The Master of Petersburg

'Ivanov was suspected? Suspected of murder? Do I understand you thought Ivanov was a murderer? Why did you think so?'

'Please allow me to finish! There was a rumour to that effect going around the building, or else the child who repeated the rumour to me misunderstood everything, I don't know which. Does it matter, when the fact is the man is dead? I was surprised and appalled that someone like that should have been killed. He was quite harmless.'

'But he was not what he seemed to be, was he?'

'Do you mean a beggar?'

'He was not a beggar, was he?'

'In a ma

'You are not being clear. Are you claiming that you were unaware of Ivanov's responsibilities? Is that why you were surprised?'

'I was surprised that anyone should have put his immortal soul in peril by killing a harmless nonentity.'

The official regards him sardonically. 'A nonentity -is that your Christian word on him?'

At this moment Maximov himself enters in a great hurry. Under his arm is a pile of folders tied with pink ribbons. He drops these on the desk, takes out a handkerchief, and wipes his brow. 'So hot in here!' he murmurs; and then, to his colleague: 'Thank you. You have finished?'

Without a word the man gathers up his papers and leaves. Sighing, mopping his face, Maximov takes over the chair. 'So sorry, Fyodor Mikhailovich. Now: the matter of your stepson's papers. I am afraid we are going to have to keep back one item, namely the list of people to be, as our friends say, liquidated, which – I am sure you will agree – should not go into circulation, since it will only cause alarm. Besides, it will in due course form part of the case against Nechaev. As for the rest of the papers, they are yours, we have finished with them, we have, so to speak, extracted their honey from them.

'However, before I pass them over to you for good, there is one thing further I would like to say, if you will do me the honour of hearing me out.

'If I thought of myself merely as a functionary whose path of duty you have happened to cross, I would return these papers to you without more ado. But in the present case I am not a mere functionary. I am also, if you will permit me to use the word, a well-wisher, someone with your best interests at heart. And as such I have a severe reservation about handing them over. Let me state that reservation. It is that painful discoveries lie in store for you – painful and u

So saying, Maximov, using only the middle finger of his right hand, prods the folder across the desk, the surprisingly thick folder that holds Pavel's papers.

He rises, takes the folder, makes his bow, and is preparing to leave when Maximov speaks again. 'If I may detain you a moment longer in a somewhat different regard: you have not by any chance had contact with the Nechaev gang here in Petersburg, have you?'

Ivanov! Nechaev! So that is the reason why he has been called in! Pavel, the papers, Maximov's dance of compunctiousness – nothing but a side-issue, a lure!

'I do not see the bearing of your question,' he replies stiffly. 'I do not see by what right you ask or expect me to answer.'

'By no right at all! Set your mind at rest – you are accused of nothing. Simply a question. As for its bearing, I would not have thought that so difficult to work out. Having discussed your stepson with me, I reasoned, perhaps you would now find it easier to discuss Nechaev. For in our conversation the other day it seemed to me that what you chose to say sometimes had a double meaning. A word had another word hidden beneath it, so to speak. What do you think? Was I wrong?'

'Which words? What lay beneath them?'

'That is for you to say.'

'You are wrong. I do not speak in riddles. Every word I use means what it says. Pavel is Pavel, not Nechaev.'

With that he turns and takes his departure; nor does Maximov call him back.

Through the winding streets of the Moskovskaya quarter he bears the folder to Svechnoi Street, to No. 63, up the stairs to the third floor, to his room, and closes the door.

He unties the ribbon. His heart is hammering unpleasandy. That there is something unsavoury in his haste he ca

He remembers Albert showing him two flies in the act of copulating, the male riding on the female's back. Albert held the flies in his cupped hand. 'Watch,' he said. He pinched one of the male's wings between his fingertips and tugged lightly. The wing came off. The fly paid no attention. He tore off the second wing. The fly, with its strange, bald back, went on with its business. With an expression of distaste, Albert flung the couple to the ground and crushed it.

He could imagine staring into the fly's eyes while its wings were being torn off: he was sure it would not blink; perhaps it would not even see him. It was as though, for the duration of the act, its soul went into the female. The thought had made him shudder; it had made him want to a

A childish response to an act he did not understand, an act he feared because everyone around him, whispering, gri

The folder contains a leather-bound diary, five school exercise books, twenty or twenty-five loose pages pi

A message, messages; but from whom to whom?

He takes up the diary and, without reading, ruffles through it like a deck of cards. The second half is empty. Still, the body of writing in it is substantial. He glances at the first date. 29 June 1866, Pavel's name-day. The diary must have been a gift. A gift from whom? He ca

As if touching a hot dish, alert, ready to recoil, he begins to read the first entry. A recital, and a somewhat laboured one at that, of how Pavel spent the day. The work of a novice diarist. No accusations, no denunciations. With relief he closes the book. When I am in Dresden, he promises himself, when I have time, I will read the whole of it.