by R. N. Morris
‘Pokrovsky’s tenement? Where is that, if you please?’
‘You will find it where Yekateringofsky Prospekt meets Voznesensky Prospekt, close to the Yekaterininsky Canal. But I would not go there if I were you.’
‘And why not, pray?’
‘There is cholera there.’
Porfiry nodded slowly as he watched the politseisky cover Ferfichkin’s face.
4
The widow Dobroselova
The morning’s storm, now spent, had swelled the waters of the Yekaterininsky Canal, but contrary to Virginsky’s prediction the Ditch had not yet flooded. Churned by the heavy downpour, the murky darkness of its depths had risen to the surface. The stench that haunted the canal’s twisting course was given fresh virulence.
Virginsky snarled in distaste as he closed the door of the police brougham. Lara Olsufevna looked out at him, self-contained, watchful and vindicated. He shouted to the driver and she was borne away with a jolt. She seemed to shake her head disapprovingly, or warningly perhaps, as he watched her go.
Porfiry looked up at the high dark mass shouldering out the sun. Pokrovsky’s tenement was home to countless souls and yet there was nothing welcoming about it. It seemed more like a prison than a place of refuge. The fabric of the building was decayed and dirty; it was impossible to say how many summers ago it had last been repaired. There were gaps in the masonry around the windows wide enough to slide a hand into. The windows themselves were filthy and broken, in places boarded up. The woodwork had the soft, lustreless look of rotten timber.
‘It has the air of defeat to it, does it not?’ said Porfiry.
‘Of disease, more like.’
‘Well yes. That we know.’ Porfiry glanced briefly at his companion. ‘It troubles you to go inside?’
Virginsky considered Porfiry’s question. ‘No, sir. It angers me. Shall I tell you what is a crime, Porfiry Petrovich? That people in this city are dying of the cholera when the cause of the disease has been understood for over ten years. I’m not afraid of going into this building. I know perfectly well that I can’t contract the disease unless I drink the same water as these poor wretches must. Water that is contaminated with faecal matter. Just as the cause is understood, so too is the means of prevention.’
Porfiry listened with a distracted air. ‘That is . . . interesting,’ he said after a moment, but without conviction.
‘You did not hear a word I said!’
‘On the contrary,’ said Porfiry, gazing searchingly into Virginsky’s face. ‘Your words have made a very great impression on me indeed.’
They entered the dim passageway that led to the courtyard of the building. With each step the stink grew stronger. Both men involuntarily held their breath but felt the teeming air work on their eyes. A door set in one wall of the passageway bore a crudely painted cross.
Porfiry reached out towards the door, hesitating for a moment as he sought Virginsky’s eye.
‘Can we wonder that those who are forced to live in these conditions are driven to criminality?’ pressed Virginsky.
Porfiry waited in silence with his hand hovering near the door.
‘Porfiry Petrovich, have you nothing to say?’
Porfiry finally allowed his hand to touch the door and pull it open. The door’s whine of complaint stood for his answer.
There was no relief from the foul atmosphere inside. They waited for a moment, listening, tensed in expectation. It was unnaturally quiet, given the many lives that the building must have housed. But there was something audible, or perceptible in some way, a kind of pulse to the air. As they strained to attune their senses to it, the coarser sound of footsteps overlapping on the stairs above intruded. The two men looked up. The footsteps were erratic: at times slow and laboured, at other times progressing in hurried bursts. Occasionally, there would be a break altogether, usually accompanied by a heavy metallic clank. Then a second, lighter, clank would precede the continuation of the footsteps.
At last the person on the stairs came into view, a girl who appeared to be about eleven, although her head seemed as large as an adult’s. Her clothes were little better than rags. Her scrawny arms were bent back on themselves by the weight of a tin pail. The girl halted on the landing above Porfiry and Virginsky and let the bucket drop on to the boards, releasing the handle. Even in her oversized head, her eyes appeared enormous. They swivelled to take in the two men looking up at her. She wiped her brow with the side of her wrist, then patiently picked up the bucket again and resumed her descent.
They knew the contents of the bucket before they saw them.
‘Dear God,’ cried Porfiry, lifting a hand to his face. He tried to avert his eyes but the fascination of that dark swill proved too great. Almost too late he flinched away, swallowing back the quickly rising gorge. The two men parted to let the girl through. Porfiry heard a fast trickle of liquid on the floor. He looked down to see the thin, filthy trail marking where she had been.
‘Where are you going with that, daughter?’ said Virginsky.
‘To the canal.’
‘Are there no closets here?’ asked Porfiry.
‘In the yard.’
‘Then why don’t people use them?’
‘They are too sick, sir. They cannot manage the stairs and it comes on them sudden. They use chamber pots. We empty the chamber pots into the bucket. And when the bucket is full we take it to the canal.’
‘It makes no difference anyhow,’ said Virginsky. ‘The owners of these buildings construct waste pipes straight into the canals.’
‘How many sick do you have here?’ asked Porfiry.
‘I don’t know, sir. In my family, there are three.’
‘I am sorry.’ Porfiry held the door open for her and waited for her to return. Her step was shuffling and weary now. She held the empty bucket in one hand; fortunately for Porfiry, it was the hand furthest from him. He expected her to avert her gaze too, out of embarrassment, or even shame. But she stared straight at him. Her expression was dulled, however: not unabashed, just empty. He felt that if he had struck that face or cradled it, it would have been all the same to her.
‘My child.’
She halted and absorbed his gaze.
‘We are looking for the Gorshkovs. They live with the widow Dobroselova. Do you know where that is?’
The girl nodded. ‘Widow Dobroselova lives in the basement.’
‘The basement? I see. Thank you.’ Porfiry’s slow nod released her.
‘It is no wonder they lost six children,’ said Virginsky, his feet splashing in water. He had reached the bottom of the steps to the cellar, which were at the front of the building, outside.
Porfiry felt the water rise above his shoes and lap his ankles. Looking down he saw a cloudy pool about two inches deep. It seemed the daylight hung back, unwilling to penetrate the surface of the water.
‘The cesspit has overflowed.’ Virginsky turned his grimace away from Porfiry.
‘It would seem so.’ Porfiry’s eye skimmed along the murky water. Black tide-marks on the walls indicated that there had been deeper floods. The door to the basement stood open.
‘Through there?’ asked Virginsky.
‘There is nowhere else to go,’ answered Porfiry, bemused; however, he understood the reluctance that Virginsky’s question expressed.
They entered a long open room. Light seeped weakly through high windows, and where it did not reach there was a shadowed gloom, unrelieved by any candle flame or lantern. Arched slabs of darkness were dimly discernible, suggesting that the basement extended into labyrinthine depths beyond. A sound, the amplification of the pulse they had noticed when they first entered the building, echoed somewhere in the unseen periphery, together with the steady dripping, and occasional stirring, of moisture. As their eyes adapted, it was a shock to make out first the odd pieces of broken furniture and then the people positioned amongst them, lives discarded and consigned to this cellar.
An old woman, dressed in black,
stared up at them with clouded, unblinking eyes. Her skirts were soaked in the water that surrounded her seat. She was motionless. Her face possessed a strangely beatific expression.
‘Good day, Grandmother,’ said Porfiry. His voice reverberated, as if it were startled by itself. She did not react to his greeting. So fixed was her stare that he thought for a moment that she was dead, but a girlish giggle warbled unexpectedly in her throat. ‘Are you the widow Dobroselova, by any chance?’
This time the girlish giggle came out strangled and distorted. It could have been intended to express amusement, but there was a mechanical emptiness to it that horrified.
‘She may be deaf,’ said Virginsky. ‘As well as blind.’
‘Widow Dobroselova?’ shouted Porfiry. The whole cellar rang with his voice.
The old woman’s mouth stretched open revealing a few cherished remnants of teeth. ‘Is that you, Dobroselov?’
‘My name is Porfiry Petrovich.’
‘Oh, Dobroselov!’ She chuckled indulgently. Her misty eyes opened wide on nothing. ‘You and your games.’
‘I assure you, madam, I am Porfiry Petrovich and I am a magistrate. We are looking for the factory worker Gorshkov. It is our understanding that he lives in the basement here.’
‘Get away with you, Dobroselov!’ The old woman gave a flick of the wrist.
Porfiry straightened up and looked at Virginsky.
‘She is . . . mad?’ asked the younger man tentatively.
‘Can you blame her?’ murmured Porfiry. He surveyed the rest of the room and the other human figures in it, bodies curled around their misery on bare mattresses, or sitting slumped over empty tables. He estimated that there were about twenty people visible, though he sensed the presence of many more hidden in the shadows at the edges, beyond the arches. Undoubtedly, only the oldest and most infirm would remain in the flooded cellar when the day outside was dry and warm.
The pulsating sound continued, identifiable now as weeping. It seemed to be all around them.
An old man sitting at a table lifted his head from sprawled arms and looked at them. His face was gaunt and sallow, but his gaze was firm, hostile even. Dressed in the overalls of a labourer, he seemed worn out by the effort of sitting up. His head was massive on puny shoulders. ‘What do you want with Gorshkov?’ The voice that addressed them was harsh-edged, as if every word was dredged from a corrosive pool of bitterness.
‘We are magistrates,’ said Porfiry. ‘If you know where Gorshkov is, it is your duty to tell us.’
‘Oh, I know where he is,’ said the old man, wheezing out a dry, empty laughter.
‘Where then?’
‘You just missed him. They came for him this morning.’
‘Who came for him?’
‘Your lot. The police. And a doctor.’
‘I see. And why was that?’
‘He was raving. Worse than raving. He had a knife. Threatened to kill anyone who came near. He had his wife, Nadezhda, by the throat. We all thought he was going to kill her. Then at the last minute he turned the knife on himself. Slashed his own neck. They carted him off then.’
‘Was he dead?’
‘The doctor patched him up. Mind you, he fell bleeding in the water here, so he might die yet.’
‘Where did they take him?’
‘Where do they take all the mad ones?’
‘To the house at the eleventh verst,’ said Virginsky, in something like wonder.
The old man nodded.
‘I presume it was the loss of his children that drove him mad?’ said Porfiry.
‘His moods were never good.’
‘Where is his wife now?’
The old man gestured towards the arched darkness. ‘She’s not long for this world,’ he said. ‘It was out of mercy that Gorshkov meant to kill her.’ He then allowed his head to slump down on his arms once more.
They made their way kicking through the water in the direction he had indicated. The sound of weeping became more focused and it seemed that they were moving towards its source.
Porfiry’s hand reached up and touched the brickwork of the arch as he stooped to pass beneath it. He felt a repulsive cold clamminess and withdrew his hand immediately, wondering what had possessed him to touch it in the first place.
In the thickened gloom he could just make out a bundled form on the bed, from which the jagged sobs emanated. The smell in this part of the basement was particularly foul.
‘Nadezhda?’
The bundle stirred. A tremulous moan came from it.
‘Is there no light in here?’ asked Porfiry gently.
There was a more agitated movement from the bed; limbs broke away from the bundle and thrashed about.
‘Not even a candle?’
The moan became a wail. ‘No candle for my baby!’
‘There there, Nadezhda. I will light a candle for your baby. I will go to St Isaac’s Cathedral and light a candle for her soul. What was she called?’ As he spoke, Porfiry reached into a pocket with one hand.
‘Anastasya.’
‘A beautiful name.’ A match flared in Porfiry’s hand. ‘There. For Anastasya.’ In the fragile glow he saw the woman’s agonised face, her mouth locked in a grimace of pain. He saw her body crumple and fold as she drew her legs up around the pain. The dark cast of her flesh, as though bruised from a lifetime of beatings, was clearly visible. He held the dying match to his own face, allowing her to see the smile which he hoped was reassuring. He believed he saw her face relax, if only for a moment.
‘Anastasya Filippovna,’ said Nadezhda.
‘Your husband is Filipp Gorshkov?’
‘Filya!’ The name was uttered as a cry of despair as the match expired. ‘Filya is gone. I am alone. I have been left to die alone.’
‘You’re not alone, Nadya. I am here with you.’ Porfiry bent down and reached into the darkness. He found a hand, in which was clasped an object made of soft, padded fabric. He searched for the other hand. It was as damp as the wall he had touched, but feverishly hot. He wondered if it was the same impulse in operation: the need to know, rather than the desire to console.
‘She should be in a hospital,’ said Virginsky at his back.
‘No!’ cried Nadezhda.
‘It’s all right, Nadya,’ said Porfiry, squeezing her hand gently.
She murmured something, the words inaudible. Her eyes closed and she drifted away from them, the tension falling out of her body. Porfiry continued holding her hand. ‘I wonder, has any doctor been in here?’
‘I very much doubt it,’ said Virginsky.
‘The thought of hospital inspires terror in her. In her mind, it is not a place one returns from.’
‘One thing’s for certain. She will not last long here.’
Porfiry leant forward decisively. ‘You will help me. We will take her to the Obukhovsky Hospital. Dr Pervoyedov will see her.’
‘And what of all the others who are dying in this building, Porfiry Petrovich? And those dying in other buildings? How will your sentimental gesture help them?’
‘But to do nothing in the face of her suffering - is that what you advocate?’
‘Far from it, as you well know. I advocate action, urgent and comprehensive action. Coming here, seeing this, you must surely see that it is necessary. And as you have said yourself, Porfiry Petrovich, that which is necessary can only be right.’
‘But the action you advocate will not save her.’
‘Porfiry Petrovich, I fear nothing may save her.’
Porfiry was silent for a moment. ‘Come, help me lift her,’ he said at last. He could not interpret Virginsky’s silence in the darkness.
They lifted her by the armpits. As they peeled her body from the bed, there was a sound like a wheel turning in a bog. They raised her to a seated position and swung her arms around their shoulders.
‘On the count of three,’ said Porfiry. They braced themselves as they reached the final number, only to discover that the woman had bar
ely any weight at all. She almost flew from the bed. She moaned and tossed her head.
‘It’s all right, Nadya,’ soothed Porfiry.
They bent to walk her through the arch, her feet dragging in the flood water. In the comparative light of the open room, Porfiry saw that her feet were bare. He also saw that the object she clutched was an ancient and grubby rag doll.
The old man at the table raised his head to watch them, then lowered it again without comment, overwhelmed by passivity. Nadezhda Gorshkova’s body tensed between them. A moment later it was limp. Her head lolled. Her hand opened, dropping the rag doll into the mired water. Virginsky and Porfiry halted and looked at the woman’s face. Her mouth and eyes were open. She was no longer weeping or moaning. She made no sound at all.