The Buddha's Return (13 page)

I made a supreme effort to cross this border separating my thoughts on Pavel Alexandrovich’s fate—thoughts that were evoked by a definite feeling of sympathy for him—from the facts that lay, or could lay, the blame squarely on me. I perfectly understood the profound difference between this dark sense of theoretical culpability and the thrust of a knife that had caused his death. I understood this, yet the combination of both one and the other was so powerful that in attempting to stick to the facts I felt as if I were forever stumbling into invisible walls barring me from even the simplest logical line of argument. I was unable to break free of this mental fog, although I knew that my next journey into it, as well as this absurd consciousness of my guilt—I realized the ridiculousness of it, but could do nothing to escape the sensation depriving me of the necessary presence of mind—threatened me with the most immediate and terrible danger.

The inspector posed several more questions that I was unable to answer with the necessary precision. He then left, only to be replaced by another. My eyes hurt from the glare of the lamp; I was thirsty, hungry and in need of a cigarette. Shortly after, I felt sleep begin to take hold of me; I nodded off for a brief moment and awoke to find someone tapping me on the shoulder. Another man I did not recognize asked me again what had driven me to murder. I took courage and replied once more that it was not a crime, but a logical construct. A familiar voice said:

“He’s delirious from exhaustion, but he’s still holding out.”

Thereupon, however, the interrogation unexpectedly came to an end, and I was taken away. I walked like a drunk between the two policemen, swaying and stumbling. Then a door opened and I found myself in a narrow cell, on the floor of which lay a mattress covered by a blanket. I literally fell onto this, but sleep seemed to overcome me before I even touched it.

I awoke probably several hours later in total darkness, immediately recalling everything that had happened. I knew I was in prison and that I stood accused of Shcherbakov’s murder. Only now did I truly comprehend it. Poor Pavel Alexandrovich, how short his enjoyment of the good life had been. But who could have murdered him, and more importantly why?

I spent almost three days trying vainly to regain my clarity of mind, which seemed forever to be slipping away, but the light, opaque mist that usually engulfed me during these strange episodes of mental illness refused to disperse. When I was finally called in for further questioning, I felt little better than I had done on the day of my arrest.

This time I found myself before an investigator, an elderly man with gentle eyes. After the initial formalities, he said:

“I have examined your file carefully, and there is nothing in it that affects you adversely. Do you deny murdering Shcherbakov?”

“Most categorically.”

“You were on friendly terms with him, is that not correct?”

“Yes.”

“Had you known him for long?”

“About three years.”

“Do you remember where and when you first met him?”

I told him how I had come to know Pavel Alexandrovich.

“So he was a beggar in those days?”

“That’s right.”

“And three years later we find him living in a comfortable apartment on Rue Molitor? That sounds rather suspicious. How did it come about?”

I explained everything to him. I noticed that I found it much easier to answer his questions, and that the facts were more or less clear to me when the discussion had nothing to do with the murder.

“Very well,” he said. “What were your movements on the evening of the eleventh of February, that is, the evening of Shcherbakov’s murder? Can you remember your whereabouts?”

“Of course,” I said. And indeed I vividly recalled everything that had happened: the cold evening, the occasional snowflake in the light of the street lamps, Odéon station, where I had begun my journey to Pavel Alexandrovich’s, and my arrival at his apartment. I remembered the face of the conductor on the train, as well as that of the mechanic,
and I would have recognized the passengers who were travelling in the same carriage as I was. I described everything to the investigator, right down to the menu for the dinner that Pavel Alexandrovich had served.

“Have you ever been engaged in any hard physical labour? Which trades do you know?”

I looked at him in astonishment, replying that, no, I had never done any hard physical labour and that I knew no trades. However, he seemed to attach no significance to this question, for he immediately said:

“After dinner you spent the whole evening chatting, is that not so?”

“Yes.”

“Do you recall what you were talking about? This is very important.”

At this point in the interrogation I was horrified suddenly to detect a gap in my memory. I was unable to remember anything of our conversation—it was as if it had never happened. Perspiration appeared on my forehead from the effort I was making to recall even some of what had been said that evening, and my head began to ache. I pulled myself together and said:

“Forgive me, but I’m in no fit state to remember anything right now. If you give me a little time, I’m sure it’ll come back to me.”

His eyes met my uneasy gaze. He was silent for a moment, then he nodded and finally said:

“Very well, try to tell me next time.”

Once again I slept like a log for hours on end. When I awoke, I took a few steps about in the darkness. I hadn’t felt like this in a long time. I was in a happy, almost forgotten state of physical and mental equilibrium, and it had come on so unexpectedly that I could scarcely believe my own senses. Catherine’s distant face flashed before my eyes. I had nearly given up hope of seeing her again. What had happened to me during those hours, whose life veiled by heavy, impenetrable sleep had flitted past me, what had emerged out of this nothingness? How was it that what I had striven for at all costs, what I had so vainly expended this tremendous willpower on over the course of these interrogations, had suddenly revealed itself with such miraculous clarity in these few hours of sleep? Not only was I now unafraid of any interrogation, rather I looked forward to it.

When I was next brought before the investigator, the expression on his face was markedly graver than it had been on the previous occasion. I couldn’t help but notice this, although it had none of the effect on me that it would undoubtedly have done even the night before.

“I must inform you,” he began, “that your position has sharply deteriorated since we last spoke, which is to say nothing of the fact that we found no one else’s fingerprints in Shcherbakov’s apartment, except for yours and the deceased’s.”

He examined a piece of paper.

“There is a further aspect that doesn’t bode well for you. Did you and Shcherbakov ever discuss his will?”

“Never,” I said. “I’d be amazed to learn that he had ever given any thought to it.”

“Nonetheless, his notary has provided us with a copy of the will: Shcherbakov has left his entire fortune to you.”

“To me?” I said in astonishment. A chill ran down my spine. “That is indeed a terrible coincidence.”

“The body of evidence stacked against you is almost too incredible to be believed,” he said. “On the evening of the murder you went to Shcherbakov’s. You are the last man to have seen him alive. No fingerprints other than yours have been found. Let us suppose that it’s all a coincidence—an extremely unlucky one, but a coincidence nevertheless. The only argument to speak in your favour was that, as far as you were concerned, the murder would have been utterly pointless. Yet now we learn that there was a will, and this will leaves the deceased’s entire fortune to you. The logical missing link—how you stand to benefit from Shcherbakov’s death—has been found. You must admit that the evidence is overwhelming. And the answer to the question that arose at the very beginning—‘Why did you kill him?’—is now obvious. You claim you knew nothing of the will, but that’s a verbal assertion opposed by a host of weighty and incontrovertible evidence gathered during the course of this investigation.”

I couldn’t recollect myself for the shock of it: how and why had Pavel Alexandrovich made out a will in my favour? I focused on this question for a few moments and was suddenly struck by a possible explanation for it all. However, I did not mention this to the investigator.

“I should like to know,” he continued, “what you have to say to this.”

“First of all, that it would be odd, to say the least, if it were true that I had acted as the investigation, not without a certain logic, seeks to establish. What could be more foolish and naive than the behaviour of such a murderer? He knows he cannot conceal the fact of his visit to Shcherbakov, that what he stands to benefit from the death of this man is indisputable and all too apparent, and that suspicion in the first instance will fall on him. Yet there he goes one evening to Shcherbakov’s, not by chance, but by invitation, kills him, returns home and fancies that if anyone were to ask him about it he’d simply say he didn’t kill anyone and that he would naturally be believed. You must admit that only a man whose mental faculties ought to be the subject of clinical study could act in such a way.”

Everything the investigator said to me and everything I said in response was marked by a peculiar clarity and precision—to which I was now quite unaccustomed, having lost it long ago.

“There’s almost always a clinical element,” said the investigator, “in the logic of every murderer; criminal
reports continue to substantiate this. Herein lies the difference between their logic and that of normal people, and this is the Achilles’ heel, so to speak, of any murderer.”

“Yes, yes, I understand. There’s always a certain pathological moment,” I said. “It usually manifests itself as some minor miscalculation. But such sheer stupidity in the behaviour of a would-be murderer—doesn’t that seem even more unlikely to you than this whole series of coincidences? For me this is a matter of life and death, and I intend to defend myself to the last. But I give you my word only to speak the truth.”

His distant eyes looked at me as though he were thinking something I could never know. Then he said:

“I’m going to do something that is perhaps a little unorthodox. Let us suppose that you aren’t the murderer, although, I repeat, the evidence is stacked against you. I admit, the arguments you have just presented had already occurred to me: it’s much too obvious, and it’s truly rather strange. Were it not for the fact that I’ve met and spoken to you, and had I just been told about this, I would have said that an investigation would be a waste of time. But I will try to help you. Do you remember what you and Shcherbakov were talking about on the night of his murder?”

Silence filled the large office. I was sitting in a chair, smoking a cigarette; to anyone else it might have looked as if two friends were having a quiet conversation about some abstract matter.

“Yes, yes,” I replied. “I remember everything now. It all began when I mentioned how much I enjoyed watching the fire, finding something atavistic in this love for flames. My friend agreed with me; then we began to talk about death. He said that he often thought about it and found a certain comfort in these thoughts. He quoted from the Orthodox funeral rites and an obituary that might have appeared in the papers. I told him that death lacked any allure for me whatsoever. I recall it now as clear as day: I said to him that he had no heirs, no one to make a
will
for. Then came a few personal recollections that had no particular significance. One of the last things we discussed was Buddhism.”

“If I understand correctly, then, the conversation meandered without any logical sequence to it,” he said. “We would call it
une conversation à bâtons rompus.
But perhaps you’re able to recall the link, the association that led you from personal anecdotes to a discussion of religious doctrine?”

“That’s very simple,” I replied. “Above Pavel Alexandrovich’s head…”

“You mean to say, above the divan where he was sitting?”

“He was sitting on the armchair, not on the divan,” I said. “The divan was to the right of the armchair, a little off to the side.”

“You’re quite right; my mistake. Please, do go on.”

“Above his head was a bookshelf, and on this shelf stood a golden statuette of the Buddha.”

“Can you describe it to me?”

“I’d recognize it among a thousand others.”

“What was so unusual about it?”

I described the golden Buddha in detail and said that I was struck by its ecstatic face and the similarity of its expression to that of St Jerome.

The investigator’s face suddenly tensed.

“That’s odd,” he said under his breath, more to himself than to me. “That’s very odd. Did you imagine this statuette to be particularly valuable?”

“I’m no expert in such objects. For me its value was primarily aesthetic. However, I believe it must have been worth a great deal; it was made of solid gold, and there was a ruby set in it, albeit a very small one. In any case it was a remarkable statuette.”

“Very well,” he said. “So, you see the gold Buddha, and this naturally made you think of…”

“…of Buddhism and nirvana. Pavel Alexandrovich handed me the statuette so that I could examine it properly. While it was on the shelf, I hadn’t been able to see it in all its glory: a lamp was shining on the table and the books were in the shadows.”

“What did you do with the statuette next?”

“I handed it back to Pavel Alexandrovich, who placed it back on the shelf.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“Of what in particular?”

“That he put it back on the shelf.”

“I’m certain.”

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll have more questions for you later.”

Back in my cell, I set my mind to work on the murder of Pavel Alexandrovich. Unlike my interrogators, I knew one vital detail—that I was not the murderer. The first hypothesis to enter my head was that Amar was the murderer. But I failed to see why he would do this. There could be no question of jealousy. Nor of any immediate advantage: Pavel Alexandrovich was supporting Lida, and Amar was living off the money she received. Moreover, the apartment had been left perfectly in order, there were no signs of any struggle, no attempt at theft, and everything was in its rightful place. Could it have been a man from the street, some random criminal? That seemed equally improbable—mainly because nothing had been stolen.