MARKOVITCH AND SEMYONOV.
I
On the evening of that very afternoon, Thursday, I again col apsed. I was coming home in the dusk through a whispering world. Al over the streets, everywhere on the broad shining snow, under a blaze of stars so sharp and piercing that the sky seemed strangely close and intimate, the talk went on. Groups everywhere and groups irrespective of al class distinction--a well-to-do woman in rich furs, a peasant woman with a shawl over her head, a wild, bearded soldier, a stout, important officer, a maid-servant, a cab-driver, a shopman--talking, talking, talking, talking.... The eagerness, the ignorance, the odd fairy-tale world spun about those groups, so that the coloured domes of the churches, the silver network of the stars, the wooden booths, the mist of candles before the Ikons, the rough painted pictures on the shops advertising the goods sold within--all these things shared in that crude idealistic, cynical ignorance, in that fairy-tale of brutality, goodness, cowardice, and bravery, malice and generosity, superstition and devotion that was so shortly to be offered to a materialistic, hard-fighting, brave and unthinking Europe!...
That, however, was not now my immediate business--enough of that presently. My immediate business, as I very quickly discovered, was to pluck up enough strength to drag my wretched body home. The events of the week had, I suppose, carried me along. I was to suffer now the inevitable reaction. I felt exactly as though I had been shot from a gun and landed, suddenly, without breath, without any strength in any of my limbs in a new and strange world. I was standing, when I first realised my weakness, beside the wooden booths in the Sadovaya. They were all closed of course, but along the pavement women and old men had baskets containing sweets and notepaper and red paper tulips offered in memory of the glorious Revolution. Right across the Square the groups of people scattered in little dusky pools against the snow, until they touched the very doors of the church.... I saw al this, was conscious that the stars and the church candles mingled... then suddenly I had to clutch the side of the booth behind me to prevent myself from fal ing. My head swam, my limbs were as water, and my old so wel -remembered friend struck me in the middle of the spine as though he had cut me in two with his knife. How was I ever to get home? No one noticed me--indeed they seemed to my sick eyes to have ceased to be human. Ghosts in a ghostly world, the snow gleaming through them so that they only moved like a thin diaphanous veil against the wall of the sky... I clutched my booth. In a moment I should be down. The pain in my back was agony, my legs had ceased to exist, and I was fal ing into a dark, dark pool of clear jet-black water, at the bottom of which lay a star....
The strange thing is that I do not know who it was who rescued me. I know that some one came. I know that to my own dim surprise an Isvostchick was there and that very feebly I got into it. Some one was with me. Was it my black-bearded peasant? I fancy now that it was. I can even, on looking back, see him sitting up, very large and still, one thick arm holding me. I fancy that I can still smel the stuff of his clothes. I fancy that he talked to me, very quietly, reassuring me about something. But, upon my word, I don't know. One can so easily imagine what one wants to be true, and now I want, more than I would then ever have believed to be possible, to have had actual contact with him. It is the only conversation between us that can ever have existed: never, before or after, was there another opportunity. And in any case there can scarcely have been a conversation, because I certainly said nothing, and I cannot remember anything that he said, if indeed he said anything at al . At any rate I was there in the Sadovaya, I was in a cab, I was in my bed. The truth of the rest of it any one may decide for himself....
II
That Thursday was March 15. I was conscious of my existence again on Sunday, April 1st. I opened my eyes and saw that there was a thaw. That was the first thing of which I was aware--that water was apparently dripping on every side of me. It is a strange sensation to lie on your bed very weak, and very indifferent, and to feel the world turning to moisture al about you.... My ramshackle habitation had never been a very strong defence against the outside world. It seemed now to have definitely decided to abandon the struggle. The water streamed down the panes of my window opposite my bed. One patch of my ceiling (just above my only bookcase, confound it!) was coloured a mouldy grey, and from this huge drops like elephant's tears, splashed monotonously. (Already _The Spirit of Man_ was disfigured by a long grey streak, and the green back of Galleon's _Roads_ was splotched with stains.) Some one had placed a bucket near the door to catch a perpetual stream flowing from the corner of the room. Down into the bucket it pattered with a hasty, giggling, hysterical jiggle. I rather liked the companionship of it. I didn't mind it at al . I real y minded nothing whatever.... I sighed my appreciation of my return to life. My sigh brought some one from the corner of my room and that some one was, of course, the inevitable Eat.
He came up to my bed in his stealthy, furtive fashion, and looked at me reproachfully. I asked him, my voice sounding to myself strange and very far away, what he was doing there. He answered that if it had not been for him I should be dead. He had come early one morning and found me lying in my bed and no one in the place at al . No one--because the old woman had vanished. Yes, the neighbours had told him. Apparently on that very Thursday she had decided that the Revolution had given her her freedom, and that she was never going to work for anybody ever again.
She had told a woman-neighbour that she heard that the land now was going to be given back to everybody, and she was returning therefore to her village somewhere in the Moscow Province. She had not been back there for twenty years. And first, to celebrate her liberty, she would get magnificently drunk on furniture polish.
"I did not see her of course," said the Rat. "No. When I came, early in the morning, no one was here. I thought that you were dead, Barin, and I began col ecting your property, so that no one else should take it. Then you made a movement, and I saw that you were alive--so I got some cabbage soup and gave it you. That certainly saved you.... I'm going to stay with you now."
I did not care in the least whether he went or stayed. He chattered on.
By staying with me he would inevitably neglect his public duties.
Perhaps I didn't know that he had public duties? Yes, he was now an Anarchist, and I should be astonished very shortly, by the things the Anarchists would do. All the same, they had their own discipline. They had their own processions, too, like any one else. Only four days ago he had marched all over Petrograd carrying a black flag. He must confess that he was rather sick of it. But they must have processions.... Even the prostitutes had marched down the Nevski the other day demanding shorter hours.
But of course I cannot remember al that he said. During the next few days I slowly pul ed myself out of the misty dead world in which I had been lying. Pain came back to me, leaping upon me and then receding, final y, on the third day suddenly leaving me altogether. The Rat fed me on cabbage soup and glasses of tea and caviare and biscuits. During those three days he never left me, and indeed tended me like a woman. He would sit by my bed and with his rough hand stroke my hair, while he poured into my ears ghastly stories of the many crimes that he had committed. I noticed that he was cleaner and more civilised. His beard was clipped and he smelt of cabbage and straw--a rather healthy smell.
One morning he suddenly took the pail, filled it with water and washed himself in front of my windows. He scrubbed himself until I should have thought that he had no skin left.
"You're a fine big man, Rat," I said.
He was delighted with that, and came quite near my bed, stretching his naked body, his arms and legs and chest, like a pleased animal.
"Yes, I'm a fine man, Barin," he said; "many women have loved me, and many will again..." Then he went back, and producing clean drawers and vest from somewhere (I suspect that they were mine but I was too weak to care), put them on.
On the second and third days I felt much better. The thaw was less violent, the wood crackled in my stove. On the morning of Wednesday April 14 I got up, dressed, and sat in front of my window. The ice was still there, but over it lay a faint, a very faint, filmy sheen of water. It was a day of gleams, the sun flashing in and out of the clouds. Just beneath my window a tree was pushing into bud. Pools of water lay thick on the dirty melting snow. I got the Rat to bring a little table and put some books on it. I had near me _The Spirit of Man_, Keats's _Letters_, _The Roads_, Beddoes, and _Pride and Prejudice_. A consciousness of the outer world crept, like warmth, through my bones.
"Rat," I said, "who's been to see me?"
"No one," said he.
I felt suddenly a ridiculous affront.
"No one?" I asked, incredulous.
"No one," he answered. "They've al forgotten you, Barin," he added maliciously, knowing that that would hurt me.
It was strange how deeply I cared. Here was I who, only a short while before, had declared myself done with the world for ever, and now I was almost crying because no one had been to see me! Indeed, I believe in my weakness and distress I actual y did cry. No one at all? Not Vera nor Nina nor Jeremy nor Bohun? Not young Bohun even...? And then slowly my brain realised that there was now a new world. None of the old conditions held any longer.
We had been the victims of an earthquake. Now it was--every man for himself! Quickly then there came upon me an eager desire to know what had happened in the Markovitch family. What of Jerry and Vera? What of Nicholas? What of Semyonov...?
"Rat," I said, "this afternoon I am going out!"
"Very wel , Barin," he said, "I, too, have an engagement."
In the afternoon I crept out like an old sick man. I felt strangely shy and nervous. When I reached the corner of Ekateringofsky Canal and the English Prospect I decided not to go in and see the Markovitches. For one thing I shrank from the thought of their compassion. I had not shaved for many days. I was that dull sickly yellow colour that offends the taste of all healthy vigorous people. I did not want their pity.
No.... I would wait until I was stronger.
My interest in life was reviving with every step that I took. I don't know what I had expected the outside world to be. This was April 14. It was nearly a month since the outburst of the Revolution, and surely there should be signs in the streets of the results of such a cataclysm.
There were, on the surface, no signs. There was the same little cinema on the canal with its gaudy coloured posters, there was the old woman sitting at the foot of the little bridge with her basket of apples and bootlaces, there was the same wooden hut with the sweets and the fruit, the same figures of peasant women, soldiers, boys hurrying across the bridge, the same slow, sleepy Isvostchick stumbling along carelessly.
One sign there was. Exactly opposite the little cinema, on the other side of the canal, was a high grey block of flats. This now was starred and sprayed with the white marks of bullets. It was like a man marked for life with smallpox. That building alone was witness to me that I had not dreamt the events of that week.
The thaw made walking very difficult. The water poured down the sides of the houses and gurgled in floods through the pipes. The snow was slippery under the film of gleaming wet, and there were huge pools at every step. Across the middle of the English Prospect, near the Baths, there was quite a deep lake....
I wandered slowly along, enjoying the chill warmth of the soft spring sun. The winter was nearly over! Thank God for that! What had happened during my month of illness? Perhaps a great Revolutionary army had been formed, and a mighty, free, and united Russia was going out to save the world! Oh, I did hope that it was so! Surely that wonderful white week was a good omen. No Revolution in history had started so wel as this one....
I found my way at last very slowly to the end of the Quay, and the sight of the round towers of my favourite church was like the reassuring smile of an old friend. The sun was dropping low over the Neva. The whole vast expanse of the river was coloured very faintly pink. Here, too, there was the film of the water above the ice; the water caught the colour, but the ice below it was grey and still. Clouds of crimson and orange and faint gold streamed away in great waves of light from the sun. The long line of buildings and towers on the farther side was jet-black; the masts of the ships clustering against the Quay were touched at their tips with bright gold. It was al utterly still, not a sound nor a movement anywhere; only one figure, that of a woman, was coming slowly towards me. I felt, as one always does at the beginning of a Russian spring, a strange sense of expectation. Spring in Russia is so sudden and so swift that it gives an overwhelming impression of a powerful organising Power behind it. Suddenly the shutters are pul ed back and the sun floods the world! Upon this afternoon one could feel the urgent business of preparation pushing forward, arrogantly, ruthlessly. I don't think that I had ever before realised the power of the Neva at such close quarters. I was almost ashamed at the contrast of its struggle with my own feebleness.
I saw then that the figure coming towards me was Nina.
III
As she came nearer I saw that she was intensely preoccupied. She was looking straight in front of her but seeing nothing. It was only when she was quite close to me that I saw that she was crying. She was making no sound. Her mouth was closed; the tears were slowly, helplessly, rolling down her cheeks.
She was very near to me indeed before she saw me; then she looked at me closely before she recognised me. When she saw that it was I, she stopped, fumbled for her handkerchief, which she found, wiped her eyes, then turned away from me and looked out over the river.
"Nina, dear," I said, "what's the matter?"
She didn't answer; at length she turned round and said:
"You've been ill again, haven't you?"
One cheek had a dirty tear-stain on it, which made her inexpressibly young and pathetic and helpless.
"Yes," I said, "I have."
She caught her breath, put out her hand, and touched my arm.
"Oh, you _do_ look ill!... Vera went to ask, and there was a rough-looking man there who said that no one could see you, but that you were all right.... One of us ought to have forced a way in--M. Bohun wanted to--but we've al been thinking of ourselves."
"What's the matter, Nina?" I asked. "You've been crying."
"Nothing's the matter. I'm al right."
"No, you're not. You ought to tell me. You trusted me once."
"I don't trust any one," she answered fiercely. "Especial y not Englishmen."
"What's the matter?" I asked again.
"Nothing.... We're just as we were. Except," she suddenly looked up at me, "Uncle Alexei's living with us now."
"Semyonov!" I cried out sharply, "living with you!"
"Yes," she went on, "in the room where Nicholas had his inventions is Uncle Alexei's bedroom."
"Why, in Heaven's name?" I cried.
"Uncle Alexei wanted it. He said he was lonely, and then he just came. I don't know whether Nicholas likes it or not. Vera hates it, but she agreed at once."
"And do you like it?" I asked.
"I like Uncle Alexei," she answered. "We have long talks. He shows me how silly I've been."
"Oh!" I said... "and what about Nicholas' inventions?"
"He's given them up for ever." She looked at me doubtful y, as though she were wondering whether she could trust me. "He's so funny now--Nicholas, I mean. You know he was so happy when the Revolution came. Now he's in a different mood every minute. Something's happened to him that we don't know about."
"What kind of thing?" I asked.
"I don't know. He's seen something or heard something. It's some secret he's got. But Uncle Alexei knows."
"How can you tel ?"
"Because he's always saying things that make Nicholas angry, and we can't see anything in them at all.... Uncle Alexei's very clever."
"Yes, he is," I agreed. "But you haven't told me why you were crying just now."
She looked at me. She gave a little shiver. "Oh, you do look ill!...
Everything's going wrong together, isn't it?"
And with that she suddenly left me, hurrying away from me, leaving me miserable and apprehensive of some great trouble in store for al of us.
IV
It is impossible to explain how disturbed I was by Nina's news. Semyonov living in the flat! He must have some very strong reason for this, to leave his big comfortable flat for the pokiness of the Markovitches'!
And then that the Markovitches should have him! There were already inhabitants enough--Nicholas, Vera, Nina, Uncle Ivan, Bohun. Then the inconvenience and discomfort of Nicholas's little hole as a bedroom! How Semyonov must loathe it!
From that moment the Markovitches' flat became for me the centre of my drama. Looking back I could see now how al the growing development of the story had centred round those rooms. I did not of course know at this time of that final drama of the Thursday afternoon, but I knew of the adventure with the policeman, and it seemed to me that the flat was a cup into which the ingredients were being poured one after another until at last the preparation would be complete, and then....
Oh, but I cared for Nina and Vera and Nicholas--yes, and Jerry too! I wanted to see them happy and at peace before I left them--in especial Nicholas.
And Semyonov came closer to them and closer, fol owing some plan of his own and yet, after all, final y like a man driven by a power, constructed it might be, out of his own very irony.
I made a kind of bet with fate that by Easter Day every one should be happy by then.
Next day, the 15th of April, was the great funeral for the victims of the Revolution. I believe, although of course at that time I had heard nothing, that there had been great speculation about the day, many people thinking that it would be an excuse for further trouble, the Monarchists rising, or the "Soviet" attacking the Provisional Government, or Milyukoff and his fol owers attacking the Soviet. They need not have been alarmed. No one had as yet realised the lengths that Slavonic apathy may permit itself....
I went down about half-past ten to the Square at the end of the Sadovaya and found it filled with a vast concourse of peasants, not only the Square was filled, but the Sadovaya as far as the eye could see. They were arranged in perfect order, about eight in a row, arm in arm. Every group carried its banner, and far away into the distance one could see the words "Freedom," "Brotherhood," "The Land for Al ," "Peace of the World," floating on the breeze. Nevertheless, in spite of these fine words, it was not a very cheering sight. The day was wretched--no actual rain, but a cold damp wind blowing and the dirty snow, half ice and half water; the people themselves were not inspiring. They were al , it seemed, peasants. I saw very few workmen, although I believe that multitudes were actually in the procession. Those strange, pale, Eastern faces, passive, apathetic, ignorant, childish, unreasoning, stretched in a great cloud under the grey overhanging canopy of the sky. They raised if once and again a melancholy little tune that was more wail than anything else. They had stood there, I was told, in pools of frozen water for hours, and were perfectly ready to stand thus for many hours more if they were ordered to do so. As I regarded their ignorance and apathy I realised for the first time something of what the Revolution had already done.
A hundred million of these children--ignorant, greedy, pathetic, helpless, revengeful--let loose upon the world! Where were their leaders? Who, indeed, would their leaders be? The sun sometimes broke through for a moment, but the light that it threw on their faces only made them more pal id, more death-like. They did not laugh nor joke as our people at home would have done.... I believe that very few of them had any idea why they were there....
Suddenly the word came down the lines to move forward. Very slowly, wailing their little tune, they advanced.
But the morning was growing old and I must at once see Vera. I had made up my mind, during the night, to do anything that lay in my power to persuade Vera and Nina to leave their flat. The flat was the root of al their trouble, there was something in its atmosphere, something gloomy and ominous. They would be better at the other end of the town, or, perhaps, over on the Vassily Ostrov. I would show Vera that it was a fatal plan to have Semyonov to live with them (as in all probability she herself knew wel enough), and their leaving the flat was a very good excuse for getting rid of him. I had al this in my head as I went along. I was still feeling ill and feeble, and my half-hour's stand in the market-place had seriously exhausted me. I had to lean against the wal s of the houses every now and then; it seemed to me that, in the pale watery air, the whole world was a dream, the high forbiding flats looking down on to the dirty ice of the canals, the water dripping, dripping, dripping.... No one was about. Every one had gone to join in the procession. I could see it, with my mind's eye, unwinding its huge tails through the watery-oozing channels of the town, like some pale-coloured snake, crawling through the misty labyrinths of a marsh.
In the flat I found only Uncle Ivan sitting very happily by himself at the table playing patience. He was dressed very smartly in his English black suit and a black bow tie. He behaved with his usual elaborate courtesy to me but, to my relief, on this occasion, he spoke Russian.
It appeared that the Revolution had not upset him in the least. He took, he assured me, no interest whatever in politics. The great thing was "to live inside oneself," and by living inside oneself he meant, I gathered, that one should be entirely selfish. Clothes were important, and food and courteous manners, but he must say that he could not see that one would be very much worse off even though one were ruled by the Germans--one might, indeed, be a great deal more comfortable. And as to this Revolution he couldn't real y understand why people made such a fuss. One class or another class what did it matter? (As to this he was, I fear, to be sadly undeceived. He little knew that, before the year was out, he would be shovel ing snow in the Morskaia for a rouble an hour.) So centred was he upon himself that he did not notice that I looked ill.
He offered me a chair, indeed, but that was simply his courteous manners. Very ridiculous, he thought, the fuss that Nicholas made about the Revolution--very ridiculous the fuss that he made about everything....
Alexei had been showing Nicholas how ridiculous he was.
"Oh, has he?" said I. "How's he been doing that?"
Laughing at him, apparently. They al laughed at him. It was his own fault.
"Alexei's living with us now, you know."
"Yes, I know," I said, "what's he doing that for?"
"He wanted to," said Uncle Ivan simply. "He's always done what he's wanted to, al his life."
"It makes it a great many of you in one small flat."
"Yes, doesn't it?" said Uncle Ivan amiably. "Very pleasant--although, Ivan Andreievitch, I will admit to you quite frankly that I've always been frightened of Alexei. He has such a very sharp tongue. He discovers one's weak spots in a marvel ous manner.... We all have weak spots you know," he added apologetically.
"Yes, we have," I said.
Then, to my relief, Vera came in. She was very sweet to me, expressing much concern about my illness, asking me to stay and have my meal with them.... She suddenly broke off. There was a letter lying on the table addressed to her. I saw at once that it was in Nina's handwriting.
"Nina! Writing to _me_!" She picked it up, stood back looking at the envelope before she opened it. She read it, then turned on me with a cry.
"Nina!... She's gone!"
"Gone!" I repeated, starting at once.
"Yes.... Read!" She thrust it into my hand.
In Nina's sprawling schoolgirl hand I read:
Dear Vera--I've left you and Nicholas for ever.... I have been thinking of this for a long time, and now Uncle Alexei has shown me how foolish I've been, wanting something I can't have. But I'm not a child any longer. I must lead my own life.... I'm going to live with Boris who will take care of me. It's no use you or any one trying to prevent me. I will not come back. I must lead my own life now. Nina.
Vera was beside herself.
"Quick! Quick! Some one must go after her. She must be brought back at once. Quick! _Scora! Scora_!... I must go. No, she is angry with me. She won't listen to me. Ivan Andreievitch, you must go. At once! You must bring her back with you. Darling, darling Nina!... Oh, my God, what shal I do if anything happens to her!"
She clutched my arm. Even as she spoke, she had got my hat and stick.
"This is Alexei Petrovitch," I said.
"Never mind who it is," she answered. "She must be brought back at once.
She is so young. She doesn't know.... Boris--Oh! it's impossible. Don't leave without bringing her back with you."
Even old Uncle Ivan seemed distressed.
"Dear, dear..." he kept repeating, "dear, dear.... Poor little Nina.
Poor little Nina--"
"Where does Grogoff live?" I asked.
"16 Gagarinskaya.... Flat 3. Quick. You must bring her back with you.
Promise me."
"I will do my best," I said.
I found by a miracle of good fortune an Isvostchick in the street outside. We plunged along through the pools of water in the direction of the Gagarinskaya. That was a horrible drive. In the Sadovaya we met the slow, winding funeral procession.
On they went, arm in arm, the same little wailing tune, monotonously repeating, but sounding like nothing human, rather exuding from the very cobbles of the road and the waters of the stagnant canals.
The march of the peasants upon Petrograd! I could see them from al the quarters of the town, converging upon the Marsovoie Pole, stubborn, silent, wraiths of earlier civilisation, omens of later dominations. I thought of Boris Grogoff. What did he, with al his vehemence and conceit, intend to do with these? First he would flatter them--I saw that clearly enough. But then when his flatteries failed, what then?
Could he control them? Would they obey him? Would they obey anybody until education had shown them the necessities for co-ordination and self-discipline? The river at last was overflowing its banks--would not the savage force of its power be greater than any one could calculate?
The stream flowed on.... My Isvostchick took his cab down a side street, and then again met the strange sorrowful company. From this point I could see several further bridges and streets, and over them all I saw the same stream flowing, the same banners blowing--and al so still, so dumb, so patient.
The delay was maddening. My thoughts were al now on Nina. I saw her always before me as I had beheld her yesterday, walking slowly along, her eyes fixed on space, the tears trickling down her face. "Life,"
Nikitin once said to me, "I sometimes think is like a dark room, the door closed, the windows bolted and your enemy shut in with you. Whether your enemy or yourself is the stronger who knows?... Nor does it matter, as the issue is always decided outside.... Knowing that you can at least afford to despise him."
I felt something of that impotence now. I cursed the Isvostchick, but wherever he went this slow endless stream seemed to impede our way. Poor Nina! Such a baby! What was it that had driven her to this? She did not love the man, and she knew quite well that she did not. No, it was an act of defiance. But defiance to whom--to Vera? to Lawrence?... and what had Semyonov said to her?
Then, thank Heaven, we crossed the Nevski, and our way was clear. The old cabman whipped up his horse and, in a minute or two we were outside 16 Gagarinskaya. I will confess to very real fears and hesitations as I climbed the dark stairs (the lift was, of course, not working). I was not the kind of man for this kind of job. In the first place I hated quarrels, and knowing Grogoff's hot temper I had every reason to expect a tempestuous interview. Then I was ill, aching in every limb and seeing everything, as I always did when I was unwell, mistily and with uncertainty. Then I had a very shrewd suspicion that there was considerable truth in what Semyonov had said, that I was interfering in what only remotely concerned me. At any rate, that was certainly the view that Grogoff would take, and Nina, perhaps also. I felt, as I rang the bell of No. 3, that unpleasant pain in the pit of the stomach that tel s you that you're going to make a fool of yourself.
Well, it would not be for the first time.
"Boris Nicolaievitch, _doma_?" I asked the cross-looking old woman who opened the door.