The Gentle Axe

The Investigator’s Eyelashes

Lilya shivered again as she came out into a freezing fog.

Restless splinters of ice penetrated her clothes and skin. Her feet were wet and numb with the cold. For a moment she had not the faintest idea where she was or how she came to be there. All she could remember was leaving Fräulein Keller’s basement. And everything that had happened since seemed to have happened in a dream.

She ought to go back for her galoshes.

She walked without any sense of where she was going. She heard the lampposts singing, shaken by a wind that went straight through her, despite her shawl. Then she heard the jangle of a passing sleigh and the muted clip of hooves. The horses were almost on her before she saw them. The driver’s green caftan passed in a blur, his words-whether for her or for his team-stifled by the damp air.

It was the man’s eyes that had amazed her, Porfiry Petrovich’s eyes. Or more specifically his eyelashes, blond to the point of transparency. Once she had noticed them, she could not look away. He blinked a lot, and there seemed to be some point to his blinking. Expectancy, or cunning, but a peculiarly feminine cunning, somehow also benign. She’d found it hard to understand what he was saying, so fascinated was she by his lashes and the effect they had on his face. And of course, she was tired.

She blinked herself, as though by imitating him she would come to understand him. Was it really true that he had let her go? And had he really meant to have them return the money to her?

Perhaps it was all a trick. If so, it was just as well she had refused the money. Ah, but to go home with nothing, after a whole night! She couldn’t go home, not yet. She ought to go back to Fräulein Keller’s to get what was owed her.

Zoya had come to see her. That was what she had been told. “Zoya is here for you,” Fräulein Keller had said. “She wants to talk to you about your little one.” But it made no sense. If Zoya had come to Fräulein Keller’s, who was looking after Vera? And when she had gone out into the cold night, there was no sign of Zoya. Just him.

Lilya shivered and let the spasm take hold. She gave in to her weakness for only an instant, holding one blink of her eyelids longer than the others, and in that instant she was back home, cuddling her sweet-souled, beautiful daughter, kissing her cheeks, stroking her hair, whispering promises, never, never again will I leave you, this will last forever, this laughing, crying, clinging moment.

The fog was beginning to clear. Perhaps she had held the blink for longer than she intended. But she was relieved to find herself still standing.

Lilya pulled her shawl tight about her. She had come out into Sadovaya Street. To her right, dim shapes formed into the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary across the Haymarket, above the canvas-covered stalls. She felt comforted by the appearance of the church. A bustling crowd filled the cobbled square between. But in the same way that she was able to see more, so too was she more visible. Faces turned toward her, hostile, mocking, contemptuous. And yet some of the men who pointed her out for ridicule were among those who came to the basement of the milliner’s shop, at a different hour, for a different purpose.

She turned her back on the Haymarket, to face north, toward Yekaterininsky Canal, or the Ditch, as it was known. She crossed Kokushkin Bridge over the frozen canal back into Stolyarny Lane. There was the building that housed the police station ahead of her, and she remembered again his impossible eyelashes. His eyes, she now remembered, were the color of ice, but whether that color was black or silver, she could not say. She was tempted to go back inside just to find out. And while she was at it, she would demand the money after all.

Then without her thinking about it, the rest of him suddenly came back to her. Fat-that was it. He was a fat little man, with a proud paunch out front. But every part of him, almost, seemed to have something swollen about it, from his big, close-cropped head to his plump hands. How strange and improbable those eyes had seemed in all this. How calm and unexpected and alert, but above all how kindly.

Perhaps she would go back inside. And tell him everything. But then again, what was there to tell?

She kept on walking as far as Srednyaya Meshchanskaya Street. So she was going home after all, and with nothing to show for the night.

She could not face going back for her galoshes.

The snow in the yard was stained with blood. A pig had been slaughtered there that morning. A peasant couple butchered the carcass in the open. They paused in their task to watch her across the yard. The two of them lifted their cleavers in warning, as if they suspected her of being intent on stealing their meat. Their expressions remained blank.

Lilya entered a narrow passageway at the rear of the courtyard. Its darkness shielded her from their scrutiny. She reached out one hand to grope her way along the wall, but with the first step she took, her foot kicked over an unseen obstacle, setting off an almost musical reverberation. A metal pail lay on its side, a dark stain hastening from it. Before she knew it, the peasant couple were at her shoulder, screaming abuse.

“That was our blood, you careless bitch!”

“You’ll pay for it, whore!”

As she fled their stabbing fingers and careless blades, she felt a gob of hawked mucus strike her cheek. She could still hear their shouts as the door to the back stairs closed behind her.

The stench of cabbage soup and urine hung in the stairway. Even so, this felt like a refuge. The gloom welcomed and concealed her. The temperature, though chill, was a degree warmer than outside.

Lilya hauled herself up the stairs with both hands together on the grimy rail, her feet slapping on the worn-down wooden steps.

She heard the door she had just come through clatter in its frame, then hurried footsteps hammering. Somehow she managed to pick up her own pace. She did not look back.

But she was still four flights away from her landing and the footsteps were gaining on her. Then, unexpectedly, they stopped and a door below slammed.

She turned a corner and pushed her way through hanging laundry. It seemed to cling to her face, dragging her back and down. Doors stood open on this landing. Sullen, consumptive faces looked out, waiting for something but not her.

She trudged on, light-headed, her legs uncertain and aching. In a niche on the next half-landing she fancied she saw a figure hanging back, a dark shape in dark shadows. Were those eyes that flashed in the gloom, or white sparks firing in her brain? Dog-tired she was, so tired that it was not inconceivable that her nightmares had come ahead to meet her.

It felt as though the steps were moving beneath her feet now, swaying and sinking, their height increasing, so that it required the courage of a mountaineer to scale each one. And now they had no substance. Her feet sank into them. They were like the marshes the city had once been built on.

She found herself unable to go on. She looked down at her feet. The space between two boards gaped. She closed her eyes and teetered back, the wild lurch in her belly bringing her around. Her head was a dead weight. Somehow she found the strength to lift it and look up. There, ahead of her, was her own landing. The sight of her door spurred her on to a final push.

She fell into the room, gasping at the sudden heat here, but too exhausted to make sense of it. She simply allowed the hot dry air to enclose her in a swooning embrace. And now little Vera was rushing at her, cannoning headfirst in her shrieking delight at her mother’s homecoming. Her daughter’s unquestioning love overwhelmed her. She felt undeserving of it. At the same time she had a sense of the child, so fierce in her innocence, as being eternally closed to her, strange, other, and somehow out of bounds. And there did seem to be something different about Vera today. But again Lilya was too worn-out to pursue the impression. Instead she gave in to tears. She was wracked with the pain of pure feeling, of feeling too much for too long. She allowed herself no memories, no longer entertained dreams. She kept her ideas down to the most essential. Whole areas of moral and mental life were closed to her. All that was left was the intense feeling of the moment.

“Now, now! What’s this?” cried old mother Zoya rushing up to her. She added her own embrace to the tight little cuddles of the infant. “No tears, no tears, daughter. Yes, daughter. Yes, that’s right. Daughter. Don’t I always call you daughter? Zoya’s here. Mamma Zoya will look after you. We’ll be all right. Why, my child, my daughter, my lovely girl, why-everything will be all right now. You’ll see. You’ll see, my sweet Lilililyechka. My sweet child. No tears. Not now. Not today. Oh, my lovely lovely, you’ll see. Look! Look! Mamma Zoya’s taken care of everything! See! Only look, child, and you’ll see. All our troubles are over. Never again! You’ll never have to wear that dress again. You’ll never have to go to that place again. You can tell Fräulein Keller that you’re never coming back. Never! D’you hear? Never!”

Lilya pulled away, her face wet with tears. She shook her head and her eyes were tenderly accusing. She whispered her reproach: “No, Zoya!”

“Mamma, dear. Call me Mamma. Aren’t I a mother to you? More than a mother? Don’t I look after you better than any mother would? Haven’t I earned it?”

Lilya shook her head and murmured, “Cruel!”

“Don’t be afraid, Lilya. Don’t be afraid. It’s true, you see! That life is over!”

“We’ll only make it worse for ourselves!”

Zoya made a dismissive noise and arched both eyebrows in gentle, mocking reproach. But Lilya was beyond such games, too tired even to be annoyed. She lurched past Zoya, toward the end of the room that housed the narrow bed she shared with her daughter. But felt a tight pinch of restraint on her arm. And cried out. Her eyes were pleading as she turned to confront Zoya.

“Look!” commanded the old woman, gesturing to the table. Lilya could not take it in. She saw but did not understand. The table was laden with pastries and loaves. There were sweets too, and candied peel. There was even caviar.

“Where did you get all this?”

“From the Shchukin Arcade, of course. Where else?”

This mystery reminded Lilya of another: “Did you come and see me last night? They said you were at the door.”

“And what kind of a mother are you, not to comment on her daughter’s new shawl?”

Lilya looked down at Vera’s beaming face and frowned at the unfamiliar drap-de-dames shawl around the child’s shoulders. Was this why her daughter had seemed alien to her? She stroked the white garment as if to question it with her fingers.

“And here! For you!” continued Zoya, holding out a dark and apparently ancient icon representing the Virgin and the infant Christ. The gold-leaf halos flickered in and out of brilliance. As if suspecting a trick, Lilya refused to take it. “It’s all right,” insisted Zoya. “It’s paid for. Everything is paid for.”

“But how?” whispered Lilya, afraid of the answer.

Zoya put down the icon. She bustled to the far corner of the room and disappeared behind the curtain that concealed her sleeping area. She came back with a padlocked tin box that Lilya had never seen before. As Zoya reached the table, she let the box slip out of her fingers in her excitement. It landed with a heavy clatter. Zoya fumbled with the key, grinning and chuckling, despite her wish to appear mysterious. At last the lid was open. Zoya pushed the box toward her young friend.

The warm colors of the banknotes drew Lilya’s face closer and closer. Then at the last, she recoiled, as if she were afraid of getting burned.

“Where?” she gasped.

“Petrovsky Park.”

“Whose is it?”

“Ours!” cried Zoya.

“No, no. You must tell me all about it, Zoya. You must tell me exactly where you found this money. It might belong to someone, Zoya. It must, surely it must belong to someone.”

“What if it does? What do we care? At any rate, the one it belongs to has no use for it now.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s dead!”

“Zoya! What are you saying?”

“He was a murderer and a thief. A big ugly brute. And a bully. That’s what he was. And he’s dead. No use crying for the likes of him. A murderer! The bloody axe still on him, still dripping with the little fellow’s blood.”

“Zoya, please! I don’t understand. You must start at the beginning. One thing at a time.”

“I found them both. Both dead. The little dwarf. And the other one, hanging. He’d hanged himself. Out of shame.”

“A dwarf, you said?”

“Tiny little man. With a tiny little suit.”

“No!”

“Both dead.”

“The dwarf was dead?”

“Murdered! His head bashed in. And the axe that did it was on the big one.”

“What did he look like, the dwarf?”

“Tiny! A tiny little fellow.”

“Was he dark? Dark hair with a beard?”

“Yes!”

“What else? Anything else about him?”

Zoya’s hands retrieved something from her apron, the pack of obscene playing cards.

“He was a randy little bastard, by the looks of it. I found these on him.”

Lilya gasped as if struck. “I know him! I’ve seen these before. He came to Fräulein Keller’s. Many times. He always asks for me. Zoya, did you come to Fräulein Keller’s last night? Was there something you had to tell me about Vera? Fräulein Keller said-”

“What are you talking about, child?”

Lilya took in the old woman’s good-natured incomprehension. She looked again at the money in the cash box. “Zoya, we must tell the police.”

“No! Don’t you see? They’ll want the money back.”

“But Zoya, it’s not ours.”

Zoya’s face became severe, her tone forbidding. “You must not say a word about this to anyone. Do you hear? You must swear to me on Vera’s life that you will not say a word of this to a soul.”

Lilya shook her head and whispered her refusal.

“On the icon, then. You must swear on the holy icon.”

“But Zoya, don’t you see?”

“This is a fortune,” cried Zoya in desperation. “Six thousand rubles! Enough to buy property. We could have an apartment at the front. With rooms. And tenants of our own. We could have a carriage, with servants in livery. We could parade along the Nevsky Prospect, our heads held high. We’d never be afraid to look anyone in the eye. Think of the clothes, the furs, the jewels. What admirers you would have, Lilya! Oh Lilya, think of it! Gentlemen. Noblemen. And Vera. What a future would lie before her. She could marry a prince, no less. And you, you stupid little fool, you’ll throw it all away!”

Lilya backed away, in a simple reflex of self-protection, pulling her arm free of Zoya’s grip. She fell onto her bed and murmured, “She lied to me.” The same instant she was asleep, dreaming of the policeman’s transparent eyelashes.