The Secret City

by Sir Hugh Walpole

  XIX

  From the moment that Lawrence left me, vanishing into the heart of thesnow and ice, I was obsessed by a conviction of approaching danger andperil. It has been one of the most disastrous weaknesses of my life thatI have always shrunk from precipitate action. Before the war it hadseemed to many of us that life could be jockeyed into decisions by wordsand theories and speculations. The swift, and, as it were, revengefulprecipitancy of the last three years had driven me into a self-distrustand cowardice which had grown and grown until life had seemed veiled anddistant and mysteriously obscure. From my own obscurity, against mywill, against my courage, against my own knowledge of myself,circumstances were demanding that I should advance and act. It was of noavail to myself that I should act unwisely, that I should perhaps onlyprecipitate a crisis that I could not help. I was forced to act when Iwould have given my soul to hold aloof, and in this town, whose darknessand light, intrigue and display, words and action, seemed to derive somemysterious force from the very soil, from the very air, the smallestaction achieved monstrous proportions. When you have lived for someyears in Russia you do not wonder that its citizens prefer inaction todemonstration--the soil is so much stronger than the men who live uponit.

  Nevertheless, for a fortnight I did nothing. Private affairs of anespecially tiresome kind filled my days--I saw neither Lawrence norVera, and, during that period, I scarcely left my rooms.

  There was much expectation in the town that February 14th, when the Dumawas appointed to meet, would be a critical day. Fine things were said ofthe challenging speeches that would be made, of the firm stand that theCadet party intended to take, of the crisis with which the Court partywould be faced.

  Of course nothing occurred. It may be safely said that, in Russianaffairs, no crisis occurs, either in the place or at the time, or in themanner in which it is expected. Time with us here refuses to be caughtby the throat. That is the revenge that it takes on the scorn withwhich, in Russia, it is always covered.

  On the 20th of February I received an invitation to Nina's birthdayparty. She would be eighteen on the 28th. She scribbed at the bottom ofVera's note:

  Dear Durdles--If you don't come I will never forgive you.--Your lovingNina.

  The immediate problem was a present. I knew that Nina adored presents,but Petrograd was now no easy place for purchases, and I wished, Isuppose as a kind of tribute to her youth and freshness and colour, togive her something for which she would really care. I sallied out on awonderful afternoon when the town was a blaze of colour, the walls darkred, dark brown, violet, pink, and the snow a dazzling glitter ofcrystal. The bells were ringing for some festival, echoing as do noother bells in the world from wall to wall, roof to roof, canal tocanal. Everybody moved as though they were inspired with a gay sense ofadventure, men and women laughing; the Isvostchicks surveying possiblefares with an eye less patronising and lugubrious than usual, the flowerwomen and the beggars and the little Chinese boys and the wicked old menwho stare at you as though they were dreaming of Eastern debauches,shared in the sun and tang of the air and high colour of the sky andsnow.

  I pushed my way into the shop in the Morskaia that had the colouredstones--the blue and azure and purple stones--in the window. Inside theshop, which had a fine gleaming floor, and an old man with a tired eye,there were stones of every colour, but there was nothing there forNina--all was too elaborate and grand.

  Near the Nevski is a fine shop of pictures with snow scenes and bluerivers and Italian landscapes, and copies of Repin and Verestchagin, andportraits of the Czar. I searched here, but all were too sophisticatedin their bright brown frames, and their air of being the latest thingfrom Paris and London. Then I crossed the road, threading my way throughthe carriages and motor cars, past the old white-bearded sweeper withthe broom held aloft, gazing at the sky, and plunged into the EnglishShop to see whether I might buy something warm for Nina. Here, indeed, Icould fancy that I was in the High Street in Chester, or Leicester, orTruro, or Canterbury. A demure English provincialism was overeverything, and a young man in a high white collar and a shiny blackcoat, washed his hands as he told me that "they hadn't any in stock atthe moment, but they were expecting a delivery of goods at any minute."Russian shopmen, it is almost needless to say, do not care whether theyhave goods in stock or no. They have other things to think about. Theair was filled with the chatter of English governesses, and an Englishclergyman and his wife were earnestly turning over a selection ofwoollen comforters.

  Nothing here for Nina--nothing at all. I hurried away. With a suddenflash of inspiration I realised that it was in the Jews' Market that Iwould find what I wanted. I snatched at the bulging neck of a sleepingcoachman, and before he was fully awake was in his sledge, and had toldhim my destination. He grumbled and wished to know how much I intendedto pay him, and when I said one and a half roubles, answered that hewould not take me for less than three. I threatened him then with thefat and good-natured policeman who always guarded the confused junctionof the Morskaia and Nevski, and he was frightened and moved on. I sighedas I remembered the days not so long before, when that same coachmanwould have thought it an honour to drive me for half a rouble. Down theSadovya we slipped, bumping over the uneven surface of the snow, and theshops grew smaller and the cinemas more stringent, and the women and menwith their barrows of fruit and coloured notepaper and toys morefrequent. Then through the market with the booths and the church withits golden towers, until we stood before the hooded entrance to theJews' Paradise. I paid him, and without listening to his discontentedcries pushed my way in. The Jews' Market is a series of covered arcadeswith a square in the middle of it, and in the middle of the square alittle church with some doll-like trees. These arcades are Western intheir hideous covering of glass and the ugliness of the exterior of thewooden shops that line them, but the crowd that throngs them is Eastern,so that in the strange eyes and voices, the wild gestures, the laughs,the cries, the singing, and the dancing that meets one here it is asthough a new world was suddenly born--a world offensive, dirty, voluble,blackguardly perhaps, but intriguing, tempting, and ironical. Thearcades are generally so crowded that one can move only at a slow paceand, on every side one is pestered by the equivalents of the old Englishcry: "What do you lack? What do you lack?"

  Every mixture of blood and race that the world contains is to be seenhere, but they are all--Tartars, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Indians,Arabs, Moslem, and Christian--formed by some subtle colour ofatmosphere, so that they seem all alike to be citizens of some secretlittle town, sprung to life just for a day, in the heart of this othercity. Perhaps it is the dull pale mist that the glass flings down,perhaps it is the uncleanly dust-clogged air; whatever it be, there is astain of grey shadowy smoke upon all this world, and Ikons and shabbyjewels, and piles of Eastern clothes, and old brass pots, and silver,hilted swords, and golden-tasselled Tartar coats gleam through theshadow and wink and stare.

  To-day the arcades were so crowded that I could scarcely move, and thenoise was deafening.

  Many soldiers were there, looking with indulgent amusement upon thescene, and the Jews with their skull-caps and the fat, huge-breastedJewish women screamed and shrieked and waved their arms like boughs in astorm. I stopped at many shops and fingered the cheap silver toys, thelittle blue and green Ikons, the buckles and beads and rosaries thatthronged the trays, but I could not find anything for Nina. Thensuddenly I saw a square box of mother-of-pearl and silver, so charmingand simple, the figures on the silver lid so gracefully carved that Idecided at once.

  The Jew in charge of it wanted twice as much as I was ready to give, andwe argued for ten minutes before a kindly and appreciative crowd. Atlast we arranged a compromise, and I moved away, pleased and satisfied.I stepped out of the arcade and faced the little Square. It was, at thatinstant, fantastic and oddly coloured; the sun, about to set, hung inthe misty sky a perfect round crimson globe, and it was perched, almostmaliciously, just above the tower of the little church.

  The rest of the world
was grey. The Square was a thick mass of humanbeings so tightly wedged together that it seemed to move backwards andforwards like a floor of black wood pushed by a lever. One lamp burntbehind the window of the church, the old houses leaned forward as thoughlistening to the babel below their eaves.

  But it was the sun that seemed to me then so evil and secret andcunning. Its deep red was aloof and menacing, and its outline so sharpthat it was detached from the sky as though it were human, and wouldpresently move and advance towards us. I don't know what there was inthat crowd of struggling human beings and that detached red sun.... Theair was cruel, and through all the arcades that seemed to run like veinsto this heart of the place I could feel the cold and the dark and thesmoky dusk creeping forward to veil us all with deepest night.

  I turned away and then saw, advancing towards me, as though he had justcome from the church, pushing his way, and waving a friendly hand to me,Semyonov.