R. Morris - The Gentle Axe

“Lilya’s child? But she is very young, mein Herr. She is not yet five.”

“Naturally, I would pay.”

Even Fräulein Keller’s eyes started at the coolness with which this was delivered. “It might have been possible once, mein Herr. But now that Lilya has found her rich protector, I doubt that you could persuade her, for any price. You can’t break through a wall with your forehead.”

“But Zoya. Perhaps she would be amenable to negotiation? There will be something in it for you too, of course, if you lead me to the old whore.”

“You are a determined man. I misjudged you.” Fräulein Keller narrowed her eyes assessingly.

“Not everyone who wears a cowl is a monk,” said Porfiry. He avoided Fräulein Keller’s admiring gaze and bowed his head to his champagne glass. But he found that he was suddenly chilled to the bone, and the thought of the champagne in his mouth was nauseating.

In his dream, the cabinetmaker Kezel was constructing an interminable twisting staircase for the tsar’s new palace. He wanted to explain that he had no experience or knowledge of building staircases. But it was as if someone had nailed his tongue to the floor of his mouth. The timber was white oak from the Terskaya region, conveyed to Petersburg at great expense. He knew that the quantity of wood had been precisely calculated to build the staircase according to the plan that he had been given. He could not afford to make one mistake. All this had been made clear to him. But a draft of wind kept lifting the plan and folding it in two so that he repeatedly had to break off from his work to lay it flat. In the end, he decided to abandon the plan. He was sawing the wood and fitting it together from memory. To begin with, everything went well. It was as if he weren’t working in the heavy, unyielding medium of his craft. He hefted and chiseled beams without any effort at all. Dovetailed joints slotted together at the touch of his finger. Doweling plugs sank into wood as if into butter. But then something made him look up, and he saw that the staircase he was building was diverging hopelessly from the landing that was awaiting it. And now the pieces that he had shaped would no longer fit together. Joints that he had carefully measured refused to marry up. He was forced to fasten the pieces together with enormous nails. But no matter how hard he hammered the first of these nails, he couldn’t drive it into the wood. He hammered and hammered on the head of the nail. With each hammer blow, he felt the nail advance minutely, only to see it a moment later retreat, as if the sundered timber were healing itself and in the process forcing the nail out. Now there was an air of desperation to his labors. The hammer blows fell faster and harder. But it made no difference. The evil nail would not go in.

Frustrated by the dream, and losing patience with its unreasonableness, Kezel woke up, only to hear that the sounds his dreaming mind had interpreted as hammer blows were in fact coming from the front door of the apartment. It was pitch-black and cold. Caught between fear and anger, he was little inclined to get out of bed to answer the pounding. But suddenly the issue was decided for him as the door crashed open. A lantern beam lit up the apartment and was in his eyes. Behind the beam he could make out a huddle of men in dark uniforms.

“The student Virginsky!” one of them shouted. “Where is he?”

Kezel pointed at the door to Virginsky’s room.

Two men separated themselves from the huddle and rushed the door, shouting. Their shouts were inarticulate, the tension of their act finding voice. The door flew open. The shouting continued inside Virginsky’s room.

Another man strode into the apartment now, a short, stout individual wrapped up in a shuba. He bowed gravely to Kezel, without speaking.

Virginsky’s voice could be heard: “All right! All right! Let me get my boots on!”

A moment later he was hauled out by the arms. The unfastened laces of his boots whipped out as he kicked his feet in protest.

He was taken before the man in the shuba.

“So first you bring me presents. Now you have me arrested!”

“That is the man,” said Porfiry Petrovich, blinking rapidly. “That is Virginsky.”

Virginsky was given something to eat and then taken to Porfiry’s chambers. An armed polizyeisky was stationed at the door.

Porfiry laid the contract on the desk in front of him. Virginsky read it in a few seconds and then snorted derisively, “It was a joke. The whole thing was a joke. You think I killed him because of this?”

“Who are these men? Govorov and Ratazyayev?”

“I don’t know. They were friends of Goryanchikov’s. Goryanchikov knew all sorts of people. They were just two men who happened to be in the tavern at the time. I’d never met them before. They were actors, I think. Or had been.”

“They were both actors?”

“I think so. I can’t really remember. I was drunk at the time. That’s how they knew each other, I think.”

Porfiry looked down at the document. “Konstantin Kirillovich. A strange coincidence. Yet another strange coincidence concerning your friend Lilya. I asked you once if the name meant anything to you, do you remember?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. I can’t remember.” Virginsky gave a sudden angry scowl and came back fiercely: “No, actually. I don’t remember. I don’t remember you asking me that. What you asked me, I seem to remember, was if I had ever heard Lilya mention him.”

“Ah! You would make a fine defense counsel. A nice distinction. It does not, however, persuade me of your innocence. First you say you can’t remember, and then you seem to remember only too well.”

“It just came back to me. I’m tired. I was dragged from my bed. You can’t expect me to be in full control of my faculties. But of course, that’s exactly the way you want it, isn’t it? That’s why you do this, to catch me napping.”

“I don’t pretend to understand what you thought you were doing when you entered into this contract.”

“I was drunk. We had been gambling. I owed Goryanchikov a lot of money that I didn’t have. I didn’t want to renege on the bet. There is such a thing as honor. He suggested this way out. I thought, why not? It was either this or writing to my father. This seemed the lesser of two evils.”

“Where was the contract drawn up?”

“Some filthy drinking den near the Haymarket. Where did you find it?”

“It was tucked away in the pages of one of those books you hocked.”

Virginsky quaked with wheezing laughter.

“I take it you didn’t put it there?” said Porfiry, a note of incredulity in his voice.

Virginsky shook his head.

“So how did it get there? Do you have any idea?”

“I imagine Goryanchikov put it there.”

“Why would he do that? Why would he put it in one of your books?”

“They weren’t my books. They were his.”

“But you pawned them?”

“All right, I confess. I will admit to a crime. I stole them from him. I stole the books from him and pawned them for the money. I would have redeemed them and given them back to him, I swear. Once I’d got the money together.”

“How did you intend to get the money? Your father?”

“No, I–I don’t know. There are ways. Goryanchikov always seemed to manage. I had thought of journalism.”

“I think perhaps Goryanchikov took the contract rather more seriously than you. That is why he stole the pawn ticket from you. Because he was determined to get the contract back.”

“Perhaps he simply wanted the books back because they were his. I mean, because he had translated them.”