The Matiushin Case Read Free

being alone, of being unnecessary to them. That was when he started missing his older brother and yearning for him. Grigorii Ilich had brought a colour photograph from Moscow, showing himself and Yasha, smart and spruce, standing in front of the Kremlin wall – the snapshot had been taken at the tomb of the unknown soldier. They put the photo in the best spot, in the china cabinet with the tall glasses and the father’s gleaming army dagger – not for themselves, but for visitors, so that people would see it. Little Vasya used to steal the photograph for a while and secretly hide away with it in his room, dreaming of growing up soon and going off into a bright, new distance, like Yashka.
    Yakov used to come visiting in summer, during his leave, but at that time Vasenka’s parents sent him to summer camp, and they didn’t visit him there – that was the order of things in their family. During those years his father gave up drinking and smoking and started taking care of his health, although he was still a long way from being old – which was why he was genuinely afraid of dying. Matiushin’s father had put down roots in Yelsk: he commanded this little place that was almost an army town, and his authority there had long been undisputed. Ten years of living in the same place and with such great respect mellowed Grigorii Ilich. The peace of this little provincial corner, where he was the boss, inspired the idea of hiding away from life, surrounding himself with the little town that he controlled as protective cover.
    The father’s passion was hunting and then, after that, fishing – when he no longer wanted anything but peace – and he even came to love relaxing all on his own. But his two rifles, trophies from the Germans, remained in the home with him, even though he had got out of the habit of hunting. For as long as Matiushin could remember, the guns had been kept in the apartment, in their father’s room, which no one dared to enter without his permission, let alone in his absence. There was a bureau in there that looked like a safe, made in times long past by a forgotten soldier craftsman. Every summer his father used to take out the guns and warm them in the sun, for some reason, and then they were cleaned and lubricated. Since he didn’t like getting smeared with dirt himself, he trusted his son to clean the barrels with ram-rods. Matiushin performed this work with zeal, knowing that his father would call for him to bring the cleaned guns, then put them back in their covers and lock them in the walnut bureau with its only little key. The bureau, which he deliberately concealed from his son with his back, gave out the smells of leather, gun oil and something else. The bureau also contained numerous little shelves, drawers and boxes, and Matiushin only had time to glimpse their dark outlines before his father slammed the door shut and locked his property away, then turned round and drove his son out.
    Matiushin fell in love with mystery, and he also fell in love with rummaging among things – his mother’s buttons, for instance – and with hiding some things himself.
    He grew up left to his own devices. Studying came easily to him, without any effort, but because of that he was tormented by boredom. The only thing that could rouse his interest in something was praise, but if he wasn’t praised, he got bored again.
    Very early on, Grigorii Ilich decided that he wanted his younger son to be a doctor, and not just a medic, but a specialist in military medicine. He needed a personal doctor, but someone close, and only a military man – as if a civilian couldn’t have made sense of his health – and he wouldn’t trust a stranger. If anyone in the family fell ill, they were treated in the infirmary: even the children were taken to an army doctor, otherwise Grigorii Ilich refused to believe in their illness.
    In his early childhood, Matiushin had an