The Gentle Axe Read online

  Porfiry struck a match and leaned forward to meet its flame. As he inhaled, his blood quickened, and he felt both absorbed by and in control of his mental and perceptual processes.

  The elegant syntax of the article revealed its secrets to him. He experienced it as a dance of ideas, inevitable and inexorable. He frowned, not because he was confused but for the pleasure of frowning. He was acutely self-conscious.

  Something began to impinge on his reverie.

  Salytov.

  He felt the catalyst of cigarette smoke lose its power. His entire being was no longer focused onto the pages of the journal. He was aware now of the green leather surface of the writing desk upon which it rested. And now the rest of the room came back to him, with its government-issue furniture, the imitation leather–covered sofa, the chairs, the escritoire and bookcase, all made from the same tawny wood. But more than anything he felt the looming presence of the doors.

  Salytov was shouting. Again.

  Two doors led off from Porfiry Petrovich’s “chambers,” as this modest room in the Department of the Investigation of Criminal Causes was rather grandly known. One was the door to his private apartments, provided for him, like everything else, by the government. The other was the door to the Haymarket District Police Bureau in Stolyarny Lane.

  The doors symbolized Porfiry’s dilemma. Either he could take his journal and his cigarette and retreat into his inner sanctuary (although it was well past the hour when he was required to make himself available for his official duties as an investigator); or he could step out into the chaos of the receiving area of the police station and confront his colleague Ilya Petrovich Salytov.

  Porfiry ground the stub of his cigarette into a crystal ashtray.

  MY DEAR ILYA PETROVICH—”

  “Everything is under control, Porfiry Petrovich. There is no need for your interference.” Salytov jerked his arms as he shouted, as if Porfiry were a fly he was trying to swat away. His face was red. The veins on his temples bulged. He moved constantly but without purpose. He was starting to sweat and pulled at his collar.

  “Of course, of course…But, you know, I don’t seek to interfere, merely to offer my assistance.”

  “I am grateful to you. However…” Salytov had been a lieutenant in the army. Perhaps he had learned to bluster then. But Porfiry found it hard to believe he had ever commanded the respect of his men. He had a weak mouth. The bristles of his well-trimmed sandy mustache couldn’t compensate for this.

  “How you scared us last time, Ilya Petrovich! We, your friends in the department, we were most concerned for your health. I’ve never seen such a shade of puce in nature before. And when you fainted.”

  “That was in the summer. It was a fearful hot day, and the smell from the Ditch was overpowering.”

  “But the doctor was clear that your temper had contributed to the attack.”

  “It wasn’t an attack!”

  “Were you not commanded—for your own good, of course, but commanded all the same—to avoid such excesses of passion by no less than Nikodim Fomich? Think what would happen if he were to come upon you now.”

  “I’m not afraid of Nikodim Fomich.”

  “I’m not suggesting you should be afraid of any man, Ilya Petrovich. Not even our esteemed chief superintendent. However, were you to be deprived of your position—”

  “He can’t do that to me!”

  “A transfer, it would be called, no doubt. A move into a less stressful position. For health reasons. I know how these things work. Believe me, Ilya Petrovich, I’m on your side. I will do all I can. But surely the best course of action is to avoid his attention in the first place. Isn’t there some way we can resolve this matter without all the, uh…” Porfiry smiled and whispered, “Shouting?”

  Salytov gave his reluctant assent with a flinch.

  “What is the situation here?” Porfiry’s gently amused tone mollified the demand.

  “This young hussy—a prostitute, mind…” Salytov indicated a small, tired-looking girl. She was handcuffed to the black-uniformed polizyeisky, who maintained exemplary side whiskers and an outraged expression. The girl’s exact age was hard to say, but she was young. Her face was thickly made up, in the usual fashion of a streetwalker. Somehow this only made her seem more naïve. It was as if someone had explained the economic advantage of heavy cosmetics, and she had applied it in good faith. And she had donned the requisite costume too, by the looks of it handed down to her through the generations. In the glare of the police station, her red silk dress, so old and worn it was practically falling apart, appeared like a badge of poverty rather than vice. The oversize bustle and sodden filthy train invited ridicule, as did her frayed straw hat and tattered parasol. Pathetically at odds with all this, and undermining whatever effect she was aiming at, was the homely woolen shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her build was slight. Both Salytov and the polizyeisky loomed over her, though Porfiry was closer to her height. The chief clerk, a pale superior type with high cheekbones, was also in attendance, seated on a stool behind the reception desk. It was clear that the girl was exhausted. Her blue eyes stared wide open in the effort to keep awake. But her shoulders continually sagged. Once or twice she leaned forward onto the desk, causing the clerk to bang down the great admissions book. She would then shoot bolt upright, betraying neither ill will nor complaisance. Necessity drove her, that was all. Every now and then a convulsion of shivering gripped her frail form, each attack more extended than the one before.

  Porfiry took her in with a glance as he finished his cigarette. “She carries the yellow ticket?” he asked Salytov.

  “Yes.”

  “And it is in order?”

  “That’s not the issue.”

  “But it is in order?”

  “Yes.” Salytov almost spat out the word. His face became the battleground for contesting emotions: hatred and anger on one side, the desire not to be shown a fool on the other. It was always the same when he had dealings with Porfiry Petrovich. “She stands accused of stealing one hundred rubles from a gentleman. A search by the arresting constable discovered a banknote to that denomination on her person.”

  “I see. And where did this alleged crime take place?”

  “Alleged! Really, Porfiry Petrovich!”

  “But where?”

  “On Sadovaya Street.”

  “I see. And when?”

  “In the early hours of the morning.”

  “Do we not know the precise time?”

  “It was about four A.M., sir,” put in the uniformed officer.

  “I see. Is there a reason why it has taken so long to process the incident?”

  “The gentleman making the charge went missing,” the head clerk supplied, his tone sarcastic and amused, making clear that it was nothing to do with him.

  “How unfortunate. Has he turned up now?”

  “We are still looking for him,” said Salytov quickly, flashing hatred at the clerk.

  “Do we know his name?”

  “She”—Salytov signaled the prostitute with a terse nod—“claims he was one Konstantin Kirillovich.”

  Porfiry turned his attention to the girl. “So this man was known to you?”

  “I had met him once before, your honor.” Her voice was that of a child. It was also polite—the voice of a well-brought-up child.

  “Under what circumstances?”

  The girl blushed and stared at Porfiry’s feet. Then she escaped into another of her shivering fits.

  “He was a client of yours?”

  The convulsion calmed. She met his gaze. “No. Not that.”

  “A pimp then?”

  The girl shook her head but would say no more.

  “Do you know where he lives, this Konstantin Kirillovich?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And how did you come to have the hundred rubles that were found on you?”

  “He gave them to me.”

  “He gave you a hundred rubles? Why?”
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  “I didn’t want to take it, sir. He forced it on me.”

  “He forced you to take a hundred rubles off him and then called a policeman to accuse you of stealing it? It beggars belief, does it not, child?”

  “I can’t explain it, sir.”

  “Did he want you to go with him when he gave you the money?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And did you go with him?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You refused?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And yet you kept the money that he gave you. Perhaps that’s why he called the policeman?”

  “I tried to give the money back to him. He wouldn’t take it.”

  “Do you normally charge a hundred rubles for your favors?”

  The girl made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. There was outrage in it and suffering, yet acceptance.

  “Forgive me. But let us face the facts. You are a prostitute. You don’t deny that?”

  “I am legal. I have a license.”

  She produced the yellow passport that was her license to whore herself. Porfiry read the name: Lilya Ivanovna Semenova. She was registered as working at a brothel called Keller’s at an address on Sadovaya Street.

  “Of course. There is nothing to worry about as far as that is concerned. A man gives you a hundred rubles. You refuse the money and refuse to go with him. Was he very ugly?”

  “It wasn’t that. That has nothing to do with it, after all.”

  “So why wouldn’t you go with him? Why didn’t you want his money?”

  “It was too much.”

  “You are a strange prostitute, to have qualms on that front.”

  “I was afraid of what he would expect in return.”

  “Ah! There are limits then? Is that it?”

  “Not in the way you think.”

  “Please, tell me, in what way then?”

  “He didn’t want me for himself.”

  “I see. He was an agent in the transaction. And who—on whose behalf was he acting?”

  “He didn’t say.” Her pupils, for a moment, oscillated wildly from side to side. Porfiry tilted his head to study her, a feminine gesture.

  “But still it doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t you go with him? And why, on your refusal, wouldn’t he simply demand the money back? Why call a policeman? Why accuse you of theft? And why, then, run off?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “What has happened to the money now?”

  “We’re holding it as evidence,” answered Salytov.

  “Evidence of what? There is no complainant. We can’t charge her. We can’t hold her. Regarding her license, everything is in order. I suggest, therefore, that we release the girl. It is my opinion, also, that we must return the hundred rubles to her.”

  “But she stole it!”

  “So says a man who isn’t here. She says he gave it to her. There is no one to contradict that story. Perhaps it was a gift. Or we might refer to it as payment in advance for a service that hasn’t yet been rendered. We can’t give it back to him because he’s not here and we don’t know his address. There’s nothing to justify confiscating this poor girl’s earnings.”

  “But she did nothing to earn it, even if you accept her version of events,” insisted Salytov.

  “True. But who are we to make judgments on that account? We’re here to uphold the law, not our own notions of morality. I would like very much to talk to this Konstantin Kirillovich. My dear, you don’t know his family name, by any chance?”

  “No, sir. I know him only as Konstantin Kirillovich.”

  “Ah, well. But perhaps he has reasons of his own for not wishing to talk to us. I consider it very careless of you to have let him escape, Ilya Petrovich.”

  “But I had no idea he would make off like that!”

  “My dear fellow, can’t you recognize when you’re being teased? Of course I don’t blame you. After all, one normally only has to confine the accused.” Porfiry now turned to the head clerk. “Alexander Grigorevich, if you would be so kind as to get the money belonging to this young lady.”

  Alexander Grigorevich treated Porfiry to a look of open incredulity; nonetheless he slipped from his stool and sauntered into a room behind the main desk.

  A moment later he returned with a brightly colored one-hundred-ruble note. The girl, Lilya Ivanovna Semenova, protested, “I don’t want it. I don’t want his money. You keep it.” There was fear as well as disgust in her expression.

  “It doesn’t belong to us,” explained Porfiry.

  “But I don’t want it. I never wanted it.”

  “Very well, Lilya Ivanovna. We can’t force you to take it. Officer, you may release the prisoner.”

  The polizyeisky unlocked the handcuffs. Lilya Ivanovna’s face was lit up by amazement. Then she frowned at Porfiry, as though he were a puzzle she couldn’t solve, before turning to plunge herself into the loose crowd milling through the bureau. In her wake, she left a scent in the air.

  “What do you want me to do with this?” asked Alexander Grigorevich, holding the banknote distastefully between the tips of his thumb and forefinger.

  “Give it to the orphans,” said Porfiry, without looking at him.

  3

  The Investigator’s Eyelashes

  LILYA SHIVERED AGAIN as she came out into a freezing fog.

  Restless splinters of ice penetrated her clothes and skin. Her feet were wet and numb with the cold. For a moment she had not the faintest idea where she was or how she came to be there. All she could remember was leaving Fräulein Keller’s basement. And everything that had happened since seemed to have happened in a dream.

  She ought to go back for her galoshes.

  She walked without any sense of where she was going. She heard the lampposts singing, shaken by a wind that went straight through her, despite her shawl. Then she heard the jangle of a passing sleigh and the muted clip of hooves. The horses were almost on her before she saw them. The driver’s green caftan passed in a blur, his words—whether for her or for his team—stifled by the damp air.

  It was the man’s eyes that had amazed her, Porfiry Petrovich’s eyes. Or more specifically his eyelashes, blond to the point of transparency. Once she had noticed them, she could not look away. He blinked a lot, and there seemed to be some point to his blinking. Expectancy, or cunning, but a peculiarly feminine cunning, somehow also benign. She’d found it hard to understand what he was saying, so fascinated was she by his lashes and the effect they had on his face. And of course, she was tired.

  She blinked herself, as though by imitating him she would come to understand him. Was it really true that he had let her go? And had he really meant to have them return the money to her?

  Perhaps it was all a trick. If so, it was just as well she had refused the money. Ah, but to go home with nothing, after a whole night! She couldn’t go home, not yet. She ought to go back to Fräulein Keller’s to get what was owed her.

  Zoya had come to see her. That was what she had been told. “Zoya is here for you,” Fräulein Keller had said. “She wants to talk to you about your little one.” But it made no sense. If Zoya had come to Fräulein Keller’s, who was looking after Vera? And when she had gone out into the cold night, there was no sign of Zoya. Just him.

  Lilya shivered and let the spasm take hold. She gave in to her weakness for only an instant, holding one blink of her eyelids longer than the others, and in that instant she was back home, cuddling her sweet-souled, beautiful daughter, kissing her cheeks, stroking her hair, whispering promises, never, never again will I leave you, this will last forever, this laughing, crying, clinging moment.

  The fog was beginning to clear. Perhaps she had held the blink for longer than she intended. But she was relieved to find herself still standing.

  Lilya pulled her shawl tight about her. She had come out into Sadovaya Street. To her right, dim shapes formed into the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary across the H
aymarket, above the canvas-covered stalls. She felt comforted by the appearance of the church. A bustling crowd filled the cobbled square between. But in the same way that she was able to see more, so too was she more visible. Faces turned toward her, hostile, mocking, contemptuous. And yet some of the men who pointed her out for ridicule were among those who came to the basement of the milliner’s shop, at a different hour, for a different purpose.

  She turned her back on the Haymarket, to face north, toward Yekaterininsky Canal, or the Ditch, as it was known. She crossed Kokushkin Bridge over the frozen canal back into Stolyarny Lane. There was the building that housed the police station ahead of her, and she remembered again his impossible eyelashes. His eyes, she now remembered, were the color of ice, but whether that color was black or silver, she could not say. She was tempted to go back inside just to find out. And while she was at it, she would demand the money after all.

  Then without her thinking about it, the rest of him suddenly came back to her. Fat—that was it. He was a fat little man, with a proud paunch out front. But every part of him, almost, seemed to have something swollen about it, from his big, close-cropped head to his plump hands. How strange and improbable those eyes had seemed in all this. How calm and unexpected and alert, but above all how kindly.

  Perhaps she would go back inside. And tell him everything. But then again, what was there to tell?

  She kept on walking as far as Srednyaya Meshchanskaya Street. So she was going home after all, and with nothing to show for the night.

  She could not face going back for her galoshes.

  THE SNOW IN the yard was stained with blood. A pig had been slaughtered there that morning. A peasant couple butchered the carcass in the open. They paused in their task to watch her across the yard. The two of them lifted their cleavers in warning, as if they suspected her of being intent on stealing their meat. Their expressions remained blank.

  Lilya entered a narrow passageway at the rear of the courtyard. Its darkness shielded her from their scrutiny. She reached out one hand to grope her way along the wall, but with the first step she took, her foot kicked over an unseen obstacle, setting off an almost musical reverberation. A metal pail lay on its side, a dark stain hastening from it. Before she knew it, the peasant couple were at her shoulder, screaming abuse.