His mouth was lined with an unpleasant layer of sticky residue. He licked his teeth and grimaced at the taste.
Somewhere, birds were singing, an onslaught of noise, devoid of sentiment.
The journey had passed in a numb, throbbing daze. He barely knew where he was, how he had got here and why he had come. Of course, if he tried, if he concentrated hard enough, he could bring it all to mind. But there was little incentive to do that.
On one level it was very simple. He was here, in Lipetsk, on the advice of his doctor. There was nothing physically wrong with him, at least nothing that Dr Orlov had been able to find. He was suffering from a strange, unaccountable weakness and the exhaustion that came from that.
Dr Orlov had tapped his knee, peered into his eyes, pressed down his tongue and listened to his chest. His temperature had been taken, his pulse monitored and his blood pressure recorded. He had been prodded and poked and made to stand on one leg. He had given blood and urine samples. He would have given his tears too, if Dr Orlov had asked.
At the end of it all, the good doctor scratched his chin and shook his head. ‘It’s a question of nerves,’ he had declared. ‘Your nerves are disarranged.’
As to why his nerves were disarranged, or what that even meant, Virginsky showed no inclination to enquire.
Dr Orlov had recommended a sojourn in a spa resort. He had connections with the Sanatorium in Lipetsk, possibly connections that entailed a commission. The way Virginsky saw it, he might as well be in Lipetsk as anywhere.
He had spent most of the last three months alone, weeping in a darkened room. The passage of time was indicated by the thickness of Virginsky’s beard. Civil Service rules required him to be clean-shaven when he was practising as an investigating magistrate.
This journey, a thousand verst south, to a brighter sky and a warmer air, was the first step along what Dr Orlov hoped was the road to recovery. The problem was, Virginsky didn’t want to recover. He just wanted to curl up into a ball and die. Death would bring oblivion and oblivion was the best he could hope for. But his treacherous body insisted on living.
Virginsky did not believe in the soul. So what then was this thing inside him that had turned to stone? Whatever name he gave to it, it was a dead weight that he would lug around with him for the rest of his life. What happened after that was not his concern.
His black suit absorbed the day’s heat and turned it into sweat. A black top hat dressed with a band of black crêpe sat precariously on his head. His mouth gaped open, witlessly dehydrated.
He stood for a moment to get his bearings, as if he were trying to place a face. The other passengers, purposeful and garrulous, streamed away from him, a bank of receding backs. Then the engine released a cloud of steam that settled over the platform. As the cloud dissipated, it revealed the silhouette of a man who had turned to face Virginsky, about ten paces ahead.
The man’s face was still obscured by steam but Virginsky felt his heartbeat quicken as he registered the familiar body shape. It was unmistakable. The same short, squat figure, protruding in odd places. There was only one man shaped like that! Porfiry Petrovich! It had to be. And he was there, waiting for him!
Another billow of steam cloaked the figure once more. This time when it cleared, Porfiry was gone. Virginsky scanned the emptying platform in desperation. His old mentor was nowhere to be seen.
Of course he wasn’t there. How could he be? Porfiry Petrovich was dead. Virginsky himself had seen his mangled body lying in the street after he had been trampled to death by a team of horses outside the Circus Ciniselli. The accident had happened at the end of Virginsky’s last investigation.
So, he was seeing ghosts now? But if he didn’t believe in the soul, he certainly didn’t believe in ghosts. His mind was playing tricks on him, that was the only explanation. It was his guilt that had summoned Porfiry’s ghost, as it did every night in his dreams. Every night? Who was he trying to kid? In his current depressed state, he was asleep more hours than he was awake. Whole days and weeks were lost in marathons of sleep, interrupted only by his need to answer his bodily functions. He wondered if his prodigious exhaustion was a subconscious strategy to allow him to spend time in Porfiry’s company.
But this was a new development, to see Porfiry while he was awake, in broad daylight, as it were, although the steam from the engine had cast a veil of obscurity and doubt over the vision.
Virginsky was rooted to the spot. All of a sudden, he felt someone push into him from behind. At the same moment there was a shriek of surprise.
He took a half step forward before turning to see the young woman who had just walked into him. Her face was flushed with embarrassment. Virginsky was vaguely aware of a group of friends around her, both male and female, who were laughing at her clumsiness.
‘Nadya!’ one man cried. ‘Watch where you’re going!’
Another man shook his head warningly at the speaker. Virginsky formed only the vaguest impression of her friends, except for this fellow. He was sporting a pair of eye-catching handlebar moustaches, which might have made him seem a comic figure. But he carried himself with a cocksure swagger. Even in his present distracted state, Virginsky was struck by the cold intensity of his glower.
The woman called Nadya looked at Virginsky with amazement, as if he had suddenly materialised out of thin air, which to some extent he had. When she had come to terms with his presence, she gave a half bow of acknowledgement. ‘I do beg your pardon, sir, though I confess, I did not expect there to be someone dawdling in the steam.’ Her voice betrayed her class, as did her bearing. She was a deep-boned aristocrat and always would be. Her seeming politeness was a practised act of condescension, designed to put Virginsky in his place.
Virginsky blinked. He realised that she was beautiful but he felt her beauty as if it were a scientific fact rather than anything that could stir his emotions. He was almost angered by it. He hadn’t asked for it. He didn’t want it. He found that he had nothing to say to her.
No. Nothing. He had nothing left to say to any woman, however beautiful, since his rift with Maria Petrovna. If he could not speak to her, he would speak to none of them.
The group of friends parted around him and went on their way. He could hear them talking about him. One of them described him as an eccentric. ‘Did you see his eyes?’ another said. ‘He has been crying, I think.’ ‘He is in mourning, obviously.’ ‘Still, that’s no excuse…’
Their voices faded.
But he was too daunted to follow in their wake.
In many ways, she, Nadya, was a more startling apparition than Porfiry Petrovich.
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