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Chapter Thirteen
 oscow Housing Commissar, V. V. Podly, sat in his office on the first floor of the Senate Building in the Kremlin. He scrutinized the chessboard set up to the right of his desk. It was early afternoon, Monday, December 3. Many people had come to see him that day concerning housing issues. But all he could think of as he stared at the white pawn in a group of "captured pieces" off the chessboard - was Zina Dumatskoy. His mind was still swirling from what had happened at the Red Rooster that past Saturday night. It was confusion that made his mind swirl. His memory of what had happened was terribly convoluted. Cocaine, a little opium smoke, and a large amount of vodka; the squealing of violins and accordions of gypsy music from the Ukraine, and the raucous brass and drums of the jazz band from America were rolled and tumbled around in his mind like so many pairs of dice continuously thrown out on the green felt table of the Rooster's after hours gambling den by croupiers with hideously painted faces and the whirling multiple arms of Shiva.
 The only thing that made perfect sense was the memory of seeing Zina's face no more than a couple of paces from his own sometime late Saturday night/Sunday morning. He had not in a million years expected to see her out on the town - and looking so radiant, exquisite, and full of life and happiness. According to his plan, she should have been at home, depressed and beaten, and vulnerable. Something was terribly wrong with his plan. In the crowd filing in and out of the bathrooms behind the Rooster's stage - suddenly, there she was: luxuriant brown hair worn loose, falling around that face in curls. The exotically shaped big brown-green eyes, the crooked nose, the skin with the smoothness and the hue of polished ivory - he froze before that face, for an instant he saw nothing else around him. The cacophony of the Rooster's overcrowded voices he ceased to hear. His head pounded again that Monday in the same fierce way as he tried to conceptualize the vision. Everything around him vanished from view when he saw her, except that face. Even the rest of her body disappeared. He saw only a white beauty mark stuck onto the void illuminated by its own inner power like the sun. Zina had not seen Podly.
Podly had told his secretary to cancel all the remaining appointments for the day. He wanted to be alone in his office to sort out his memories and feelings. He needed a drink or two to help him focus. There was nothing like vodka, a few well-aimed shots, to help Podly arrange, clarify, and understand his thoughts. He poured and drank three shots of vodka in quick succession. True, at that moment, Podly could remember Zina's face, and seeing her at the Rooster. But there was another thought, lurking at the back of that thought, waiting to emerge. It was a thought that was very confusing, perhaps a daydream, or the memory of a dream that had recurred and recurred, but just then had managed to force itself out into consciousness. Podly had seen Zina's face as she appeared to him there in December 1921. But there was another face, a face from 1910, a ten-year old face. And along with the 1910 face was a 1910 body, a ten-year old body that was perfectly in-focus, three-dimensional and flesh-colored. Beyond that ten-year old phantom was a shadowy memory coming forward. A particular Sunday morning after services at the Cathedral of St. Sofya in Novgorod. The organist and all the children had left the choir loft and had gone downstairs - except one. Only one light was on in the loft - the one on the organ that lit the organist's music. She had stood there smiling at him with that smile in a constant state of nervous motion, wanting something, wanting to speak to him after the others had gone, wanting to ask him something, tell him something. He came close to her. He had to comfort her. Her hair was so smooth and shiny, the crooked nose, the eyes, the wiry body. He approached her slowly. The only sounds now left in the cathedral were from old women's voices, their mumbling prayers, their weeping. Podly approached Zina slowly, cautiously, so as not to frighten her off. She backed away. Was that a tear on her cheek? The eyes were smiling, big and dark. He reached out for her. She took his hand and squeezed it.
"How can I help you, Zinochka? Let me help you." He embraced her.
"No, no. . . you can't help me," she whispered quietly. He embraced her.
Podly was sweating as he stood up and paced around his office in the Senate Building. He stopped dead in his tracks. He felt something deep in his heart. Something new, something never felt before. He sat down on his leather couch for a few moments. He stood up and went to the desk to pour another vodka. Was he ashamed of what he had done? Was that the new feeling? Was that what he felt when he unexpectedly saw Zina, the woman, at the Red Rooster? Is that all that he felt when he saw her?
Was there not that lust that had been there that Christmas Eve in the choir loft? Did he want to touch here again, on Saturday night? Would he have touched her, given the opportunity? What was his shame: that he had done what he did in the choir loft, or that he had not the desire to do that again when he saw her at the Red Rooster? But there was no time for lust at the Rooster. It was too brief an episode. There was just time for recognition. She was there! It had shocked him.
He poured and drank another shot; and then another. The focus was being blurred. He seemed again to doubt everything that had happened. He began to doubt if those things had happened in reality, or just in his imagination. So much time had gone by. So many years of drug and alcohol abuse had passed between Novgorod and Moscow. So much time to think of her, desire her, plan plots to get her! His confusion was now at fever pitch. He needed air. He needed to stop thinking of all that and just get drunk. His thoughts and feelings had not been sorted out. They were more shadowy and arcane than before. It was too late now to focus. He had crossed the shot line for focus. All that was left was oblivion.
* * * * *
"Ah, the conversation always seems to come around to the same thing with you two, eh?"
Svyatovovich put down the glass of cognac on the little table next to his chair. He stared at the fire. He seemed a bit agitated.
"It's a subject that always seems to please our host, here." Ladkov exageratingly tilted his head to the left towards V. V. Podly who sat between his two guests. Ladkov seemed rather pleased with the way in which the conversation was going. On Saturday, December 8, the three old friends, having finished the sumptuous dinner prepared and served by Podly's housekeeper, Elizaveta Fyodorovna, relaxed in front of the housing Commissar's fireplace with cognac, vodka, and cigars - all of the finest quality.
Porfiry Ivanovich Svyatovovich was 57, a practicing lawyer, and also an associate professor of law at Moscow University. Ardalon Ardalonovich Ladkov was 61, a retired army general, veteran of many campaigns of the war with Germany and the Civil War. He retired the previous year to accept a consultation position with the Munitions and Armaments Trust. He had no right arm; it had been riveted in battle in 1920 by machine gun fire, and had to be amputated at the shoulder. He wore his right suit coat tucked in at the side pocket. Podly loved the company of those two men, because of their education, experience and the power they held.
"I suppose Faust's name will soon be reverently pronounced, and we'll all be obliged to bow our heads and strike our chests!" Svyatovovich puffed on his cigar and made faces to suggest his mounting irritability.
"A character with Faust's qualities is nothing to scoff at, Porfiry Ivanovich. Indeed, your tone of voice could stand that a little reverence be blended in with it."
Podly turned his flashing black eyes to the right to Ladkov. The two men laughed heartily.
"Faust, certainly. But perhaps we do speak of him too much. Let me offer another name for consideration."
Ladkov took a long drink of vodka from his big tumbler before he pronounced the name - "Raskolnikov".
Svyatovovich rolled his eyes as if to say, "Oh, no!" Podly nodded approvingly.
"Yes, the great hero of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, the embodiment of Nietzsche's Superman or as we say in Russia, the "strong personality".
"Demon personality!" interjected Svyatovovich.
"Perhaps. And something wrong with that?"
Syvatovovich looked at Ladkov scornfully.
"Oh for the sake of God, Ardalon Ardatonovich. The demon brought down to size, perhaps. In the novel, Divine Truth and Justice, the earthly law claimed their rights. Raskolnikov ends up by being compelled to give himself up, tormented as he is by his crime. He is separated and cut off from humankind. He needs to rejoin his race. He accepts suffering to atone for his deed, for the murder of the old woman moneylender. It's the old Orthodox religious outlook: People are not born to happiness. Happiness is purchased at the price of suffering."
"I always had a problem with the punishment part of the novel, and became disinterested in Raskolnikov's salvation."
Ladkov was tossing the bait into Podly's water.
"I am mostly excited by the utilitarian concept. What is practically useful. The old money lender is a vulture. She feeds off the needs of people. By murdering her and taking all her money, Raskolnikov can help his mother, his sister, and himself. Once he commits the act, he plans to live the rest of his life honorably, fulfilling his debt to humankind. Crime? It's the theory of practical egoism pursued to its ultimate conclusion."
"I object!" said Svyatovovich.
Podly and Ladkov looked at each other and laughed heartily once again.
"This is no parlor game, gentlemen. The very lives of people are at stake."
Svyatovovich pulled at his white beard, and poured himself another glass of cognac from the carafe on his little table.
Podly drained his tumbler of vodka. From the carafe at the little table in front of him, he refilled the tumbler. To his two guests, Podly appeared to be as proud as Lucifer. He appeared to them to be a man who had much more blood pouring through his veins than other men, and moved on a more primitive level than most men. Podly ran his tongue along his lip as if along the gummed edge of a cigarette paper. He carried on his face the mask of an origin even more distant than Novgorod. His ink-colored, penetrating eyes seemed not to blink that night. They were stretched open so far as to never shut again, darting straight into Ladkov's and Svyatovovich's eyes. An angry grin settled on his mouth. He addressed his two guests slowly and authoritatively like the master of his subject,
"I am of low birth. I wanted from the outset to sit at the top rung of the ladder and be king of it, to be king of all those below me, power through crime, power through money the path to the top. Power and only power! It is irrelevant what use one makes of it. It doesn't matter whether one will turn it into humankind's good, or into evil. Human lives are a lie and a deceit. . . ."
"And truth! What of truth, Vasily Viktorovich?" said the lawyer heatedly.
"Truth is the metaphysical will to might, to power," said Podly without hesitation.
"Bravo!" cried Ladkov.
"I will not submit myself to anyone, or anything!"
Podly got up from his chair and took a long drink from his tumbler. His deeply polished shoes stood up erect and aggressive on his heels. He continued,
"To the self-exaltation of the strong personality, the demon personality!"
He drained his tumbler.
"I love to roam the Arbat late at night. Especially, of course, 'the Catacombs'. The narrow streets and blind alleys, the dwelling places of poverty and crime, I love how the poor suffer! The poisonous vapors that rise up from there, the contaminated and feverish breath gives birth to my most profound thoughts. One group of people the majority obey. Individuals, I reduce to 'clamor'. Their petty tragedies smell of the factory, and their blood is the color of grease. The others, an infinitesimally smaller group control the power, the law. And so, they are above it! I may shed that blood according to my will. It seems to be more just than the State's right to shed blood."
Podly sat down in his chair.
Svyatovovich stood up at his chair with his glass of cognac in one hand and his cigar in the other hand. He wobbled. Podly reached out and steadied him. Svyatovovich declaimed as if addressing a jury,
"Vasily Viktorovich Podly, for your exorbitant pride, arrogance and contempt of society I find Despotism in your character trait. I'll wager you are sad and lonely at the top rung of that ladder of yours."
Podly faced his antagonist. He stood there with his cigar, smoking like a chimney,
"I have cured myself of all moral prejudices."
Svyatovovich and Ladkov both finished their drinks in one big gulp each. They looked at each other and cried,
"Bravo, Podly!"
And the three men laughed heartily.
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