IWISH TO see Osip Maximovich.”
Vadim Vasilyevich’s cold, gray eyes looked down on the bedraggled individual who had just presented himself at the offices of Athene Publishing. His small mouth drew itself into a tight pucker of distaste. “And who are you?” The question was strangled by the man’s forced baritone.
“You know me. You’ve seen me at the house of Anna Alexandrovna. I am Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky.”
“What is your business here?”
“I wish to see Osip Maximovich.”
“He’s a very busy man. You can’t just walk in here demanding to see whomsoever you like.”
“Tell him I was a friend of Goryanchikov’s.”
“You will have to do better than that.”
“I am a writer. Well, a student. But I have written…essays.”
“Petersburg is full of writers.”
“Goryanchikov said that I could get work here. Goryanchikov said he would vouch for me.”
“Unfortunately, Goryanchikov is dead. He can’t vouch for anyone.”
“Please. Let me see Osip Maximovich. Goryanchikov told me-”
“Goryanchikov told you what?” A second, higher voice, leavened with relaxed good humor, took over the interrogation. Osip Maximovich himself had just come into the room. A twinkling flash danced across his spectacle lenses.
“About the work he was doing for you. The translation. The Proudhon. We talked about it.”
Osip Maximovich took off his spectacles. His face was serious as he assessed Virginsky with his penetrating black eyes. “You talked about Proudhon?”
“Yes.”
Osip Maximovich replaced his spectacles. The optical effect was to retract his eyes. “And you think that qualifies you to take over Stepan Sergeyevich’s work?” He had seemed to be on the verge of asking something else entirely, but the thick lenses masked his intentions.
“We talked about other things.”
“What other things?”
“Philosophy in general. Philosophers. Hegel.”
Osip Maximovich pursed his lips as if impressed. “You talked of Hegel.”
“Please. I want to work for you. Give me a section to do. If you’re happy with the result, hire me to complete it. I will work for half what you were paying Goryanchikov.”
“Is that because you are only half as good as him?” quipped Vadim Vasilyevich.
“I’m not greedy. Just hungry.”
Osip Maximovich’s smile expressed his approval of the answer. He transmitted some of his beaming pleasure toward Vadim Vasilyevich.
“There is no point,” said Vadim Vasilyevich bluntly. “The police have confiscated the text of Goryanchikov’s translation. We don’t know how far he got.”
“I know he didn’t finish it,” said Virginsky.
A sudden change came over Osip Maximovich’s mood. He sighed despondently. “Poor Stepan Sergeyevich. His death was a terrible blow to us.” He smiled forlornly to Virginsky. “He was like a son to me.”
Virginsky frowned. “I wonder why people say that. It doesn’t mean very much.”
“I…miss him.”
Virginsky said nothing.
“Did he ever, I wonder, speak of me…warmly?” pressed Osip Maximovich.
“Would it make any difference to you to know he hated you?”
“He said that?”
“No. But those are the feelings I have toward my own father. If he was like a son to you, you should have expected the same from him.”
Osip Maximovich laughed abruptly. “I think you will make a very good translator of philosophy. We will try you out with the final section of Proudhon. If you make an adequate job of that, you can have the section before the last. And so on in reverse. With any luck, when we get Goryanchikov’s version back from the police, the two will meet in the middle.”
“Madness,” said Vadim Vasilyevich, throwing up his arms.
“Now, now, Vadim Vasilyevich. We’ll find out soon enough if he’s up to the task. Do you accept the commission, my friend?”
“What about money? We haven’t agreed on the money.”
“That depends on the quality of the work. If it isn’t up to scratch, I’m afraid we won’t be able to pay you anything.”
“But I need some money now.” Desperation made Virginsky’s tone aggressive. He quickly softened it. “For materials. Paper…pens…ink…candles.” After a moment Virginsky added, “Et cetera.”
“Et cetera? What et cetera can there be?” smiled Osip Maximovich.
“Food.”
“This is beggary,” commented Vadim Vasilyevich.
“Well, I’d rather deal with a beggar than a-” Osip Maximovich’s lips closed on the word he had been about to say. “Some other kind of scoundrel.”
Vadim Vasilyevich averted his eyes, as if Osip Maximovich had just told an off-color joke.
“At any rate, we can’t let our translator starve,” decided Osip Maximovich brightly. “We’ll give you fifty kopeks in advance. If the work is adequate, you will receive a further five rubles and the next section, that is to say the preceding section, to translate. If the work is not adequate, the fifty kopeks will serve as a severance fee, and we will never see you again. Is that agreed?”
Virginsky nodded without looking Osip Maximovich in the eye.
“Vadim Vasilyevich, the money box, please.”
Vadim Vasilyevich was shaking his head as he withdrew into the back room.
Out in the open, with the cold air piercing his face, Salytov began to feel cleansed. It didn’t last. He saw a man vomit orange paste into the gutter. Another argued with the wind. At the northeast corner of Haymarket Square, where it spilled over into Spassky Lane, a shivering woman offered her headscarf for sale. The thought occurred to him that she would get a better price for it than for herself.
Students clustered around the racks and tables outside the secondhand bookshops on Spassky Lane. He had little patience for them. In fact, the sight of them infuriated him. He had no doubt they would consider themselves superior to him, as if their rags for clothes, their battered, crooked hats, even their starving bellies should be objects of envy. What kind of inverted table of ranks was this when the trappings of the most abject poverty were held to be a source of pride? They were no better than the ignorant peasants who scavenged for crusts and rags. No, they were worse, far worse. At least the peasant had a sense of his duty to himself. The peasant too had his soul intact. These educated fools had squandered theirs.
Salytov imagined himself kicking over the book displays, a kind of Christ among the moneylenders.
The entrance to number 3 hung open. Salytov skipped up the steps and pulled the door behind him, but it would not close. It was dark in the hallway and rapidly becoming darker. He could just about make out the looming rectangles of the apartment doors on the ground floor. He kicked the front door wide open. It made little difference. Outside the afternoon was dissolving into gloom. He sensed rather than saw the stairs ahead of him, in the same way that he sensed his hand in front of his face.
Before he lost the light completely, Salytov knocked briskly on the first door he came to. Minutes passed. He knocked again, with renewed urgency. His raps echoed in the dark. He had the sense of a great emptiness behind the door.
He wondered if perhaps he had made a mistake. Was he wise to have come here alone or at least without informing anyone at the bureau what he was doing?
He thought about turning around. He imagined himself outside, running, yes, running like a coward away from this place. But he imagined other things too: a knife coming out of the darkness and plunging into his midriff. He imagined a figure stepping out of the shadows. The face was a smooth blank. At the same time Salytov felt a retrospective anger at the way Porfiry Petrovich had tried to make a fool of him over the disappearance of the prostitute’s accuser, the man they now believed was Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov. But it had had nothing to do with him. The man had absconded before he became involved.