The Gentle Axe

A Theatrical Type

Porfiry’s cheeks glowed pink from the icy air. He felt it only on his face. The rest of him was hot, swaddled in mink. His ankle-length shuba exaggerated the portliness of his physique, giving him the appearance of a large fur bell. The oversize ushanka on his head seemed to compress his form even more. The thoroughfares and open spaces of St. Petersburg were quiet and white. The buildings, both the grand stone edifices and the jerry-built wooden tenements squeezed between them, struck him as out of place. Imposed in a snowy vastness that was indifferent to them, they appeared fragile and dreamlike, no matter what arrogance or energy their construction implied.

Porfiry entered the great market of Apraxin Arcade from Sadovaya Street, near its corner with Apraxin Lane. Passing below the icon of Saint Nicholas that was suspended over the narrow wooden gate, he stepped into a dark, bustling universe. The music of a barrel organ clashed with the songs of woodworkers at their lathes and the cries of the itinerant vendors and the stallholders. Overhead, pigeons swooped with clattering wings and settled next to placid, mice-intent cats. Wooden bridges, hung with icons, spanned the passageways between the clustered booths, linking the upper stories. The areas of the market, and the trades that were conducted within them, were marked by the smells through which he wandered. The strongest aromas came as he passed the bakeries, the spice and incense sellers, the tea and tobacco traders. Then he felt the fainter but no less enticing breaths of the honey stalls and the chandlers. The fermenting complexity of the preserved fruit merchants tempted him to linger, while the dusty cough and pungent smack of the chalk and pitch dealers, their shops decorated outside with balalaikas, hurried him on. Befuddled now, he passed the harness makers, the cobblers, the metalworkers, and the jewelers. Here and there these distinct zones were complicated by the passing waft of a pastry seller, his wares balanced on his head, or by the alcoholic miasma from a tavern, or by the whiff of sanctity from the chapel next to it.

In the farthest corner, so that he had to cross the extent of the market to reach it, was the flea market, which had its own atmosphere of fustiness and must. And in the farthest corner of the flea market was Lyamshin’s Pawnbroker’s.

A querulous bell announced his entry. From the gloom of the shop’s interior came the mingled smells of mothballs and unwashed bodies. A crowd of objects pressed in on Porfiry. He ducked the musical instruments and weaponry hanging from the ceiling. His eye was drawn equally by the precious and the worthless, the jewelry locked behind glass, the shelves of chipped and cracked pots. There were rails of secondhand clothes, from luxuriant furs to threadbare petticoats. Some men had even pawned their shirtfronts and collars. He dipped his fingers into barrels of shoes and crates of spectacles and stroked the snuffboxes and thimbles laid out on trays. It was as if these objects, left to their own devices, demonstrated some natural law of affinity, the magnetism of the abandoned. And of course, there was the fact that everything in the shop had once been part of someone’s life; behind each object, however mundane in itself, was a story of despair and even tragedy.

As soon as he entered, Porfiry was aware of a booming male voice. There was something artificial about this voice and excited too: an edge of premeditated hilarity. Porfiry identified the speaker immediately, a middle-aged man with a massive paunch, his eyes shrunk by the ballooning of his ruddy-complexioned face. The man’s gesticulations drew the attention as much as the delivery of his words. His face seemed almost paralyzed into joviality, and it seemed he felt the need to compensate by making the rest of his substantial body as expressive as possible. Porfiry realized the man was reciting a speech from a play, for the benefit of the pawnbroker. The actor, for Porfiry had him down as a professional of the boards, kept his eyes cast down. He was capable of achieving a curious effect in his vocal performance. The speech had the character of a surly mumble, yet every word was clearly enunciated. More than that, his voice filled the shop. The pawnbroker, a skeletally thin individual who evidently believed it bad taste to appear too prosperous or well fed before his customers, waited for the recital to finish with his head on one side, a strained smile frozen on his features. His hands, in fingerless gloves, rested on a seven-stringed gypsy guitar that lay on the counter in front of him.

At last the speech came to its end with “Holy God, what I wouldn’t do for a bowl of cabbage soup! I’m so hungry I could eat a carthorse. Whoops-someone coming, must be his lordship.”

Porfiry clapped his hands four or five times and called, “Bravo!” The pawnbroker, however, merely grimaced and turned the guitar over.

“Osip’s monologue, from The Government Inspector,” said Porfiry. The theatrical type acknowledged the applause with a bow, his face gratified and friendly. There was a waft of vodka about him.

“I played the part in ’fifty-six, in the revival at the original Mariinsky Theater. You are an aficionado of the dramatic arts?”

“I am an admirer of Gogol.”

“Twenty rubles,” growled the pawnbroker, setting the guitar resonating as he put it down sharply.

“Twenty! You thief! You bloodsucker! You Jew! It cost me ten times that. It belonged to Sarenko.”

“Twenty rubles.”

“The speech alone was worth twenty rubles.”

“I can’t sell the speech. If you can prove it belonged to Sarenko, I’ll give you twenty-five.”

“You have my word.”

“Twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two! The man has a heart of stone,” cried the actor, appealing to Porfiry.

“You know how it works,” said the pawnbroker. “I can only give you what I think I’ll get for it.”

“You’ll get more than twenty-two for this. One hundred at least.”

“Twenty-two. Take it or leave it.”

“Very well. Be warned. He will suck the blood from you,” said the actor in a loud aside to Porfiry. The actor took his money and withdrew a step but did not leave. It was as though he were waiting for something. Porfiry was aware of his presence behind him as he handed the ticket to the pawnbroker.

The gaunt face across the counter regarded him suspiciously. “You have the money?”

Porfiry laid down a red ten-ruble note. He looked over his shoulder to see the actor watching him intently. The other man gave a reflex smile and made his face bland. The pawnbroker came back with a bundle of books, tied together with string.

“You’re not Virginsky,” said the pawnbroker.

“Could you cut the string for me, please? I wish to examine the books more closely.”

“You’re not Virginsky,” repeated the pawnbroker.

“Who is Virginsky?”

“The man who pawned these books.”

“Does it matter? I’m paying his debt. I have the money to redeem the pledge on his behalf. Please cut the string.”

The pawnbroker hesitated, sucking in even farther the cheeks of his death’s-head face. All his vitality was concentrated in his eyes, which were locked on Porfiry as he slipped a penknife under the string.

The first four books were Russian translations of, in turn, Moleschott’s The Cycle of Life, Büchner’s Force and Matter, Vogt’s Superstition and Science, and Dühring’s Natural Dialectics. The fifth book, in maroon cloth binding, bore the title One Thousand and One Maidenheads.

“Ah,” came the voice at Porfiry’s shoulder as he investigated this last one, “I see you are an acolyte of Priapos.” Porfiry closed the book hurriedly. He gave the actor a stern, questioning glance. “Priapos,” his new friend explained, “my favorite publishing house.” Porfiry saw that this was the name of the book’s imprint. “There is nothing quite like the thrill of cutting the pages of the latest Priapos. If ever, my friend, you feel the need of another’s hand to guide your blade, I have much experience in such mutually advantageous manipulations.”

“Sir, I believe you are laboring under a misapprehension.”

“What’s wrong with two gentlemen enjoying a gentlemanly pursuit together? It is the same as if we were to share a bottle of fine wine or, as the redskins do, a pipe. But why stop at breaching virgin paper when there is virgin flesh to be sundered? There are girls, sir, yes, fresh, sweet, compliant girls…You have only to say. These things can be arranged.”

“I have no wish.”

“Of course, I understand. The unique pleasure of the solitary method, if I may put it like that. There is the question too of hygiene, not to mention speed. It is the rational choice. But still, a helping hand would not go amiss, I venture to suggest. Between friends, it is often the most civilized way, I find.”

“Sir, I am outraged.”

“And I am at a loss. From your other reading matter, I took you to be a rationalist and a materialist. With such an outlook, what objection could there be?”

“I have not come so far in my freethinking.”

“Then I am sorry for you.”

“And I for you.”

“Please do not be.”

“I am a magistrate.”

“Ah!”

“I am here on police business.”

“I bid you-” But the theatrical gentleman flew the shop without completing the farewell.

Feeling strangely compromised by the encounter, Porfiry turned back to the pawnbroker. The man met him with a look of open impertinence. Those eyes, intense, dark, and fiercely alive, seemed momentarily more obscene than anything in One Thousand and One Maidenheads.

“This Virginsky,” began Porfiry.

“Pavel Pavlovich.”

“You understand now that it is a police matter.”

“I know nothing of that.”

“Can you give me a description of him?”

The pawnbroker shrugged.

“Is he particularly tall or-how shall I put it? — diminutive?”

“Not particularly.”

“I see. So there is nothing especially distinctive about his appearance?”

“He has a pale complexion and a generally disreputable appearance. But among the students of Petersburg, I dare say there is nothing distinctive about that.”

“And from your familiarity with him, I take it he is a regular customer of yours?”

“Regular enough.”

“Do you happen to know Pavel Pavlovich’s address?”

“I do.”

Porfiry added another red note to the first still on the pawnbroker’s counter.

“You have only to go to Lippevechsel’s Tenements. And ask there for Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky.”

The pawnbroker picked up the two banknotes and held the second one out to Porfiry. “This is a legitimate credit business. The debt is paid.”

Porfiry bowed and held the bow.

“I am a Jew, yes, but I am also a law-abiding citizen.”

Porfiry lifted his head, looked the pawnbroker in the eye, and met the anger there without flinching. He took back the note that he had offered.

“Would you please tie up the books for me again?” he said, as he folded it into his wallet. The pawnbroker breathed out sharply through his nostrils before complying.