The Gentle Axe Read online

  “That was our blood, you careless bitch!”

  “You’ll pay for it, whore!”

  As she fled their stabbing fingers and careless blades, she felt a gob of hawked mucus strike her cheek. She could still hear their shouts as the door to the back stairs closed behind her.

  The stench of cabbage soup and urine hung in the stairway. Even so, this felt like a refuge. The gloom welcomed and concealed her. The temperature, though chill, was a degree warmer than outside.

  Lilya hauled herself up the stairs with both hands together on the grimy rail, her feet slapping on the worn-down wooden steps.

  She heard the door she had just come through clatter in its frame, then hurried footsteps hammering. Somehow she managed to pick up her own pace. She did not look back.

  But she was still four flights away from her landing and the footsteps were gaining on her. Then, unexpectedly, they stopped and a door below slammed.

  She turned a corner and pushed her way through hanging laundry. It seemed to cling to her face, dragging her back and down. Doors stood open on this landing. Sullen, consumptive faces looked out, waiting for something but not her.

  She trudged on, light-headed, her legs uncertain and aching. In a niche on the next half-landing she fancied she saw a figure hanging back, a dark shape in dark shadows. Were those eyes that flashed in the gloom, or white sparks firing in her brain? Dog-tired she was, so tired that it was not inconceivable that her nightmares had come ahead to meet her.

  It felt as though the steps were moving beneath her feet now, swaying and sinking, their height increasing, so that it required the courage of a mountaineer to scale each one. And now they had no substance. Her feet sank into them. They were like the marshes the city had once been built on.

  She found herself unable to go on. She looked down at her feet. The space between two boards gaped. She closed her eyes and teetered back, the wild lurch in her belly bringing her around. Her head was a dead weight. Somehow she found the strength to lift it and look up. There, ahead of her, was her own landing. The sight of her door spurred her on to a final push.

  She fell into the room, gasping at the sudden heat here, but too exhausted to make sense of it. She simply allowed the hot dry air to enclose her in a swooning embrace. And now little Vera was rushing at her, cannoning headfirst in her shrieking delight at her mother’s homecoming. Her daughter’s unquestioning love overwhelmed her. She felt undeserving of it. At the same time she had a sense of the child, so fierce in her innocence, as being eternally closed to her, strange, other, and somehow out of bounds. And there did seem to be something different about Vera today. But again Lilya was too worn-out to pursue the impression. Instead she gave in to tears. She was wracked with the pain of pure feeling, of feeling too much for too long. She allowed herself no memories, no longer entertained dreams. She kept her ideas down to the most essential. Whole areas of moral and mental life were closed to her. All that was left was the intense feeling of the moment.

  “Now, now! What’s this?” cried old mother Zoya rushing up to her. She added her own embrace to the tight little cuddles of the infant. “No tears, no tears, daughter. Yes, daughter. Yes, that’s right. Daughter. Don’t I always call you daughter? Zoya’s here. Mamma Zoya will look after you. We’ll be all right. Why, my child, my daughter, my lovely girl, why—everything will be all right now. You’ll see. You’ll see, my sweet Lilililyechka. My sweet child. No tears. Not now. Not today. Oh, my lovely lovely, you’ll see. Look! Look! Mamma Zoya’s taken care of everything! See! Only look, child, and you’ll see. All our troubles are over. Never again! You’ll never have to wear that dress again. You’ll never have to go to that place again. You can tell Fräulein Keller that you’re never coming back. Never! D’you hear? Never!”

  Lilya pulled away, her face wet with tears. She shook her head and her eyes were tenderly accusing. She whispered her reproach: “No, Zoya!”

  “Mamma, dear. Call me Mamma. Aren’t I a mother to you? More than a mother? Don’t I look after you better than any mother would? Haven’t I earned it?”

  Lilya shook her head and murmured, “Cruel!”

  “Don’t be afraid, Lilya. Don’t be afraid. It’s true, you see! That life is over!”

  “We’ll only make it worse for ourselves!”

  Zoya made a dismissive noise and arched both eyebrows in gentle, mocking reproach. But Lilya was beyond such games, too tired even to be annoyed. She lurched past Zoya, toward the end of the room that housed the narrow bed she shared with her daughter. But felt a tight pinch of restraint on her arm. And cried out. Her eyes were pleading as she turned to confront Zoya.

  “Look!” commanded the old woman, gesturing to the table. Lilya could not take it in. She saw but did not understand. The table was laden with pastries and loaves. There were sweets too, and candied peel. There was even caviar.

  “Where did you get all this?”

  “From the Shchukin Arcade, of course. Where else?”

  This mystery reminded Lilya of another: “Did you come and see me last night? They said you were at the door.”

  “And what kind of a mother are you, not to comment on her daughter’s new shawl?”

  Lilya looked down at Vera’s beaming face and frowned at the unfamiliar drap-de-dames shawl around the child’s shoulders. Was this why her daughter had seemed alien to her? She stroked the white garment as if to question it with her fingers.

  “And here! For you!” continued Zoya, holding out a dark and apparently ancient icon representing the Virgin and the infant Christ. The gold-leaf halos flickered in and out of brilliance. As if suspecting a trick, Lilya refused to take it. “It’s all right,” insisted Zoya. “It’s paid for. Everything is paid for.”

  “But how?” whispered Lilya, afraid of the answer.

  Zoya put down the icon. She bustled to the far corner of the room and disappeared behind the curtain that concealed her sleeping area. She came back with a padlocked tin box that Lilya had never seen before. As Zoya reached the table, she let the box slip out of her fingers in her excitement. It landed with a heavy clatter. Zoya fumbled with the key, grinning and chuckling, despite her wish to appear mysterious. At last the lid was open. Zoya pushed the box toward her young friend.

  The warm colors of the banknotes drew Lilya’s face closer and closer. Then at the last, she recoiled, as if she were afraid of getting burned.

  “Where?” she gasped.

  “Petrovsky Park.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “Ours!” cried Zoya.

  “No, no. You must tell me all about it, Zoya. You must tell me exactly where you found this money. It might belong to someone, Zoya. It must, surely it must belong to someone.”

  “What if it does? What do we care? At any rate, the one it belongs to has no use for it now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s dead!”

  “Zoya! What are you saying?”

  “He was a murderer and a thief. A big ugly brute. And a bully. That’s what he was. And he’s dead. No use crying for the likes of him. A murderer! The bloody axe still on him, still dripping with the little fellow’s blood.”

  “Zoya, please! I don’t understand. You must start at the beginning. One thing at a time.”

  “I found them both. Both dead. The little dwarf. And the other one, hanging. He’d hanged himself. Out of shame.”

  “A dwarf, you said?”

  “Tiny little man. With a tiny little suit.”

  “No!”

  “Both dead.”

  “The dwarf was dead?”

  “Murdered! His head bashed in. And the axe that did it was on the big one.”

  “What did he look like, the dwarf?”

  “Tiny! A tiny little fellow.”

  “Was he dark? Dark hair with a beard?”

  “Yes!”

  “What else? Anything else about him?”

  Zoya’s hands retrieved something from her apron, the pack of obscene playing car
ds.

  “He was a randy little bastard, by the looks of it. I found these on him.”

  Lilya gasped as if struck. “I know him! I’ve seen these before. He came to Fräulein Keller’s. Many times. He always asks for me. Zoya, did you come to Fräulein Keller’s last night? Was there something you had to tell me about Vera? Fräulein Keller said—”

  “What are you talking about, child?”

  Lilya took in the old woman’s good-natured incomprehension. She looked again at the money in the cash box. “Zoya, we must tell the police.”

  “No! Don’t you see? They’ll want the money back.”

  “But Zoya, it’s not ours.”

  Zoya’s face became severe, her tone forbidding. “You must not say a word about this to anyone. Do you hear? You must swear to me on Vera’s life that you will not say a word of this to a soul.”

  Lilya shook her head and whispered her refusal.

  “On the icon, then. You must swear on the holy icon.”

  “But Zoya, don’t you see?”

  “This is a fortune,” cried Zoya in desperation. “Six thousand rubles! Enough to buy property. We could have an apartment at the front. With rooms. And tenants of our own. We could have a carriage, with servants in livery. We could parade along the Nevsky Prospect, our heads held high. We’d never be afraid to look anyone in the eye. Think of the clothes, the furs, the jewels. What admirers you would have, Lilya! Oh Lilya, think of it! Gentlemen. Noblemen. And Vera. What a future would lie before her. She could marry a prince, no less. And you, you stupid little fool, you’ll throw it all away!”

  Lilya backed away, in a simple reflex of self-protection, pulling her arm free of Zoya’s grip. She fell onto her bed and murmured, “She lied to me.” The same instant she was asleep, dreaming of the policeman’s transparent eyelashes.

  4

  The Anonymous Note

  THE ENVELOPE, addressed simply to “Porfiry Petrovich,” arrived on the investigator’s desk with the morning’s first round of mail. Its contents drew Porfiry from his rooms.

  “Alexander Grigorevich, did you see who left this for me?”

  Seated on his high stool behind the front desk, the chief clerk barely glanced in Porfiry’s direction. He was distracted by the thin, agitated woman before him, who was keeping up a stream of tearful and incoherent complaints. Her raving drew to the clerk’s face an expression of deep disgust. And yet it seemed he could not tear his eyes away from her. The woman’s face was pinched and pale, with bursts of crimson on her cheeks and a deeper red, the color of raw anguish, around her eyes. Fine features had hardened into sharpness, with dark lines etched into a pattern of ravage. Her worn and dirty clothes had once been fashionable and even expensive, many seasons ago. The smell from her was strong and unpleasant. It was hard to estimate her age.

  “Alexander Grigorevich,” insisted Porfiry, “someone left a note for me.”

  “What of it?” said Alexander Grigorevich Zamyotov at last, meeting Porfiry’s inquiring gaze with something close to a sneer.

  More than anything, Porfiry felt a weary disappointment. He had no time for impertinence, and not because he was one to insist on the honor due his rank. “Alexander Grigorevich, you are a man and I am a man, and to that extent we are equals. I will treat you with respect; all I ask is that you do the same.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Porfiry Petrovich.”

  “I won’t lie to you. I won’t look down on you. I won’t play games with you.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it, but I don’t understand what bearing all this has.”

  “This note,” said Porfiry, laying the envelope down on the counter. His voice was calm, but he was not smiling. “I ask you again. Did you see who delivered it?”

  Zamyotov took a moment to study the envelope. He picked it up and turned it over and then placed it back on the counter. “No,” he said, barely suppressing the pleasure he took from this little charade.

  Porfiry snatched up the letter and bowed to the disconsolate woman, whose lamentations had not let up throughout his exchange with Zamyotov.

  “Porfiry Petrovich,” the head clerk gurgled gleefully. “This woman wishes to see you.”

  Porfiry hesitated before answering the clerk directly, without looking at the tearful woman. “I can’t. Not now. An urgent matter has arisen. I must talk to Nikodim Fomich. You must tell her to come back tomorrow.”

  Porfiry braced himself, expecting the pitch and intensity of her plaints to increase at this announcement. But there was an alarming constancy to her behavior. It was as if she hadn’t heard his decision, or didn’t understand it. Porfiry realized it would be hard to get rid of her.

  “Alexander Grigorevich, take a statement from her…” Perhaps there was some desire to punish the head clerk in this demand. Porfiry did not discount the possibility.

  “A statement? I?”

  “Yes, a statement. I will give it my full attention when I have seen Nikodim Fomich. If she wishes to wait, that’s up to her, but I advise her to come back tomorrow.”

  “Porfiry Petrovich, with the greatest respect,” began the clerk in a tone that contradicted his words, “what kind of a statement do you expect me to take from”—he gestured toward the woman, her face contorted by suffering—“that?”

  “You will do your best. I am confident that it will be more than good enough.”

  IT’S NOT MUCH to go on.” Chief Superintendent Nikodim Fomich Maximov dropped the note onto his desk. He leaned back in his chair, both hands behind his head, and looked up at the high ceiling of his office, enjoying the scale of the apartment his position entitled him to. He had learned the habit of ignoring the odd flaws in its grandeur, the peeling paint here and there, the stains of damp beneath the window, and the cracks in the plaster. For a moment his lips pursed ironically, as if an amusing thought had just occurred to him. He was a handsome man and well liked. Both of these attributes were important to him: he had an awareness of his own ability to soothe, merely by his presence. Porfiry wondered if this awareness did not sometimes affect his friend’s judgment. Nikodim Fomich sometimes gave the impression of valuing an easy life above all else. “I mean to say, how do we know it’s not a hoax?”

  “Of course, I agree, it’s probably a hoax.” Under the new rules, Porfiry had the authority to command the police to pursue any matter he deemed worthy of investigation. But it was a sensitive area. It was only two years ago that control of individual cases had been taken from the police and given over to the newly created office of investigating magistrate. And Porfiry preferred to work with the cooperation of his colleagues in the police bureau, rather than with their resentful subordination. Besides, he knew that the best way to change the chief ’s mind was to agree with him. “I felt I had a responsibility to show it to you, that is all.” Porfiry reached to take the note back.

  “But if it’s not a hoax?” asked Nikodim Fomich quickly. He leaned forward and grabbed the note before Porfiry could retrieve it. “If there really has been a case of ‘Murder in Petrovsky Park’?” The senior police officer read the note with a heavily ironical intonation. He turned the sheet over several times. But those four words were all that was written on its entire surface. Constant rotation did not cause any more to appear. “If it were signed, it would be more credible.”

  “And there would be someone held responsible if it turned out to be a hoax,” suggested Porfiry.

  “Well, of course, a hoaxer would never sign it.”

  “So it must be a hoax,” insisted Porfiry brightly, as if the matter were settled.

  “Not necessarily,” demurred Nikodim Fomich, who suddenly found himself in the position of arguing with his own original point of view. “It could have been written by someone involved in the crime in some way.”

  Porfiry gave Nikodim Fomich a sudden look of astonishment, as if this idea had never occurred to him. The chief superintendent frowned. Porfiry’s play-acting annoyed him. He knew the investigator well enough
not to be taken in. “We’ll have the local boys look into it,” he decided. “If they turn up anything, we’ll go to the prokuror with it.”

  “Yes, yes, I agree. There is no need to trouble Yaroslav Nikolaevich until we have something definite to go on. However, if I might make a suggestion?”

  Nikodim Fomich nodded for Porfiry to go on.

  “Offer one of your men to assist. An officer to oversee the search.”

  “Isn’t that a little proprietorial?”

  “The note was delivered here, to this bureau.”

  “Did you have anyone in mind?” the chief superintendent asked.

  “Lieutenant Salytov, perhaps.”

  “Salytov? Old Gunpowder?” Nikodim Fomich laughed with easy good humor. “At least it will get him out of the bureau for a few hours.”

  Again Porfiry’s expression signified surprise at an idea that couldn’t have been further from his mind.

  “Don’t overdo it, Porfiry Petrovich,” said the chief superintendent, delivering the warning with a complicit wink.

  SHE’S STILL HERE,” called out Zamyotov accusingly, as Porfiry crossed the receiving hall. He indicated the tearful woman with a tilt of his head. “She has asked specifically for the investigating magistrate,” Zamyotov confided to his fingernails, with a smirk.

  “Have you taken a statement from her, as I requested?” asked Porfiry. His gaze was detached as he studied the woman. He noted that the quality and level of her keening was unchanged. He was not one of those men who are afraid to confront the tears of women, or who shy from the pain of life. But her distress embarrassed him because he felt there was something almost artificial about it. He suspected it of being a ploy, a ploy she had committed herself to and now couldn’t get out of. He felt if he could say to her, in a friendly, confiding tone, “You don’t have to keep that up, you know,” she would instantly become reasonable. He bowed his head slightly in an attempt to engage her flitting glance with a smile. But when her eyes did meet his, for only the briefest moment, he experienced a physical sense of depression, as if something heavy and poisonous had entered his soul. He realized that her distress was not artificial after all. But it was alien to her, an infection that had taken her over. It was this terrible illness that was weeping so mechanically, perhaps even the illness that was insisting on seeing the investigating magistrate.