XI
I realise that the moment has come in my tale when the whole interest ofmy narrative centres in Markovitch. Markovitch is really the point ofall my story as I have, throughout, subconsciously, recognised. Theevents of that wonderful Tuesday when for a brief instant the sun offreedom really did seem to all of us to break through the clouds, thatone day in all our lives when hopes, dreams, Utopias, fairy tales seemedto be sober and realistic fact, those events might be seen through theeyes of any of us. Vera, Nina, Grogoff, Semyonov, Lawrence, Bohun and I,all shared in them and all had our sensations and experiences. But myown were drab and ordinary enough, and from the others I had no accountso full and personal and true as from Markovitch. He told me all aboutthat great day afterwards, only a short time before that catastrophethat overwhelmed us all, and in his account there was all the growingsuspicion and horror of disillusion that after-events fostered in him.But as he told me, sitting through the purple hours of the night,watching the light break in ripples and circles of colour over the sea,he regained some of the splendours of that great day, and before he hadfinished his tale he was right back in that fantastic world that hadburst at the touch like bubbles in the sun. I will give his account, asaccurately as possible in his own words. I seldom interrupted him, and Ithink he soon forgot that I was there. He had come to me that night in apanic, for reasons which will he given later and I, in trying toreassure him, had reminded him of that day, when the world was suddenlyUtopia.
"That _did_ exist, that world," I said. "And once having existed itcannot now be dead. Believe, believe that it will come back."
"Come back!" He shook his head. "Even if it is still there I cannot goback to it. I will tell you, Ivan Andreievitch, what that day was...and why now I am so bitterly punished for having believed in it. Listen,what happened to me. It occurred, all of it, exactly as I tell you. Youknow that, just at that time, I had been worrying very much about Vera.The Revolution had come I suppose very suddenly to every one; but trulyto myself, because I had been thinking of Vera, it was like athunder-clap. It's always been my trouble, Ivan Andreievitch, that Ican't think of more than one thing at once, and the worry of it has beenthat in my life there has been almost invariably more than one thingthat I ought to think of.... I would think of my invention, you know,that I ought to get on with it a little faster. Because really--it wasmaking a sort of cloth out of bark that I was working at; as every daypassed, I could see more and more clearly that there was a great deal inthis particular invention, and that it only needed real application tobring it properly forward. Only application as you know is my trouble.If I could only shut my brain up...."
He told me then, I remember, a lot about his early childhood, and thenthe struggle that he had had to see one thing at once, and not two orthree things that got in the way and hindered him from doing anything.He went on about Vera.
"You know that one night I had crept up into your room, and looked tosee whether there were possibly a letter there. That was a disgracefulthing to do, wasn't it? But I felt then that I had to satisfy myself. Iwonder whether I can make you understand. It wasn't jealousy exactly,because I had never felt that I had had any very strong right over Vera,considering the way that she had married me; but I don't think I everloved her more than I did during those weeks, and she was unattainable.I was lonely, Ivan Andreievitch, that's the truth. Everything seemed tobe slipping away from me, and in some way Alexei Petrovitch Semyonovseemed to accentuate that. He was always reminding me of one day oranother when I had been happy with Vera long ago--some silly littleexpedition we had taken--or he was doubtful about my experiments beingany good, or he would recall what I had felt about Russia at thebeginning of the war.... All in a very kindly way, mind you. He was morefriendly than he had ever been, and seemed to be altogethersofter-hearted. But he made me think a great deal about Vera. He talkedoften so much. He thought that I ought to look after her more, and Iexplained that that wasn't my right.
"The truth is that ever since Nina's birthday-party I had been anxious.I knew really that everything was right. Vera is of course the soul ofhonour--but something had occurred then which made me....
"Well, well, that doesn't matter now. The only point is that I wasthinking of Vera a great deal, and wondering how I could make her happy.She wasn't happy. I don't know how it was, but during those weeks justbefore the Revolution we were none of us happy. We were all uneasy asthough we expected something were going to happen--and we were allsuspicious....
"I only tell you this because then you will see why it was that theRevolution broke upon me with such surprise. I had been right insidemyself, talking to nobody, wanting nobody to talk to me. I get like thatsometimes, when words seem to mean so much that it seems dangerous tothrow them about.... And perhaps it is. But silence is dangerous too.Everything is dangerous if you are unlucky by nature....
"I had been indoors all that Monday working at my invention, andthinking about Vera, wondering whether I'd speak to her, then afraid ofmy temper (I have a bad temper), wanting to know what was the truth,thinking at one moment that if she cared for some one else that I'd goaway...and then suddenly angry and jealous, wishing to challenge him,but I am a ludicrous figure to challenge any one, as I very well know.Semyonov had been to see me that morning, and he had just sat therewithout saying anything. I couldn't endure that very long, so I askedhim what he came for and he said, 'Oh, nothing.' I felt as though hewere spying and I became uneasy. Why should he come so often now? And Iwas beginning to think of him when he wasn't there. It was as though hethought he had a right over all of us, and that irritated me.... Well,that was Monday. They all came late in the afternoon and told me all thenews. They had been at the Astoria. The whole town seemed to be inrevolt, so they said.
"But even then I didn't realise it. I was thinking of Vera just thesame. I looked at her all the evening just as Semyonov had looked at me.And didn't say anything.... I never wanted her so badly before. I madeher sleep with me all that night. She hadn't done that for a long time,and I woke up early in the morning to hear her crying softly to herself.She never used to cry. She was so proud. I put my arms round her, andshe stopped crying and lay quite still. It wasn't fair what I did, but Ifelt as though Alexei Petrovitch had challenged me to do it. He alwayshated Vera I knew. I got up very early and went to my wood. You canimagine I wasn't very happy....
"Then suddenly I thought I'd go out into the streets, and see what washappening. I couldn't believe really that there had been any change. SoI went out.
"Do you know of recent years I've walked out very seldom? What was it? Akind of shyness. I knew when I was in my own house, and I knew whom Iwas with. Then I was never a man who cared greatly about exercise, andthere was no one outside whom I wanted very much to see. So when I wentout that morning it was as though I didn't know Petrograd at all, andhad only just arrived there. I went over the Ekateringofsky Bridge,through the Square, and to the left down the Sadovaya.
"Of course the first thing that I noticed was that there were no trams,and that there were multitudes of people walking along and that theywere all poor people and all happy.' And I _was_ glad when I saw that.Of course I'm a fool, and life can't be as I want it, but that's alwayswhat I had thought life ought to be--all the streets filled with poorpeople, all free and happy. And here they were!... with the snow crispunder their feet, and the sun shining, and the air quite still, so thatall the talk came up, and up into the sky like a song. But of coursethey were bewildered as well as happy. They didn't know where to go,they didn't know what to do--like birds let out suddenly from theircages. I didn't know myself. That's what sudden freedom does--takes yourbreath away so that you go staggering along, and get caught again ifyou're not careful. No trams, no policemen, no carriages filled withproud people cursing you.... Oh, Ivan Andreievitch, I'd be proud myselfif I had money, and servants to put on my clothes, and new women everynight, and different food every day.... I don't blame them--but suddenlyproud people were gone, and I was crying without knowi
ng it--simplybecause that great crowd of poor people went pushing along, all talkingunder the sunny sky as freely as they pleased.
"I began to look about me. I saw that there were papers posted on thewalls. They were those proclamations, you know, of Rodziancko's newgovernment, saying that while everything was unsettled, Milyukoff,Rodziancko, and the others would take charge in order to keep order anddiscipline. It seemed to me that there was little need to talk aboutdiscipline. Had beggars appeared there in the road I believed that thecrowd would have stripped off their clothes and given them, rather thanthat they should want.
"I stood by one proclamation and read it out to the little crowd. Theyrepeated the names to themselves, but they did not seem to care much.'The Czar's wicked they tell me,' said one man to me. 'And all ourtroubles come from him.'
"'It doesn't matter,' said another. 'There'll be plenty of bread now.'
"And indeed what did names matter now? I couldn't believe my eyes or myears, Ivan Andreievitch. It looked too much like Paradise and I'd beendeceived so often. So I determined to be very cautious. 'You've beentaken in, Nicolai Leontievitch, many many times. Don't you believethis?' But I couldn't help feeling that if only this world wouldcontinue, if only the people could always be free and happy and the suncould shine, perhaps the rest of the world would see its folly and thewar would stop and never begin again. This thought would grow in my mindas I walked, although I refused to encourage it.
"Motor lorries covered with soldiers came dashing down the street. Thesoldiers had their guns pointed, but the crowd cheered and cheered,waving hands and shouting. I shouted too. The tears were streaming downmy face. I couldn't help myself. I wanted to hold the sun and the snowand the people all in my arms fixed so that it should never change, andthe world should see how good and innocent life could be.
"On every side people had asked what had really happened, and of courseno one knew. But it did not matter. Every one was so simple. A soldier,standing beside one of the placards was shouting: '_Tovaristchi!_ Whatwe must have is a splendid Republic and a good Czar to look after it.'
"And they all cheered him and laughed and sang. I turned up one of theside streets on to the Fontanka, and here I saw them emptying the roomsof one of the police. That was amusing! I laugh still when I think ofit. Sending everything out of the windows,--underclothes, ladies'bonnets, chairs, books, flower-pots, pictures, and then all the records,white and yellow and pink paper, all fluttering in the sun like so manybutterflies. The crowd was perfectly peaceful, in an excellent temper.Isn't that wonderful when you think that for months those people hadbeen starved and driven, waiting all night in the street for a piece ofbread, and that now all discipline was removed, no more policemen exceptthose hiding for their lives in houses, and yet they did nothing, theytouched no one's property, did no man any harm. People say now that itwas their apathy, that they were taken by surprise, that they were likeanimals who did not know where to go, but I tell you, Ivan Andreievitch,that it was not so. I tell you that it was because just for an hour thesoul could come up from its dark waters and breathe the sun and thelight and see that all was good. Oh, why cannot that day return? Whycannot that day return?..."
He broke off and looked at me like a distracted child, his browspuckered, his hands beating the air. I did not say anything. I wantedhim to forget that I was there.
He went on: "... I could not be there all day, I thought that I would goon to the Duma. I flowed on with the crowd. We were a great riverswinging without knowing why, in one direction and only interrupted,once and again, by the motor lorries that rattled along, the soldiersshouting to us and waving their rifles, and we replying with cheers. Iheard no firing that morning at all. They said, in the crowd, that manythousands had been killed last night. It seemed that on the roof ofnearly every house in Petrograd there was a policeman with amachine-gun. But we marched along, without fear, singing. And all thetime the joy in my heart was rising, rising, and I was checking it,telling myself that in a moment I would be disappointed, that I wouldsoon be tricked as I had been so often tricked before. But I couldn'thelp my joy, which was stronger than myself....
"It must have been early afternoon, so long had I been on the road, whenI came at last to the Duma. You saw yourself, Ivan Andreievitch, thatall that week the crowd outside the Duma was truly a sea of people withthe motor lorries that bristled with rifles for sea-monsters and thegun-carriages for ships. And such a babel! Every one talking at once andnobody listening to any one.
"I don't know now how I pushed through into the Court, but at last I wasinside and found myself crushed up against the doors of the Palace by amob of soldiers and students. Here there was a kind of hush.
"When the door of the Palace opened there was a little sigh of interest.At intervals armed guards marched up with some wretched pale dirtyGorodovoi whom they had taken prisoner--"
Nicholas Markovitch paused again and again. He had been looking out tothe sea over whose purple shadows the sky pale green and studded withsilver stars seemed to wave magic shuttles of light, to and fro,backwards and forwards.
"You don't mind all these details, Ivan Andreievitch? I am trying todiscover, for my own sake, all the details that led me to my finalexperience. I want to trace the chain link by link...nothing isunimportant..."
I assured him that I was absorbed by his story. And indeed I was. Thatlittle, uncouth, lost, and desolate man was the most genuine human beingwhom I had ever known. That quality, above all others, stood forth inhim. He had his secret as all men have their secret, the key to theirpursuit of their own immortality....But Markovitch's secret was a realone, something that he faced with real bravery, real pride, and realdignity, and when he saw what the issue of his conduct must be he would,I knew, face it without flinching.
He went on, but looking at me now rather than the sea--looking at mewith his grave, melancholy, angry eyes. "...After one of these convoysof prisoners the door remained for a moment open, and I seeing my chanceslipped in after the guards. Here I was then in the very heart of theRevolution; but still, you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I couldn't properlyseize the fact, I couldn't grasp the truth that all this was reallyoccurring and that it wasn't just a play, a pretence, or a dream...yes, a dream... especially a dream... perhaps, after all, that waswhat it was. The Circular Hall was piled high with machine-guns, bags offlour, and provisions of all kinds. There were some armed soldiers ofcourse and women, and beside the machine guns the floor was strewn withcigarette ends and empty tins and papers and bags and cardboard boxesand even broken bottles. Dirt and Desolation! I remember that it wasthen when I looked at that floor that the first little suspicion stoleinto my heart--not a suspicion so much as an uneasiness. I wanted atonce myself to set to work to clean up all the mess with my own hands.
"I didn't like to see it there, and no one caring whether it were thereor no.
"In the Catherine Hall into which I peered there was a vast mob, andthis huge mass of men stirred and coiled and uncoiled like some hugeant-heap. Many of them, as I watched, suddenly turned into the outerhall. Men jumped on to chairs and boxes and balustrades, and soon, allover the place there were speakers, some shouting, some shrieking, somewith tears rolling down their cheeks, some swearing, some whispering asthough to themselves... and all the regiments came pouring in from thestation, tumbling in like puppies or babies with pieces of red clothtied to their rifles, some singing, some laughing, some dumb withamazement... thicker and thicker and thicker... standing round thespeakers with their mouths open and their eyes wide, pushing andjostling, but good-naturedly, like young dogs.
"Everywhere, you know, men were forming committees, committees forsocial right, for a just Peace, for Women's Suffrage, for FinnishIndependence, for literature and the arts, for the better treatment ofprostitutes, for education, for the just division of the land. I hadcrept into my corner, and soon as the soldiers came thicker and thicker,the noise grew more and more deafening, the dust floated in hazy clouds.The men had their kettles and they boiled
tea, squatting down there,sometimes little processions pushed their way through, soldiers shoutingand laughing with some white-faced policeman in their midst. Once I sawan old man, his Shuba about his ears, stumbling with his eyes wide open,and staring as though he were sleep-walking. That was Stuermer beingbrought to judgement. Once I saw a man so terrified that he couldn'tmove, but must be prodded along by the rifles of the soldiers. That wasPitirim....
"And the shouting and screaming rose and rose like a flood. OnceRodziancko came in and began shouting, '_Tovaristchi! Tovaristchi!_...'but his voice soon gave away, and he went back into the Salle Catherineagain. The Socialists had it their way. There were so many, and theirvoices were so fresh and the soldiers liked to listen to them. 'Land foreverybody!' they shouted. 'And Bread and Peace! Hurrah! Hurrah!' criedthe soldiers.
"'That's all very well,' said a huge man near me. 'But Nicholas iscoming, and to-morrow he will eat us all up!'
"But no one seemed to care. They were all mad, and I was mad too. It wasthe drunkenness of dust. It got in our heads and our brains. We allshouted. I began to shout too, although I didn't know what it was that Iwas shouting.
"A grimy soldier caught me round the neck and kissed me. 'Land foreverybody!' he cried. 'Have some tea, _Tovaristch_!' and I shared histea with him.
"Then through the dust and noise I suddenly saw Boris Grogoff! That wasan astonishing thing. You see I had dissociated all this from my privatelife. I had even, during these last hours, forgotten Vera, perhaps forthe very first moment since I met her. She had seemed to have no sharein this,--and then suddenly the figure of Boris showed me that one'sprivate life is always with one, that it is a secret city in which onemust always live, and whose gates one will never pass through, whatevermay be going on in the world outside. But Grogoff! What a change! Youknow, I had always patronised him, Ivan Andreievitch. It had seemed tome that he was only a boy with a boy's crude ideas. You know his freshface with the way that he used to push back his hair from his forehead,and shout his ideas. He never considered any one's feelings. He was acomplete egoist, and a man, it seemed to me, of no importance. But now!He stood on a bench and had around him a large crowd of soldiers. He wasshouting in just his old way that he used in the English Prospect, buthe seemed to have grown in the meantime, into a man. He did not seemafraid any more. I saw that he had power over the men to whom he wasspeaking.... I couldn't hear what he said, but through the dust and heathe seemed to grow and grow until it was only him whom I saw there.
"'He will carry off Nina' was my next thought--ludicrous there at such atime, in such a crowd, but it is exactly like that that life shifts andshifts until it has formed a pattern. I was frightened by Grogoff. Icould not believe that the new freedom, the new Russia, the new worldwould be made by such men. He waved his arms, he pushed back his hair,the men shouted. Grogoff was triumphant: 'The New World... _NovayaJezn, Novaya Jezn_!' (New Life!) I heard him shout.
"The sun before it set flooded the hall with light. What a scene throughthe dust! The red flags, the women and the soldiers and the shouting!
"I was suddenly dismayed. 'How can order come out of this?' I thought.'They are all mad.... Terrible things are going to happen.' I was dirtyand tired and exhausted. I fought my way through the mob, found thedoor. For a moment I looked back, to that sea of men lit by the lastlight of the sun. Then I pushed out, was thrown, it seemed to me, fromman to man, and was at last in the air.... Quiet, fires burning in thecourtyard, a sky of the palest blue, a few stars, and the people singingthe 'Marseillaise.'
"It was like drinking great draughts of cold water after an intolerablethirst....
"...Hasn't Tchekov said somewhere that Russians have nostalgia but nopatriotism? That was never true of me--can't remember how young I waswhen I remember my father talking to me about the idea of Russia. I'vetold you that he was by any kind of standard a bad man. He had, I think,no redeeming points at all--but he had, all the same, that sense ofRussia. I don't suppose that he put it to any practical use, or that heeven tried to teach it to his pupils, but it would suddenly seize himand he would let himself go, and for an hour he would be a finemaster--of words. And what Russian is ever more than that at the end?
"He spoke to me and gave me a picture of a world inside a world, andthis inside world was complete in itself. It had everything init--beauty, wealth, force, power; it could be anything, it could doanything. But it was held by an evil enchantment as though a wickedmagician had it in thrall, and everything slept as in Tchaikowsky'sBallet. But one day, he told me, the Prince would come and kill theEnchanter, and this great world would come into its own. I remember thatI was so excited that I couldn't bear to wait, but prayed that I mightbe allowed to go out and find the Enchanter... but my father laughedand said that there were no Enchanter now, and then I cried. All thesame I never lost my hope. I talked to people about Russia, but it wasnever Russia itself they seemed to care for--it was women or drink orperhaps freedom and socialism, or perhaps some part of Russia, Siberia,or the Caucasus--but my world they none of them believed in. It didn'texist they said. It was simply my imagination that had painted it, andthey laughed at me and said it was held together by the lashes of theknout, and when those went Russia would go too. As I grew up some ofthem thought that I was revolutionary, and they tried to make me jointheir clubs and societies. But those were no use to me. They couldn'tgive me what I wanted. They wanted to destroy, to assassinate some one,or to blow up a building. They had no thought beyond destruction, andthat to me seemed only the first step. And they never think of Russia,our revolutionaries. You will have noticed that yourself, IvanAndreievitch. Nothing so small and trivial as Russia! It must be thewhole world or nothing at all. Democracy... Freedom... the Brotherhoodof Man! Oh, the terrible harm that words have done to Russia! Had theRussians of the last fifty years been born without the gift of speech wewould be now the greatest people on the earth!
"But I loved Russia from end to end. The farthest villages in Siberia,the remotest hut beyond Archangel, from the shops in the Sadovaya to theLavra at Kieff, from the little villages on the bank of the Volga to thewoods round Tarnopol--all, all one country, one people, one world withina world. The old man to whom I was secretary discovered this secret hopeof mine. I talked one night when I was drunk and told him everything. Imentioned even the Enchanter and the Sleeping Beauty! How he laughed atme! He would never leave me alone. 'Nicolai Leontievitch believes inHoly Russia!' he would say. 'Not so much Holy, you understand, asBewitched. A Fairy Garden, ladies, with a sleeping beauty in the middleof it. Dear me, Nicolai Leontievitch, no wonder you are heart-free!'
"How I hated him and his yellow face and his ugly stomach! I would havestamped on it with delight. But that made me shy. I was afraid to speakof it to any one, and I kept to myself. Then Vera came and she didn'tlaugh at me. The two ideas grew together in my head. Vera and Russia!The two things in my life by which I stood--because man must havesomething in life round which he may nestle as a cat curls up by thefire.
"But even Vera did not seem to care for Russia as Russia. 'What canSiberia be to me?' she would say. 'Why, Nicholas, it is no more thanChina.'
"But it was more than China; when I looked at it on the map I recognisedit as though it were my own country. Then the war came and I thought thedesire of my heart was fulfilled. At last men talked about Russia asthough she truly existed. For a moment all Russia was united, allclasses, rich and poor, high and low. Men were patriotic together asthough one heart beat through all the land. But only for a moment.Divisions came, and quickly things were worse than before. There cameTannenburg and afterwards Warsaw.
"All was lost.... Russia was betrayed, and I was a sentimental fool. Youknow yourself how cynical even the most sentimental Russians are--thatis because if you stick to facts you know where you are, but ideas arealways betraying you. Life simply isn't long enough to test them, that'sall, and man is certainly not a patient animal.
"At first I watched the war going from bad to worse, and then I shutmy
self in and refused to look any longer. I thought only of Vera and mywork. I would make a great discovery and be rich, and then Vera at lastwould love me. Idiot! As though I had not known that Vera would not lovefor that kind of reason.... I determined that I would think no more ofRussia, that I would be a man of no country. Then during those lastweeks before the Revolution I began to be suspicious of Vera and towatch her. I did things of which I was ashamed, and then I despisedmyself for being ashamed.
"I am a man, I can do what I wish. Even though I am imprisoned I amfree.... I am my own master. But all the same, to be a spy is a meanthing, Ivan Andreievitch. You Englishmen, although you are stupid, youare not mean. It was that day when your young friend, Bohun, found melooking in your room for letters, that in spite of myself I was ashamed.
"He looked at me in a sort of way as though, down to his very soul hewas astonished at what I had done. Well, why should I mind that heshould be astonished? He was very young and all wrong in his ideas oflife. Nevertheless that look of his influenced me. I thought about itafterwards. Then came Alexei Petrovitch. I've told you already. He wasalways hinting at something. He was always there as though he werewaiting for something to happen. He hinted things about Vera. It'sstrange, Ivan Andreievitch, but there was a day just a week before theRevolution, when I was very nearly jumping up and striking him. Just toget rid of him so that he shouldn't be watching me....Why even when Iwasn't there he....
"But what's that got to do with my walk? Nothing perhaps. All the same,it was all these little things that made me, when I walked out of theDuma that evening so queer. You see I'd been getting desperate. All thatI had left was being taken from me, and then suddenly this Revolutionhad come and given me back Russia again. I forgot Alexei Petrovitch andyour Englishman Lawrence and the failure of my work--I remembered, onceagain, just as I had those first days of the war, Vera and Russia.
"There, in the clear evening air, I forgot all the talk there had beeninside the Duma, the mess and the noise and the dust. I was suddenlyhappy again, and excited, and hopeful.... The Enchanter had come afterall, and Russia was to awake.
"Ah, what a wonderful evening that was! You know that there have beentimes--very, very rare occasions in one's life--when places that oneknows well, streets and houses so common and customary as to be likeone's very skin--are suddenly for a wonderful half-hour places of magic,the trees are gold, the houses silver, the bricks jewelled, the pavementof amber. Or simply perhaps they are different, a new country of newcolour and mystery... when one is just in love or has won some prize,or finished at last some difficult work. Petrograd was like that to methat night; I swear to you, Ivan Andreievitch, I did not know where Iwas. I seem now on looking back to have been in places that night,magical places, that by the morning had flown away. I could not tell youwhere I went. I know that I must have walked for miles. I walked with agreat many people who were all my brothers. I had drunk nothing, noteven water, and yet the effect on me was exactly as though I were drunk,drunk with happiness, Ivan Andreievitch, and with the possibility of allthe things that might now be.
"We, many of us, marched along, singing the 'Marseillaise' I suppose.There was firing I think in some of the streets, because I can remembernow on looking back that once or twice I heard a machine-gun quite closeto me and didn't care at all, and even laughed.... Not that I've evercared for that. Bullets aren't the sort of things that frighten me.There are other terrors....All the same it was curious that we shouldall march along as though there were no danger and the peace of theworld had come. There were women with us--quite a number of them Ithink--and, I believe, some children. I remember that some of the way Icarried a child, fast asleep in my arms. How ludicrous it would be nowif I, of all men in the world, carried a baby down the Nevski! But itwas quite natural that night. The town seemed to me blazing with light.Of course that it cannot have been; there can have only been the starsand some bonfires. And perhaps we stopped at the police-courts whichwere crackling away. I don't remember that, but I know that somewherethere were clouds of golden sparks opening into the sky and minglingwith the stars--a wonderful sight, flocks of golden birds and behindthem a roar of sound like a torrent of water... I know that, most ofthe night, I had one man especially for my companion. I can see himquite clearly now, although, whether it is all my imagination or not Ican't say. Certainly I've never seen him since and never will again. Hewas a peasant, a bigly made man, very neatly and decently dressed in aworkman's blouse and black trousers. He had a long black beard and wasgrave and serious, speaking very little but watching everything. Kindly,our best type of peasant--perhaps the type that will one day give Russiaher real freedom... one day... a thousand years from now....
"I don't know why it is that I can still see him so clearly, because Ican remember no one else of that night, and even this fellow may havebeen my imagination. But I think that, as we walked along, I talked tohim about Russia and how the whole land now from Archangel toVladivostock might be free and be one great country of peace and plenty,first in all the world.
"It seemed to me that every one was singing, men and women andchildren....
"We must, at last, have parted from most of the company. I had come withmy friend into the quieter streets of the city. Then it was that Isuddenly smelt the sea. You must have noticed how Petrograd is mixed upwith the sea, how suddenly, where you never would expect it, you see themasts of ships all clustered together against the sky. I smelt the sea,the wind blew fresh and strong and there we were on the banks of theNeva. Everywhere there was perfect silence. The Neva lay, tranquil,bound under its ice. The black hulks of the ships lay against the whiteshadows like sleeping animals. The curve of the sky, with its multitudeof stars, was infinite.
"My friend embraced me and left me and I stayed alone, so happy, so sureof the peace of the world that I did what I had not done for years, sentup a prayer of gratitude to God. Then with my head on my hands, lookingdown at the masts of the ships, feeling Petrograd behind me with itslights as though it were the City of God, I burst into tears--tears ofhappiness and joy and humble gratitude.... I have no memory of anythingfurther."
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