The Gentle Axe Paperback (24 page)

Marfa Denisovna moved the ace of diamonds up to the top.

“How long have you been with the family, Marfa Denisovna?”

The old woman chuckled. “All my life.”

“You were born a serf?”

“Yes. I belonged to Sergei Pavlovich’s father’s estate.”

“And you stayed on after emancipation?”

“Where else would I go? Besides, I had my little Sonechka to look after.”

“Sofiya Sergeyevna?”

“Of course.”

“I’d like to talk to you about Stepan Sergeyevich.” Marfa Denisovna nodded assent. “He owed your mistress money, didn’t he?”

“It didn’t matter.”

“Why do you say that?”

Marfa Denisovna’s hard little body jerked up and down in an overdone shrug.

“It was only money. Some things are more important than money. So he was behind on his rent? But he would pay it when he was able.”

“You suggest some kind of bond between Stepan Sergeyevich and Anna Alexandrovna.”

Marfa Denisovna moved a row of cards, the eight of hearts down to the three of clubs, over to a nine of clubs. She turned over a jack of hearts.

“Shall I tell you a story? My darling Sonechka loves it when I tell her stories. Babushka, tell me a story, she says. Even now that she is nearly grown.”

“Yes, Babushka. Tell me a story,” said Porfiry, smiling.

“There was once a young and handsome man of noble birth. He came from a rich family. The family owned nearly a thousand souls. One day the young man saw a beautiful girl washing clothes in the river. And as she worked the clothes in the river, it was as if she were wringing his heart in her hands. The young man came out from his hiding place, for he had been spying on her in secret. And he knew from the look on the girl’s face that his love was returned. But the girl was the daughter of one of his father’s serfs. Their love could not be. And yet it was. A child was born, a boy. They christened the baby Stepan. Then in the night, while his mother slept, baby Stepan was taken to the Foundling Hospital in St. Petersburg. Years passed. The young, handsome man grew older and moved to the city, away from the beautiful girl he had loved. Abandoned, her heart turned to stone. She continued to serve his family and even came to the city to serve him when his new, young wife bore him a baby girl. Remembering the baby that had been taken from her, she nursed that little darling as if she were her own. In the meantime, baby Stepan grew up, though not as much as he might have done! The sins of his parents were there for all to see in his little arms and legs. But he was a clever boy. As you might expect, his father being a clever man and his mother nobody’s fool. He had been left at the Foundling Hospital with a signet ring around his neck on a cord. There was a family emblem engraved on the signet ring. That was all that the clever boy needed. Well, a man now, though no taller than an infant, he tracked his father down. The father wept tears of regret and remorse and took in his son. Though to keep up appearances, he called him a lodger and said nothing to his young wife. And within a year of his long-lost son’s arrival, the father died, suddenly and quite mysteriously.” With an impatient shake of her head, Marfa Denisovna scooped the cards together. “It won’t come out!”

“Does she know now?” Porfiry asked quietly. “Anna Alexandrovna?”

“Oh, yes. I told her. I had to tell her.”

“Why?”

“You will find it hard to understand. You never knew Stepan Sergeyevich. Not when he was alive. You never saw his eyes. There was something undeniable about his eyes. A woman who would find the idea of it quite ridiculous, who would laugh if you were to suggest such a thing to her—even such a woman, when she saw his eyes, would begin to wonder. Such things she would begin to wonder! There is a part of all of us that we only see when we look in eyes like Stepan Sergeyevich had. That he was a dwarf did not come into it.”

“What happened when you told her?”

“Hah! Poor dearie. She was sick. I mean, she vomited up her dinner. And all she had to reproach herself with were idle wonderings. But some women take such things harder than others. And she could see now how he was looking at her little Sofiya. There was something devilish in Stepan Sergeyevich, there’s no denying it. Something more than ordinary mischief.”

“Do you think she could have killed him to prevent…the unthinkable?”

Marfa Denisovna dealt out the cards for another game. She didn’t answer Porfiry Petrovich’s question and didn’t look up when he closed the door behind him.

A
S THE DAY BEGAN
, eight hundred versts south of St. Petersburg, in the town of Kaluga, a young deputy investigating magistrate pulled himself up into the box seat of an open sleigh. Yevgeny Nikolaevich Ulitin settled next to the driver and carelessly arranged a sheepskin over his legs. He was already wearing two fur coats, thick fur mittens, and a heavy
ushanka.
His blue eyes were bleary from lack of sleep, and his face was shimmeringly pale. He had been up half the night discussing
zemstvo
politics, the freedom of the press, the existence (or otherwise) of the soul, insanity (from both a legal and a strictly psychiatric point of view), ignorance, education, the church, the state of the peasantry, the emancipation of the serfs, the legal reforms, the tsar, the tsarina, the woman problem, the comparative beauty of two sisters, actresses both in the Kaluga Provincial Theater, beauty in the abstract, art, literature, architecture, St. Petersburg…

His partner in these often circular and invariably unsatisfying debates was Dr. Artemy Vsevolodovich Drozdov, whom Ulitin frequently declared to be the only other civilized being in Kaluga. Ulitin licked a metallic taste from his teeth. The fine wisps of his beard were plastered crustily around his mouth, and he resisted the temptation to send his tongue out to test the whiskers of his mustache. A vague memory of champagne—how many bottles had they opened?—prompted him to clamp one mittened hand over his mouth, as if he had just let slip an indiscretion. Whatever subjects they touched upon in their discussions, the two friends always returned to the same eternal theme. St. Petersburg. It was a mystery to each of them how he came to be rotting away in this provincial backwater when all his friends and associates from university days were undoubtedly carving out glorious careers for themselves, close to the heart of all that was worthwhile and invigorating. Sometimes these discussions lapsed into mere recitals of the streets and place-names of the great capital, culminating in a rapturous chorus of “Nevsky Prospect! Ah, the Nevsky Prospect!” There would then follow a meditative silence, during which the evening’s opened bottles would stare back at them sullenly. The night would break up soon after that, as memories of the pressing duties of the following day came back to claim them.

Nikita, his driver, was busy lighting a pipe. When this was securely completed, he turned stiffly toward Ulitin, at the same time leaning away from the younger man. It was a complicated posture, not without condescension. “Where are we going today, your honor?” asked Nikita as he took up the reins. Ulitin thought he detected an ironic tone in the peasant’s deference.

“Optina Pustyn.”

“Optina Pustyn?” Nikita threw the name back with astonishment. He put the reins down again.

“Yes.”

“It’s a long way.”

“I know. Which is why we should not waste another moment.”

“We may not make it before nightfall.”

“I think we will.”

“We may not make it at all, if there is a storm.”

“So what do you suggest, my friend? That we stay here? I have official business at the monastery. Should I telegram back to the authorities in St. Petersburg who have instructed me in this commission that I cannot go there because Nikita says it is a long way?”

“But if we get caught in a snowstorm and we lose the road, you will not thank me.”

“I will thank you if you get me to Optina Pustyn safely. I have to speak to Father Amvrosy on a very important matter.”

“Father Amvrosy?”

“Yes.”

“The holy man?”

“They say he is holy.”

“He is holy. There was this girl. The daughter of one of my wife’s relatives. Her sister’s mother-in-law’s brother’s daughter, or some such. Or perhaps it was someone else. Anyhow, he cured her.”

“Yes. I have heard similar stories.”

“The doctors couldn’t do a thing for her. She was just wasting away before their eyes. She couldn’t keep anything down, you see.” Nikita mimed vomiting. Ulitin closed his eyes and turned away. “They say he’s dying,” added Nikita. “Father Amvrosy. Doesn’t have long left in this world. Ah well, he is sure to be going to a better one.”

“All the more reason to hasten our journey,” said Ulitin.

Nikita stared at the deputy investigating magistrate for a long time, as if he had just said something incomprehensibly stupid. He then shrugged and took up the reins again. He shook his head and allowed the energy of his bewilderment to pass down the reins. The two horses shouldered heavily into the day, snorting their own reluctance back to their driver.

W
HEN THE FIRST FLAKES
touched their faces, Nikita turned briefly in the same stiff, backward-leaning way toward Ulitin. But he said nothing. Neither of them had spoken for a long time.

Before long the air was filled with swirling flakes. They looped and spiraled but most of all fell, with a frantic and dizzying insistence. First the woods on either side disappeared from view. Then the posts that marked the road. Now all that Ulitin could see, apart from the teeming rush of the blizzard, was the back of the trace horse.

Nikita pulled on the reins, and they slid to a halt.

“We’ve lost the road,” he said, shielding his eyes and peering through the constantly shifting layers.

Ulitin said nothing.

Without warning Nikita jumped down from the box seat. He clapped his hands, nodded, then bustled off into the storm. In a moment he had vanished from sight.

Ulitin felt suddenly very alone. He heard the horses shift and shiver uneasily. Last night, with Drozdov, he had talked of the soul and of the question of its survival after death. With the abstract confidence of young men, they had resolved the issue beyond dispute. Drozdov was a doctor. He had vouched for the physiological basis of personality. The argument was irrefutable. If a subject’s personality could become changed through morbid disease, as in the case of dementia praecox, it was logical to argue that it did not have its basis in anything eternal and immutable. And if disease can mutate the subjective self, it is also logical to conclude that death will terminate it.

Now, sitting lost and abandoned in the middle of a furious snowstorm, Ulitin was not so sure. Or rather, he wished he had not been so sure.

He closed his eyes. It was as if he did not wish to catch himself in the act of saying a prayer.

The sleigh shook. Nikita clambered up next to him. Ulitin had never been so pleased to see another human.

“Stavrogin’s Copse. If we keep that to our right, we should find Kozelsk.”

Ulitin peered in the direction Nikita indicated. But all he could see was the maddening dance of snowflakes in front of his eyes.

T
HEY GOT TEA
and something to eat at the
zemstvo
hut in Kozelsk.

As they ate, they kept a close eye on the window, watching the storm intensify its rage. Ulitin became suddenly depressed and could bear it no longer. He looked away from the window and took out the telegram he had received the previous day.

Ulitin handled the flimsy paper forlornly. The telegram had been sent by one Porfiry Petrovich, an investigating magistrate with the Department of the Investigation of Criminal Causes in St. Petersburg. As he touched the words, he seemed to feel a direct contact with the city, or at least with the dreams of his that it represented. His heart had quickened when he’d received it. He had seen it as an opportunity to impress important personages in the capital. Perhaps a transfer would follow. But now his ambitions had been swallowed up by the snow, and he was trapped in the
zemstvo
hut in Kozelsk.

He tried to imagine Porfiry Petrovich. When this proved impossible, he imagined himself walking down the Nevsky in summer.

“Well, your honor, will you look at that!”

Ulitin looked up. Nikita was pointing at the window. The storm had stopped. The sky was clear.

“Get the horses ready!”

“You’re not thinking of going now?”

“We have no time to lose,” cried Ulitin, rising to his feet.

Nikita shook his head regretfully. “No, no, no, your honor. It will be dark before I have a chance to get the sleigh out. It would be as well to wait until the morning. We will see how it is in the morning.”

Remembering how he had felt when Nikita had come back to him in the storm, Ulitin did not insist. He looked down at the telegram and felt a lump of self-pity in his throat. He blinked away the threat of tears.

T
HEY APPROACHED THE
monastery on the frozen river Zhidra.

Ulitin saw the gold crosses floating in the sky, the clear winter sunlight exulting on them. His heart leaped and he reproached it.
They are only painted crossbeams of wood!
But he could not deny that at first he had stared in amazement. For just an instant their appearance had seemed miraculous.
How can that be?
There was some trick, there had to be…Then they drew nearer. As the course of the river twisted their path, the crosses bobbed from one side to the other as if engaged in stately dance. And of course, it became clear. The crosses were mounted on cupolas, the blue of which had, from a distance, been indistinguishable from the sky. Gradually the domes had appeared, like a slow solidifying of the sky, forming beneath the crosses.

From the gatehouse by the river to the convent was a steep walk up a forested mountain. Ulitin had heard that some pilgrims completed it on their knees. He left Nikita and the horses at the gatehouse and set out on foot with a young monk who gave every impression of expecting him.

It’s just a way they have,
thought Ulitin.
They like to make a mystery out of everything.

The young monk was excitable and garrulous and seemed unable to look Ulitin in the eye. His talk was trivial, at times almost hysterical. He reminded Ulitin of a child on the eve of a holiday.

Perhaps he’s simpleminded,
he thought.

“You’ve come to see Father Amvrosy,” said the young monk, whose name was Brother Innokentiy. Although he was dressed only in a monastic cassock, he didn’t seem to feel the cold. He walked quickly, despite the deep snow and the treacherous path.

Ulitin frowned in annoyance and hurried to keep up.

Brother Innokentiy smiled enigmatically. “Why else would you come? There are many who have already made the pilgrimage. Every day someone arrives. You will have to wait your turn to see him.”

“I’m not a pilgrim. I’m here on official business. I’m an investigating magistrate.”

“He won’t see you. He’s not interested in earthly affairs.”

“It’s a very important matter. I have orders from St. Petersburg. From the police authorities. It is to do with a criminal investigation.”

“He won’t talk about it. He doesn’t care about such things now. The time has gone for him to talk about such things.” Brother Innokentiy flashed one of his questing, sly glances. “What is it about? Perhaps I can help you.” His smile was insinuating.

“I have been directed to talk to Father Amvrosy.”

“But he won’t see you, I tell you. Not about this. If it was about your soul, perhaps.” Brother Innokentiy giggled unpleasantly as if he had just made a very funny, though slightly risqué joke. “He may die any moment. What if he dies before we reach the convent? You’ll have to ask me then.” One side of the monk’s mouth snagged up in a leering grin.

Ulitin slowed his pace. He was tired. But he wanted to let the monk get ahead of him. He wanted a respite from his chatter.

Brother Innokentiy waited for him to catch up. His welcoming smile had a gloating edge.

B
ROTHER INNOKENTIY SHOWED
him into a room that was crowded with well-to-do pilgrims. Everyone seemed to be affected by the same talkative excitement that Ulitin had sensed in the monk. As they entered, every face turned to them expectantly, there was a momentary hush, and then the din picked up again.

Ulitin felt aggrieved on the old, dying monk’s behalf.
They are expecting a miracle,
he thought.
They have come for a miracle, but they look like vultures.

A group of landowners, the men in immaculate frock coats, the women already in shining black, made straight for Brother Innokentiy. Their faces were set with sanctimony. “How is he now?” was the question they all wanted to know the answer to.

“I don’t know,” said Brother Innokentiy. “I’ve come from the gatehouse.” He seemed delighted not to have any news for them.

“The end is near though, isn’t it?” The middle-aged woman who spoke couldn’t keep the eagerness out of her question, though her face was a solemn mask. She scrutinized Brother Innokentiy through a lorgnette.

A stout red-faced man pushing a girl of about eighteen in a wheelchair forced his way to the front. “He must see her. He must see my Lana. Please, you must make him see her.” The girl blushed.
She is quite beautiful when she blushes,
thought Ulitin. Her eyes sought his, then looked away.

“He knows you are here. He knows you are all here. He asks for those he wants to see,” said Brother Innokentiy.

“It is not as if I haven’t been generous to the brothers,” insisted the stout man, short of breath.