The Gentle Axe

The Elusive Govorov

A fool’s errand, it was another fool’s errand.

Lieutenant Salytov descended into the seventh tavern that day. How the smell of these places sickened him. The air, abrasive with hard spirit, licked his eyes into weeping. He was jostled on the stairs by two drunks leaving. Nothing malicious-it was simply that they could not control their shoulders. They seemed to be attracted to him magnetically.

The rub of their filthy coats, the sense of their awkward humanity beneath, disgusted him. The unshakable absurdity of it disgusted him.

His rage made it difficult for him to speak.

“Oaf.” With leather-gloved hands, he pushed one of them away and was horrified by the heavy, beseeching roll of the man’s eyes and the grim, clownish slapstick of his tread. “You-” Salytov’s throat tightened around the words he could have said. “People!” It was all he was able to squeeze out. But he was satisfied by the word. He felt it placed a distance between himself and such individuals.

The drunk’s answer was a deep and inarticulate growling.

His companion gripped the handrail of the stairs and swayed as if he were at the prow of a listing ship. He swallowed portentously. His body lurched dangerously after Salytov as he passed. But the sober policeman moved too quickly for him. He left them on the stairs and did not look back.

Wan candle flames glimmered on the half-dozen tables and along the bar. The uncertain light, pocketed in gloom, seemed to encourage introspection among the isolated drinkers. Not a single face turned toward him. In one corner of the room, a woman wrapped in a grubby shawl was squeezing random notes out of a ruptured concertina. The anxious expectancy that these sounds induced was incompatible with conversation. There was no laughter, no voices raised in conviviality; only groans and sighs of despondency sounded in the gaps between the instrument’s wheezes.

Salytov pushed through his own resistance to the wooden bar, where a skinny adolescent potboy was intent on smearing glasses with a dirty rag. The youth paused now and then, prompted somehow by the irregular rhythms of the concertina. It was as if he couldn’t continue his task until the next note had sounded. He wore a soiled and belted rubashka, the embroidery of which was coming apart.

“Who’s in charge here?” The boy responded to Salytov’s abrupt demand with a look of stupefied amazement. “The landlord, idiot!” Salytov brought a fist down on the bar. The noise it made was less impressive than he had hoped, but still it was enough to startle the boy a second time. It seemed also to silence the concertina player, at least temporarily. “Why are you staring at me like that? Why will you not speak? Are you a mute? Are you an imbecile?” Fear bloated the boy’s eyes. This only infuriated Salytov more. “Can you people not understand-?” He broke off, unable to voice what it was he wanted to be understood. His sense of contamination was incommunicable. He resorted to announcing: “I am Lieutenant Ilya Petrovich Salytov of the Haymarket District Police Bureau.” And now the boy’s mouth was gaping. “Don’t you understand Russian? Where is he?”

“Who?” came finally, in a cracked voice that managed to span several octaves in one word.

“The landlord, you idiot!”

“He’s in the other room.”

“Call him then! Don’t you people understand anything?” He could feel it on his scalp now, the contamination. It had spread over the surface of his body and was now seeping into him. Every second he was forced to spend in these places deepened it. A shudder of loathing passed through him. He scanned the floor for cockroaches and looked back at the boy as if he had found one.

But without the boy calling, a rotund man with indolent eyes appeared behind him. His face was dirty, his hair and beard knotted. His pear-shaped body bulged beneath a greasy leather apron. “It’s all right, Kesha.” There was a note of suspicion in his bass voice. Wariness flickered in his eyes as he took Salytov in.

“You are the proprietor of this”-Salytov looked around as if he would find the word he was looking for daubed on the walls, then settled for a sarcasm-“establishment?”

The landlord nodded minimally.

“Lieutenant Salytov of the Haymarket District Police. I am conducting an official investigation. You must cooperate or face the consequences.” Salytov reached into the pocket of his greatcoat, then passed across the photograph of Ratazyayev. “Do you recognize this man?”

The landlord studied the photograph without comment. He blinked once with great emphasis, making his face a mask of imperturbability. “We get a lot of people in here,” he said finally, handing the photograph back.

“But do you recognize him?”

“Not particularly.”

“Not particularly!” shouted Salytov with sudden spluttering rage. “What on earth do you mean by not particularly? Either you recognize the man or you do not.”

“In that case, I should say, all things considered, I do not.”

“Are you trying to make a fool out of me? Is that your game? I warn you, do not try to make a fool out of me.”

One of the landlord’s eyebrows rose and fell eloquently.

“Do not raise your eyebrow at me! You dare to raise your eyebrow at me? Impertinent-” Salytov struck the man across the face with the back of his hand. The potboy jumped back in shock. But the landlord hardly turned his head and swung it back immediately as if eager for another blow. He faced Salytov now with lowered eyes. “That will teach you to raise your eyebrow at me.”

The landlord nodded in meek penitence.

“Now, I ask you once again, do you recognize this man? Look at the photograph carefully.” Salytov thrust the picture into the landlord’s face, so that he had to lean back to see it.

“Now that I think about it, perhaps he has been in here, once or twice.” The landlord’s voice was flat and calculated. He spoke deliberately, without a trace of fear.

“He is known to frequent the filthiest dives in the Haymarket area. Why would he not come in here?” When it seemed the witticism would not receive the appreciation it merited, Salytov continued his questioning. “When was the last time?”

“I don’t remember, your excellency.” Despite his readiness to use the honorary title, the landlord’s tone remained dangerously neutral. Salytov eyed him suspiciously, even nervously.

“Today? Has he been in here today?”

“No, your excellency.”

“Last night?”

“No. We haven’t seen him for a while, your excellency.” A new note, of strained impatience, crept into the landlord’s voice. He flashed a decisive glance at Salytov and risked: “Or the other one.”

“The other one? What other one?” The kindling of Salytov’s curiosity relaxed his aggression. He dropped the hand holding the photograph.

“He often comes in with another man.”

“Name?”

“I don’t know, your excellency. It’s not my business to inquire into the names of my clientele.”

“I could have you pulled in as the accomplice to a very serious crime.” But Salytov was distracted. The threat was delivered without conviction, almost out of habit. “You are guilty of aiding and abetting men wanted by the police,” he added sharply, as if remembering himself.

“I didn’t know they were wanted by the police, your excellency.” The landlord spoke with measured guile. “If I had, I would have made sure I got their names. As it is, I don’t know the names of any of these people.” He gestured toward the stupor-frozen faces peering out of the gloom. “They come in, they drink, they leave. I don’t interfere with them. Perhaps Kesha can help you.” The landlord nodded permissively to the potboy, whose face was suddenly stretched by panic at the prospect of having to talk to the police officer.

A slow sneer writhed over Salytov’s features. “Very well. You. Talk.”

Kesha’s gaze flitted anxiously between the landlord and the policeman.

Salytov held up the photograph. “So you know these men?”

Kesha nodded.

“Speak!” barked Salytov.

“Y-y-y-yes.”

“Names? Did you ever hear them address each other by name?”

“I think s-s-s-so.”

“Good. So what are their names?”

“That’s Ra-Ra-Ra-Ra….” The boy’s stammering dried up.

“Ra-Ra-Ra? What sort of a name is Ra-Ra-Ra, you imbecile?”

“Ra-Ra-Ratazyayev!” The name came out, eventually, in an angry rush.

“I know it’s Ra-Ra-Ratazyayev, you idiot. I don’t need you to tell me it’s Ra-Ra-Ratazyayev. I want to know about the other one. The man he comes in here with.”

“Govorov.” This time, the name was produced without stammering, in a sudden, involuntary regurgitation.

“Govorov? Are you sure?”

Kesha nodded frantically.

“So. Govorov. What can you tell me about this Govorov?”

Kesha’s shrug was anything but nonchalant. It was as much a wince anticipating pain as a gesture of helplessness. He was desperate to know what it was Salytov wanted to be told about this Govorov. Then he could get on with telling it. But only one thing came to mind: “He has photographs.”

“Go on.”

The boy’s lips rippled uncomfortably. Another spasm of a shrug shook him.

“Tell me more about these photographs. What were they of?”

“Stupid.”

“What is so stupid about them?”

“Just…stupid.”

“You are the stupid here, boy. Tell me exactly what you saw when you looked at the photographs.”

“Girls.”

“Girls? What is so stupid about that? Don’t you like to look at photographs of girls?”

“They had no clothes on.”

Salytov let out a great “Ha!” of amusement. “What’s wrong with you? That’s not stupid, that’s…” The word eluded Salytov. “Do you have any of these photographs?”

Kesha frowned and shook his head. “I didn’t like to look at them.”

“Come, come! A boy of your age! Listen, I will not arrest you for looking at a few smutty photographs. Tell the truth now, Kesha.” The boy was startled to hear his name from Salytov. “What did you do with the photographs?”

“I wouldn’t take them! I wouldn’t look at them!” insisted Kesha hotly.

“Why ever not? Are you a skopsy? Have you cut off your balls and dick, is that it? Or are you-” A look of horrified disgust came over Salytov.

“It’s nothing like that. It was their faces. They looked afraid.”

“They’re just whores.”

“They were-some of them-they were just little girls. I have a little sister. It’s not right.”

“They are born whores, girls like that. Why else do you think they do it?”

“I didn’t like to look at them.”

“You have a saint here, cleaning your pots,” Salytov joked to the landlord.

“He is a good boy, Kesha is.”

“He is a liar. I know boys. He is a liar, or worse.” Salytov looked at Kesha distastefully. “Tell me, skopsy, did he show these photographs to anyone else?”

“He was always showing them to people. He would sell them to whoever would buy them, and-” There was a warning look from the landlord. Kesha broke off.

The fire returned to Salytov’s complexion. “Damn you! What’s this?”

“I remember the man myself, now,” put in the landlord quickly. “Once he tried to pay for his kvas with some of these pictures.”

“Strange how your memory returns. Did you accept the pornography as payment?”

“He told me he was an artist. They are what he called artistic poses. Nobody said anything about pornography.”

“Get them.”

The landlord moved slowly, reluctance thickening his torpor. His eyes were the last part of him to turn.

“Hurry it up!” barked Salytov. He smirked at the landlord’s waddling gait as he hurried into the back room.

Approximately the size of playing cards, the photographs were no worse than many he had seen. True, the faces had a certain bewildered quality, but he found that only added to the piquancy. He shuffled through them briskly, ruthlessly, careful not to dwell on any one image or to betray an interest other than professional. And yet the luminous pallor of the flesh, the crisp darknesses of exposed and in some cases immature genitalia, drew his eye and hardened his pulse. He recognized, in among the stilted pageant, the young prostitute who had been brought into the station, accused of stealing a hundred rubles. In the instant that her photograph flashed before him, he assessed the fullness of her breasts.

There were men in some of the photographs. Their faces were always turned away, cropped off or blurred by movement: never shown. Unlike the women, the men were clothed, although in some cases their sexual organs, in varying states of rigidity, were exposed. In one instance, the male subject had been captured at the moment of his self-induced ejaculation. The beads of his semen hung in the air; their trajectory seemed to be toward the female model’s abdomen. She viewed their approach without enthusiasm.

Salytov turned the photographs over and shuffled through them again. An address was written on the reverse of one.

“This. What is this?” said Salytov, laying it down on the counter.

“Three Spassky Lane,” read the landlord.

“Is this Govorov’s address?”

“I suppose it must be. I never noticed it before now.” The landlord avoided Salytov’s eye.

“I find that hard to believe. It’s more likely that he wrote it for you deliberately. So that you would know where to go if you wanted more of the same.”

“Well, I don’t remember. Besides, I don’t spend much time looking at the backs of photographs.”

“This is police evidence now,” said Salytov with a provocative grin. He pocketed the photographs. The landlord didn’t offer a protest, unless a slight hunching of the shoulders could be read as such. “If you see either of these men again, Ratazyayev or Govorov, send Kesha to the police bureau on Stolyarny Lane. Detain them until we get here. Is that understood?”

Salytov didn’t wait for an answer. He delivered a warning nod with the precision of a hammer blow. The concertina player started up again. Salytov had the fanciful idea that her playing was not just mournful but diseased. In his mind, tuberculosis floated in the ragged notes. He turned suddenly and fled. The sense of contamination pursued him, even as he took the steps two at a time.

Seventy-two, seventy-three,seventy-four, seventy-five…

Virginsky counted his steps. But no matter how far he walked, he couldn’t put any distance between himself and his humiliation. It was always there with him, staring him in the face, in the form of the boots Porfiry Petrovich had given him. So it had come to this: he was a charity case. And to accept charity from such a man! Virginsky had not forgotten how they came for him in the night, nor the words with which the magistrate pointed him out: “That is the man. That is Virginsky.” And then this same Judas had the nerve to argue that he should relinquish his freedom voluntarily!

That man is the devil, he said to himself. To think I nearly went along with it.

He realized that he had lost count of his steps. It was difficult to count and think at the same time. That was the point, of course-the point of the counting. If he could only concentrate on his counting, he wouldn’t have to think about his humiliation. He picked up from the last number he could remember, not knowing how many steps he had missed.

Seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight…

He was walking along the side of the solidified Yekaterininsky Canal, toward the Nevsky Prospect. It was not a day to be out unless you had good reason. The cold wind assaulted his face and mocked his tattered overcoat. The ice cut into him and spread along his nerve fibers with greedy, destructive haste. There was a bend in the canal. The towpath kinked sharply northward. On his right was the Imperial Bank, turning its curved back on him jealously. You shall not have any of this, it seemed to say. On the other side, across the canal, loomed the massive bulk of the Foundling Hospital. It struck him as an ironic juxtaposition.

Virginsky stopped to consider the significance of it. He felt weak, unable to think. And yet it was suddenly pressingly important to him to work out what it meant to be standing between the Imperial Bank and the Foundling Hospital.

As he stood there, a man even more destitute than he shuffled past, his meager jacket and trousers padded with straw and newspaper. The tramp seemed to have come from nowhere, his footsteps almost silent. There were many such individuals in Petersburg, anonymous and interchangeable. As one died, another would appear. Virginsky did not attempt to meet his eye, though he did look at his feet. The man wore an old, disintegrating pair of felt boots, soaked and filthy.

Virginsky acknowledged the superstitious dread that had prevented him from looking into the man’s face. He was remembering a story he had once read about a man haunted by his double.

He let the tramp disappear around the bend in the path before starting his steps again.

Seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one…

When he turned the corner the tramp was not in view.

Eighty-two…

The canal path brought him into the Nevsky Prospect alongside the Kazan Cathedral. The width and prosperity of the street intimidated him. He felt that the wind that purged it would destroy him, deliberately. Only the affluent, layered in furs, could venture into it.

Virginsky decided to shelter in the colonnade of the Kazan Cathedral. Though he would describe himself as an atheist, he had always liked this place. The semicircular sweep of the colonnade was vaguely reminiscent of arms held open for embrace. He responded to the grandeur of the design without being awed by it. It seemed to contain within it something welcoming and benign. He believed the humanity of the peasant stonemason shone through.

The wind had blown between the columns a light scattering of snow dust, which every now and then it moved around or added to. Looking at the palimpsests of footprints on the paving stones, Virginsky’s mind went blank. He was suddenly unable to count his own steps.

His humiliation came back to him and the dim memory of a resolve to end it. He remembered a plan, conceived in a police cell or possibly even before then. He seemed to spend his life reaching the same resolve, drawing up the same plan. Would he ever find the courage to put it into action?

But already he had forgotten what the plan was and would have to wait for it to come back to him. In the meantime…

One, two, three…

He set off again, walking the colonnade.

It was not that he was simpleminded. It was just that he was hungry. If only he could find a solution to that, the hunger, and the humiliation that came with it. But that was it, he suddenly remembered. That was why he was here in the Nevsky Prospect. To bring an end to the hunger.

Four, five, six…

He noticed that he was following one particular set of footprints. These seemed to be both the most recent and the most indistinct, lacking any clear heel or toe definition. At times they smudged into long lines, as if the walker had been dragging one foot or the other. Virginsky looked up but saw no one. All the same, he did not believe he had the colonnade to himself. He sensed another presence, concealed behind the shifting blinds of the columns.

Seven, eight, nine…

Then he saw the man-the same tramp from beside the canal-darting across the aisle between two columns.

He moves quickly, thought Virginsky. Yet to look at him, he must be in a worse state than I.

And it was not that Virginsky had found the courage to move away from the Kazan Cathedral. It was just that he could no longer bear the tramp’s proximity. His terror had crystallized. He was certain now that if he came face to face with this other, he would see his own features staring back at him.

He stepped out into the Nevsky Prospect, his gaze fixed on a square three-story building on the other side of the street. Fortunately the road was clear of traffic. But the wind shrieked gleefully as it battered into him.

IWISH TO see Osip Maximovich.”

Vadim Vasilyevich’s cold, gray eyes looked down on the bedraggled individual who had just presented himself at the offices of Athene Publishing. His small mouth drew itself into a tight pucker of distaste. “And who are you?” The question was strangled by the man’s forced baritone.

“You know me. You’ve seen me at the house of Anna Alexandrovna. I am Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky.”

“What is your business here?”

“I wish to see Osip Maximovich.”

“He’s a very busy man. You can’t just walk in here demanding to see whomsoever you like.”

“Tell him I was a friend of Goryanchikov’s.”

“You will have to do better than that.”

“I am a writer. Well, a student. But I have written…essays.”

“Petersburg is full of writers.”

“Goryanchikov said that I could get work here. Goryanchikov said he would vouch for me.”

“Unfortunately, Goryanchikov is dead. He can’t vouch for anyone.”

“Please. Let me see Osip Maximovich. Goryanchikov told me-”

“Goryanchikov told you what?” A second, higher voice, leavened with relaxed good humor, took over the interrogation. Osip Maximovich himself had just come into the room. A twinkling flash danced across his spectacle lenses.

“About the work he was doing for you. The translation. The Proudhon. We talked about it.”

Osip Maximovich took off his spectacles. His face was serious as he assessed Virginsky with his penetrating black eyes. “You talked about Proudhon?”

“Yes.”

Osip Maximovich replaced his spectacles. The optical effect was to retract his eyes. “And you think that qualifies you to take over Stepan Sergeyevich’s work?” He had seemed to be on the verge of asking something else entirely, but the thick lenses masked his intentions.

“We talked about other things.”

“What other things?”

“Philosophy in general. Philosophers. Hegel.”

Osip Maximovich pursed his lips as if impressed. “You talked of Hegel.”

“Please. I want to work for you. Give me a section to do. If you’re happy with the result, hire me to complete it. I will work for half what you were paying Goryanchikov.”

“Is that because you are only half as good as him?” quipped Vadim Vasilyevich.

“I’m not greedy. Just hungry.”

Osip Maximovich’s smile expressed his approval of the answer. He transmitted some of his beaming pleasure toward Vadim Vasilyevich.

“There is no point,” said Vadim Vasilyevich bluntly. “The police have confiscated the text of Goryanchikov’s translation. We don’t know how far he got.”

“I know he didn’t finish it,” said Virginsky.

A sudden change came over Osip Maximovich’s mood. He sighed despondently. “Poor Stepan Sergeyevich. His death was a terrible blow to us.” He smiled forlornly to Virginsky. “He was like a son to me.”

Virginsky frowned. “I wonder why people say that. It doesn’t mean very much.”

“I…miss him.”

Virginsky said nothing.

“Did he ever, I wonder, speak of me…warmly?” pressed Osip Maximovich.

“Would it make any difference to you to know he hated you?”

“He said that?”

“No. But those are the feelings I have toward my own father. If he was like a son to you, you should have expected the same from him.”

Osip Maximovich laughed abruptly. “I think you will make a very good translator of philosophy. We will try you out with the final section of Proudhon. If you make an adequate job of that, you can have the section before the last. And so on in reverse. With any luck, when we get Goryanchikov’s version back from the police, the two will meet in the middle.”

“Madness,” said Vadim Vasilyevich, throwing up his arms.

“Now, now, Vadim Vasilyevich. We’ll find out soon enough if he’s up to the task. Do you accept the commission, my friend?”

“What about money? We haven’t agreed on the money.”

“That depends on the quality of the work. If it isn’t up to scratch, I’m afraid we won’t be able to pay you anything.”

“But I need some money now.” Desperation made Virginsky’s tone aggressive. He quickly softened it. “For materials. Paper…pens…ink…candles.” After a moment Virginsky added, “Et cetera.”

“Et cetera? What et cetera can there be?” smiled Osip Maximovich.

“Food.”

“This is beggary,” commented Vadim Vasilyevich.

“Well, I’d rather deal with a beggar than a-” Osip Maximovich’s lips closed on the word he had been about to say. “Some other kind of scoundrel.”

Vadim Vasilyevich averted his eyes, as if Osip Maximovich had just told an off-color joke.

“At any rate, we can’t let our translator starve,” decided Osip Maximovich brightly. “We’ll give you fifty kopeks in advance. If the work is adequate, you will receive a further five rubles and the next section, that is to say the preceding section, to translate. If the work is not adequate, the fifty kopeks will serve as a severance fee, and we will never see you again. Is that agreed?”

Virginsky nodded without looking Osip Maximovich in the eye.

“Vadim Vasilyevich, the money box, please.”

Vadim Vasilyevich was shaking his head as he withdrew into the back room.

Out in the open, with the cold air piercing his face, Salytov began to feel cleansed. It didn’t last. He saw a man vomit orange paste into the gutter. Another argued with the wind. At the northeast corner of Haymarket Square, where it spilled over into Spassky Lane, a shivering woman offered her headscarf for sale. The thought occurred to him that she would get a better price for it than for herself.

Students clustered around the racks and tables outside the secondhand bookshops on Spassky Lane. He had little patience for them. In fact, the sight of them infuriated him. He had no doubt they would consider themselves superior to him, as if their rags for clothes, their battered, crooked hats, even their starving bellies should be objects of envy. What kind of inverted table of ranks was this when the trappings of the most abject poverty were held to be a source of pride? They were no better than the ignorant peasants who scavenged for crusts and rags. No, they were worse, far worse. At least the peasant had a sense of his duty to himself. The peasant too had his soul intact. These educated fools had squandered theirs.

Salytov imagined himself kicking over the book displays, a kind of Christ among the moneylenders.

The entrance to number 3 hung open. Salytov skipped up the steps and pulled the door behind him, but it would not close. It was dark in the hallway and rapidly becoming darker. He could just about make out the looming rectangles of the apartment doors on the ground floor. He kicked the front door wide open. It made little difference. Outside the afternoon was dissolving into gloom. He sensed rather than saw the stairs ahead of him, in the same way that he sensed his hand in front of his face.

Before he lost the light completely, Salytov knocked briskly on the first door he came to. Minutes passed. He knocked again, with renewed urgency. His raps echoed in the dark. He had the sense of a great emptiness behind the door.

He wondered if perhaps he had made a mistake. Was he wise to have come here alone or at least without informing anyone at the bureau what he was doing?

He thought about turning around. He imagined himself outside, running, yes, running like a coward away from this place. But he imagined other things too: a knife coming out of the darkness and plunging into his midriff. He imagined a figure stepping out of the shadows. The face was a smooth blank. At the same time Salytov felt a retrospective anger at the way Porfiry Petrovich had tried to make a fool of him over the disappearance of the prostitute’s accuser, the man they now believed was Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov. But it had had nothing to do with him. The man had absconded before he became involved.

He would show Porfiry Petrovich. He would bring Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov in alone.

But more than anything, it was Salytov’s fear that persuaded him to stay.

He could hear footsteps in the ground floor apartment now. In a moment he could be dead.

The door cracked open. The glow of an oil lamp held at chest height flared upward, illuminating a single dark eye, set deep beneath a sprawling, highly animated eyebrow.

“Govorov?” The hoarseness of his own voice surprised Salytov.

“Upstairs.” The eyebrow wriggled as if from the effort of producing the word. A waft of pickled cucumber came with it.

“Show me.”

The eyebrow plummeted heavily. The movement expressed angry refusal.

“I am a police officer. It will be better for you if you cooperate.”

The door swung inward, allowing the halo of light to spread across the hall. The oil lamp was held by a short, balding man of about fifty. The first thing Salytov looked at was his eyebrows. He was impatient to dispel a superstitious sense of evil. Seeing them in the context of the full person only partially reassured him. He remained disturbed by their apparent unruliness and independence. He had to force himself to take in the rest of the man’s face. His skin was sallow, features Asiatic, his face skeletally gaunt beneath high, sharp cheekbones. A large bald head tapered acutely into a pointed beard, like an inverted onion dome.

“I don’t want any trouble,” said the man. “This is a respectable house.”

“I’m glad to hear it. You are?”

“Leonid Simonovich Tolkachenko. I am the yardkeeper here.”

“You have keys to all the apartments?”

“Yes.”

“Bring them.”

The light went with Tolkachenko as he withdrew. Salytov felt Govorov’s presence fill the darkness.

“What has he done?” said Tolkachenko sternly, returning with the bobbing light and the keys.

“It’s no concern of yours,” said Salytov to the caretaker’s back as he followed him up the creaking stairs.

“I knew it would end badly,” Tolkachenko threw over his shoulder.

“What are you talking about?”

“I told him it had to stop.”

“What?”

“He brought girls here. He denied it. But I saw them and heard them. He tried to sneak them up the stairs. But I know the creak and groan of every step. And there is a board outside his door that calls out to me.”

They reached the first landing. Tolkachenko pointed to the door on the right and nodded. Salytov gestured for him to open the door.

The flat was in darkness.

Tolkachenko cast the lamp’s unfocused glow about the room. “He’s not here.” Tolkachenko seemed surprised. “He was here.” The caretaker crossed to the window and held up the lamp to look out. He tested the window and found it locked. “How strange.”

“Perhaps he slid down the banister,” said Salytov, grinning in the darkness. “Bring the light over here,” he added sharply. He was aware of an undefined dark shape hovering at shoulder height. “Give me that!” He took the lamp and allowed its flare to wash over the shape, which he was able to identify as a camera on its tripod. “So this is where he takes the photographs,” muttered Salytov. In that instant he hated Govorov. His desire to catch him and see him punished-for something, he didn’t care what-solidified.

The swing of the sputtering oil lamp gradually revealed the room as a series of unrelated fragments: a sofa draped in a satin throw, a table littered with breadcrumbs and dirty crockery, an unmade bed, an open escritoire, a shelf of books, and propped up beneath it, a seven-stringed gypsy guitar. The escritoire demanded closer examination. Even at a distance Salytov recognized its contents as more of the genre of photographs he had confiscated from the tavern owner. In fact, it contained multiple copies of the same photograph. It was that girl again, the prostitute who had been brought in for stealing the hundred rubles. She was lying naked on Govorov’s sofa, her arms behind her head, her legs at right angles to each other, one knee sticking straight up, the other pointing out. Salytov felt his mouth contract with dehydration, sticking slightly to his teeth. The insistence of the image, repeated on every card he looked at, was dizzying.

“Filthy whore,” commented Tolkachenko, with a heavy swallow. “And to think, all this has been going on above my head. Wait till I see Govorov.”

“Say nothing. Do not arouse his suspicions. Do you understand? He may well be dangerous. This is a murder investigation. The moment he returns, send word to me. I am Lieutenant Ilya Petrovich Salytov of the Haymarket District Police Bureau. The Stolyarny Lane station.”

“I know it. Not that I have ever been in trouble with the police,” added Tolkachenko quickly.

“What hours does he keep, this Govorov?”

“It is hard to say. He is not what you would call a regular gentleman. Sometimes he sleeps all day. Sometimes he is out all night.”

Salytov crossed to the shelf of books. The volumes were all roughly the same size and shape, all in the same maroon cloth binding. He scanned the titles: Hareem Tales, The Adventures of a Rake, Pandora’s Awakening, White Slaves, A Sojourn in Sodom, The Gentleman’s Privilege, The Whip and the Whipped, The Pleasure of Purple (Being a Sequel to The Whip and the Whipped), Flesh and Blood, She Gave Herself to Gypsies, One Thousand and One Maidenheads, The Monk and the Virgins. Each one bore the imprint Priapos.

Salytov gave an emphatic nod of triumph. It was not for the benefit of the caretaker, to whom he had nothing to prove, and whose presence he had anyway forgotten. He was imagining that he was showing the books to Porfiry Petrovich.