Porfiry opened a drawer in his desk and produced the photographs Salytov had taken from the innkeeper. He spread them out and pushed those that featured male participants toward Prince Bykov.
The prince compressed his lips in disgust and nodded. “Yes. That is Ratazyayev. It is Ratazyayev in them all.”
Porfiry gathered the photographs up.
Prince Bykov looked away, trembling. “He also occasionally acted as a distribution agent for a publishing company. This was through Govorov also.”
“Athene?” The name escaped without conscious thought. Porfiry did not know why he made the assumption.
“No.” Prince Bykov was definite. “I have heard of them,” he added thoughtfully. “But this was not a respectable house.”
“Priapos.” It was not offered as a question.
The prince dropped his eyelids in confirmation.
Leonid Semenovich Tolkachenko felt the turmoil of too many pickled cucumbers eaten too hastily.
He was sitting in his armchair reading The Northern Bee. He had to hold the candle close to the newspaper. There was no light from the window. It was past three in the afternoon. Soon he would have to go outside and attend to his duties.
Tolkachenko lived alone in a small apartment at 3 Spassky Lane, the building where he worked as yardkeeper. He had never married. Once, many years ago, when he was still a young man, he had come close to declaring his feelings for the daughter of Devushkin. This Devushkin was a clerk in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where Tolkachenko worked at the time as a courier. Tolkachencko had also lodged with the family, sub-renting a room hardly bigger than a cupboard in their tiny apartment. The girl, Mariya Alexeyevna, was sixteen when it started. He left gifts for her that he could ill afford and feigned an interest in literature. But despite the family’s poverty and the father’s alcoholism, her parents were proud. They talked frequently and loudly of a very important personage from whom they imminently expected a proposal. Tolkachenko grew discouraged, even though the proposal from the important personage was not forthcoming. He stopped buying bonbons and lace. He went back to reading The Northern Bee. Mariya Alexeyevna ceased to be sixteen. In his eyes, she ceased to be many things. Her father lost his position. Her mother died, it was said, from disappointment. Mariya Alexeyevna began to look at Leonid Semenovich with big pleading eyes. Now she left gifts for him, books that he never read. She suggested a walk along the Fontanka in one of the city’s white summer nights. But he had remembered, with a mixture of shame and revulsion, the estrangement from himself that he had suffered at the height of his passion. Perhaps he had wished to punish her for that. Perhaps he had been afraid of experiencing such feelings again or, even worse, of not experiencing them. Or perhaps he had simply awakened from a strange dream. He did not meet her at the appointed time. Instead he put his few belongings into a carpetbag and walked away from the Fontanka. He did not look up once into the brilliant night sky. Nor did he ever make inquiries to find out what became of her.
Thirty years on Leonid Semenovich Tolkachenko sat alone in the dark, reading The Northern Bee by candlelight. Since the policeman’s visit, he felt a more direct connection with the news accounts. Until now the wives beaten to death, the trampled drunks, the fathers murdered by their sons had existed at one remove, contained within the surface of the newspaper as if behind a looking glass. Now such dangers and terrors were spilling out into the world he occupied. He could vouch personally for their reality. Reading the paper was no longer a comfortable sensation; the anxieties it inspired, with its fulminating editorials against the new law courts, were no longer vicarious.
A murder investigation, that was what the policeman had said.
“Dangerous” was the word he had used.
In other words, Govorov was a murderer.
Tolkachenko swallowed back a dyspeptic, vinegary belch and read:
There has never been any doubt as to Protopopov’s guilt. On several occasions, in the presence of witnesses, he threatened to kill the victim. He was seen going into her apartment. A revolver was heard to discharge. When the police arrived, he was sitting calmly next to the dead body of his landlady with the murder weapon in his hand. He confessed immediately to the crime. And now, thanks jointly to the cleverness of his defense lawyer and the stupidity of the new juries-not to mention the incompetence of the police authorities-this man, a cold-blooded murderer, has walked free. In the process, the victim has been transformed into the criminal. Subject to the vilest slander and innuendo, none of it material to the case, her character has been publicly traduced. The inference we are meant to draw is that she deserved everything that came to her. Naturally, she cannot speak in her own defense. (You may reasonably ask: Why should she have to?) She is dead. Protopopov murdered her. He has never denied it. But this same Protopopov is acquitted, and his acquittal is greeted with rapturous applause. This may be the way it is done in France, but when the innocent become the guilty, when murderers walk free, none of us is safe.
Tolkachenko heard the street door click. He sat up with a jolt and strained to listen. Footsteps reverberated on the stairs. The old boards shrieked and cracked like fireworks. Tolkachenko’s senses tingled unpleasantly. He was used to listening to the comings and goings of the residents. He could recognize them each by their step. But this time it was difficult. Footfalls overlapped. He narrowed his eyes and discerned two separate step patterns. Was one of them Govorov’s? It was hard to tell. He imagined, in fact, two Govorovs climbing the stairs.
Tolkachenko’s arms began to ache from holding the paper still. He knew the footsteps were heading away from him. Even so, he was afraid of making the slightest sound. It could be a trick. Somehow the beat of his heart had fallen in rhythm with the steps. Every time there was a pause in the sounds of climbing, his heart seemed to stop beating. He imagined the two Govorovs turning around and coming back for him.
At last, a door above closed.
It was some time before Tolkachenko stirred. He folded the newspaper carefully and leaned forward to place it noiselessly on the floor. The throb of his pulse echoed in his head. His knees creaked as he rose from the seat. Partially digested pickled cucumbers gurgled in his stomach. He winced as if these minute interior noises were in danger of reaching the apartment above.
Tolkachenko moved slowly, lowering his feet with tense precision. He waited, listening, after each step. Then stood, listening, at his own door before grasping the handle with a grip that tightened the whole of his arm. He pushed his shoulder into the door as he eased it open.
Even in the dark he knew where to place his feet so that he could climb the stairs without setting off too many alarms from the floorboards. As he ascended, the low rumble of voices grew louder.
A light showed under Govorov’s door. The voices he had heard were coming from inside. Tolkachenko couldn’t make out what was being said, but he recognized Govorov’s booming theatrical bass. There was one other man in there, he judged, whose voice was higher and lighter. They seemed to be arguing, but there was something detached, almost disjointed, about their exchange. It had not reached the point where both parties were shouting over each other.
Without questioning what he was doing, Tolkachenko took the heavy ring of keys from his pocket and fumbled for the key to Govorov’s door. The metallic jangling prompted a break in the discussion within. But Tolkachenko moved quickly. He thrust the key into the lock and turned it. Then he slipped it off the chained ring and stepped back. He turned the key in the door so that it was at a slight angle to the keyhole. He heard footsteps hurry toward him. The door shook in the frame.