The Secret City Part 40

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 collecting 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 prost.i.tutes had marched down the Nevski the other day demanding shorter hours.

But of course I cannot remember all that he said. During the next few days I slowly pulled myself out of the misty dead world in which I had been lying. Pain came back to me, leaping upon me and then receding, finally, on the third day suddenly leaving me altogether. The Rat fed me on cabbage soup and gla.s.ses 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 all 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 actually 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 well, 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 Ca.n.a.l and the English Prospect I decided not to go in and see the Markovitches. For one thing I shrank from the thought of their compa.s.sion. 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 G.o.d 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 well 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 rea.s.suring 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 cl.u.s.tering against the Quay were touched at their tips with bright gold. It was all 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 pulled 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 all been thinking of ourselves."

"What's the matter, Nina?" I asked. "You've been crying."

"Nothing's the matter. I'm all right."

"No, you're not. You ought to tell me. You trusted me once."

"I don't trust any one," she answered fiercely. "Especially 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?"