The Gentle Axe Paperback

by R. N. Morris

  “I feel, almost, that it is my duty to see him. Please, show the gentleman in, Alexander Grigorevich.”

  The young man entered with a tentative step. Hat and gloves in hand, he had something of the air of a supplicant.

  “You may go now,” Porfiry said to Zamyotov, who was lingering expectantly. The clerk challenged the peremptory dismissal with a glare. He slammed the door as he left. Porfiry turned to the young man, indicating a chair. “Please.” The young man moved with deliberation, almost gingerly, as if he were afraid the seat would not support him. And yet, as Porfiry judged, there was hardly anything to him. “You are?”

  The young man seemed surprised by the question. He hesitated, as though he were unsure about the wisdom or necessity of supplying his name. At last he said, “Makar Alexeyevich Bykov.” His voice was high and strained. As the name seemed to make no impression on Porfiry, the young man added in a whisper, “I am Prince Bykov.”

  “Prince Bykov.” Porfiry’s emphasis was satirical.

  “You have heard of me?”

  Porfiry allowed a beat before admitting, “No.”

  “It’s just that I have written some plays.”

  “You are a playwright?”

  “They have caused quite a stir in certain circles. Perhaps they have come to your attention in an…uh…official capacity?”

  “No. I have not heard of you or your plays.” Porfiry smiled in a way that he hoped was reassuring.

  The young man seemed dubious. “Of course, I do not believe there is anything seditious in them myself. My works are inspired by a profound patriotism.”

  “That’s all right then,” said Porfiry.

  “Were they ever to be performed, however, there is a danger that they might be misunderstood. Willfully misunderstood, I mean. The meaning of the plays is clear enough.”

  “I would hope so.”

  “Alexander Grigorevich led me to believe that you would be able to help me.”

  “I can’t help you with your plays. I am a magistrate, not an impresario.”

  “It is not to do with my plays that I have come to see you.”

  “Ah—I misunderstood.”

  Prince Bykov was overcome by a sudden turmoil of emotion. It was as if he could hold himself together no longer. His voice was breaking as he blurted out, “Ratazyayev is missing.”

  “Ratazyayev?”

  “Yes.” The prince nodded violently, knuckling away his sudden tears.

  “Who is Ratazyayev?”

  “He is”—Prince Bykov closed his eyes, steeling himself—“a very dear friend of mine.” Prince Bykov opened his eyes again to see how Porfiry had taken this declaration. His look was raw and exposed but not timid and had about it no pretense. Whatever else he was, Prince Makar Alexeyevich Bykov was an honest man and a brave man too, Porfiry decided.

  “I see,” said Porfiry. At that moment he decided also that it was time to take Prince Bykov seriously. “Please,” continued Porfiry, taking and lighting a cigarette. “Please tell me how it came about that Ratazyayev went missing.”

  “I blame myself. It was all my fault. We quarreled, you see.”

  “What was the quarrel over?”

  Prince Bykov’s expression became pained. “Ratazyayev came suddenly into some money. I was suspicious. I accused him of certain things. He said he had an engagement. An acting engagement. Ratazyayev is an actor, you see, although he has not performed on a public stage for many years. I’m afraid I didn’t believe him. I accused him of many things. The engagement was supposed to be in Tosno. It was for a week, apparently. Precisely one week. But what theater is there in Tosno, tell me that? And what kind of a run lasts for just one week? One week! What can you do in one week? Was he not required for rehearsals? But then, no, it’s not a week, it’s two weeks. It was a private acting engagement. There was to be only one performance. The two weeks included the rehearsal time. It was in honor of Prince Stroganov-Golitsyn. You know the Stroganov-Golitsyns have their estate near Tosno. It was to be held on the prince’s birthday. A special performance, arranged by his friends. Very well. What play? Well, first it was to be A Feast During the Plague. A very appropriate play for a birthday celebration, would you not say? So then, no, it’s not A Feast During the Plague, it’s Little Snowdrop. My goodness, Pushkin must give way to Ostrovsky? So no, it’s not Little Snowdrop, it’s Boris Godunov. The whole thing? You can have a passable production of Boris Godunov ready in two weeks? No, no, no. Not the whole thing. Scenes from Boris Godunov. Scenes, only scenes. And what part is he to play? Why, he will take the title role! But if you know Ratazyayev, you will know he would be hopelessly miscast as Boris Godunov. The whole thing was a pack of lies from beginning to end, it was obvious. But when I challenged him, he became angry. He packed his case. He was going to Tosno. I could not go with him. He would not let me carry the case out to the carriage. Would not let me even touch it. So I was not required. That is all very well. I will accept that. I will accept that Ratazyayev is a free man. If he wishes to go to Tosno, I will not stand in his way. But to lie to me! That I will not stand for! And it is a lie! What he doesn’t realize, you see, is that I was in the Cadet Corps with a cousin of Prince Stroganov-Golitsyn’s. Whom I happened to meet at the English Club. And whom I happened to ask about this marvelous theatrical birthday celebration. At which point I discover that the prince’s birthday is in the summer—in August. Surely there must be some mistake. But no. The cousin is quite certain. He went to the party for the prince’s last birthday. And there was not a theatrical performance. There were open-air tableaux. The cousin himself took part in one. A scene from the Trojan War. He was Patroclus, I believe. I decide not to confront Ratazyayev with this. I can’t bear to. I can’t bear to hear more lies. I can’t bear to see the man I—” Prince Bykov broke off. He looked at Porfiry queasily. “A man I greatly admire…humiliate himself with lies.” Prince Bykov regarded Porfiry with a genuinely tortured look. “Perhaps I should have done. Perhaps if I had confronted him, Ratazyayev would be with me today. Instead I chose, to my shame, to employ subterfuge. I spied on him. I disguised myself and followed him to the Nikolaevsky Station, where he was to take the train to Tosno.”

  “You disguised yourself? How did you disguise yourself?”

  “Is it important?”

  “It may be. If he saw you and recognized you, it could have a bearing on the case.”

  “He did not recognize me.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I disguised myself as a woman.”

  “I see.”

  “He looked straight at me and did not see me.”

  “And so you followed him to the Nikolaevsky Station.”

  “I stood behind him as he bought his ticket to Tosno. I heard him say the destination. I saw him take the ticket.”

  “You were so close, and he didn’t recognize you?”

  “He had no idea. I bought a ticket to Tosno myself. I took the train. I did not sit in the same compartment as him, but I had a good look at him. He was on the train. I saw him on the train.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I got off at Tosno. I was one of the first to get off, I swear. I saw everyone who got off that train.”

  “And?”

  “Ratazyayev did not get off the train.”

  “He decided to continue his journey?”

  “But here is the thing that is strange.”

  “Go on.”

  “I saw a man, a man I had noticed in Ratazyayev’s compartment, get off at Tosno, and he was carrying Ratazyayev’s case.”

  “But it was not Ratazyayev.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I see. Can you be sure?”

  “I was not sure at the time. I doubted the evidence of my own eyes. But now I am sure of it.”

  “Why are you sure of it now?”

  “Because Ratazyayev has not returned. From wherever he went, he has not returned. He should have been back, he promised me he would be back
, two days ago. But he has not come back, and I have not had a single letter from him for the whole time. That is not like him. I know we quarreled, but he would not punish me so much. We have quarreled before, and he has always come back. There have been tears. And reproaches. But forgiveness also. He knows I would forgive him. And he would forgive me.”

  Porfiry paused to allow the prince to master himself. Then he asked, “Can you describe the case?”

  “It is a brown case.” Prince Bykov mopped his cheeks with an enormous handkerchief. “A brown leather suitcase.”

  “But how can you be sure it was Ratazyayev’s case? There must be many people who have brown suitcases.”

  “It was the same size and shape, and it was scratched in a certain way.”

  Prince Bykov watched expectantly as Porfiry finished his cigarette and stubbed it out in his crystal ashtray. “It is inconclusive,” he announced.

  The young prince became crestfallen. “However, if you bear with me for one moment, I would like you to look at something.”

  IT TOOK SEVERAL minutes for the case to be brought. There was some doubt as to its whereabouts, whether indeed it was still in the station. Lieutenant Salytov put his head around the door at one point to challenge Porfiry’s order. “You are aware that as of today this investigation is officially over?”

  “I am aware of that, Ilya Petrovich, though I am grateful to you for bringing it to my attention. However, this is to do with another investigation. This gentleman—a prince, no less—has reported a missing person. His testimony makes mention of a piece of luggage. In order to get a more accurate impression of this particular article of luggage, I wished to compare it to the suitcase that you found in Petrovsky Park. That is all.”

  Salytov seemed dubious, suspicious even. And no doubt the necessity of instigating a search was inconvenient to him. But in the end the case was tracked down. It had left the room in which evidence is stored, but not the station, and was found under an officer’s desk. Clearing out the old case files that had been temporarily stored in it took only a few moments.

  Prince Bykov nodded tensely when the case was put on Porfiry’s desk. “That is it. That is Ratazyayev’s. The scratch on the front is the same.”

  13

  A Strange Document

  AS PORFIRY ENTERED the main headquarters of the St. Petersburg City Police Department, he was impressed not so much by the grandeur of the building as by its immaculate preservation. The contrast with the Haymarket District station was marked. The very uniforms of the policemen, even when they were of the same rank as the men in his own bureau, seemed crisper and smarter. He had the sense of visiting wealthier relatives and felt that he should be on his best behavior.

  The building was situated at 2 Gorokhovaya Street, close to the Admiralty. Prokuror Liputin’s chambers were on the third floor. Porfiry walked slowly up the stairs. The echoing clip of his heels drew disapproving glances from those coming down.

  He was kept waiting, as he knew he would be, for over an hour before being admitted to an office similar to his own, except larger, cleaner, and with newer furniture. The prokuror was seated at his desk, his head bowed as he studied a case file. When he finally looked up, his face was puckered by a scowl of displeasure.

  “Porfiry Petrovich.” He made the possession of such a name sound like a crime.

  “Your excellency.”

  “What is this about?”

  “I wish to apply for permission to reopen the investigation into the murder of Goryanchikov.”

  “The dwarf?”

  “New evidence has come to light.”

  “What are you doing seeking new evidence?”

  “I did not seek the evidence. It came to me.”

  “What is this evidence?”

  “It is the testimony of a prince. As you know, our law makes clear that the rank of a witness has a bearing on the reliability of his testimony. The testimony of a prince cannot be discounted.”

  “Who is this prince?”

  “Prince Bykov.”

  “What is his testimony?”

  “He has identified the suitcase in which the student Goryanchikov was found as belonging to an associate of his. One Ratazyayev. This Ratazyayev is now missing.”

  Liputin screwed his face up in distaste. “How did he come to see the suitcase?”

  “I showed it to him.”

  “You showed it to him!”

  “There were certain details concerning Ratazyayev’s suitcase, which is itself pertinent to his disappearance. I felt that if Prince Bykov saw the case found in Petrovsky Park, it would help him to describe the missing man’s luggage.”

  “You were playing games, Porfiry Petrovich.”

  “I was pursuing a connection.”

  “Who is this Ratazyayev?”

  “An actor.”

  “An actor!” exclaimed Liputin disdainfully.

  “A very good friend of Prince Bykov, who is himself accepted within the highest echelons of our society. He speaks warmly of the Stroganov-Golitsyns.”

  “The dwarf was killed by the yardkeeper. The yardkeeper committed suicide,” recited Liputin.

  “Perhaps that is true. But still the question remains, how did Goryanchikov’s body come to be found in Ratazyayev’s suitcase? And where, indeed, is Ratazyayev?”

  “How can he be sure that it is the same case? It is a nondescript kind of brown suitcase. There must be thousands of them in circulation in St. Petersburg. No, it is not enough. You may only investigate the disappearance of Ratazyayev. You may not assume any connection between the cases.” Noting the look of disappointment on Porfiry’s face, the prokuror added with an insincere smile: “I am only protecting you from yourself, Porfiry Petrovich. The last thing I want is for you to make a fool of yourself over this. Besides, it’s not like you to be seduced by a minor member of the aristocracy.”

  THAT NIGHT PORFIRY dined in his chambers: fish soup, sturgeon and beans fetched from the Palais de Cristal restaurant on the corner of Sadovaya Street and Voznesensky Prospect. Or rather, the food was laid in front of him by Zakhar, the aged manservant provided for him by the government. Zakhar took it away hardly touched.

  “His nibs is out of sorts,” Zakhar confided to himself as he carried the tray away, swallowing down the anticipatory build of saliva. “Well, I have done my duty by him,” he decided. This was the license he needed to devour the remains.

  Porfiry had not asked for wine to be brought. The month before Christmas was, after all, a period of fasting in the Orthodox calendar. But he had consented to a pot of strong black coffee. And although he relinquished the food, Porfiry let out a warning yelp when Zakhar threatened to take the coffee. That was the only communication he had all evening with the human being who shared his apartment.

  Spread out in front of him were the books he had redeemed from Lyamshin’s. He also had the French book that Goryanchikov had been working on, together with Goryanchikov’s unfinished translation. He felt that he should continue to examine this text for its discrepancies with its source. But a sullen lethargy possessed him. Perhaps it was not lethargy; he had after all been forbidden from working on the Goryanchikov case. Perhaps it was submission. At any rate, he was beginning to feel the over-stimulating effects of the coffee. Why had he let Zakhar take the sturgeon away? He lit a cigarette to quell the hunger pangs and aid his concentration. But even smoking, he was not up to conducting a close textual comparison between a French philosophy book and its handwritten Russian translation.

  He halfheartedly turned to the other philosophical titles, the Russian editions of The Cycle of Life, Force and Matter, Superstition and Science, and Natural Dialectics. But his study of these books only went as far as the title pages, where he discovered that they were all published by the same house, Athene. There was a St. Petersburg address given: 22 Nevsky Prospect.

  But then he surrendered completely to his mood and turned to the other book. He was aware that he had been avoiding this book,
aware too that it disgusted him, but equally aware that he had wanted to look at it ever since it had been put into his hands by the pawnbroker. He was salivating every bit as copiously as he knew Zakhar to have been.

  Of course, he could not now pretend, not since his interview with Liputin, that his reasons for looking at One Thousand and One Maidenheads had anything to do with the investigation. But in a way, that interview freed him. He was like the officer who had appropriated Ratazyayev’s suitcase to store paperwork. The books no longer counted as evidence. They had belonged to a man who was now dead. It would not be frowned upon if he used them for his own purposes.

  The title page of this book gave no address, only the imprint, Priapos, and the name—or rather pseudonym—of the translator. An inscription read: “Translated from the French by ‘Alcibiades.’”

  The pages of the book were uncut. And he found himself strangely reluctant to take his paper knife to them. It was not, however, the kind of book that required its pages to be cut for its qualities to be appreciated. At a little under two hundred pages long, Porfiry calculated an average of five maidenheads per page. There was not much room left for narrative complexity, or even continuity. And yet even from the truncated version he allowed himself to read, Porfiry found that the author had quite cleverly constructed the story to avoid monotony and build interest. Although the first maidenhead was breached on page one, the episode itself covered several pages, as the erstwhile maiden quickly acquired a taste for the activity responsible for the loss of her virginity. For the whole of the first third of the book, as far as Porfiry could tell, all the deflowerings occurred consecutively. By the middle of the book, it seemed the hero was able, somehow, to increase the number of virgins who were willing to share his bed at any one time. The final climactic episode took place in a private girls’ boarding school, when the remaining tally of three hundred and twenty-one maidenheads was accounted for in one endless white night and twelve exhausting pages; the final maidenhead being that of the school’s headmistress, a sixty-three-year-old virgin, who wept uncontrollably at the discovery of what she had missed out on for so many years.