The Gentle Axe

by R. N. Morris

  “Please!” cried Anna Alexandrovna. “In one breath you are suggesting that he was my husband’s son, in the next that he was my lover.”

  Porfiry’s bow was very close to an affirmative nod.

  Suddenly, the double doors to the drawing room parted, revealing the portly, bespectacled figure of Osip Maximovich Simonov. His face was determined, antagonistic. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  “Osip Maximovich,” gasped Anna Alexandrovna. “Thank God!” She rushed toward him as he came into the room. Her out-held hands came to nothing. She turned from him, almost chastened.

  “Sir, I demand an explanation,” said Osip Maximovich, and closed the doors behind him.

  “I am conducting an investigation into the murders of three people.”

  “And you suspect Anna Alexandrovna?”

  “It is important to establish the truth. You should know that, sir, as the publisher of philosophical works.”

  “Anna Alexandrovna is a respectable woman. You have no right to come here with your insinuating questions.”

  “How do you know my questions were insinuating? Were you listening at the door?” asked Porfiry with a smile that strained to be pleasant.

  “I am not a fool, sir. I can very well imagine the kind of filthy questions you were asking.”

  “Believe me, please, when I say that no one regrets the necessity of asking such questions more than I.”

  “Then do not ask them.”

  “I’m afraid it’s my job.”

  “It is not a job for a gentleman.”

  “Perhaps not. It is a necessary job, all the same.”

  “But to persecute Anna Alexandrovna!”

  A thought seemed to occur suddenly to Porfiry. “I wonder, Osip Maximovich, do you believe a gentleman would be capable of murder?”

  “There is no saying what any one of us is capable of, I am sure,” Osip Maximovich answered huffily. “It would be absurd to deny that murders have been committed by members of the gentry.”

  “But would a gentleman use an axe?” Porfiry’s tone was arch.

  “Wasn’t there indeed such a case recently? The student who took an axe to those sisters.”

  “But the axe is more a weapon we would associate with the peasantry, do you not agree? More the sort of weapon someone like Borya would choose?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I wonder what weapon a gentleman would choose. Or a gentlewoman, for that matter.”

  “I take it you have finished questioning Anna Alexandrovna. In which case, may I suggest that it is time that you left?”

  “I have one more question and a request. Anna Alexandrovna, do you have any idea how Borya came to be in possession of six thousand rubles?”

  “Borya? I do not—” Her eyes flitted in confusion. The color drained from her face. “I have no idea,” she added without conviction, her gaze plummeting.

  “He must have stolen it. It’s as simple as that,” said Osip Maximovich. He tried to flash reassurance toward her.

  Porfiry made no comment on this theory, except to say, “It is a lot of money.” He watched Anna Alexandrovna closely, noting her discomfiture.

  “Have you finished?” asked Osip Maximovich curtly.

  “Yes, except for my request. I would like Anna Alexandrovna to write something for me.”

  “You really do suspect her! Meanwhile the real murderer—”

  “What do you wish me to write?” asked Anna Alexandrovna. Although she spoke decisively, there was once again a fatalistic weight to her voice.

  “It really doesn’t matter. My only requirement is that you write it on your own personal stationery.”

  “Osip Maximovich,” said Anna Alexandrovna, placing a hand to her forehead. “Will you ring for Katya, please?”

  KATYA BROUGHT the paper on a wooden tray. Immediately Porfiry noticed that the stationery’s lilac shade matched exactly that of the envelope in which the six thousand rubles had been found.

  Katya’s step was brisk and disapproving. She did not look at Porfiry. In her wake, held back by her timidity but drawn despite it into the room, was a girl of about thirteen or fourteen. Porfiry saw the imprint of Anna Alexandrovna in her features. But youth made her beauty heedless.

  The girl rushed out from behind Katya toward her mother and cried, “Mamma!”

  “It’s all right, darling.” Anna Alexandrovna reached an arm around her daughter’s shawled shoulders. She stooped to kiss her forehead, then nodded firmly and released her.

  At Sofiya Sergeyevna’s entrance, Osip Maximovich turned his back and moved away to a window. He gave the impression of losing interest.

  Katya placed the tray on the low mahogany table from which Porfiry had once drunk tea. There was a pen and a pot of ink on the tray with the paper.

  “So I may write anything?” said Anna Alexandrovna, taking her seat on the sofa by the table.

  Porfiry bowed.

  “But I can think of nothing,” she confessed.

  “In that case, may I suggest, ‘Do you remember the summer?’” said Porfiry Petrovich.

  Anna Alexandrovna looked up at him questioningly but without reproach. She then looked to Osip Maximovich, only to find he still had his back to her. Her head bowed hesitantly, and she took up the pen. She handed the note to Porfiry. He studied it briefly before pocketing it.

  “And so this farce is at an end?” said Osip Maximovich, returning abruptly from the window. “You have all you need?”

  “I have all I need from Anna Alexandrovna,” confirmed Porfiry.

  “And what have you decided? Is it enough to have her arrested?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Not quite. I see. Not quite. And do you think it is enough, this ‘not quite’? Do you think it is good enough to justify this persecution?” Osip Maximovich didn’t wait for Porfiry to answer. “And while we are on the subject of your persecutions, would it be possible for me to request the return of the Proudhon translation that you confiscated from Stepan Sergeyevich’s room?”

  “I can’t return it yet. I haven’t finished examining it.”

  “What is there to examine? It is the translation of a philosophical text. What possible bearing could it have on the case?”

  “There are a number of discrepancies in it. Sections in the translation that do not occur in the original.”

  Osip Maximovich frowned angrily. “What do you know about discrepancies? What do you know about translating philosophy? It is impossible to do it literally. Stepan Sergeyevich had a genius for interpretive translation.”

  “Why is it so important to you to have it back?” asked Porfiry mildly.

  “Because it belongs to me!” exploded Osip Maximovich. “And I have found a translator for the rest of it. I wish to know how much Stepan Sergeyevich was able to complete before his death.”

  “I will return it to you as soon as I am able. But now I would like to talk to one other member of the household.”

  MARFA DENISOVNA HEARD the door to her apartment open and close. She didn’t look up from the cards but tightened her warty fingers around the pack.

  “So you have come to speak to me at last,” she said. There was something like a smile on the lipless gash of her mouth.

  “Do you know who I am?” asked Porfiry Petrovich.

  “You’re the one who asks questions.”

  Porfiry nodded. “My name is Porfiry Petrovich. I am an investigating magistrate. I am investigating the deaths of Stepan Sergeyevich Goryanchikov and Borya the yardkeeper. As well as the death of another individual called Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov.”

  Marfa Denisovna moved the ace of diamonds up to the top.

  “How long have you been with the family, Marfa Denisovna?”

  The old woman chuckled. “All my life.”

  “You were born a serf?”

  “Yes. I belonged to Sergei Pavlovich’s father’s estate.”

  “And you stayed on after emancipation?”
/>
  “Where else would I go? Besides, I had my little Sonechka to look after.”

  “Sofiya Sergeyevna?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d like to talk to you about Stepan Sergeyevich.” Marfa Denisovna nodded assent. “He owed your mistress money, didn’t he?”

  “It didn’t matter.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Marfa Denisovna’s hard little body jerked up and down in an overdone shrug.

  “It was only money. Some things are more important than money. So he was behind on his rent? But he would pay it when he was able.”

  “You suggest some kind of bond between Stepan Sergeyevich and Anna Alexandrovna.”

  Marfa Denisovna moved a row of cards, the eight of hearts down to the three of clubs, over to a nine of clubs. She turned over a jack of hearts.

  “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.

  22

  The Holiest Man in Russia

  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 he
ard 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.”

  “All the more reason to hasten our journey,” said Ulitin.

  Nikita stared at the deputy investigating magistrate for a long time, as if he had just said something incomprehensibly stupid. He then shrugged and took up the reins again. He shook his head and allowed the energy of his bewilderment to pass down the reins. The two horses shouldered heavily into the day, snorting their own reluctance back to their driver.

  WHEN THE FIRST FLAKES touched their faces, Nikita turned briefly in the same stiff, backward-leaning way toward Ulitin. But he said nothing. Neither of them had spoken for a long time.

  Before long the air was filled with swirling flakes. They looped and spiraled but most of all fell, with a frantic and dizzying insistence. First the woods on either side disappeared from view. Then the posts that marked the road. Now all that Ulitin could see, apart from the teeming rush of the blizzard, was the back of the trace horse.

  Nikita pulled on the reins, and they slid to a halt.

  “We’ve lost the road,” he said, shielding his eyes and peering through the constantly shifting layers.

  Ulitin said nothing.

  Without warning Nikita jumped down from the box seat. He clapped his hands, nodded, then bustled off into the storm. In a moment he had vanished from sight.

  Ulitin felt suddenly very alone. He heard the horses shift and shiver uneasily. Last night, with Drozdov, he had talked of the soul and of the question of its survival after death. With the abstract confidence of young men, they had resolved the issue beyond dispute. Drozdov was a doctor. He had vouched for the physiological basis of personality. The argument was irrefutable. If a subject’s personality could become changed through morbid disease, as in the case of dementia praecox, it was logical to argue that it did not have its basis in anything eternal and immutable. And if disease can mutate the subjective self, it is also logical to conclude that death will terminate it.