A Vengeful Longing by R. N. Morris

periphery of the city. Roads broke up into dirt tracks; walls crumbled; sheds and shanty houses tumbled into each other. Out of all this arose a new and sinister-seeming presence, that of looming, smoke-grimed manufactories. The train banked away from Virginsky’s sight-line, as if turning its back on the pervasive ugliness. Pulled by the direction of movement, Virginsky looked through the opposite window, across the corridor of the carriage. His gaze swooped along the momentous curve of the tracks, carried away by perspective, westward. The landscape here was taken up with a series of garden plots, another manifestation of the human instinct for purpose and production, the force that drew the hurtling train on. He picked out isolated figures, peasants, stooped and barely moving, as though they had grown out of the soil they worked.
     
    Clumps of woodland squatted over the horizon. In the middle distance, Virginsky glimpsed a large ochre and white house, half-concealed by trees. He stirred and sat up, then leant forward and touched Porfiry’s knee.
     
    ‘Ulyanka,’ said Virginsky.
     
    Porfiry shrugged. ‘So? Ulyanka is on the way to Petergof. This really shouldn’t come as news to you.’
     
    ‘But it is another connection. Now with this Bezmygin fellow.’ Porfiry smiled at Virginsky’s excitement. ‘Or another meaningless coincidence,’ he said.
     
    They were both silent as they watched the building dance in and out of vision behind the veil of birch.
     
    ‘The house at the eleventh verst,’ said Virginsky redundantly. Porfiry screwed his face up into an expression of reproof.
     
    The train stopped at a station on the Ligovsky Canal. The lunatic asylum remained in view, as if to provoke them. Porfiry fidgeted in annoyance. Virginsky felt somehow embarrassed. It was a relief to them both it seemed when the train pulled out.
     
    From Ligovo, the short next stop, the railway climbed and ran through woodland. A green translucent fire blazed around them. As they emerged they scanned the horizon hopefully for a glimpse of the sea. Now the tracks ran parallel with the Petergof Road a couple of versts away to the north, its chain of magnificent dachas spread out along the coast. Beyond it, the edge of the land crumbled into the bay.
     
    The summer residence of Count Akhmatov was a grand, neoclassical palace looking out over the Gulf of Finland. To reach it, they took a drozhki from New Petergof station one and a half versts back along the Petergof Road. The salted air and the flicker of light through the beech trees rekindled the holiday mood in Virginsky. There was a breeze from the sea; the morning hovered on the edge of coolness. But he felt the sun on his face and that counted for a lot.
     
    Porfiry sat with the basket of food on his lap. There was something fussy and comical about the figure he cut. It would be easy to underestimate him , thought Virginsky, looking at the placid, almost animal, expression on his superior’s face. Porfiry had his eyes closed, those hyperactive lashes of his still for the moment, as he smiled, basking in the sun. Virginsky remembered the fear and, yes, hatred he had once felt towards this man. But he realised that even when these feelings had been at their most intense, there had been room for others. Porfiry Petrovich had always fascinated him. There had been times when he had even liked the man, and wanted to be liked by him in return. Certainly, he had never made the mistake of not respecting him. Now, in retrospect, the sympathy he had at the time entertained towards his persecutor seemed inexplicable. He wondered whether he would ever entirely trust him.
     
    As the drozhki turned into the canopied lane that led winding up to the house, Porfiry opened his eyes and saw Virginsky looking at him. Porfiry’s smile was questioning. Virginsky met it with an ironic, slightly mocking face. ‘You are quite comfortable?’ he asked.
     
    ‘Yes,’ answered Porfiry,