‘This is highly irregular.’
‘Not at all. Think nothing of it. Good day.’ Porfiry gave a small bow on the hoof, treating Zamyotov to a brief and excluding smile.
*
The sky above Sadovaya Street was clouded over, the endless strip of grey a memory of the winter gone. There was moisture in the air, which began to form into a light drizzle. The pale grey of Virginsky’s suit was soon spotted with small dark circles, the size of five-kopek pieces. It seemed as though the seeping sky had singled him out, prompted by a misguided spirit of affinity, its grey communing with his.
The two men said nothing as they walked. Indeed, it seemed that there was nothing left for them to say, at least not until they had discovered whatever else the morning had to reveal to them.
The fourth Spasskaya ward neighboured on the Moskovskaya District, which Virginsky had visited the night before. Both had a significant Jewish population. As they approached the junction with Voznesensky Prospect, Virginsky noted an increase in the number of Jewish shops and business premises. The characters of the Hebrew signs were to him tantalisingly alien. Each one seemed to hold the secret to its own great mystery, and the promise of revealing it, if only he would step inside. But this was impossible, today being Saturday.
Virginsky thought back to the closed doors that he had seen as he had climbed the stairs of the apartment building, following Botkin to that fateful meeting. He thought of the lives of the families that he imagined living behind them; Jewish families observing the Sabbath. He felt an overwhelming surge of envy for what he took to be the simplicity and certainty of their lives, their innocence. As they lit the ceremonial candles, and enjoyed their Sabbath Eve meal, they knew nothing of the plots being hatched in the apartment on the second floor. He realised that he envied them their religion, as he envied Porfiry Petrovich his Christian faith. Perhaps he was not cut out to be an atheist, after all.
But religion was a lie; atheism an unblinking confrontation with the truth. The former offered deluded consolation; the latter left him bereft, an aching weight of loneliness pulling at his heart. Atheism required men to model their own certainties, which crumbled to dust as soon as they clutched them.
In a godless universe, every door of that apartment building would have been closed on an identical meeting to the one he attended, the same plans discussed, and the same momentous decisions made. Even he, as an atheist, found that a chilling thought.
He stole a quick glance at Porfiry Petrovich. His face was calm, a mask of imperturbability. Was that the effect of his faith? wondered Virginsky. Was he really incapable of being shaken to his core? Could nothing, ultimately, surprise this plump little gnome of a man? For Virginsky knew that all his displays of astonishment, the endless flurries of blinking and grimacing, were nothing more than play-acting. This blank impassive screen of flesh that his face had for the present become, his face in repose, was the true Porfiry. He was in control of every tic that passed across it. And behind the face, what was there of Porfiry Petrovich that could be known? What of his soul?
Virginsky could not speculate about that. All he could say for certain was that the old man looked a little tired. Other than that, he showed no sign of unease.
They were walking south along Voznesensky Prospect, past the great Novo-Alexandrovsky Market. Recently constructed, it was the largest market in St Petersburg. It amazed Virginsky how it had so quickly taken root as part of the city’s commercial establishment. At the time of its construction, the vast market, thrown up almost overnight, struck many as a reckless venture. Did they not have enough markets already? Where would the people come from to shop in it? And yet now, barely five years later, it was hard to imagine how they had managed without it.
This morning, the place was bustling with life. Again, Virginsky experienced a pang of envy, this time for the shoppers who streamed through it, troubled by nothing other than the need to acquire the day’s provisions, or the desire to squander their week’s wages on a small luxury. It was another kind of faith, another kind of certainty that drove them. And Virginsky almost wished it was enough for him. What would they make of the plots that had been hatched in their name? A part of him longed to follow the shoppers into the market, to lose himself in its avenues of stalls, to wander there aimlessly until the catastrophe of his life had passed him by.
But his feet were locked onto another course, from which he was unable to extricate himself. All he could do was count his steps, and as soon as he started to do so he felt strangely comforted.
They reached the Fontanka. And Virginsky suddenly felt that something more immediate than faith or certainty was lost to him, something acutely personal. Not even the counting of his steps could reconcile him to it.
*
The address that Rakitin had confided to Virginsky was for a building on the opposite side of the road, just where Voznesensky Prospect met the Fontanka embankment. The print shop was in the basement, entered directly from the street by a small flight of steps.
They walked into a din of black iron and lead, a rhythmic, rolling clatter as ink was hammered onto paper and literature coughed out with a mechanical retch. Oil and ink tingled in their nostrils. The workshop contained three presses, all in operation, driven by belts from a rotating axle fixed to the ceiling. Each machine was tended by its own inky-fingered man in a long apron, like a worker bee fussing around its queen. The man at the first press looked around vaguely at Virginsky and Porfiry’s entrance, but did not break off from what he was doing. Off to one side, a row of stoop-shouldered compositors stood at high angled workbenches, placing the metal type into formes with the absorption of surgeons.
At length, another man, also wearing an apron over a merchant’s kaftan, emerged from a side door. He cast a foreman’s eye over the work of the others, cursory but critical, and then approached the magistrates. ‘Can I help you?’
‘We wish to enquire,’ Porfiry began, but his words were entirely swallowed up by the noise of the machine. He drew breath to shout: ‘You are the foreman here?’
‘I am the owner.’
Porfiry gave a mechanical smile.
‘And the foreman. I see to everything.’
There was a sudden reduction in the noise from the machines, as one of them appeared to have come to the end of its paper supply. It was enough to allow Porfiry to speak more comfortably: ‘You are the very man we need to speak to. We wish to know whether you can supply printed material to the Department of Justice.’
‘That depends,’ answered the printer, dubiously. ‘How quickly you need it. How complicated the job. What is it for?’
‘There is no specific job at the moment. We are simply looking into your. .’ Porfiry waved a hand around the workshop. ‘Facilities. Typically, however, we require items such as posters and leaflets, to be produced very quickly.’
‘We are not equipped for a fast turnaround. Right now, our presses are booked up for months to come. I have to plan jobs carefully, you see. There is a schedule of work. Perhaps if you came to us just as we were finishing a print run, we could fit your job in before we set up the presses for the next big one. But that would be a matter of luck. I couldn’t stop the presses to accommodate you.’
‘That seems rather inflexible. Does it not curtail your commercial potential?’
‘It is simply the kind of work we are set up for. We have stop cylinder platen machines which we use for book and periodical production. We used to have a treadle-powered letterpress, which was ideal for the sort of jobs you describe. But it was stolen.’
‘A printing press was stolen? Good Heavens.’
‘It’s not unheard of. It was a small machine, not like these beasts.’