Dmitri and the One-Legged Lady

‘Then we have something in common,’ said the Governor’s wife, giving Dmitri her arm and leading the way into lunch. ‘Our side of the family have always been gentlemen.’

‘But Mr Kameron no longer lives on his estate. Mother,’ said the tall dark girl. ‘He is a lawyer.’

‘Well one has to be something. I suppose.’

‘And how do you find the law, Mr Kameron?’ asked the dark girl.

‘It is at an interesting stage in Russia at the moment. Miss Mitkin. It could go either forward or backward. Until recently, as I’m sure you know, the only law we had was what the Tsar decreed.’

‘Well, isn’t that enough?’ said the Governor’s wife.

‘Not always. What if the Tsar himself does something wrong?’

‘But is that likely?’

‘Not the Tsar himself, perhaps; but what about those who serve him?’

‘The Government, you mean?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Governors?’ said the Governor.

‘Well –’

‘These are radical notions, Mr Kameron,’ said the Governor heavily.

‘Mr Kameron is, of course, very young,’ said the Governor’s wife.

‘But in touch with the new tone of the times, don’t you think?’ said her daughter.

‘Ah, the tone of the times!’ said the Governor’s wife, steering the conversation into safer channels.

After lunch the two women retired and the Governor led Dmitri into a pleasant room which seemed to serve as a second sitting room. Its walls were covered with icons.

‘Quite nice, aren’t they?’ said the Governor, seeing, and mistaking, Dmitri’s interest.

‘And some of them are not without value. They’re all domestic icons, of course. Not,’ he smiled, ‘like the Lady whose acquaintance you have recently been making.’

2

‘Dmitri Alexandrovich,’ said the Governor in a fatherly tone, ‘– a little more cognac? – are you religious?’

The question caught Dmitri off guard. The fact was that this was a tricky point in the Kameron family. For generations the Kamerons, as loyal servants of the Tsar, had been members of the Orthodox Russian Church. Then with Dmitri’s grandfather the line had hiccuped. Awkward as always, he had announced that he had become a Freethinker, with the result that he had been dismissed from the Tsar’s service. His son, awkward, too, and determined, as all male Kamerons, to quarrel with his father, had conversely announced his return to the faith; only the faith that he had elected to return to was that of his Scottish ancestors. Since, however, there were no Presbyterian churches in Russia at the time, the genuineness of his return had not been able to be tested and while the Tsar’s officials were working this out he had been allowed to continue in the Tsar’s service and had been still serving at the time of his unfortunately early death. All this had left Dmitri in some difficulty as to his own position.

‘Well –’

‘My advice,’ said the Governor,’– another cognac? – is to leave unto God the things that are God’s and unto man the things that are man’s.’

‘Seems reasonable,’ said Dmitri.

‘That is what it says in the Bible. Or more or less. And I have always found it a sound maxim to follow. At least as far as the Russian Church is concerned.’

‘Good idea,’ said Dmitri. The last cognac had left him rather blurred.

‘I commend the principle to you as a good one to adopt. Especially in the case of the One-Legged Lady.’

‘But that’s just what has not happened!’ cried Dmitri. ‘Man has just walked in and helped himself to –’

‘I was not speaking of others,’ said the Governor, annoyed. ‘I was speaking of you.’

The haze descended again.

‘Of me? Oh, yes, well –’

‘And of the One-Legged Lady.’

The One-Legged Lady? Who the hell was she? It sounded intriguing. He must look her up some time. But, wait a minute –

‘The One-Legged Lady?’

‘Is no business of yours. It will only lead to trouble. You mark my words, Dmitri Alexandrovich, I have a nose for such things. You keep right out of it. Assume a wisdom if you have it not. That’s what the English poet, Shakespeare, says. Or more or less. Wise man, Shakespeare. What he doesn’t know about the Russian Church isn’t worth knowing. You keep right out of it. That’s my advice, Dmitri Alexandrovich. Keep right out of it.’

He had invited a few friends round that evening to celebrate his promotion to Assistant Procurator. Unfortunately, their congratulations fell short of the whole-hearted.

‘You’ve let them buy you off, Dmitri,’ said Vera Samsonova, never one to shrink from telling other people the truth about themselves.

‘The surprise is that you were prepared to let yourself go so cheaply,’ said Igor Stepanovich.

Dmitri fired up.

‘If you tried to sell yourself, you wouldn’t get an offer!’ he retorted.

It had been a hard decision on his return from Siberia whether to stay in state service or to try to pursue an independent career at the St Petersburg Bar.

‘But to agree to work for them!’ said Sonya reproachfully. ‘After all they’ve done!’

Sonya had recently returned from Europe, where she had drunk deep of the liberal notions that the little group of friends liked to meet regularly to discuss.

‘And you’ve said!’ put in Vera Samsonova.

‘If you want to improve them,’ said Dmitri, employing one of the arguments that Prince Dolgorukov had used to persuade him, ‘the best way is from the inside.’

‘If you want to improve your career,’ said Vera Samsonova nastily, ‘the best way is from the inside.’

The thought, it must be admitted, had crossed Dmitri’s own mind. It was all very well for the others to tell him to abandon his career in the State Prosecution Service and work for the greater good of mankind. The trouble was that mankind was unlikely to pay him; and if you were a young lawyer struggling to make your way in Tsarist Russia of the eighteen nineties, that was quite a consideration.

It was not that he was against working for the greater good: it was just that he wanted to eat while he was doing it. So when Prince Dolgorukov had approached him after that little business of the massacre at Tiumen, he had been willing to lend at least a quarter of an ear.

‘You will rise more quickly than most,’ the Prince had assured him. ‘A glittering career awaits you!’

Unfortunately, it appeared to await him at Kursk. Wasn’t that sacrifice enough, thought Dmitri, bridling?

His friends sensed that perhaps they had gone too far.

‘I am sure Dmitri will do his best,’ said Sonya conciliatorily.

‘Yes, but for whom?’ said Vera Samsonova.

‘I do think that’s unkind, Vera,’ said Sonya severely.

‘Yes,’ said Igor Stepanovich. ‘It’s not surprising if Dmitri gets outwitted by someone like Prince Dolgorukov.’

Dmitri bit back his reply. With Dmitri biting his tongue and Vera Samsonova biting hers, the rest of the evening passed off amicably.

Dmitri told them about the One-Legged Lady.

Why on earth, asked Vera, would anyone in their right senses want to steal an icon? And in particular the Holy Icon of the One-Legged Lady of Kursk?

‘Because it is encrusted with diamonds,’ said Igor Stepanovich.

‘Because it has miraculous powers of healing,’ said Sonya, who had clearly imbibed insufficiently of the sceptical currents of the West during her stay in Europe.

Vera frowned. Russian intellectual society was sharply divided between westernizers, who saw in Western liberalism the best hope for the salvation of Russian society, and slavophils, whose views were exactly opposite. The little group of friends were strongly westernizers.

The group fell to discussing the general problem posed by religion for the development in Russia of a truly modern society. Sonya claimed that there was no problem since even Europe was not perfect and what was needed was a marriage of the best of Russia, which was its deep spirituality, with the best of the West, which was its progressive ideas. Vera said that no such marriage was possible because the two were contradictory. And Dmitri, after his fifth glass of vodka, heard himself maintaining that what Russia needed was a Dissolution of the Monasteries on the Scottish model (he had never been quite clear about the difference between Scotland and England).

The consensus was that religion was one of the things that was holding Russia back. As for the One-Legged Lady, the general view – put most forcibly by Vera Samsonova – was that if some old relic that smacked of superstition had gone missing, then so much the better. And what a relatively enlightened person like Dmitri was doing trying to track it down, the group, with a return to its earlier doubts about the genuineness of his commitment to progress, simply failed to see.

Even if Dmitri had been minded to return to the Monastery, he would have been unable to, for the Procurator had bespoken the sleigh for the rest of the week for a round of social visits.

‘But the One-Legged Lady –’

‘That old icon?’ said the Procurator offhandedly, looking up from his newspaper, ‘I’d forget about it if I were you.’

‘But –’

‘In any case, I can’t spare you, I’m afraid,’ said the Procurator.

Dmitri was surprised. The Procurator had always been able to spare him before. Only too readily.

‘Too much going on here.’ The Procurator waved a vague hand.

Since the only work that Dmitri was aware of were the cases that the Procurator had passed on to him, he was even more surprised. They were all of the ‘she-put-a-spell-on-my-cow’ sort. One of the duties of the Procurator’s office was to assess potential charges and decide if they merited further investigation. Dmitri had taken one look at these and decided that they did not.

The Procurator glanced at his watch and put the newspaper down.

‘You’re needed here,’ he said in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘I have to go out. I’m having lunch with Marputin.’

Dmitri shrugged his shoulders and settled down to reading the latest novel from St Petersburg. At lunch time, feeling the need for a breath of fresh air, he went out for a walk and in the main street he met Ludmilla Mitkin. She was dressed in Cossack boots, a long fur coat and a small astrakhan hat and looked absolutely ravishing: a considerable improvement, thought Dmitri, on what usually walked down the main street in Kursk.

‘Hello,’ she said, ‘would you like to give me some legal advice?’

Dmitri thought he would, and they turned into the park, where old women were sweeping the snow from the paths with brooms made of birch twigs. It had frozen hard the previous night after a partial thaw and the trees were heavy with icicles. They sparkled in the sun like chandeliers.

The last thing that Dmitri had expected was that she really would want legal advice. Unfortunately, she did.

‘My mother’s family,’ she said, ‘had an estate up in the north. It was where the family originally started and had been in our possession for nearly three hundred years. When the serfs were freed, we kept the house and a little land but agreed to pass most of it to the local peasants. It was the same kind of settlement as elsewhere. The Government lent them the money to pay for the land and they had to repay it over forty-nine years. Not surprisingly, most of them have been unable to keep up the repayments and now someone is going round offering to take over the repayments for them in return for the land. What I want to know is: is this legal?’

‘In principle, yes; but a lot depends on who has title to the land. If the title was passed to individuals, then the man has every right to purchase it. Usually, however, it was not passed to individuals; ownership was vested in the village community as a whole. If that was the case then it would be much harder for the man to get his hands on it.’

‘Why would it be harder?’

‘Because everyone in the village would have to agree. And there is no way,’ said Dmitri, ‘that everyone in a village, not in a Russian village, at any rate, is going to agree.’

‘Not even if they were all offered money? Lots of it?’

‘The argument would be very persuasive. Even so, there would be someone who wouldn’t agree. If only because he was holding out for more.’

‘There is no legal obstacle, however?’

‘Only that consent has to be found.’

Ludmilla looked cast down.

‘I was hoping there would be,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid not. Why were you hoping?’

She hesitated.

‘The person who is buying up the title has promised to return Yabloki Sad to the family.’

‘Well, that’s very nice,’ said Dmitri.

‘In return for something.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Dmitri. ‘What?’

‘Me.’

When Dmitri got back to the Court House he found Maximov, the Chief of Police, waiting at the top of the steps. He rushed down to meet him.

‘Dmitri Alexandrovich! Thank God you’re here! Have you any idea where Boris Petrovich is?’

‘Still at lunch, I expect.’

‘When will he be back?’

‘Tomorrow, I would think.’

‘Tomorrow!’ moaned the Chief of Police. He seized Dmitri by the arm. ‘You’ve no idea – I suppose you’ve no idea – who he’s having lunch with?’

‘Marputin, I believe.’

‘Marputin! Then he’ll be at the Metropole. Sasha, you run to the Metropole –’

‘What’s going on?’ asked Dmitri.

‘I need the sleigh. There’s some trouble at the Monastery about an icon –’

‘Mind if I come along?’ said Dmitri.

The smudge in front of the gates was bigger. From far off across the snow Dmitri could see the huge crowd.

‘I’m not going through that lot!’ said the driver.

‘Go round the back!’ instructed Maximov.

‘They always keep the gates locked!’

‘They’ll open them when they see us coming.’

‘I hope they do!’

At the last moment the driver swung off the road and began to head round the side of the Monastery. Some of the small figures, guessing his intention, started running.

The driver whipped the horses.

They were round the back of the buildings now and could see the rear gates. They remained obstinately closed.

A group of dark figures came blundering towards them through the snow.

The gates suddenly swung open.

The sleigh dashed through.

Almost before they had passed the gates, they crashed shut again.

‘So what’s all this about, then. Father?’ asked Maximov.

‘It’s the One-Legged Lady. They don’t like her being missing.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose you like it, either.’

‘They’re blaming us.’

‘Ridiculous!’ snorted Maximov. ‘They need a good kick up the ass, that’s what!’

‘There’s someone whipping them up,’ said the Father Superior.

‘Oh, is there?’ said Maximov.

He marched down to the gates.

‘Now, lads,’ he said through the bars, ‘what’s the trouble? We can’t have this, you know, or else we’ll have to get the Cossacks here. You don’t want that, do you?’

‘They’ve flogged off the Old Lady!’ shouted someone from the back of the crowd.

‘Nonsense! No one’s flogged her off. Someone’s nicked her, that’s all.’

‘Yes, and we know who it was!’

‘No, you don’t. You think you do, but you don’t. Someone’s been whispering a lot of nonsense in your ear.’

‘She’s missing, isn’t she? That’s not nonsense!’

‘And we’re looking for her,’ said Maximov. ‘That’s not nonsense, either.’

‘You’re taking your time about it!’

‘Well, it takes time.’

‘Especially when you’re not looking too hard!’

‘Why are we listening to him?’ said someone contemptuously.

‘You’d do better to listen to me,’ said Maximov, ‘than to listen to some of the people you’ve been listening to!’

But the mood of the crowd was against him. He tried again but could hardly make his words heard in the general uproar.

‘The Cossacks –’

‘Bugger the Cossacks!’

‘Let them come! We’ll bloody show them!’

‘He’s always on about the Cossacks, this one! What about the Old Lady?’

‘We’ll find her, lads!’ shouted Maximov desperately. ‘Just give us time!’

‘You’ve had three days! How much more do you want?’

‘It takes time –’

‘It’d take you time. It’d take you for ever!’

The crowd surged forwards against the bars. Maximov stepped back hurriedly.

‘Listen, lads –’

‘We don’t want to listen to you. It’s a waste of time.’

‘He’s in it with the others!’

A missile hit the gates, and then another. Several people caught hold of the bars and began to shake them.

‘Lads–’

Maximov’s eye fell suddenly on Dmitri.

‘Lads!’ he shouted with sudden inspiration. ‘Lads, you’ve got it wrong. It’s not me!’

‘What do you mean, it’s not you?’

‘It’s not me that’s in charge of looking for the Old Lady.’

‘Who is it, then?’

Maximov pointed at Dmitri.

‘Him,’ he said.

‘Him! What does he know about it?’

‘A bloody schoolboy!’

The shouting started again.

‘Is that all they can manage to send us?’ called out someone derisively. ‘A fat-assed Chief of Police and a pretty Barin so wet behind the ears that he doesn’t know his mother from his girl friend?’

There was a burst of laughter.

‘Now that’s just where you’re wrong!’ shouted Maximov. ‘He may look green but he knows a thing or two. Have any of you heard of the Tiumen Massacre?’

‘We’ve heard of Tiumen.’

Who hadn’t heard of Tiumen? It was the great forwarding prison for convicts on their way to Siberia.

‘Yes, but the Massacre?’

‘I’ve heard of the Massacre,’ said a voice from the back.

‘Right, then. Well, this young Barin was the one who brought it out into the open.’

There was a sudden silence.

‘Is that right?’ someone asked Dmitri directly.

‘Yes.’

There was another silence.

‘Come on, lads,’ said Maximov persuasively, ‘it’s either him or the Cossacks. Now which is it to be? Leave it to him or have the Cossacks here?’

‘We don’t want the bloody Cossacks,’ said someone.

‘No,’ said Maximov, ‘I agree with you. We don’t want the Cossacks. So are you going to leave it to him?’

He paused.

‘We could give him a chance, I suppose,’ said someone reluctantly.

‘Give him a chance? Well, that’s very wise of you. Now, look, lads. I want you all to go home and quieten down. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you anything else. Give him a chance and if it doesn’t work out, well –’

‘And so, your Excellencies,’ said Maximov virtuously, ‘I decided I had to take action.’

‘Quite right,’ said the Governor.

Boris Petrovich nodded approvingly.

‘If you don’t jump on these things right away, I said to myself, they get out of hand.’

‘Well, that’s it.’

‘You’ve got to stamp on them. At once!’

‘Nip them in the bud.’

‘While there’s still time.’

‘Exactly so. Your Honours. Oh, I know there are those who say that these things have got to be handled with kid gloves. But when you’ve had a bit of experience, you know that it doesn’t do to hang around; you’ve got to go in hard!’

‘Absolutely!’ said the Governor.

‘Good man!’ murmured Boris Petrovich.

Maximov swelled.

‘And so. Your Excellencies,’ he said, ‘as soon as I got back I sent for the Cossacks.’

‘You what?’ said Dmitri.

‘Sent for the Cossacks.’

‘The very thing!’ said the Governor.

‘No doubt about it,’ said Boris Petrovich.

‘You sent for the Cossacks?’

‘I did.’

‘But – but – you made a deal with them!’

‘Deal?’ said the Governor.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that!’

‘But you did!’ Dmitri insisted. ‘You said that it was either the Cossacks or me and that you wouldn’t run for the Cossacks if –’

‘Pardon me, Your Honour, I don’t think I actually said that. That’s what they may have understood, Your Honour, but that’s a different thing.’

‘A very different thing!’ said the Governor.

‘In any case,’ said Boris Petrovich, ‘if there was an agreement, it was plainly made under duress and that certainly wouldn’t hold up in a court of law. You’re a lawyer yourself, Dmitri Alexandrovich. You must know that.’

‘But it was deception!’ cried Dmitri. ‘A trick!’

‘Justified, I would have thought,’ said the Governor, ‘when you’ve got a riot on your hands.’

‘But –’

‘What else was I to do, Your Excellencies? There was the mob hammering at the gates; missiles were being thrown –’

‘Good heavens!’

‘It was getting out of hand. Now I couldn’t have that, could I? I’m a police officer –’

‘And a very good one!’

‘–I owe a duty to the Tsar –’

‘Absolutely!’

‘Not to say the Church –’

‘The Church, too! Don’t forget that, Dmitri Alexandrovich!’

‘It’s all very well for young people to criticise –’

‘Young people! That’s it!’

‘– but when they’ve had as much experience as I have –’

‘You did your duty, Maxim Maximovich!’

‘No man could do more!’

‘It was a question of trust,’ said Dmitri. ‘They weren’t prepared to trust you. They only quietened down when you told them that it wasn’t you who was in charge of the investigation but me!’

‘Oh, now, come, Dmitri Alexandrovich!’

‘This is vanity!’

‘Your Excellencies –’ Maximov spread his hands in appeal to the Governor’s ceiling.

‘Really, Dmitri Alexandrovich!’

‘We all know how good you are, Dmitri Alexandrovich,’ said Boris Petrovich spitefully, ‘or, at least, how good you think you are –’

‘Because of some trifling success you may have had in the past –’

‘Which has been made far too much of –’

‘But this is outrageous!’

‘Dmitri Alexandrovich is, of course,’ said Maximov smiling, ‘very young, and in matters like this –’

‘No, you can’t have the sleigh,’ said the Procurator, ‘I have important visits to make.’

‘Such as?’

‘Lunch with Viktor Sharmansky, tea with Olga Vishinsky,’ the Procurator ticked off on his fingers, ‘lunch tomorrow with Sasha Radelsky, the next day with Irene Rodzhenitsy –’

‘A theft has been reported,’ said Dmitri doggedly. ‘It is our duty to investigate it.’

‘It is our duty to decide whether to investigate it,’ corrected the Procurator.

‘Are you saying that you have decided not to investigate it?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say that at all!’

‘Then –’

‘It is simply a question of priorities. Naturally we shall investigate it. But with so much coming into the office –’

‘Nothing is coming into the office!’ said Dmitri. ‘I insist on being allowed to investigate the theft of the Icon!’

‘Dmitri Alexandrovich,’ said the Procurator in a tired voice, ‘there is a principle that I have always found helpful in such matters: leave unto God the things that are God’s and unto man the things that are man’s.’

‘I have heard that before,’ said Dmitri.

‘I hope you have. It comes from the Bible. I think.’

‘It comes from the Governor,’ said Dmitri. ‘I think. So you are not going to let me have the sleigh?’

‘When the Cossacks go in,’ said the Procurator, ‘anyone else would be well advised to stay out!’

Dmitri sat in his office, first of all nursing his wrath, and secondly wondering how best he could pursue his inquiries while confined to Kursk. He was still nursing and still wondering when he heard the sleigh draw up outside. The door burst open and the Procurator rushed in.

‘Dmitri Alexandrovich! You must come with me at once!’

He almost manhandled Dmitri into the sleigh.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To the Governor’s.’

‘What about?’

The Procurator seemed deep in thought. Suddenly he stirred.

‘My advice, Dmitri Alexandrovich, is to say nothing!’