The Secret City Part 19

We moved away from the table. Vera came over to us, and then sat on the sofa with her arm around Nina's neck. Nina was very quiet now, sitting there, her cheeks flushed, smiling, but as though she were thinking of something quite different.

Some one proposed that we should play "Pet.i.ts Cheveaux." We gathered around the table, and soon every one was laughing and gambling.

Only once I looked up and saw that Markovitch was gazing at Vera; and once again I looked at Vera and saw that she was staring before her, seeing nothing, lost in some vision--but it was not of Markovitch that she was thinking....

I was the first to leave--I said good-night to every one. I could hear their laughter as I waited at the bottom of the stairs for the Dvornik to let me out.

But when I was in the street the world was breathlessly still. I walked up the Prospect--no soul was in sight, only the scattered lamps, the pale snow, and the houses. At the end of the Ca.n.a.l I stopped. The silence was intense.

It seemed to me then that in the very centre of the Ca.n.a.l the ice suddenly cracked, slowly pulled apart, leaving a still pool of black water. The water slowly stirred, rippled, then a long, horned, and scaly head pushed up. I could see the shining scales on its thick side and the ribbed horn on the back of the neck. Beneath it the water stirred and heaved. With dead glazed eyes it stared upon the world, then slowly, as though it were drawn from below, it sank. The water rippled in narrowing circles--then all was still....

The moon came out from behind filmy shadow. The world was intensely light, and I saw that the ice of the ca.n.a.l had never been broken, and that no pool of black water caught the moon's rays.

It was fiercely cold and I hurried home, pulling my Shuba more closely about me.

PART II

LAWRENCE

LAWRENCE

I

Of some of the events that I am now about to relate it is obvious that I could not have been an eye-witness--and yet, looking back from the strange isolation that is now my world I find it incredibly difficult to realise what I saw and what I did not. Was I with Nina and Vera on that Tuesday night when they stood face to face with one another for the first time? Was I with Markovitch during his walk through that marvellous new world that he seemed himself to have created? I know that I shared none of these things..., and yet it seems to me that I was at the heart of them all. I may have been told many things by the actors in those events--I may not. I cannot now in retrospect see any of it save as my own personal experience, and as my own personal experience I must relate it; but, as I have already said at the beginning of this book, no one is compelled to believe either my tale or my interpretation. Every man would, I suppose, like to tell his story in the manner of some other man. I can conceive the events of this part of my narration being interpreted in the spirit of the wildest farce, of the genteelest comedy, of the most humorous satire--"Other men, Other gifts." I am a dull and pompous fellow, as Semyonov often tells me; and I hope that I never allowed him to see how deeply I felt the truth of his words.

Meanwhile I will begin with a small adventure of Henry Bohun's.

Apparently, one evening soon after Nina's party, he found himself about half-past ten in the evening, lonely and unhappy, walking down the Nevski. Gay and happy crowds wandered by him, brushing him aside, refusing to look at him, showing in fact no kind of interest in his existence. He was suddenly frightened, the distances seemed terrific and the Nevski was so hard and bright and shining--that it had no use at all for any lonely young man. He decided suddenly that he would go and see me. He found an Isvostchick, but when they reached the Ekaterinsgofsky Ca.n.a.l the surly coachman refused to drive further, saying that his horse had gone lame, and that this was as far as he had bargained to go.

Henry was forced to leave the cab, and then found himself outside the little people's cinema, where he had once been with Vera and myself.

He knew that my rooms were not far away, and he started off beside the white and silent ca.n.a.l, wondering why he had come, and wishing he were back in bed.

There was still a great deal of the baby in Henry, and ghosts and giants and scaly-headed monsters were not incredibilities to his young imagination. As he left the main thoroughfare and turned down past the widening docks, he suddenly knew that he was terrified. There had been stories of wild attacks on rich strangers, sand-bagging and the rest, often enough, but it was not of that kind of thing that he was afraid.

He told me afterwards that he expected to see "long thick crawling creatures" creeping towards him over the ice. He continually turned round to see whether some one were following him. When he crossed the tumbledown bridge that led to my island it seemed that he was absolutely alone in the whole world. The masts of the ships dim through the cold mist were like tangled spiders' webs. A strange hard red moon peered over the towers and chimneys of the distant dockyard. The ice was limitless, and of a dirty grey pallor, with black shadows streaking it.

My island must have looked desolate enough, with its dirty snow-heaps, old boards and sc.r.a.p-iron and tumbledown cottages.

Again, as on his first arrival in Petrograd, Henry was faced by the solemn fact that events are so often romantic in retrospect, but grimly realistic in experience. He reached my lodging and found the door open.

He climbed the dark rickety stairs and entered my sitting-room. The blinds were not drawn, and the red moon peered through on to the grey shadows that the ice beyond always flung. The stove was not burning, the room was cold and deserted. Henry called my name and there was no answer. He went into my bedroom and there was no one there. He came back and stood there listening.

He could hear the creaking of some bar beyond the window and the melancholy whistle of a distant train.

He was held there, as though spellbound. Suddenly he thought that he heard some one climbing the stairs. He gave a cry, and that was answered by a movement so close to him that it was almost at his elbow.

"Who's there?" he cried. He saw a shadow pa.s.s between the moon and himself. In a panic of terror he cried out, and at the same time struck a match. Some one came towards him, and he saw that it was Markovitch.

He was so relieved to find that it was a friend that he did not stop to wonder what Markovitch should be doing hiding in my room. It afterwards struck him that Markovitch looked odd. "Like a kind of conspirator, in old shabby Shuba with the collar turned up. He looked jolly ill and dirty, as though he hadn't slept or washed. He didn't seem a bit surprised at seeing me there, and I think he scarcely realised that it _was_ me. He was thinking of something else so hard that he couldn't take me in."

"Oh, Bohun!" he said in a confused way.

"Hullo, Nicolai Leontievitch," Bohun said, trying to be unconcerned.

"What are you doing here?"

"Came to see Ivan Andreievitch," he said. "Wasn't here; I was going to write to him."

Bohun then lit a candle and discovered that the place was in a very considerable mess. Some one had been sifting my desk, and papers and letters were lying about the floor. The drawers of my table were open, and one chair was over-turned. Markovitch stood back near the window, looking at Bohun suspiciously. They must have been a curious couple for such a position. There was an awkward pause, and then Bohun, trying to speak easily, said:

"Well, it seems that Durward isn't coming. He's out dining somewhere I expect."

"Probably," said Markovitch drily.

There was another pause, then Markovitch broke out with: "I suppose you think I've been here trying to steal something."

"Oh no--oh no--no--" stammered Bohun.

"But I have," said Markovitch. "You can look round and see. There it is on every side of you. I've been trying to find a letter."

"Oh yes," said Bohun nervously.

"Well, that seems to you terrible," went on Markovitch, growing ever fiercer. "Of course it seems to you perfect Englishmen a dreadful thing.

But why heed it?... You all do things just as bad, only you are hypocrites."

"Oh yes, certainly," said Bohun.

"And now," said Markovitch with a snarl. "I'm sure you will not think me a proper person for you to lodge with any longer--and you will be right.

I am not a proper person. I have no sense of decency, thank G.o.d, and no Russian has any sense of decency, and that is why we are beaten and despised by the whole world, and yet are finer than them all--so you'd better not lodge with us any more."

"But of course," said Bohun, disliking more and more this uncomfortable scene--"of course I shall continue to stay with you. You are my friends, and one doesn't mind what one's friends do. One's friends are one's friends."

Suddenly, then, Markovitch jerked himself forward, "just as though,"

Bohun afterwards described it to me, "he had shot himself out of a catapault."

"Tell me," he said, "is your English friend in love with my wife?"

What Bohun wanted to do then was to run out of the room, down the dark stairs, and away as fast as his legs would carry him. He had not been in Russia so long that he had lost his English dislike of scenes, and he was seriously afraid that Markovitch was, as he put it, "bang off his head."

But at this critical moment, he remembered, it seems, my injunction to him, "to be kind to Markovitch--to make a friend of him." That had always seemed to him before impossible enough, but now, at the very moment when Markovitch was at his queerest, he was also at his most pathetic, looking there in the mist and shadows too untidy and dirty and miserable to be really alarming. Henry then took courage. "That's all nonsense, Markovitch," he said. "I suppose by 'your English friend' you mean Lawrence. He thinks the world of your wife, of course, as we all do, but he's not the fellow to be in love. I don't suppose he's ever been really in love with a woman in his life. He's a kindly good-hearted chap, Lawrence, and he wouldn't do harm to a fly."

Markovitch peered into Bohun's face. "What did you come here for, any of you?" he asked. "What's Russia over-run with foreigners for? We'll clear the lot of you out, all of you...." Then he broke off, with a pathetic little gesture, his hand up to his head. "But I don't know what I'm saying--I don't mean it, really. Only things are so difficult, and they slip away from one so.

"I love Russia and I love my wife, Mr. Bohun--and they've both left me.

But you aren't interested in that. Why should you be? Only remember when you're inclined to laugh at me that I'm like a man in a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l boat--and it isn't my fault. I was put in it."