by R. N. Morris
But religion was a lie; atheism an unblinking confrontation with the truth. The former offered deluded consolation; the latter left him bereft, an aching weight of loneliness pulling at his heart. Atheism required men to model their own certainties, which crumbled to dust as soon as they clutched them.
In a godless universe, every door of that apartment building would have been closed on an identical meeting to the one he attended, the same plans discussed, and the same momentous decisions made. Even he, as an atheist, found that a chilling thought.
He stole a quick glance at Porfiry Petrovich. His face was calm, a mask of imperturbability. Was that the effect of his faith? wondered Virginsky. Was he really incapable of being shaken to his core? Could nothing, ultimately, surprise this plump little gnome of a man? For Virginsky knew that all his displays of astonishment, the endless flurries of blinking and grimacing, were nothing more than play-acting. This blank impassive screen of flesh that his face had for the present become, his face in repose, was the true Porfiry. He was in control of every tic that passed across it. And behind the face, what was there of Porfiry Petrovich that could be known? What of his soul?
Virginsky could not speculate about that. All he could say for certain was that the old man looked a little tired. Other than that, he showed no sign of unease.
They were walking south along Voznesensky Prospect, past the great Novo-Alexandrovsky Market. Recently constructed, it was the largest market in St Petersburg. It amazed Virginsky how it had so quickly taken root as part of the city’s commercial establishment. At the time of its construction, the vast market, thrown up almost overnight, struck many as a reckless venture. Did they not have enough markets already? Where would the people come from to shop in it? And yet now, barely five years later, it was hard to imagine how they had managed without it.
This morning, the place was bustling with life. Again, Virginsky experienced a pang of envy, this time for the shoppers who streamed through it, troubled by nothing other than the need to acquire the day’s provisions, or the desire to squander their week’s wages on a small luxury. It was another kind of faith, another kind of certainty that drove them. And Virginsky almost wished it was enough for him. What would they make of the plots that had been hatched in their name? A part of him longed to follow the shoppers into the market, to lose himself in its avenues of stalls, to wander there aimlessly until the catastrophe of his life had passed him by.
But his feet were locked onto another course, from which he was unable to extricate himself. All he could do was count his steps, and as soon as he started to do so he felt strangely comforted.
They reached the Fontanka. And Virginsky suddenly felt that something more immediate than faith or certainty was lost to him, something acutely personal. Not even the counting of his steps could reconcile him to it.
*
The address that Rakitin had confided to Virginsky was for a building on the opposite side of the road, just where Voznesensky Prospect met the Fontanka embankment. The print shop was in the basement, entered directly from the street by a small flight of steps.
They walked into a din of black iron and lead, a rhythmic, rolling clatter as ink was hammered onto paper and literature coughed out with a mechanical retch. Oil and ink tingled in their nostrils. The workshop contained three presses, all in operation, driven by belts from a rotating axle fixed to the ceiling. Each machine was tended by its own inky-fingered man in a long apron, like a worker bee fussing around its queen. The man at the first press looked around vaguely at Virginsky and Porfiry’s entrance, but did not break off from what he was doing. Off to one side, a row of stoop-shouldered compositors stood at high angled workbenches, placing the metal type into formes with the absorption of surgeons.
At length, another man, also wearing an apron over a merchant’s kaftan, emerged from a side door. He cast a foreman’s eye over the work of the others, cursory but critical, and then approached the magistrates. ‘Can I help you?’
‘We wish to enquire,’ Porfiry began, but his words were entirely swallowed up by the noise of the machine. He drew breath to shout: ‘You are the foreman here?’
‘I am the owner.’
Porfiry gave a mechanical smile.
‘And the foreman. I see to everything.’
There was a sudden reduction in the noise from the machines, as one of them appeared to have come to the end of its paper supply. It was enough to allow Porfiry to speak more comfortably: ‘You are the very man we need to speak to. We wish to know whether you can supply printed material to the Department of Justice.’
‘That depends,’ answered the printer, dubiously. ‘How quickly you need it. How complicated the job. What is it for?’
‘There is no specific job at the moment. We are simply looking into your . . .’ Porfiry waved a hand around the workshop. ‘Facilities. Typically, however, we require items such as posters and leaflets, to be produced very quickly.’
‘We are not equipped for a fast turnaround. Right now, our presses are booked up for months to come. I have to plan jobs carefully, you see. There is a schedule of work. Perhaps if you came to us just as we were finishing a print run, we could fit your job in before we set up the presses for the next big one. But that would be a matter of luck. I couldn’t stop the presses to accommodate you.’
‘That seems rather inflexible. Does it not curtail your commercial potential?’
‘It is simply the kind of work we are set up for. We have stop cylinder platen machines which we use for book and periodical production. We used to have a treadle-powered letterpress, which was ideal for the sort of jobs you describe. But it was stolen.’
‘A printing press was stolen? Good Heavens.’
‘It’s not unheard of. It was a small machine, not like these beasts.’
‘Who would have stolen it?’
‘Well, you know . . . There are those who find it rather useful to have an illegal printing press, if you know what I mean.’
‘It is a pity that you cannot help us. We had been led to believe that you could.’
‘Really? By whom, may I ask?’
‘Mr Pseldonimov.’
The foreman gave a snort of incredulity. ‘Pseldonimov? I sincerely doubt it. Pseldonimov is not the type to have friendly dealings with the Department of Justice!’
‘What do you mean by that, if I may ask?’
‘Why, he is the one I suspect of stealing my press!’
‘I see. And why is that?’
‘For one thing, he disappeared soon after the press was stolen. I was dropping hints about it and things got too hot for him, so he scarpered. Good riddance, I say.’
‘When was this?’
‘Oh, it must have been six months ago. More. Last autumn, I believe it was.’
‘How interesting. Did you report the theft of your press to the authorities?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And your suspicions regarding Pseldonimov?’
The foreman gave a shrug. ‘I couldn’t prove anything. What was the point?’ But his head was angled down, his eyes averted away from his interlocutor, evasively, or so it seemed to Virginsky.
‘Perhaps you knew that he would meet his comeuppance anyhow,’ said Virginsky.
The foreman gave him a startled look, as if he were astonished to discover that he could speak.
‘Pseldonimov is dead, you know,’ continued Virginsky. ‘It might be said that you had a motive to kill him – or to organise his death.’
‘I don’t know anything about that. Look here, what is all this about? I thought you wanted to purchase some print work.’
Porfiry gave Virginsky a disparaging look. ‘We do. That is to say, we did. But now we know that you are not able to help us. Unless, of course, you are intending to replace the stolen printing press?’
‘I would love to, of course, but at the moment I don’t have the capital. Our profit margins are very tight.’
‘But with the promise of ongoing work from
the Department of Justice, perhaps you could persuade the bank to supply a loan.’
‘That’s possible, I suppose.’
‘Perhaps then, you would allow us to have a look around? Just to reassure ourselves that your facilities are up to the task. There are certain minimum standards that every government department requires.’
‘Be my guest, though there isn’t much for you to see. I don’t have the press that I would use to do your work, as that depends on me getting the contract.’
‘Understood,’ said Porfiry, blinking suavely.
Virginsky frowned, as much to himself as for Porfiry’s benefit. He was not entirely sure what they were looking for. It was so long since Pseldonimov had been at the workshop that he doubted they would find any meaningful evidence relating to him. And as for assessing the print shop’s suitability as a supplier for the Ministry of Justice, he was hardly qualified to make a judgement on that.
None of this seemed to concern Porfiry, who gave every impression of being in his element. He wandered over to the nearest printing press and looked down at the growing pile of printed sheets, each bearing four pages of type, ready for folding and cutting into quartos. He gave a startled blink as each sheet jumped out from the jaws of the press. He soon appeared to be mesmerised by the action of the machine.
He turned to the foreman with a look of wonder. ‘What is this?’
‘We are printing a lubok.’
‘A lubok! How fascinating. Perhaps you know a gentleman called Rakitin. He is an author of lubki. Perhaps you have printed some of his work?’
‘We do not generally have dealings with authors.’
‘But he was a friend of Mr Pseldonimov’s, I believe.’
The foreman shrugged, as if this information was not of the least interest to him.
Porfiry gave a small bow to indicate that he had seen enough.
*
‘What now, Porfiry Petrovich?’ A small, blindingly white rupture in the clouds above Voznesensky Prospect drew Virginsky’s gaze. The rain had dried up. The air was clearing.
Porfiry took out a folded piece of paper and handed it over. ‘Pseldonimov’s last known address,’ he explained. ‘It came in after the file had gone off to the Third Section.’
‘Obvodni Canal Embankment, 157. You think we should go there?’
‘It’s not far. Just across the Fontanka and down Izmailovsky Prospect.’
‘Yes, but we are not supposed to be investigating this case any longer. What possible reason could we have for going to Pseldonimov’s lodgings?’
‘A citizen has only just now reported the theft of a valuable piece of equipment. Do you not think he would be grateful if we were able to recover it?’
Virginsky shook his head in begrudging admiration, his mouth cranked into an involuntary grin.
*
Number 157 was only one door away from a dosshouse, on the northern embankment of the Obvodni Canal. Facing the building, on the other side of the canal, was the Varshavsky Railway Station, and next to that the Cattle Yards. This was at the southern threshold of the city. There was a bleak, fragmented feel to the area, as if it barely cohered as a neighbourhood. It seemed an appropriate location for a night shelter for transients; equally fitting that the former lodgings of a murder victim should be next door.
They discovered that Pseldonimov had shared an apartment with six other men. That was nothing unusual for the Narvskaya District, of course, one of the poorest in the city. The yardkeeper who admitted them was a wily individual with cheeks so ruddy they seemed to be painted on and eyes that were little more than chisel slits in the hardened fabric of his face. The impression was superficially cheery, but if you looked into those permanently narrowed eyes, you saw reflected back at you an empty, instinctual cunning and a dark-hearted contempt. Pseldonimov’s vacated bunk had long ago been filled, of course, and the yardkeeper pretended to know nothing of any possessions that had been left.
A man with a liverish complexion lay on a plank bed, covered by a coarse blanket. He was either drunk or dying, and at that time of the day, the latter was more probable. He raised himself with difficulty onto one elbow and pointed a trembling finger at the yardkeeper. In a voice that was astonishingly clear and robust, he said, ‘He stole it all.’ He fell back on his plank and closed his eyes. He lay very still now, and it almost seemed as though this surge of effort had hastened his end.
‘He’s delirious,’ said the yardkeeper.
‘Of course,’ agreed Porfiry. ‘But still, it is a serious charge. For a yardkeeper, who holds a position of trust and responsibility, to be accused of such a crime . . . it must be investigated. You will have to come with us back to the police bureau. Unless, of course, it is all a misunderstanding? Perhaps you were simply looking after Mr Pseldonimov’s possessions until his relatives came to claim them? If that were the case, there would be no need for any investigation. It would be enough for you simply to show us the items and we could arrange for them to be collected and passed on to the parties concerned. I am sure there might even be a reward, if everything is found to be intact.’
‘Yes, that’s it. That’s what I was doing. Looking after them. I have them downstairs.’
They descended to the yardkeeper’s cellar, which was like a peculiar reversal of Aladdin’s cave, in which it seemed items of the least possible value had been hoarded: empty pomade jars, chipped cups, broken figurines, cracked lanterns, handleless pans, shattered mirrors, as well as piles of old newspapers. The only explanation was that the yardkeeper’s instinct to purloin was greater than his ability to discriminate.
The yardkeeper led them to the back of his one-room apartment. An olive-green drape hid a shapeless mass of further objects. Virginsky naturally imagined that these must be the items of genuine value secreted amongst so much dross. He pictured the mountains of jewels and precious metals, heaped coins and polished lamps that would be revealed when the drab cloth was lifted. The reality was inevitably disappointing. It did seem to be the case that these objects were more valuable than those on open display, but in truth that was not saying much.
The yardkeeper bent down and pulled out a cardboard box from under a table. ‘These belonged to Pseldonimov.’
It was a box of handbills, printed on cheap paper. Porfiry pulled one out and handed it to Virginsky.
‘God the Nihilist,’ read Virginsky.
‘My dear friend,’ said Porfiry to the yardkeeper, his voice heavy with foreboding. ‘This puts a rather different complexion on the affair. Here you are in possession of illegal manifestos. How do we know you are not intending to distribute them?’
‘No, no! It’s not like that. It’s as you said. I have been keeping them. Looking after them. The reward! Don’t forget the reward!’
‘I’m afraid it is no longer a question of a reward. This is a very serious matter. As a yardkeeper, you are in a position of great position and influence. Why, it is almost the same as if I, or my colleague here, as if we magistrates, had such material in our possession. The courts come down very heavily on yardkeepers and magistrates who stray. An example must be set. Besides, the new juries do not like us, you see. They take great pleasure in punishing us.’
‘But it need not come to court, your Excellency. I am sure I can persuade you to overlook this. What would it take?’
‘Be careful, my friend. Do not add attempted corruption to the already serious charges you face.’
‘But in all honesty, I didn’t know anything about it. I hadn’t looked inside that infernal box until just now. These were Pseldonimov’s handbills, not mine.’
‘Was there anything else of Pseldonimov’s that you have been taking care of?’
‘Just this box. That was all. If he had any other possessions, I don’t know where he kept them.’ Fear made the yardkeeper’s words convincing.
‘Very well. We will let the matter go this time. I will send a police officer to collect this illegal material.’
‘And what
about the reward?’
‘Don’t push your luck, my friend.’ Porfiry nodded tersely to Virginsky and the two magistrates left the yardkeeper to his grubby trove.
*
The following day, a Sunday, Porfiry attended mass at the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Haymarket Square. Rumours passed through the congregation that Katya Mikhailovna Dolgorukaya had that day borne the Tsar a son, and that His Imperial Highness had given thanks to God. The news was indeed highly scandalous. Porfiry pretended to be affected by the general agitation, though in truth he was secretly pleased. After the ceremony, he was moved by the desire to visit old friends. In particular, he had long been troubled by a sense of estrangement that had entered his relations with Nikodim Fomich. He was greeted by the police chief and his wife like a prodigal son. That is to say, he was offered tea and honey-soaked pirozhky. The couple’s unmarried daughters entertained him with songs at the piano, performed with great exuberance and accomplishment. Fortunately, Porfiry was too old to feel obliged to choose between them. The afternoon was rounded off delightfully by a visit from the eldest daughter, accompanied by her husband and two small children. Porfiry was pressed to stay for dinner, but made his excuses in a private conversation with Nikodim Fomich in the latter’s study. There was one other call he wished to make that day, he explained.
Dr Pervoyedov was equally surprised, and delighted, to find the magistrate at the door of his Gorokhovaya Street apartment. He called excitedly to his wife, ‘Anya! Anya! Come and see! It’s Porfiry Petrovich!’
His wife came out from the kitchen to greet the magistrate with a shy smile, which was nonetheless illuminated by an ironic intelligence. She had never met Porfiry Petrovich before this day, a fact which seemed to have escaped her husband. But, in truth, he had talked so much about Porfiry over the years that she might have felt that she knew the magistrate as well as her husband seemed to assume she did. She smiled indulgently at Pervoyedov as he gabbled on; in her look, Porfiry detected a depth of love that for a moment exalted them all. The good doctor then insisted that Porfiry should be introduced to his son and demanded from his wife the boy’s whereabouts. She confessed that she hadn’t the least idea.