The Gentle Axe

by R. N. Morris

  Now, sitting lost and abandoned in the middle of a furious snowstorm, Ulitin was not so sure. Or rather, he wished he had not been so sure.

  He closed his eyes. It was as if he did not wish to catch himself in the act of saying a prayer.

  The sleigh shook. Nikita clambered up next to him. Ulitin had never been so pleased to see another human.

  “Stavrogin’s Copse. If we keep that to our right, we should find Kozelsk.”

  Ulitin peered in the direction Nikita indicated. But all he could see was the maddening dance of snowflakes in front of his eyes.

  THEY GOT TEA and something to eat at the zemstvo hut in Kozelsk.

  As they ate, they kept a close eye on the window, watching the storm intensify its rage. Ulitin became suddenly depressed and could bear it no longer. He looked away from the window and took out the telegram he had received the previous day.

  GO TO OPTINA PUSTYN QUESTION F AMVROSY VERIFY OSIP MAXIMOVICH SIMONOV AT OPT PUST 29 NOV TO 11 DEC INC STOP

  Ulitin handled the flimsy paper forlornly. The telegram had been sent by one Porfiry Petrovich, an investigating magistrate with the Department of the Investigation of Criminal Causes in St. Petersburg. As he touched the words, he seemed to feel a direct contact with the city, or at least with the dreams of his that it represented. His heart had quickened when he’d received it. He had seen it as an opportunity to impress important personages in the capital. Perhaps a transfer would follow. But now his ambitions had been swallowed up by the snow, and he was trapped in the zemstvo hut in Kozelsk.

  He tried to imagine Porfiry Petrovich. When this proved impossible, he imagined himself walking down the Nevsky in summer.

  “Well, your honor, will you look at that!”

  Ulitin looked up. Nikita was pointing at the window. The storm had stopped. The sky was clear.

  “Get the horses ready!”

  “You’re not thinking of going now?”

  “We have no time to lose,” cried Ulitin, rising to his feet.

  Nikita shook his head regretfully. “No, no, no, your honor. It will be dark before I have a chance to get the sleigh out. It would be as well to wait until the morning. We will see how it is in the morning.”

  Remembering how he had felt when Nikita had come back to him in the storm, Ulitin did not insist. He looked down at the telegram and felt a lump of self-pity in his throat. He blinked away the threat of tears.

  THEY APPROACHED THE monastery on the frozen river Zhidra.

  Ulitin saw the gold crosses floating in the sky, the clear winter sunlight exulting on them. His heart leaped and he reproached it. They are only painted crossbeams of wood! But he could not deny that at first he had stared in amazement. For just an instant their appearance had seemed miraculous. How can that be? There was some trick, there had to be…Then they drew nearer. As the course of the river twisted their path, the crosses bobbed from one side to the other as if engaged in stately dance. And of course, it became clear. The crosses were mounted on cupolas, the blue of which had, from a distance, been indistinguishable from the sky. Gradually the domes had appeared, like a slow solidifying of the sky, forming beneath the crosses.

  From the gatehouse by the river to the convent was a steep walk up a forested mountain. Ulitin had heard that some pilgrims completed it on their knees. He left Nikita and the horses at the gatehouse and set out on foot with a young monk who gave every impression of expecting him.

  It’s just a way they have, thought Ulitin. They like to make a mystery out of everything.

  The young monk was excitable and garrulous and seemed unable to look Ulitin in the eye. His talk was trivial, at times almost hysterical. He reminded Ulitin of a child on the eve of a holiday.

  Perhaps he’s simpleminded, he thought.

  “You’ve come to see Father Amvrosy,” said the young monk, whose name was Brother Innokentiy. Although he was dressed only in a monastic cassock, he didn’t seem to feel the cold. He walked quickly, despite the deep snow and the treacherous path.

  Ulitin frowned in annoyance and hurried to keep up.

  Brother Innokentiy smiled enigmatically. “Why else would you come? There are many who have already made the pilgrimage. Every day someone arrives. You will have to wait your turn to see him.”

  “I’m not a pilgrim. I’m here on official business. I’m an investigating magistrate.”

  “He won’t see you. He’s not interested in earthly affairs.”

  “It’s a very important matter. I have orders from St. Petersburg. From the police authorities. It is to do with a criminal investigation.”

  “He won’t talk about it. He doesn’t care about such things now. The time has gone for him to talk about such things.” Brother Innokentiy flashed one of his questing, sly glances. “What is it about? Perhaps I can help you.” His smile was insinuating.

  “I have been directed to talk to Father Amvrosy.”

  “But he won’t see you, I tell you. Not about this. If it was about your soul, perhaps.” Brother Innokentiy giggled unpleasantly as if he had just made a very funny, though slightly risqué joke. “He may die any moment. What if he dies before we reach the convent? You’ll have to ask me then.” One side of the monk’s mouth snagged up in a leering grin.

  Ulitin slowed his pace. He was tired. But he wanted to let the monk get ahead of him. He wanted a respite from his chatter.

  Brother Innokentiy waited for him to catch up. His welcoming smile had a gloating edge.

  BROTHER INNOKENTIY SHOWED him into a room that was crowded with well-to-do pilgrims. Everyone seemed to be affected by the same talkative excitement that Ulitin had sensed in the monk. As they entered, every face turned to them expectantly, there was a momentary hush, and then the din picked up again.

  Ulitin felt aggrieved on the old, dying monk’s behalf. They are expecting a miracle, he thought. They have come for a miracle, but they look like vultures.

  A group of landowners, the men in immaculate frock coats, the women already in shining black, made straight for Brother Innokentiy. Their faces were set with sanctimony. “How is he now?” was the question they all wanted to know the answer to.

  “I don’t know,” said Brother Innokentiy. “I’ve come from the gatehouse.” He seemed delighted not to have any news for them.

  “The end is near though, isn’t it?” The middle-aged woman who spoke couldn’t keep the eagerness out of her question, though her face was a solemn mask. She scrutinized Brother Innokentiy through a lorgnette.

  A stout red-faced man pushing a girl of about eighteen in a wheelchair forced his way to the front. “He must see her. He must see my Lana. Please, you must make him see her.” The girl blushed. She is quite beautiful when she blushes, thought Ulitin. Her eyes sought his, then looked away.

  “He knows you are here. He knows you are all here. He asks for those he wants to see,” said Brother Innokentiy.

  “It is not as if I haven’t been generous to the brothers,” insisted the stout man, short of breath.

  “Daddy!” protested Lana.

  “Your generosity has not gone unnoticed. But perhaps there are others in greater spiritual need. There is so little time left. He can’t see everyone.”

  “He will see me,” said Yevgeny Nikolaevich Ulitin abruptly.

  Brother Innokentiy looked Ulitin up and down thoroughly. “Perhaps he will,” he said at last, quietly, and left.

  He is not simpleminded after all, thought Ulitin.

  The stout landowner took hold of Ulitin’s arm. He had seen something in the young monk’s look. “Make him see my Lana, before it’s too late,” he pleaded.

  FOR A MOMENT Ulitin thought the man on the bed was already dead. His long white hair lay haloed about his head. The skin on his face was drawn back skeletally. His body was motionless, a minimal disruption in the blankets. It was hard to believe there really was a body under them. His eyes were open, but they didn’t seem to see anyone in the room. They were fixed on a point beyond the ceiling.
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  The small bedroom was filled with monks, all of them standing. Some were dressed imposingly in robes embroidered with scriptural passages. Every one of them was reciting from the gospel, their gentle murmurs lapping over the dying man, like a kind of final baptism of voices before death.

  “He has moments of remarkable lucidity and long spells when he is lost to us,” explained Brother Innokentiy in an excited whisper. “The Lord is already calling to him. I was able to tell him about you. That an important magistrate has come on official business.”

  “I am not important,” said Ulitin, and blushed. It was the last thing he would have thought he was going to say.

  It is false, he thought. That’s why I blushed. Because it was false. I have been affected by all of this.

  “But still he wouldn’t see you,” went on Brother Innokentiy gleefully. “It was only when I told him that you were a nonbeliever that he asked for you to be brought.”

  “How do you know I’m a nonbeliever?”

  “It’s in your eyes.” Brother Innokentiy smiled provokingly. “You must kneel beside his bed and wait for him to notice you. Do not speak until he speaks to you. If he closes his eyes, you must go.”

  Ulitin did as he was directed. At the same time Brother Innokentiy leaned intimately close to the old monk’s face, as if he would kiss him, but instead whispered something in his ear. Brother Innokentiy moved away. Ulitin almost thought he winked at him.

  Close to the dying man, Ulitin remembered how he had felt the day before when Nikita had left him alone on the sleigh, his rationalist certainties battered by the storm.

  The old man’s eyes rolled heavily toward Ulitin. The expression was infinitely pleading. “What do you want to ask me?” The voice seemed to come from far away, and as the monk’s lips barely moved, it was tempting to believe that someone else was speaking for him.

  Ulitin felt suddenly ashamed. “I am sorry to trouble you at this time,” he said uselessly.

  Father Amvrosy closed his eyes. Ulitin’s heart sank. He did not want the audience to end, even though it was not important to him to ask the questions anymore. It was the privilege of the moment that he wanted to hold on to. He was about to get up when Father Amvrosy opened his eyes again.

  “So you do not believe in God?”

  “Not in God, not in the soul, not in eternal life.”

  Ulitin thought he saw a gentle smile form beneath the monk’s massive beard. Perhaps it was a mild twinge of pain. “So why does it matter to you?”

  “What?”

  “Your investigation. If you don’t believe in God, what does it matter?”

  “Because there must be laws. A legal framework. Men must respect one another’s rights. The right to life, for example. It is a question of social order. It is quite rational.” Ulitin paused and added, “But it is not my investigation. I’m under instruction from a magistrate in St. Petersburg.”

  “A higher authority?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he want to know, this higher authority of yours?”

  “He wants to know if one Osip Maximovich Simonov was here at Optina Pustyn from the twenty-ninth of November to the eleventh of December.”

  “You could have asked Brother Innokentiy that. It was he who looked after the gentleman. He took him his food every day and talked to him.”

  “I was ordered to ask you.”

  The elder’s eyes rolled away from Ulitin, it seemed in disappointment. Ulitin feared he had pushed the monk too far. “Someone by that name was here.”

  “Between those dates?”

  The old monk gave a barely perceptible nod. “The convent register will confirm it.”

  “Thank you.” Ulitin made to rise. The eyes came back to hold him. These little movements of the eyes seemed to require every last calorie of energy the dying man possessed. They had to be important to him. Any one might be his last.

  “Is there nothing else you wish to ask me?”

  Ulitin hesitated. “Why did you agree to see me?”

  Father Amvrosy swallowed epically. “I wanted to be sure,” he said at last, when the swallowing was finally done. “I wanted to look an atheist in the eye one last time.” As he spoke, the elder was staring fixedly into Ulitin’s eyes. His gaze was as tender and consoling as a lover’s.

  “What do you see?” asked Ulitin, hardly daring to breathe.

  “Fear,” said Father Amvrosy. With that he closed his eyes. After a moment he murmured something that sounded like “I’m not afraid.”

  Ulitin felt himself raised and led from the bedroom. “But I am a believer!” he cried in sudden protest, and the outburst did not seem to surprise anyone.

  BACK IN THE room with the wealthy devout, Ulitin guiltily avoided the eyes of the girl in the wheelchair. He felt as though there was something between them, and he had betrayed her.

  Her father accosted him. “Did you mention Lana to the elder? Did you tell him he has to see her?”

  Ulitin shook his head.

  Brother Innokentiy came in. The smile that occupied his lips now transcended all the others Ulitin had seen there. “Father Amvrosy is at peace,” he called, his voice cracking with emotion.

  All around Ulitin people fell to their knees and began praying. Yevgeny Nikolaevich Ulitin did the same. The girl in the wheelchair was weeping.

  23

  Jupiter’s Bastards

  IS IT TRUE?” Nikodim Fomich closed the door to Porfiry’s chambers but seemed unwilling to advance into the room. He was waiting on Porfiry’s reply.

  Porfiry blew out a funnel of smoke and flicked the ash from his cigarette. “Is what true?” He looked up from the papers he was studying and hyperblinked.

  “Liputin’s latest insanity?”

  Porfiry handed the chief superintendent a letter bearing the crest of the prokuror’s office. “I’m to hand over the file relating to the deaths under suspicious circumstances of Stepan Sergeyevich Goryanchikov, Boris Borisovich Kutuzov, and Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov to Prokuror Yaroslav Nikolaevich Liputin. He will take over the handling of the case personally. I am expecting his high excellency at any moment.”

  Nikodim Fomich read the note and threw it down on Porfiry’s desk. “But this is absurd. ‘Serious procedural irregularities.’ ‘Misinterpretation and misreporting of medical evidence.’ You told him exactly what Pervoyedov had found. He chose to ignore it.”

  “The office of the prokuror is never wrong.”

  “But the man’s an idiot. He doesn’t stand a chance of solving the case.”

  “I think he believes that I have already solved it.”

  “And have you?”

  Porfiry shrugged. “I have some theories. I have narrowed down the field of suspects.”

  “To how many?”

  Porfiry’s eyes rolled upward as he counted in his head. “About six.”

  “That’s hardly narrowing the field, Porfiry Petrovich.”

  “Or seven.”

  “Well, I must say, you seem to be taking it very calmly.” Nikodim Fomich was indignant.

  “What can I do about it?”

  “You can appeal.”

  Porfiry smiled weakly. “I must accept my fate. That’s the Russian way, is it not?”

  “No, it isn’t,” objected Nikodim Fomich petulantly. “I don’t believe stoicism is a true Russian trait at all. I deplore it!”

  “I must do all I can to help Prokuror Liputin uncover the identity of the murderer. That’s the important thing now. My own personal disappointment is irrelevant.” After a moment, Porfiry added, “Whoever is responsible for these deaths is certainly capable of killing again.”

  “Exactly! That’s why you must stay on the case until it’s solved.”

  The door opened suddenly. “Prokuror Liputin is here to see you,” said the chief clerk, Zamyotov. He made no attempt to mask his pleasure.

  Now the prokuror himself strode into the room. Liputin didn’t acknowledge Nikodim Fomich and dismissed Zamy
otov with a curt nod. “Porfiry Petrovich, you have the file I requested?” He held out a hand.

  “Of course, your excellency.” Porfiry gathered together the papers on his desk and placed them in a cardboard wallet that he handed to Liputin.

  “You will wait until I have studied these papers, then you will answer any questions I put to you. Then you will consider yourself suspended until further notice.”

  “Yaroslav Nikolaevich!” cried Nikodim Fomich. “I really must protest. This is hardly just—or sensible.”

  Liputin still refused to look in Nikodim Fomich’s direction. His head was bowed as he scanned the contents of the file. “Good day, Nikodim Fomich. Your presence is not required here. I trust you have police matters to attend to.”

  “I shall be entering a formal appeal on Porfiry Petrovich’s behalf.”

  “Which I shall look forward to processing.” The corner of Liputin’s mouth went into spasm.

  Porfiry Petrovich released his friend from the room with a gentle smile.

  THEprokurorTOOK over Porfiry’s desk. Every now and then, for instance when he was studying the pornographic photographs found in Govorov’s apartment, he would look across disapprovingly at Porfiry, as if he were responsible. Porfiry was sitting on the brown fake-leather sofa, chain-smoking. Occasionally the prokuror seemed about to say something but always thought better of it. At last he placed the final piece of paper, the line written by Anna Alexandrovna, back into the file and sat back in Porfiry’s chair.

  His eyes were fixed on Porfiry, who sat up expectantly and stubbed out the cigarette he was smoking in the crystal ashtray that was resting on the arm of the sofa.

  “So, Porfiry Petrovich,” began Liputin, “you think that Anna Alexandrovna is the murderer? Is that really likely? A woman? And a woman of her class too? Do you not think she would be restrained by modesty and a sense of shame?”