I feel conscious, as I approach the centre of my story, that there is an appearance of uncertainty in the way that I pass from one character to another. I do not defend that uncertainty.
What I think I really feel now, on looking back, is that each of us — myself, Semyonov, Vera, Nina, Lawrence, Bohun, Grogoff, yes, and the Rat himself — was a part of a mysterious figure who was beyond us, outside us, and above us all. The heart, the lungs, the mouth, the eyes… used against our own human agency, and yet free within that domination for the exercise of our own free will. Have you never felt when you have been swept into the interaction of some group of persons that you were being employed as a part of a figure that without you would be incomplete? The figure is formed…. For an instant it remains, gigantic, splendid, towering above mankind, as a symbol, a warning, a judgement, an ideal, a threat. Dimly you recognise that you have played some part in the creation of that figure, and that living for a moment, as you have done, in some force outside your individuality, you have yet expressed that same individuality more nobly than any poor assertion of your own small lonely figure could afford. You have been used and now you are alone again…. You were caught up and united to your fellowmen. God appeared to you — not, as you had expected, in a vision cut off from the rest of the world, but in a revelation that you shared and that was only revealed because you were uniting with others. And yet your individuality was still there, strengthened, heightened, purified.
And the vision of the figure remains….
When I woke on Saturday morning, after my evening with Semyonov, I was conscious that I was relieved as though I had finally settled some affair whose uncertainty had worried me. I lay in bed chuckling as though I had won a triumph over Semyonov, as though I said to myself, “Well, I needn’t be afraid of him any longer.” It was a most beautiful day, crystal clear, with a stainless blue sky and the snow like a carpet of jewels, and I thought I would go and see how the world was behaving. I walked down the Morskaia, finding it quiet enough, although I fancied that the faces of the passers-by were anxious and nervous. Nevertheless, the brilliant sunshine and the clear peaceful beauty of the snow reassured me — the world was too beautiful and well-ordered a place to allow disturbance. Then at the corner of the English shop where the Morskaia joins the Nevski Prospect, I realised that something had occurred. It was as though the world that I had known so long, and with whom I felt upon such intimate terms, had suddenly screwed round its face and showed me a new grin.
The broad space of the Nevski was swallowed up by a vast crowd, very quiet, very amiable, moving easily, almost slothfully, in a slowly stirring stream.
As I looked up the Nevski I realised what it was that had given me the first positive shock of an altered world. The trams had stopped. I had never seen the Nevski without its trams; I had always been forced to stand on the brink, waiting whilst the stream of Isvostchicks galloped past and the heavy, lumbering, coloured elephants tottered along, amiable and slow and good-natured like everything else in that country. Now the elephants were gone; the Isvostchicks were gone. So far as my eye could see, the black stream flooded the shining way.
I mingled with the crowd and found myself slowly propelled in an amiable, aimless manner up the street.
“What’s the matter?” I asked a cheerful, fat little “Chinovnik,” who seemed to be tethered to me by some outside invincible force.
“I don’t know….” he said. “They’re saying there’s been some shooting up by the Nicholas Station — but that was last night. Some women had a procession about food…. Tak oni gavoryat — so they say…. But I don’t know. People have just come out to see what they can see….”
And so they had — women, boys, old men, little children. I could see no signs of ill-temper anywhere, only a rather open-mouthed wonder and sense of expectation.
A large woman near me, with a shawl over her head and carrying a large basket, laughed a great deal. “No, I wouldn’t go,” she said. “You go and get it for yourself — I’m not coming. Not I, I was too clever for that.” Then she would turn, shrilly calling for some child who was apparently lost in the crowd. “Sacha!… Ah! Sacha!” she cried — and turning again, “Eh! look at the Cossack!… There’s a fine Cossack!”
It was then that I noticed the Cossacks. They were lined up along the side of the pavement, and sometimes they would suddenly wheel and clatter along the pavement itself, to the great confusion of the crowd who would scatter in every direction.
They were fine-looking men, and their faces expressed childish and rather worried amiability. The crowd obviously feared them not at all, and I saw a woman standing with her hand on the neck of one of the horses, talking in a very friendly fashion to the soldier who rode it. “That’s strange,” I thought to myself; “there’s something queer here.” It was then, just at the entrance of the “Malaia Koniushennaia,” that a strange little incident occurred. Some fellow — I could just see his shaggy head, his pale face, and black beard — had been shouting something, and suddenly a little group of Cossacks moved towards him and he was surrounded. They turned off with him towards a yard close at hand. I could hear his voice shrilly protesting; the crowd also moved behind, murmuring. Suddenly a Cossack, laughing, said something. I could not hear his words, but every one near me laughed. The little Chinovnik at my side said to me, “That’s right. They’re not going to shoot, whatever happens — not on their brothers, they say. They’ll let the fellow go in a moment. It’s only just for discipline’s sake. That’s right. That’s the spirit!”
“But what about the police?” I asked.
“Ah, the police!” His cheery, good-natured face was suddenly dark and scowling. “Let them try, that’s all. It’s Protopopoff who’s our enemy — not the Cossacks.”
And a woman near him repeated.
“Yes, yes, it’s Protopopoff. Hurrah for the Cossacks!”
I was squeezed now into a corner, and the crowd swirled and eddied about me in a tangled stream, slow, smiling, confused, and excited. I pushed my way along, and at last tumbled down the dark stone steps into the “Cave de la Grave,” a little restaurant patronised by the foreigners and certain middle-class Russians. It was full, and every one was eating his or her meal very comfortably as though nothing at all were the matter. I sat down with a young American, an acquaintance of mine attached to the American Embassy.
“There’s a tremendous crowd in the Nevski,” I said.
“Guess I’m too hungry to trouble about it,” he answered.
“Do you think there’s going to be any trouble?” I asked.
“Course not. These folks are always wandering round. M. Protopopoff has it in hand all right.”
“Yes, I suppose he has,” I answered with a sigh.
“You seem to want trouble,” he said, suddenly looking up at me.
“No, I don’t want trouble,” I answered. “But I’m sick of this mess, this mismanagement, thievery, lying — one’s tempted to think that anything would be better—”
“Don’t you believe it,” he said brusquely. “Excuse me, Durward, I’ve been in this country five years. A revolution would mean God’s own upset, and you’ve got a war on, haven’t you?”
“They might fight better than ever,” I argued.
“Fight!” he laughed. “They’re dam sick of it all, that’s what they are. And a revolution would leave ’em like a lot of silly sheep wandering on to a precipice. But there won’t be no revolution. Take my word.”
It was at that moment that I saw Boris Grogoff come in. He stood in the doorway looking about him, and he had the strangest air of a man walking in his sleep, so bewildered, so rapt, so removed was he. He stared about him, looked straight at me, but did not recognise me; finally, when a waiter showed him a table, he sat down still gazing in front of him. The waiter had to speak to him twice before he ordered his meal, and then he spoke so strangely that the fellow looked at him in astonishment. “Guess that chap’s seen the Millennium,” remarked my American. “Or he’s drunk, maybe.”
This appearance had the oddest effect on me. It was as though I had been given a sudden conviction that after all there was something behind this disturbance. I saw, during the whole of the rest of that day, Grogoff’s strange face with the exalted, bewildered eyes, the excited mouth, the body tense and strained as though waiting for a blow. And now, always when I look back I see Boris Grogoff standing in the doorway of the “Cave de la Grave” like a ghost from another world warning me.
In the afternoon I had a piece of business that took me across the river. I did my business and turned homewards. It was almost dark, and the ice of the Neva was coloured a faint green under the grey sky; the buildings rose out of it like black bubbles poised over a swamp. I was in that strange quarter of Petrograd where the river seems, like some sluggish octopus, to possess a thousand coils. Always you are turning upon a new bend of the ice, secretly stretching into darkness; strange bridges suddenly meet you, and then, where you had expected to find a solid mass of hideous flats, there will be a cluster of masts and the smell of tar, and little fierce red lights like the eyes of waiting beasts.
I seemed to stand with ice on every side of me, and so frail was my trembling wooden bridge that it seemed an easy thing for the ice, that appeared to press with tremendous weight against its banks, to grind the supports to fragments. There was complete silence on every side of me. The street to my left was utterly deserted. I heard no cries nor calls — only the ice seemed once and again to quiver as though some submerged creature was moving beneath it. That vast crowd on the Nevski seemed to be a dream. I was in a world that had fallen into decay and desolation, and I could smell rotting wood, and could fancy that frozen blades of grass were pressing up through the very pavement stones. Suddenly an Isvostchick stumbled along past me, down the empty street, and the bumping rattle of the sledge on the snow woke me from my laziness. I started off homewards. When I had gone a little way and was approaching the bridge over the Neva some man passed me, looked back, stopped and waited for me. When I came up to him I saw to my surprise that it was the Rat. He had his coat-collar turned over his ears and his dirty fur cap pulled down over his forehead. His nose was very red, and his thin hollow cheeks a dirty yellow colour.
“Good-evening, Barin,” he said, grinning.
“Good-evening,” I said. “Where are you slipping off to so secretly?”
“Slipping off?” He did not seem to understand my word. I repeated it.
“Oh, I’m not slipping off,” he said almost indignantly. “No, indeed. I’m just out for a walk like your Honour, to see the town.”
“What have they been doing this afternoon?” I asked. “There’s been a fine fuss on the Nevski.”
“Yes, there has….” he said, chuckling. “But it’s nothing to the fuss there will be.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “The police have got it all in control already.
You’ll see to-morrow….”
“And the soldiers, Barin?”
“Oh, the soldiers won’t do anything. Talk’s one thing — action’s another.”
He laughed to himself and seemed greatly amused. This irritated me.
“Well, what do you know?” I asked.
“I know nothing,” he chuckled. “But remember, Barin, in a week’s time, if you want me I’m your friend. Who knows? In a week I may be a rich man.”
“Some one else’s riches,” I answered.
“Certainly,” he said. “And why not? Why should he have things? Is he a better man than I? Possibly — but then it is easy for a rich man to keep within the law. And then Russia’s meant for the poor man. However,” he continued, with great contempt in his voice, “that’s politics — dull stuff. While the others talk I act.”
“And what about the Germans?” I asked him. “Does it occur to you that when you’ve collected your spoils the Germans will come in and take them?”
“Ah, you don’t understand us, Barin,” he said, laughing. “You’re a good man and a kind man, but you don’t understand us. What can the Germans do? They can’t take the whole of Russia. Russia’s a big country…. No, if the Germans come there’ll be more for us to take.”
We stood for a moment under a lamp-post. He put his hand on my arm and looked up at me with his queer ugly face, his sentimental dreary eyes, his red nose, and his hard, cruel little mouth.
“But no one shall touch you — unless it’s myself if I’m very drunk. But you, knowing me, will understand afterwards that I was at least not malicious—”
I laughed. “And this mysticism that they tell us about in England. Are you mystical, Rat? Have you a beautiful soul?”
He sniffed and blew his nose with his hand.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Barin — I suppose you haven’t a rouble or two on you?”
“No, I haven’t,” I answered. He looked up and down the bridge as though he were wondering whether an attack on me was worth while. He saw a policeman and decided that it wasn’t.
“Well, good-night, Barin,” he said cheerfully. He shuffled off. I looked at the vast Neva, pale green and dim grey, so silent under the bridges. The policeman, enormous under his high coat, the sure and confident guardian of that silent world, came slowly towards me, and I turned away home.