Michael Pearce - Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers

‘Not convinced, Your Excellency?’ Novikov chuckled. ‘Well, that doesn’t surprise me. In fact, it’s what I told myself. An old fox like His Excellency will want something more than that, I said. And quite right, too! So I did a bit of nosing around and, as luck would have it, who should I come upon but young Stenka. Come in, lad!’ he called out into the corridor.

A fresh-faced young soldier appeared hesitantly in the doorway.

‘Come in, lad. His Excellency won’t bite you. Now, you come in and tell His Excellency what you told me.’

The young soldier cleared his throat nervously.

‘I was on the carts,’ he began.

‘That very afternoon,’ interjected Novikov.

‘Yes, right, that afternoon. The women’s cart, as it fell out. Well, I don’t mind that, I mean, you never know what you might see, and you’re not going to have any trouble, are you? I mean, not any real trouble. They say things, of course, you’ve got to put up with that, but I know how to handle that. I just say: “You bloody shut up or you’ll taste the butt of my gun!”’

‘The cart, lad, the cart,’ put in Novikov hastily.

‘Yes, right, the cart. Well, there weren’t many of them that afternoon, not women, I mean. Only a few for us. So I’ve got a bit of time, and I see this girl. A real Russian beauty, she is. Oh ho, I think, I’ll bet you’ve got a nice pair of apples, and I give her a pinch as she goes by. Well, she jumps about half a verst. “What’s your name my beauty?” I say. She doesn’t answer, so I go to the sergeant and I say: “See that one there? What’s her name?” “What do you want to know for?” he says. “A taste comes before a feast,” I say. “Well,” he says, “there’s not going to be much of a feast for you, my lad, because she’s going straight on to the main convoy and you’re going to be stopping here.” “Never mind that,” I say. “What’s her name?” He looks at his list. “Shumin,” he says. “Marfa Nikolaevna Shumin.”’

‘Shumin?’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Pretty sure, sir. But I’m dead sure about the “Marfa”. My own sister’s named Marfa, it’s a bit of a family name. “That’s a good omen,” I said to myself. “She’s almost one of the family, like.”’

Novikov looked at Peter Ivanovich.

‘Satisfied, sir?’

‘There seems no doubt about it,’ Peter Ivanovich conceded.

‘That’s what I thought, sir, once I’d talked to Stenka. The name by itself, I said, won’t be enough to convince Peter Ivanovich. But a witness, an honest witness – well, that’s a different matter!’

‘Happy, now?’ said Peter Ivanovich, looking at Dmitri.

‘Not very.’ Something was troubling him. In what the guard had said. He dismissed it for the moment. ‘This was the convoy, was it?’ he said to Stenka. The soldier nodded. ‘That means she’s halfway to Siberia by now. How am I going to question her?’

‘Not very easily,’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘Unless you care to go after her.’

Novikov gave a great guffaw.

‘That’s a good one!’ he said, nudging Stenka. The soldier, not entirely understanding, but dutiful, joined in.

Peter Ivanovich allowed himself a slight smile.

‘I’m afraid our young colleague is one for the psychological,’ he said.

‘Psychological, Your Excellency?’

‘It’s the latest fashion in the Law Schools. These days, Grigori Romanovich, we mustn’t just look at the facts, we must look at the motives behind the facts.’

‘It’s getting a bit deep for me, sir.’

‘Me, too. If a dog bites a man, why ask for its motive?’

‘Why, indeed, Your Excellency?’ said Novikov, guffawing again.

‘Not only motives,’ said Dmitri, ‘but circumstances.’

It was coming to him now. Not just in what Stenka had said, but in what the women at the tannery had said.

‘Ah, circumstances!’ said Peter Ivanovich.

‘What circumstances are there, then, Dmitri Alexandrovich?’ said Novikov, mock innocently. ‘Finding out how it is that someone can’t read someone else’s writing?’

He gave Peter Ivanovich a wink. The Presiding Judge responded with a thin little smile.

‘Finding out who was actually put on the convoy,’ said Dmitri. He turned to Stenka. ‘A real Russian beauty, you said?’

‘That’s right, Your Honour.’

‘Fair?’

‘As straw in summer.’

‘A Tatar?’

‘Tatar?’

‘Marfa Nikolaevna was Tatar.’

‘This girl was no Tatar,’ said Stenka uneasily.

‘What are you saying?’ said Peter Ivanovich sharply.

‘Not saying; wondering,’ said Dmitri. ‘Whether the right woman was put on the cart.’

Whereas the woman put on the cart had been fair, almost silvery blonde in the characteristically North Russian way, Marfa Nikolaevna, they eventually established, was dark. It took them some time because although she had been tried in the Court House, she had not been tried in a regular court. As a political prisoner, she had appeared before a Special Tribunal of the Ministry of the Interior. The Ministry held its Tribunals in the same building as the ordinary Law Courts, but this was purely for convenience and the two administrations were quite separate. Peter Ivanovich could not, then, go directly to the Clerk of the Courts as he would otherwise have done, nor could he have an informal word with the lawyers involved since, despite the reforms of the eighties, out in the provinces political prisoners were not legally represented. Peter Ivanovich certainly knew the officer who had presided over the Tribunal that day – they met socially – but as a matter of protocol they never discussed each other’s affairs. Judges in Russia, following the assassination of Tsar Alexander, had learned discretion.

It was with a certain diffidence, therefore, that Peter Ivanovich inquired about Marfa Nikolaevna.

‘All I need to know about is her looks,’ he said to Porfiri Porfirovich, the officer who had chaired the Tribunal on the day that Marfa Nikolaevna had been sentenced.

‘Her looks?’ said Porfiri Porfirovich incredulously.

‘Yes. Whether, for instance, she is fair or dark?’

‘Dark,’ said Porfiri. ‘But – ’

‘A real Russian beauty?’

‘Hardly. A Tatar.’

‘I was afraid so,’ said Peter Ivanovich, sighing heavily.

‘What is this?’ said Porfiri.

‘A possible case of…’ Peter Ivanovich didn’t know what it was a possible case of. ‘Mistaken identity,’ he tried.

Porfiri Porfirovich’s eyebrows shot up.

‘On our part,’ said Peter Ivanovich hastily. ‘Or, at least, not on our part; possibly on the part of the Convoy Administration.’

But the Convoy Administration, too, came under the Ministry of the Interior and Porfiri Porfirovich’s eyebrows stayed raised.

‘Or, most likely of all,’ said Peter Ivanovich, adapting with the speed born of long years in the Russian judicial system, ‘it simply fell between stools.’

‘ What fell between stools?’

‘This – this confusion.’

‘I can see that you are confused, Peter Ivanovich,’ said Porfiri sharply; ‘but over what?’

Peter Ivanovich was forced to tell him all.

‘The trouble is,’ he concluded, ‘the Marfa Nikolaevna who was sentenced was dark, while the Marfa Nikolaevna who got on to the cart was fair. And definitely not a Tatar.’

‘Simple,’ said Porfiri Porfirovich. ‘The sergeant gave him the wrong name.’

‘Yes,’ said Peter Ivanovich unhappily, ‘that’s what we thought. At first. But then we checked. There were only five women that day in the political cart and the soldier, Stenka, remembers them all. None of them were Tatar. Three of them were in their fifties, whereas this Shumin woman was – ’