‘Thank you. And the blackening around the wound? Consistent with gunshot? A larger exit wound on the other side of the head, also consistent?’
‘Porfiry Petrovich, would you prefer to conduct the examination yourself?’
‘Not at all. I am not qualified. Although I have encountered similar wounds in the execution of my duties over the years.’
At a further signal from Dr Pervoyedov, the diener turned the body onto its back again.
‘He was a Jew?’ said Porfiry.
‘Apparently so, although I have read studies by physicians who call for the removal of the foreskin on hygienic grounds.’
Porfiry watched as Dr Pervoyedov began the Y-shaped incision that would allow him to open the body up, across from shoulder to shoulder, and down from sternum to groin. No blood raced to his scalpel blade, of course. Instead, Porfiry felt the thump of his own quick pulse. He was intensely aware of the churning turmoil of his heart. It was almost as if he were willing himself to bleed on the dead man’s behalf. He experienced a core of weightlessness in his being, a kind of empty intoxication where his soul should have been. It was an unbearable sensation, in which the instability and fragility of his organism overrode any other consideration. The sense of dread he felt was undeniably personal. It was a moment in which he was horrifically aware of his mortality. And yet he forced himself to continue watching, as Dr Pervoyedov teased his scalpel blade beneath the epidermis.
The skin came away in tatters, large looping holes where the formation of adipocere disrupted it.
‘All flesh is as grass,’ said Dr Pervoyedov, as the sheet of skin fell apart in his hands. ‘Except when it is soap.’ The doctor handed the remnants to his diener and turned back to the body.
‘Look at this, Porfiry Petrovich.’
More than anything in the world, Porfiry did not want to accept that invitation.
He took a step closer. Dr Pervoyedov was probing the white mounds that had formed on the chest with a long metal implement. ‘Here the adipocere goes deep. The heart has all but gone, it seems. I will be able to tell more when I cut the ribs away.’
‘His heart has gone?’
‘Yes. Turned to soap.’
Porfiry felt unspeakably sorry for the man on the table.
*
The air had never tasted fresher. Porfiry drew in great, bursting draughts as if he had just been rescued from drowning. He cocked his head to one side and listened to the riotous sounds of the nearby fair. And then lit a cigarette.
‘We must not resist it, Pavel Pavlovich.’
‘But should we not get back to the department?’
‘Yes, of course. But first we must greet Yarilo.’
‘I would rather not.’
‘Are you afraid?’
‘What do you mean? Of what could I possibly be afraid?’
‘It takes courage to acknowledge every aspect of one’s personality.’
‘One may acknowledge the aspects to which you are referring without being enslaved to them.’
‘Yarilo, god of regeneration. Of resurrection. Of life, reborn out of death. Striking how these ideas recur, is it not? As if there is some deep, eternal truth behind them.’
‘Or rather, it is because they answer some deep, eternal need in man. Man creates his gods to meet his needs.’
‘Perhaps. But I have always loved the balagany.’
‘I find them rather tiresome. If it is all the same to you, I shall see you back at your chambers.’ Virginsky gave a curt nod.
Porfiry answered with a flurry of angry blinks. His smile hardened. ‘As your superior, I command you. You will come to the fair with me.’ Porfiry’s hand tightened around Virginsky’s wrist. ‘Furthermore, you will enjoy yourself.’
*
Porfiry treated Virginsky to hot boiled potatoes from an old woman selling them out of her apron. He led the way through the crowd, holding his napkin of potatoes reverently out in front of him, as if it were a holy relic in procession.
He was happy to go where the crowd let him, carried along by the press of jostling shoulders. Every now and then, the throng eased around him and he would take the opportunity to guzzle a mouthful of potato. Following listlessly in Porfiry’s wake, Virginsky left his fare untouched for as long as possible. But eventually even he could not hold out against the wholesome smell.
As they moved about the fairground, the clash of sounds around them constantly mutated. An ever-shifting power struggle was being waged. One moment, a trombone band dominated, blaring out a snatch of ‘The Petersburg Theatre Goer’. The next, it was an organ grinder singing along to ‘Katenka Goes Throughout the Village’; he turned the brass handle of his street organ to grind out the melody, as if it were a form of auditory sausage meat. The shimmer of a balalaika swayed in time with the swinging cradle in which a young man serenaded his sweetheart. The shrieks of children running in and out of their legs were chased away by the yelps of a hungry dog. A moment later, screams of unfettered delight from the slopes of the artificial ice mountains sent their gaze soaring.
And all the time, the barkers’ cries rang out from competing booths.
Porfiry took in the sideshows with the air of a wine connoisseur given free run of a well-equipped cellar — with an unhurried excitement, in other words, and in the full expectation that he would not be disappointed. His promiscuous eye ranged over the dizzying choices. The flash and dazzle of the fire-eater’s torches held him entranced until all the flames were swallowed out. He gasped at the speed of a juggler’s batons spinning in the air. He felt his mouth kink into an anticipatory grin at the sight of an actor in harlequin costume, who was balancing on one of the balconies of an enormous booth, as if about to leap off into the crowd below. The fellow raised himself on his tiptoes and stretched his arms out to either side like wings. The assembled spectators drew in their breath as one, as the performer flexed his body with a few lithe dance steps on the balcony rail. At the next balagan window, puppet masters with magnificent priestly beards perched on the sill, dangling their brightly coloured marionettes or turning the wooden heads of their child-sized dummies. The most imbecilic displays were strangely compelling: a dog in a tutu dancing on its hind legs; a monkey in a hussar’s costume riding a tricycle. Porfiry smiled at them both and turned to see if Virginsky shared his delight. He did not seem to notice the younger man’s sullen glare.
Staggering like a drunk, Porfiry walked straight into a boy pushing a handcart of pastries for sale. He had finished his potatoes and was hungry for something else to consume, but the child got away from him, perhaps frightened off by his uncontrolled bulk. At the same time, his nostrils caught the scents from a nearby gingerbread and oranges stall. He was tempted by the cries of the ice seller: ‘Ice! Ice! Chocolate, vanilla, coffee and rose! Who will taste my delicious ice?!’ But in the end he settled on a gingerbread man each for himself and Virginsky. The younger man took the biscuit with a quizzical frown.
The next stall along sold puppets and dolls. Virginsky shook his head warningly at Porfiry, who seemed unduly interested in the goods on display.
‘Are you quite well, Porfiry Petrovich?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘First you buy gingerbread men, now you are casting longing glances at these childish trifles. I fear you have reverted to some infantile stage of your existence.’
Porfiry gave a heavy sigh. ‘Perhaps I am trying to recapture my lost youth. Can you blame me for that? Or it may be that I’m simply trying to get the smell of death out of my nostrils.’ He craned his head towards some cherubs carved from wax, hanging from a willow branch. ‘It amounts to the same thing, does it not?’ He held out a hand towards one of the cherubs, and set it spinning. ‘Even here I am reminded of what I seek to escape. It could be made from Dr Pervoyedov’s adipocere, could it not?’ Turning from the stall with a wistful smile, he surveyed the balagan booths, ready to make his choice at last. ‘Pulchinella!’ he announced, happily, and set off with renewed energy.