A Razor Wrapped in Silk (3 page)

‘I’m not afraid, Pavel Pavlovich.’ She could not keep the impatience out of her voice.

Porfiry Petrovich pursed his lips to suppress a smirk at Virginsky’s expense.
Oh dear, Pavel Pavlovich – that was a false
step!

‘My name is Maria Petrovna Verkhotseva. You may have heard of my father, Pyotr Afanasevich Verkhotsev.’ The disclosure was made factually, without boasting, her lack of constraint revealing the true privilege of her upbringing.

‘I know of him.’

‘I would be surprised if you did not.’

Porifiry allowed his head to fall forward with the bouncing rhythm of the
karet
.

‘This has nothing to do with my father, except insofar as it has to do with me. Some people fear him. Some people hate him. To me, he is simply
Papochka
. I love him as a daughter. He has always been a good father to me, and my mother a good mother. I have wanted for nothing. Indeed, they gave me the most precious gift any parent can give a child: an education. They allowed me, encouraged me would be more the truth, to cultivate an independent mind. My father, you may be surprised to learn, has decidedly liberal views.’

‘Why should it surprise me?’ said Porfiry. He seemed distracted, more interested in the unfolding narrative of the city outside the
karet
.

‘Some might hold that liberal views are inconsistent with his position as deputy head of the Tsar’s secret police.’

‘Isn’t the Tsar a liberal?’ Porfiry scrutinised each house and tenement building of the Moskvaya District for signs of change. It was as if he was looking into the face of an old friend re-encountered after years apart. ‘I thought he was.’

‘He
was
, perhaps. Once,’ commented Virginsky, dryly.

‘Like you,’ continued Maria Petrovna, directing her discourse at Porfiry, ‘I looked around me. Did I not have eyes in my head? I was not satisfied for their gaze to settle only on the surface of things.’

Porfiry turned a face of mild surprise towards her.

‘I went inside the tenements.’ It seemed almost as if she were rebuking him. ‘I did not like what I saw.’

Porfiry nodded for her to go on.

‘I decided to do something about it. But what could I, a mere woman, accomplish, even if I was the daughter of a powerful man?’

‘Much, I would imagine,’ said Porfiry, smiling.

‘I trained to be a teacher. Using my father’s influence, I gained admittance to the drawing rooms of the wealthy. I had connections of my own too. In addition to private tutors engaged by my father, my education had included a period at the Smolny Institute. Many of my friends from there had married appropriately. I will not say advantageously, for the advantages were mutually conferred. It was not a course I had chosen for myself, but I was happy enough to congratulate them on their good fortune. Especially if they were able to persuade their husbands to support my cause.’

‘Your cause?’

‘My plan, vision – dream. Call it what you will.’

‘And it was?’

‘To found a school. I wanted to share the gift of education that I had enjoyed with those less fortunate than myself. Many of the evils of society have their origin in the ignorance of the poorer classes. Eradicate that ignorance and you will eradicate the evils.’

‘A noble aspiration,’ said Porfiry, ‘as befits an old girl of the Smolny Institute for
Noble
Young Ladies.’

‘You’re mocking me.’

‘Forgive me. I didn’t mean to. It is simply that one forms an idea of the type of young lady that the Smolny Institute turns out and, I am pleased to say, you do not conform to it. I did not realise that they had extended their curriculum to include either practical or political studies.’

‘It is a mistake to indulge one’s prejudices. The pupils of any institute are not a homogenous mass, but a congregation of individual souls, with varying interests and characters. As are the teachers. While I was there I was fortunate to come under the influence of a remarkable educationalist, one Apollon Mikhailovich Perkhotin. The seed of my aspiration took root in his classes.’

‘What was his subject, may I ask?’

‘Conversation.’

‘Conversation?’

‘Yes. He taught us how to converse.’

‘I see.’

‘It is not as simple a subject as you imagine. Not for girls who may find themselves moving in the highest circles of society, and who may be called upon to converse with all manner of individuals, from foreign heads of state to’ – Maria Petrovna hesitated as she cast around for an appropriately contrasting exemplum – ‘poets. It begins in etiquette and ends in … well, who can say where any conversation may end?’

‘Quite.’

‘After I qualified as a teacher, I sought out Apollon Mikhailovich. He encouraged me in my scheme and advised
me on educational matters. I was overjoyed when he con sented to become a partner in my enterprise.’

‘He left the Smolny Institute to work with you?’

‘Not quite. His professorship at the Smolny had by then terminated.’

‘Please continue.’

‘Thanks to the generosity of our patrons, among whom we were proud to count the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna—’

‘The Tsar’s aunt?’ blurted Virginsky.

‘Of course.’

Virginsky knitted his brows as he took this in. ‘She is an interesting woman. A freethinker, it is said.’

‘The Grand Duchess was greatly moved by the plight of foundling children, who not only grow up without the love of their mothers, but also are forced from an early age to work long shifts in factories. The law does not require our factory owners to make any educational provision for these children. Indeed, they expend only as much of their profits as is necessary to keep them housed and alive, which outgoings you may be sure are deducted from the foundlings’ paltry wages.’

‘Do you not need the owners’ consent for the children to attend your school?’ asked Porfiry.

‘They are the owners of the factories, not of the children, though I concede you would not think so. However, the children find a way to get to us. Some of them travel far, on foot, to do so.’

‘Where is your school?’

‘We were able to secure suitable premises in the Rozhdestvenskaya District. It is only two rooms over an artisan’s workshop, but it serves our purposes.’

‘And how many pupils do you have?’

The swimming grey of her eyes settled on him; tears welled, adding to their brightness. Her face was flushed with feeling. A number of emotions seemed to be in contention: outrage, sorrow, disappointment, fear. But her gaze remained steadily fixed on Porfiry.

‘That’s just it,’ she said, her voice if anything firmer than before. ‘When we opened our doors, we had fifty-seven children and four adults. Far more than we had planned for, or could accommodate. However, we turned none away. Over the first weeks and months attendance grew, reaching a peak of over seventy children and about a dozen adults. That was last summer. In the winter, naturally, attendance declined. It was harder for the children to get to us. On top of that, the length of their shifts, which lasted from before daybreak till after nightfall, meant that what leisure hours they had were spent in perpetual darkness, which is inevitably debilitating and hardly conducive to study. However, in spring we enjoyed a resurgence in our numbers, which held, more or less, over the summer. Until several weeks ago, when I began to notice a gradual decline. I thought nothing of it. Attendance is not obligatory. That the children are able to come at all, even if just once, is a miracle. Who knows what effect even the briefest exposure to the schoolroom will have on their young minds? To see the wonder, the lively curiosity, awaken on their faces! Once that door is opened, the door to learning, you cannot imagine that it will ever be closed.’

Maria Petrovna broke off, distracted by the enamelled cigarette case which Porfiry was holding up expectantly. ‘Forgive me for interrupting you, Maria Petrovna, but I fear we are reaching the point at which it is necessary for me to smoke.’

Virginsky and Maria Petrovna watched the lighting of the cigarette, which had a ritualistic formality to it. There was a practised crispness to Porfiry’s movements, culminating in his eyelids quivering closed with an aesthete’s sensuality at the precise moment of inhalation. ‘I beg you to continue. You were talking about the decline in attendance.’

‘Yes,’ continued Maria Petrovna, somewhat nonplussed. ‘As I said, I thought nothing of it. And then Mitka stopped coming.’

‘Mitka?’

‘Dmitri Krasotkin, an employee of the Nevsky Cotton-pinning Factory. A foundling, ten years of age. All the children love to learn – really, they do! – but with Mitka it was more than that. It was something fiercer. A desperate need. He hung on my every word, picked things up so quickly. He showed a remarkable aptitude and I believe he realised that our little school offered him some hope of escaping his terrible life at the factory. It is back-breaking work they put them to, you know, and it’s a tragedy to see a boy like Mitka, who is capable of so much, worn down by it. When he repeatedly failed to attend the school, I made enquiries at the factory. He had gone missing from there too. They assumed he had run away. Truth to tell, they cared little what had become of him and were only exercised insofar as his disappearance inconvenienced them and depressed their productivity. The foreman, an Englishman called Beck, whose Russian I could barely understand, pretended to believe that I had something to do with Mitka’s disappearance. I also had an unpleasant interview with the old woman who supervised the apprentice house, who made such disgusting insinuations that I question her suitability to hold any position of responsibility over children.

‘So troubled was I by Mitka’s disappearance that I made enquiries concerning the other children who had ceased attending around the same time as he. Some had simply dropped out and I was relieved enough to discover them alive, though the conditions of their lives distressed me. However, there were two other children, Artur Smurov and Svetlana Chisova, the former a worker at the Nobel metal works, the latter employed by the Miller tobacco factory, who have also disappeared without trace, or so it seems. It was at this point that I decided to take my discoveries to the police.’

‘I see. And what was their reaction … to your discoveries?’ Porfiry stretched the question out with an ironic air of knowing what the answer would be.

‘Indifference. Nothing was done.’

‘You made a statement?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘A written statement?’

‘Yes.’

‘At which police station?’

‘It was a station near the Nevsky Cotton-Spinning Factory. On Great Bolotnaya Street. I could tell that it was simply a matter of form. They filed the statement away without even reading it.’

‘When was this?’

‘It was last Friday.’

‘That would have been the twenty-seventh. Thank you. That is helpful.’ Porfiry drew on his cigarette and exhaled with a pained expression. ‘I am afraid, Maria Petrovna, in my experience it is very difficult to find someone who does not wish to be found. Even here in St Petersburg, where we have City Guards every one hundred and fifty paces.’

‘Why are you suggesting that the children do not wish to be found? Isn’t it more likely that some harm has befallen them?’

‘One mustn’t always presume the worst, you know, even if it is a possibility. You yourself commented on the abject misery of their existences. How could they not wish to flee such horrors, especially now that you have opened their eyes to something better?’

The
karet
had come to a halt, signalling the termination of the discussion. The two horses shifted restively, the clop of their hooves tolling a despondent knell. Panic entered Maria Petrovna’s eyes and seized her voice, raising it a good half octave: ‘You are just like the police. You don’t care.’

‘I am merely trying to place myself in the position of one of these unfortunates. It is a fundamental technique of the investigator. If I were faced with a life of soul-destroying drudgery, I would do everything in my power to escape it.’

Maria Petrovna’s voice, though still charged with passion, returned to its original pitch and firmness of tone. ‘They have. Escape for them was the school. And that is why I know something terrible has happened to them.’

‘Let us sincerely hope not.’

‘Is that it? Is that all you will do? Sincerely hope? Are you not a father yourself?’

Porfiry gave a single slow blink. ‘No, I am not. However—’

‘But you were once a child?’

Porfiry tensed a smile.

‘Do you not owe it to the child you once were to find out what has happened to my children?’

‘We will look into it. You have my assurance.’ Porfiry broke off and peered through the rain-spattered window. A single mass of heavy grey cloud seemed intent on absorbing the city
with a cold and soulless greed. The building that faced him, distorted by the prisms of moisture through which he viewed it, appeared almost impossibly dilapidated. It was strangely familiar too, like the architecture of a dream. ‘What street is this?’

‘Stolyarny Lane,’ answered Virginsky. ‘We are back at the department.’

4

A scene at the Naryskin Palace

In a city of palaces, the Naryskin Palace did everything it could to assert its pre-eminence, shouldering out of the way its neighbours on the Fontanka Embankment. Built on a plot of land assigned to the first Prince Naryskin by Peter the Great, in gratitude for his services in the war against Sweden, it overlooked the river with a flamboyantly remodelled façade, a blushing pink celebration of Russian baroque.

The evening light exploded softly over it. The day had been clear and bright, a welcome break in the sullen dampness that had squatted over the city for the past week or so. This was autumn’s other face, golden-hued and expansive, but all too briefly seen. The falling leaves had a brittle-edged crispness. There was a crunch, rather than a squelch, underfoot. But it felt like remission. To be shown their glittering city for a day only reminded the citizens of St Petersburg of what they were soon to lose, irretrievably, under the dark, endless months to come. They were days away from the first snows, and they knew it.