The crisp white sheet folded over the man’s chest seemed like an infinite weight pinning him down. His bandaged arms and hands lay stiffly on top of his covers.
‘Ilya Petrovich?’ Porfiry spoke gently, taking a seat next to the bed.
Salytov’s eyes opened and sought Porfiry out. The slit of his mouth opened on to blackness, as he swallowed drily. ‘Did you get the bastards?’
‘It was not the boy from Ballet’s who did this to you, Ilya Petrovich, or any of his associates. The bomb was thrown by the civil servant Yefimov. It was not a revolutionary plot, merely a mask for his personal vendettas. It was intended to distract and confuse us.’
Salytov closed his eyes. ‘Yefimov.’ His mouth as he said the name appeared disembodied, giving its pronouncements a strangely oracular authority. It seemed that it was not Salytov speaking, but some unseen force, blind, yet all-knowing.
‘He’s dead. . now,’ said Porfiry, falteringly. ‘He escaped justice in this life, but he will not in the next.’
‘Your faith is touching, Porfiry Petrovich. I wish I shared it.’ Salytov opened his eyes again. ‘How did he die?’
‘He was stabbed. One of his subordinates attacked him. In a fury of revenge, it seems, for the way Yefimov treated Rostanev. There are. . complications surrounding the attack.’
‘What complications?’
‘The perpetrator is being protected by his colleagues. They will not give him up and we — that is to say, Pavel Pavlovich and I — cannot positively say which one of them it was. These civil servants tend to look alike, you know,’ he added in an abashed aside.
‘You witnessed it?’
‘N-yes.’
The figure on the bed began to shake. The eyes gleamed with mirth. ‘You witnessed the attack, but you cannot identify the attacker!’
‘It happened very quickly and in great confusion. Yefimov did not die immediately. We had to. . we had a responsibility to tend to him. It took some time to get help. He died on the way to hospital, it seems.’
Salytov’s eyes became suddenly serious. ‘How many of our men died in the blast?’
‘Two. Kheruvimov and Pestryakov.’
‘I led them into it.’
‘You could not have known. And besides, the operation was approved by Nikodim Fomich.’ After a moment Porfiry added: ‘I too must bear some responsibility.’
Salytov did not answer. His eyes were closed again and he seemed to have drifted off into sleep.
Porfiry was in no hurry to get back to the bureau. He allowed himself to be led by the city, following an echoed shout, or the glimpse of something moving through an entry. He felt himself drawn into the secret heart of St Petersburg, passing through it by the chain of interlocking courtyards. He felt himself privileged. He found that he didn’t mind the dust of construction, or the summer stench. He had been released from his hatred of his city. Every step took him away from one set of lives and towards another, lives overlooking lives, each one mingling with the next.
Occasionally he would emerge on to one of the city’s broad thoroughfares, or the stone embankment of one of its waterways. He would follow that course for as long as the whim took him, until the enticement of another entrance beckoned.
He found himself, at last, on Nevsky Prospekt. It was late morning. The sun burned down from a clear sky. It seemed that, after being cloistered within a hidden city, he had now emerged into a public one. In some way, it seemed like he had rejoined his fellow citizens after a long, enforced separation. He welcomed his immersion in the cries of street vendors, the clatter of carriages, the snatches of conversation.
He stood in the middle of the pavement, forcing the streams of pedestrians coming in both directions to part around him. Now and then he was buffeted by a passing shoulder. His strange obduracy attracted puzzled backward glances and, from those who were coming straight at him, threatening glares. He was disdainfully ignored by cavalry officers and frowned upon by civil servants. Young ladies averted their gaze, something in their eyes suggesting a suspicion of madness. But Porfiry held his ground, the sole constant in the ceaseless cross-tides of unbound humanity. He let them flow away from him without regret.
He looked into faces, the healthy, the lean, the sallow, the consumptive, some beautiful, some haughty, faces distorted by suffering or set in determination, faces empty of everything apart from a simple enjoyment of the day’s warmth; he searched these faces, recognising none, but feeling somehow that he knew them all. Was he also looking for some flicker of reciprocal recognition, some acknowledgement of how things stood between them?
At last he shook his head, as if trying to shake off his folly. A smile broke into his face as he turned his back on the vanity that had detained him.
It was time to get back to Stolyarny Lane.