“And another corrective is his metaphysical …” (I’ve never said anything like that in a lecture. It was meant for you. Are you pleased? Do you agree?)
(Have I upset you? I didn’t mean to … But there are some questions which cannot be …)
… Cannot be avoided—Nikolai I and Aleksandr III, for instance, came to the throne with no preparation for it at all … two strong examples. But not one of your arguments applies to the present Emperor, with his incomparable skill in surrounding himself with incompetents, and letting down honest people. Not one of your arguments really fits him. And when an accidental characteristic of the autocrat becomes an accidental characteristic of the Supreme Commander …
But although the colonel did not speak up in support of her he was unmistakably on her side, sitting beside her as though he had long ago enrolled in her guard.
“… his metaphysical interpretation of his power as a duty to carry out a higher will. As the power of God’s anointed.”
“Anointed” was a word the engineer could not bear to hear, even used in jest.
“God’s anointed! That moldy old formula! Will we never hear the last of it? What sort of maniacal self-hypnosis makes that most commonplace of men believe that he is God’s anointed? How can any educated person today believe that God, whoever he may be, has really chosen and appointed Nikolai II to rule Russia?”
“That moldy old formula is very far from dead,” Andozerskaya boldly insisted. There was no retreat now. “It expresses something real enough, that he is not chosen by human beings, and that he did not seek that post himself. As long as the succession is not forcibly interrupted—and we are discussing the pure form of hereditary monarchy—human will intervenes only in the choice of the first member of the dynasty. And you must admit that in Russia God took a hand in the accession of the first member of that dynasty.”
Perhaps. But after that the chips began to fly. Struggles for the throne. Dethronements. Assassinations. (He kept this to himself. Not a subject for light conversation.)
“After which the dynastic tradition continues independent of human beings and of political struggle. As in Japan, where a single dynasty has ruled for more than two thousand years. It is like nature itself.”
Vorotyntsev realized that Vera too was standing there. Not jealous and anxious, as before, but surprised at what she heard and eager for more.
“The essential point is that the anointed monarch is not free to renounce his position. He did not strive for power, but he cannot run away from it. He accepts it like a slave. It is his duty rather than his right.”
A very attentive student, his sister. “Like a slave!”—that impressed her.
But her brother said not a word in Andozerskaya’s support. He had already gone too far the other way, talking about a republic, a Doge’s Council.
Obodovsky loved arguing if it was likely to lead to some practical conclusion—then the ground heaved under you and sent you running into action. But now that they had got onto “God’s anointed” he’d had enough. He had his own scheme for an ultrademocratic republic pretty well worked out. It was time to leave anyway, but he had to wait for Dmitriev to ring. He stopped listening, leafed through his notebook, held it half open on the edge of the table, and started drawing.
Vorotyntsev leaned over toward Olda Orestovna, and spoke in a low voice. Anyone just out of earshot might have thought that he was whispering compliments.
“So what is the purpose of this unfortunate ‘anointment’? To ensure Russia’s inevitable doom?”
Vera moved away.
“That’s something we can’t know,” Olda Orestovna answered, almost whispering herself.
Answered, perhaps, with her eyes rather than her voice. Hazel eyes? Green eyes? Not at all professorial eyes.
“It will all be clear in time. After we’ve gone.”
When hope is suddenly kindled—how to tell whether it deceives? (Whether she is … the one?)
Only the experienced heart …
Still she couldn’t forgive him his “republicanism.”
“What happens under republican governments?” she asked. “Making rational decisions becomes much more complicated. They have to struggle through thickets of human failings. Ambition burns much more fiercely in a republic: it must be appeased quickly. And then—the pyrotechnics of the electoral lie! You bank entirely on popularity—on pleasing. During an electoral campaign the future President is a petitioner, a crowd pleaser, a demagogue. No noble nature can prevail in such a contest. And the moment he’s elected he’s bound hand and foot by the trammels of distrust. A republic is based on bottomless distrust of the head of government, and even the ablest of men is reluctant to show his talent on the edge of an abyss. A republic cannot ensure consistent development in any particular direction. It is always changing course.”
Obodovsky woke up. “In a republic the people recovers its reason and its will. And begins to live a full national life again.”
Andozerskaya hit back. “People think you only have to call a country a republic and it will become happy at once. Why should anyone confuse the jolts and jars of politics with a rich national existence? Politics ought not to consume the whole of the people’s spiritual strength, its attention, its time. Everybody from Rousseau to Robespierre tried to tell us that ‘republic’ and ‘freedom’ mean the same thing. But it is not so. And anyway, why should freedom be put before honor and dignity?”
Obodovsky flared up again. “Because the law protects the honor and dignity of everyone. The law which is above us all. But what good is law in a monarchy, when the monarch can flout it at will?”
Olda Orestovna shivered (one arm could easily encircle those slight shoulders) but persisted. “Is the law, then, incapable of error? Is it always drafted by farseeing minds? Are not laws often the product of chance? Or the triumph of one side’s self-interest over another’s? A settling of accounts? ‘Dura lex, sed lex’ is a pre-Christian principle, and a pretty stupid one. Yes, the Lord’s anointed, and he alone can flout the law. At the dictate of his heart. To show firmness at a moment of change. Or at times for mercy’s sake. And that is more Christian than the law.”
“Special pleading!” The engineer wriggled impatiently and dismissed all this with a wave of his notebook. “That formula would allow any tyrant to break the law at will. And speaking of tyrants—who anoints them? The devil?”
Like a fire, running from his hands, along his arms, past his elbows … Is she the one?
She is! She is! Of course she is!
Not the slightest hesitation in her voice, in her argument: “What makes man a tyrant is that he flouts the law for his own purposes, not with the authority bestowed on him from above. A tyrant feels no responsibility to heaven, and that is what distinguishes him from a monarch.”
When heaven was mentioned seriously as an operative historical force, was any further discussion possible?
“The tyrant is a special case, and we aren’t discussing him. A republic too can be destabilized and lapse into lawlessness—and civil war.”
The telephone rang at last, and put an end to it.
Ladies looked in from the next room: “Is that Andrei Ivanovich?”
“Dmitriev for me, I expect,” Obodovsky said, closing his notebook.
Evfrosinya Maksimovna’s voice came from the corridor: “Pyotr Akimovich, it’s for you.”
Vera flushed bright red. (Andozerskaya saw it without looking at her.) Obodovsky darted to the telephone. Nobody was much interested, until they heard the excitement in his voice.
“Yes, but, I’m sorry, it’s a bit late now, there’s no point in … So let’s say tomorrow … What? … What?! … Wha-a-at???”
Ladies poked their heads around the door again, and the lecturer loomed in their rear.
“On Bolshoi Sampso …? So where are you now?”
Obodovsky held the receiver away from his ear, and with a puzzled frown, called down the corridor, sounding bewildered? dismayed
? overjoyed? “D’you know, ladies and gentlemen, I almost think … it’s begun!”
Begun? What had begun? It could have been anything. The casting of a gun barrel? A surgical operation, a difficult childbirth, the flooding of the Neva, war with Sweden …? But no! All present instantly, unerringly, unanimously heard in that colorless word the boom of a great bass bell: IT’S BEGUN!
What else could possibly have begun?
And who could leave now? How could they break up and go home without hearing all about it?
“Is he far away?”
“Just over the Grenadiers’ Bridge.”
“So tell him to come here.”
Nobody would be leaving.
IT HAD BEGUN!
[26]
They were all in the dining room now, the whole group—or a number of little groups—like people waiting for a train.
The same train? Or different ones with different destinations?
And just as when you are waiting for a train your thoughts stray, you can’t concentrate on a conversation, because you have to make sure, in case the train pulls in suddenly, that you have everything with you—so the eight guests in Shingarev’s dining room lost interest in each other, neglected the conventional flash of the teeth and rattle of the tongue when chance brought them face to face.
They withdrew into waiting. Or looked around for kindred souls.
Not too far away. Will soon be here. At the door now …
To the Grenadiers’ Bridge, over the bridge, past the Grenadiers’ barracks, along Monetnaya—ten blocks, was it?
Just like those last few minutes at the station. Some passengers are relaxed and placid, some are busy with newspapers. Some sit around in the restaurant or the post office. Others, uncomfortable on the benches provided, move their suitcases close to the exit and sit on them, and yet others are in no condition to sit at all once the train is announced, but pace the hall so restlessly that their fellow passengers begin to see double.
Just so, the younger of the two lady militants, the one in the dark green blouse with the brown splashes, found a path around the table, tortuous but just wide enough, and paced restlessly, unceasingly, swerving at exactly the same place, and reversing her course at exactly the same place, on exactly the same parquet block, every time.
Head down, with eyes for no one, sunk in silence, she seemed to be repeating rhythmical phrases in her mind, or in a whisper, as she paced:
To the Russian people! I am the sad Avenging Angel!
I sow the seeds! The centuries of suffering are over!
The older lady did not walk about, did not budge, but sat still with a look of satisfaction, almost of happiness, on her face: the train would be on time, her ticket was in her pocket, she had booked a good seat. Or perhaps she was taking spiteful pleasure in the plight of those who had distrusted the timetable, expected the train to be held up at signals and switches, and now would never get their luggage together in time.
The lecturer, solid character that he was in spite of his youth, sat motionless, his hands lying on the dining-room table before him like separate tools, gigantic pliers or wrenches. The eyes behind the dark-rimmed spectacles were narrowed in thought, as he went over in his mind the next stages of the journey as far as he knew them: were the bridges safe, were the inclines too steep, what was the radius of the curves, was the outer rail high enough? The look on his scholarly young face was tense but optimistic.
The younger lady paced nervously, to a rhythm not her own, to the rhythm of … That, That Which Was to Come. She had long been mesmerized by this rhythm, had heard before anyone the clatter of wheels over the switches, the grinding of brake shoes, the steady hum of the rails. These sounds transformed themselves into familiar lines, echoing in her mind, or perhaps no more than a whisper.
Like a blue flame I will race through the soul of the people,
Like a red flame I will race through the streets of the cities.
Through the mouths of each and of all I shall cry, “Freedom!”
And for each, and for all, give “Freedom” a different meaning.
Obodovsky couldn’t sit still either. He kept going to the window and raising a corner of the blind—perhaps expecting to see from five stories up whether “She” was already sweeping along Bolshaya Monetnaya.
Nusya let her husband worry for two—her role was to be strong enough for two. She sat stiller than any of them, without a wrinkle on her brow, with no trace of anxiety on her smooth and, yes, still youthful face. Whatever the troubles to come she had seen them before, we weathered the last one, we’ll weather this!
Little Vera, whose life was spent quietly between bookcases, had twice in one evening been caught in a whirlwind. First in the street, now here. Her slim form moved restlessly from room to corridor, from corridor to room …
The younger lady’s hands were clenched, rigid at her side, she could not unclench them, and didn’t know where to put them. At last the mysterious brown splashes on her dress seemed to make sense: they were the fires whose light struggled to break through the dark green fog of everyday life.
And I shall write: “My behest is justice.”
My enemy shall read: “No mercy will be shown.”
As for the colonel and the lady professor, newly met on this station, and still more or less strangers, they looked at each other with something more than goodwill, wondering: Are we traveling to the same destination? Will we find ourselves in the same carriage?
Throughout the evening only one of those present, little Vera, had watched that friendship ripening, although she was not near them much of the time and only half heard what they were saying. She could see farther ahead than her brother, but did not know how to tell him.
The telephone call had left her trembling. It had to happen—this sudden descent of an unexpected visitor on Shingarev’s apartment. Mikhail Dmitrievich. It seemed somehow right that he and the great news should arrive at the same time.
She shivered, and asked Evfrosinya Maksimovna to lend her a wrap.
Fronya had children, Fronya had a home to look after, Fronya had guests who had outstayed their welcome, but Fronya was her husband’s wife, and knew as well as he did that It, alas, was unavoidable, that It would come whatever happened, that It was imminent, and no one could think of anything else. Fronya too had been a student in her day, and remembered that far-off time when they were waiting for the Other One.
Dusk-to-dawn student sessions, prophesying the bright future. “The student disturbances alone will be enough to shake all of Russian society! The undying student movement will compel the Russian government to yield to historical necessity!” It became the fashionable thing for high school pupils to help those in prison. Even drapers’ assistants drafted proclamations in their basements while their masters enjoyed a lengthy postprandial snooze. Even market traders crowded into one of the stalls to read illicit literature: they didn’t understand that word “socialism” but whatever was against the government gave them a bit of a thrill. The local constable stood guard outside while they read, so that they wouldn’t be caught by the police inspector or informers from among themselves. Wealthy exiles crossed the Volga in motorboats to picnic and sing revolutionary songs—with policemen waiting on them. No action at all was taken against those who sent money to political émigrés or received letters and messages from them. By then, no governor hostile to liberal ideas need expect promotion. It was only when men in butchers’ aprons took to the streets and threw stones at windows that some people began wondering where they could get an icon to put on the windowsill for safety. It was a long time since they’d had one of their own. Must borrow the cook’s from the kitchen. The universities became autonomous, and on those islets of freedom, where no policeman was allowed to set foot, joint meetings with workers were held and funds for the Armed Uprising were collected! All educated society agreed that the cowardly attempt of the University Council to safeguard its laboratories and museums, rather than convert the u
niversity into the headquarters of armed struggle, was disgraceful. Boycott the reactionary professors! Let students, not professors, govern the universities! University buildings offered a warm shelter for all passersby. Sinister characters in fur caps hung around there smoking.
Shivering, Vera drew the Orenburg shawl more tightly around her slender shoulders, looked expectantly, apprehensively at the outer door, and returned to the dining room.
The words promised by the younger lady’s expression, and unspoken in all their arguments—were they now radiant in her prophetic face, murmured like the warning of a coming storm?
To each I say, “Yours are the keys of hope.
Alone you see the light. For all but you the light is spent.”
Only this half-whisper was heard. If they had all begun reminiscing and arguing—the full-blooded lady with the energetic elbows, the lecturer with the quiet bass cough, inexhaustible in argument, yet as wary as Milyukov himself, the anarchic engineer, who looked around from behind the curtains, eyelids twitching painfully, whenever he disagreed with what was said, the lady professor, content to conceal her anxiety with the firmness of her tone and the quietness of her speech, the pseudo-liberal colonel, docile for the moment, but liable to turn and savage you, the young lady librarian, blushing and trying in vain to master her shyness—if they all rushed into speech at once with their memories and thoughts it would be morning before they knew it and they would have missed the messenger and his message.
… Talking about revolutions is easy in countries which have never had one. But we lived through one, we saw what it was like.
November 1916 Page 55