Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers

‘Oh, Dmitri Alexandrovich! We’re not like St Petersburg, you know!’

Nevertheless –

‘Frankly,’ said Semeonov, ‘there’s no one here you’d encourage her to meet.’

‘Except yourself, Dmitri Alexandrovich,’ said Olga Feodorovna, smiling.

‘When you get on a bit,’ said Semeonov. ‘In your career, I mean.’

But had there been anyone particular? A tendresse, perhaps?

‘Oh, Dmitri Alexandrovich!’ said Olga Feodorovna roguishly.

‘No,’ said Semeonov shortly.

Servants came and cleared the dishes away. Over the coffee, Dmitri said:

‘And what exactly was Anna Semeonova doing in the Court House yesterday?’

‘A fad!’ said Semeonov, frowning.

‘A whim!’ said Olga Feodorovna.

‘But what …?’

‘She wanted to see a court in action,’ said Semeonov. ‘Well, I ask you!’

‘Such a serious girl!’ said Olga Feodorovna.

‘It’s all these books she’s been reading. I’m all for giving girls education,’ said Semeonov, ‘but you can go too far.’

‘I told her we could receive the lawyers socially,’ said Olga Feodorovna. ‘Only that wasn’t what she wanted.’

‘She wanted to go and see,’ said Semeonov. ‘I fixed it up with Smirnov. I didn’t want anything too … well, you know what I mean. She’s only a young girl.’

‘Smirnov?’ said Dmitri. ‘That would be contracts, then.’

‘I thought that was safest. Nothing too juicy. Smirnov said that it would be so boring she’d never want to go again.’

‘I see. So there was nothing specific she particularly wanted to see, it was just the working of the courts in general?’

‘She wanted to see the working of justice, she said.’

In that case, thought Dmitri, why go to the Law Courts?

2 (#ulink_f6b4b336-a962-5782-9c33-1c9c7cc3e91d)

Dmitri considered the fact that she was a serious girl a major indictment. He knew what serious girls were like. Especially in Kursk.

Besides, with her parents’ permission, he’d taken a look in her room and seen the books: heavy, figure-filled stuff and all in German. Dmitri felt guilty about German. Germany was where a lot of the most advanced social thinking was going on and as a committed Westernizer, he should have been keeping himself au courant. He found the German language, however – or, at least, the German language as written by heavy German academics – hard going. So, apparently, had Anna Semeonova. She had persevered, nonetheless. That was another thing that Dmitri held against her.

The books gave a clue as to the direction of her seriousness. She was not serious about novels, she was not serious about music, she was not serious about ballet. What she was serious about was society. Unless Dmitri was much mistaken, the poor girl had had a fit of politics coming on.

This threw a different light on things. It knocked on the head, for a start, Dmitri’s favourite theory at the moment (Dmitri had a lot of theories, it was relating them to facts that was the problem), namely, that Anna Semeonova had gone off with a boyfriend. Seriousness and sexuality were, in Dmitri’s view, incompatible. Unless – the thought made him stop in his tracks as he trudged back to the Court House through the remnants of snow – unless having a boyfriend was itself a political act!

It might be. With parents like the Semeonovs, any daughter could be excused for turning to rebellion; and what better form could rebellion take than running off with an unsuitable boyfriend? It was a sort of inverse of the mother’s position. Psychologically, thought Dmitri, this sounded right; or if not right, at least interesting.

He decided he would pursue the matter with Novikov when he got back to the Court House. He was already sure that the Chief of Police’s searching would not uncover a body. Dmitri was an optimistic fellow at heart and found it hard to believe, in general, that anyone was dead.

And so it turned out, at least in so far as all the searching that morning, in the park, in the grounds, in the back yard and, again, in the building itself, had failed to produce a body.

‘Of course you won’t find a body,’ said Dmitri confidently, ‘because the body walked out.’

‘Now, look here, Dmitri Alexandrovich – ’ began the caretaker.

They were sitting in his room drinking tea. The room was right next to the entrance and he was always in it, always drinking tea, as he pointed out.

‘No one gets in or out without me seeing them. What do you think I’m here for?’

Dmitri had often wondered but wisely refrained from the comment.

‘Your attention might have been distracted,’ said Novikov.

‘In that case Peter Profimovich would have noticed. Wouldn’t you, Peter Profimovich?’ said the caretaker, turning to his assistant.

Peter Profimovich grunted.

‘There you are!’ said the caretaker. ‘One of us always keeps an eye on the door.’

Peter Profimovich grunted twice.

‘And we would certainly have seen anyone like Anna Semeonova,’ translated the caretaker, ‘because girls like Anna Semeonova don’t go in or out of this door very often.’

‘It was a cold day,’ said Dmitri. ‘She might have been well wrapped up.’

‘Dmitri Alexandrovich!’ said the caretaker, shaking his head pityingly. ‘Do you think we wouldn’t have seen a figure like that? No matter how it was wrapped up?’

Peter Profimovich grunted three times.

‘In any case,’ said the caretaker, ‘there wasn’t much on yesterday morning and we remember everyone who went through. There was young Nikita, going out to see that girl of his – we always know it’s getting on towards lunchtime when we see her appear at the gate of the park. There was Serafim Serafimovich going out for his usual drink – that was about eleven o’clock. There were a couple of clerks going to fetch things for Peter Ivanovich. There was a woman – ’

‘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.’