The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense (26 page)

Recalling that the expedition had sailed from Archangel after stopping there for several days, the investigator decided to go to that city and see what he could learn there.

He arrived in Archangel the next morning and immediately started on a tour of all stores that sold hunting knives. He was shown hundreds of hunting knives, expensive and cheap, Finnish knives, knives from Vologda, Kostroma, Vyatka, and Pavlovo-Posad—but not one of the kind he was looking for. Salesmen eyed their fussy customer in dismay; store managers shrugged, cashiers giggled—but nowhere could he find the knife he was seeking.

Finally, toward evening, he wandered into a small sporting goods shop on the Dvina Embankment. Almost the first thing he noticed was a hunting knife with a wooden handle—exactly like the one that had killed the Professor.

“How much does this knife cost?” the investigator asked.

“Three seventy-five,” the salesman answered.

The detective called the manager and learned that only one cooperative made such knives, sending its entire output to this store. And yes, the knives had been on sale when the University expedition was in Archangel.

“We have sold many of them,” the manager said, “but we can’t remember all our customers.”

The detective returned to Moscow. There, in Professor Burov’s notebook, among hundreds of entries, he found the following:
Archangel. Hunting knife
—
3 rub. 75 kop.…

“Sit down, Comrade Voronov,” the detective said, smiling. “This is the last time I’ll be summoning you. Kindly read the order to close the case. Sign here, to show you’ve received your copy.”

Voronov took up the pen. Suddenly everything seemed to swim before him—the pen, the inkwell, the face of the investigator sitting across the table. But the investigator’s words finally sank in. The young scientist realized that his horrible experience was now a thing of the past, that his innocence had been proved, that the uncommunicative man sitting across the desk from him had saved his life and his honor.

IVAN BUNIN

THE GENTLEMAN
FROM SAN FRANCISCO

When Ivan Alexeyevich Bunin (1870–1953) was told in 1933 that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he asked what the amount was. Living in France at the time, he was told it was 600,000 francs (about $38,000). He said he was lucky, but then pointed out that a barber from Tarascon had won 5,000,000. His move to Paris, followed by one to the French Riviera, had been necessitated when he sided with the reactionary forces at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and fled the country in May 1918.

The precocious author and poet began writing poetry at the age of eight, heavily influenced by his mother’s reading Pushkin aloud to him. His tutor taught him to read and write with the aid of such books as
Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe
and the stories of Gogol, convincing him that he wanted to be a writer. His poetry and translations of Longfellow’s
Hiawatha
and Byron’s
Cain
earned him the Pushkin Prize in 1903, the highest literary award given by the Russian Academy; he was elected to its literary division in 1909. The following year, he wrote
The Village
, the novel that brought him international renown. It was his first major work to use as its theme one he used frequently in other books: the trials and complex, often tragic, lives of the Russian people under the Czar.

“The Gentleman from San Francisco” is regarded as one of the greatest short stories of all time. Whether a crime occurs may be left to the reader to decide. It was first published in Russia in 1915; the first English language translation appeared in the January 1922 issue of
The Dial
.

“Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city!”

—Revelation of St. John.

T
he Gentleman from San Francisco—neither at Naples nor on Capri could any one recall his name—with his wife and daughter, was on his way to Europe, where he intended to stay for two whole years, solely for the pleasure of it.

He was firmly convinced that he had a full right to a rest, enjoyment, a long comfortable trip, and what not. This conviction had a twofold reason: first he was rich, and second, despite his fifty-eight years, he was just about to enter the stream of life’s pleasures. Until now he had not really lived, but simply existed, to be sure—fairly well, yet putting off his fondest hopes for the future. He toiled unweariedly—the Chinese, whom he imported by thousands for his works, knew full well what it meant,—and finally he saw that he had made much, and that he had nearly come up to the level of those whom he had once taken as a model, and he decided to catch his breath. The class of people to which he belonged was in the habit of beginning its enjoyment of life with a trip to Europe, India, Egypt. He made up his mind to do the same. Of course, it was first of all himself that he desired to reward for the years of toil, but he was also glad for his wife and daughter’s sake. His wife was never distinguished by any extraordinary impressionability, but then, all elderly American women are ardent travelers. As for his daughter, a girl of marriageable age, and somewhat sickly,—travel was the very thing she needed. Not to speak of the benefit to her health, do not happy meetings occur during travels? Abroad, one may chance to sit at the same table with a prince, or examine frescoes side by side with a multi-millionaire.

The itinerary the Gentleman from San Francisco planned out was an extensive one. In December and January he expected to relish the sun of southern Italy, monuments of antiquity, the tarantella, serenades of wandering minstrels, and that which at his age is felt most keenly—the love, not entirely disinterested though, of young Neapolitan girls. The Carnival days he planned to spend at Nice and Monte-Carlo, which at that time of the year is the meeting-place of the choicest society, the society upon which depend all the blessings of civilization: the cut of dress suits, the stability of thrones, the declaration of wars, the prosperity of hotels. Some of these people passionately give themselves over to automobile and boat races, others to roulette, others, again, busy themselves with what is called flirtation, and others shoot pigeons, which soar so beautifully from the dove-cote, hover a while over the emerald lawn, on the background of the forget-me-not colored sea, and then suddenly hit the ground, like little white lumps. Early March he wanted to devote to Florence, and at Easter, to hear the Miserere in Paris. His plans also included Venice, Paris, bull-baiting at Seville, bathing on the British Islands, also Athens, Constantinople, Palestine, Egypt, and even Japan, of course, on the way back … And at first things went very well indeed.

It was the end of November, and all the way to Gibraltar the ship sailed across seas which were either clad by icy darkness or swept by storms carrying wet snow. But there were no accidents, and the vessel did not even roll. The passengers,—all people of consequence—were numerous, and the steamer the famous “Atlantis,” resembled the most expensive European hotel with all improvements: a night refreshment-bar, Oriental baths, even a newspaper of its own. The manner of living was a most aristocratic one; passengers rose early, awakened by the shrill voice of a bugle, filling the corridors at the gloomy hour when the day broke slowly and sulkily over the grayish-green watery desert, which rolled heavily in the fog. After putting on their flannel pajamas, they took coffee, chocolate, cocoa; they seated themselves in marble baths, went through their exercises, whetting their appetites and increasing their sense of well-being, dressed for the day, and had their breakfast. Till eleven o’clock they were supposed to stroll on the deck, breathing in the chill freshness of the ocean, or they played table-tennis, or other games which arouse the appetite. At eleven o’clock a collation was served consisting of sandwiches and bouillon, after which people read their newspapers, quietly waiting for luncheon, which was more nourishing and varied than the breakfast. The next two hours were given to rest; all the decks were crowded then with steamer chairs, on which the passengers, wrapped in plaids, lay stretched, dozing lazily, or watching the cloudy sky and the foamy-fringed water hillocks flashing beyond the sides of the vessel. At five o’clock, refreshed and gay, they drank strong, fragrant tea; at seven the sound of the bugle announced a dinner of nine courses … Then the Gentleman from San Francisco, rubbing his hands in an onrush of vital energy, hastened to his luxurious state-room to dress.

In the evening, all the decks of the “Atlantis” yawned in the darkness, shone with their innumerable fiery eyes, and a multitude of servants worked with increased feverishness in the kitchens, dish-washing compartments, and wine-cellars. The ocean, which heaved about the sides of the ship, was dreadful, but no one thought of it. All had faith in the controlling power, of the captain, a red-headed giant, heavy and very sleepy, who, clad in a uniform with broad golden stripes, looked like a huge idol, and but rarely emerged, for the benefit of the public, from his mysterious retreat. On the fore-castle, the siren gloomily roared or screeched in a fit of mad rage, but few of the diners heard the siren: its hellish voice was covered by the sounds of an excellent string orchestra, which played ceaselessly and exquisitely in a vast hall, decorated with marble and spread with velvety carpets. The hall was flooded with torrents of light, radiated by crystal lustres and gilt chandeliers; it was filled with a throng of bejeweled ladies in low-necked dresses, of men in dinner-coats, graceful waiters, and deferential maîtres-d’hôtel. One of these,—who accepted wine orders exclusively—wore a chain on his neck like some lord-mayor. The evening dress, and the ideal linen, made the Gentleman from San Francisco look very young. Dry-skinned, of average height, strongly, though irregularly built, glossy with thorough washing and cleaning, and moderately animated, he sat in the golden splendor of this palace. Near him stood a bottle of amber-colored Johannisberg, and goblets of most delicate glass and of varied sizes, surmounted by a frizzled bunch of fresh hyacinths. There was something Mongolian in his yellowish face with its trimmed silvery moustache; his large teeth glimmered with gold fillings, and his strong, bald head had a dull glow, like old ivory. His wife, a big, broad and placid woman, was dressed richly, but in keeping with her age. Complicated, but light, transparent, and innocently immodest was the dress of his daughter, tall and slender, with magnificent hair gracefully combed; her breath was sweet with violet-scented tablets, and she had a number of tiny and most delicate pink dimples near her lips and between her slightly-powdered shoulder blades …

The dinner lasted two whole hours, and was followed by dances in the dancing hall, while the men—the Gentleman from San Francisco among them—made their way to the refreshment bar, where negros in red jackets and with eye-balls like shelled hard-boiled eggs, waited on them. There, with their feet on tables, smoking Havana cigars, and drinking themselves purple in the face, they settled the destinies of nations on the basis of the latest political and stock-exchange news. Outside, the ocean tossed up black mountains with a thud; and the snowstorm hissed furiously in the rigging grown heavy with slush; the ship trembled in every limb, struggling with the storm and ploughing with difficulty the shifting and seething mountainous masses that threw far and high their foaming tails; the siren groaned in agony, choked by storm and fog; the watchmen in their towers froze and almost went out of their minds under the superhuman stress of attention. Like the gloomy and sultry mass of the inferno, like its last, ninth circle, was the submersed womb of the steamer, where monstrous furnaces yawned with red-hot open jaws, and emitted deep, hooting sounds, and where the stokers, stripped to the waist, and purple with the reflected flames, bathed in their own dirty, acid sweat. And here, in the refreshment-bar, carefree men, with their feet, encased in dancing shoes, on the table, sipped cognac and liqueurs, swam in waves of spiced smoke, and exchanged subtle remarks, while in the dancing-hall everything sparkled and radiated light, warmth and joy. The couples now turned around in a waltz, now swayed in the tango; and the music, sweetly shameless and sad, persisted in its ceaseless entreaties … There were many persons of note in this magnificent crowd; an ambassador, a dry, modest old man; a great millionaire, shaved, tall, of an indefinite age, who, in his old-fashioned dress-coat, looked like a prelate; also a famous Spanish writer, and an international belle, already slightly faded and of dubious morals. There was also among them a loving pair, exquisite and refined, whom everybody watched with curiosity and who did not conceal their bliss; he danced only with her, sang—with great skill—only to her accompaniment, and they were so charming, so graceful. The captain alone knew that they had been hired by the company at a good salary to play at love, and that they had been sailing now on one, now on another steamer, for quite a long time.