R. Morris - The Gentle Axe

It was dark by the time he reached Sadovaya Street.

He walked with his head bent down, not meeting any face, looking only at his shoes kicking through the sludge. It was easy to imagine that those feet did not belong to him. He didn’t feel the cold anymore, nor his exhaustion, his hunger, or his pain. His certainty of purpose had overridden everything.

He had to see Lilya.

But it was harder than he had imagined to find the milliner’s shop. Admittedly, he had hoped that a mysterious force would draw him straight to it. The one other time, long ago, that he had been there, it had been dark and he had been drunk. He was as good as blindfolded. When he had fled from it, he quickly became lost in this city, which had never truly been his home.

He was aware of a presence ahead of him. His cowed glance took in a dark, bulky figure. He had a sense of a dim orange glow bobbing around it and then soaring up into the darkness. A streetlamp flared and lit the workman beneath. In his refusal to look the city’s lamplighter in the eye, Virginsky recognized a puzzling mixture of defiance, humility, and fear. The lamplighter passed on into the darkness at Virginsky’s back, leaving a trail of illumination. The transformation wrought by his restless wick was so sudden and complete that it was difficult to believe in it. Virginsky felt himself to be entering a realm of deception. His instinct was to shun it. But to speak to Lilya-as another, more urgent imperative demanded-he had to press on into the light, crunching diamonds underfoot.

He knew from Lilya that Fräulein Keller’s establishment was on Sadovaya Street, but where exactly she had never revealed. She didn’t like to talk about the place, to the extent that she had begged him never to mention it.

He thought he remembered a side entrance to the shop he was looking for, and iron steps there leading down to the basement. None of the shops he saw now had that configuration.

He heard voices. A group of young cavalry officers, already in their cups, were exchanging ribald jokes. The deceptive light glinted coldly on the buttons and decorations of their greatcoats. He recognized in their voices and their leering grins the same harsh appetite that had once drawn him to Fräulein Keller’s, in the company of a similar group. Perhaps, he conjectured, they were heading to that very place now! He hung back before following them.

Their progress was slow and interrupted, but Virginsky matched their pace, careful always to remain at the same distance from them. He kept to the edge of the streetlamp’s glow, out of its brilliance. All the same he felt sure that they would notice him. He tried to imagine what he would say if he became the object of their contemptuous attention. But no words came to mind, and the only outcome of the adventure he could envisage was a beating for himself. He would not resist. He would surrender himself to their violence, as if he deserved it. He wondered, in fact, if he were not trying to provoke it by following them. He seriously considered calling out insults to them. A belief in his own invisibility suddenly overcame him. It was a giddy and dangerous moment. He was prevented from doing anything reckless by a sudden outburst from one of their number, who fell to his knees and began singing “One Night of Gladness” in a perfectly acceptable tenor voice.

“Like a moment you passed,

Night of gladness I knew…”

The interlude was enough to give Virginsky pause. He remembered his original purpose and was amazed how close he had come to jeopardizing it. He was following the cavalry officers because he believed they would lead him to Lilya. The thought of Lilya in connection with these young men inspired in him an overpowering disgust. At the same time it confirmed him in his mission. He had to find Lilya, now. There were questions he had to ask her.

He had come close to asking her questions before: “How many men? How many times?” And other questions, which he could barely frame in his mind. But her anguished reticence had always touched him. And yet if he was honest, he would say that part of what touched him was anger and part of that anger was directed against her.

The musical soldier began the next verse:

“She despises my grief,

She is heartless and cold,

She has bartered her youth

For splendor and gold…”

These men, these drunken, loathsome men, with their grins and buttons, to say nothing of their sentimental hypocrisy-it was men like these Lilya went with. (How he hated the euphemism-he knew full well what it stood for!) Perhaps tonight, this very night, they would be her customers. His mind forced an image of Lilya into the midst of these privileged hooligans, her clothes falling away beneath their manicured pawings. Her face fluctuated between childlike innocence and meretricious depravity. He had only ever seen the former expression on Lilya, his Lilya. He had seen it the first time he met her, even there, in the depths of Fräulein Keller’s establishment. But he did not doubt the existence of another Lilya, with another face. He hated that Lilya as much as he hated these men.

The singer was hoisted to his feet and cajoled into moving on. His fellows were evidently impatient. Virginsky continued to track them as they made their veering way along the Prospect, the lyrics of the folk song trailing in the crisp air:

“Earth and sky, fare you well,

To the river I go,

Where the waters are deep,

O’er my heart let them flow…”

Virginsky was disproportionately agitated by the words. Of course, the river was not flowing at this time of the year. But allowing for that one small change of detail, he could almost believe that the oaf had read his mind and sung his thoughts.

It wasn’t long before they came to a stop again. A new tone to their laughter, a gunshot excitement, alerted Virginsky to a significant change in their mood and roused him from his preoccupations. He looked around to see hats floating in a callously illuminated shopwindow. He could hear the officers discussing money. Virginsky was in no doubt. This was the place. And there to confirm it was the wrought-iron stairway at the side.

The financial negotiations became heated and drew in all the officers. Virginsky took the opportunity to slip past the jostle of smooth backs and down the stairs. He sank into darkness, stumbling the last few steps. Was this really the place? He heard the cavalry officers move on and felt the certainty drain from him.

A paneled door formed itself in front of him as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom in the stairwell. He groped for and found the bellpull. There was no answering sound.

He filled the silence with doubts. The questions now were for himself. Why had he allowed himself to be led by the cavalry officers? He saw that there was no logic or consistency to his behavior. This irritated him, and yet he got some satisfaction from the fact that he was still capable of objectivity in his self-analysis. If this did turn out to be the place, perhaps it would also turn out that he had always known how to get here. He had wanted to involve the cavalry officers in his own guilty knowledge; he had wanted, in fact, to pass it on to them and in so doing absolve himself. But it was possible that they had never had any intention of coming to Fräulein Keller’s. It was merely another coincidence that they had led him here. The sinfulness and hypocrisy were all his. They, perhaps, were as innocent as babes, at least in this respect. If so, he hated them even more.

A panel in the door opened, and a beam of light projected into Virginsky’s face. There was a scornful cackle.

“Hello?” Virginsky called out, shielding his eyes.