R. Morris - The Gentle Axe

“Shall I tell you a story? My darling Sonechka loves it when I tell her stories. Babushka, tell me a story, she says. Even now that she is nearly grown.”

“Yes, Babushka. Tell me a story,” said Porfiry, smiling.

“There was once a young and handsome man of noble birth. He came from a rich family. The family owned nearly a thousand souls. One day the young man saw a beautiful girl washing clothes in the river. And as she worked the clothes in the river, it was as if she were wringing his heart in her hands. The young man came out from his hiding place, for he had been spying on her in secret. And he knew from the look on the girl’s face that his love was returned. But the girl was the daughter of one of his father’s serfs. Their love could not be. And yet it was. A child was born, a boy. They christened the baby Stepan. Then in the night, while his mother slept, baby Stepan was taken to the Foundling Hospital in St. Petersburg. Years passed. The young, handsome man grew older and moved to the city, away from the beautiful girl he had loved. Abandoned, her heart turned to stone. She continued to serve his family and even came to the city to serve him when his new, young wife bore him a baby girl. Remembering the baby that had been taken from her, she nursed that little darling as if she were her own. In the meantime, baby Stepan grew up, though not as much as he might have done! The sins of his parents were there for all to see in his little arms and legs. But he was a clever boy. As you might expect, his father being a clever man and his mother nobody’s fool. He had been left at the Foundling Hospital with a signet ring around his neck on a cord. There was a family emblem engraved on the signet ring. That was all that the clever boy needed. Well, a man now, though no taller than an infant, he tracked his father down. The father wept tears of regret and remorse and took in his son. Though to keep up appearances, he called him a lodger and said nothing to his young wife. And within a year of his long-lost son’s arrival, the father died, suddenly and quite mysteriously.” With an impatient shake of her head, Marfa Denisovna scooped the cards together. “It won’t come out!”

“Does she know now?” Porfiry asked quietly. “Anna Alexandrovna?”

“Oh, yes. I told her. I had to tell her.”

“Why?”

“You will find it hard to understand. You never knew Stepan Sergeyevich. Not when he was alive. You never saw his eyes. There was something undeniable about his eyes. A woman who would find the idea of it quite ridiculous, who would laugh if you were to suggest such a thing to her-even such a woman, when she saw his eyes, would begin to wonder. Such things she would begin to wonder! There is a part of all of us that we only see when we look in eyes like Stepan Sergeyevich had. That he was a dwarf did not come into it.”

“What happened when you told her?”

“Hah! Poor dearie. She was sick. I mean, she vomited up her dinner. And all she had to reproach herself with were idle wonderings. But some women take such things harder than others. And she could see now how he was looking at her little Sofiya. There was something devilish in Stepan Sergeyevich, there’s no denying it. Something more than ordinary mischief.”

“Do you think she could have killed him to prevent…the unthinkable?”

Marfa Denisovna dealt out the cards for another game. She didn’t answer Porfiry Petrovich’s question and didn’t look up when he closed the door behind him.

As the day began, eight hundred versts south of St. Petersburg, in the town of Kaluga, a young deputy investigating magistrate pulled himself up into the box seat of an open sleigh. Yevgeny Nikolaevich Ulitin settled next to the driver and carelessly arranged a sheepskin over his legs. He was already wearing two fur coats, thick fur mittens, and a heavy ushanka. His blue eyes were bleary from lack of sleep, and his face was shimmeringly pale. He had been up half the night discussing zemstvo politics, the freedom of the press, the existence (or otherwise) of the soul, insanity (from both a legal and a strictly psychiatric point of view), ignorance, education, the church, the state of the peasantry, the emancipation of the serfs, the legal reforms, the tsar, the tsarina, the woman problem, the comparative beauty of two sisters, actresses both in the Kaluga Provincial Theater, beauty in the abstract, art, literature, architecture, St. Petersburg…

His partner in these often circular and invariably unsatisfying debates was Dr. Artemy Vsevolodovich Drozdov, whom Ulitin frequently declared to be the only other civilized being in Kaluga. Ulitin licked a metallic taste from his teeth. The fine wisps of his beard were plastered crustily around his mouth, and he resisted the temptation to send his tongue out to test the whiskers of his mustache. A vague memory of champagne-how many bottles had they opened? — prompted him to clamp one mittened hand over his mouth, as if he had just let slip an indiscretion. Whatever subjects they touched upon in their discussions, the two friends always returned to the same eternal theme. St. Petersburg. It was a mystery to each of them how he came to be rotting away in this provincial backwater when all his friends and associates from university days were undoubtedly carving out glorious careers for themselves, close to the heart of all that was worthwhile and invigorating. Sometimes these discussions lapsed into mere recitals of the streets and place-names of the great capital, culminating in a rapturous chorus of “Nevsky Prospect! Ah, the Nevsky Prospect!” There would then follow a meditative silence, during which the evening’s opened bottles would stare back at them sullenly. The night would break up soon after that, as memories of the pressing duties of the following day came back to claim them.

Nikita, his driver, was busy lighting a pipe. When this was securely completed, he turned stiffly toward Ulitin, at the same time leaning away from the younger man. It was a complicated posture, not without condescension. “Where are we going today, your honor?” asked Nikita as he took up the reins. Ulitin thought he detected an ironic tone in the peasant’s deference.

“Optina Pustyn.”

“Optina Pustyn?” Nikita threw the name back with astonishment. He put the reins down again.

“Yes.”

“It’s a long way.”

“I know. Which is why we should not waste another moment.”

“We may not make it before nightfall.”

“I think we will.”

“We may not make it at all, if there is a storm.”

“So what do you suggest, my friend? That we stay here? I have official business at the monastery. Should I telegram back to the authorities in St. Petersburg who have instructed me in this commission that I cannot go there because Nikita says it is a long way?”

“But if we get caught in a snowstorm and we lose the road, you will not thank me.”

“I will thank you if you get me to Optina Pustyn safely. I have to speak to Father Amvrosy on a very important matter.”

“Father Amvrosy?”

“Yes.”

“The holy man?”

“They say he is holy.”

“He is holy. There was this girl. The daughter of one of my wife’s relatives. Her sister’s mother-in-law’s brother’s daughter, or some such. Or perhaps it was someone else. Anyhow, he cured her.”

“Yes. I have heard similar stories.”

“The doctors couldn’t do a thing for her. She was just wasting away before their eyes. She couldn’t keep anything down, you see.” Nikita mimed vomiting. Ulitin closed his eyes and turned away. “They say he’s dying,” added Nikita. “Father Amvrosy. Doesn’t have long left in this world. Ah well, he is sure to be going to a better one.”