Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers Read online

‘Ah!’ said Dmitri and Novikov. ‘A woman!’

  ‘Who wasn’t a bit like Anna Semeonova.’

  ‘Disguise?’ hinted Dmitri.

  ‘She’d have to disguise her height as well,’ said the caretaker caustically. ‘She was about half the height of Anna Semeonova. And her hair. Anna Semeonova is a true blonde, a real Russian, you might say, whereas this girl’s hair was as dark as a Tatar’s. Which is not surprising,’ said the caretaker, ‘since that’s what she was.’

  Peter Profimovich laughed.

  Dmitri refused to be put off.

  ‘You saw her face?’

  ‘We certainly did. Both of us. That’s right, isn’t it?’ he appealed.

  Peter Profimovich grunted.

  ‘Cheekbones and all,’ said the caretaker. ‘If she was Anna Semeonova then I’m Tsar of Russia!’

  ‘You watch out!’ said Novikov. ‘We don’t want that kind of talk!’

  ‘Saving His Reverence!’ added the caretaker, crossing himself automatically.

  ‘Anyone else?’ demanded Dmitri.

  ‘I’ve checked them all,’ said Novikov seriously.

  ‘She must have gone out the back, then,’ said Dmitri.

  ‘Dmitri Alexandrovich!’ The caretaker bent over, convulsed. ‘Forgive me, Dmitri Alexandrovich, but you don’t know what you’re saying! There’s mud a foot deep – ’

  ‘I saw it!’ snapped Dmitri.

  ‘There’s guards on the gate, there’s soldiers everywhere. And then there are all those brutes! A respectable girl like Anna Semeonova? Forgive me, sir, you’ve got to be joking!’

  ‘She couldn’t have gone through the gate,’ said Novikov positively. ‘The guards would have seen her.’

  ‘And don’t tell me they wouldn’t have remembered!’ said the caretaker, with a knowing wink at Peter Profimovich.

  ‘Shut up!’ said Dmitri. ‘Well, I don’t know how she did it,’ he said to Novikov, ‘but I’m sure that’s what she did. Because what else could have happened?’

  ‘It’s true,’ admitted Novikov, ‘she’s got to be either here or not here.’

  ‘She’s somewhere else,’ said Dmitri. ‘And almost certainly with someone else. Which brings us to the question of friends. I’ve been talking to her parents and got a list.’

  He showed it to Novikov.

  ‘You’re the Chief of Police. Where would you suggest I made a start? I’m looking especially for a political connection.’

  ‘Political?’ said Novikov doubtfully. He looked at the list. ‘I don’t think you’ll find that any of these are what you might call political. They’re all quite respectable.’

  And that was basically the problem with Larissa Philipovna. She would have been so much happier talking about ponies than about politics. She seemed to Dmitri to be unbelievably young. How she could be an intimate of someone as poised and elegant as Anna Semeonova (who was improving all the time in his recollection), Dmitri could not think. If the image that Anna Semeonova had left with him was that of an ice-cool nordic heroine, the picture that her friend presented was that of a puppy in pigtails.

  She received him, perched anxiously on the edge of her chair, in what her mother irritatingly referred to as ‘the salon’. Oh, yes, (wide-eyed) she was Anna Semeonova’s friend, her very closest friend. They saw each other all the time. They visited each other’s houses almost every other day. Or used to. They wrote verses in each other’s albums. Would Dmitri Alexandrovich care to …?

  Dmitri winced and handed the book back.

  Used to?

  Well, yes. Just the last week or two, or perhaps it wasn’t even weeks but months, they hadn’t seen quite as much of each other. Anna Semeonova was studying.

  Studying? What?

  Books. Larissa Philipovna lowered her voice. This was serious; indeed, possibly more than serious: grave. Terribly difficult ones. She had shown some to her once and Larissa Philipovna had not been able to understand a word. Even Anna Semeonova herself had found them difficult. She had said so.

  Then why had she taken to reading them?

  Oh, it was because she was so very clever. She wanted to know about things. And why things were the way they were.

  Politics?

  Politics! Larissa Philipovna was aghast. No, no, definitely not! Anna Semeonova wasn’t that kind of girl, not that kind of girl at all! Larissa Philipovna was sure –

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Dmitri. ‘I just wondered. Now, tell me, was there anyone she liked to talk to about all the reading? Any new friends, perhaps?’

  Well, there was that new doctor, Vera Samsonova –

  ‘Ah, Vera Samsonova?’ said Dmitri, pricking up his ears.

  She had gone to her once to ask her about something in a book she had been reading.

  ‘Something medical?’

  ‘It was to do with numbers,’ said Larissa Philipovna hesitantly.

  Ah!

  ‘The Health Question?’ Larissa Philipovna put forward, emboldened.

  ‘I see. And Anna Semeonova called on her, did she?’

  ‘Yes. And she was very nice. She told her everything she wanted to know and a lot more besides. And she said she could come again if she wanted. And I think she did go again. Only …’

  ‘Only what?’

  ‘Only I don’t think that makes Vera Samsonova a friend, does it, Dmitri Alexandrovich? Not a real friend, the way Anna and I are friends? I mean, she’s so much older. She couldn’t be, could she?’

  Blue eyes looked up trustingly at Dmitri.

  ‘Not a real friend,’ said Dmitri, and immediately kicked himself. Why had he let her wheedle that out of him?

  ‘I know,’ breathed Larissa Philipovna.

  ‘There are different kinds of friendship,’ he said sternly.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Larissa Philipovna.

  This examination was not going the way he had intended.

  ‘Tell me about her friends,’ he said firmly. ‘Did she have a boyfriend, for instance?’

  ‘Oh, Dmitri Alexandrovich!’ she cried, and collapsed in a fit of giggles.

  The door at the end of the room opened slightly. It was that bitch of a mother, he was sure.

  Nettled, he moved closer to Larissa Philipovna. She was not altogether unattractive. Or, at least, she wouldn’t be in about ten years’ time. Physically, that was. Mentally, of course …

  ‘Dmitri Alexandrovich!’

  ‘Would you care for some tea, Dmitri Alexandrovich?’ said the bitch of a mother, coming definitely into the room.

  Vera Samsonova, tracked down at last to the small room she used as a dispensary, regarded him unwelcomingly.

  ‘Yes?’

  Dmitri declared himself.

  ‘I’m sorry I missed you last night,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t miss me. I didn’t go.’

  ‘I thought that Sonya – ’

  ‘She asked me. I wasn’t free.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘In any case, I probably wouldn’t have gone.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a pity. Why not, may I ask?’

  ‘I think such gatherings are a bit beside the point,’ said Vera Samsonova. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Beside what point?’ asked Dmitri cautiously.

  ‘If you’re looking for intellectual involvement you’re not going to find it there.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. The people are very agreeable – ’

  ‘Agreeable,’ said Vera Samsonova, ‘but not very interesting.’

  ‘Considering that we live in Kursk – ’ Dmitri began.

  ‘It’s not where they live,’ said Vera Samsonova, ‘it’s the kind of people they are. Dilettante. And naturally they want to talk about dilettante-ish things.’

  ‘Art?’ said Dmitri, annoyed. ‘Culture? Where Russia is going?’

  ‘Perhaps the subjects are not dilettante,’ Vera conceded. ‘It’s just the way they are talked about.’

  ‘Ah, well, there I agree with you – ’

  ‘In te
rms of generalities. You ask where Russia is going; not what it ought to be doing about sewage.’

  ‘Sewage!’

  ‘Yes, sewage. And farming and engineering and taxation – ’

  ‘Taxation!’

  ‘Taxation.’

  ‘Boring!’ said Dmitri, rallying.

  ‘Real!’ said Vera Samsonova defiantly.

  ‘Absolute nonsense!’

  ‘You see?’ said Vera. ‘Prejudiced!’

  ‘Not prejudiced at all,’ said Dmitri: ‘rational. And surely these things can be discussed rationally. That’s the point of our gatherings.’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong people there,’ said Vera. ‘You ought to have surveyors and agronomists – ’

  ‘Sewage experts?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘You’ll be saying doctors next!’

  Vera considered. Then, unexpectedly, her face dimpled and broke into a smile. Up till now, Dmitri had attributed to her all the charm of a pair of scissors.

  ‘Well, perhaps not doctors. At least, not the kind of doctors we have in Kursk!’

  ‘There you are! Come and give us a chance to argue your points.’

  ‘Maybe. It would certainly be better than arguing them here. Now, look, I’ve got work to do. Haven’t you?’

  ‘I’m doing it,’ said Dmitri, injured. ‘I’m here on business.’

  ‘You are? Well, it’s a pretty relaxed kind of business compared with mine, I can tell you. Or perhaps it’s just that our approaches are different. You prefer a more general one. What was it exactly that you came for?’

  ‘I came to ask about Anna Semeonova.’

  Vera Samsonova put down the burette she had been holding and turned to give him her full attention.

  ‘Has she been found?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s good news in a way. I was afraid – ’ she gave a slight shake of her shoulders – ‘that the next time I might see her was when she was brought here.’

  ‘Do you have any particular reason for fearing that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She might just have run away.’

  ‘She might.’

  ‘If she had, would that surprise you?’

  ‘Would it surprise me?’ Vera Samsonova considered. ‘No, to the extent that she is an independent girl and capable of independent action. Yes, to the extent that she would have had to have had a reason.’

  ‘And you don’t know of one?’

  ‘No. Was there one?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.’

  ‘Well, I’m not the person to ask. I only know her slightly. She’s come to see me once or twice recently to ask me about something that she’s been reading.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Oh, it was a book about infantile mortality. A bit out of date. But there were some comparative statistics she couldn’t understand – not the numbers, but the medical terms used.’

  ‘Nothing political?’

  ‘Political?’ Vera Samsonova stared at him.

  ‘Well, I just wondered. She disappeared from the Law Courts, you see, where she had been to watch a case being tried, and I wondered what had taken her there. Her parents thought mere idle curiosity, but I wondered …’

  ‘What did you wonder, Dmitri Alexandrovich?’

  ‘If it was an interest in justice.’

  ‘And that makes it political?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Vera Samsonova was silent. Then she said:

  ‘We did not talk about that, Dmitri Alexandrovich. We talked about medical terminology. But, yes, in so far as the terminology was to do with perinatal mortality and the statistics were to do with comparisons between Russia and other countries and between rich cities like Moscow and poor ones like Kursk, yes, questions of justice were implicit, and, yes, if you press the questions far enough they do require answers which in the end are political. Was that what you wanted to ask me, Dmitri Alexandrovich? Because if it was, you’ve had your answer and now I suggest you leave.’

  ‘Don’t get annoyed!’ said Dmitri.

  ‘Well, I am annoyed, because it sounds as if you’re trying to get me to incriminate myself.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Dmitri. ‘It’s just the way lawyers talk. Or, at least, Examining Magistrates talk.’

  ‘It’s the assumptions that lie behind what you say!’

  ‘I’m not assuming anything. I’m trying to find out what happened to Anna Semeonova. At first I thought something dreadful must have happened. But if it had, I think by now we would have found the body. So perhaps she went off of her own accord. But why and where to? Or, rather, who to? A boyfriend? But everyone assures me that is not so. Some other friend, then? We have been round them all. And in the end, Vera Samsonova, I have come to you.’

  ‘I hardly count as a friend.’

  ‘That will be a relief to Larissa Philipovna. But since it is clear that Anna Semeonova did not come to you, it means that we have once again drawn a blank, in that respect at least. But perhaps you can help me in another way. I ask myself why she could have gone off. Now, you and everyone else say that she is a serious girl; and she was at the Law Courts. Might there not be a connection between that and her disappearance?’

  ‘Why did you ask me about politics?’

  ‘Because that could be the connection.’

  ‘You think she has run off to be a revolutionary?’ said Vera derisively.

  ‘Well, young people from good families do sometimes go off these days. Not to become a revolutionary but to work for a cause. Giving out literature, addressing meetings, organizing with others – ’

  Vera Semeonova shook her head.

  ‘Anyone less likely to become a political activist than Anna Semeonova,’ she said firmly, ‘you never saw. For that kind of thing you require a degree of hardness, perhaps, even a degree of hate. Anna Semeonova wasn’t like that at all. She was a sweet, gentle girl, full of sympathy for others.’

  ‘All right,’ said Dmitri, ‘perhaps I’ve got it wrong. I don’t know the girl, I’ve hardly even spoken to her. Let me try something else on you; you said she was full of sympathy for others. Is it possible that she could have gone off in some daft quixotic way to work for the poor? In a monastery, perhaps – no, not monastery, her parents said she’d gone off the Church, but something like that?’

  ‘A sort of personal “Going to the People”?’ asked Vera, interested.

  She was referring to the great movement of some years earlier which had sent hundreds of idealistic young people out into the countryside to work for the improvement of the poor; an initiative that the poor had not universally appreciated.

  ‘That sort of thing,’ said Dmitri, who had sided with the poor on this matter.

  ‘She said nothing to me,’ said Vera.

  ‘Oh, well …’

  But Vera was thinking.

  ‘It’s a long shot,’ she said, pulling a prescription pad towards her, ‘but I can give you the name of a family. I mentioned them to her once – it was the last time she came – when we were talking about the way in which conditions contribute to infant mortality. You know, drunken father, ignorant mother, poverty, dirt, dozens of children already. Anna could hardly believe some of the examples I gave. She asked if there was anyone I knew whom she could go and see, so I told her about the Stichkovs. She wouldn’t come to any harm, the man is always unconscious and the woman is warm and kindly, quite motherly, really, in fact, far too much so – ’

  Dmitri felt oppressed by the sheer fecundity. One babe was at Mrs Stichkov’s breast, two, hardly bigger, at her feet. Elsewhere in the room there appeared to be three more infants and there were certainly at least two outside. From time to time one of the children at her feet hauled himself up Mrs Stichkov’s skirt and applied himself to her free breast.

  ‘It’s food, after all,’ said Mrs Stichkov, ‘and there’s not much of that about with Ivan not working.’

  Iva
n was certainly not working. He was stretched on his back in a far corner of the room snoring loudly. Even at this distance, Dmitri could smell the vodka.

  ‘He doesn’t work much,’ Mrs Stichkov acknowledged.

  Except, thought Dmitri, when he roused himself to perform his conjugal duties, which appeared to be pretty frequently.

  ‘Not since he’s hurt his back,’ supplemented Mrs Stichkov.

  ‘Ah, he’s hurt his back?’

  ‘Carrying the loads. He can’t carry a thing now. Not even the water. You need a man for that, the buckets are that heavy! Anna Semeonova tried to help me once, but she couldn’t even lift the pail, not when it was full. You need a man, really, and she’s just a slip of a girl.’

  ‘She tried to help you, did she?’

  ‘Yes, Your Excellency. She said, “It’s not right, not with you expecting and all.” But I said, “Lots of things are not right, and if I don’t do it, who will?” “I will,” she said, and she tried, but, bless her, she couldn’t even lift it. “You look after Vasya”, I said, “and I will do it.” “It’s not right,” she said, “not with your time so close,” and she just stood there. And then Marfa Nikolaevna came along and said, “No, it’s not right. That idle man of hers ought to do it, but he won’t lift a finger.” She’s got a sharp tongue, that woman has. “I’ll find someone, Mrs Stichkov,” she said. And off she goes and comes back with one of the men from her place. Mind you, he wasn’t that much better than Anna Semeonova, nor much bigger, neither, not with him being a Jew. Still, what do I care about that. I said to Ivan, “At least he gave me a hand, which is more than can be said for some people – ”’

  Mrs Stichkov shifted the baby from one breast to the other, gently detaching the other child as she did so.

  ‘– And then he gives me a cuff!’ she said cheerfully. ‘I don’t mind, it’s not much of one – he can hardly stand up, he’s that drunk – but Anna Semeonova gets very angry. I can see she’s going to say something, so I say quickly: “Don’t mind him, love, it’s just his way!” But she doesn’t like it, I can see that, and she goes out, and a little later I hear her talking to Marfa Nikolaevna. Which is all very well, I’m not saying that the woman is wrong, but you have to watch out with her. Sometimes it’s better to let things rest easy. But she won’t, you see, she’s always got to out with it, and when it’s man and wife, it doesn’t pay to meddle.’