No
He felt immediately the hopelessness of the task he had been set. It was not a code. It was simply the first few letters of four lines of text. The letters in themselves meant nothing, or any meaning they suggested was illusory. They had been severed from their true meaning by a random accident. If the piece of paper had any significance at all, it was to be found in the larger, missing text. That is to say, it was beyond his reach. Therefore, no matter how much he applied himself, he would never be able to make sense of the letters in front of him.
The fragment seemed to start with an exhortation and end with discouragement. Between was nonsense. All too appropriate, decided Virginsky.
And yet, as Virginsky repeated the truncated chant that the letters spelled out — Go, Of m, Stit, No, Go, Of m, Stit, No — the significant detail struck him. Each of the four lines began with a capital letter. He could assume that the text these letters came from was a poem of some kind.
With this first realisation came another: he had seen these letters before. However, he was far less certain of this than he was of the letters’ poetic provenance. He remembered waking from his dream the night before, but by now all the details of the dream were irretrievably lost to him. Had he also dreamt of pulling the tin trunk out from under his bed? His memory of that seemed to be of a different quality to the sense he had of the vanished dream.
The mood of the previous night came back to him, in particular his sense of appalled rationality. Now, in the cold light of day, he was not so sure that his refusal to open the trunk was in fact the right decision, even from a supremely rationalist standpoint. A rationalist would be able to accept that the mind — even his own mind — was at times irrational. He would reason that this aspect of the mind must not be ignored. Ignored, it would only grow and fester in secret. Far better to confront it with its own absurdities, to wage open war constantly against its calamitous influence. Far better, in other words, to have opened the trunk and to have proven to himself the folly of his delusions.
Virginsky pulled a wincing face. He was reasoning himself into acting like a superstitious peasant, trusting to dreams and omens. No. The trunk must remain under the bed, its lid firmly closed. Until he had another manifesto to add to his collection, that is.
To do otherwise would be to give in to irrationalism, not to fight it.
*
It was after lunch when Porfiry returned to his chambers. To Virginsky, it seemed that his face was greyer than it had been when he had last seen him. There was a wan emptiness to his expression. He seemed hunched in on himself, reduced somehow. But when he spoke there was a rasp of determination, a fierce impatient quality to his voice. Judging by his voice alone, one would have said that Porfiry had been energised by the Feast of Radonitsa.
‘How are you getting on with those letters? Have you deciphered them yet?’
‘It is not a question of deciphering them,’ complained Virginsky. He took Porfiry through his reasoning, though he omitted to tell him about his dream, and his consequent indecision.
‘A poem? Good, yes. That is very plausible. Given Kozodavlev’s politics, it is not likely to be some verses of Pushkin. You remember what our young nihilist said. Boots over Pushkin. No, this was probably some radical manifesto, severely utilitarian in purpose. Many of them are written in verse, you know. I suppose the writers believe it will make their message more memorable. If the printed handbills are destroyed, the message will linger in the minds of those who have read it. Furthermore, it makes it easier to pass it on orally, if distribution becomes dangerous.’ Porfiry pulled open a drawer in his desk. ‘I have a small collection of such manifestos here. .’
‘You?’
‘Yes. I. Why does that surprise you?’
‘What possible reason could you have to collect such material?’
‘Oh, all the wrong reasons, you would undoubtedly say. But I am interested to know what people are saying. And thinking. Many of these are in wide circulation. I have had a number posted to me anonymously, or thrust in my hand by passing strangers. It is not so hard to acquire them, and not so easy to destroy them. One feels that they are too interesting to destroy, although one cannot always agree with the sentiments expressed. I am a magistrate, after all. I must acquaint myself with the doctrinal edicts of the state’s enemies, if they can be regarded as such.’ Porfiry gave Virginsky a quick warning look. ‘However, I must say that it would be quite another matter for anyone to harbour such a collection in the privacy of their own home. Magistrate or not. It is the fact that I keep my collection here, in my chambers, that makes it allowable. It is logged as official evidence, you see. There can be no unpleasant repercussions.’ Porfiry took out a couple of handfuls of printed sheets. ‘A rather tedious task for you, I’m afraid, Pavel Pavlovich. Sort through these and see if you can find a section that corresponds to our fragment. And well done, by the way. It was a breakthrough to perceive that it came from a poem.’
Virginsky frowned in bemusement as he took the manifestos from Porfiry.
*
It was a simple but laborious chore to look through the twenty or so pamphlets, isolating the beginnings of lines to find a sequence that matched the letters on the fragment. Almost all of the handbills were familiar to him from his own collection.
So when he found the poem he was looking for, it should not have been a surprise.
But it was worse than that. He felt a sickening vertigo. As soon as he saw it, he remembered his dream of the night before. For in the dream, he had held this very pamphlet in his hands as it caught fire, burning away the words as he read them.
He handed it to Porfiry without a word.
‘This is the one?’
‘Yes. There. The second verse.’ Virginsky recited from memory. ‘God is man-made, but no less real; / Of man’s fears, does he consist. / Stitched from such stern material, / No wonder God’s a Nihilist.’
‘I see. Yes. Well done. A strange work. God the Nihilist.’ Porfiry shook his head wonderingly. ‘Perhaps he is. On days like this, one cannot help wondering.’
Virginsky’s voice faltered as he asked: ‘D-do you. . do you remember where you got this?’ After a beat, he added, redundantly: ‘Who gave it to you?’ He held in his own mind an image of the hatchet-headed man.
Porfiry leaned back in his seat and sighed. ‘My memory is not what it used to be. That is in itself a cause for concern, Pavel Pavlovich. The investigator’s memory is one of the chief weapons in his armoury. One must not only be able to hold on to the details of the current case one is investigating, but one must also be alert to ripples of connection from past cases. Criminals do not burst forth spontaneously. They are like the spring buds. They give the appearance of spontaneous generation, but the plants that bear them may have taken root long ago.’
‘Yes,’ said Virginsky, shortly. ‘I know that. You do not need to talk to me in this way. I am not a pupil in need of instruction.’
Porfiry looked aghast. ‘Forgive me, I meant no offence. I am a foolish, forgetful old man. One falls into habits. And habits are by definition bad. I have acquired the habit of talking down to you. Whenever I succumb to it, you must reprove me, in the harshest possible terms.’
Virginsky shook his head impatiently. ‘So you cannot remember who gave it to you?’
‘In essence, no.’
Virginsky constricted his mouth and turned his back on Porfiry, as if in disappointment.
*
That night, Virginsky lit the tallow candle and pulled the tin trunk out from under his bed. He took the key from a drawer in his bedside table. He did not need to open the trunk to know that it was in there. He did not need to look at it, nor hold it in his hands.
Yet he did.
His dreaming mind had been right. He had known all along.