The Secret City

by Sir Hugh Walpole

  XII

  That Tuesday night poor young Bohun will remember to his grave--andbeyond it, I expect.

  He came in from his work about six in the evening and found Markovitchand Semyonov sitting in the dining-room. Everything was ordinary enough.Semyonov was in the armchair reading a newspaper; Markovitch was walkingvery quietly up and down the farther end of the room. He wore faded bluecarpet slippers; he had taken to them lately. Everything was the same asit had always been. The storm that had raged all day had now died down,and a very pale evening sun struck little patches of colour on the bigtable with the fading table-cloth, on the old brown carpet, on thepicture of the old gentleman with bushy eyebrows, on Semyonov'smusical-box, on the old knick-knacks and the untidy shelf of books.(Bohun looked especially to see whether the musical-box were stillthere. It was there on a little side-table.) Bohun, tired with his longday's efforts to shove the glories of the British Empire down thereluctant throats of the indifferent Russians, dropped into the otherarmchair with a tattered copy of Turgenieff's _House of Gentle-folks_,and soon sank into a state of half-slumber.

  He roused himself from this to hear Semyonov reading extracts from thenewspaper. He caught, at first, only portions of sentences. I am writingthis, of course, from Bohun's account of it, and I cannot thereforequote the actual words, but they were incidents of disorder at theFront.

  "There!" Semyonov would say, pausing. "Now, Nicholas... What do you sayto that? A nice state of things. The Colonel was murdered, of course,although our friend the _Retch_ doesn't put it quite so bluntly. The_Novaya Jezn_ of course highly approves. Here's another...." This wenton for some ten minutes, and the only sound beside Semyonov's voice wasMarkovitch's padding steps. "Ah! here's another bit!... Now what aboutthat, my fine upholder of the Russian Revolution? See what they've beendoing near Riga! It says...."

  "Can't you leave it alone, Alexei? Keep your paper to yourself!"

  These words came in so strange a note, a tone so different fromMarkovitch's ordinary voice, that they were, to Bohun, like a warningblow on the shoulder.

  "There's gratitude--when I'm trying to interest you! How childish, too,not to face the real situation! Do you think you're going to improvethings by pretending that anarchy doesn't exist? So soon, too, afteryour beautiful Revolution! How long is it? Let me see... March, April...yes, just about six weeks.... Well, well!"

  "Leave me alone, Alexei!... Leave me alone!"

  Bohun had with that such a sense of a superhuman effort at controlbehind the words that the pain of it was almost intolerable. He wanted,there and then, to have left the room. It would have been better for himhad he done so. But some force held him in his chair, and, as the scenedeveloped, be felt as though his sudden departure would have laid tooemphatic a stress on the discomfort of it.

  He hoped that in a moment Vera or Uncle Ivan would come and the scenewould end.

  Semyonov, meanwhile, continued: "What were those words you used to menot so long ago? Something about free Russia, I think--Russia movinglike one man to save the world--Russia with an unbroken front.... Toooptimistic, weren't you?"

  The padding feet stopped. In a whisper that seemed to Bohun to fill theroom with echoing sound Markovitch said:

  "You have tempted me for weeks now, Alexei.... I don't know why you hateme so, nor why you pursue me. Go back to your own place. If I am anunfortunate man, and by my own fault, that should be nothing to you whoare more fortunate."

  "Torment you! I?... My dear Nicholas, never! But you are so childish inyour ideas--and are you unfortunate? I didn't know it. Is it about yourinventions that you are speaking? Well, they were never very happy, werethey?"

  "You praised them to me!"

  "Did I?... My foolish kindness of heart, I'm afraid. To tell the truth,I was thankful when you saw things as they were..."

  "You took them away from me."

  "I took them away? What nonsense! It was your own wish--Vera's wishtoo."

  "Yes, you persuaded both Vera and Nina that they were no good. Theybelieved in them before you came."

  "You flatter me, Nicholas. I haven't such power over Vera's opinions,I'm afraid. If I tell her anything she believes at once the opposite.You must have seen that yourself."

  "You took her belief away from me. You took her love away from me."

  Semyonov laughed. That laugh seemed to rouse Markovitch to frenzy. Hescreamed out. "You have taken everything from me!... You will not leaveme alone! You must be careful. You are in danger, I tell you."

  Semyonov sprang up from his chair, and the two men, advancing towardsone another, came into Bohun's vision.

  Markovitch was like a madman, his hands raised, his eyes staring fromhis head, his body trembling. Semyonov was quiet, motionless, smiling,standing very close to the other.

  "Well, what are you going to do?" he asked.

  Markovitch stood for a moment, his hands raised, then his whole bodyseemed to collapse. He moved away, muttering something which Bohun couldnot hear. With shuffling feet, his head lowered, he went out of theroom. Semyonov returned to his seat.

  To Bohun, an innocent youth with very simple and amiable ideas aboutlife, the whole thing seemed "beastly beyond words."

  "I saw a man torture a dog once," he told me. "He didn't do much to itreally. Tied it up to a tree and dug into it with a pen-knife. I wenthome and was sick.... Well, I felt sick this time, too."

  Nevertheless his own "sickness" was not the principal affair. The pointwas the sense of danger that seemed now to tinge with its own faintstain every article in the room. Bohun's hatred of Semyonov was sostrong that he felt as though he would never be able to speak to himagain; but it was not really of Semyonov that he was thinking. Histhoughts were all centred round Markovitch. You must remember that for along time now he had considered himself Markovitch's protector. Thissense of his protection had developed in him an affection for the manthat he would not otherwise have felt. He did not, of course, know ofany of Markovitch's deepest troubles. He could only guess at hisrelations with Vera, and he did not understand the passionate importancethat he attached to his Russian idea. But he knew enough to be aware ofhis childishness, his simplicity, his _naivete_, and his essentialgoodness. "He's an awfully decent sort, really," he used to say in akind of apologetic defence. The very fact of Semyonov's strength madehis brutality seem now the more revolting. "Like hitting a fellow halfyour size"....

  He saw that things in that flat were approaching a climax, and he knewenough now of Russian impetuosity to realise that climaxes in thatcountry are, very often, no ordinary affairs. It was just as thoughthere were an evil smell in the flat, he explained to me. "It seemed tohang over everything. Things looked the same and yet they weren't thesame at all."

  His main impression that "something would very soon happen if he didn'tlook out," drove everything else from his mind--but he didn't quite seewhat to do. Speak to Vera? To Nicholas? To Semyonov?... He didn't feelqualified to do any of these things.

  He went to bed that night early, about ten o'clock. He couldn't sleep.His door was not quite closed and he could hear first Vera, then UncleIvan, lastly Markovitch go to bed. He lay awake then, with thatexaggerated sense of hearing that one has in the middle of the night,when one is compelled, as it were, against one's will, to listen forsounds. He heard the dripping of the tap in the bathroom, the creakingof some door in the wind (the storm had risen again) and all thethousand and one little uncertainties, like the agitated beating ofinnumerable hearts that penetrate the folds and curtains of the night.As he lay there he thought of what he would do did Markovitch really gooff his head. He had a revolver, he knew. He had seen it in his hand.And then what was Semyonov after? My explanation had seemed, at first,so fantastic and impossible that Bohun had dismissed it, but now, afterthe conversation that he had just overheard, it did not seem impossibleat all--especially in the middle of the night. His mind travelled backto his own first arrival in Petrograd, that first sleep at the "France"with the dripping water and the crawlin
g rats, the plunge into the KazanCathedral, and everything that followed.

  He did not see, of course, his own progress since that day, or the manythings that Russia had already done for him, but he did feel that suchsituations as the one he was now sharing were, to-day, much more in thenatural order of things than they would have been four months before....

  He dozed off and then was awakened, sharply, abruptly, by the sound ofMarkovitch's padded feet. There could be no mistaking them; very softlythey went past Bohun's door, down the passage towards the dining-room.He sat up in bed, and all the other sounds of the night seemed suddenlyto be accentuated--the dripping of the tap, the blowing of the wind, andeven the heavy breathing of old Sacha, who always slept in a sort ofcupboard near the kitchen, with her legs hanging out into the passage.Suddenly no sound! The house was still, and, with that, the sense ofdanger and peril was redoubled, as though the house were holding itsbreath as it watched....

  Bohun could endure it no longer; he got up, put on his dressing-gown andbedroom slippers, and went out. When he got as far as the dining-roomdoor he saw that Markovitch was standing in the middle of the room witha lighted candle in his hand. The glimmer of the candle flung a circle,outside which all was dusk. Within the glimmer there was Markovitch, hishair rough and strangely like a wig, his face pale yellow, and wearingan old quilted bed-jacket of a purple green colour. He was in anight-dress, and his naked legs were like sticks of tallow.

  He stood there, the candle shaking in his hand, as though he wereuncertain as to what he would do next. He was saying something tohimself, Bohun thought.

  At any rate his lips were moving. Then he put his hand into the pocketof his bed-coat and took out a revolver. Bohun saw it gleam in thecandle-light. He held it up close to his eyes as though he wereshort-sighted and seemed to sniff at it. Then, clumsily, Bohun said, heopened it, to see whether it were loaded, I suppose, and closed itagain. After that, very softly indeed, he shuffled off towards the doorof Semyonov's room, the room that had once been the sanctuary of hisinventions.

  All this time young Bohun was paralysed. He said that all his life now,in spite of his having done quite decently in France, he would doubt hiscapacity in a crisis because, during the whole of this affair, he neverstirred. But that was because it was all exactly like a dream. "I was inthe dream, you know, as well as the other fellows. You know those dreamswhen you're doing your very damnedest to wake up--when you struggle andsweat and know you'll die if something doesn't happen--well, it was likethat, except that I didn't struggle and swear, but just stood there,like a painted picture, watching...."

  Markovitch had nearly reached Semyonov's door (you remember that therewas a little square window of glass in the upper part of it) when he dida funny thing. He stopped dead as though some one had rapped him on theshoulder. He stopped and looked round, then, very slowly, as though hewere compelled, gazed with his nervous blinking eyes up at the portraitof the old gentleman with the bushy eyebrows. Bohun looked up too andsaw (it was probably a trick of the faltering candle-light) that the oldman was not looking at him at all, but steadfastly, and, of course,ironically at Markovitch. The two regarded one another for a while, thenMarkovitch, still moving with the greatest caution, slipped therevolver back into his pocket, got a chair, climbed on to it and liftedthe picture down from its nail. He looked at it for a moment, staringinto the cracked and roughened paint, then hung it deliberately back onits nail again, but with its face to the wall. As he did this his bare,skinny legs were trembling so on the chair that, at every moment, hethreatened to topple over. He climbed down at last, put the chair backin its place, and then once more turned towards Semyonov's door.

  When he reached it he stopped and again took out the revolver, openedit, looked into it, and closed it. Then he put his hand on thedoor-knob.

  It was then that Bohun had, as one has in dreams, a sudden impulse toscream: "Look out! Look out! Look out!" although, Heaven knows, he hadno desire to protect Semyonov from anything. But it was just then thatthe oddest conviction came over him, namely, an assurance that Semyonovwas standing on the other side of the door, looking through the littlewindow and waiting. He could not have told, any more than one can evertell in dreams, how he was so certain of this. He could only see thelittle window as the dimmest and darkest square of shadow behindMarkovitch's candle, but he was sure that this was so. He could even seeSemyonov standing there, in his shirt, with his thick legs, his head alittle raised, listening...

  For what seemed an endless time Markovitch did not move. He also seemedto be listening. Was it possible that he heard Semyonov's breathing?...But, of course, I have never had any actual knowledge that Semyonov wasthere. That was simply Bohun's idea....

  Then Markovitch began very slowly, bending a little, as though it werestiff and difficult, to turn the handle. I don't know what then Bohunwould have done. He must, I think, have moved, shouted, screamed, donesomething or other. There was another interruption. He heard a quick,soft step behind him. He moved into the shadow.

  It was Vera, in her night-dress, her hair down her back.

  She came forward into the room and whispered very quietly: "Nicholas!"

  He turned at once. He did not seem to be startled or surprised; he haddropped the revolver at once back into his pocket. He came up to her,she bent down and kissed him, then put her arm round him and led himaway.

  When they had gone Bohun also went back to bed. The house was very stilland peaceful. Suddenly he remembered the picture. It would never do, hethought, if in the morning it were found by Sacha or Uncle Ivan with itsface to the wall. After hesitating he lit his own candle, got out of bedagain, and went down the passage.

  "The funny thing was," he said, "that I really expected to find it justas it always was, face outwards.... as though the whole thing really hadbeen a dream. But it wasn't. It had its face to the wall all right. Igot a chair, turned it round, and went back to bed again."