‘Li-i-isten!’ sounded in my ears a long drawn out cry. ‘Li-i-isten!’ was
echoed back with a sort of desperation in the distance. ‘Li-i-isten!’ died
away somewhere far, far away. I started. A tall golden spire flashed on my
eyes; I recognised the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.
A northern, pale night! But was it night at all? Was it not rather a
pallid, sickly daylight? I never liked Petersburg nights; but this time the
night seemed even fearful to me; the face of Alice had vanished completely,
melted away like the mist of morning in the July sun, and I saw her whole
body clearly, as it hung, heavy and solitary on a level with the Alexander
column. So here was Petersburg! Yes, it was Petersburg, no doubt. The wide
empty grey streets; the greyish-white, and yellowish-grey and greyish-lilac
houses, covered with stucco, which was peeling off, with their sunken
windows, gaudy sign-boards, iron canopies over steps, and wretched little
green-grocer’s shops; the façades, inscriptions, sentry-boxes, troughs; the
golden cap of St. Isaac’s; the senseless motley Bourse; the granite walls
of the fortress, and the broken wooden pavement; the barges loaded with hay
and timber; the smell of dust, cabbage, matting, and hemp; the stony-faced
dvorniks in sheepskin coats, with high collars; the cab-drivers, huddled up
dead asleep on their decrepit cabs--yes, this was Petersburg, our northern
Palmyra. Everything was visible; everything was clear--cruelly clear and
distinct--and everything was mournfully sleeping, standing out in strange
huddled masses in the dull clear air. The flush of sunset--a hectic
flush--had not yet gone, and would not be gone till morning from the white
starless sky; it was reflected on the silken surface of the Neva, while
faintly gurgling and faintly moving, the cold blue waves hurried on....
‘Let us fly away,’ Alice implored.
And without waiting for my reply, she bore me away across the Neva, over
the palace square to Liteiny Street. Steps and voices were audible beneath
us; a group of young men, with worn faces, came along the street talking
about dancing-classes. ‘Sub-lieutenant Stolpakov’s seventh!’ shouted
suddenly a soldier, standing half-asleep on guard at a pyramid of rusty
bullets; and a little farther on, at an open window in a tall house, I saw
a girl in a creased silk dress, without cuffs, with a pearl net on her
hair, and a cigarette in her mouth. She was reading a book with reverent
attention; it was a volume of the works of one of our modern Juvenals.
‘Let us fly away!’ I said to Alice.
One instant more, and there were glimpses below us of the rotting pine
copses and mossy bogs surrounding Petersburg. We bent our course straight
to the south; sky, earth, all grew gradually darker and darker. The sick
night; the sick daylight; the sick town--all were left behind us.