“Now you will write that thing for the tsar,” said Dmitri. “I should get a gold medal for this. I’ve risked my life.”
Porfiry blinked himself into concentration. “The citation? I shall be glad to. But first I have just one more question for you. After you had delivered your message to Goryanchikov, you then stopped off at the yardkeeper’s shed. Is this not true?”
Porfiry watched in amazement as the boy’s face colored and collapsed beneath an overwhelming surge of emotion. He had forgotten that this was a child he was dealing with. Thick streams of sudden tears ran from Dmitri’s eyes, clearing tracks in the dirt on his face. He howled his unhappiness: “It’s not fair. I’ve answered all your questions, then you ask me more questions. I’ve done nothing wrong. You can’t keep me here. You promised me a medal. Give me my medal.”
Porfiry cast a glance of appeal toward Katya. But she was having none of it. She scowled suspiciously. Her hand was reaching out as if to grab Dmitri’s ear again. Porfiry stepped forward and reached out to restrain her.
In that instant, Dmitri’s hand flashed into the pocket of Porfiry’s frock coat. Then, in the tail of the same instant, he was at the door and opening it. Porfiry suddenly felt the truth of Nikodim Fomich’s observation. He was rooted to the spot by age and by his tobacco-shortened breaths. The boy’s sudden move had not just taken him by surprise, it had left him winded, his body incapable of responding to the excited chemicals surging through it. His first impulse had been to light up rather than give chase.
At the door, thrown open by the fleeing Dmitri, Porfiry’s cry of “Stop him!” was smothered in a coughing fit. It turned a few puzzled, a few curious, but mostly blank faces. One elderly polizyeisky, surely long past retirement age, seemed to grasp what was going on. He saw the young, filthy urchin running full tilt toward him, away from the investigating magistrate. The polizyeisky dropped eagerly to a catching posture, spreading his feet and stretching out his arms. Something kindled in his eyes: sport and the memory of a youthful energy. Bobbing with anticipation, he possessed the narrowed space between two desks, effectively blocking Dmitri’s only escape route. But the boy did not slow his pace. If anything he accelerated, hurtling straight toward the human obstacle. Then, at the last minute, as the elderly polizyeisky reeled and readied himself for impact, groping the air and masticating nervously, the boy leaped to one side, vaulting onto one of the desks. It was a startling feat-fearless and marvelously athletic. There was no break in the fluidity of his movement. The sweep of his boots sent paper fluttering, upturning an inkpot that bled a quick puddle of black over the desk. He rose from his leap with perfect balance, head high, legs kicking. In two thundering steps he was across the desk and off the other side. The clerk behind it threw up his hands in impotent outrage, but the polizyeisky blew out his cheeks, spontaneously admiring.
In the time that it took to accomplish all this, Porfiry lit a cigarette.
“You let him get away,” accused Katya, when Porfiry turned back into his chambers. “After all the trouble I went to to bring him in. And I don’t suppose I’ll be getting a medal from the tsar.”
Porfiry licked a loose fleck of tobacco from his upper lip as he considered her antagonism. “I know where to find him,” he said nonchalantly. “I remain grateful to you, Katya. And as a representative of the state, I am confident the tsar is grateful too.” He bowed solemnly, blinking, as if he had been officially authorized to reward her with the rapid oscillation of his eyelids.
The Elusive Govorov
A fool’s errand, it was another fool’s errand.
Lieutenant Salytov descended into the seventh tavern that day. How the smell of these places sickened him. The air, abrasive with hard spirit, licked his eyes into weeping. He was jostled on the stairs by two drunks leaving. Nothing malicious-it was simply that they could not control their shoulders. They seemed to be attracted to him magnetically.
The rub of their filthy coats, the sense of their awkward humanity beneath, disgusted him. The unshakable absurdity of it disgusted him.
His rage made it difficult for him to speak.
“Oaf.” With leather-gloved hands, he pushed one of them away and was horrified by the heavy, beseeching roll of the man’s eyes and the grim, clownish slapstick of his tread. “You-” Salytov’s throat tightened around the words he could have said. “People!” It was all he was able to squeeze out. But he was satisfied by the word. He felt it placed a distance between himself and such individuals.
The drunk’s answer was a deep and inarticulate growling.
His companion gripped the handrail of the stairs and swayed as if he were at the prow of a listing ship. He swallowed portentously. His body lurched dangerously after Salytov as he passed. But the sober policeman moved too quickly for him. He left them on the stairs and did not look back.
Wan candle flames glimmered on the half-dozen tables and along the bar. The uncertain light, pocketed in gloom, seemed to encourage introspection among the isolated drinkers. Not a single face turned toward him. In one corner of the room, a woman wrapped in a grubby shawl was squeezing random notes out of a ruptured concertina. The anxious expectancy that these sounds induced was incompatible with conversation. There was no laughter, no voices raised in conviviality; only groans and sighs of despondency sounded in the gaps between the instrument’s wheezes.
Salytov pushed through his own resistance to the wooden bar, where a skinny adolescent potboy was intent on smearing glasses with a dirty rag. The youth paused now and then, prompted somehow by the irregular rhythms of the concertina. It was as if he couldn’t continue his task until the next note had sounded. He wore a soiled and belted rubashka, the embroidery of which was coming apart.
“Who’s in charge here?” The boy responded to Salytov’s abrupt demand with a look of stupefied amazement. “The landlord, idiot!” Salytov brought a fist down on the bar. The noise it made was less impressive than he had hoped, but still it was enough to startle the boy a second time. It seemed also to silence the concertina player, at least temporarily. “Why are you staring at me like that? Why will you not speak? Are you a mute? Are you an imbecile?” Fear bloated the boy’s eyes. This only infuriated Salytov more. “Can you people not understand-?” He broke off, unable to voice what it was he wanted to be understood. His sense of contamination was incommunicable. He resorted to announcing: “I am Lieutenant Ilya Petrovich Salytov of the Haymarket District Police Bureau.” And now the boy’s mouth was gaping. “Don’t you understand Russian? Where is he?”
“Who?” came finally, in a cracked voice that managed to span several octaves in one word.
“The landlord, you idiot!”
“He’s in the other room.”
“Call him then! Don’t you people understand anything?” He could feel it on his scalp now, the contamination. It had spread over the surface of his body and was now seeping into him. Every second he was forced to spend in these places deepened it. A shudder of loathing passed through him. He scanned the floor for cockroaches and looked back at the boy as if he had found one.
But without the boy calling, a rotund man with indolent eyes appeared behind him. His face was dirty, his hair and beard knotted. His pear-shaped body bulged beneath a greasy leather apron. “It’s all right, Kesha.” There was a note of suspicion in his bass voice. Wariness flickered in his eyes as he took Salytov in.
“You are the proprietor of this”-Salytov looked around as if he would find the word he was looking for daubed on the walls, then settled for a sarcasm-“establishment?”
The landlord nodded minimally.