'Well, that can be arranged . . .'
The fat woman then tiptoed into the next-door room, and her voice could be heard whispering persuasively:
'Now lie still, Maria Frantsevna, for God's sake . . . They're going now and they'll find out everything. The cadet says that he's lying in the barracks.'
'On planks?' asked the penetrating and, to Nikolka, hate-filled voice.
'No, of course not my dear, in the chapel, in the chapel . . .'
'He may still be lying at that crossroads, with the dogs gnawing at him.'
'What nonsense, Maria Frantsevna . . . you lie down quietly my dear, I beg of you . . .'
'Mama simply hasn't been normal these last three days . . .' whispered Nai's sister, pushing back the same unruly curl and staring past Nikolka. 'But then, nothing is normal any longer . . .'
'I'm going with them', rang out the voice from the next room.
The sister turned round with a start and ran.
'Mama, mama, you're not coming. You're not coming. The cadet will refuse to help us if you come. He may be arrested. Lie there, I beg you, mama . . .'
'Ah Irina, Irina, Irina,' came the voice, 'he's dead, they've killed him and what can you do now? What's to become of you, Irina? And what am I to do now that Felix is dead? Dead . . . lying in the snow . . . Do you think . . .' There was the sound of sobbing, the bed creaked and Lydia Pavlovna's voice said:
'Calm yourself and be brave, Maria Frantsevna . . .'
'Oh God, oh God', said the young woman as she ran through the drawing-room. In horror and despair Nikolka thought dimly: 'Whatever will happen if we can't find him?'
By that terrible doorway, where despite the frost they could
already smell the dreadful, suffocating stench, Nikolka stopped and said:
'Perhaps you'd better sit down here. There's such a smell in there that it may make you sick.'
Irina looked at the green door, then at Nikolka and said:
'No, I'm coming with you.'
Nikolka pulled at the handle of the heavy door and they went in. At first it was dark. Then they began to make out endless rows of empty coat-hooks. A dim lamp hung overhead.
Nikolka turned round anxiously to his companion, but she was walking beside him apparently unperturbed; only her face was pale and her brows were drawn together in a frown. She frowned in a way that reminded Nikolka of Nai-Turs, although the resemblance was fleeting - Nai-Turs had iron features, a plain and manly face, whilst his sister was a beautiful girl, with a beauty that was not so much Russian as somehow foreign. An astounding, remarkable girl.
The smell, which Nikolka feared so much, was everywhere. The floors, the wall, the wooden coat-hooks all smelled of it. The stench was so awful that it was almost visible. It seemed as if the walls were greasy and sticky, and the coat-hooks sticky, the floors greasy and the air thick and saturated, reeking of decaying flesh. He very soon got used to the smell itself, but he felt it safer not to look too hard at the surroundings and not to think too much. The chief thing was to stop oneself from thinking, or nausea would quickly follow. A student in an overcoat hurried past and disappeared. Over to the left, behind the row of coat-hooks, a door creaked open and a man came out, wearing boots. Nikolka looked at him and quickly looked away again to avoid seeing the man's jacket. Like the coat-hooks his jacket glistened, and the man's hands were glistening too.
'What do you want?' asked the man sternly.
'We have come,' said Nikolka, 'to see the man in charge . . . We have to find the body of a man who has been killed. Would he be here?'
'What man?' the man asked, staring suspiciously.
'He was killed here in the City, three days ago.'
'Aha, I suppose he was a cadet or an officer ... and the haidamaks caught him. Who is he?'
Nikolka was afraid to admit that Nai-Turs had been an officer, so he said:
'Well yes, he was killed too . . .'
'He was an officer serving under the Hetman', said Irina as she approached the man. 'His name is Nai-Turs.'
The man, who obviously could not have cared who Nai-Turs was, glanced side-ways at Irina, coughed, spat on the floor and replied:
'I don't really know what to do. It's past working hours now, and there's nobody here. All the other janitors have gone. It will be difficult to find him, very difficult. All the bodies have been transferred down to the cellars. It's difficult, very difficult . . .'
Irina Nai-Turs unfastened her handbag, took out some money and handed it to the janitor. Nikolka turned away, afraid that the man might be honest and protest against this. But the janitor did not protest.
'Thanks, miss', he said, and at once grew livelier and more businesslike. 'We might be able to find him. Only we shall need permission. We can do it if the professor allows it.'
'Where's the professor?' asked Nikolka.
'He's here, only he's busy. I don't know whether I ought to announce you or not . . .'
'Please, please inform the professor at once,' begged Nikolka, 'I shall be able to recognise the body at once . . .'
'All right', said the janitor and led them away. They went up some stairs to a corridor, where the smell was even more overpowering. Then they went down the corridor and turned left; the smell grew fainter and the corridor lighter as it passed under a glass roof. Here the doors to right and left were painted white. At one of them the janitor stopped, knocked, then took off his cap and entered. It was quiet in the corridor, and a diffused light came through the glass ceiling. Twilight was gradually beginning to set in. At last the janitor came out again and said:
'Come in.'
Nikolka went in, followed by Irina Nai-Turs. Nikolka took off his cap, noticing the gleaming black blinds drawn down over the windows and a beam of painfully bright light falling on to a desk, behind which was a black beard, a crumpled, exhausted face, and a hooked nose. Then he glanced nervously around the walls at the line of shiny, glass-fronted cabinets containing rows of monstrous things in bottles, brown and yellow, like hideous Chinese faces. Further away stood a tall man, priest-like in a leather apron and black rubber gloves, who was bending over a long table. There like guns, glittering with polished brass and reflecting mirrors in the light of a low green-shaded lamp, stood a row of microscopes.
'What do you want?' asked the professor.
From his weary face and beard Nikolka realised that this was the professor, and the priest-like figure presumably his assistant.
He stared at the patch of bright light that streamed from the shiny, strangely contorted lamp, and at the other things: at the nicotine-stained fingers and at the repulsive object lying in front of the professor - a human neck and lower jaw stripped down to the veins and tendons, stuck with dozens of gleaming surgical needles and forceps.
'Are you relatives?' asked the professor. He had a dull, husky voice which went with his exhausted face and his beard. He looked up and frowned at Irina Nai-Turs, at her fur coat and boots.
'I am his sister', she said, trying not to look at the thing lying on the professor's desk.
'There, you see how difficult it is, Sergei Nikolaevich. And this isn't the first case . . . Yes, the body may still be here. Have they all been transferred to the general mortuary?'
'It's possible', said the tall man, throwing aside an instrument.
'Fyodor!' shouted the professor.
#
'No, wait here. You mustn't go in there . . . I'll go . . .' said Nikolka timidly.
'I shouldn't go, miss, if I were you', the janitor agreed. 'Look,' he said, 'you can wait here.'
Nikolka took the man aside, gave him some more money and asked him to find a clean stool for the lady to sit on. Reeking of cheap home-grown tobacco, the janitor produced a stool from a corner where there stood a green-shaded standard lamp and several skeletons.