A Razor Wrapped in Silk

21 Anatomy 1

Virginsky crossed the Neva by the temporary pontoon bridge at the end of Liteyny Prospekt, riding on the open deck of an omnibus. The acrid smell of the Vyborgskaya District drifted over the river to greet him. A thick ash, the noxious product of factory chimneys, settled on him like a coating of despair. Snow was no longer in the air, only this infernal negative of it. He chose the upper deck, despite the cold and the poisonous fumes, because he liked to look down on the city, or rather to feel in himself the potential for ascent.

The clop of the horses’ hooves lost their resonance as the omnibus rattled off the shifting bridge on to the solid embankment north of the Neva. Virginsky gave in to a resentful despondency, as he rose from his seat. No one, it occurred to him, ventured into the Vyborgskaya District unless they had to. It was a place of sprawling factories and precarious wooden slums; between them, expanses of flat, black, toxic wasteland, littered with clumps of grubby vegetation and human detritus. At this time of the year — the damp, raw season before the big freeze set in — the largely unpaved roads were churned into seas of mud. The earth became an impediment, sucking purpose from those who sought to traverse it.

He jumped off the moving platform of the omnibus on Morskaya Street, just as the Medical-Surgical Academy came forward to dominate the view. Tucked in behind the Military Hospital, as if these institutional outposts felt the need to huddle together, it was a neo-classical building somewhere between a palace and a temple. An academy, in fact: Virginsky had no doubt that it would have conformed to all the Vitruvian requirements of that genre of building, the architect substituting obedience for imagination, as was so often the way in Russia.

Virginsky felt a glimmer of excitement at his own small act of insubordination, although perhaps it was not so very small, after all. He ought to have returned immediately to the bureau with the results of Dr Pervoyedov’s analysis. And yet, he had come here, on his own initiative — or rather, in open disobedience of his superior, Porfiry Petrovich. He could argue that he was acting in response to the lead given him by Dr Pervoyedov. However, it did not help his case that the bureau lay between the Obukhovsky Hospital and the Surgical-Medical Academy. It would have been an easy matter for him to call in on his way and share the news with Porfiry Petrovich. Virginsky smiled to himself. There was no doubt he enjoyed having the advantage over Porfiry Petrovich for once, and he would hold on to it for as long as possible. He had to admit, however, that he found it impossible to make sense of the information Dr Pervoyedov had given him. At the same time, he had the irritating premonition that Porfiry Petrovich would know just what it signified as soon as it was revealed to him.

A statue of some Roman goddess (he would never understand why a nation that declared itself Christian continued to erect these tributes to pagan deities) stood in the garden before the entrance to the Academy, with a number of benches around it. Virginsky hesitated for a moment, looking up at the lemon yellow building. Its white columns gleamed like the teeth in a monumentally gaping mouth. A group of medical students in their uniforms gave him a mildly curious backward glance as they passed him. He fell in behind them, and climbed the steps to enter.

Inside, in contrast to the classical formality of its exterior, the great entrance hall presented the worn-down eccentricity of a functioning institution. It was a place where people congregated; they had made their mark on it, chipping off its edges, treading down its pathways. It had the feel of a clannish, almost familial enclosure. The members of this community knew their place, and moved about within it with the contented confidence of belonging. When voices were raised, it was in raucous fellowship, each individual burst of exuberance adding to the strength of the corporate body. Virginsky keenly felt his status as an interloper.

He had arrived just as the next period of lectures was about to begin — no doubt the last of the morning. The corridors thronged with medical students. He noticed a number of students flocking in one particular direction. They seemed possessed by a highly animated excitement that drew him into their midst. He hurried to keep up with them, pausing only once to glance through the circular window in a closed door which bore the number 11 on a small plate. Banks of seating led down to a demonstration area. On a table, beneath a green sheet, an ominously elongated mound awaited the beginning of the lecture.

Virginsky caught up with the students. Their excitement seemed to heighten into bravado. They streamed through a door identical to the one that had given Virginsky pause a moment before. This one was designated ‘Anatomy 1’. He had expected it to be another banked auditorium, but it was simply a large open room in which were arranged around twenty or so tables. Each table was draped with a green sheet, though the mounds beneath these sheets were much smaller and more spherically compact than the one he had glimpsed earlier. The students took their places, a pair to each table. Their excitement had drained from them, and from many all colour too. They were tense, though an occasional bubble of nervous laughter broke out.

A bell rang. A professor in a white coat entered and strode up to the lecture podium at one end of the room.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Uncover your heads.’

It had come to this again, as it always did. And as ever, it was Porfiry Petrovich who had brought him here.

*

The tables had marble surfaces. He had not expected that. The heads lolled back on them. Virginsky wanted to keep looking at the marble. He wanted to find patterns in the mineral veins. He did not want to meet the vacant eyes, and even less the tendril-trailing neck stumps of the decapitated heads.

There were too many to take in at once. Each head, each face, contended for his compassionate attention, but without beseeching, without expression of any kind. All around him, dead mouths gaped in mute chorus.

He moved unchallenged between the tables, his service uniform for the moment lending the imprimatur of authority. He estimated that of the approximately twenty heads, six were those of children.

‘May I help you?’ It was the professor, a sinewy man of about fifty years, wearing a pince-nez across a scalpel-sharp nose. His adam’s apple was almost equally sharp.

‘Yes. I am a magistrate from the Department for the Investigation of Criminal Causes. I am looking into the disappearance of a number of children. I notice that there are children’s … uhm … remains, amongst these that the students are working on today.’

‘Sadly, yes.’

‘Is it usual for there to be so many children at one time?’

‘I’m afraid it’s not unprecedented — although, yes, we do currently have a higher proportion than is typical.’

‘How did they die?’

‘The children?’

‘Yes.’

‘In different ways.’

‘But you have ascertained a cause of death for each child?’

‘This is an anatomy class. We are not teaching forensic medicine.’

‘But if, for example, a child had died in an horrendous accident, you would notice, would you not? There would be wounds, broken bones perhaps, even ruptured internal organs?’

‘Oh certainly. We get our fair share of those. They are of limited usefulness to the students. The industrial accidents are the worst. The bones are not simply broken, but crushed, sometimes to a fibrous pulp. Picture a shredded banana skin. I’m talking about young bones, of course. The older, more brittle bones simply shatter into fragments, which become embedded in mangled tissue.’

‘I trust the police make allowances for this in the price they ask for such sub-standard goods.’

The professor gave him a severe look over the top of his pince-nez. ‘That does not come into it.’

‘You do not pay the police for the bodies?’

‘We are assured that the money goes to the families. Our payment is made in the form of a charitable contribution.’

‘There are families involved? I understood that the bodies you acquired were unidentified, and therefore unclaimed. Is that not so?’

‘I cannot comment. The police assure us that the money goes to the families. That is how it is put to us.’

‘But wouldn’t a family wish to bury its children?’

‘These are very poor people.’

‘But they are also Christians, are they not? And Russians?’

‘Poverty compels people to do things they would not otherwise countenance. Especially if it is compounded by vice. When a mother will sell her living daughter’s body to a sensualist — for the price of a jug of vodka — how can you suppose that she will scruple to sell the same body when dead to a teaching hospital? We see the ravages of venereal disease in corpses as young as ten.’

‘That is indeed educational. Let us take it then that the money goes to the families. We must trust the police to pass it on.’

At that point one of the students, holding a scalpel aloft in readiness, called out: ‘Professor! What would you have us do with our heads?’

The question provoked widespread hilarity.

Virginsky raised his hand in restraint. ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to call a halt to today’s class. These heads, the heads of the children at least, must not be damaged any further. For the purposes of identification, you understand.’

‘What about the adult heads — you are not concerned with those?’

‘Your students may do what they like to those.’

The professor clapped his hands. ‘Gentlemen, lay down your implements. Those of you working on juveniles, please attach yourselves to another table. We will be working on adult heads only today.’

‘Thank you,’ said Virginsky with a nod of appreciation. ‘Is there somewhere where the children’s heads can be stored for the time being?’

‘Of course,’ said the professor. ‘We have a room for that.’

An image of what such a room must be like forced itself on Virginsky. He closed his eyes to dispel it. But the image remained, together with the certainty that he would be called upon to enter it.