by R. N. Morris
The maid’s departure was liberating. Raisa and Grisha devoured the chocolates in an absorbed frenzy of consumption.
Raisa stared at the box, empty now apart from one remaining chocolate. It shamed and depressed her to look at it. To leave it was almost worse than to eat them all: the solitary chocolate exposed her weakness. But her self-disgust was becoming physical.
All she could taste now was the bitterness. She looked at her son. His expression was uncertain, almost fearful.
‘Ho-cla!’ he said, seemingly unable to form the word correctly.
The tingling had spread from her throat over the whole of her mouth, even numbing her lips and tongue. She felt that if she tried to speak, she wouldn’t be able to. She began to be aware of a hot, parched sensation. She sipped her tea, but couldn’t taste it.
Raisa noticed the look of panic on her son’s face. His hands went to his throat. ‘Grisha? Are you all right?’
He gasped harshly, trying to expel his fear, the flesh of his soft palate grating in a desperate hawking.
Raisa felt the tingling intensify into a fire in the flesh of her mouth and throat, as a numbness spread through her chest and out from her stomach. Her heart began to palpitate wildly.
A sudden, sharp cry from Grisha. He jumped up. The wrought-iron chair behind him fell over. The crash of the chair was strangely distant and muffled. He clutched one hand to his mouth. The fist of the other was pummelling his belly.
A thick, dark liquid seeped through his fingers. He took his hand away. His body shook in a violent convulsion that ended in a loud retch. His neat pages were covered in a viscous murky puddle.
Grisha turned a distraught face on his mother. For a moment, there was an edge of outrage to it, as when any child seeks out its parent to explain the unfairness of the world. But that gave way to simple fear.
‘Oh, Grisha,’ began Raisa, stretching out a consoling hand. But the nausea hit her now. A systemic convulsion took hold of her and her own vomit chased the words out of her mouth.
A high-pitched keening came from somewhere. It seemed to answer the pain Raisa was feeling, but she was not aware of making the sound: it was as though something inside her was being stretched and twisted and squeezed by iron hands.
And where was Grisha now? The table and the chairs on the veranda swam and merged, and somewhere in this swirl of detail was her son. Her eye picked out the discarded ribbon of the chocolates. Then she was aware of a fist beating down upon something solid and smooth.
Raisa’s heart now felt as though it had been filled with mercury, her pulse laboured and erratic. Her breathing came unevenly, her lungs no longer certain what was expected of them. She felt a sudden hot weight in her bowels. A liquid gurgling came from Grisha.
‘Mama!’ Her vision came and went. She saw eyes, his eyes, fearful and imploring.
‘It’s . . . all . . . right . . . Grisha.’ She was amazed how clearly she was able to think as she recognised the panic in her own voice.
Raisa reached out towards where she believed her son’s hand must be. She could see a hand, but it divided into two hands, which circled one another in her failing vision. She grabbed for one of the hands but pulled only air towards her. Her hand went flying. She had no control over any part of herself. She watched her hand smash into the samovar. Strange, she did not feel its heat, or even its hardness. The samovar toppled over and fell apart with a loud clatter.
Raisa sank to her knees. It was as if a heavy weight was pushing down on her shoulders, and her legs were just not up to it. Grisha now was lying on his back, writhing.
‘Martin!’ It was as if the name was the articulation of her pain. She broke it down and cried it out again, at a higher, fiercer pitch: ‘Marrrr-tin!’
She was aware of the girl, Polina, at the door, tried hard to focus on her. Horror quickly settled in Polina’s face.
‘Get my husband,’ Raisa managed, gripping the table edge. Then, more sharply, as she felt herself unable to control her bowels: ‘Get my husband!’
But Polina did not move. It seemed she could not take her eyes off the spectacle before her. At first she was dumbstruck by it, her mouth gaping idiotically. Then, when finally she stirred herself to act, it was to close her eyes, throw back her head, and scream. She screamed for a long time, a high, steady note, as clear and hard as steel.
2
The new recruit
‘I have come to see Porfiry Petrovich.’
Alexander Grigorevich Zamyotov, chief clerk of the Haymarket District Police Bureau in Stolyarny Lane, remained bent over the case notes he was sorting. He was reluctant to lift his face into the full force of the stench that permeated the receiving hall.
There was a light tapping on the counter. Zamyotov froze, but still did not look up.
‘My dear sir, respectfully, I request . . .’
‘Respectfully?’ Zamyotov slowly straightened himself at last, wincing and blinking through the eye-watering smell. He subjected the clean-shaven young man before him to a withering scrutiny. The young man was crisply turned out in a brand-new civil service uniform, with a single-breasted coat of bottle green. Its nine silver buttons shone in admonition of Zamyotov’s own dull buttons, one of which hung by a loose thread. ‘Is it respectful to hammer thus?’ Zamyotov rapped his knuckles angrily on the counter. ‘Can you not see that I am engaged in important police duties here? I am not at the beck and call of the likes of you, even if you have come straight from the outfitters.’ Zamyotov’s face contorted into an impressive sneer, marred only by a slight pursing of his lips.
‘Forgive me. I was not sure that you had heard me.’
‘I am not deaf.’
‘But you did not acknowledge . . .’
‘I am not here to acknowledge.’
The young man bowed deeply, and held his bow.
‘What are you doing now, you ridiculous individual?’
‘I am waiting. For you to finish your task.’
Zamyotov leant forward to hiss: ‘Get up! Before someone sees you! Think of your uniform, your rank. When you abase yourself, you abase us all.’
The young man obeyed.
‘Name?’ demanded Zamyotov.
‘Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky.’
Zamyotov started. He looked at the young man with new interest. ‘You’ve put on weight.’
Virginsky nodded.
‘And smartened yourself up. Well, well.’
The young man seemed embarrassed by the observation.
‘So,’ said Zamyotov, with a malicious grin, ‘what trouble have you got yourself into this time?’
‘I’m not in trouble. I joined the service. I’ve just graduated from the university.’
‘You graduated? They are giving degrees to madmen now?’
‘Yes, I have a degree in law. I have decided to become an investigating magistrate. My father thought . . .’
‘Your father?’ Zamyotov smirked sarcastically.
‘I thought,’ Virginsky corrected himself, ‘and my father agreed, that it would be good for me to train under Porfiry Petrovich. There is no doubt that he is one of the best investigating magistrates in St Petersburg.’
‘And who is your father? Tsar Alexander the Second?’
‘No. He is former Actual State Councillor Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky, a landowner of the Riga province.’
‘How was a provincial landowner able to pull strings in order to get you the position you had set your heart upon?’
‘It was not a question of pulling strings. Our family has no connections. Or very few.’
‘And yet, you decide something and it comes to pass. If only my career had run along such a track.’
‘My father wrote a letter.’
‘Ah! So that’s it!’
‘To the office of the prokuror.’
‘I see.’
‘Who passed it on to Porfiry Petrovich himself.’
‘I think I remember it now,’ said Zamyotov thoughtfully. ‘You have me to th
ank for putting it before him, you know.’
‘But it is your duty, surely, to pass on all his mail to him?’
‘No, it would be quite wrong of you to think that. If you are to work here you must get such nonsense out of your head. My duty is to exercise my discretion on his behalf. On behalf of them all.’
‘I see.’
‘Another clerk, remembering the disreputable, one might almost say contemptible, figure that you once cut - your matted hair, the parlous state of your clothes, indeed your apparent madness - as I say, another clerk would not have troubled the investigating magistrate with a petition on behalf of such an individual.’
‘Then I am grateful to you.’
‘Are you?’ There was a testing petulance to Zamyotov’s tone.
‘I just said as much.’
‘But you have not said “thank you”.’
‘There’s a terrible smell in here,’ said Virginsky, sniffing the air.
‘Get used to it,’ said Zamyotov. ‘It is the Ditch. It always stinks in the summer. It’s full of excrement.’
‘Will you tell Porfiry Petrovich that I am here to see him? He is expecting me, I believe.’
Zamyotov sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. ‘If he is expecting you, then what are you waiting for? It is not advisable to keep the investigating magistrate waiting on your first day.’
Virginsky frowned in confusion. Zamyotov, now bent once again over his paperwork, waved him away impatiently, towards the door to Porfiry Petrovich’s chambers.
Porfiry Petrovich stood at the window, his back to the room. The window was high, narrow and arched, set in the furthest corner, at the very tip of the iron-shaped block. It overlooked the Yekaterininsky Canal, at the spot where the Kokushkin Bridge spanned it. A cloud of cigarette smoke hung around him; despite it, the underlying smell of raw sewage was just as strong in here as it was out in the main hall. The din of building work outside, the clash and rumble of hammers and falling masonry, was barely muted by the dust-coated panes.
The back of the investigating magistrate’s coat was stretched taut under the pressure of his squat form, which seemed shorter and fatter, even more like a peasant woman’s, than Virginsky remembered it. His head was close-cropped and protruded at the back like a bulbous tuber. His expression, as he turned, was severe, pained even, although there was something comical about the effect of this severity on his round, snub-nosed face. He looked like an angry pug. He was clean-shaven, his skin dark, so that his white eyelashes stood out strikingly, drawing attention to his eyes. If there was a danger of not taking Porfiry Petrovich seriously, it quickly passed when one looked into the penetrating force of those eyes.
For a moment, he seemed not to recognise Virginsky, even to be affronted by his presence, although he had just that moment invited him to enter with a lethargic ‘In.’ A fat black fly buzzed close to Virginsky’s face as he entered. Porfiry Petrovich drew sternly on his cigarette, before his face wrinkled with delight and warmth around the eyes.
‘My dear . . . Pavel Pavlovich!’ Porfiry crossed the room, his short legs moving quickly. He paused to stub out the cigarette in the crystal ashtray on his desk, then took Virginsky’s hand in both of his own. ‘You must forgive me. This heat, and the smell . . . it puts me in the foulest of moods. I had forgotten you were coming. But my, let me look at you! You look well. Indeed, you do!’
‘Thank you.’ Virginsky bowed his head, then lifted it quickly as if remembering himself. He looked Porfiry in the eye almost defiantly.
‘Come in! Sit down! Let us chat!’ Porfiry winced as he perched on the edge of his desk. It was a difficult manoeuvre for him to pull off without appearing comical again. He seemed precarious there, one leg dangling short of the floor. ‘I was delighted to receive the letter from your father, for a number of reasons.’
This was what Virginsky had been waiting for. ‘It’s not what you think.’ He sat stiffly on the sofa - government-issue, upholstered in brown artificial leather - and looked beyond Porfiry at the cracked plaster of the wall. The fly, or perhaps it was another one, was climbing at an angle. It took off. Virginsky tried to track it, but it disappeared against the glare from the window.
‘And what do I think?’ Porfiry crinkled his eyes as if he was going to wink.
‘That I have been reconciled with my father.’
‘Is that not the case?’
‘It may shock you to know, Porfiry Petrovich, that I have become a materialist.’
Porfiry lazily threw up his hands. It was an ironic gesture. ‘Please, you will have to do better than that if you want to shock me.’
‘An egoist, then.’
‘Ah, well . . . what is to be done?’
‘Exactly! I see that you understand me perfectly. You are referring to the novel by Chernyshevsky. Anyone who has read that book will know that any rational man will always act in accordance with that which is in his own best interests. I have consented to behave as though I am reconciled with my father because it is in my own best interests to do so. My father is in a position to help me achieve my ambition. It would be irrational of me to refuse to allow him to do so.’
‘And I’m sure your father is pleased to help you.’
‘That may be. But it is nothing to me. I am not interested in my father’s pleasure.’
‘Ah, but as a materialist, and a rationalist - and indeed as an exemplary egoist - if it pleases your father to be of service to you, then surely it is in your interest to increase your father’s pleasure.’
‘So far as it pertains to his being of service to me, and no further. You will accuse me of hypocrisy, no doubt?’
Porfiry pursed his lips and fluttered his eyelashes in a distinctly womanish gesture.
‘You may be assured that I have accused myself of the same crime,’ continued Virginsky. ‘After considering the matter fully, I realised that I cannot be a hypocrite because I am aware of the hypocrisy involved. A genuine hypocrite is blind to his hypocrisy. He believes that he acts in an upright and indeed honourable way at all times, while in reality pursuing his own interests.’
‘You have acquitted yourself then? Perhaps you should consider a career as a defence lawyer instead? Was that not once your intention? ’
Virginsky half-closed his eyes, acknowledging the jibe. ‘What further acquits me of this charge is the fact that I have not entered upon this course, to become an investigating magistrate, for my own pleasure. But rather for the benefit of society as a whole. The occupation will undoubtedly be a burden for me, involving onerous and unpleasant tasks for little recompense. However, I will persevere with it - have no fear on that front, Porfiry Petrovich. And I will do so, as I say, because of the benefits accruing to society as a whole. In acting in this way I am nevertheless behaving as an egoist. I have realised that the thing that will give me personally the greatest pleasure is for society to be organised along more just lines. Such must be the goal of any sane and rational man. I admit, I do not need a legal background, or a job in the Department of Justice, to assist in bringing this about. I need . . .’ Virginsky broke off and considered his words. He saw Porfiry looking at him with amusement. ‘I need other materials for that. However, the skills of an investigator will help me, at some future date, when society has begun to be organised in the manner I have indicated, to root out and bring to justice those guilty of the greatest crimes against their fellow men. In the meantime it will satisfy me to prosecute ordinary criminals and to acquire the skills I will need, when . . .’ Again Virginsky broke off. ‘When the time comes,’ he concluded, avoiding Porfiry’s eyes now.
‘Well,’ said Porfiry with a broad smile. ‘I hope that it will . . . satisfy you.’ He stressed the word ironically.
Virginsky bristled. ‘You do not take me seriously.’
‘Oh but I do.’
‘Then you are embarrassed by what I have said? You think I am sincere, but foolish?’
‘It is not that either.’ Porfiry Petrovich held Virginsky
’s gaze sternly. ‘May I give you a word of advice, my young friend? Do not ever speak in the way you have just spoken to anyone else here. Indeed, I would advise you to give up such a mode of discourse entirely. You are a servant of His Imperial Majesty now, no longer merely his subject - his servant, understand. You are employed in the Department of Justice. Justice here is not an abstract concept. It is the Tsar’s justice. It is the Tsar’s laws we are upholding. And it is those who break the Tsar’s laws - the Tsar’s enemies in effect - whom we are to hunt down and prosecute. Besides, you are surrounded by policemen. It is most unwise to talk of society being organised along different lines. There are those who would construe it as seditious.’