he had the opportunity. And yet, instead, he struggled — with his last breath, as it were — to blame it on voices .’ Porfiry whispered the last word with melodramatic emphasis.