R. Morris - A Vengeful Longing

‘This has really gone on quite long enough. You have no right to come here and make these unfounded and quite obscene allegations. ’

‘She was just an inconvenience to you, then, wasn’t she? A terrible mistake, an embarrassment — and you had to be rid of her. What could be easier? She was a prostitute. So you offered her money — and what? She threw it in your face? You could never forgive her for that. And you could never forgive Ferfichkin either, for witnessing the scene.’

Yefimov said nothing for a long time, but simply looked at Porfiry with an expression of studied disdain. However, Porfiry was not inclined to speak either. He had a sense that everything hung on the words that would come next from Yefimov; that the question of his guilt or innocence would be resolved in them. It was as he thought. ‘But you have no proof,’ said Yefimov at last. The guilty always insist on proof , thought Porfiry.

‘The greatest and most compelling proof is your character.’ Porfiry returned Yefimov’s gaze steadily.

‘You think you know my character!’ Yefimov could not control his outrage.

‘I believe so. You are a common enough type. Educated to a superfluous level, cynical to the point that you are capable of any cruelty, without feeling it to be such. Alienated, I might say, from yourself and your fellow men. At first sight you seem simply to be a minor official, a petty tsar, but there is more to it than that. You have nourished your resentments. They have festered underground over the years until they have burst forth as crimes. It is entirely in keeping with your personality, for instance, that you would adopt the name Nikolai Nobody, given to you contemptuously by your childhood enemies, from whom you could not tear yourself away.

You wallow in that which you hate, and that which hates you. It is small wonder that you imagine yourself suffering from vertigo. Your hypochondria is the most clinching proof of all. You may deny it all, but it is all easy to prove. I have only to ask Vakhramev to look at you. And Dr Meyer will be able to confirm that you were the man who bumped into him outside Ballet’s. You were also seen at the funeral of Gorshkov’s child.’

Yefimov shook his head in mute denial.

‘It is also in keeping with your character that you chose each method of murder carefully, matching it to the victim, and, I imagine, the insult that provoked each murder. Poison for Raisa, whose charms were tainted by her past as a prostitute. She had refused your gift of money, but you made her swallow the gift of death. And a needle for the tailor Ferfichkin, whose very existence tortured you for so long, like a thorn in your side. As for Setochkin, the military man, you chose the weapon of honour, the pistol. Did he perhaps dishonour you in some way?’

‘Please be so good as to tell me,’ said Yefimov. ‘You are, after all, the man with all the answers.’

‘I will tell you this. You arranged for two rooms to be rented in Rostanev’s name. Did you pay the rent on both of them, I wonder? Or merely on the second room, the one which you kept vacant? You came and went, visiting your underling. Of course, you knew him from your schooldays too. He was the one creature in that dreadful place more miserable and misbegotten than you. The only one left for you to abuse. Is that what bound the two of you together? And is that why you found him a job at the department? Rostanev was no doubt flattered by the attention of a superior — and one to whom he was in debt. At night, you would go into the empty room and speak down the rubber hose, which would transmit your voice to Rostanev’s bed, where it would resonate, and he would hear it as the voices in his head, telling him what to do. It was in this vacant apartment that you created the bomb which was only today thrown at Lieutenant Salytov. By you, of course. Your position here at the department allows you to come and go more or less freely. The purpose of this attack was to throw suspicion away from you by incriminating the boy from Ballet’s, whose case you had heard about by talking to the manager. And, of course, it was you who gave Tolya the radical pamphlets. All this was a secondary precaution in case your attempts to incriminate Rostanev failed. Rostanev, in whose name you bought the chocolates and whose death you engineered, as the final proof of his criminal madness.’

Yefimov smirked, involuntarily. It seemed to Porfiry that this part of the plan must have given him particular pleasure and satisfaction.

‘Yes, you saw to that, putting the idea of self-mutilation into his head through the speaking tube. You merely took his ideas — If your hand offends you, cut it off! — and gave them back to him, twisted and exaggerated beyond recognition.’ There was a murmur of disquiet from the clerks behind Yefimov. One or two of them rose from their stools. Porfiry continued: ‘ And you made Rostanev send the letters. In fact, you made him send more than you needed him to, even putting yourself forward as a target for his malice. All this was merely a smokescreen for the ones that were truly necessary, by which I mean the ones to Meyer, Vakhramev and Gorshkov. You think that you have been wonderfully clever, but in fact you have been rather stupid, blinded by your overestimation of your intellect and abilities, which are really quite limited. Similarly, you underestimated your adversaries, the officers of the law who would pursue you. Your stupidity has manifested itself in a way that is typical of men of your sort. That is to say, in overelaboration. You constructed layers of incrimination, by which you hoped to confuse the hapless and, in your view, oafish police. And yet all you have succeeded in doing is revealing the patterns of your peculiarly Byzantine imagination. You hoped to conceal, but in fact you have revealed yourself, more patently than if you had carried a placard proclaiming your guilt.’

‘But what of Setochkin?’ shrieked Yefimov. ‘Why did I kill Setochkin?’

‘Do you wish to tell me?’ answered Porfiry. ‘Perhaps if you tell me, I will understand you better. I will appreciate your cleverness, after all. I have a feeling that your reason for killing Setochkin is sublime. It may even be exquisite, the evidence — at last — of a refined and superior sensibility. The proof, even, of your genius. A masterstroke. I will only fully understand you when I understand that. And isn’t it important to you that I should understand you? That everyone should understand you? After all, you’re not a madman, not like Rostanev, who could be manipulated by your superior will to do whatever you wanted him to.’ Porfiry noticed more of the clerks get to their feet. They began to drift over, forming a wide arc behind Yefimov. Sullen, discontented glances passed along the line.

‘I do not admit to any of this,’ said Yefimov suddenly, his voice startled.

‘You played him like a pipe organ. You pulled out his stops and he responded. But then again you believe that the great mass of humanity consists of such automatons, do you not? Only the select few, the super-beings, the men like you, are capable of original acts and thought, of true self-determination.’

‘I am not the only one to hold such philosophical ideas. To think is not against the law, as far as I am aware.’

‘Give me evidence of your superhumanity. Make me believe — as I want to believe — in you as more than an ordinary man, as a hero. Tell me why you killed Colonel Setochkin.’

‘ Colonel Setochkin! How diligent you are in giving the man his rank. Tell me, if you were walking down the street, Nevsky Prospekt, for example, and such a man, such a colonel , were coming in the opposite direction — would you step aside? Or would you stand your ground, and insist that you were as much a man as he and every bit as entitled to walk on the pavement? Would you, in short, demand that he got out of your way? But what if he took no notice of you, what if he looked straight through you, what if he did not acknowledge your polite request — not even your existence? In short, what if he brushed you aside as if you were no more than a fly? What if he shouldered you into the road, so that your clothes were mired with the splatter from a passing cart? And what if the worst of it was that he hadn’t even realised he had done it! So insignificant were you in his eyes that he failed to see you as a man, or as an obstacle, as anything. What then? What would you do then?’