A Vengeful Longing

7

They took the train from Petergofsky Station. The morning was bright and warm, the city in the full luminous grip of summer. It felt to Virginsky like they were going on an excursion. Porfiry’s cook had even prepared a lunch for them, putting a loaf of black bread, a hock of ham and some gooseberries into a small wicker basket. Porfiry had the basket on the seat next to him, as if it were the third member of their party. Most of the day-trippers to Petergof had taken earlier trains, giving Porfiry and Virginsky the whole of a second-class compartment to themselves.

The train gathered speed as it passed the Mitrofanevsky Cemetery. Virginsky watched the memorials and mausoleums flicker by, the grey palaces of the dead projecting sharply from the all-consuming earth. He remembered this was not an excursion after all.

‘Have they buried them yet?’

Porfiry was lost in the enjoyment of a cigarette. He had been looking out of the same window, but without seeing the sombre landscape, it seemed. And by now they had left the cemetery behind. He turned a quizzical face to Virginsky.

‘Raisa Ivanovna and Grisha.’

‘Yesterday,’ said Porfiry. ‘We let Meyer out to attend the funeral. There were no other relatives.’

‘No one on her side?’

‘No one.’

They travelled through the borderland of squalid dwellings that lay at the southern periphery of the city. Roads broke up into dirt tracks; walls crumbled; sheds and shanty houses tumbled into each other. Out of all this arose a new and sinister-seeming presence, that of looming, smoke-grimed manufactories. The train banked away from Virginsky’s sight-line, as if turning its back on the pervasive ugliness. Pulled by the direction of movement, Virginsky looked through the opposite window, across the corridor of the carriage. His gaze swooped along the momentous curve of the tracks, carried away by perspective, westward. The landscape here was taken up with a series of garden plots, another manifestation of the human instinct for purpose and production, the force that drew the hurtling train on. He picked out isolated figures, peasants, stooped and barely moving, as though they had grown out of the soil they worked.

Clumps of woodland squatted over the horizon. In the middle distance, Virginsky glimpsed a large ochre and white house, half-concealed by trees. He stirred and sat up, then leant forward and touched Porfiry’s knee.

‘Ulyanka,’ said Virginsky.

Porfiry shrugged. ‘So? Ulyanka is on the way to Petergof. This really shouldn’t come as news to you.’

‘But it is another connection. Now with this Bezmygin fellow.’ Porfiry smiled at Virginsky’s excitement. ‘Or another meaningless coincidence,’ he said.

They were both silent as they watched the building dance in and out of vision behind the veil of birch.

‘The house at the eleventh verst,’ said Virginsky redundantly. Porfiry screwed his face up into an expression of reproof.

The train stopped at a station on the Ligovsky Canal. The lunatic asylum remained in view, as if to provoke them. Porfiry fidgeted in annoyance. Virginsky felt somehow embarrassed. It was a relief to them both it seemed when the train pulled out.

From Ligovo, the short next stop, the railway climbed and ran through woodland. A green translucent fire blazed around them. As they emerged they scanned the horizon hopefully for a glimpse of the sea. Now the tracks ran parallel with the Petergof Road a couple of versts away to the north, its chain of magnificent dachas spread out along the coast. Beyond it, the edge of the land crumbled into the bay.

The summer residence of Count Akhmatov was a grand, neoclassical palace looking out over the Gulf of Finland. To reach it, they took a drozhki from New Petergof station one and a half versts back along the Petergof Road. The salted air and the flicker of light through the beech trees rekindled the holiday mood in Virginsky. There was a breeze from the sea; the morning hovered on the edge of coolness. But he felt the sun on his face and that counted for a lot.

Porfiry sat with the basket of food on his lap. There was something fussy and comical about the figure he cut. It would be easy to underestimate him, thought Virginsky, looking at the placid, almost animal, expression on his superior’s face. Porfiry had his eyes closed, those hyperactive lashes of his still for the moment, as he smiled, basking in the sun. Virginsky remembered the fear and, yes, hatred he had once felt towards this man. But he realised that even when these feelings had been at their most intense, there had been room for others. Porfiry Petrovich had always fascinated him. There had been times when he had even liked the man, and wanted to be liked by him in return. Certainly, he had never made the mistake of not respecting him. Now, in retrospect, the sympathy he had at the time entertained towards his persecutor seemed inexplicable. He wondered whether he would ever entirely trust him.

As the drozhki turned into the canopied lane that led winding up to the house, Porfiry opened his eyes and saw Virginsky looking at him. Porfiry’s smile was questioning. Virginsky met it with an ironic, slightly mocking face. ‘You are quite comfortable?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ answered Porfiry, bemused.

‘I was merely thinking of something you said to Dr Meyer. About sitting down. For long periods. I wondered. .’

‘It comes and goes,’ said Porfiry carelessly, looking away.

‘I rather imagined it was just something you said. Off the top of your head, as it were. An invention.’

‘How could you suspect me of such a thing, Pavel Pavlovich?’

Virginsky shrugged. ‘I thought it was part of your technique.’

‘Do you really believe me capable of such deviousness?’ Porfiry’s tone was hurt. ‘Besides, I am more superstitious than you allow. To lay claim to a malady one does not have seems almost to invite it. I am not so rash as to wish the complaint in question upon myself.’

‘What malady?’

‘Haemorrhoids.’ Porfiry’s expression sealed off any further discussion.

Catching sight of the gardens, formally landscaped in the ‘French’ style, with symmetrical lawns and statue-lined avenues, Virginsky was stirred first to delight and then to anger. Really, these aristocrats! he thought, they believe that even nature must do their bidding. He looked back to Porfiry and saw now that it was he who was being watched with interest. Porfiry smiled and nodded for Virginsky to look at something: a fountain sprayed out from a statue of Neptune, within an arc of columns.

‘He has made his own little Petergof,’ said Porfiry.

Virginsky allowed himself a collusive smile.

The path curved round and brought them to the front of the house. A gleaming facade of columns faced the sea, as if demanding obeisance of it.

Virginsky, however, was determined not to be cowed, though he was curiously discomfited by Porfiry’s basket, which was handed to him to hold as the senior investigating magistrate climbed down after him from the cab. He made sure to give it back to Porfiry at the soonest opportunity.

The doors were opened to them by a gaunt-faced butler who affected a superior attitude, despite the fact that he was the one done up in livery. When Porfiry explained who they were and why they were there, the butler turned a contemptuous eye on the basket before admitting them.

They followed his satin-clad back across a marble-floored reception hall towards the muted sounds of an orchestra playing. The hall was dominated by a huge painting of an Arcadian scene. Howtypical! thought Virginsky, hotly. He imagined the declaration he would make when he was brought into the count’s presence. You celebrate the rural idyll, adorn your walls with idealised images of shepherds and shepherdesses, yet the wealth that makes it possible was borne out of the ownership of human souls. The count will probably protest that he no longer owns any souls. Perhaps he will even claim to be a liberal, saying that he gave his serfs their freedom in advance of the reforms of ’61. But Virginsky would not spare him. You refuse to renounce the crimes of your forefathers! Your life of luxury and idleness is tainted by its source. You are the child of theft and oppression!

With an unpleasant jolt of awareness, Virginsky recognised the face his imagination had supplied for the count in this self-soothing fantasy: it was his father’s.

The flunky opened a door and released a blast of music that was both lush and somehow also ragged. The room they were shown into was a circular hall with a domed ceiling painted with clouds. The walls were lined with paper in which gold leaf predominated. In the middle of the hall, stretched out on a sofa, was a man of around forty, a Chinese dressing gown draped around his considerable bulk. He wore his hair long and unkempt and had his eyes closed, though he did not seem to be asleep. His expression was somewhere between the pained and the ecstatic. The musicians, who were dressed in the same pale-blue livery as the butler, were seated on a platform in front of their solitary audience. They were about twenty in number, and by the sounds of it, of varying degrees of musicianship. The string section produced a passable, even rich, sound, but one or two of the woodwind were out of tune, as well as out of time. Virginsky couldn’t see the face of the conductor, who was bringing them more or less to the end of a limping rendition of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, but his shoulders were rounded and the movements of his arms seemed rather constrained and lacking in conviction.

When the music finished, he turned a face in which fear and hopefulness were combined to pathetic effect towards the lounging aristocrat, who did not deign to open his eyes or acknowledge the end of the piece in any way. Virginsky also discerned in the conductor’s meek and suppliant expression a stifled hatred that were it ever to be released would result in an explosion of violent passion.

‘Well, Yakov Ilyich,’ began Count Akhmatov at last, for it was surely he reclining on the sofa. ‘The noise your rabble produces reminds me of the female pudenda, heavenly bliss in close proximity to utter filth and degradation.’

There was a titter of amusement from the players.

‘Thank you, Your Excellency.’ Yakov Ilyich smiled uneasily.

Count Akhmatov kept his eyes closed, but his arms swept magisterially about him, trailing the loose sleeves of his dressing gown. ‘Don’t thank me, you fool. I’m insulting you! Don’t you even have the wit to know when you are insulted?’

Yakov Ilyich shrugged and mugged for the orchestra. By such small acts of insubordination, he asserted his freedom from the tormentor on the sofa.

The butler who had shown Porfiry and Virginsky in cleared his throat loudly and walked over to Count Akhmatov. After the flunky had whispered something in his ear, Akhmatov sat up sharply and turned a blue imperious gaze on the visitors. ‘Magistrates from St Petersburg! For Bezmygin!’ he shouted, in mock alarm. ‘You cannot arrest Bezmygin. He is a scoundrel and a philanderer, but he is my best player. Arrest one of them instead!’ Count Akhmatov pointed to a pair of flautists, little more than boys, who seemed as unhappy to be in his orchestra as he was to have them there. ‘In fact, you may arrest the whole of the woodwind section, but not Bezmygin. I am holding a masked ball tonight. I cannot do without my Bezmygin.’

‘Your Excellency,’ protested Porfiry, mildly, ‘we have not come to arrest Bezmygin, merely to talk to him.’

‘What is in your basket?’

‘Food.’

‘You have come to invite him on a picnic?’

‘Not exactly, sir.’

Count Akhmatov regarded first Porfiry then Virginsky with open, almost offensive curiosity, like a schoolboy inspecting snails. He seemed particularly interested in Virginsky, perhaps sensing his hostility and wanting to provoke it more.

‘Very well, you have my permission to talk to him.’ Virginsky bristled at that ‘permission’ and the count allowed himself a small smile of triumph. He rose from the sofa, swishing his sleeves about him. ‘I shall retire to the orangery. My auditory senses are worn out. Yakov Ilyich, you will be busy this afternoon, I think. There is much work to be done, but you are the man to do it, of that I have no doubt. Now then, where is that young wife of yours? We must do our best to keep her entertained while you are occupied. It is the least we can do. It would not do for one so pretty to be bored. Though how a booby like you won such a wife, I’ll never know.’ With that, Akhmatov padded out of the ballroom, his slippers flapping mocking applause as he went.

‘Which of you is Bezmygin?’ Porfiry called out, when the emotional wake of the departed aristocrat had cleared from the room.

The man who occupied the position of first violin tilted back his head and looked down superciliously. There was arrogance in his posture, but also a kind of sly wariness that undermined it. Perhaps it was this contradiction, the hint of vulnerability in his soft, dark eyes, that made him attractive to women. To Virginsky, he had the look of the Lothario who expects the husband to burst in at any moment. He laid down his instrument and stepped down from the platform. His gait was stiff and self-conscious. He held himself away from Porfiry and Virginsky as he approached them.

‘What is this about?’ Behind him, the orchestra master tapped his baton on his music stand and called out bars for the woodwind players.

‘You are Bezmygin?’ demanded Porfiry.

The musician nodded confirmation.

‘We have come to talk to you about Raisa Ivanovna Meyer.’

An unpleasant smirk contorted Bezmygin’s face. ‘What has she done? Murdered that insufferable philistine of a husband of hers?’

‘No. In fact, I am afraid to say that she is dead and it seems someone has murdered her.’

The shock of receiving this news seemed to knock some of the stuffing out of Bezmygin’s pose. It struck Virginsky as genuine. He remembered his own experience of how Porfiry used such revelations as psychological tools to prise out the truth.

‘Poor Raya,’ said Bezmygin.

‘Dr Meyer seems to think you might have had something to do with it.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘Is it true you were having an affair with Raisa Ivanovna?’

‘I deny that.’

‘My friend, you may deny it and yet it may also be true,’ observed Porfiry. ‘Her husband’s view is that when she broke off the affair, your pride was wounded and you determined to exact revenge.’

‘He’s a fool. This would be laughable if it weren’t. .’ Bezmygin broke off.

‘You were often at her house. Alone with her, when her husband was not there.’

‘Yes. We were putting together some pieces for a soirée. She. . was a gifted accompanist.’ Sudden anger flared in Bezmygin’s eyes. ‘I cannot believe you have come here to ask me these questions. I should have thought it quite obvious that her husband killed her out of jealousy.’

‘Did he, then, have grounds to be jealous?’

‘No! Except that she was bored with him. The man is a philistine and a morphine eater who had no appreciation of her talents. Besides, he was having an affair with the maid, Polina. Did he tell you about that?’

Porfiry and Virginsky exchanged a glance. ‘No, he did not,’ said Porfiry.

‘Well, it’s true. Raisa told me about it.’

‘So relations between Dr Meyer and his wife were strained?’ asked Porfiry.

‘I should say so. He had turned away from her. The man had a heart of ice.’

‘As far as you know, was there any specific reason for the deteriorationin their relations, other than her friendship with you?’

‘Our friendship had nothing to do with it. It was all to do with a letter he received.’

‘A letter? Who was it from?’

‘It was anonymous, apparently. The thing upset her terribly. Really, there are some quite malicious people in the world. Live and let live is what I say. But it seems there are those who hold to a different philosophy.’

‘Did she tell you what was in the letter?’

‘No. She wouldn’t go into the details. But it was pretty spiteful stuff, I should think, judging by the effect it had.’

‘You think the contents concerned Raisa Ivanovna?’

‘All I know is that after he received it, Meyer would have nothing to do with his wife, not in the normal way of married couples, if you take my meaning. If you ask me, he was looking for an excuse. And, anyway, it didn’t take long for him to fall into the arms of his wench.’

‘When did he receive this letter, can you say?’

‘Two or three months ago.’ Bezmygin shrugged his shoulders uncertainly. ‘I think it was about then that she first spoke to me of it.’

‘This is all very interesting,’ said Porfiry. ‘If true.’

‘Of course it’s true! You have only to find the letter. He would not destroy it, though she begged him to.’

Porfiry pursed his lips distractedly, then it seemed as though he had remembered something. ‘Tell me, what were your feelings towards Grigory, the Meyers’ son?’

‘Pity, mostly. Why? What has Grigory got to do with this?’

‘Whoever killed Raisa Ivanovna, also killed him,’ said Virginsky, and he wondered why he had wanted to be the one who broke this news to Bezmygin.

‘What a terrible business,’ said Bezmygin, and there was something deliberate about the way he made this declaration. He looked back at the platform. The other musicians had stopped practising and all eyes were on him. His look to Porfiry, seeking release, was defiant.

‘Are you not going to eat that?’ said Virginsky, indicating the basket, which was once again on Porfiry’s lap. They were on the train back to St Petersburg. ‘You have taken it all the way to Petergof and now you are taking it all the way back without touching it.’

Porfiry’s surprise at discovering the basket seemed a little overdone. ‘I have been so preoccupied, I forgot all about it.’

‘If you had ever been a starving student, you would have found it impossible to forget about eating.’

‘It has been on your mind all the time? Here, have it. Help yourself. I’ll perhaps have. . just a few gooseberries.’

Virginsky took the basket. He broke off a piece of the bread and sliced the ham with a knife that the cook had supplied. ‘So? What do you think now?’

‘I think we need to find this letter. I would like you to go to the dacha this afternoon to find it. You could meet young Ptitsyn there. He is a good man to have at a crime scene.’

‘Very well.’

‘Perhaps you could give me a little of the ham, after all,’ said Porfiry.

‘But what did you think of Bezmygin?’

‘Obviously, he had nothing to do with it.’

Virginsky nodded. ‘That was my impression too.’

‘I don’t suppose Zakhar put any wine in there, did he?’

Virginsky shook his head.

‘Really, that man. He persecutes me terribly. One’s servants always do.’

Virginsky furrowed his brow in distaste at the joke. ‘Then don’t have servants.’

‘In which case, who would I have to persecute me? Or would you have me marry?’

But Virginsky had lost his appetite for the banter, as he had almost for the food. He pretended sudden interest in a somewhat pretentious dacha that was gliding past at that moment.

‘Any bread?’ said Porfiry. ‘I think I must be hungrier than I realised.’

They were driving north now on Izmailovsky Prospekt, having just crossed the Fontanka, when Virginsky stood up in the drozhki and called the driver to a halt. He leapt down from the cab and ran back some distance along the pavement towards a couple who had just come out of the entrance of an apartment building opposite the Novo-Alexandrovsky Market. A tall, well-to-do middle-aged gentleman was arm-in-arm with a very pretty and fashionably dressed girl about half his age. The gentleman’s expression when he saw Virginsky coming towards him was at first one of shock, which gradually gave way to shame-faced contrition.

‘Father!’ Virginsky called out. ‘You did not tell me you were coming to Petersburg.’

‘Why it’s Pasha!’ cried the young woman delightedly. At the same time she broke away from Virginsky’s father and threw her arms out towards Virginsky. He slowed his step and ignored the offered embrace.

‘Ah, my dear!’ Virginsky’s father at last began. ‘It all happened so quickly. There did not seem time. And besides. .’ His father suddenly seemed to think of something. ‘We thought it would be nice to surprise you!’ His voice rose brightly, but there was something not entirely trustworthy about his eyes at that moment. Virginsky felt a pang of depression.

‘How long have you been here?’ he asked leadenly.

‘Oh, simply ages,’ said the girl, rolling her eyes. ‘It feels like a lifetime. Pavel Pavlovich has had all sorts of boring business to attend to with his boring old cronies. It has been the longest week of my life.’

‘A week?’

‘Now now, Natasha! Don’t exaggerate. Not a week, nothing like. A matter of days, that’s all. We were intending to pay you a visit once I had sorted out all my business affairs.’ Virginsky’s father smiled nervously.

Natasha, that is to say, Natalya Ivanovna, Virginsky’s young stepmother, placed her hand on his arm and turned him gently away from his father. He was aware of a wild excitement that her touch provoked in him, something closer to hatred than desire.

‘Pasha, you must rescue me from your father.’ Her eyes were imploring. But again he recognised in them a suspect quality. Oh, how they deserve each other, he thought bitterly. ‘He has been neglecting me awfully. He prefers to spend all his time with that old lecher Colonel Setochkin.’

‘What’s that?’ said Virginsky, his smile frozen anxiously.

Natasha addressed him over her shoulder. ‘You wouldn’t object, would you, dearest, if Pasha were to look after me for the next few days, while you sort out your affairs with Setochkin?’ Then to Virginsky she confided: ‘You wouldn’t believe it. I have to sit on my own in a tiny room with only the walls to talk to, while they lock themselves away discussing I know not what.’

‘Business matters. It would be even more tiresome for you to have to listen to it all. But yes! Why not? What a capital idea. Pasha, you could show your mother the sights of St Petersburg. The Hermitage, the Summer Garden, the Fortress. .’

‘No,’ said Virginsky quickly. He pulled away from the disturbing touch. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I have work to do. Now.’ He gestured back to the waiting drozhki.

‘Ah! The magistrate! Of course. Is that the great Porfiry Petrovich?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you not introduce us?’

‘Another time, perhaps. Right now we are engaged in urgent business. A case. Time is of the essence.’

‘I see.’ Virginsky’s father dropped his gaze to the ground in disappointment. He worked quickly to dispel it. ‘Of course. You must devote yourself to your work. I am glad to see you taking so well to it.’ And then he remembered: ‘The letter! It did the trick then, the letter I wrote?’

Virginsky frowned in annoyance and did not answer.

‘But what will I do?’ implored Natalya Ivanovna petulantly. ‘You men and your business, it is all you ever think about.’

‘Sweetest, I will make it up to you, I promise. I shall take you to the opera!’

‘Good day to you, sir. And you, madam,’ Virginsky cut in, tersely. He began to walk away without waiting for a response.

‘We’re at the Hotel Regina,’ called his father after him. ‘On the Moika Embankment. Charming view of the river. You must come and see us.’

Virginsky shook his head at Porfiry’s questioning face as he climbed back into the drozhki.