Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers Read online

  ‘The guards!’ he said, trying to scramble to his feet.

  Someone helped him.

  ‘Don’t worry about that, Barin. We’ve taken care of them.’

  Barin! They were all calling him Barin, even the prisoners.

  He swayed unsteadily on his feet.

  ‘You go up to your room, Barin, and have a nice lie-down.’

  They helped him to the door and he just about made it up the stairs. Then he collapsed on his bed and let the room steady its swirling.

  My God, this was terrible. How had he got himself into this situation? An Examining Magistrate, drinking with prisoners, collapsing into insensibility and then allowing himself to be carried out unconscious into the yard! Dmitri was mortified. If the authorities found out about this, he would never recover. Jesus, what a lunatic!

  It was all in the pursuit of his inquiries … He could imagine himself saying that – and could imagine the reception! Is that how you carry out your inquiries, Examining Magistrate Kameron?

  Only if I have to, and in this case I had to. The prison authorities were not co-operating. He could imagine the stony faces. We can understand that, Examining Magistrate Kameron!

  The face of the prison Governor came before him. Jesus, it was playing into his hands! He would be able to deport Dmitri now and no one would raise an eyebrow. The guards must have seen him lying there.

  But had they? The prisoners had said they’d taken care of that, but how could they? Well, perhaps they could. They might simply have shielded him with their bodies. But could he rely on that? Jesus, it was getting worse. He was relying on convicts now! What sort of Examining Magistrate was that?

  Someone else had asked that question recently. Methodosius! He had said that was what the Artel wanted to know: What sort of lawyer was he? What had they meant? Bribable? Definitely not! Drunk and incapable? On the evidence, alas … Dmitri lifted his head indignantly. Drunk he might be, but not incapable. Never!

  And anyway, that had not been the point of the question. The question was whose side was he on? The Governor’s, or …? Dmitri would always have said he was on nobody’s side; he was committed solely to the truth. He was an investigating lawyer, not one of those specious rhetorical ones he had seen so often in the Court House at Kursk. He was there to get at the truth, no matter how unacceptable it was and for whom.

  So whose side was he on? The Governor’s or the yard’s? Dmitri thought malevolently of the Governor and was tempted to plump for the yard. But that would not do. He was on no one’s side. The law stood apart from sides. It was independent, external and objective.

  Or was it? Not in Russia, if his friend upstairs in the cells was correct. Law in Russia, or, at least in Siberia, was the Governor’s law, it was what the Tsar or his representatives decreed. According to Grigori, the problem with Russian law was precisely that it wasn’t above and independent of the state. Dmitri, interested in ideas, had thought vaguely that this was something he must look into when he got back to Kursk. He was beginning to think now that he would have to look into it rather sooner than he had thought.

  The cell was crowded. There were faces here that Dmitri was sure he had not seen before. Others beside himself, and apart from the normal inmates of the cell, must have been invited to Alexandra’s party.

  On the far side of the room he could hear a new, harsh, unpleasant voice raised in dispute.

  ‘No, no, no, what we need is a truly scientific analysis. We must look at the historico-economic bases and find out the scientific laws that determine them. Only then can we achieve a genuinely objective, materialist explanation.’

  Dmitri had not come across him before, and if he had anything to do with it wouldn’t come across him again. One thing he couldn’t stand was the mechanistic jargon so fashionable in some radical circles.

  He looked around for someone more congenial and saw the doctor he had met on his last visit. He was talking to a middle-aged, rather worn but still pretty woman.

  ‘Lara Kovalevskaya – Dmitri Alexandrovich!’

  They shook hands.

  ‘A lovely idea of Alexandra’s, isn’t it? To have this party? And so typical of her, to want to cheer everyone up!’

  ‘It’s her birthday,’ said Konstantin, the doctor.

  ‘What a place to celebrate it!’ said Dmitri.

  ‘The important thing, though,’ said Lara, ‘is to celebrate it.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Konstantin. ‘The one thing you mustn’t do is give in.’

  Dmitri muttered something about her being an impressive lady. Ordinarily he would have run a mile from someone like Alexandra. He distrusted anyone who tried to organize him. Here, though, he could see that there was a need for people like that. The idea of a party had given everyone a lift and they were all chattering away as excitedly and obliviously as they had once done in the drawing rooms of St Petersburg.

  And that was without alcohol! The political prisoners did not appear to have the same ability to command resources as the Artel did. Russian intellectuals, however, reflected Dmitri, did not need alcohol to become intoxicated.

  All over the cell, animated discussions were taking place.

  ‘What I am demanding, of course, is a New Positivism.’

  God, it was that man again.

  Someone pushed a drink into his hand. He sipped it. It was tea. That might not be a bad thing in the circumstances. He was still feeling fragile from his encounter with the Artel. The thought of the Artel put an idea in his head.

  ‘Did you see any Milk-Drinkers when you were over in the infirmary?’ he asked Konstantin.

  ‘Milk-Drinkers? I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘The girl I am looking for, the one I was telling you about, was on the hospital carts with some Milk-Drinkers. I wondered if they’d all been taken to the infirmary to help with the nursing.’

  ‘I didn’t see any. The medical orderlies were ordinary prison staff. There could, of course, have been other wards.’

  ‘I thought they may have called in other help, the way they called you in.’

  ‘The wards were full, certainly. Every bed was taken. People were even lying on the floor between the beds.’

  ‘That would be because of the big influx from the latest convoy?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. The patients I saw had mostly been there for some time. They were recovering from typhoid fever.’

  ‘I had the impression a lot of patients came in with the latest convoy.’

  ‘Not as far as I know. Of course, I wasn’t there when the convoy arrived. I only went there after. Actually,’ said Konstantin, thinking, ‘that may explain it. Explain my being called in, I mean. Maybe there were a lot of extra patients as a result of the convoy and the usual doctors were busy with them.’

  ‘You’ve no idea what they could have been suffering from?’

  ‘The ones from the convoy? No, as I was saying, I didn’t really see any of them. My cases were all typhoid.’

  He looked at Dmitri.

  ‘You’re thinking there could have been an outbreak of something else? On the journey?’

  ‘They had to call in extra help.’

  ‘That would explain it, of course. Them making use of a separate ward, if that’s what they did. Especially if it was infectious. And perhaps that’s where the ordinary doctors were.’

  ‘Might the people who had been nursing them on the convoy be there too?’

  ‘Well, they might,’ said Konstantin doubtfully. ‘I suppose that reduces the risk of spreading infection. All the same … I mean, they’re not trained nurses, are they? And it hardly seems ethical to – ’

  ‘Ethical?’ said Lara. ‘You think that would enter into it?’

  Alexandra came pushing through the crowd carrying a jug of tea, Russian tea, not black but gold. She brightened when she saw Dmitri.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad you could come!’

  It seemed so incongruous that Dmitri almost laughed. For A
lexandra, however, it was clearly not a laughing matter, and Dmitri was oddly touched. She was so determined to keep up, even here, the forms of civilization, the things that made the difference between man and brute. Dmitri was all for that. In his small way that’s exactly what he was trying to do at Kursk.

  ‘Happy Birthday!’ he said, kissing her warmly. Konstantin and Lara kissed her, too.

  He gave her the book which he had brought with him from Kursk. Alexandra, pleased, took it from him and examined it.

  ‘Why, it’s a novel!’

  ‘Is that allowed?’

  ‘Yes, of course. We have too many serious books here.’

  ‘This isn’t serious?’

  Alexandra looked at him.

  ‘You think I’m too much the librarian?’

  ‘I think the idea of having a party is absolutely marvellous!’

  Alexandra flushed and turned away.

  ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet,’ she said over her shoulder.

  Unfortunately, it was the man with the voice.

  ‘Gasparov,’ he said, not bothering to look at Dmitri but sticking out a hand in his direction.

  Dmitri did not take it.

  ‘I’m sure you two will get on together,’ said Alexandra, not noticing. ‘You’re both men of ideas.’

  ‘What sort of ideas?’ said Gasparov suspiciously.

  ‘Does one have to have a sort?’ asked Dmitri.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Gasparov. ‘There has to be consistency to one’s intellectual framework.’

  ‘I prefer a generally critical approach, myself,’ said Dmitri.

  ‘Hegelian?’

  ‘Kantian,’ said Dmitri, casting around.

  ‘Kant,’ said Gasparov, ‘is passé. He has been superseded.’

  ‘Oh yes? Who by?’

  ‘Hegel. And we’, said Gasparov complacently, ‘have superseded Hegel. Hegel was an idealist. We are Materialist. We have taken Hegel and stood him on his head.’

  ‘It seems a very strange position from which to view the world.’

  Gasparov recognized at last that he had an adversary.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘you are a Pre-Materialist?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Dmitri coldly. ‘I am not an Ist at all.’

  ‘Categorization is the beginning of Reason. You would deny Reason, then?’

  ‘Just your kind of Reason.’

  ‘There is only one kind of Reason: Scientific Reason.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘It must be so. Science’s laws are universal.’

  ‘In the field of Nature, perhaps.’

  ‘In the field of Society, too.’

  ‘And you have discovered them?’

  ‘Are discovering them. Our task, though, is not to discover Society but to change it. For that we need a new Philosophy, a new Positivism, a new – ’

  ‘Dogmatism?’ suggested Dmitri.

  Their neighbours pulled them apart.

  ‘I knew you’d get on,’ said Alexandra happily.

  There were some more letters for him. He picked them up with an avidity that surprised him. He had never previously supposed that anything that happened in Kursk could possibly interest him. Seen from Siberia, however, even Kursk had its points.

  ‘Dear Dmitri,’ Igor Stepanovich wrote, ‘there have been some unexpected changes here. Peter Ivanovich has been transferred to another post. So has Novikov. So, even more surprisingly, has Porfiri Porfirovich, you know, the man who chairs the Special Tribunal. It all happened very quickly. One day they were here, the next day they weren’t.’

  ‘I just wanted to know’, wrote Sonya, ‘whether you have detected any signs of spiritual growth yet? You mustn’t feel discouraged if you haven’t. They will come, Dmitri, I assure you. All the books say so. Just don’t harden your heart, Dmitri. Otherwise it will take years.’

  ‘Dear Dmitri,’ wrote Vera Samsonova, ‘I am writing only to keep you informed. You may remember that in my last letter I mentioned a demonstration that had occurred outside a local tannery. Well, I have had a chance to speak to some of the demonstrators. One of them had fallen ill – the conditions in the prison are appalling – and demanded to see a woman doctor. I asked them about Marfa Shumin. It certainly seems to be the same one. So I asked them why she was prepared to see an innocent woman go to Siberia instead of her.

  ‘Well, they hummed and hawed. Some said that it was right for Anna Semeonova to sacrifice herself since Marfa Shumin was worth more to the cause. I said, that wasn’t the point. The point was, was it right for Shumin to sacrifice someone else for the cause. They seemed to think, I’m afraid, that it was. What did I expect Shumin to do? they asked. Give herself up? No, I said, just come out with a public statement that she is free and someone else has gone to Siberia in her place.

  ‘They didn’t seem to think that was likely, but promised to try and get a message to Shumin. And, you know, Dmitri, I think they may have done, for some funny things have happened here. Peter Ivanovich has been moved and so has Novikov. So has the Chairman of the Special Administrative Tribunal that actually sentenced her.

  ‘Of course, it could simply just be that it has taken all this time for Prince Dolgorukov to find out that there is a place called Kursk, where some funny things have been going on …’

  Methodosius appeared to be in trouble again. A guard was calling out names and men were lining up in front of the gate-house. Methodosius was among them.

  ‘What’s this?’ Dmitri asked Timofei.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ the Milk-Drinker assured him. ‘They’re just looking for vodka, that’s all.’

  Some forty men had lined up.

  ‘They won’t find anything,’ said Timofei. ‘They never do.’

  Methodosius, certainly, seemed unconcerned.

  The guard had begun a roll call. As each man’s name was called out he took one step forward, said, ‘Yes, Your Honour’, and stepped back into line. Dmitri watched, not exactly with interest, but not idly either. Roll calls were in a way at the heart of this case and he wanted to see again how they were done.

  There was something odd about some of the names. He listened more attentively. A surprising number of the men were called, or claimed to be called, Nepomyashchi: Don’tremember. There was an Ivan Don’tremember, a Mustapha Don’tremember, a Fritz Don’tremember, an Abram Don’tremember and several Don’tremembers from down in the Caucasus somewhere.

  ‘Don’tremember?’ said Dmitri.

  ‘They don’t like to give their real names,’ said Timofei.

  ‘But surely the authorities know them?’

  He couldn’t recollect ever seeing a Don’tremember on a prison list at Kursk. The Court wouldn’t have stood for any of that nonsense! Prisoners were charged under their proper names.

  ‘Well, no, they don’t.’

  ‘They must have been on their original papers.’

  ‘And were, Excellency, and were!’ butted in a prison official who was standing nearby. Strictly speaking, he shouldn’t be saying anything to Dmitri, but he couldn’t stand by and allow slights to be cast on the administration.

  ‘You see, Your Excellency, these are returners.’

  ‘Returners?’

  ‘Yes. They passed through our hands once and were sent on to camps in Further Siberia. But then the rascals escaped and set off on their way home. Well, it’s all right when you’re out on the steppe and there’s no one about only you and the partridges, but here in the west we’ve got patrols out and not many get through, I can tell you! They get picked up and brought here.

  ‘So you see, Your Excellency,’ continued the official confidently, ‘that’s how it is they don’t have papers. Their documents are in the camps they were sent to out in Further Siberia. And we can’t match them up with them because they won’t tell us their names, the rascals!’

  ‘Surely there is a list of people who have escaped, isn’t there? And couldn’t you find a match, for some of them at any rate, by
description?’

  ‘But, Excellency, there are so many of them!’

  ‘So many of them?’

  ‘Well, yes, Excellency, look at all these Don’tremembers here!’

  ‘Why won’t they give their names?’

  ‘So that we won’t know how long they were sentenced to. It’s not worth the bother of finding out, you see, Your Excellency, so what we do is simply give them all five years.’

  ‘And that’s worth it, is it? Five years!’

  ‘Between you and me, Your Excellency, it’s worth it for quite a lot of them.’

  He came out and stood beside Dmitri in a companionable way, instructions about keeping distance forgotten.

  ‘The fact is, Your Excellency, some of them make quite a career of it.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Escaping. Yes, I know it sounds odd. But some of them get into the way of it. No sooner are they in than they’re out. They’re like gypsies, you see, Your Excellency. That’s where they like to be, out on the steppe, with the wind blowing and the great sky above. All right, in the end it comes to nothing, because sooner or later they’ll get picked up. None of them’s ever going to get back to Mother Russia. But I don’t think that bothers them, really, because deep down that’s not what they’re looking for. They just want to be out on the steppe with the wind in their face and the sun on their back. They’re wanderers, Your Excellency, that’s what they are: wanderers.’

  Methodosius was a Don’tremember.

  When the roll call was completed, the prisoners were left standing there while the guards went into the huts. Methodosius said afterwards that they had turned everything over. They had not found anything, nor, of course, had they expected to. The search was intended, Dmitri suspected, merely to remind the Artel that things could get awkward if the guards weren’t paid off. After a while the guards returned empty-handed but unbothered and the line was dismissed.

  Methodosius came towards him.

  ‘There’s been a bit of a hitch,’ he said.

  ‘Hitch?’

  ‘Yes. Over your visit to the infirmary. The visit’s still on – it’ll be tomorrow night – but they can’t find this girl of yours.’