Virginsky turned to see the familiar face of Nikodim Fomich, which seemed to float out of the sea of candle flames. The apparition acted on him like an emotional lodestone. His eager, deprived gaze latched onto it. Feelings that he was not aware of harbouring surged out from the core of his being to its surface. He searched for reassurance and succour in insignificant details. And yet there was something that jarred in the Chief of Police’s face, an inexplicable hostility squeezing his mouth into an uncharacteristically sour pucker.
Virginsky felt the hand around his arm tighten. Totsky was looking nervously over his shoulder at Tatyana Ruslanovna, who was lurking by the door, ready to make a break for it when the time came. Virginsky could not be sure whether it was Tatyana Ruslanovna’s imminent flight, rather than Nikodim Fomich’s intervention, that had prompted Totsky to increase his grip.
Certainly Nikodim Fomich’s appearance had the effect of sobering Virginsky, of concentrating his mind. There was now a danger, he realised, that Totsky would panic, that he would be pushed into acting precipitously. He had to think — and act — quickly. The vital thing was to remain on his feet for as long as possible, and to keep out of the press of the congregation. He felt himself to be remarkably in control of his actions. He shook his head warningly to Nikodim Fomich.
At that moment the priest began to lead the congregation in the Kontakion to the Departed: ‘With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of Thy servant. .’
The words of the Kontakion continued to reverberate in the vast sounding box of the cathedral, voices overlapping with voices to create a rising bed of sound on which the meaning was borne up, as if to Heaven: ‘. . where sickness and sorrow are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.’
Now Nikodim Fomich shook his head, in a grave, slow, momentous sweep. The gesture was imbued with unexpected pity, and therefore left no room for hope.
Virginsky yanked himself free of Totsky’s hold. And if he had thought about it, he might have been surprised by how easily his freedom was achieved. But he was beyond that now. He did not even care that he was jostled as he pushed his way through the crowd of standing mourners to the front of the church.
Around the coffin were placed four great manoualias, each densely packed with fine candles giving a thick cluster of flames. The candle-stands were arranged one at the head, one at the foot of the coffin, and one on either side, forming the branches of a flaming cross. Virginsky could not yet bring himself to confront what lay within. His eye went instead to the memorial table nearby, on which were placed the dish of koliva that the mourners would eat after the service. He understood the symbolism well enough. Although he was an atheist, he was still a Russian. The wheat of the koliva represented rebirth through death. The grain had to fall to the ground before it could give forth fruit, just as the faithful had to die before the eternal life of the soul could come into being.
But Virginsky saw only a glutinous mound of cold boiled wheat. As food it was unappetising; as a religious symbol it repelled him. The burning tapers — small fragments of the greater flame — that projected from it were like the cheap tricks of a bad stage conjuror. Had Porfiry really invested the core of his being in such counterfeit props? Virginsky had never given much thought to his superior’s faith. It was something he had taken for granted; out of respect, he had held himself back from challenging it. At the same time, he had not taken it entirely seriously either. He had thought of it as another of Porfiry’s eccentricities, almost as an affectation. But now, for the first time, it struck him that his faith was the one thing of which Porfiry would never have made light. It was inconceivable that he would have deceived the church authorities into conducting a bogus funeral, and equally inconceivable that they would have gone along with such a charade.
He turned, at last, from the memorial table to the coffin, as if to demand an answer. And in the moment of turning his head to make that confrontation, he thought of all the other confrontations with death that Porfiry Petrovich had forced on him: heads severed from their bodies, naked corpses laid out on slabs, and most recently the drenched and partly saponified corpse of Pseldonimov.
At first, he could not understand what he saw. The body in the coffin was that of a woman, a tiny, old woman, as frail as the long stems of the roses with which it was strewn. Virginsky laughed out loud once in savage delight. He turned to the congregation, to see if they were in on the joke. From the stern faces that met his gaze, it seemed that they were not.
Virginsky shook his head in amazement. Surely they had noticed that the body in the coffin was not that of Porfiry Petrovich? And then it occurred to him: he was the only one there who had expected it to be Porfiry.
Virginsky looked down at the old woman again. She was dressed like a doll in a costume that was too big for her, and which appeared never to have been worn before. Her tiny body was swamped by an elaborate gown of the kind worn by ladies of the Court, encrusted with braiding and padded with quilting. Banks of pearls concealed her neck. As if to draw attention away from the deep wrinkles of her face, her head was adorned with a high, crescent-shaped kokoshnik headdress, so that her head seemed massive in comparison to the rest of her body. Virginsky’s eye was drawn to the paper crown that had been placed beneath the kokoshnik. On it were written the words of the Trisagion: Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us.
For the first time, he wondered who she was. Something about her extraordinarily diminutive structure seemed familiar. He thought of Tatyana Ruslanovna’s words to him just before they entered the church: Someone you killed, that’s all.
Had she said it simply to make him think of Porfiry Petrovich? She knew as well as he did that Porfiry was not really dead, and that therefore Virginsky could not in any way be said to have killed him.
Indeed, there was no one whose death could be laid at his door. Unless one counted Dolgoruky.
Of course. Now he recognised the woman in the coffin as Princess Dolgorukaya, Dolgoruky’s mother. So Princess Dolgorukaya had died. But how could he be held responsible for her death?
The chanting had come to a stop. Virginsky turned to face the sea of candle flame. Without the auditory accompaniment, the light seemed wan and almost incomplete. The faces of the mourners were turned towards him, in anxious expectation. He saw a number of men in police and gendarme uniforms assembled at the front, forming a kind of human barricade around one part of the congregation. The officers shifted nervously. Among them he recognised Major Verkhotsev, whose expression was wary, although again Virginsky noticed the unmistakable presence of pity. Verkhotsev was standing at the head of the bank of men; immediately next to him, to Virginsky’s surprise, was Totsky. If it was not such an absurd idea, he might have thought the two of them had just been in conference.
Virginsky cast a glance towards the back of the cathedral, seeking out Tatyana Ruslanovna, as if the sight of her face would explain everything. But instead of an explanation, he saw only contempt.
He turned back to the cordon of tense, bristling uniforms. They seemed to be closing in on him, by slow, measured steps. In the shift and bob of the men, he caught sight of the one man who was truly responsible for the terrible predicament he found himself in, the Tsar whose jealous retention of autocratic powers had driven ‘our people’ to the only reasonable course of action open to them: revolution. Everything followed from that, including his own infiltration of the movement, and the ruse that had been required to make that possible.