R. Morris - The Gentle Axe

“Do you recognize him?” asked Porfiry.

Virginsky nodded.

“It is your friend Goryanchikov?” pressed Porfiry.

Virginsky could not take his eyes off the wound in the preserved head. He gazed at it with urgency, as if he hungered for the sight of it and was afraid that it would be taken from him. It was obscene, but like all obscenities it pulled at his soul. “It was him,” he said at last.

“I am very sorry,” said Porfiry. He nodded to Dr. Pervoyedov, who wheeled the trolley around so that the second specimen jar was at the front. “Do you recognize this man?”

Virginsky felt calm now. In fact, he was conscious of his calmness and astonished by it. He felt capable of the utmost callousness.

“It’s not a man. It’s a head,” he said.

“But do you recognize it?”

“It’s Borya.”

“Who is Borya?”

“It’s strange. If you look. Goryanchikov’s head fills its jar more completely. His head really was big. I always thought it an illusion, caused by the smallness of his body. Borya’s head is tiny in comparison.”

“Please, I need to know more about Borya.”

“He was not a great thinker, so perhaps it should not surprise us.” Virginsky began to giggle unpleasantly. “Goryanchikov, on the other hand, thought too much. As we can see, it has had an effect on his brain. What is the word for it when something grows too large? Hypertrophy?”

“He is delirious,” observed Dr. Pervoyedov.

“On the contrary, doctor. I have never felt more lucid. To see this, to be granted this, I thought it would sicken me. I find I am not in the least nauseous. My appetite, I have not lost my appetite at all. Should I be sad? Goryanchikov was a friend, I loved him as a friend, but he was a difficult man to like. And Borya, Borya-who could not love Borya?”

“He was a popular man?” asked Porfiry.

“I would call it a privilege. To be granted this, this vision. It is not given to everyone to see such wonders.”

“The two men were known to each other?”

“I’m not sad. Isn’t that strange? Not sad at all. I find myself feeling quite…almost, you might say, happy. No, not happy. I’m not happy. But I am glad. I shall say that much. What does it mean? Does it mean I have no soul? Does it mean I’m not a man?”

“Why are you glad, do you think?”

“I think I’m glad because it’s not my head pickled in one of those jars.” Virginsky began to shake. He could not stem the sudden flood of tears over his face. “I’m crying for myself, not for them,” he insisted. “I’m crying because I’m a man without a soul. Because I’m not a man. Because I can look at the severed heads of my friends and still live and still breathe and still rejoice to feel my heart beating. Because I’m a bastard, the bastard son of a bastard father, the last in a long line of worthless cowards, and knowing this doesn’t change a thing. I will eat and sleep and write a letter to my father, and one day perhaps I will marry. And looking at their pickled heads won’t change a thing. I’m not a great man. I have no greatness of soul. I’m not great enough to be enlarged by this. If anything, I will be shrunk by this.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know a thing about it!” snarled Virginsky.

“I know enough to recognize a man who is in deep shock. Would you not say so, doctor?”

Dr. Pervoyedov nodded solicitously.

“For all you know, I killed them.”

“Is that a confession?”

“I know how you people work. The fact that I knew them both makes me a suspect.”

“You are sick. I will arrange for you to be taken home.”

Virginsky fell off the stool and staggered forward, grabbing the trolley for balance. “I can find my own way home. I don’t need any help from you.” He gave the trolley a push. The two heads glided away, rotated, then slowed to a halt. “Thank you for showing me this, these…You have shown me myself.”

“You hate me at this moment. You would do better to hate whoever killed your friends.”

“You are quite the psychologist.”

“Who is Borya?”

“Whatever he was, he is nothing anymore.”

“Please. Sit down. You can’t go like this.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“I’m asking for your help. “

“Aha!”

“Borya…?”

“Was the yardkeeper at Goryanchikov’s building. Now will you let me go?”

“And the address? Of Goryanchikov’s building.”

“How can I be expected to remember these details? What difference do these details make, now, after all this?”

“It’s very important. It may help us find whoever killed these men.”

“He lodged with Anna Alexandrovna and her daughter. In a house on Bolshaya Morskaya Street.”

“The number?”

“Yes, there was a number.” Virginsky pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are quite right, there was a number.”

“Did you go to the house?”

Virginsky looked down disconsolately at his feet. “I need new shoes.”

Porfiry followed his gaze. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“Seven. The number of the house. It’s come back to me. It has a seven in it. It’s either seven or seventeen, or seventy. Or seven hundred and seventy-seven.” Virginsky laughed wheezily. “No. There’s only one seven, I’m sure of that. At any rate there is a sign.”

“Thank you.”

“Will you write to my father and tell him that I’ve done my duty as a good citizen?”

“Do you wish me to?”

“Not particularly.”

“You should go home now.”

“And the shoes?”

“Don’t worry about the shoes.”

“He was my friend, Goryanchikov. As for Borya…Borya was an innocent. Of course, they hated each other. It’s strange that it should end like this.” Virginsky bowed farewell, took one step toward the door, and fainted.

The two men came toward Virginsky and bent over him.

“How are you feeling?” asked Dr. Pervoyedov.

“What a shock you gave us, Pavel Pavlovich,” said Porfiry.

Virginsky began to lift himself up.

“Please,” protested Dr. Pervoyedov. “Don’t try and get up.”

“I’m quite all right,” insisted Virginsky. “It was the shock.”

“Of course. A quite understandable reaction,” said Porfiry.

“I was not expecting-” Virginsky broke off. His face was gray. He was standing now. He turned to Porfiry with a look of hatred. “You didn’t warn me. That it would be heads. Just heads. In jars. Was that how they were found?”

“No. The heads were removed and preserved by Dr. Pervoyedov. I’m sorry if it shocked you.”

“It was cruel of you. Why did you do it? Is it part of your technique?”

“I’m truly sorry,” said Porfiry. “This is what we deal in. This is our currency. Perhaps we become inured to it and forget the effect it has on others.”

“I do not believe you are one to forget anything, sir. I know what you were trying to do. You were trying to shock me into revealing something.”

“You speak as though I suspect you. But surely you see I can have no reason to suspect you of anything.”

“And did it work? Your nasty little trick? Did I reveal anything?”

“Very well, I’ll be honest with you. You’re an intelligent young man. I like you, Pavel Pavlovich. I did hope to break down any barriers you might have erected in your mind, which might have prevented you from cooperating fully with the investigation. Not because I suspect you, but because you see me as a figure of authority and it’s natural for you to resist me. In the same way that you resist your father. There may be something you know that could be crucial to the solution of this case, but you may not realize you know it, or you may not realize that you are keeping it from me. I hoped, in the aftershock of this discovery-”