The Cleansing Flames

The pastry vendor

It took a moment for the genteel chatter of the confectioner’s to fall silent. But Salytov knew that the silence would come, to be broken only by gasps and the perilous clatter of silverware on china, as heavy-handled forks fell from involuntarily relaxed grips. It was the moment it took for everyone to notice him, for the full horror of his melded face to be absorbed.

He was used to this. Every time he walked into a roomful of strangers, he experienced a similar reception. And yet it did not lessen his willingness to go abroad. He had no intention of turning himself into a recluse. On the contrary, it was with a certain pride that he held himself upright, thrusting his posture upwards against his cane, facing down the looks of shock and pity with angry contempt. He wanted to scream back at them, That’s right, look at me! I got this face for you, you ungrateful pigs!

Eventually, as happened now, the conversation would resume. Those who had stopped to stare at him would gradually tear themselves away from the freak show of his face, and turn their attention once again to their pastries and their companions. For Salytov, it was almost worse when they did. For in that moment he was left alone with his disfigurement.

The fat German woman avoided looking at him as he approached. No doubt, she would not recognise him from the last time he had visited the shop, before the bomb blast. Perhaps that was just as well, thought Salytov, without exploring his reasons for thinking that.

‘I am looking for Tolya.’

Recognition skittered wildly in her eyes at the sound of his voice. She looked up and stared searchingly into his eyes. ‘You?’

Salytov lifted the angle of his head disdainfully.

‘You have nerve, coming here.’

‘Tolya,’ insisted Salytov.

‘Master will not be happy to see you.’

‘Do you think I care? But I have not come to see your master. I have come for Tolya.’

‘Always Tolya. Still you persecute that boy. He is a good boy. You leave him alone.’

‘I merely wish to speak to him. He is not in any trouble. That is to say, he will not be in any trouble so long as he co-operates with me.’ After a moment, he added, ‘And is not found to have done anything criminal. If that is the case, then, naturally, he will feel the full force of the law come down upon him.’ Salytov rammed the tip of his cane against the floor to reinforce his point.

‘He is not here. Master let him go. After all the trouble.’ From the woman’s scowl, it was clear that she held Salytov responsible.

‘Where is Tolya now?’

The German woman’s nose wrinkled distastefully.

Salytov lifted his cane and slapped it threateningly into his spare hand. ‘I’m sure you don’t want any trouble, like last time. Then your master had Tolya to blame. Now. .’ Salytov pointed the tip of his cane at the woman.

‘I heard he sell pastries in Gostinny Dvor.’

As the door closed behind him, he sensed the explosion of relief, as the customers burst into conversation, far more garrulous and excitable than that which his entrance had quelled.

*

Everywhere Salytov looked, he saw a reflection of himself. He was standing on Sadovaya Street, facing the longest of Gostinny Dvor’s frontages. This stretch of the great bazaar, where the mirror sellers clustered, was known as ‘Glass Line’. Here, the windows of the vaulted arcade were given over to displays of looking glasses of every size and shape, fragmented walls of reflection that threw the observer’s image back in his face. It was not a comfortable place for Lieutenant Salytov to stand. And yet he did not, for the moment at least, turn away or move on.

There was no doubt a streak of masochism in his nature that kept him rooted there, confronting the multiple glimpses of his damaged flesh. It was as if he needed to remind himself what he had suffered, in order to understand who he had become. But however many mirrors he stood before, and however long he looked into them, he would never be able to relate the grotesque stranger he saw to his own sense of himself.

He thought of his wife. That woman never tired of looking into a glass. In her younger days, it was no doubt because she had been gratified by what she saw. She had once possessed a fresh, heedless prettiness that could trip his heart. The years, in which she had borne him seven children, had taken their toll on her looks. Now when she scoured the surface of a silver-backed glass, it was as if she was desperately seeking an image of herself that she knew must be in there somewhere, but which had somehow slipped out of sight. Or perhaps she was simply watchful, not trying to recapture her youthful looks but determined to track and capture every sign of their disintegration. There was something obsessive about her fascination with her own face. It had acquired an added piquancy since Salytov’s accident. He had the feeling that his wife looked more intently into her own face now that she could no longer bear to look into his.

Salytov entered the market and pushed through the cluster of mirror sellers’ stalls. A tradesman in blue kaftan and cloth cap approached him from the side and accosted him with the usual spiel: ‘Step this way, sir. . only the finest examples of the mirror-maker’s art. . such a flawless reflection as you have never — ’

Salytov waited until the man had got this far before turning his full face towards him. It was enough to silence him. He began to back off, one hand gyrating in confusion and apology, his face drawn in horror. ‘Halt,’ commanded Salytov. ‘Do you know a pastry seller by the name of Tolya?’

The stallholder continued to back away as he answered Salytov: ‘There’s a fellow I sometimes see wandering the lines. Could be a Tolya.’

‘Have you seen him yet today?’

‘He has not been this way yet, sir. He treads a well-worn route. There is a pastry cook who has a concession upstairs in the gallery, over on Linen Line side. By the name of Dasha. She should be able to tell you where to find this Tolya at any given time of the day. It could even be that Tolya works for Dasha, sir, if you see what I mean — taking her pastries abroad for her.’

Salytov gave a curt nod, which was as close as he came to expressing gratitude.

He left the arcade and stepped into the central court of the bazaar. The cries of stallholders vying for business echoed around him, at times drowned out by the squawks of the caged birds they kept hung around the entrances to their shops. From those who were busy came also the sharp clack of flying abacus beads; from those who sat idle, the clatter of dice in the cup and the click of backgammon pieces on the board.

The looking-glass traders gave way to art dealers, first those selling secular paintings, and then the icon dealers. Jewellers, watchmakers, cabinetmakers, dealers in tables, chairs, beds. . the place was like a living encyclopedia of household commerce, arranged in categories and sub-categories, a criss-cross of themed lines. Sometimes the transition from one group to another was gradual and subtle, as if one trade was slowly mutating into another.

Now and then, a trader — not simply to amuse himself it seemed, but more to strengthen links with his neighbouring stallholders — would hoof a ball along the line, over the heads of the hapless shoppers, landing it skilfully at the feet of his mate a hundred or so arshins away.

It was with some relief that Salytov ducked out of the central courtyard, to take the stairs to the upper gallery.

He found the pastry stall near the corner of the Nevsky Prospect and Surovskaya Line arcades, a simple matter of following his nose. The greasy odour provoked a rush of salivation and a twisting sensation in his belly, as if his guts were being wrung out.

He waited for the woman stallholder to finish serving a savoury pie to a young man in a battered top hat. His complexion was as flaky and pale as the pastry. The pie flew to his mouth as if subject to some strange magnetism. He did not see Salytov; his whole being was absorbed in the consumption of that pie. Salytov communicated his distaste with a conscious sneer.

The woman met Salytov’s gaze with the shopkeeper’s look of habitual, almost disengaged, expectancy. She had the napkin ready and the tongs poised over her array of pastries. She gave the impression of having been on her feet at her stall since the first days of Gostinny Dvor, over a hundred years before, with every expectation of remaining there for a hundred more years.

‘Where will I find Tolya?’ Salytov demanded abruptly. He allowed his police uniform to explain his interest.

A flicker of commercial disappointment showed in her face, but she quickly recovered from it. ‘You could try the Linen Line. He treads the same path every day, and at this time of the morning he is usually there or thereabouts.’ It was clear that she wanted to be rid of Salytov as quickly as possible. Salytov sensed this and hated her for it. To punish her, he lingered pointlessly, keeping his eyes fixed on her warningly. ‘Will there be anything else?’ she asked at last.

‘What?’ he snapped, as if outraged by her effrontery.

‘A pie perhaps?’ Was there a trace of mockery in her smile?

Salytov glowered. ‘Madam, a man of my position cannot be seen to buy pies from the likes of you.’

‘If you don’t want a pie, then you’d best be gone. You’re scaring away the paying customers.’

‘I could close you down. .’ Salytov clicked his fingers. ‘Like that.’

‘I have a business to run. I’ve told you what you want to know. Why do you pick a fight with me?’

The question seemed to take Salytov by surprise. At last he began to back away from the stall, although he kept his eyes fixed on her warningly.

Returning to the inner courtyard, the clamour of the caged songbirds seemed louder and more insistent than before. Salytov allowed his instincts to lead him, through avenues hung with lace and shawls, to the Linen Line. He made enquiries as he went, and eventually closed in on the itinerant pastry vendor, clamping a hand on his shoulder as he pushed his cart away from him.

As Tolya turned to see who was detaining him, his look of mild enquiry changed to horror.

‘Do you recognise me, lad?’

‘You?’

Salytov nodded. He worked at the muscles around his mouth to produce something that he hoped would approximate a smile.

‘What do you want from me?’

‘This face — do you know how I got it?’

Tolya shook his head.

‘It was not hawking pies, I can tell you that.’

‘How. . did you?’

‘A bomb,’ cried Salytov, his voice exultant. ‘I was one of the lucky ones. I survived. Some of my friends, my fellow officers, did not. They tell me you had nothing to do with it. But I am not so sure I can believe that. All I know is that I was investigating you and your associates at the time. And then. .’ Salytov pointed at his face. ‘This.’

‘I had nothing to do with it.’

‘Do you remember that day I broke your stilts?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can do much worse than that, let me tell you.’ Salytov looked down at Tolya’s cart with a threatening leer.

‘What do you want from me?’

‘Answers. The last time we met, you were working at Ballet’s. There were two men in there. Friends of yours. Disreputable-looking individuals. One of them has turned up dead. This one.’ Salytov handed Tolya a photograph of the man from the canal. ‘He had a badly pockmarked face. Give me a name.’

Tolya looked as if he was going to be sick. ‘Pseldonimov.’

‘Who was he? What was he? How did you know him?’

‘He was a customer at the confectioner’s.’

‘Don’t play games with me, lad. He was more than that.’

‘He was a printer, I think, or something like that.’

‘Something like that?’ Salytov barked back sarcastically. ‘What does that mean? Either he was a printer or he was not.’

Tolya drew himself up. The years since his last encounter with Salytov seemed to have emboldened him. ‘You are a difficult man to help, Lieutenant Salytov. I was going to say, there were rumours.’

Salytov glared at him, as if outraged at his impertinence. ‘What rumours?’ His tone was suddenly less abrasive.

‘Rumours that he engaged in illegal activities.’

‘Pamphlets? I remember we found pamphlets at your lodgings.’

‘Pamphlets, yes. But also. . counterfeiting.’

‘I see. And when was the last time you saw him?’

‘I haven’t seen him for years, I swear. Not since I left Ballet’s.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘I need not have told you about the counterfeiting,’ cried Tolya in outrage.

‘Oh, but you know that it would have been worse for you if you had not.’

‘I swear, I have seen neither him nor Rakitin since that time.’

‘Rakitin?’

‘The one who was always by his side.’

‘I remember him. Grubby individual. Where is he now, this Rakitin?’

‘He used to live in the Petersburg Quarter. I don’t know if he lives there still.’

‘Give me a pie,’ demanded Salytov.

Tolya angled his head warily. ‘What sort of pie would you like?’

‘I don’t care.’

Tolya selected a pastry and wrapped it in a napkin. His movements were constrained by suspicion. Reluctantly, he held it out to Salytov. ‘That will be five kopeks.’

Salytov stared blankly at Tolya, as if he had not heard. He did not take the pie.

Tolya started to withdraw the pie.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Salytov touched Tolya’s wrist with his cane, halting the withdrawal.

‘Do you want it or not?’ demanded Tolya.

‘That’s very kind of you.’ Salytov snatched the pie. He held it for a moment and then tipped his hand so that it fell onto the floor. A moment later, he raised his foot and stamped it down on the pie, squashing it into the ground. ‘Give me another one.’

‘Are you going to pay me for that one?’

‘You gave it to me. A gift. Remember.’

‘This is my livelihood. I cannot afford to have you-’

‘My livelihood,’ cut in Salytov, ‘is tracking down criminals. When you withhold information, it is just the same as me treading on your pies.’

‘I’m not withholding information. You didn’t give me a chance. You don’t have to do all this. I would have told you everything I know anyhow. I have told you everything I know. I haven’t seen Rakitin for years. All I can say is he used to live in a house in the Petersburg Quarter. I did go there once. If you wish, I can tell you where to find it. But I cannot promise that he still lives there. He may do, but if not, someone there may know where to find him.’

‘Are you telling me how to do my job, lad?’

‘No.’ Tolya closed his eyes, his face trembling in exasperation.

‘Because I would not presume to tell you how to sell pies.’

Tolya clamped his lips together.

‘Right. Let’s get going.’

‘Where?’

‘To this house in the Petersburg Quarter, of course. You’re going to take me there.’

Tolya looked down in despair at his cart.

‘You won’t be needing that.’ Salytov made a sharp gesture with his cane to hurry the pastry vendor along.