The Secret City
Page 5
V
He felt happy and consoled after a bath, a shave, and breakfast. AlwaysI should think he reacted very quickly to his own physical sensations,and he was, as yet, too young to know that you cannot lay ghosts by thesimple brushing of your hair and sponging your face. After his breakfasthe lay down on the bed and again fell asleep, but this time not todream; he slept like a Briton, dreamless, healthy and clean. He awoke assure of himself as ever.... The first incantation had not, you see, beenenough....
He plunged into the city. It was raining with that thick dark rain thatseems to have mud in it before it has fallen. The town was veiled inthin mist, figures appearing and disappearing, tram-bells ringing, andthose strange wild cries in the Russian tongue that seem at one's firsthearing so romantic and startling, rising sharply and yet lazily intothe air. He plunged along and found himself in the Nevski Prospect--hecould not mistake its breadth and assurance, dull though it seemed inthe mud and rain.
But he was above all things a romantic and sentimental youth, and he wasdetermined to see this country as he had expected to see it; so heplodded on, his coat-collar up, British obstinacy in his eyes and alittle excited flutter in his heart whenever a bright colour, an Easternface, a street pedlar, a bunched-up, high-backed coachman, anything orany one unusual presented itself.
He saw on his right a great church; it stood back from the street,having in front of it a desolate little arrangement of bushes and publicseats and winding paths. The church itself was approached by flights ofsteps that disappeared under the shadow of a high dome supported by vaststone pillars. Letters in gold flamed across the building above thepillars.
Henry passed the intervening ground and climbed the steps. Under thepillars before the heavy, swinging doors were two rows of beggars; theywere dirtier, more touzled and tangled, fiercer and more ironicallyfalsely submissive than any beggars that, he had ever seen. He describedone fellow to me, a fierce brigand with a high black hat of feathers, asoiled Cossack coat and tall dirty red leather boots; his eyes werefires, Henry said. At any rate that is what Henry liked to think theywere. There was a woman with no legs and a man with neither nose norears. I am sure that they watched Henry with supplicating hostility. Heentered the church and was instantly swallowed up by a vast multitude.
He described to me afterwards that it was as though he had been pushed(by the evil, eager fingers of the beggars no doubt) into deep water. Herose with a gasp, and was first conscious of a strange smell of dirt andtallow and something that he did not know, but was afterwards torecognise as the scent of sunflower seed. He was pushed upon, pressedand pulled, fingered and crushed. He did not mind--he was glad--this waswhat he wanted. He looked about him and found that he and all the peopleround him were swimming in a hazy golden mist flung into the air fromthe thousands of lighted candles that danced in the breeze blowingthrough the building. The whole vast shining floor was covered withpeasants, pressed, packed together. Peasants, men and women--he did notsee a single member of the middle-class. In front of him under the altarthere was a blaze of light, and figures moved in the blaze uncertainly,indistinctly. Now and then a sudden quiver passed across the throng, aswind blows through the corn. Here and there men and women knelt, but forthe most part they stood steadfast, motionless, staring in front ofthem. He looked at them and discovered that they had the faces ofchildren--simple, trustful, unintelligent, unhumorous children,--andeyes, always kindlier than any he had ever seen in other human beings.They stood there gravely, with no signs of religious fervour, with nomarks of impatience or weariness and also with no evidence of anyespecial interest in what was occurring. It might have been a vastconcourse of sleep-walkers.
He saw that three soldiers near to him were holding hands....
From the lighted altars came the echoing whisper of a monotonous chant.The sound rose and fell, scarcely a voice, scarcely an appeal, somethingrising from the place itself and sinking back into it again withouthuman agency.
After a time he saw a strange movement that at first he could notunderstand. Then watching, he found that unlit candles were being passedfrom line to line, one man leaning forward and tapping the man in frontof him with the candle, the man in front passing it, in his turn,forward, and so on until at last it reached the altar where it waslighted and fastened into its sconce. This tapping with the candleshappened incessantly throughout the vast crowd. Henry himself wastapped, and felt suddenly as though he had been admitted a member ofsome secret society. He felt the tap again and again, and soon he seemedto be hypnotised by the low chant at the altar and the motionless silentcrowd and the dim golden mist. He stood, not thinking, not living, away,away, questioning nothing, wanting nothing....
He must of course finish with his romantic notion. People pushed aroundhim, struggling to get out. He turned to go and was faced, he told me,with a remarkable figure. His description, romantic and sentimentalthough he tried to make it, resolved itself into nothing more than thesketch of an ordinary peasant, tall, broad, black-bearded, neatly cladin blue shirt, black trousers, and high boots. This fellow stoodapparently away from the crowd, apart, and watched it all, as you sooften may see the Russian peasant doing, with indifferent gaze. In hismild blue eyes Bohun fancied that he saw all kinds of things--power,wisdom, prophecy--a figure apart and symbolic. But how easy in Russia itis to see symbols and how often those symbols fail to justifythemselves! Well, I let Bohun have his fancies. "I should know that mananywhere again," he declared. "It was as though he knew what was goingto happen and was ready for it." Then I suppose he saw my smile, for hebroke off and said no more.
And here for a moment I leave him and his adventures.