IX
I must return now to young Henry Bohun. I would like to arouse yoursympathy for him, but sympathy's a dangerous medicine for the young, whoare only too ready, so far as their self-confidence goes, to take a mileif you give them an inch. But with Bohun it was simply a case ofre-delivering, piece by piece, the mile that he had had no possibleright to imagine in his possession, and at the end of his relinquishmenthe was as naked and impoverished a soul as any life with youth andhealth on its side can manage to sustain. He was very miserable duringthese first weeks, and then it must be remembered that Petrograd was, atthis time, no very happy place for anybody. Bohun was not a coward--hewould have stood the worst things in France without flinching--but hewas neither old enough nor young enough to face without a tremor thequeer world of nerves and unfulfilled expectation in which he foundhimself. In the first place, Petrograd was so very different fromanything that he had expected. Its size and space, its power of reducingthe human figure to a sudden speck of insignificance, its strange lightsand shadows, its waste spaces and cold, empty, moonlit squares, itsjumble of modern and mediaeval civilisation, above all, its supremeindifference to all and sundry--these things cowed and humiliated him.He was sharp enough to realise that here he was nobody at all. Then hehad not expected to be so absolutely cut off from all that he had known.The Western world simply did not seem to exist. The papers came soslowly that on their arrival they were not worth reading. He had nottold his friends in England to send his letters through the Embassy bag,with the result that they would not, he was informed, reach him formonths.
Of his work I do not intend here to speak,--it does not come into thisstory,--but he found that it was most complicated and difficult, andkicks rather than halfpence would be the certain reward. And Bohun hatedkicks....
Finally, he could not be said to be happy in the Markovitch flat. Hehad, poor boy, heard so much about Russian hospitality, and had formed,from the reading of the books of Mr. Stephen Graham and others,delightful pictures of the warmest hearts in the world holding out thewarmest hands before the warmest samovars. In its spirit that was trueenough, but it was not true in the way that Bohun expected it.
The Markovitches, during those first weeks, left him to look afterhimself because they quite honestly believed that that was the thingthat he would prefer. Uncle Ivan tried to entertain him, but Bohun foundhim a bore, and with the ruthless intolerance of the very young, showedhim so. The family did not put itself out to please him in any way. Hehad his room and his latchkey. There was always coffee in the morning,dinner at half-past six, and the samovar from half-past nine onwards.But the Markovitch family life was not turned from its normal course.Why should it be?
And then he was laughed at. Nina laughed at him. Everything about himseemed to Nina ridiculous--his cold bath in the morning, histrouser-press, the little silver-topped bottles on his table, the creasein his trousers, his shining neat hair, the pearl pin in his black tie,his precise and careful speech, the way that he said "_Nu tak...Spasebo... gavoreet... gariachy_..." She was never tired of imitatinghim; and very soon he caught her strutting about the dining-room with aman's cap on her head, twisting a cane and bargaining with anIsvostchick--this last because, only the evening before, he had toldthem with great pride of his cleverness in that especial direction. Thefun was good-natured enough, but it was, as Russian chaff generally is,quite regardless of sensitive feelings. Nina chaffed everybody andnobody minded, but Bohun did not know this, and minded very much indeed.He showed during dinner that evening that he was hurt, and sat over hiscabbage soup very dignified and silent. This made every oneuncomfortable, although Vera told me afterwards that she found itdifficult not to laugh. The family did not make themselves especiallypleasant, as Henry felt they ought to have done--they continued the eventenor of their way. He was met by one of those sudden cold horriblewaves of isolated terror with which it pleases Russia sometimes tooverwhelm one. The snow was falling; the town was settling into asuspicious ominous quiet. There was no light in the sky, and horriblewinds blew round the corners of abandoned streets. Henry was desperatelyhomesick. He would have cut and run, had there been any possible meansof doing it. He did not remember the wild joy with which he had heard,only a few weeks before, that he was to come to Petrograd. He hadforgotten even the splendours of _Discipline_. He only knew that he waslonely and frightened and home-sick. He seemed to be without a friend inthe world.
But he was proud. He confided in nobody. He went about with his head up,and every one thought him the most conceited young puppy who had evertrotted the Petrograd streets. And, although he never owned it even tohimself, Jerry Lawrence seemed to him now the one friendly soul in allthe world. You could be sure that Lawrence would be always the same; hewould not laugh at you behind your back, if he disliked something hewould say so. You knew where you were with him, and in the uncertainworld in which poor Bohun found himself that simply was everything.Bohun would have denied it vehemently if you told him that he had oncelooked down on Lawrence, or despised him for his inartistic mind.Lawrence was "a fine fellow"; he might seem a little slow at first, "butyou wait and you will see what kind of a chap he is." Nevertheless Bohunwas not able to be for ever in his company; work separated them, andthen Lawrence lodged with Baron Wilderling on the Admiralty Quay, a longway from Anglisky Prospect. Therefore, at the end of three weeks, HenryBohun discovered himself to be profoundly wretched. There seemed to beno hope anywhere. Even the artist in him was disappointed. He went tothe Ballet and saw Tchaikowsky's "Swan Lake"; but bearing Diagilev'ssplendours in front of him, and knowing nothing about the technique ofballet-dancing he was bored and cross and contemptuous. He went to"Eugen Onyegin" and enjoyed it, because there was still a great deal ofthe schoolgirl in him; but after that he was flung on to Glinka's"Russlan and Ludmilla," and this seemed to him quite interminable and tohave nothing to do with the gentleman and lady mentioned in the title.He tried a play at the Alexander Theatre; it was, he saw, by Andreeff,whose art he had told many people in England he admired, but now hemixed him up in his mind with Kuprin, and the play was all about acircus--very confused and gloomy. As for literature, he purchased somenew poems by Balmont, some essays by Merejkowsky, and Andre Biely's _St.Petersburg,_ but the first of these he found pretentious, the seconddull, and the third quite impossibly obscure. He did not confess tohimself that it might perhaps be his ignorance of the Russian languagethat was at fault. He went to the Hermitage and the Alexander Galleries,and purchased coloured post-cards of the works of Somov, Benois,Douboginsky, Lanceray, and Ostroymova--all the quite obvious people. Hewrote home to his mother "that from what he could see of Russian Art itseemed to him to have a real future in front of it"--and he boughtlittle painted wooden animals and figures at the Peasants' Workshops andstuck them up on the front of his stove.
"I like them because they are so essentially Russian," he said to me,pointing out a red spotted cow and a green giraffe. "No other countrycould have been responsible for them."
Poor boy, I had not the heart to tell him that they had been made inGermany.
However, as I have said, in spite of his painted toys and his operas hewas, at the end of three weeks, a miserable man. Anybody could see thathe was miserable, and Vera Michailovna saw it. She took him in hand, andat once his life was changed. I was present at the beginning of thechange.
It was the evening of Rasputin's murder. The town of course talked ofnothing else--it had been talking, without cessation, since two o'clockthat afternoon. The dirty, sinister figure of the monk with his magneticeyes, his greasy beard, his robe, his girdle, and all his otherproperties, brooded gigantic over all of us. He was brought intoimmediate personal relationship with the humblest, most insignificantcreature in the city, and with him incredible shadows and shapes, fromDostoeffsky, from Gogol, from Lermontov, from Nekrasov--from whom youplease--all the shadows of whom one is eternally subconsciously awarein Russia--faced us and reminded us that they were not shadows butrealities.
The detail
s of his murder were not accurately known--it was only surethat, at last, after so many false rumours of attempted assassination,he was truly gone, and this world would be bothered by his evil presenceno longer.
Pictures formed in one's mind as one listened. The day was fiercelycold, and this seemed to add to the horror of it all--to theHoffmannesque fantasy of the party, the lights, the supper, and thewomen, the murder with its mixture of religion and superstition andmelodrama, the body flung out at last so easily and swiftly, on to thefrozen river. How many souls must have asked themselves that day--"Why,if this is so easy, do we not proceed further? A man dies more simplythan you thought--only resolution... only resolution."
I know that that evening I found it impossible to remain in my lonelyrooms; I went round to the Markovitch flat. I found Vera Michailovna andBohun preparing to go out; they were alone in the flat. He looked at meapprehensively. I think that I appeared to him at that time a queer,moody, ill-disposed fellow, who was too old to understand the truecharacter of young men's impetuous souls. It may be that he wasright....
"Will you come with us, Ivan Andreievitch?" Vera Michailovna asked me."We're going to the little cinema on Ekateringofsky--a piece of localcolour for Mr. Bohun."
"I'll come anywhere with you," I said. "And we'll talk about Rasputin."
Bohun was only too ready. The affair seemed to his romantic soul toogood to be true. Because we none of us knew, at that time, what hadreally happened, a fine field was offered for every rumour andconjecture.
Bohun had collected some wonderful stories. I saw that, apart fromRasputin, he was a new man--something had happened to him. It was notlong before I discovered that what had happened was that VeraMichailovna had been kind to him. Vera's most beautiful quality was hermotherliness. I do not intend that much-abused word in any sentimentalfashion. She did not shed tears over a dirty baby in the street, nor didshe drag decrepit old men into the flat to give them milk and fiftykopecks,--but let some one appeal to the strength and bravery in her,and she responded magnificently. I believe that to be true of very manyRussian women, who are always their most natural selves when somethingappeals to the best in them. Vera Michailovna had a strength and asecurity in her protection of souls weaker than her own that had aboutit nothing forced or pretentious or self-conscious--it was simply thenatural woman acting as she was made to act. She saw that Bohun waslonely and miserable and, now that the first awkwardness was passed andhe was no longer a stranger, she was able, gently and unobtrusively, toshow him that she was his friend. I think that she had not liked him atfirst; but if you want a Russian to like you, the thing to do is to showhim that you need him. It is amazing to watch their readiness to receivedependent souls whom they are in no kind of way qualified toprotect--but they do their best, and although the result is invariablybad for everybody's character, a great deal of affection is created.
As we walked to the cinema she asked him, very gently and rather shyly,about his home and his people and English life. She must have asked allher English guests the same questions, but Bohun, I fancy, gave herrather original answers. He let himself go, and became very young andrather absurd, but also sympathetic. We were, all three of us, gay andsilly, as one very often suddenly is, in Russia, in the middle of evendisastrous situations. It had been a day of most beautiful weather, themud was frozen, the streets clean, the sky deep blue, the air harshlysweet. The night blazed with stars that seemed to swing through the hazeof the frost like a curtain moved, very gently, by the wind. TheEkateringofsky Canal was blue with the stars lying like scraps ofquicksilver all about it, and the trees and houses were deep black inoutline above it. I could feel that the people in the street were happy.The murder of Rasputin was a sign, a symbol; his figure had been behindthe scenes so long that it had become mythical, something beyond humanpower--and now, behold, it was not beyond human power at all, but wasthere like a dead stinking fish. I could see the thought in their mindsas they hurried along: "Ah, he is gone, the dirty fellow--_SlavaBogu_--the war will soon be over."
I, myself, felt the influence. Perhaps now the war would go better,perhaps Stunner and Protopopoff and the rest of them would be dismissed,and clean men... it was still time for the Czar.... And I heard Bohun,in his funny, slow, childish Russian: "But you understand, VeraMichailovna, that my father knows nothing about writing, nothing atall--so that it wouldn't matter very much what he said.... Yes, he'smilitary--been in the Army always...."
Along the canal the little trees that in the spring would be greenflames were touched now very faintly by silver frost. A huge barge layblack against the blue water; in the middle of it the rain had left apool that was not frozen and under the light of a street lamp blazedgold--very strange the sudden gleam.... We passed the little woodenshelter where an old man in a high furry cap kept oranges and apples andnuts and sweets in paper. One candle illuminated his little store. Helooked out from the darkness behind him like an old prehistoric man. Hisshed was peaked like a cocked hat, an old fat woman sat beside himknitting and drinking a glass of tea....
"I'm sorry, Vera Michailovna, that you can't read English...." Bohun'scareful voice was explaining, "Only Wells and Locke and Jack London...."
I heard Vera Michailovna's voice. Then Bohun again:
"No, I write very slowly--yes, I correct an awful lot...."
We stumbled amongst the darkness of the cobbles; where pools had beenthe ice crackled beneath our feet, then the snow scrunched.... I lovedthe sound, the sharp clear scent of the air, the pools of stars in thesky, the pools of ice at our feet, the blue like the thinnest glassstretched across the sky. I felt the poignancy of my age, of the countrywhere I was, of Bohun's youth and confidence, of the war, of disease anddeath--but behind it all happiness at the strange sense that I hadto-night, that came to me sometimes from I knew not where, that theundercurrent of the river of life was stronger than the eddies andwhirlpools on its surface, that it knew whither it was speeding, andthat the purpose behind its force was strong and true and good....
"Oh," I heard Bohun say, "I'm not really very young, Vera Michailovna.After all, it's what you've done rather than your actual years...."
"You're older than you'll ever be again, Bohun, if that's anyconsolation to you," I said.
We had arrived. The cinema door blazed with light, and around it wasgathered a group of soldiers and women and children, peering in at asoldiers' band, which, placed on benches in a corner of the room, playedaway for its very life. Outside, around the door were large billsannouncing "The Woman without a Soul, Drama in four parts," and therewere fine pictures of women falling over precipices, men shot inbedrooms, and parties in which all the guests shrank back in extremehorror from the heroine. We went inside and were overwhelmed by theband, so that we could not hear one another speak. The floor was coveredwith sunflower seeds, and there was a strong smell of soldiers' bootsand bad cigarettes and urine. We bought tickets from an old Jewessbehind the pigeon-hole and then, pushing the curtain aside, stumbledinto darkness. Here the smell was different, being, quite simply that ofhuman flesh not very carefully washed. Although, as we stumbled to someseats at the back, we could feel that we were alone, it had theimpression that multitudes of people pressed in upon us, and when thelights did go up we found that the little hall was indeed packed to itsextremest limit.
No one could have denied that it was a cheerful scene. Soldiers,sailors, peasants, women, and children crowded together upon the narrowbenches. There was a great consumption of sunflower seeds, and thenarrow passage down the middle of the room was littered with fragments.Two stout and elaborate policemen leaned against the wall surveying thepublic with a friendly if superior air. There was a tremendous amount ofnoise. Mingled with the strains of the band beyond the curtain werecries and calls and loud roars of laughter. The soldiers embraced thegirls, and the children, their fingers in their mouths, wandered frombench to bench, and a mangy dog begged wherever he thought that he saw akindly face. All the faces were kindly--kindly, ignorant, andastoundin
gly young. As I felt that youth I felt also separation; I andmy like could emphasise as we pleased the goodness, docility, mysticismeven of these people, but we were walking in a country of darkness. Icaught a laugh, the glance of some women, the voice of a youngsoldier--I felt behind us, watching us, the thick heavy figure ofRasputin. I smelt the eastern scent of the sunflower seeds, I lookedback and glanced at the impenetrable superiority of the two policemen,and I laughed at myself for the knowledge that I thought I had, for thesecurity upon which I thought that I rested, for the familiarity withwhich I had fancied I could approach my neighbours.... I was not wise, Iwas not secure, I had no claim to familiarity....
The lights were down and we were shown pictures of Paris. Because thecinema was a little one and the prices small the films were faded andtorn, so that the Opera and the Place de la Concorde and the Louvre andthe Seine danced and wriggled and broke before our eyes. They lookedstrange enough to us and only accented our isolation and the oddsemi-civilisation in which we were living. There were comments allaround the room in exactly the spirit of children before a conjurer at aparty.... The smell grew steadily stronger and stronger... my head swama little and I seemed to see Rasputin, swelling in his black robe,catching us all into its folds, sweeping us up into the starlight sky.We were under the flare of the light again. I caught Bohun's happy eyes;he was talking eagerly to Vera Michailovna, not removing his eyes fromher face. She had conquered him; I fancied as I looked at her that herthoughts were elsewhere.
There followed a Vaudeville entertainment. A woman and a man inpeasants' dress came and laughed raucously, without meaning, their eyesnarrowly searching the depths of the house, then they stamped their feetand whirled around, struck one another, laughed again, and vanished.
The applause was half-hearted. Then there was a trainer of dogs, ablack-eyed Tartar with four very miserable little fox-terriers, whoshivered and trembled and jumped reluctantly through hoops. The audienceliked this, and cried and shouted and threw paper pellets at the dogs. Astout perspiring Jew in a shabby evening suit came forward and beggedfor decorum. Then there appeared a stout little man in a top hat whowished to recite verses of, I gathered, a violent indecency. I wasuncomfortable about Vera Michailovna, but I need not have been. Theindecency was of no importance to her, and she was interested in thehuman tragedy of the performer. Tragedy it was. The man was hungry anddirty and not far from tears. He forgot his verses and glanced nervouslyinto the wings as though he expected to be beaten publicly by theperspiring Jew.
He stammered; his mouth wobbled; he covered it with a dirty hand. Hecould not continue.
The audience was sympathetic. They listened in encouraging silence; thenthey clapped; then they shouted friendly words to him. You could feelthroughout the room an intense desire that he should succeed. Heresponded a little to the encouragement, but could not remember hisverses. He struggled, struggled, did a hurried little breakdown dance,bowed and vanished into the wings, to be beaten, I have no doubt, by theJewish gentleman. We watched a little of the "Drama of the Woman withouta Soul," but the sense of being in a large vat filled with boiling humanflesh into whose depths we were pressed ever more and more deeply was atlast too much for us, and we stumbled our way into the open air. Theblack shadow of the barge, the jagged outline of the huddled buildingsagainst the sky, the black tower at the end of the canal, all these swamin the crystal air.
We took deep breaths of the freshness and purity; cheerful noises wereon every side of us, the band and laughter; a church bell with its deepnote and silver tinkle; the snow was vast and deep and hard all aboutus. We walked back very happily to Anglisky Prospect. Vera Michailovnasaid good-night to me and went in. Before he followed her, Bohun turnedround to me:
"Isn't she splendid?" he whispered. "By God, Durward, I'd do anythingfor her.... Do you think she likes me?"
"Why not?" I asked.
"I want her to--frightfully. I'd do anything for her. Do you think she'dlike to learn English?"
"I don't know," I said. "Ask her."
He disappeared. As I walked home I felt about me the new interaction ofhuman lives and souls--ambitions, hopes, youth. And the crisis, behindthese, of the world's history made up, as it was, of the sameinteractions of human and divine. The fortunes and adventures of thesoul on its journey towards its own country, its hopes and fears,struggles and despairs, its rejections and joy and rewards--its deathand destruction--all this in terms of human life and the sillyblundering conditions of this splendid glorious earth.... Here was VeraMichailovna and her husband, Nina and Boris Grogoff, Bohun and Lawrence,myself and Semyonov--a jumbled lot--with all our pitiful self-importantlittle histories, our crimes and virtues so insignificant and so quicklyover, and behind them the fine stuff of the human and divine soul,pushing on through all raillery and incongruity to its goal. Why, I hadcaught up, once more, that interest in life that I had, I thought, soutterly lost! I stopped for a moment by the frozen canal and laughed tomyself. The drama of life was, after all, too strong for my weakindifference. I felt that night as though I had stepped into a new housewith lighted rooms and fires and friends waiting for me. Afterwards, Iwas so closely stirred by the sense of impending events that I could notsleep, but sat at my window watching the faint lights of the sky shiftand waver over the frozen ice....
The Secret City Page 9