There were men in some of the photographs. Their faces were always turned away, cropped off or blurred by movement: never shown. Unlike the women, the men were clothed, although in some cases their sexual organs, in varying states of rigidity, were exposed. In one instance, the male subject had been captured at the moment of his self-induced ejaculation. The beads of his semen hung in the air; their trajectory seemed to be toward the female model’s abdomen. She viewed their approach without enthusiasm.
Salytov turned the photographs over and shuffled through them again. An address was written on the reverse of one.
“This. What is this?” said Salytov, laying it down on the counter.
“Three Spassky Lane,” read the landlord.
“Is this Govorov’s address?”
“I suppose it must be. I never noticed it before now.” The landlord avoided Salytov’s eye.
“I find that hard to believe. It’s more likely that he wrote it for you deliberately. So that you would know where to go if you wanted more of the same.”
“Well, I don’t remember. Besides, I don’t spend much time looking at the backs of photographs.”
“This is police evidence now,” said Salytov with a provocative grin. He pocketed the photographs. The landlord didn’t offer a protest, unless a slight hunching of the shoulders could be read as such. “If you see either of these men again, Ratazyayev or Govorov, send Kesha to the police bureau on Stolyarny Lane. Detain them until we get here. Is that understood?”
Salytov didn’t wait for an answer. He delivered a warning nod with the precision of a hammer blow. The concertina player started up again. Salytov had the fanciful idea that her playing was not just mournful but diseased. In his mind, tuberculosis floated in the ragged notes. He turned suddenly and fled. The sense of contamination pursued him, even as he took the steps two at a time.
Seventy-two, seventy-three,seventy-four, seventy-five…
Virginsky counted his steps. But no matter how far he walked, he couldn’t put any distance between himself and his humiliation. It was always there with him, staring him in the face, in the form of the boots Porfiry Petrovich had given him. So it had come to this: he was a charity case. And to accept charity from such a man! Virginsky had not forgotten how they came for him in the night, nor the words with which the magistrate pointed him out: “That is the man. That is Virginsky.” And then this same Judas had the nerve to argue that he should relinquish his freedom voluntarily!
That man is the devil, he said to himself. To think I nearly went along with it.
He realized that he had lost count of his steps. It was difficult to count and think at the same time. That was the point, of course-the point of the counting. If he could only concentrate on his counting, he wouldn’t have to think about his humiliation. He picked up from the last number he could remember, not knowing how many steps he had missed.
Seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight…
He was walking along the side of the solidified Yekaterininsky Canal, toward the Nevsky Prospect. It was not a day to be out unless you had good reason. The cold wind assaulted his face and mocked his tattered overcoat. The ice cut into him and spread along his nerve fibers with greedy, destructive haste. There was a bend in the canal. The towpath kinked sharply northward. On his right was the Imperial Bank, turning its curved back on him jealously. You shall not have any of this, it seemed to say. On the other side, across the canal, loomed the massive bulk of the Foundling Hospital. It struck him as an ironic juxtaposition.
Virginsky stopped to consider the significance of it. He felt weak, unable to think. And yet it was suddenly pressingly important to him to work out what it meant to be standing between the Imperial Bank and the Foundling Hospital.
As he stood there, a man even more destitute than he shuffled past, his meager jacket and trousers padded with straw and newspaper. The tramp seemed to have come from nowhere, his footsteps almost silent. There were many such individuals in Petersburg, anonymous and interchangeable. As one died, another would appear. Virginsky did not attempt to meet his eye, though he did look at his feet. The man wore an old, disintegrating pair of felt boots, soaked and filthy.
Virginsky acknowledged the superstitious dread that had prevented him from looking into the man’s face. He was remembering a story he had once read about a man haunted by his double.
He let the tramp disappear around the bend in the path before starting his steps again.
Seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one…
When he turned the corner the tramp was not in view.
Eighty-two…
The canal path brought him into the Nevsky Prospect alongside the Kazan Cathedral. The width and prosperity of the street intimidated him. He felt that the wind that purged it would destroy him, deliberately. Only the affluent, layered in furs, could venture into it.
Virginsky decided to shelter in the colonnade of the Kazan Cathedral. Though he would describe himself as an atheist, he had always liked this place. The semicircular sweep of the colonnade was vaguely reminiscent of arms held open for embrace. He responded to the grandeur of the design without being awed by it. It seemed to contain within it something welcoming and benign. He believed the humanity of the peasant stonemason shone through.
The wind had blown between the columns a light scattering of snow dust, which every now and then it moved around or added to. Looking at the palimpsests of footprints on the paving stones, Virginsky’s mind went blank. He was suddenly unable to count his own steps.
His humiliation came back to him and the dim memory of a resolve to end it. He remembered a plan, conceived in a police cell or possibly even before then. He seemed to spend his life reaching the same resolve, drawing up the same plan. Would he ever find the courage to put it into action?
But already he had forgotten what the plan was and would have to wait for it to come back to him. In the meantime…
One, two, three…
He set off again, walking the colonnade.
It was not that he was simpleminded. It was just that he was hungry. If only he could find a solution to that, the hunger, and the humiliation that came with it. But that was it, he suddenly remembered. That was why he was here in the Nevsky Prospect. To bring an end to the hunger.
Four, five, six…
He noticed that he was following one particular set of footprints. These seemed to be both the most recent and the most indistinct, lacking any clear heel or toe definition. At times they smudged into long lines, as if the walker had been dragging one foot or the other. Virginsky looked up but saw no one. All the same, he did not believe he had the colonnade to himself. He sensed another presence, concealed behind the shifting blinds of the columns.
Seven, eight, nine…
Then he saw the man-the same tramp from beside the canal-darting across the aisle between two columns.
He moves quickly, thought Virginsky. Yet to look at him, he must be in a worse state than I.
And it was not that Virginsky had found the courage to move away from the Kazan Cathedral. It was just that he could no longer bear the tramp’s proximity. His terror had crystallized. He was certain now that if he came face to face with this other, he would see his own features staring back at him.
He stepped out into the Nevsky Prospect, his gaze fixed on a square three-story building on the other side of the street. Fortunately the road was clear of traffic. But the wind shrieked gleefully as it battered into him.