A Vengeful Longing

9

The following day, a sticky heat returned to St Petersburg. The humidity of the air mingled with the dust to create a cloying atmosphere; it sapped the energy just to breathe it.

Porfiry and Virginsky were walking north on the sunny side of Gorokhovaya Street. Momentarily blinded by the sunlight in the countless windows, Porfiry had a sense of the sky as an oppressive weight above his head. The sun’s hostility seemed personal. The high, deep apartment buildings on both sides of the street seemed to lean over him, dark masses crowding in impatiently, each one containing a village-worth of souls and all their unknowable secrets.

They stopped outside a barber’s, level with number 97 on the other side of the street.

‘Ah,’ said Porfiry. ‘This would be a good place from which. .’ He squinted into the shop. ‘I thought so!’ The dandyish man from the bureau was sitting in the seat nearest the window. The barber bobbed and floated around him, his hands flicking out to snip at and comb reverently the seated man’s plump moustache. It seemed that the barber’s deference was directed wholly towards this magisterial and self-possessed specimen of facial hair, rather than its wearer. The man in the seat gave no indication of recognising Porfiry, except that his eye enlarged forbiddingly, as if this was an important business in which he could not be disturbed.

Porfiry turned away to watch the entrance to number 97. Every now and then, individuals, or groups of men, in civil service uniforms came out and headed off briskly in one direction or another, some with their lunches parcelled in brown paper under their arms.

A few minutes later, Porfiry and Virginsky were joined by the freshly groomed police spy. He stroked his prized moustache jealously, completely in its thrall. Without looking at Porfiry, he gave his report: ‘We followed him directly here yesterday. Akaky Akakevich took the first watch. I relieved him at midnight. I am expecting Akaky Akakevich at any moment to relieve me. The subject went straight inside yesterday and has not come out. The yardkeeper is watching the rear of the building for us. He has reported nothing.’

‘I see.’ Porfiry continued to watch the entrance opposite. The exodus of civil servants seemed to have tailed off. ‘You have not seen him leave for his department then? He would come out by the front door for that, I think.’

‘I have not seen him.’ The man swayed unsteadily.

‘Are you drunk?’

‘No sir. I’ve been on my feet half the night. My legs have turned to jelly. I just went into the barber’s for a bit of a sit-down.’

‘Very well. As soon as Akaky Akakevich arrives you may go home.’

The man’s head tipped forwards, under the weight of his gratitude.

According to their briefing from Salytov, Rostanev’s room was on the fifth floor; that is to say, in the attic of the house.

‘You will find, Pavel Pavlovich,’ said Porfiry as they tramped the stairs, ‘that as an investigating magistrate in St Petersburg one is always climbing one flight of stairs or another.’ He paused, breathing heavily, to rest one hand on his knee as he stooped to look out of a low window. ‘I wonder if Ilya Petrovich has this right. One would expect such a man to live underground.’

‘Such a man?’ said Virginsky.

‘The solitary, brooding type. The modern kind of madman.’

‘Perhaps he likes to look down on the city and its denizens?’

‘You may have something there, Pavel Pavlovich.’ Porfiry took out and lit a cigarette.

‘You think that the murderer will have contacted Rostanev?’ asked Virginsky.

‘Certainly, it will be interesting to find out from Axenty Ivanovich if he has had any visitors overnight. That’s my chief purpose in visiting him. It is not a social call. Of course, it is likely that Rostanev himself is unaware that the person in question is a murderer. ’ Porfiry drew deeply on his cigarette. His expression darkened. ‘You know, Pavel Pavlovich, I am surprised and — I confess — more than a little concerned that he has not gone into the department this morning. I would have expected it. The department is his life.’ Porfiry dropped the cigarette and ground it with his heel. He gave Virginsky an urgent look. ‘We may be too late already.’

Porfiry took the steps two and three at a time. Virginsky was momentarily surprised by the older man’s speed. He quickly recovered and gave chase.

As they reached the fifth-floor landing, Porfiry almost collided with a young man in a civil service coat who was hurrying out, his bleary eyes fixed on the cap in his hands.

‘Rostanev?’ barked Porfiry, as he dodged the human obstacle.

The young civil servant gaped after him.

‘Funny little man with a pronged beard? Last door on the left or right?’

‘Right,’ said the bewildered-looking young man.

They reached the end of the corridor. Porfiry gave Virginsky a significant look before pounding the door with the side of his fist. There was no answer. Porfiry knocked again and put his ear to the door.

‘There’s someone in there. I heard a sound.’

‘What sound?’

‘Not a good sound.’

Porfiry turned the handle of the door and found it locked.

‘Axenty Ivanovich! Can you hear me? Open up now. It’s Porfiry Petrovich. I wish to speak to you.’

He was answered by a long, croaking groan. There was a pause, then a second groan sounded, higher and more urgent than the first, like a compressed force escaping. Finally, a low rumble faded gradually to nothing.

Porfiry rattled the door in the frame. ‘I could send you downstairsto fetch the yardkeeper, or. .’ He looked down at the door handle regretfully. ‘It is a pity we don’t have Ilya Petrovich here with us. He has a way of getting through locked doors.’

Virginsky frowned resentfully. ‘Stand back!’ He puffed himself up and took a step back, possessing the corridor with his arms outstretched in readiness.

‘My dear boy, what do you intend to do?’ asked Porfiry, alarmed.

Before Virginsky could answer, they heard the hook lifted, followed by a protracted, gurgling moan. Virginsky lowered his arms slowly. The tendons in his neck flexed as a repulsive force twisted his head away from that sound.

The door opened outwards in Porfiry’s hand. ‘It is perhaps as well that you did not charge it,’ said Porfiry dryly. But as the door reached its full extent, and they were able to see inside the room, all thought of drollery evaporated.

It was the blood they saw first. His hands were wet with it. And the sheets of the bed where he was lying were drenched in it, as was his nightshirt. The nightshirt was pulled up past his groin, revealing the ragged, red-glistening wound, a dark, incomprehensible void from which the blood was still pumping in rhythmic spurts. The blood was in his beard too, the points of which had clearly been pulled and twisted by those sodden fingers.

His right hand, with which he had reached out to unlock the door, so small was his room, hung limp in the air. The left lay across his abdomen, weak and lifeless.

On the bed, next to him, pooled in blood, was a mess of something fleshy, a bundle of butchered tissue. Porfiry stared at it in horror, disbelieving, or rather not wanting to believe, what he saw. But there could be no mistaking it: the tubular stub, wrinkled and retracted; and still attached to it, a loose, ravaged appendage sprawling open to reveal the compact globes of his testes, like secret eyes, peeping fearfully up at them.

A penknife, similar to the one that had been taken from him at the bureau, but with a blade that looked strangely, freshly, rusted, lay nearby.

Rostanev turned his face towards them, his eyes bulging, as though surprised by the absolutism of pain. Another creaking, rattling groan came from his throat. His legs stirred, the knees rising up slightly, and then falling apart, airing the gaping mutilation. The wound continued to haemorrhage copiously.

‘My God,’ said Virginsky.

‘What happened here?’ Porfiry asked the question in no real expectation of an answer, at least not from the diminished man upon the bed.

But a word came from him, a word that grew out of another visceral moan and faded into an empty gasp: ‘Voices-s-s-s-s-s-s.’ He closed his eyes on his pain.

A sharp spasm brought his legs together, the tension of which gripped his whole body. His hands contracted into fists and pummelled the mattress. His head shot back, mouth racked open. From it came a full-throated scream.

The moment the scream ended, his body relaxed. A profound change was visible in his face, a collapsed emptiness, his features rendered almost unrecognisable.

For an instant, Porfiry was overwhelmed by the horror of what he had just witnessed and by the grotesque aftermath of it displayed before him. This was all that there was in the world and all, even, that the world could promise. Every human hope and endeavour came to this. And even when this bleak sentiment faded, all that was left in its place was a reminder of every other scene of violence and destruction that he had been called upon to survey in his career.

It was this thought that caused him to remember Virginsky’s presence.

The boy’s face — for in this moment Virginsky appeared to him as a lost and terrified boy — was white. His head was shaking in a tremble of denial. His arms began to shake too, violently. Porfiry held him firmly by both forearms, feeling the vibrations of his distress pass into him.

‘He’s. . d-d-d-dead.’

Porfiry nodded.

‘This is bad,’ said Virginsky. ‘This is bad.’ He repeated the phrase several more times, his eyes staring in wild distraction into Porfiry’s.

‘Yes,’ said Porfiry calmly. ‘But it will not always be as bad as this.’

‘Who’s done this to him?’

‘I think he did it to himself.’ Porfiry’s voice sounded distant and weak, empty of everything apart from puzzlement.

‘Why would he?’

Porfiry looked down at the wreckage of a man on the bed. He frowned, as if squeezing an emotion out through his brows. ‘It’s a renouncement. Is this not what members of the skoptsy sect do to themselves?’

‘How can you?’ cried Virginsky, accusingly.

Porfiry’s frown thickened.

‘Here you are, even now, thinking it over, puzzling it out, reducing it to a mystery to be solved. Can you not see?’ Virginsky’s face was appalled. ‘The blood?’

‘You have to learn to look beyond the blood,’ said Porfiry, quietly. ‘There will always be blood. If you cannot see beyond the blood, you will see nothing.’

‘It’s just an intellectual exercise to you, a game!’

‘I cannot stop myself thinking. And I am not sure what purpose would be served if I did.’

‘How can you be so cold?’ said Virginsky.

‘You are in shock,’ answered Porfiry. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’ He released his hold on Virginsky’s arms and took out his cigarette case. ‘Here.’

Virginsky looked at the opened case with unexpected avidity. He grabbed a cigarette and took it shaking to his lips. Porfiry lit it for him, steadying the bobbing cigarette with one hand. Virginsky immediately began to cough. He held the cigarette away from his face, wincing out the smoke. He looked again at Rostanev. ‘Are you sure he is dead? Should we not try to help him — to a hospital?’

‘He is dead,’ said Porfiry. ‘The severed artery has stopped pumping. ’ He lit a cigarette for himself.

A floorboard creaked in the next room. There were footsteps in the corridor. Porfiry shut the door on the faces of Rostanev’s neighbours, catching inquisitiveness turn to horror in the closing sweep.

Virginsky attempted to smoke his cigarette once more. His face darkened to a hue that brought to mind the flesh of a pickled cucumber. Then he lurched forward and vomited, turning his face from Porfiry though he held on to him to stop himself falling over.

‘It’s all right,’ said Porfiry. ‘There is no shame in it. No shame in it at all.’ It was out of tact that he avoided Virginsky’s eye as he patted his shoulder gently.

Footsteps receded outside the room and everything was quiet. Porfiry listened to the air and smoke pass through his cigarette and the comforting crackle of burning tobacco.