At last the speech came to its end with “Holy God, what I wouldn’t do for a bowl of cabbage soup! I’m so hungry I could eat a carthorse. Whoops-someone coming, must be his lordship.”
Porfiry clapped his hands four or five times and called, “Bravo!” The pawnbroker, however, merely grimaced and turned the guitar over.
“Osip’s monologue, from The Government Inspector,” said Porfiry. The theatrical type acknowledged the applause with a bow, his face gratified and friendly. There was a waft of vodka about him.
“I played the part in ’fifty-six, in the revival at the original Mariinsky Theater. You are an aficionado of the dramatic arts?”
“I am an admirer of Gogol.”
“Twenty rubles,” growled the pawnbroker, setting the guitar resonating as he put it down sharply.
“Twenty! You thief! You bloodsucker! You Jew! It cost me ten times that. It belonged to Sarenko.”
“Twenty rubles.”
“The speech alone was worth twenty rubles.”
“I can’t sell the speech. If you can prove it belonged to Sarenko, I’ll give you twenty-five.”
“You have my word.”
“Twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two! The man has a heart of stone,” cried the actor, appealing to Porfiry.
“You know how it works,” said the pawnbroker. “I can only give you what I think I’ll get for it.”
“You’ll get more than twenty-two for this. One hundred at least.”
“Twenty-two. Take it or leave it.”
“Very well. Be warned. He will suck the blood from you,” said the actor in a loud aside to Porfiry. The actor took his money and withdrew a step but did not leave. It was as though he were waiting for something. Porfiry was aware of his presence behind him as he handed the ticket to the pawnbroker.
The gaunt face across the counter regarded him suspiciously. “You have the money?”
Porfiry laid down a red ten-ruble note. He looked over his shoulder to see the actor watching him intently. The other man gave a reflex smile and made his face bland. The pawnbroker came back with a bundle of books, tied together with string.
“You’re not Virginsky,” said the pawnbroker.
“Could you cut the string for me, please? I wish to examine the books more closely.”
“You’re not Virginsky,” repeated the pawnbroker.
“Who is Virginsky?”
“The man who pawned these books.”
“Does it matter? I’m paying his debt. I have the money to redeem the pledge on his behalf. Please cut the string.”
The pawnbroker hesitated, sucking in even farther the cheeks of his death’s-head face. All his vitality was concentrated in his eyes, which were locked on Porfiry as he slipped a penknife under the string.
The first four books were Russian translations of, in turn, Moleschott’s The Cycle of Life, Büchner’s Force and Matter, Vogt’s Superstition and Science, and Dühring’s Natural Dialectics. The fifth book, in maroon cloth binding, bore the title One Thousand and One Maidenheads.
“Ah,” came the voice at Porfiry’s shoulder as he investigated this last one, “I see you are an acolyte of Priapos.” Porfiry closed the book hurriedly. He gave the actor a stern, questioning glance. “Priapos,” his new friend explained, “my favorite publishing house.” Porfiry saw that this was the name of the book’s imprint. “There is nothing quite like the thrill of cutting the pages of the latest Priapos. If ever, my friend, you feel the need of another’s hand to guide your blade, I have much experience in such mutually advantageous manipulations.”
“Sir, I believe you are laboring under a misapprehension.”
“What’s wrong with two gentlemen enjoying a gentlemanly pursuit together? It is the same as if we were to share a bottle of fine wine or, as the redskins do, a pipe. But why stop at breaching virgin paper when there is virgin flesh to be sundered? There are girls, sir, yes, fresh, sweet, compliant girls…You have only to say. These things can be arranged.”
“I have no wish.”
“Of course, I understand. The unique pleasure of the solitary method, if I may put it like that. There is the question too of hygiene, not to mention speed. It is the rational choice. But still, a helping hand would not go amiss, I venture to suggest. Between friends, it is often the most civilized way, I find.”
“Sir, I am outraged.”
“And I am at a loss. From your other reading matter, I took you to be a rationalist and a materialist. With such an outlook, what objection could there be?”
“I have not come so far in my freethinking.”
“Then I am sorry for you.”
“And I for you.”
“Please do not be.”
“I am a magistrate.”
“Ah!”
“I am here on police business.”
“I bid you-” But the theatrical gentleman flew the shop without completing the farewell.
Feeling strangely compromised by the encounter, Porfiry turned back to the pawnbroker. The man met him with a look of open impertinence. Those eyes, intense, dark, and fiercely alive, seemed momentarily more obscene than anything in One Thousand and One Maidenheads.
“This Virginsky,” began Porfiry.
“Pavel Pavlovich.”
“You understand now that it is a police matter.”
“I know nothing of that.”
“Can you give me a description of him?”
The pawnbroker shrugged.
“Is he particularly tall or-how shall I put it? — diminutive?”
“Not particularly.”
“I see. So there is nothing especially distinctive about his appearance?”
“He has a pale complexion and a generally disreputable appearance. But among the students of Petersburg, I dare say there is nothing distinctive about that.”
“And from your familiarity with him, I take it he is a regular customer of yours?”
“Regular enough.”
“Do you happen to know Pavel Pavlovich’s address?”
“I do.”
Porfiry added another red note to the first still on the pawnbroker’s counter.
“You have only to go to Lippevechsel’s Tenements. And ask there for Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky.”
The pawnbroker picked up the two banknotes and held the second one out to Porfiry. “This is a legitimate credit business. The debt is paid.”
Porfiry bowed and held the bow.
“I am a Jew, yes, but I am also a law-abiding citizen.”
Porfiry lifted his head, looked the pawnbroker in the eye, and met the anger there without flinching. He took back the note that he had offered.
“Would you please tie up the books for me again?” he said, as he folded it into his wallet. The pawnbroker breathed out sharply through his nostrils before complying.
The Gamble
Lippevechsel’s tenements in Gorokhovaya Street was one of those sprawling apartment buildings that seemed to have grown like an organism rather than been built to any rational plan. Ramshackle and crumbling, its various fronts and wings clustered around a series of dirty yards into which sunlight never penetrated. When the wind blew through it, it was felt by every occupant, even those huddled around one of its stoves or samovars, even one buried under a mound of rags or bent double in a cupboard. Close to Kameny Bridge, the building overlooked the Yekaterininsky Canal, which was frozen now but in the summer served as an open drain. The stench, in those high hot days, seeped in through the gaping cracks in its walls and spread throughout the building. It mingled with the smells of cooking, insinuating itself into the lives of the residents, so that it shared their intimacies and infected their dreams.