The Cleansing Flames

A friend of the family

‘How extraordinary,’ murmured Porfiry Petrovich, as he closed the door to his chambers.

‘What is it?’ asked Virginsky.

Porfiry handed over the slip of paper that he had received from his clerk Zamyotov only a moment before.

Virginsky read: The Dolgoruky Residence, Liteiny Prospect, 10. ‘What is so extraordinary? That is the correct address, I believe.’

‘I asked Alexander Grigorevich to make enquiries about Lebezyatnikov’s address. This is what he discovered.’

‘Lebezyatnikov lives with the Dolgorukys?’

‘That would seem to be the case,’ said Porfiry. ‘I wonder what his connection with the family is. Princess Dolgorukaya does not seem to be the sort to take in paying lodgers. Still, appearances can be deceptive. When necessity speaks, and all that.’

‘Perhaps his relationship with the ageing princess is not that of a landlady and tenant. Perhaps he lives there on entirely different terms.’

‘What are you suggesting, Pavel Pavlovich?’

Virginsky shrugged. ‘He may be a friend of the family.’ He handed the address back to Porfiry with an ironic ripple of his brows.

*

Porfiry detected no hint of surprise on the elderly butler’s face as he opened the door. Years of serving an aristocratic Russian family had no doubt habituated him to the suppression of that emotion, to the extent that he now seemed incapable of feeling it. His tone was impatient and weary: ‘I shall tell the Princess that you are here.’

‘There is no need to disturb your mistress, Alexey Yegorovich. We have come to speak to Vissarion Stepanovich.’ Porfiry enjoyed a moment of satisfaction as a tremor of elusive surprise did at last cause a small convulsion in the butler’s face.

Alexey Yegorovich recovered himself quickly. ‘Vissarion Stepanovich is out of sorts today.’

‘I am sorry to hear that. However, I am afraid that we must insist on talking to that gentleman.’

The butler bowed and showed them into a drawing room, furnished and decorated in impeccable European style.

Some moments later, Princess Dolgorukaya herself burst into the room, a tiny purple tornado of agitation. ‘It is out of the question. You cannot talk to Vissarion Stepanovich. I will not allow it.’

‘With all respect, dear lady, you cannot prevent it.’

‘He is an old man. An old fool. It will do you no good to talk to him.’

‘Allow me to be the judge of that.’

Princess Dolgorukaya scowled severely at Porfiry. ‘I insist on being present while you interview him.’

‘That will not be necessary.’

‘Do you suspect him of some misdeed? Vissarion Stepanovich is a confused and silly old man, but he is not a criminal. You have my word on that.’

‘Really, Madame, this is a matter between ourselves and Vissarion Stepanovich. We are not at liberty to discuss it with a third party.’

‘How dare you! I am not a third party. I am that man’s sole benefactor and friend. You will have me to answer to if Vissarion Stepanovich is upset.’

‘Please, be assured, it is not our intention to upset him. We merely wish to ask him some questions.’

‘Oh, but you don’t understand. That’s the very thing that will upset him. He finds it very, very difficult to answer questions. It is simply the cruellest thing you can do to him.’

‘Nevertheless, we must speak to him.’ Porfiry watched the elderly princess closely. Remembering the cool demeanour she had shown yesterday, with her chilling denial of maternity, it was hard to believe that this was the same individual in front of him now. What was consistent — he saw now — was her wilful obstruction. In neither case had he interpreted her behaviour as obstruction. She was simply the disappointed mother and the anxiously solicitous friend. But for the first time he began to suspect that there might be an element of pretence to her conduct. She was presenting personas.

The Princess seemed to detect something she did not like in Porfiry’s attention. ‘Very well, speak to him if you wish. He is not a child. I am not his mother. He must answer for himself, and pay the consequences. I have done all I can to protect him.’ She was withdrawing from the fray, certainly, but only because she saw that it was necessary to do so. She had sensed Porfiry’s suspicion, and chose to nip it in the bud. However, she had missed the right psychological moment to do so.

At any rate, she left the room abruptly, possibly to take herself out of the range of Porfiry’s consideration.

The door opened one more time and a gentleman entered the room with such force that it seemed he had been propelled into it. This could only be Vissarion Stepanovich Lebezyatnikov.

He was past the prime of his life, though by no means as advanced in years as Princess Dolgorukaya had led them to believe. In fact, the man was little older than Porfiry himself, or so he judged. He was dressed carelessly, a silk dressing gown thrown over crumpled trousers and a grubby waistcoat. His shirt lacked a collar and he wore no necktie. Strands of white hair stood up from a naked skull. A stubble of several days’ growth silvered his face.

Lebezyatnikov clutched a large, far-from-clean handkerchief in one hand, which he dabbed to his rheumy eyes. ‘Forgive my appearance. I was not expecting guests. They told me I didn’t have time to dress. Quelle dommage! I appear before you en deshabille. And you are magistrates, they tell me.’

‘That is perfectly alright. You are Vissarion Stepanovich Lebezyatnikov?’

The Princess’s anxiety about the effect of questions on her protege’s nerves was borne out. ‘What? What is this? Good Heavens. I never. Am I Vissarion Stepanovich Lebezyatnikov? My good sir! What kind of a question is that? If I am not, then I do not know who I am. And even if I am, then perhaps the same may be said. Am I Vissarion Stepanovich Lebezyatnikov indeed! How is one to begin to answer such a question?’

‘A simple yes will suffice.’

‘Oh, but will it? Will it, indeed? Let us say, for the sake of argument, that I possess the name you mentioned. Where does that get us? Does it get us any closer to understanding the essential man behind the name? I am more than just a name, I hope, even if that name be Vissarion Stepanovich Lebezyatnikov.’

‘But that is your name?’

Lebezyatnikov held his finger down the length of his nose and inhaled noisily. ‘I prefer that question.’

‘Will you deign to answer it?’

‘That is my name. That is to say, it is the name by which I am known. To go further, the name by which I have always been known. It is not too much to speculate that it will be the name by which I will continue to be known in the future, for the rest of my life we might say, and perhaps beyond, if I am remembered at all after I have gone. Perhaps I will be remembered fondly by some of those I have touched, in one way or another, on this journey through life. By some of my former students perhaps. Of course, it is my fervent hope that my name will, from time to time, form itself upon the lips of my lifelong friend and benefactor, Yevgenia Alexeevna. However, she is an old woman, not in the best of health. One must face the possibility that I may outlive her, though how I will survive when she is gone, I tremble to think. I can only trust to her generosity and consideration. Oh, she scolds me horribly — every day! But she has a heart of gold. She will not abandon me, even in death.’

Porfiry and Virginsky watched spellbound as Lebezyatnikov dabbed non-existent tears from his eyes and then took a moment to recover his composure.

‘As for any wider remembrance of my name by the general public,’ he resumed at last, ‘that is too much to hope for. Except that there were some verses of mine published in my youth. I flatter myself to think that they may have left the imprint of my soul on the receptive ears of unknown readers. Oh dear — can a soul leave an imprint on an ear? I’m not sure. It seemed that it could, but now, I think perhaps it can’t. I shall have to think about that one. To return to the name of Vissarion Stepanovich Lebezyatnikov, yes, it is mine, but it was given to me by my parents. Not so much given to me as thrust upon me. I had no choice in the matter. And I will say this to you, there are times, even now, when I wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with the question “Who am I?” ringing in my ears. The answer comes, “You are Vissarion Stepanovich Lebezyatnikov!” In response to which, the further question, “Yes, but who is he?” ’

‘For our purposes, it is enough that you are willing to acknowledge the name as yours.’

‘If you gentlemen are satisfied with that, then so am I.’

‘I can see that we are going to have to proceed carefully,’ said Porfiry. ‘I do not wish to unsettle you with unnecessary. . questions. However, there are certain matters we wish to talk to you about. Indeed, we are utterly compelled to talk to you about them.’

Lebezyatnikov gasped.

‘There is nothing to be alarmed about. I wish to talk to you about the articles that appeared in certain newspapers concerning you.’

‘What is this? I have been defamed in the press?’

‘Some lampoons appeared. The author was given as “K.” ’

‘I have always had my enemies.’ Horror dawned on Lebezyatnikov’s face. ‘And so you have come to arrest me! On the basis of these slanderous lies.’ Lebezyatnikov clumped the handkerchief into a ball, which he as good as stuffed into his mouth. He took two tottering steps backwards and fell onto a sofa. He tried to speak, but his voice was muffled by the handkerchief. Removing it, he cried, ‘I recant! I recant! Whatever I stand accused of, I recant! Let me write a letter to the Tsar. I will throw myself at his mercy! I will confess to everything. I will go back to the Church. I have never stopped believing, in my secret heart.’

‘My dear sir,’ soothed Porfiry. ‘Please do not distress yourself. You do not stand accused of anything. The articles were clearly malicious — and really there is no substance in them. It is simply that we believe that the man who wrote them is now dead. We are talking to a number of people whom we can connect to him. In a general way, you understand.’

‘And you have connected me with this man?’

‘There must have been some reason why he chose to attack you in print.’

‘The poems, I told you about the poems. That is where I can trace all this enmity back to. They may be interpreted metaphorically, you see. And there are those who do not like such an interpretation. Powerful individuals. I should never have allowed their publication. If I could take one thing back in my life, it would be that. But I was vain. I allowed myself to be flattered. The vanity of youth! It should have been enough for me that they were circulated in private, that certain influential figures read and approved of them. But I was prevailed upon. They said I had a duty to publish.’

‘When. . was this?’ asked Porfiry nervously. It seemed a simple question, but so too had asking the man’s name.

‘When? But what is the passage of time, when we are concerned with eternal absolutes? There exists, beyond the time-sullied world we know, a pure, perfect, ideal realm. I may be a creature of the former world, enslaved by appetite, shackled to the runaway locomotive engine of time, but my ideas belong to the latter realm, that of eternal absolutes. I trust my images are not too subtle for you?’

‘Please, rest assured, they are not. But I believe you said the poems were published in your youth.’ Porfiry consciously removed any interrogative intonation from the statement. ‘The articles attacking you appeared quite recently. We must consider the possibility that something other than your metaphors provoked them.’

‘I can think of no other reason why anyone would attack me.’

‘The writer, we believe, was a journalist called Demyan Antonovich Kozodavlev.’

‘Kozodavlev? Kozodavlev attacked me?’

‘It would seem so.’

‘But Kozodavlev is my friend.’

‘So you do know Kozodavlev. .’

‘He is my friend, I tell you. He came on my name day. We drank champagne together.’

‘He was a friend of Prince Dolgoruky too,’ suggested Porfiry.

‘Will you show me these articles?’

‘I don’t have them with me. I assumed you would have already seen them.’

‘I never read the papers. Sometimes, I look back at old almanacs. It seems to me that that is the only way to understand events, with hindsight. I find what is happening now to be altogether too tumultuous. It overwhelms me. What is a man to do in the face of all these happenings?’

‘I sympathise. I spend my life contending with the tumult of happenings. Tell me about Prince Dolgoruky. He has become estranged from his mother.’

‘Yevgenia Alexeevna has a heart of gold, as I think I have told you. Un veritable coeur d’or. Mais, en effet, it is a peculiarly brittle kind of gold. Like gold that has been left out in the ice and snow. The frost has permeated it and it has become. . brittle. For Heaven’s sake, do not tell her that I said this! She does not understand the subtlety of my images. She would not understand a heart of gold permeated with frost. Assuming such a thing is possible, of course. My subject is history, not the natural sciences. I do not know if gold becomes more brittle when subjected to the action of frost. I suppose it may be possible to conduct an experiment.’

‘You mentioned history. You taught at the university, I believe.’

‘The happiest days of my life. . until my enemies caught up with me.’

‘I am surprised to hear you say that you have enemies.’

‘Do you think I am too ridiculous to have enemies?’

‘Forgive me, no. That is not what I meant to suggest. Too benign, too innocent.’

‘It amounts to the same thing. It was Yevgenia Alexeevna who told me that I am too ridiculous to have enemies. Who would waste their time in becoming my enemy? That is her question to me. But I do have enemies. Perhaps it is my innocence that they hate.’

‘You were talking about Prince Dolgoruky.’

‘Ah, dear, sweet Konstantinka. Little Koka.’

‘He didn’t seem so little to me.’

‘Not now, but when I taught him.’

‘Ah, I see. You. .’

‘I was his tutor for many years. In his boyhood. . You may say I stood in loco parentis, or more accurately in loco patris. His father died when he was an infant. Yevgenia Alexeevna. . she. . has a heart of gold, that woman.’

‘Yes, of course, it goes without saying.’

‘Her heart was in the right place, but it has to be said that she did not understand how to bring up a boy.’

‘I see.’

‘She was his mother, but she left much of his upbringing to me. It may be said that I was his solitary guiding influence during his formative years.’

‘Oh. . that is a great responsibility.’

‘A burden! But I saw it as my duty, and I fulfilled my duty to the utmost of my abilities. In all conscience, I did the best I could for that boy.’

‘I’m sure you did.’ Porfiry smiled uneasily. ‘Prince Dolgoruky — ’

‘My dear Kostyasha!’

‘Your dear Kostyasha. . acted as an intermediary — as a kind of agent, we might say — between Kozodavlev and the publisher of the articles against you. Without doubt, he profited from the transaction. He facilitated their publication.’

Lebezyatnikov let out a bleating cry and fell back in an affected swoon. ‘You drive a dagger into my heart! A dagger, sir! And my heart is not metallic. Oh no, my heart is all too weak and fleshly.’ Lebezyatnikov’s gaze veered wildly, and then he seemed to fix on a distant point. Some kind of realisation came over him. ‘I am to blame. I am to blame for everything.’ He spoke quietly, though his voice was strangely firm. For all his absurdity and self-deception, he did not baulk at confronting this single devastating truth.

‘Professor Tatiscev.’ Porfiry simply said the name, and left it hanging there.

Lebezyatnikov turned a bewildered expression on Porfiry. ‘What about him?’

‘According to Kozodavlev, he is to blame for everything.’

‘But that makes no sense.’ Lebezyatnikov frowned at Porfiry. Then his expression became wary and sealed.

‘Kozodavlev called him the Devil’s Professor.’

‘But Kozodavlev was an atheist.’

‘And Prince Dolgoruky is hounded by the Devil.’

‘He is an atheist too. I made sure of that. I taught him to turn his back on all such superstitious nonsense.’

‘Even so, he sees the Devil. Perhaps that is proof of the Devil’s existence, if he can be seen by a man who does not believe in him.’

‘The Devil is a pervasive delusion.’

‘There is something else I wish to tell you about Prince Dolgoruky.’

‘Something worse? You have saved the worst till last?’

‘He had printed a certain document, accusing himself of a number of crimes.’

Lebezyatnikov frowned darkly as he considered this information. Then his face suddenly lit up. ‘It is his conscience! The boy has printed up his conscience! He acknowledges his crimes against me, and seeks forgiveness. There is hope!’

But Lebezyatnikov’s face, in the aftermath of this assertion, was the most pathetic that Porfiry had ever seen. Behind the mask of optimism, the eyes showed utter desolation. The vaunted hope was nowhere to be seen.