Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers

‘And got nowhere?’

‘She speaks too bitter,’ said the second woman.

The other woman turned on her.

‘Not this time. She spoke real civil. Agafa Sirkova was listening at the door and she said she couldn’t get over how polite she was. Not that it made any difference. He threw her out just the same.’

‘Her reputation went before her,’ said the second woman. ‘That was the trouble.’

‘It would have been the same whoever had gone.’

‘Well, that’s very true, and that’s why it’s best to leave these things alone, as you yourself were saying to this gentleman only just now.’

‘But Marfa Nikolaevna, I gather, was not one to leave things alone?’ said Dmitri.

The first woman gave a little laugh.

‘You could say that,’ she said. ‘Yes, you could certainly say that! She was a bit of a firebrand. She wasn’t one of us, Your Honour. She came from the steppes. Those Tatars, they light up at anything.’

‘Well,’ said Dmitri, ‘all this is not really my concern. I am hoping she might be able to help me on something else. The tailor’s, you say?’

As he left, he was aware again that they were looking at him rather oddly.

The snow on this side of the stream, between the houses, had become a sea of mud, through which his boots squelched noisily. Great, discoloured puddles lay everywhere. Half in one of them, half out, he could see a rat lying on its back, its body still and contorted, its feet in the air, the underside of its belly tinged with yellow. The fumes from the tannery made him cough and reach for his handkerchief. This was definitely not the place for a young woman like Anna Semeonova; nor, frankly, was it much of a place for a promising young Examining Magistrate.

Dmitri pushed open the door and went in. The room was full of women sewing. It was so dark that he was amazed that any of them could see.

‘I’m looking for Marfa Nikolaevna,’ he said.

A man in a skull cap came forward.

‘Marfa Nikolaevna?’ he said, with a worried expression on his face. ‘But, Barin, she is no longer here.’

‘No longer here?’

‘She hasn’t been here for, oh, over three weeks now. Not since they came and took her away.’

‘Where is she now?’ said Dmitri harshly.

‘Her case came up yesterday,’ said the tailor, ‘in the District Court at Kursk.’

3 (#ulink_94a3c86e-47c3-51ee-9f9f-b61342ef90f9)

The following morning, Anna Semeonova had still not been found.

‘It’s bad,’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘First, because she’s a nice girl. I’ve known her since she was six. At that time she looked like a dumpling and everyone was afraid she was going to take after her father. Recently, though, she has thinned out and is becoming a beauty like her mother. Second, because her father blames us. Thirdly, because so does everyone else.’

Dmitri was always irritated by the Presiding Judge’s pedantic habit of enumerating his points.

‘She did, after all, disappear from the Court House,’ he pointed out.

‘I know; very inconsiderate of her,’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘Why couldn’t she have disappeared from her home? We would still have been blamed, but we wouldn’t have looked quite as stupid. And now I’m afraid they will send someone down from St Petersburg.’

‘To take charge of the case?’

Dmitri wasn’t sure that he liked this. It was his case; and thus far in his career he had not been assigned so many that he could afford to be blasé. This was, actually, if you included the ridiculous affair of the old woman and the cow, only his second case. And were they now going to take even that from him?

‘We must resist,’ he said sternly.

Peter Ivanovich looked at him pityingly.

‘Tell me how you get on’, he said, ‘as Examining Magistrate in Siberia. Let me talk to you as a father, Dmitri Alexandrovich: obstruct, but do not resist. That is the first rule of bureaucracy. Besides,’ he said, ‘they won’t take over the case. They will leave you in charge. So that you can be blamed if things go wrong. That is the second rule of bureaucracy: make sure that responsibility always lies elsewhere.’

The advice of a master, thought Dmitri. Peter Ivanovich was wrong, however. The first rule of bureaucracy was surely to keep your mouth shut; which Dmitri was grimly trying to do.

‘The answer is, of course,’ continued Peter Ivanovich, ‘to solve the case yourself before they get here. How are you getting on, incidentally?’

He listened to Dmitri’s account of yesterday’s inquiries.

‘Interesting,’ he commented. ‘Who would have thought it? A girl like Anna Semeonova – getting herself mixed up with such people!’

‘I’m not sure how far she is mixed up with such people,’ said Dmitri. ‘That’s one of the things I wanted to ask Marfa Nikolaevna.’

‘Ask her, by all means,’ said Peter Ivanovich generously, ‘although I doubt if it will help you much.’

‘I would if I could,’ said Dmitri, frowning. ‘But there’s been a bit of a mix-up.’

‘Another one?’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘Oh dear! These people! What is it this time?’

‘They can’t trace her.’

‘Come, come!’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘She was in court the day before yesterday, wasn’t she? And surely she was not acquitted?’

‘Oh, no. She was sentenced, all right. It’s what happened afterwards that’s not clear.’

‘It’s as clear as daylight,’ said Peter Ivanovich. ‘She was a political prisoner, wasn’t she? Then she would have been sent back to prison to await transportation.’

‘So one would have thought. But the prison denies readmitting her. And there’s a complication. Some of the prisoners that day were sent directly to join the Siberian convoy.’

‘Well, perhaps that’s what happened to her, then,’ said Peter Ivanovich patiently.

‘They’ve checked the lists,’ said Dmitri, ‘and they can’t find her.’

‘They’ve made a mistake. It’s always happening. A clerical error. Either there or at the prison. Get them to check it again!’

‘I have. There’s no record in either place of a person of that name.’

‘There must be! She must be either in the one place or in the other. Either in prison or in the convoy. She can’t be still in the Court House, can she?’