Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Happy, now?’ said Peter Ivanovich, looking at Dmitri.

  ‘Not very.’ Something was troubling him. In what the guard had said. He dismissed it for the moment. ‘This was the convoy, was it?’ he said to Stenka. The soldier nodded. ‘That means she’s halfway to Siberia by now. How am I going to question her?’

  ‘Not very easily,’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘Unless you care to go after her.’

  Novikov gave a great guffaw.

  ‘That’s a good one!’ he said, nudging Stenka. The soldier, not entirely understanding, but dutiful, joined in.

  Peter Ivanovich allowed himself a slight smile.

  ‘I’m afraid our young colleague is one for the psychological,’ he said.

  ‘Psychological, Your Excellency?’

  ‘It’s the latest fashion in the Law Schools. These days, Grigori Romanovich, we mustn’t just look at the facts, we must look at the motives behind the facts.’

  ‘It’s getting a bit deep for me, sir.’

  ‘Me, too. If a dog bites a man, why ask for its motive?’

  ‘Why, indeed, Your Excellency?’ said Novikov, guffawing again.

  ‘Not only motives,’ said Dmitri, ‘but circumstances.’

  It was coming to him now. Not just in what Stenka had said, but in what the women at the tannery had said.

  ‘Ah, circumstances!’ said Peter Ivanovich.

  ‘What circumstances are there, then, Dmitri Alexandrovich?’ said Novikov, mock innocently. ‘Finding out how it is that someone can’t read someone else’s writing?’

  He gave Peter Ivanovich a wink. The Presiding Judge responded with a thin little smile.

  ‘Finding out who was actually put on the convoy,’ said Dmitri. He turned to Stenka. ‘A real Russian beauty, you said?’

  ‘That’s right, Your Honour.’

  ‘Fair?’

  ‘As straw in summer.’

  ‘A Tatar?’

  ‘Tatar?’

  ‘Marfa Nikolaevna was Tatar.’

  ‘This girl was no Tatar,’ said Stenka uneasily.

  ‘What are you saying?’ said Peter Ivanovich sharply.

  ‘Not saying; wondering,’ said Dmitri. ‘Whether the right woman was put on the cart.’

  Whereas the woman put on the cart had been fair, almost silvery blonde in the characteristically North Russian way, Marfa Nikolaevna, they eventually established, was dark. It took them some time because although she had been tried in the Court House, she had not been tried in a regular court. As a political prisoner, she had appeared before a Special Tribunal of the Ministry of the Interior. The Ministry held its Tribunals in the same building as the ordinary Law Courts, but this was purely for convenience and the two administrations were quite separate. Peter Ivanovich could not, then, go directly to the Clerk of the Courts as he would otherwise have done, nor could he have an informal word with the lawyers involved since, despite the reforms of the eighties, out in the provinces political prisoners were not legally represented. Peter Ivanovich certainly knew the officer who had presided over the Tribunal that day – they met socially – but as a matter of protocol they never discussed each other’s affairs. Judges in Russia, following the assassination of Tsar Alexander, had learned discretion.

  It was with a certain diffidence, therefore, that Peter Ivanovich inquired about Marfa Nikolaevna.

  ‘All I need to know about is her looks,’ he said to Porfiri Porfirovich, the officer who had chaired the Tribunal on the day that Marfa Nikolaevna had been sentenced.

  ‘Her looks?’ said Porfiri Porfirovich incredulously.

  ‘Yes. Whether, for instance, she is fair or dark?’

  ‘Dark,’ said Porfiri. ‘But – ’

  ‘A real Russian beauty?’

  ‘Hardly. A Tatar.’

  ‘I was afraid so,’ said Peter Ivanovich, sighing heavily.

  ‘What is this?’ said Porfiri.

  ‘A possible case of…’ Peter Ivanovich didn’t know what it was a possible case of. ‘Mistaken identity,’ he tried.

  Porfiri Porfirovich’s eyebrows shot up.

  ‘On our part,’ said Peter Ivanovich hastily. ‘Or, at least, not on our part; possibly on the part of the Convoy Administration.’

  But the Convoy Administration, too, came under the Ministry of the Interior and Porfiri Porfirovich’s eyebrows stayed raised.

  ‘Or, most likely of all,’ said Peter Ivanovich, adapting with the speed born of long years in the Russian judicial system, ‘it simply fell between stools.’

  ‘What fell between stools?’

  ‘This – this confusion.’

  ‘I can see that you are confused, Peter Ivanovich,’ said Porfiri sharply; ‘but over what?’

  Peter Ivanovich was forced to tell him all.

  ‘The trouble is,’ he concluded, ‘the Marfa Nikolaevna who was sentenced was dark, while the Marfa Nikolaevna who got on to the cart was fair. And definitely not a Tatar.’

  ‘Simple,’ said Porfiri Porfirovich. ‘The sergeant gave him the wrong name.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter Ivanovich unhappily, ‘that’s what we thought. At first. But then we checked. There were only five women that day in the political cart and the soldier, Stenka, remembers them all. None of them were Tatar. Three of them were in their fifties, whereas this Shumin woman was – ’

  ‘In her thirties.’

  ‘Exactly. And of the other two, one was nursing a baby and the other was, well, blonde in the Russian style. So where is the real Marfa Nikolaevna?’

  ‘In the prison. She must have been put in the wrong cart.’

  ‘We have been to the prison. We have checked all the prisoners who were readmitted that day. None of them’, said Peter Ivanovich, ‘is Marfa Nikolaevna.’

  Porfiri Porfirovich frowned.

  ‘Are you sure? Quite sure? Who did the checking? You can’t rely on the prison officers.’

  ‘Novikov,’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘He went over there and checked them personally.’

  ‘Novikov’s a fool,’ said Porfiri dismissively.

  ‘I sent young Kameron with him. You know, the new Examining Magistrate. You can say a lot about young Kameron, I know,’ said Peter Ivanovich quickly, as Porfiri opened his mouth, ‘but what you can’t say is that he isn’t bright.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ said Porfiri. ‘That means she must have been in our cart. The soldier’s simply got it wrong.’

  ‘I hope so. But, um, you wouldn’t care to check, would you, Porfiri Porfirovich? Because the only alternative, if she’s not in the prison and she’s not with the convoy, is that – ’

  ‘She’s escaped. Escaped?’

  Porfiri sprang to his feet.

  ‘Escaped?’

  Peter Ivanovich nodded unhappily.

  ‘From the Court House at Kursk?’

  Peter Ivanovich nodded even more unhappily.

  ‘Outrageous!’

  ‘And improbable,’ said Peter Ivanovich swiftly. ‘Quite improbable! There will be some other explanation, I am sure. But – you will check, Porfiri Porfirovich?’

  Porfiri pulled a writing pad towards him.

  ‘I’ll check, all right!’ he said. ‘And if – ’ He swore terribly. ‘The trouble is’, he said, ‘that God knows where they have got to by now. Things have speeded up, Peter Ivanovich, in the last year or two, now that we can use the train. We get them to Moscow and after that it’s train all the way to Perm. How many days is it since the cart left? We might just do it.’

  He picked up the bell on his desk and rang it vigorously.

  ‘We’re going to have to get on with this,’ he said. ‘No hanging around. If something has gone wrong – My God! Escaped! From the Court House at Kursk! This is terrible!’

  ‘It’s even worse,’ said Peter Ivanovich gloomily. ‘Because if she’s not gone, someone else has. And I have a nasty feeling that …’

  He told Porfiri Porfirovich about Anna Semeonova.

  ‘You damned fool!’ shouted Porfiri.
‘You’ve sent the wrong woman to Siberia!’

  Which was hardly fair, Peter Ivanovich told himself as he walked back to his office, since if anyone had sent anyone to Siberia it was clearly Porfiri Porfirovich. He had an uneasy feeling, though, that when blame was finally attached, it would not be to the Ministry of the Interior. Meanwhile, there was the girl herself to be considered: Anna Semeonova, that was, not this wretched Shumin woman, who, from what Dmitri had said, seemed to have been asking for trouble anyway. The more Peter Ivanovich thought about the matter, the more convinced he became that Dmitri was right. If Marfa Nikolaevna had not been dispatched to Siberia, then somebody else had; and from the soldier’s description – young, fair, ‘a real Russian beauty’ – it sounded very much as if it was Anna Semeonova. If so, goodness knows what was happening to her now. How she, a young girl of a sheltered, respectable family, would respond it was frightful to think. How her father, a man who had powerful friends, would respond, Peter Ivanovich had all too good an idea.

  Among the other depressing things jostling in his mind as he walked back to his office was the prospect of having to tell Semeonov what had happened to his daughter. How on earth did you do a thing like that? ‘Oh, by the way, Semeonov, about your daughter: we’ve worked out what must have happened. A silly mistake! Frightfully sorry, old man, but we’ve sent her to Siberia!’ The sheer idea was enough to start Peter Ivanovich thinking desperately about his pension. No one who had climbed as far up the ladder as he had done could be without influential friends. Peter Ivanovich now began hastily to review them, wondering which of them it would be best to turn to in the present emergency.

  But wasn’t he being premature? Wasn’t it too early to tell the Semeonovs anything just yet? After all, he still wasn’t sure. Why not wait until he was sure? To do otherwise might be merely to worry the parents unnecessarily. All might yet be well. It might all be just a silly mistake.

  Not that mistake; a different one. Please God, prayed Peter Ivanovich, with a fervency hitherto unsuspected in him, let it all be a mistake!

  And someone else’s, he added.

  But how on earth had it all happened? How could the girl have got herself into this situation? She must have been standing in the yard and one of the guards had naturally thought –

  She would have protested, of course, but –

  The fact was, she ought not to have been in the yard at all. He had said that all along. It wasn’t a fit place for a decent young girl. Everyone knew that. No one, surely, needed telling? If you went there and got involved in something unpleasant, you had only yourself to blame. Although, of course, in this case …

  His thoughts were just coming round to Dmitri when he turned the corner and saw the conceited young puppy standing at the door of his room.

  ‘I’ve had a thought,’ said Dmitri unceremoniously.

  Peter Ivanovich was just about to ask that he be spared when he remembered that it was Dmitri, after all, who had hit on the possibility that the wrong woman had been transported.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, with ill grace. His head was beginning to throb painfully. ‘What was your thought?’ he asked, forcing himself to make an effort.

  ‘It’s about the girl,’ said Dmitri. ‘Not Anna Semeonova, the other one.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Surely the man could see that his head was splitting?

  ‘If what we’re supposing is correct,’ said Dmitri, ‘then we know where Anna Semeonova is. But where is Marfa Nikolaevna?’

  ‘Somewhere else in the convoy.’

  ‘But surely not. First, because there was only one convoy cart for women that day and we’ve checked the people in it and none of them was her. Second, because if she was there, she would be under somebody else’s name and there would be a person left over.’

  Peter Ivanovich groaned and pressed his hand to his head.

  ‘A migraine,’ he said. ‘Never mind; continue.’

  Dmitri had not the slightest intention of minding. He continued:

  ‘Since nobody was left over, however, someone must have removed themselves, literally, from the equation. As Anna Semeonova came into the yard, someone else must have gone out.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Quite so,’ murmured Peter Ivanovich. Had the man no feeling?

  ‘Marfa Nikolaevna, of course.’

  ‘Of course. Of course?’ said Peter Ivanovich, waking up.

  ‘And I think I know’, said Dmitri triumphantly, ‘where she went.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes. Straight out of the front door.’

  ‘Oh, come!’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘We checked with the porters, remember? And they swore – ’

  ‘That Anna Semeonova had not gone out. Anna Semeonova,’ said Dmitri with emphasis; ‘not Marfa Nikolaevna.’

  ‘Well – ’

  ‘And they did, in fact, remember that another woman had left the building. A Tatar.’

  Peter Ivanovich sat stunned.

  ‘You mean …?’

  ‘That Marfa Nikolaevna walked out of the front door, a free woman; while Anna Semeonova left from the back door – in a prison cart!’

  ‘Impossible!’ said Novikov. ‘Prisoners are under guard all the time. From the moment they leave the dock to the moment they are put on the cart. And then afterwards all the time until they’re either back in the prison or with the convoy. This Marfa Nikolaevna couldn’t just walk out. Ridiculous!’

  ‘She was seen by the porters.’

  ‘They made a mistake.’

  ‘Another one?’ said Peter Ivanovich wearily. He was beginning to feel past caring. ‘There do seem to be a lot of them about.’

  ‘With all due respect, Peter Ivanovich, too much weight must not be placed on a single glimpse!’

  ‘We’re placing quite a lot of weight on Stenka’s single glimpse,’ said Dmitri.

  ‘That was not a glimpse,’ retorted the Chief of Police. ‘That was a studied examination.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Peter Ivanovich, ‘the soldiers have nothing better to do than examine the female prisoners.’

  ‘At least it means that they’re watching them, Your Excellency,’ said Novikov, beginning to perspire. ‘So it makes it even more unlikely that one of them would have just … just walked off.’

  ‘They’re under guard all the time, are they?’ asked Dmitri.

  ‘From the moment they leave the dock.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ve got that. But all the time? What happens if they want to have a pee?’

  ‘How the hell do I know?’ said Novikov, patience snapping. He pulled himself together and looked at Peter Ivanovich. ‘Your Excellency, that is not a question one gentleman should ask of another!’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ said Peter Ivanovich, placing his pounding head between his hands.

  ‘Well, if you don’t know, who would know?’ demanded Dmitri.

  ‘The soldiers in the yard, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, let’s go and ask them.’

  ‘Your Excellency – ’ Novikov appealed to the Presiding Judge.

  ‘Oh, go and ask them!’

  It couldn’t get worse. He could imagine what people would say. His colleagues: ‘And then he sent the Chief of Police to find out how the women peed! Well, really!’ But Peter Ivanovich was past caring.

  ‘Go on!’

  There were some soldiers in the yard. While the courts were in session and until the prisoners started coming back down again they had nothing to do. They were standing around smoking.

  Dmitri went up to them.

  ‘What happens when the prisoners want to relieve themselves?’

  ‘Relieve?’

  ‘Pee.’

  The soldiers looked puzzled.

  ‘They get on with it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘In the yard?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where they stand?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘The women too?’

  The so
ldiers looked at each other.

  ‘You might let them go to one side,’ they conceded.

  ‘Out of sight?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t say that. Just – a bit away. Over against the wall.’

  ‘Yes, over against the wall.’

  ‘You heard that?’ said Novikov. ‘Not out of sight.’

  ‘Suppose they were over against the wall and something happened to distract you, another party of prisoners arrived, say: would it be possible for them to slip away?’

  ‘Where would they slip?’

  ‘Through the door,’ said Dmitri. ‘That door there, say,’ pointing at the door to which he and Anna Semeonova had come that ill-fated day.

  ‘Well, it’s possible, I suppose, but – ’

  ‘It’s impossible, Dmitri Alexandrovich, absolutely impossible!’ said Novikov firmly. ‘Remember the situation that day: very few women prisoners. They’d have been under the guard’s eye all the time. Now I know what you think of young Stenka. He said what he shouldn’t have done and perhaps he did what he shouldn’t have done; but the one thing you can’t say is that he wasn’t looking at them!’

  ‘He was looking at Anna Semeonova,’ said Dmitri, ‘and while he was looking at her, Marfa Nikolaevna was sloping off.’

  Porfiri Porfirovich listened in silence. When the Presiding Judge had finished, he paused for a moment and then said:

  ‘So what you’ve done is to let a noted woman terrorist walk free and an innocent young girl be deported to Siberia?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ said Peter Ivanovich.

  ‘Noted woman terrorist?’ said Dmitri.

  ‘If she wasn’t one already,’ said Porfiri Porfirovich, ‘she’s probably become one by now!’

  ‘It’s not her, with all respect, that I’m worried about,’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘It’s Anna Semeonova.’

  ‘A sensitive young girl,’ said Porfiri, ‘cast among some of the most hardened and brutalized people imaginable!’

  Peter Ivanovich blenched.