'Then, as well, there is the question of his drinking. Was he used to heavy drinking, or did he take to it recently, because of the strains of the conspiratorial life?'

'I don't understand. Why are we talking about drinking?'

'Because on the night of his death he had drunk a great deal. Did you not know that?'

He shakes his head dumbly.

'Clearly, Fyodor Mikhailovich, there is a great deal you do not know. Come, let me be candid with you. As soon as I heard you had arrived to claim your stepson's papers, stepping, so to speak, into the lion's den, I was sure, or almost sure, that you had no suspicion of anything untoward. For if you had known of a connection between your stepson and Nechaev's criminal gang, you would surely not have come here. Or at least you would have made it plain from the outset that it was only the letters between yourself and your stepson that you were claiming, nothing else. Do you follow?'

'Yes – '

'And since you are already in possession of your stepson's letters to you, that would have meant you wanted only the letters written by you to him. But why – '

'Letters, yes, and everything else of a private nature. What can be the point of your hounding him now?'

'What indeed!… So tragic… But to return to the matter of the papers: you use the expression "of a private nature." It occurs to me that in today's circumstances it is hard to know what "of a private nature" means any longer. Of course we must respect the deceased, we must defend rights your stepson is no longer in a position to defend, in this case a right to a certain decent privacy. The prospect that after our decease a stranger will come sniffing through our possessions, opening drawers, breaking seals, reading; intimate letters – such would be a painful prospect to any of us, I am sure. On the other hand, in certain cases we might actually prefer a disinterested stranger to perform this ugly but necessary office. Would we be easy at the thought of our more intimate affairs being opened up, when emotions are still raw, to the unsuspecting gaze of a wife or a daughter or a sister? Better, in certain respects, that it be done by a stranger, someone who cannot be offended because we are nothing to him, and also because he is hardened, by the nature of his profession, to offence.

'Of course this is, in a sense, idle talk, for in the end it is the law that disposes, the law of succession: the heirs to the estate come into possession of the private papers and everything else. And in a case where one dies without naming an heir, rules of consanguinity take over and determine what needs to be determined.

'So letters between family members, we agree, are private papers, to be treated with the appropriate discretion. While communications from abroad, communications of a seditious nature – lists of people marked down to be murdered, for instance – are clearly not private papers. But here, now, here is a curious case.'

He is leafing through something in the file, drumming on the desk with his fingernails in an irritating way. 'Here's a curious case, here's a curious case,' he repeats in a murmur. 'A story,' he announces abruptly. 'What shall we say of a story, a work of fiction? Is a story a private matter, would you say?'

'A private matter, an utterly private matter, private to the writer, till it is given to the world.'

Maximov casts him a quizzical look, then pushes what he has been reading across the desk. It is a child's exercise book with ruled pages. He recognizes at once the slanted script with its trailing loops and dashes. Orphan writing, he thinks: I will have to learn to love it. He places a protective hand over the page.

'Read it,' says his antagonist softly.

He tries to read but he cannot concentrate; the more he tries, the more he sees only details of penmanship. His eyes are blurred with tears too; he dabs with a sleeve to prevent them from falling and blotting the page. 'Trackless wastes of snow,' he reads, and wants to correct the cliché. Something about a man out in the open, something about the cold. He shakes his head and closes the book.

Maximov reaches across and tugs it gently from him. He turns the pages till he finds what he wants, then pushes it back across the desk. 'Read this part,' he says, 'just a page or two. Our hero is a young man convicted of treasonous conspiracy and sent to Siberia. He escapes from prison and finds his way to the home of a landowner, where he is hidden and fed by a kitchenmaid, a peasant girl. They are young, romantic feelings develop between them, and so forth. One evening the landowner, who is portrayed as a gross sensualist, tries to force his attentions on the girl. This is the passage I suggest you read.'

Again he shakes his head.

Maximov takes the book back. 'The young man can bear the spectacle no longer. He comes out of his hiding-place and intervenes.' He begins to read aloud.

' "Karamzin" – that is the landowner – "turned upon him and hissed, 'Who are you? What are you doing here?' Then he took in the tattered grey uniform and the broken leg-shackle. 'Aha, one of those!' he cried -'I'll soon take care of you!' He turned and began to lumber out of the room." That is the word used, "lumber," I like it. The landowner is described as a pug-faced brute with hairy ears and short, fat legs. No wonder our young hero is offended: age and ugliness pawing maiden beauty! He picks up a hatchet from beside the stove. "With all the force at his command, shuddering even as he did so, he brought the hatchet down on the man's pale skull. Karamzin's knees folded beneath him. With a great snort like a beast's he fell flat on the scrubbed kitchen floor, his arms spread out wide, his fingers twitching, then relaxing. Sergei" – that is our hero's name – "stood transfixed, the bloody hatchet in his hand, unable to believe what he had done. But Marfa" – that is the heroine – "with a presence of mind he did not expect, snatched up a wet rag and pushed it under the dead man's head so that the blood would not spread." A nice touch of realism, don't you think?

'The rest of the story is sketchy – I won't read on. Perhaps, once the obscene Karamzin has been polished off, our author's inspiration began to dwindle. Sergei and Marfa drag the body off and drop it down a disused well. Then they set off together into the night "full of resolution" – that is the phrase. It is not clear whither they intend to flee. But let me mention one last detail. Sergei does not leave the murder weapon behind. No, he takes it with him. What for, asks Marfa? I quote his reply. "Because it is the weapon of the Russian people, our means of defence and our means of revenge." The bloody axe, the people's revenge – the allusion could not be clearer, could it?'

He stares at Maximov in disbelief. 'I can't believe my ears,' he whispers. 'Do you really intend to construe this as evidence against my son – a story, a fantasy, written in the privacy of his room?'

'Oh dear, no, Fyodor Mikhailovich, you misunderstand me!' Maximov throws himself back in his chair, shaking his head in seeming distress. 'There can be no question of hounding your stepson (to use your word). His case is closed, in the sense that matters most. I read you his fantasy, as you like to call it, simply to indicate how deeply he had fallen under the influence of the Nechaevites, who have led astray heaven knows how many of our more impressionable and volatile young people, particularly here in Petersburg, many of them from good families too. Quite an epidemic, I would say, Nechaevism. An epidemic, or perhaps just a fashion.'

'Not a fashion. What you call Nechaevism has always existed in Russia, though under other names. Nechaevism is as Russian as brigandage. But I am not here to discuss the Nechaevites. I came for a simple reason -to fetch my son's papers. May I have them? If not, may I leave?'