‘It’s all right, Nadya,’ soothed Porfiry.
They bent to walk her through the arch, her feet dragging in the flood water. In the comparative light of the open room, Porfiry saw that her feet were bare. He also saw that the object she clutched was an ancient and grubby rag doll.
The old man at the table raised his head to watch them, then lowered it again without comment, overwhelmed by passivity. Nadezhda Gorshkova’s body tensed between them. A moment later it was limp. Her head lolled. Her hand opened, dropping the rag doll into the mired water. Virginsky and Porfiry halted and looked at the woman’s face. Her mouth and eyes were open. She was no longer weeping or moaning. She made no sound at all.
5
It was not really a house, more a low sprawl of buildings, partially concealed from the road by a stand of ragged birch and a decaying fence topped with rusted nails. Glimpsed from a distance it gave the impression, gleaming pale in the new day, of having no substance. Its presence on the ground seemed accidental, owing nothing to the operation of gravity. It might almost have been tethered there, such was its weightless, dreamlike quality. Seeing the turquoise roofs and the walls of ochre and white over the fence, Porfiry was reminded of the time that Virginsky had pointed the building out to him the morning they had taken the train to Petergof. He acknowledged a sense of resentment as he approached it now, for it felt like an idea that had been forced upon him. He found himself startled by a detail of the architecture: the windows and doors were arched, as were the passageways through to the courtyards. The motif brought back the memory of the flooded basement and of the arch through which he and Virginsky had carried Nadezhda Gorshkova. The correspondence irritated him. He refused to see anything portentous in the fact that by stepping through another arch he would encounter the dead woman’s husband.
The gatekeeper was dressed in a grubby kosovorotka. He had deep-set eyes that turned with torpid cunning towards Porfiry and Virginsky. His face maintained a deliberate blankness at their approach, though the abrupt shift in his posture, from indolence to wariness, suggested visitors were rare and unwelcome. He sat on a high stool in a three-sided hut behind a chained gate. Weeds grew all around him; in amongst them could be seen items of discardedrubbish: a rusted bedstead, broken bottles, bundles of clothes and an odd shoe. The gatekeeper’s face seemed to absorb all this ugliness and reflect it back at them. His expression was a strange mixture of shame and defiance.
‘I am Porfiry Petrovich, investigating magistrate from the Department of the Investigation of Criminal Causes.’ Porfiry did not look directly at the man as he made this announcement, almost as if he could not bear to. ‘You will please let us in.’
‘I can’t do that,’ said the gatekeeper with a sly smile. ‘I don’t have the key.’
‘Then kindly fetch the key.’
‘Do you think they will trust me with it?’ The man leered. ‘Look!’ He lifted his shirt, revealing a striped uniform, equally grubby, underneath. ‘They think it looks better if they dress me in a kosovorotka.’
‘I see. Is there someone you can notify of our presence who would be authorised to admit us?’
‘That would be Dr Zverkov.’
‘Very well. Please inform Dr Zverkov that magistrates from St Petersburg are here to see him.’
It was a moment before the gatekeeper descended from his stool, a moment in which he kept his eyes fixed firmly on Porfiry. Only with reluctance did he finally turn away from the magistrate. Then, unexpectedly, he broke into a run which carried him across the burdock-infested grounds towards the main house, a central two-storey block winged by long single-storey extensions.
‘Is this a hospital or a prison?’ said Virginsky.
‘Something of both,’ answered Porfiry. He looked at the long weeds growing through the wires of the old bedstead. ‘A place of abandonment,’ he added.
‘And they have set one of the inmates to guard it,’ said Virginsky.
Now a plump and florid-faced man was striding towards them, at the same time fastening on a black frock coat. He wore his beard neatly trimmed and they could see where the stiff collar of his shirt had rubbed his neck raw. His face wrinkled distastefully as he passed the strewn rubbish, as if it had long been on his mind to do something about it. The gatekeeper followed at some distance, his head averted in a kind of flinch.
The plump man took a key from his pocket and unlocked the chain that bound the gate. ‘Gentlemen, welcome to the Ulyanka Asylum. I am Dr Zverkov. How may I assist you?’ His voice was a feeble, high tenor, at odds with his bulk.
Porfiry saw that Dr Zverkov’s face was bathed in sweat as he pushed the creaking gate open.
‘You admitted an inmate yesterday, one Gorshkov, a factory worker.’
‘Ah yes, there was an admission yesterday. That is correct.’
‘We wish to speak to him.’
‘You won’t get much sense out of him,’ said Dr Zverkov, squaring up to Porfiry as if to block his way, despite the fact that he had gone to the trouble of opening the gate for him. He manufactured a thin smile, but his eyes were hostile, the set of his body pugnacious. ‘He was raving when we admitted him and he’s raving now.’
‘Of course,’ said Porfiry. ‘Nevertheless.’
‘What has he done?’ asked the gatekeeper from behind Dr Zverkov.
‘Be quiet, Nikita,’ snapped the doctor. However, he narrowed his eyes as he looked at Porfiry, as if waiting for an answer to the question.
Porfiry said nothing.
Dr Zverkov at last stepped aside and waved in the two magistrates. He then closed and re-chained the gate.
‘Follow me, please.’ He led the way briskly towards the right-hand wing. Porfiry could see that the fabric of the building was by no means as pristine as it had seemed from a distance, when the sun had coated it with a sheen that evened out all imperfections. The cracks and stains in the stucco were visible now. He could also see that the windows were barred. ‘Back to your post, Nikita,’ Dr Zverkov commanded irritably, as if seeking to distract from the shabbiness. He too, it seemed, could not bear to look at the man when he addressed him. ‘As magistrates, you will be used to dealingwith the criminally insane.’ He angled his head back towards Porfiry and Virginsky, who were in step behind him. ‘It will not surprise you that we have had to restrain him.’
‘Why do you say that he is criminally insane?’ asked Virginsky sharply. ‘What crime has he committed?’
‘He menaced his cohabitants, including his wife, with a knife. And then attempted to murder himself. Suicide is a crime, I believe, as well as being against the laws of God and nature. Anyone attempting suicide is by definition insane.’
‘You are aware of the background to his case? The loss of his children?’ Virginsky insisted.
‘Of course. However, such suffering is by no means unique. Many people suffer far worse and do not become violent. We must find a way to overcome our sufferings, not be overcome by them. That is the rational way. When you consider the age of the earth, and the many ages of man, what really do the sorrows of one lifetime amount to? The Romans, I think, had the right attitude.’
‘You are talking of the Stoics? It is hard for a parent who has lost six children to be stoical, I think.’ Virginsky cast a glance towards Porfiry, soliciting his support.
‘Is this how you treat your patients, by reasoning with them?’ said Porfiry with a smile.
‘Of course not. One cannot reason with the mad.’ Dr Zverkov turned sharply into an arched passageway that led through the wing of the building into an inner courtyard. The same long weeds grew unchallenged here. The air thickened with that summer courtyard stench, which here, somehow, made Porfiry think of captive beasts. They crossed the courtyard and followed Dr Zverkov through a door, inevitably arched, into an utterly dilapidated annexe. A man in striped uniform, the same as Nikita had worn beneath his kosovorotka, was sitting on a chair smoking a pipe. Behind him, an open doorway led to a ward.