Her hand now burrowed into the inside breast pocket of his greatcoat and straightaway felt the contents. Two things, she judged, about the same size, one soft and papery, the other hard. She pulled out the first, a bulging envelope. It was pale lilac, unaddressed and unsealed.
Inside the envelope was a bundle of banknotes.
She darted quick glances in every direction, certain now that someone would disturb her. She took out the money, a rainbow of color in the bleached landscape, and counted the notes.
Zoya’s hands trembled but not from the cold. The lilac envelope fell. She raised her face to the falling snow. Six thousand rubles! Tears now, real tears of emotion, mingled with the flakes thawing on her cheeks. She folded the cash away inside the layers of her extended being and went on her way laughing.
“Everything Is in Order”
Porfiry Petrovich transferred the cigarette from fingers to lips, a moment of intense anticipation. It was not pleasure so much that he anticipated as clarity. Porfiry always insisted that he smoked for rational-he would even say professional-reasons.
He closed the brightly colored enamel cigarette case with a soft click and returned it to the inside pocket of his jacket.
A copy of The Periodical was open on the desk in front of him. Porfiry flattened the pages, seeming to stroke the words in preparation to reading them. It was an article entitled “Why Do They Do It?” An introductory line promised: “A discussion of the motivation of educated, titled, and talented perpetrators of crime and injustice.” The author was given as “R.”
Porfiry struck a match and leaned forward to meet its flame. As he inhaled, his blood quickened, and he felt both absorbed by and in control of his mental and perceptual processes.
The elegant syntax of the article revealed its secrets to him. He experienced it as a dance of ideas, inevitable and inexorable. He frowned, not because he was confused but for the pleasure of frowning. He was acutely self-conscious.
Something began to impinge on his reverie.
Salytov.
He felt the catalyst of cigarette smoke lose its power. His entire being was no longer focused onto the pages of the journal. He was aware now of the green leather surface of the writing desk upon which it rested. And now the rest of the room came back to him, with its government-issue furniture, the imitation leather-covered sofa, the chairs, the escritoire and bookcase, all made from the same tawny wood. But more than anything he felt the looming presence of the doors.
Salytov was shouting. Again.
Two doors led off from Porfiry Petrovich’s “chambers,” as this modest room in the Department of the Investigation of Criminal Causes was rather grandly known. One was the door to his private apartments, provided for him, like everything else, by the government. The other was the door to the Haymarket District Police Bureau in Stolyarny Lane.
The doors symbolized Porfiry’s dilemma. Either he could take his journal and his cigarette and retreat into his inner sanctuary (although it was well past the hour when he was required to make himself available for his official duties as an investigator); or he could step out into the chaos of the receiving area of the police station and confront his colleague Ilya Petrovich Salytov.
Porfiry ground the stub of his cigarette into a crystal ashtray.
MY DEAR ILYA PETROVICH-”
“Everything is under control, Porfiry Petrovich. There is no need for your interference.” Salytov jerked his arms as he shouted, as if Porfiry were a fly he was trying to swat away. His face was red. The veins on his temples bulged. He moved constantly but without purpose. He was starting to sweat and pulled at his collar.
“Of course, of course…But, you know, I don’t seek to interfere, merely to offer my assistance.”
“I am grateful to you. However…” Salytov had been a lieutenant in the army. Perhaps he had learned to bluster then. But Porfiry found it hard to believe he had ever commanded the respect of his men. He had a weak mouth. The bristles of his well-trimmed sandy mustache couldn’t compensate for this.
“How you scared us last time, Ilya Petrovich! We, your friends in the department, we were most concerned for your health. I’ve never seen such a shade of puce in nature before. And when you fainted.”
“That was in the summer. It was a fearful hot day, and the smell from the Ditch was overpowering.”
“But the doctor was clear that your temper had contributed to the attack.”
“It wasn’t an attack!”
“Were you not commanded-for your own good, of course, but commanded all the same-to avoid such excesses of passion by no less than Nikodim Fomich? Think what would happen if he were to come upon you now.”
“I’m not afraid of Nikodim Fomich.”
“I’m not suggesting you should be afraid of any man, Ilya Petrovich. Not even our esteemed chief superintendent. However, were you to be deprived of your position-”
“He can’t do that to me!”
“A transfer, it would be called, no doubt. A move into a less stressful position. For health reasons. I know how these things work. Believe me, Ilya Petrovich, I’m on your side. I will do all I can. But surely the best course of action is to avoid his attention in the first place. Isn’t there some way we can resolve this matter without all the, uh…” Porfiry smiled and whispered, “Shouting?”
Salytov gave his reluctant assent with a flinch.
“What is the situation here?” Porfiry’s gently amused tone mollified the demand.
“This young hussy-a prostitute, mind…” Salytov indicated a small, tired-looking girl. She was handcuffed to the black-uniformed polizyeisky, who maintained exemplary side whiskers and an outraged expression. The girl’s exact age was hard to say, but she was young. Her face was thickly made up, in the usual fashion of a streetwalker. Somehow this only made her seem more naïve. It was as if someone had explained the economic advantage of heavy cosmetics, and she had applied it in good faith. And she had donned the requisite costume too, by the looks of it handed down to her through the generations. In the glare of the police station, her red silk dress, so old and worn it was practically falling apart, appeared like a badge of poverty rather than vice. The oversize bustle and sodden filthy train invited ridicule, as did her frayed straw hat and tattered parasol. Pathetically at odds with all this, and undermining whatever effect she was aiming at, was the homely woolen shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her build was slight. Both Salytov and the polizyeisky loomed over her, though Porfiry was closer to her height. The chief clerk, a pale superior type with high cheekbones, was also in attendance, seated on a stool behind the reception desk. It was clear that the girl was exhausted. Her blue eyes stared wide open in the effort to keep awake. But her shoulders continually sagged. Once or twice she leaned forward onto the desk, causing the clerk to bang down the great admissions book. She would then shoot bolt upright, betraying neither ill will nor complaisance. Necessity drove her, that was all. Every now and then a convulsion of shivering gripped her frail form, each attack more extended than the one before.
Porfiry took her in with a glance as he finished his cigarette. “She carries the yellow ticket?” he asked Salytov.
“Yes.”
“And it is in order?”
“That’s not the issue.”
“But it is in order?”