Porfiry’s hand reached up and touched the brickwork of the arch as he stooped to pass beneath it. He felt a repulsive cold clamminess and withdrew his hand immediately, wondering what had possessed him to touch it in the first place.
In the thickened gloom he could just make out a bundled form on the bed, from which the jagged sobs emanated. The smell in this part of the basement was particularly foul.
‘Nadezhda?’
The bundle stirred. A tremulous moan came from it.
‘Is there no light in here?’ asked Porfiry gently.
There was a more agitated movement from the bed; limbs broke away from the bundle and thrashed about.
‘Not even a candle?’
The moan became a wail. ‘No candle for my baby!’
‘There there, Nadezhda. I will light a candle for your baby. I will go to St Isaac’s Cathedral and light a candle for her soul. What was she called?’ As he spoke, Porfiry reached into a pocket with one hand.
‘Anastasya.’
‘A beautiful name.’ A match flared in Porfiry’s hand. ‘There. For Anastasya.’ In the fragile glow he saw the woman’s agonised face, her mouth locked in a grimace of pain. He saw her body crumple and fold as she drew her legs up around the pain. The dark cast of her flesh, as though bruised from a lifetime of beatings, was clearly visible. He held the dying match to his own face, allowing her to see the smile which he hoped was reassuring. He believed he saw her face relax, if only for a moment.
‘Anastasya Filippovna,’ said Nadezhda.
‘Your husband is Filipp Gorshkov?’
‘Filya!’ The name was uttered as a cry of despair as the match expired. ‘Filya is gone. I am alone. I have been left to die alone.’
‘You’re not alone, Nadya. I am here with you.’ Porfiry bent down and reached into the darkness. He found a hand, in which was clasped an object made of soft, padded fabric. He searched for the other hand. It was as damp as the wall he had touched, but feverishly hot. He wondered if it was the same impulse in operation: the need to know, rather than the desire to console.
‘She should be in a hospital,’ said Virginsky at his back.
‘No!’ cried Nadezhda.
‘It’s all right, Nadya,’ said Porfiry, squeezing her hand gently.
She murmured something, the words inaudible. Her eyes closed and she drifted away from them, the tension falling out of her body. Porfiry continued holding her hand. ‘I wonder, has any doctor been in here?’
‘I very much doubt it,’ said Virginsky.
‘The thought of hospital inspires terror in her. In her mind, it is not a place one returns from.’
‘One thing’s for certain. She will not last long here.’
Porfiry leant forward decisively. ‘You will help me. We will take her to the Obukhovsky Hospital. Dr Pervoyedov will see her.’
‘And what of all the others who are dying in this building, Porfiry Petrovich? And those dying in other buildings? How will your sentimental gesture help them?’
‘But to do nothing in the face of her suffering - is that what you advocate?’
‘Far from it, as you well know. I advocate action, urgent and comprehensive action. Coming here, seeing this, you must surely see that it is necessary. And as you have said yourself, Porfiry Petrovich, that which is necessary can only be right.’
‘But the action you advocate will not save her.’
‘Porfiry Petrovich, I fear nothing may save her.’
Porfiry was silent for a moment. ‘Come, help me lift her,’ he said at last. He could not interpret Virginsky’s silence in the darkness.
They lifted her by the armpits. As they peeled her body from the bed, there was a sound like a wheel turning in a bog. They raised her to a seated position and swung her arms around their shoulders.
‘On the count of three,’ said Porfiry. They braced themselves as they reached the final number, only to discover that the woman had barely any weight at all. She almost flew from the bed. She moaned and tossed her head.
‘It’s all right, Nadya,’ soothed Porfiry.
They bent to walk her through the arch, her feet dragging in the flood water. In the comparative light of the open room, Porfiry saw that her feet were bare. He also saw that the object she clutched was an ancient and grubby rag doll.
The old man at the table raised his head to watch them, then lowered it again without comment, overwhelmed by passivity. Nadezhda Gorshkova’s body tensed between them. A moment later it was limp. Her head lolled. Her hand opened, dropping the rag doll into the mired water. Virginsky and Porfiry halted and looked at the woman’s face. Her mouth and eyes were open. She was no longer weeping or moaning. She made no sound at all.
5
The house at the eleventh verst
It was not really a house, more a low sprawl of buildings, partially concealed from the road by a stand of ragged birch and a decaying fence topped with rusted nails. Glimpsed from a distance it gave the impression, gleaming pale in the new day, of having no substance. Its presence on the ground seemed accidental, owing nothing to the operation of gravity. It might almost have been tethered there, such was its weightless, dreamlike quality. Seeing the turquoise roofs and the walls of ochre and white over the fence, Porfiry was reminded of the time that Virginsky had pointed the building out to him the morning they had taken the train to Petergof. He acknowledged a sense of resentment as he approached it now, for it felt like an idea that had been forced upon him. He found himself startled by a detail of the architecture: the windows and doors were arched, as were the passageways through to the courtyards. The motif brought back the memory of the flooded basement and of the arch through which he and Virginsky had carried Nadezhda Gorshkova. The correspondence irritated him. He refused to see anything portentous in the fact that by stepping through another arch he would encounter the dead woman’s husband.
The gatekeeper was dressed in a grubby
kosovorotka
. He had deep-set eyes that turned with torpid cunning towards Porfiry and Virginsky. His face maintained a deliberate blankness at their approach, though the abrupt shift in his posture, from indolence to wariness, suggested visitors were rare and unwelcome. He sat on a high stool in a three-sided hut behind a chained gate. Weeds grew all around him; in amongst them could be seen items of discardedrubbish: a rusted bedstead, broken bottles, bundles of clothes and an odd shoe. The gatekeeper’s face seemed to absorb all this ugliness and reflect it back at them. His expression was a strange mixture of shame and defiance.
‘I am Porfiry Petrovich, investigating magistrate from the Department of the Investigation of Criminal Causes.’ Porfiry did not look directly at the man as he made this announcement, almost as if he could not bear to. ‘You will please let us in.’
‘I can’t do that,’ said the gatekeeper with a sly smile. ‘I don’t have the key.’
‘Then kindly fetch the key.’
‘Do you think they will trust me with it?’ The man leered. ‘Look!’ He lifted his shirt, revealing a striped uniform, equally grubby, underneath. ‘They think it looks better if they dress me in a
kosovorotka
.’
‘I see. Is there someone you can notify of our presence who would be authorised to admit us?’
‘That would be Dr Zverkov.’
‘Very well. Please inform Dr Zverkov that magistrates from St Petersburg are here to see him.’
It was a moment before the gatekeeper descended from his stool, a moment in which he kept his eyes fixed firmly on Porfiry. Only with reluctance did he finally turn away from the magistrate. Then, unexpectedly, he broke into a run which carried him across the burdock-infested grounds towards the main house, a central two-storey block winged by long single-storey extensions.
‘Is this a hospital or a prison?’ said Virginsky.
‘Something of both,’ answered Porfiry. He looked at the long weeds growing through the wires of the old bedstead. ‘A place of abandonment,’ he added.
‘And they have set one of the inmates to guard it,’ said Virginsky.
Now a plump and florid-faced man was striding towards them, at the same time fastening on a black frock coat. He wore his beard neatly trimmed and they could see where the stiff collar of his shirt had rubbed his neck raw. His face wrinkled distastefully as he passed the strewn rubbish, as if it had long been on his mind to do something about it. The gatekeeper followed at some distance, his head averted in a kind of flinch.
The plump man took a key from his pocket and unlocked the chain that bound the gate. ‘Gentlemen, welcome to the Ulyanka Asylum. I am Dr Zverkov. How may I assist you?’ His voice was a feeble, high tenor, at odds with his bulk.
Porfiry saw that Dr Zverkov’s face was bathed in sweat as he pushed the creaking gate open.
‘You admitted an inmate yesterday, one Gorshkov, a factory worker.’
‘Ah yes, there was an admission yesterday. That is correct.’
‘We wish to speak to him.’
‘You won’t get much sense out of him,’ said Dr Zverkov, squaring up to Porfiry as if to block his way, despite the fact that he had gone to the trouble of opening the gate for him. He manufactured a thin smile, but his eyes were hostile, the set of his body pugnacious. ‘He was raving when we admitted him and he’s raving now.’
‘Of course,’ said Porfiry. ‘Nevertheless.’
‘What has he done?’ asked the gatekeeper from behind Dr Zverkov.
‘Be quiet, Nikita,’ snapped the doctor. However, he narrowed his eyes as he looked at Porfiry, as if waiting for an answer to the question.
Porfiry said nothing.
Dr Zverkov at last stepped aside and waved in the two magistrates. He then closed and re-chained the gate.
‘Follow me, please.’ He led the way briskly towards the right-hand wing. Porfiry could see that the fabric of the building was by no means as pristine as it had seemed from a distance, when the sun had coated it with a sheen that evened out all imperfections. The cracks and stains in the stucco were visible now. He could also see that the windows were barred. ‘Back to your post, Nikita,’ Dr Zverkov commanded irritably, as if seeking to distract from the shabbiness. He too, it seemed, could not bear to look at the man when he addressed him. ‘As magistrates, you will be used to dealingwith the criminally insane.’ He angled his head back towards Porfiry and Virginsky, who were in step behind him. ‘It will not surprise you that we have had to restrain him.’
‘Why do you say that he is criminally insane?’ asked Virginsky sharply. ‘What crime has he committed?’
‘He menaced his cohabitants, including his wife, with a knife. And then attempted to murder himself. Suicide is a crime, I believe, as well as being against the laws of God and nature. Anyone attempting suicide is by definition insane.’
‘You are aware of the background to his case? The loss of his children?’ Virginsky insisted.
‘Of course. However, such suffering is by no means unique. Many people suffer far worse and do not become violent. We must find a way to overcome our sufferings, not be overcome by them. That is the rational way. When you consider the age of the earth, and the many ages of man, what really do the sorrows of one lifetime amount to? The Romans, I think, had the right attitude.’
‘You are talking of the Stoics? It is hard for a parent who has lost six children to be stoical, I think.’ Virginsky cast a glance towards Porfiry, soliciting his support.
‘Is this how you treat your patients, by reasoning with them?’ said Porfiry with a smile.
‘Of course not. One cannot reason with the mad.’ Dr Zverkov turned sharply into an arched passageway that led through the wing of the building into an inner courtyard. The same long weeds grew unchallenged here. The air thickened with that summer courtyard stench, which here, somehow, made Porfiry think of captive beasts. They crossed the courtyard and followed Dr Zverkov through a door, inevitably arched, into an utterly dilapidated annexe. A man in striped uniform, the same as Nikita had worn beneath his
kosovorotka
, was sitting on a chair smoking a pipe. Behind him, an open doorway led to a ward.