R. Morris: The Gentle Axe

“Now, now! What’s this?” cried old mother Zoya rushing up to her. She added her own embrace to the tight little cuddles of the infant. “No tears, no tears, daughter. Yes, daughter. Yes, that’s right. Daughter. Don’t I always call you daughter? Zoya’s here. Mamma Zoya will look after you. We’ll be all right. Why, my child, my daughter, my lovely girl, why-everything will be all right now. You’ll see. You’ll see, my sweet Lilililyechka. My sweet child. No tears. Not now. Not today. Oh, my lovely lovely, you’ll see. Look! Look! Mamma Zoya’s taken care of everything! See! Only look, child, and you’ll see. All our troubles are over. Never again! You’ll never have to wear that dress again. You’ll never have to go to that place again. You can tell Fräulein Keller that you’re never coming back. Never! D’you hear? Never!”

Lilya pulled away, her face wet with tears. She shook her head and her eyes were tenderly accusing. She whispered her reproach: “No, Zoya!”

“Mamma, dear. Call me Mamma. Aren’t I a mother to you? More than a mother? Don’t I look after you better than any mother would? Haven’t I earned it?”

Lilya shook her head and murmured, “Cruel!”

“Don’t be afraid, Lilya. Don’t be afraid. It’s true, you see! That life is over!”

“We’ll only make it worse for ourselves!”

Zoya made a dismissive noise and arched both eyebrows in gentle, mocking reproach. But Lilya was beyond such games, too tired even to be annoyed. She lurched past Zoya, toward the end of the room that housed the narrow bed she shared with her daughter. But felt a tight pinch of restraint on her arm. And cried out. Her eyes were pleading as she turned to confront Zoya.

“Look!” commanded the old woman, gesturing to the table. Lilya could not take it in. She saw but did not understand. The table was laden with pastries and loaves. There were sweets too, and candied peel. There was even caviar.

“Where did you get all this?”

“From the Shchukin Arcade, of course. Where else?”

This mystery reminded Lilya of another: “Did you come and see me last night? They said you were at the door.”

“And what kind of a mother are you, not to comment on her daughter’s new shawl?”

Lilya looked down at Vera’s beaming face and frowned at the unfamiliar drap-de-dames shawl around the child’s shoulders. Was this why her daughter had seemed alien to her? She stroked the white garment as if to question it with her fingers.

“And here! For you!” continued Zoya, holding out a dark and apparently ancient icon representing the Virgin and the infant Christ. The gold-leaf halos flickered in and out of brilliance. As if suspecting a trick, Lilya refused to take it. “It’s all right,” insisted Zoya. “It’s paid for. Everything is paid for.”

“But how?” whispered Lilya, afraid of the answer.

Zoya put down the icon. She bustled to the far corner of the room and disappeared behind the curtain that concealed her sleeping area. She came back with a padlocked tin box that Lilya had never seen before. As Zoya reached the table, she let the box slip out of her fingers in her excitement. It landed with a heavy clatter. Zoya fumbled with the key, grinning and chuckling, despite her wish to appear mysterious. At last the lid was open. Zoya pushed the box toward her young friend.

The warm colors of the banknotes drew Lilya’s face closer and closer. Then at the last, she recoiled, as if she were afraid of getting burned.

“Where?” she gasped.

“Petrovsky Park.”

“Whose is it?”

“Ours!” cried Zoya.

“No, no. You must tell me all about it, Zoya. You must tell me exactly where you found this money. It might belong to someone, Zoya. It must, surely it must belong to someone.”

“What if it does? What do we care? At any rate, the one it belongs to has no use for it now.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s dead!”

“Zoya! What are you saying?”

“He was a murderer and a thief. A big ugly brute. And a bully. That’s what he was. And he’s dead. No use crying for the likes of him. A murderer! The bloody axe still on him, still dripping with the little fellow’s blood.”

“Zoya, please! I don’t understand. You must start at the beginning. One thing at a time.”

“I found them both. Both dead. The little dwarf. And the other one, hanging. He’d hanged himself. Out of shame.”

“A dwarf, you said?”

“Tiny little man. With a tiny little suit.”

“No!”

“Both dead.”

“The dwarf was dead?”

“Murdered! His head bashed in. And the axe that did it was on the big one.”

“What did he look like, the dwarf?”

“Tiny! A tiny little fellow.”

“Was he dark? Dark hair with a beard?”

“Yes!”

“What else? Anything else about him?”

Zoya’s hands retrieved something from her apron, the pack of obscene playing cards.

“He was a randy little bastard, by the looks of it. I found these on him.”

Lilya gasped as if struck. “I know him! I’ve seen these before. He came to Fräulein Keller’s. Many times. He always asks for me. Zoya, did you come to Fräulein Keller’s last night? Was there something you had to tell me about Vera? Fräulein Keller said-”

“What are you talking about, child?”

Lilya took in the old woman’s good-natured incomprehension. She looked again at the money in the cash box. “Zoya, we must tell the police.”

“No! Don’t you see? They’ll want the money back.”

“But Zoya, it’s not ours.”

Zoya’s face became severe, her tone forbidding. “You must not say a word about this to anyone. Do you hear? You must swear to me on Vera’s life that you will not say a word of this to a soul.”

Lilya shook her head and whispered her refusal.

“On the icon, then. You must swear on the holy icon.”

“But Zoya, don’t you see?”

“This is a fortune,” cried Zoya in desperation. “Six thousand rubles! Enough to buy property. We could have an apartment at the front. With rooms. And tenants of our own. We could have a carriage, with servants in livery. We could parade along the Nevsky Prospect, our heads held high. We’d never be afraid to look anyone in the eye. Think of the clothes, the furs, the jewels. What admirers you would have, Lilya! Oh Lilya, think of it! Gentlemen. Noblemen. And Vera. What a future would lie before her. She could marry a prince, no less. And you, you stupid little fool, you’ll throw it all away!”

Lilya backed away, in a simple reflex of self-protection, pulling her arm free of Zoya’s grip. She fell onto her bed and murmured, “She lied to me.” The same instant she was asleep, dreaming of the policeman’s transparent eyelashes.

The envelope, addressed simply to “Porfiry Petrovich,” arrived on the investigator’s desk with the morning’s first round of mail. Its contents drew Porfiry from his rooms.

“Alexander Grigorevich, did you see who left this for me?”

Seated on his high stool behind the front desk, the chief clerk barely glanced in Porfiry’s direction. He was distracted by the thin, agitated woman before him, who was keeping up a stream of tearful and incoherent complaints. Her raving drew to the clerk’s face an expression of deep disgust. And yet it seemed he could not tear his eyes away from her. The woman’s face was pinched and pale, with bursts of crimson on her cheeks and a deeper red, the color of raw anguish, around her eyes. Fine features had hardened into sharpness, with dark lines etched into a pattern of ravage. Her worn and dirty clothes had once been fashionable and even expensive, many seasons ago. The smell from her was strong and unpleasant. It was hard to estimate her age.