The Gentle Axe Paperback

by R. N. Morris

  “They had no clothes on.”

  Salytov let out a great “Ha!” of amusement. “What’s wrong with you? That’s not stupid, that’s…” The word eluded Salytov. “Do you have any of these photographs?”

  Kesha frowned and shook his head. “I didn’t like to look at them.”

  “Come, come! A boy of your age! Listen, I will not arrest you for looking at a few smutty photographs. Tell the truth now, Kesha.” The boy was startled to hear his name from Salytov. “What did you do with the photographs?”

  “I wouldn’t take them! I wouldn’t look at them!” insisted Kesha hotly.

  “Why ever not? Are you a skopsy? Have you cut off your balls and dick, is that it? Or are you—” A look of horrified disgust came over Salytov.

  “It’s nothing like that. It was their faces. They looked afraid.”

  “They’re just whores.”

  “They were—some of them—they were just little girls. I have a little sister. It’s not right.”

  “They are born whores, girls like that. Why else do you think they do it?”

  “I didn’t like to look at them.”

  “You have a saint here, cleaning your pots,” Salytov joked to the landlord.

  “He is a good boy, Kesha is.”

  “He is a liar. I know boys. He is a liar, or worse.” Salytov looked at Kesha distastefully. “Tell me, skopsy, did he show these photographs to anyone else?”

  “He was always showing them to people. He would sell them to whoever would buy them, and—” There was a warning look from the landlord. Kesha broke off.

  The fire returned to Salytov’s complexion. “Damn you! What’s this?”

  “I remember the man myself, now,” put in the landlord quickly. “Once he tried to pay for his kvas with some of these pictures.”

  “Strange how your memory returns. Did you accept the pornography as payment?”

  “He told me he was an artist. They are what he called artistic poses. Nobody said anything about pornography.”

  “Get them.”

  The landlord moved slowly, reluctance thickening his torpor. His eyes were the last part of him to turn.

  “Hurry it up!” barked Salytov. He smirked at the landlord’s waddling gait as he hurried into the back room.

  Approximately the size of playing cards, the photographs were no worse than many he had seen. True, the faces had a certain bewildered quality, but he found that only added to the piquancy. He shuffled through them briskly, ruthlessly, careful not to dwell on any one image or to betray an interest other than professional. And yet the luminous pallor of the flesh, the crisp darknesses of exposed and in some cases immature genitalia, drew his eye and hardened his pulse. He recognized, in among the stilted pageant, the young prostitute who had been brought into the station, accused of stealing a hundred rubles. In the instant that her photograph flashed before him, he assessed the fullness of her breasts.

  There were men in some of the photographs. Their faces were always turned away, cropped off or blurred by movement: never shown. Unlike the women, the men were clothed, although in some cases their sexual organs, in varying states of rigidity, were exposed. In one instance, the male subject had been captured at the moment of his self-induced ejaculation. The beads of his semen hung in the air; their trajectory seemed to be toward the female model’s abdomen. She viewed their approach without enthusiasm.

  Salytov turned the photographs over and shuffled through them again. An address was written on the reverse of one.

  “This. What is this?” said Salytov, laying it down on the counter.

  “Three Spassky Lane,” read the landlord.

  “Is this Govorov’s address?”

  “I suppose it must be. I never noticed it before now.” The landlord avoided Salytov’s eye.

  “I find that hard to believe. It’s more likely that he wrote it for you deliberately. So that you would know where to go if you wanted more of the same.”

  “Well, I don’t remember. Besides, I don’t spend much time looking at the backs of photographs.”

  “This is police evidence now,” said Salytov with a provocative grin. He pocketed the photographs. The landlord didn’t offer a protest, unless a slight hunching of the shoulders could be read as such. “If you see either of these men again, Ratazyayev or Govorov, send Kesha to the police bureau on Stolyarny Lane. Detain them until we get here. Is that understood?”

  Salytov didn’t wait for an answer. He delivered a warning nod with the precision of a hammer blow. The concertina player started up again. Salytov had the fanciful idea that her playing was not just mournful but diseased. In his mind, tuberculosis floated in the ragged notes. He turned suddenly and fled. The sense of contamination pursued him, even as he took the steps two at a time.

  Seventy-two, seventy-three,seventy-four, seventy-five…

  Virginsky counted his steps. But no matter how far he walked, he couldn’t put any distance between himself and his humiliation. It was always there with him, staring him in the face, in the form of the boots Porfiry Petrovich had given him. So it had come to this: he was a charity case. And to accept charity from such a man! Virginsky had not forgotten how they came for him in the night, nor the words with which the magistrate pointed him out: “That is the man. That is Virginsky.” And then this same Judas had the nerve to argue that he should relinquish his freedom voluntarily!

  That man is the devil, he said to himself. To think I nearly went along with it.

  He realized that he had lost count of his steps. It was difficult to count and think at the same time. That was the point, of course—the point of the counting. If he could only concentrate on his counting, he wouldn’t have to think about his humiliation. He picked up from the last number he could remember, not knowing how many steps he had missed.

  Seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight…

  He was walking along the side of the solidified Yekaterininsky Canal, toward the Nevsky Prospect. It was not a day to be out unless you had good reason. The cold wind assaulted his face and mocked his tattered overcoat. The ice cut into him and spread along his nerve fibers with greedy, destructive haste. There was a bend in the canal. The towpath kinked sharply northward. On his right was the Imperial Bank, turning its curved back on him jealously. You shall not have any of this, it seemed to say. On the other side, across the canal, loomed the massive bulk of the Foundling Hospital. It struck him as an ironic juxtaposition.

  Virginsky stopped to consider the significance of it. He felt weak, unable to think. And yet it was suddenly pressingly important to him to work out what it meant to be standing between the Imperial Bank and the Foundling Hospital.

  As he stood there, a man even more destitute than he shuffled past, his meager jacket and trousers padded with straw and newspaper. The tramp seemed to have come from nowhere, his footsteps almost silent. There were many such individuals in Petersburg, anonymous and interchangeable. As one died, another would appear. Virginsky did not attempt to meet his eye, though he did look at his feet. The man wore an old, disintegrating pair of felt boots, soaked and filthy.

  Virginsky acknowledged the superstitious dread that had prevented him from looking into the man’s face. He was remembering a story he had once read about a man haunted by his double.

  He let the tramp disappear around the bend in the path before starting his steps again.

  Seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one…

  When he turned the corner the tramp was not in view.

  Eighty-two…

  The canal path brought him into the Nevsky Prospect alongside the Kazan Cathedral. The width and prosperity of the street intimidated him. He felt that the wind that purged it would destroy him, deliberately. Only the affluent, layered in furs, could venture into it.

  Virginsky decided to shelter in the colonnade of the Kazan Cathedral. Though he would describe himself as an atheist, he had always liked this place. The semicircular sweep of the colonnade was vaguely reminiscent of arm
s held open for embrace. He responded to the grandeur of the design without being awed by it. It seemed to contain within it something welcoming and benign. He believed the humanity of the peasant stonemason shone through.

  The wind had blown between the columns a light scattering of snow dust, which every now and then it moved around or added to. Looking at the palimpsests of footprints on the paving stones, Virginsky’s mind went blank. He was suddenly unable to count his own steps.

  His humiliation came back to him and the dim memory of a resolve to end it. He remembered a plan, conceived in a police cell or possibly even before then. He seemed to spend his life reaching the same resolve, drawing up the same plan. Would he ever find the courage to put it into action?

  But already he had forgotten what the plan was and would have to wait for it to come back to him. In the meantime…

  One, two, three…

  He set off again, walking the colonnade.

  It was not that he was simpleminded. It was just that he was hungry. If only he could find a solution to that, the hunger, and the humiliation that came with it. But that was it, he suddenly remembered. That was why he was here in the Nevsky Prospect. To bring an end to the hunger.

  Four, five, six…

  He noticed that he was following one particular set of footprints. These seemed to be both the most recent and the most indistinct, lacking any clear heel or toe definition. At times they smudged into long lines, as if the walker had been dragging one foot or the other. Virginsky looked up but saw no one. All the same, he did not believe he had the colonnade to himself. He sensed another presence, concealed behind the shifting blinds of the columns.

  Seven, eight, nine…

  Then he saw the man—the same tramp from beside the canal—darting across the aisle between two columns.

  He moves quickly, thought Virginsky. Yet to look at him, he must be in a worse state than I.

  And it was not that Virginsky had found the courage to move away from the Kazan Cathedral. It was just that he could no longer bear the tramp’s proximity. His terror had crystallized. He was certain now that if he came face to face with this other, he would see his own features staring back at him.

  He stepped out into the Nevsky Prospect, his gaze fixed on a square three-story building on the other side of the street. Fortunately the road was clear of traffic. But the wind shrieked gleefully as it battered into him.

  IWISH TO see Osip Maximovich.”

  Vadim Vasilyevich’s cold, gray eyes looked down on the bedraggled individual who had just presented himself at the offices of Athene Publishing. His small mouth drew itself into a tight pucker of distaste. “And who are you?” The question was strangled by the man’s forced baritone.

  “You know me. You’ve seen me at the house of Anna Alexandrovna. I am Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky.”

  “What is your business here?”

  “I wish to see Osip Maximovich.”

  “He’s a very busy man. You can’t just walk in here demanding to see whomsoever you like.”

  “Tell him I was a friend of Goryanchikov’s.”

  “You will have to do better than that.”

  “I am a writer. Well, a student. But I have written…essays.”

  “Petersburg is full of writers.”

  “Goryanchikov said that I could get work here. Goryanchikov said he would vouch for me.”

  “Unfortunately, Goryanchikov is dead. He can’t vouch for anyone.”

  “Please. Let me see Osip Maximovich. Goryanchikov told me—”

  “Goryanchikov told you what?” A second, higher voice, leavened with relaxed good humor, took over the interrogation. Osip Maximovich himself had just come into the room. A twinkling flash danced across his spectacle lenses.

  “About the work he was doing for you. The translation. The Proudhon. We talked about it.”

  Osip Maximovich took off his spectacles. His face was serious as he assessed Virginsky with his penetrating black eyes. “You talked about Proudhon?”

  “Yes.”

  Osip Maximovich replaced his spectacles. The optical effect was to retract his eyes. “And you think that qualifies you to take over Stepan Sergeyevich’s work?” He had seemed to be on the verge of asking something else entirely, but the thick lenses masked his intentions.

  “We talked about other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “Philosophy in general. Philosophers. Hegel.”

  Osip Maximovich pursed his lips as if impressed. “You talked of Hegel.”

  “Please. I want to work for you. Give me a section to do. If you’re happy with the result, hire me to complete it. I will work for half what you were paying Goryanchikov.”

  “Is that because you are only half as good as him?” quipped Vadim Vasilyevich.

  “I’m not greedy. Just hungry.”

  Osip Maximovich’s smile expressed his approval of the answer. He transmitted some of his beaming pleasure toward Vadim Vasilyevich.

  “There is no point,” said Vadim Vasilyevich bluntly. “The police have confiscated the text of Goryanchikov’s translation. We don’t know how far he got.”

  “I know he didn’t finish it,” said Virginsky.

  A sudden change came over Osip Maximovich’s mood. He sighed despondently. “Poor Stepan Sergeyevich. His death was a terrible blow to us.” He smiled forlornly to Virginsky. “He was like a son to me.”

  Virginsky frowned. “I wonder why people say that. It doesn’t mean very much.”

  “I…miss him.”

  Virginsky said nothing.

  “Did he ever, I wonder, speak of me…warmly?” pressed Osip Maximovich.

  “Would it make any difference to you to know he hated you?”

  “He said that?”

  “No. But those are the feelings I have toward my own father. If he was like a son to you, you should have expected the same from him.”

  Osip Maximovich laughed abruptly. “I think you will make a very good translator of philosophy. We will try you out with the final section of Proudhon. If you make an adequate job of that, you can have the section before the last. And so on in reverse. With any luck, when we get Goryanchikov’s version back from the police, the two will meet in the middle.”

  “Madness,” said Vadim Vasilyevich, throwing up his arms.

  “Now, now, Vadim Vasilyevich. We’ll find out soon enough if he’s up to the task. Do you accept the commission, my friend?”

  “What about money? We haven’t agreed on the money.”

  “That depends on the quality of the work. If it isn’t up to scratch, I’m afraid we won’t be able to pay you anything.”

  “But I need some money now.” Desperation made Virginsky’s tone aggressive. He quickly softened it. “For materials. Paper…pens…ink…candles.” After a moment Virginsky added, “Et cetera.”

  “Et cetera? What et cetera can there be?” smiled Osip Maximovich.

  “Food.”

  “This is beggary,” commented Vadim Vasilyevich.

  “Well, I’d rather deal with a beggar than a—” Osip Maximovich’s lips closed on the word he had been about to say. “Some other kind of scoundrel.”

  Vadim Vasilyevich averted his eyes, as if Osip Maximovich had just told an off-color joke.

  “At any rate, we can’t let our translator starve,” decided Osip Maximovich brightly. “We’ll give you fifty kopeks in advance. If the work is adequate, you will receive a further five rubles and the next section, that is to say the preceding section, to translate. If the work is not adequate, the fifty kopeks will serve as a severance fee, and we will never see you again. Is that agreed?”

  Virginsky nodded without looking Osip Maximovich in the eye.

  “Vadim Vasilyevich, the money box, please.”

  Vadim Vasilyevich was shaking his head as he withdrew into the back room.

  OUT IN THE OPEN, with the cold air piercing his face, Salytov began to feel cleansed. It didn’t last. He saw a man vomit ora
nge paste into the gutter. Another argued with the wind. At the northeast corner of Haymarket Square, where it spilled over into Spassky Lane, a shivering woman offered her headscarf for sale. The thought occurred to him that she would get a better price for it than for herself.

  Students clustered around the racks and tables outside the secondhand bookshops on Spassky Lane. He had little patience for them. In fact, the sight of them infuriated him. He had no doubt they would consider themselves superior to him, as if their rags for clothes, their battered, crooked hats, even their starving bellies should be objects of envy. What kind of inverted table of ranks was this when the trappings of the most abject poverty were held to be a source of pride? They were no better than the ignorant peasants who scavenged for crusts and rags. No, they were worse, far worse. At least the peasant had a sense of his duty to himself. The peasant too had his soul intact. These educated fools had squandered theirs.

  Salytov imagined himself kicking over the book displays, a kind of Christ among the moneylenders.

  The entrance to number 3 hung open. Salytov skipped up the steps and pulled the door behind him, but it would not close. It was dark in the hallway and rapidly becoming darker. He could just about make out the looming rectangles of the apartment doors on the ground floor. He kicked the front door wide open. It made little difference. Outside the afternoon was dissolving into gloom. He sensed rather than saw the stairs ahead of him, in the same way that he sensed his hand in front of his face.

  Before he lost the light completely, Salytov knocked briskly on the first door he came to. Minutes passed. He knocked again, with renewed urgency. His raps echoed in the dark. He had the sense of a great emptiness behind the door.

  He wondered if perhaps he had made a mistake. Was he wise to have come here alone or at least without informing anyone at the bureau what he was doing?

  He thought about turning around. He imagined himself outside, running, yes, running like a coward away from this place. But he imagined other things too: a knife coming out of the darkness and plunging into his midriff. He imagined a figure stepping out of the shadows. The face was a smooth blank. At the same time Salytov felt a retrospective anger at the way Porfiry Petrovich had tried to make a fool of him over the disappearance of the prostitute’s accuser, the man they now believed was Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov. But it had had nothing to do with him. The man had absconded before he became involved.