II
I was greatly surprised to receive, a few days later, an invitation fromBaron Wilderling; he asked me to go with him on one of the firstevenings in March to a performance of Lermontov's "Masquerade" at theAlexandra Theatre. I say Lermontov, but heaven knows that that greatRussian poet was not supposed to be going to have much to say in theaffair. This performance had been in preparation for at least ten years,and when such delights as Gordon Craig's setting of "Hamlet," or Benois'dresses for "La Locandiera" were discussed, the Wise Ones said:
"Ah,--all very well--just wait until you see 'Masquerade.'"
These manifestations of the artistic spirit had not been very numerousof late in Petrograd. At the beginning of the war there had been manycabarets--"The Cow," "The Calf," "The Dog," "The Striped Cat"--and thesehad been underground cellars, lighted by Chinese lanterns, and the hallsdecorated with Futurist paintings by Yakkolyeff or some other still moreadvanced spirit. It seemed strange to me as I dressed that evening. I donot know how long it was since I had put on a dinner-jacket. With theexception of that one other visit to Baron Wilderling this seemed to bemy one link with the old world, and it was curious to feel itsfascination, its air of comfort and order and cleanliness, its courtesyand discipline. "I think I'll leave these rooms," I thought as I lookedabout me, "and take a decent flat somewhere."
It is a strange fact, behind which there lies, I believe, some odd sortof moral significance, that I cannot now recall the events of thatevening in any kind of clear detail. I remember that it was bitterlycold, with a sky that was flooded with stars. The snow had a queermetallic sheen upon it as though it were coloured ice, and I can see nowthe Nevski like a slab of some fiercely painted metal rising out of thevery smack of our horses' hoofs as my sleigh sped along--as though,silkworm-like, I spun it out of the entrails of the sledge. It was alllight and fire and colour that night, with towers of gold and frostedgreen, and even the black crowds that thronged the Nevski pavements shotwith colour.
Somewhere in one of Shorthouse's stories--in _The Little SchoolmasterMark_, I think--he gives a curious impression of a whirling fantasticcrowd of revellers who evoke by their movements some evil pattern in theair around them, and the boy who is standing in their midst sees thisdark twisted sinister picture forming against the gorgeous walls and thecoloured figures until it blots out the whole scene and plunges him intodarkness. I will not pretend that on this evening I discerned anythingsinister or ominous in the gay scene that the Alexandra Theatre offeredme, but I was nevertheless weighed down by some quite unaccountabledepression that would not let me alone. For this I can see now thatLawrence was very largely responsible. When I met him and theWilderlings in the foyer of the theatre I saw at once that he wasgreatly changed.
The clear open expression of his eyes was gone; his mind was far awayfrom his company--and it was as though I could see into his brain andwatch the repetition of the old argument occurring again and again andagain with always the same questions and answers, the same reproaches,the same defiances, the same obstinacies. He was caught by what wasperhaps the first crisis of his life. He had never been a man for muchcontact with his fellow-beings, he had been aloof and reserved, generousin his judgements of others, severe and narrow in his judgement ofhimself. Above all, he had been proud of his strength....
Now he was threatened by something stronger than himself. He could havemanaged it so long as he was aware only of his love for Vera.... Now,when, since Nina's party, he knew that also Vera loved him, he had tomeet the tussle of his life.
That, at any rate, is the kind of figure that I give to his mood thatevening. He has told me much of what happened to him afterwards, butnothing of that particular night, except once. "Do you remember that'Masquerade' evening?... I was in hell that night...." which, forLawrence, was expressive enough.
Both the Baron and his wife were in great spirits. The Baron was morethan ever the evocation of the genius of elegance and order; he seemedcarved out of some coloured ivory, behind whose white perfection burnt ashining resolute flame.
His clothes were so perfect that they would have expressed the whole ofhim even though his body had not been there. He was happy. His eyesdanced appreciatively; he waved his white gloves at the scene as thoughblessing it.
"Of course, Mr. Durward," he said to me, "this is nothing compared withwhat we could do before the war--nevertheless here you see, for amoment, a fragment of the old Petersburg--Petersburg as it shall be,please God, again one day...."
I do not in the least remember who was present that evening, but it was,I believe, a very distinguished company. The lights blazed, the jewelsflashed, and the chatter was tremendous. The horseshoe-shaped seatsbehind the stalls clustered in knots and bunches of colour under thegreat glitter of electricity about the Royal Box. Artists--Somoff andBenois and Dobujinsky; novelists like Sologub and Merejkowsky; dancerslike Karsavina--actors from all over Petrograd--they were there, Iexpect, to add criticism and argument to the adulation of friends and ofthe carelessly observant rich Jews and merchants who had come simply todisplay their jewellery. Petrograd, like every other city in the world,is artistic only by the persistence of its minority.
I'm sure that there were Princesses and Grand Dukes and Grand Duchessesfor any one who needed them, and it was only in the gallery where thestudents and their girl-friends were gathered that the name of Lermontovwas mentioned. The name of the evening was "Meyerhold," the gentlemanresponsible for the production. At last the Event that had been brewingceaselessly for the last ten years--ever since the last Revolution infact--was to reach creation. The moment of M. Meyerhold's life hadarrived--the moment, had we known it, of many other lives also; but wedid not know it. We buzzed and we hummed, we gasped and we gaped, weyawned and we applauded; and the rustle of gold tissue, the scent ofgold leaf, the thick sticky substance of gold paint, filled the air,flooded the arena, washed past us into the street outside. Meanwhile M.Meyerhold, white, perspiring, in his shirt-sleeves with his collarloosened and his hair damp, is in labour behind the gold tissue toproduce the child of his life... and Behold, the Child is produced!
And such a child! It was not I am sure so fantastic an affair in realityas in my rememberance of it. I have, since then, read Lermontov's play,and I must confess that it does not seem, in cold truth, to be one ofhis finest works. It is long and old-fashioned, melodramatic andclumsy--but then it was not on this occasion Lermontov's play that wasthe thing. But it was a masquerade, and that in a sense far from theauthor's intention. As I watched I remember that I forgot the bad acting(the hero was quite atrocious), forgot the lapses of taste in the colourand arrangement of the play, forgot the artifices and elaborateoriginalities and false sincerities; there were, I have no doubt, manythings in it all that were bad and meretricious--I was dreaming. I saw,against my will and outside my own agency, mingled with the goldscreens, the purple curtains, the fantasies and extravagances of thecostumes, the sudden flashes of unexpected colour through light or dressor backcloth--pictures from those Galician days that had been, untilSemyonov's return, as I fancied, forgotten.
A crowd of revellers ran down the stage, and a shimmering cloud of goldshot with red and purple was flung from one end of the hall to theother, and behind it, through it, between it, I saw the chill light ofthe early morning, and Nikitin and I sitting on the bench outside thestinking but that we had used as an operating theatre, watching thefirst rays of the sun warm, the cold mountain's rim. I could hearvoices, and the murmurs of the sleeping men and the groans of thewounded. The scene closed. There was space and light, and a gorgeousfigure, stiff with the splendour of his robes, talked in a dark gardenwith his lady. Their voices murmured, a lute was played, some one sang,and through the thread of it all I saw that moment when, packed togetheron our cart, we hung for an instant on the top of the hill and lookedback to a country that had suddenly crackled into flame. There was thatterrific crash as of the smashing of a world of china, the fiercecrackle of the machine-guns, and then the boom of the cann
on from underour very feet... the garden was filled with revellers, laughing,dancing, singing, the air was filled again with the air of gold paint,the tenor's voice rose higher and higher, the golden screens closed--theact was ended.
It was as though I had received, in some dim, bewildered fashion, awarning. When the lights went up, it was some moments before I realisedthat the Baron was speaking to me, that a babel of chatter, like asudden rain storm on a glass roof, had burst on every side of us, andthat a huge Jewess, all bare back and sham pearls, was trying to pass meon her way to the corridor. The Baron talked away: "Very amusing, don'tyou think? After Reinhardt, of course, although they say now thatReinhardt got all his ideas from your man Craig. I'm sure I don't knowwhether that's so.... I hope you're more reassured to-night, Mr.Durward. You were full of alarms the other evening. Look around you andyou'll see the true Russia...."
"I can't believe this to be the true Russia," I said. "Petrograd is notthe true Russia. I don't believe that there _is_ a true Russia."
"Well, there you are," he continued eagerly. "No true Russia! Quite so.Very observant. But we have to pretend there is, and that's what youforeigners are always forgetting. The Russian is an individualist--givehim freedom and he'll lose all sense of his companions. He will pursuehis own idea. Myself and my party are here to prevent him from pursuinghis own idea, for the good of himself and his country. He may bediscontented, he may grumble, but he doesn't realise his luck. Give himhis freedom, and in six months you'll see Russia back in the MiddleAges."
"And another six months?" I asked.
"The Stone Age."
"And then?"
"Ah," he said, smiling, "you ask me too much, Mr. Durward. We arespeaking of our own generation."
The curtain was up again and I was back in my other world. I cannot tellyou anything of the rest of the play--I remember nothing. Only I knowthat I was actually living over again those awful days in theforest--the heat, the flies, the smells, the glassy sheen of the trees,the perpetual rumble of the guns, the desolate whine of the shells--andthen Marie's death, Trenchard's sorrow, Trenchard's death, that lastview of Semyonov... and I felt that I was being made to remember it allfor a purpose, as though my old friend, rich now with his wiserknowledge, was whispering to me, "All life is bound up. You cannot leaveanything behind you; the past, the present, the future are one. You hadpushed us away from you, but we are with you always for ever. I am yourfriend for ever, and Marie is your friend, and now, once more, you haveto take your part in a battle, and we have come to you to share it withyou. Do not be confused by history or public events or class struggle orany big names; it is the individual and the soul of the individual alonethat matters. I and Marie and Vera and Nina and Markovitch--our love foryou, your love for us, our courage, our self-sacrifice, our weakness,our defeat, our progress--these are the things for which life exists;it exists as a training-ground for the immortal soul...."
With a sweep of colour the stage broke into a mist of movement. Maskedand hooded figures in purple and gold and blue and red danced madly offinto a forest of stinking, sodden leaves and trees as thin astissue-paper burnt by the sun. "Oh--aye! oh--aye! oh--aye!" came fromthe wounded, and the dancers answered, "Tra-la-la-la! Tra-la-la-la,'"The golden screens were drawn forward, the lights were up again, and thewhole theatre was stirring like a coloured paper ant heap.
Outside in the foyer I found Lawrence at my elbow.
"Go and see her," he whispered to me, "as soon as possible! Tellher--tell her--no, tell her nothing. But see that she's all right andlet me know. See her to-morrow--early!"
I could say nothing to him, for the Baron had joined us.
"Good-night! Good-night! A most delightful evening!... Most amusing!...No, thank you, I shall walk!"
"Come and see us," said the Baroness, smiling.
"Very soon," I answered. I little knew that I should never see either ofthem again.
The Secret City Page 24