THE REVOLUTION
I
Then I went to Oxford, and when the war broke out I joined the Navy. But
just before the revolution, Admiral Butt, who had gone on a special
mission to Russia, applied for my ‘Anglo-Russian’ services.
I still remember very vividly the morning following on my arrival in
Petrograd, when I had to meet the Admiral for the first time at the
British Embassy. I ascended the broad staircase with its worn red carpet
to the Chancery. Very perfect young men, very perfectly dressed, were
conversing in very perfect intonations about love among monkeys. It
struck me as delightfully human for diplomats. When I descended, the
Admiral had not yet arrived. I talked to Yuri, the hall-porter, a
clean-shaven individual of uncertain nationality, violently pro-British,
and speaking several languages all very badly. Every now and then the
great heavy door would open--it was snowing heavily outside--and some
man or woman would come in and inquire if this was the Military
District Staff. “It is the British Embassy,” replied Yuri proudly. And
he explained the error. The Military District Staff was 4 Palace Square;
the Embassy 4 Palace Quay. In peace-time people did come in occasionally
and inquire if this was the Military District Staff; but since war had
been declared they seemed to be doing little else. I pondered over the
possibility of Yuri, unable one day to withstand the increasing pressure
of inquiries, going mad and holding forth on this subject to his brother
inmates henceforth indefinitely in a lunatic asylum.
Helping me on with my coat, Yuri was suddenly seized by a strange panic.
He dropped the coat on the floor and dashed to the door. I followed him,
thinking it was the revolution. I was rewarded for my exertion. The
Ambassador’s car drove up, and sitting in it were Sir George Buchanan
and the French Ambassador. Yuri sprang up and pulling off his cap opened
the door of the vehicle and stood still in a paroxysm of reverence and
awe. But the two great men within continued talking, the Frenchman in
that agitated, agile manner that Frenchmen have, the Englishman with a
fine superiority of distinction. The Ambassadors of the two friendly
powers sat talking, evidently unaware that they had arrived. Yuri held
the door open, still bareheaded, the incarnation of servility and
devotion. Then they entered. Yuri made a dash for Sir George’s feet, and
began hastily to unbuckle his felt goloshes, while the great diplomat
with his fur collar still up to his temples and his round fur cap
cocked over one ear stood panting in his great fur coat. I had an absurd
idea that something great must be happening on the political horizon.
Finally the Admiral arrived. He was a tall, imperious figure. His
movements were powerful and sweeping. He had the air of a man engaged in
winning the war while everybody else about him was obstructing him in
his patriotic task. His voice was the voice of such a man. His look
seemed specially selected to match his voice. That war-winning quality
was clearly manifest in his personality, but his actual work towards
that end was all very obscure....
Then one morning, as I was about to cross the Troitski Bridge to meet
the Admiral, I was stopped by the police and was compelled to go home
and change into uniform. When I returned the revolution had already
broken out. The Admiral had just witnessed the sacking of the Arsenal by
a disorderly crowd. Regiment after regiment was going over to the
revolution. Solitary shots, and now and then machine-gun fire, were
heard from various quarters of the city. The Admiral and I stood at the
window and watched. Lorry after lorry packed with armed soldiery and
workmen, some lying in a “ready” attitude along the mudguards, went past
us in a kind of wild and dazzling joy ride, waving red flags and
revolutionary banners to shouts of “Hurrah!” from the crowds in the
street. The Admiral stood with his hands folded on the window-sill,
unable to withhold his enthusiasm. It was a clear, bright day, I think,
and very cold.
That evening following the outbreak of the revolution was vividly
impressed upon my memory. During the day I had listened to innumerable
speeches, some of a Liberal loftiness; others of a menacingly
proletarian character, threatening death to capital and revolution to
the world at large. There was a tendency to flamboyant extravagance and
exaggeration. “Down with Armies and Navies!” shouted one speaker
hysterically. “Down with militarism! Through red terror to peace,
freedom and brotherhood!” There were placards and banners and
processions. “Land and Liberty!” was a popular watchword. Red was the
dominant colour, and the opening bars of the Marseillaise were a kind of
recurring _Leitmotif_ in the tumult. Crossing a bridge I passed a
company of soldiers newly revolted. They marched alert and joyous to the
sound of some old familiar marching song till they came to the words
“for the Czar.” Having sung these words they stopped somewhat abruptly
and perplexed. “_How_ for the Czar?” one of them asked. “_How_ for the
Czar?” they repeated, looking at each other sheepishly. Then they
marched on without singing. There were peasants who did not know the
word “revolution” and thought it was a woman who would supersede the
Czar. Others wanted a republic with a czar. And there were others still
who interpreted the word republic as “rieszshpublicoo,” thinking that it
meant “cut up the public.” In the Troitski Square I was stopped by a
young enthusiastic Russian officer who, attracted by my British uniform,
spoke to me in English, his eyes glittering with excitement. “Sir,” he
said, “you now will have more vigorous Allies.” And then in the Nevski I
passed a procession of Anarchists who are regarded by the Bolsheviks
with about the same degree of unmitigated horror as the Bolsheviks are
regarded by the _Morning Post_. They marched with a gruesome look about
their faces, bearing their horrible colours of black, crested with a
human skull and cross-bones.
And somewhat later in the day I sat at dinner with Zina’s people on the
Petrograd side, and the presence of a score of students, male and
female, an engineer, a lawyer, and a journalist or two, all of that
revolutionary intelligentsia, probably accounted for the Liberal
atmosphere that prevailed. Yesterday they had been revolutionaries;
to-day they were contented Liberals, hailing Lvov and Miliukov as the
heroes of the day. The engineer drank to the future: “The old world is
dead: long live the new world!”
The two ancient grandfathers were much too old and feeble to intervene
on behalf of the old order of things; they had exhausted their Liberal
aspirations with the liberation of the serfs in 1861 and could not see
what in the world more anybody wanted. Zina’s father, underpaid and ill
as he was, had lost for ever the hope of seeing better days, and failed
to see how the revolution could affect his own position. Nikolai
Vasilievich was still keeping him so far. These Liberals interpreted the
revolution as a protest against the pro-German tendency at court, and as
an attempt to get into line with the Western Democracies in this
hitherto unconvincing struggle against militarism and autocracy. The
news was rumoured that the Czar had abdicated. Again, it was said that a
section of the court had been planning a revolution to depose the
Emperor and substitute his brother Michael in order to carry on the war
more vigorously; and that the people’s revolution had preceded it by two
days. Some monarchists now wanted to put down the revolution in order to
carry on the war; other monarchists wanted to put down the war in order
to put down the revolution; and still other monarchists wanted to put
down the revolution and did not care a hang about the war. The Liberals
wanted the revolution to carry on the war; the Czar wanted to put down
the revolution; the Socialists and workmen wanted to put down the war
and to put down the Czar; and the soldiers and sailors wanted to put
down their officers. The Liberal gathering drank to Russia’s Allies; and
then Uncle Kostia, obviously moved by the great event, rose and said in
a slow, melodious voice:
“We will not talk about or criticize the past. We will carry it gently
into the depths of the garden and bury it there among the flowers. And
then, carefully, we will look into the cradle and nurse very tenderly
the slumbering future....”
This attitude, we all felt, was befitting to the great bloodless
revolution.
II
I remember the excitement of it all. Uncle Kostia, it appeared, had
risen earlier that day on account of the revolution; and after dinner,
still in his dressing-gown and slippers, he paced the floor quicker than
was his custom, and, contrary to his practice, discoursed at great
length. He held that history was moving at an unheard-of pace, and he
complained that it was indeed difficult for him, a historian, to keep
pace with it. The revolution had overtaken Uncle Kostia as he was still
tackling the age of Anne.
From Zina’s house I remember walking to the Bursanovs in the Mohovaya. I
passed the sombre silhouettes of the snow-covered barges frozen on the
Neva. It was dark now and the crowds in the streets were more
tumultuous. Soldiers and civilians alike walked aimlessly, rifle slung
over the shoulder. Several wine-cellars had been broken into; there were
drunkards in the streets; but anyhow, all seemed drunk with the
revolution. Shots were heard every now and then, mostly fired in the
air, while the law courts had gone up in flames. The revolution, it was
felt, had been established.
Curiously enough I had not seen the Bursanovs on my return to Petrograd
until that night. They were just the same. Kniaz sat in the corner of
the little drawing-room in his usual chair, and it seemed that the
revolution had impressed him. But how it had impressed him no one could
have divined. Need I say that the three sisters sat in much the same
positions, waiting--waiting for developments? Nikolai Vasilievich was
very bitter. He had regarded the war almost as a deliberate attempt of
providence to complicate his already very complicated domestic
situation, and considering that providence had had the satisfaction of
achieving its pernicious end, it seemed he could not understand the
necessity of a revolution. “Malignity! Malignity!” he muttered, lowering
the blinds, as if to show that he, at any rate, would have nothing to do
with it.
“Nothing noble about it at all!” he answered me.
And Fanny Ivanovna, who had been sitting silently for some time, looked
as if she were entirely of his opinion on that point.
And then a horrible groan was heard from the adjoining room. I cast a
swift interrogative glance at Nikolai Vasilievich. I had an idea that
they had hidden some wretched half-mutilated policeman, the victim of a
revolutionary mob. But Nikolai Vasilievich and Fanny Ivanovna looked
awkward and ashamed. There was, I noticed, a kind of appeal for sympathy
in their eyes.
“That is Fanny Ivanovna’s husband,” said Nikolai Vasilievich
apologetically.
I looked incredulous, and he explained. As Fanny Ivanovna was not
married to him, she was a German subject, and when war broke out she was
to go back to Germany or be interned in Vologda. She refused to go to
Germany till Nikolai Vasilievich had provided for her for life, but as
the war had further crippled his finances he was not in a position to
give her the money; so they married her to Eberheim, an elderly
gentleman of German extraction but a Russian subject. As his nominal
wife Fanny Ivanovna was a Russian subject and could live in Russia until
such time as the improvement in the working of the gold-mines made it
possible for Nikolai Vasilievich to provide for her for life. Then if he
could get a divorce from his wife he would marry Zina.
“Is he wounded?” I asked, scenting revolutionary blood in the air.
“No--cancer,” said Nikolai Vasilievich. And contrasted with this word
painted red, the revolution out of doors seemed pale and trifling.
“He is going to have an operation in a day or so.”
“Has he suffered long?” I inquired.
“Oh, we took him out of hospital,” explained Fanny Ivanovna. “You may
think it odd, but he consented to the marriage on condition that we took
him home and looked after him. He said that he would not live long in
any case and that money was no earthly use to him in his condition: what
he wanted was care and comfort. And now the doctors and operations are
costing Nikolai Vasilievich a good bit of money, I can tell you. Really,
we are most unfortunate people.... And Sonia, too, marrying Baron
Wunderhausen, who, as I suspected, is a drag on Nikolai Vasilievich’s
resources. Really, he cannot afford it, Andrei Andreiech. The mines----”
She waved her hand. Nikolai Vasilievich, with his hands deep in his
trouser pockets, stood looking at the window, though the blinds were
lowered and there was nothing he could see.
“The wedding ceremony,” she went on, “was painful. I barely stood it
myself. The priest at first refused to marry us. Nikolai Vasilievich had
to lead him aside and bribe him. Eberheim’s condition was so bad ...
critical. It was wicked.... Yet he has a way of lasting. He has lasted
now for over two years. One wants to be human to him, but really, Andrei
Andreiech, look at us, look at us ... us.... And now the revolution. Who
_wants_ the revolution?” She put her chin on her hand and turned her
face away. There was silence.
Then, suddenly, without reason or provocation, she turned on the old
Kniaz, sitting neatly in his usual arm-chair, imperturbable like a
butler:
“Kniaz! Don’t sit there like that, like.... Oh, God, you’ve been sitting
like that in that chair for thirteen years.... Say something! Say
something!”
“What can I say?” he smiled faintly.
“What can you say!” she echoed; and again there was silence.
“Hasn’t he got any relations?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“No money?”
“Penniless.”
“Is he ... good?”
“Yes, but ... exacting.”
“Oh, poor fellow, he can’t help it,” said Nikolai Vasilievich.
“Poor fellow,” said Fanny Ivanovna.
“Poor fellow,” I echoed.
For a moment we sat in silence. We waited for Eberheim to groan again;
but he too was silent; and we could just hear the measured ticking of
the great oak-panelled clock in the corner and the subdued tumult of the
streets below.
“And where is Magda Nikolaevna?” I asked.
“She is with Cecedek.”
“One burden less, what, Nikolai Vasilievich?”
Nikolai Vasilievich sighed.
“You would hardly say so,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “for Nikolai Vasilievich
still has to keep his wife.”
“But what of Cecedek?”
“I am very sorry for him,” said Fanny Ivanovna.
And I learnt that at the outbreak of hostilities the Russian authorities
had found it necessary to confiscate the whole of Cecedek’s property.
They were then going to intern him, but he succeeded in proving to them
that he was now a Czech; and so they set him free. But the property
which they had taken from him as an Austrian they did not return to him
as a Czech. He had been in correspondence with the authorities on this
subject ever since July, 1914, and on his ultimate success in getting
some of it refunded his marriage with Magda Nikolaevna must henceforth
depend. Whether the revolution would assist him in his ambitious
expectations, or would delay them further, it was hard to prophesy.
Nikolai Vasilievich helped him as much as he was able in his present
circumstances. In the meantime Magda Nikolaevna had suspended her
application for a divorce and was still on Nikolai Vasilievich’s books
for payment. But Cecedek’s attitude had not changed. He now rather liked
to emphasize the Slavic side to their union, had in the last three years
developed a Czech intonation in his Russian speech, professed an undue
regard for his “Brother-Slavs,” pronounced his own name “Chechedek,” and
in signing put those funny little accents on the C’s.
I left them very early next morning; in the excitement of the day there
had been much work left overnight unaccomplished. It was about six
o’clock when I crossed the Field of Mars. Soldiers in odd groups
strolled along in the snow, now and then firing off a rifle in the air,
just for the fun of the thing; and the capital wore that appearance of a
banqueting-hall in the shrewd light of the morning after a particularly
heavy feast. Fretful clouds moved swiftly across the winter sky. The
morning promised a fine day.
III
The revolution dragged on through the winter and “deepened” as the
months advanced. The forerunners of confusion became visible: food and
commodities were being procured in an irregular manner. All were
waiting....
Pictures of them recur continually to my mind, as I write. I can see
Fanny Ivanovna, and particularly I can see the three sisters, always
sitting in the same positions, perched on sundry chairs and sofas, Fanny
Ivanovna engaged in silent contemplation over needlework, and Kniaz
sitting in his usual chair, reading, or more often sitting idly,
thinking into space. The seasons would be changing rapidly from one to
the other--but their position never! Rain would drum against the
window-pane, snow would be falling on the street below; then the ice on
the Neva would begin to break and slowly move toward the Bay; and again
one would feel the onset of spring, the unfolding of white nights....
“How tiring this is, Andrei Andreiech,” Fanny Ivanovna complained. “To
be always waiting to begin to _live_. When is that upward movement in
happiness, that splendid life that we are always waiting for, to begin
at last? Somehow you wait for the spring. But spring has come ...
_alone_, and only emphasizes our misery, by the contrast.... Spring
makes me mad. I begin to want impossible things....”
“You are an active woman, Fanny Ivanovna,” said I. “You ought not to sit
still. It’s bad for you. You ought to run about.”
“But ... I’ve got to wait.”
“I suppose waiting is sitting still. It _is_, in a sense....”
“It isn’t that. But what am I going to run about for? I go out shopping.
But that doesn’t _advance_ things, you understand. Besides, I simply
dread asking Nikolai Vasilievich for money.”
“He hasn’t got any?”
“He has. He’s always borrowing--_crescendo, forte, fortissimo!_ But
where will it end? When? Borrowing money is all right if you can do it.
But it’s not, as it were, an income; it’s not--how shall I put it?--an
end in itself, is it? There’s got to be something, somewhere, sometime.
Those gold-mines have got to justify themselves. Our plans, our
movements, everything depends on them. That’s why it’s so annoying.
They’ve got to pay, and I am confident that they will pay. But
_when_?...”
She rose abruptly, as was her wont, her black silk skirt rustling as she
swept out.
It was “Papa this” and “Mamma that” and “Fanny Ivanovna the other
thing.”
“Won’t you stop sighing?” I suggested.
“It’s all very well for you,” protested the three sisters
simultaneously. “But do you think it’s very nice for us?”
“What do you want, anyhow?”
They did not answer; they looked at the window, brooding.
I said in a jovial tone of voice:
“Well, I tried to help you. But you won’t be helped.”
“Helped us indeed!” they cried out simultaneously. The three sisters had
a way of speaking simultaneously and almost word for word in matters of
domestic politics. They were a party in themselves, stubbornly opposed
to all the other camps of Nikolai Vasilievich’s family.
The night before, I had taken them to Kusivitski’s concert. People had
been staring enviously at me, as if to ask: “Who are those three pretty
kittens?” I felt absurdly like a proud papa. The music was excruciating.
During the piano solo I clung to my chair: I could scarcely sit still.
“Scriabin,” I burst out as the music stopped, “is a persistent knocking
at the door--but the door doesn’t open. Still, as we might know in any
case that there _is_ nothing behind the door, that doesn’t greatly
matter, does it? It’s the knocking that is a human necessity. And what a
desperate knocking it is!”
Nina looked at me with that trick she had of assuming innocence and
said: “Which door?”
And it flashed across my mind that, whereas Sonia played the piano with
an agreeable touch of feeling, Nina’s hammering was shrill and
disagreeable, while, musically, Vera was still an unknown quantity.
But the pianist had resumed.
“What is this?” Nina asked.
“A fox-trot,” I replied, very superior.
I sat on the small seat facing the three sisters, as Professor
Metchnikoff trotted homeward through the sombre streets. The night was
warm and humid. By the street lamps I could see their faces. When she
was silent Nina looked so wise. Perhaps she seemed wiser than she
actually was. All this--the war, the revolution--she had overlooked: and
it did not exist. Scriabin--she had overlooked him. And he did not
exist. But she was there, watchful....
The day after was like the day before. They sat there listless--Fanny
Ivanovna, Kniaz and the three sisters. The three sisters always sat in
some extraordinary positions, on the backs of sofas and easy chairs, and
Fanny Ivanovna and Kniaz sat in very ordinary positions. Nikolai
Vasilievich alone was always absent; and I think there was a sort of
feeling running through us all that he at least was busy, _doing_
something. But in more sceptical moods I know I was inclined to question
dubiously whether he too was _getting_ anywhere for all the semblance of
activity that his mysterious absence involved. I remember the silhouette
of Nina’s profile at the window. I can feel the tension of the silence
that hung over the room, the suspense of waiting--of indefinite waiting
for indefinite things. In the hush that had crept upon us I could fancy
I could sense acutely the disturbing presence of the things my eye could
not behold: the gilded domes radiant in the fading sunlight, the many
bridges thrown across the widespread stream; and in the stillness I was
made to feel as if by instinct the throbbing pulse of Petrograd. The
leaden waves splashed gently against the granite banks; and the air was
full of that yearning melancholy call of life that yet reminds one--God
knows why--of the imminence of death; and in the sky there was the
promise of a white night.
IV
Petrograd looked thoroughly nasty on that cold November morning. There
was the drizzling snow, and it was still dark as I walked home with
Uncle Kostia. We had been at the Finland Station to see off two of Uncle
Kostia’s nieces who were going abroad. It was the morning of the
Bolshevik Revolution, and Uncle Kostia looked pessimistic. “Do you
remember all those student-revolutionaries, the heroes of our young
intelligentsia, who had been persecuted by the old régime? Well,”--he
pointed from the bridge that we were traversing to the Bolshevik craft
that had arrived from Kronstadt overnight--“_this_ is more than they
bargained for. More than they bargained for.”
We walked on.
“They are malcontents again--but on the other side! Truth is fond of
playing practical jokes of this sort. My God! how elusive it is. It is
wonderful how beneath our hastily made-up truths, the truths of usage
and convenience, there runs independently, often contrariwise, a wider,
bigger truth. Can’t you feel it? The pseudo-reason of unreason. The lack
of reasonable evidence in reason. Issues, motives being muddled up. This
ethical confusion, and the blind habitual resort to bloodshed as a means
of straightening it out. More confusion. Honour is involved. Bloodshed
as a solution. More honour involved in the solution. More bloodshed.
That idiotic plea that each generation should sacrifice itself for the
so-called benefit of the next! It never seems to end.... Oh, how the
pendulum swings! Wider and wider, and we are shedding blood generation
after generation. For _what_? For _whom_?... For future generations! My
God, what fools we are! Fools shedding blood for the sake of future
fools, who will do as much!”
“But what are you to do? _What?_” I persisted.
Uncle Kostia was evasive. “You see,” he said at last, “subtleties of the
mind, if pursued to their logical conclusions, become crudities. Let us
cease our conversation at this point.”
Barricades appeared in the streets. Bridges were being suspended.
Lorries of joy-riding proletarians became familiarly conspicuous, as I
walked on towards the Bursanovs.
I found the household in a state of wild excitement. However, the event
had no connexion with the Revolution. In fact, with continual domestic
revolutions in their own home, the much ado about the political
revolution appeared, particularly to the three sisters, a foolish
affectation.
I learnt that Nikolai Vasilievich had just discovered that his
book-keeper Stanitski, at the instigation of his house-agent, had these
last five years been falsifying the books and robbing him wholesale.
When the discovery was made the house-agent had vanished into the
darkness whence he had emerged. But as I entered I was very nearly
knocked down by Nikolai Vasilievich dashing after Stanitski, the
book-keeper, as he was flying down the stairs. He caught him by the tail
of his overcoat and dragged him back into his study. He had him
standing, stiff and awkward and ashamed, before his desk, while he
himself reclined in his arm-chair.
Nikolai Vasilievich did not shout, as Stanitski, who knew his master
intimately, had, no doubt, expected him to do. He spoke quietly and even
sadly; and it was the sadness of his speech that penetrated Stanitski’s
Slavic nature to the heart. “How could you have cheated me like that,
Ivan Sergeiech--me who have trusted you?”
And Stanitski became emotional. “Nikolai Vasilievich!” he exclaimed with
his hands joined together and the whites of his eyes turned heavenward.
“Nikolai Vasilievich! God in Heaven knows I have not been helping myself
to your money, as you seem to think, recklessly. But since I took a
little--and I have a wife, children, dependents--I had to do what the
house-agent told me. I was in his hands, at the mercy of a blackguard
and a robber. Nikolai Vasilievich: I often felt I wanted to warn you of
this rascal. But I was in his hands ... since I took myself. But I took
in measure, Nikolai Vasilievich, conscientiously, with my eyes on
God....”
The old man sobbed bitter tears. He felt that fate had dealt him a cruel
blow, unjustifiably cruel, in return for his moderation.
What could be done to him? Baron Wunderhausen, who now, as Sonia’s
husband, lived with the family, suggested handing the man over to the
Bolshevik militia. But Nikolai Vasilievich only waved his hand. I think
it was the family aspect of the old man’s position that penetrated
Nikolai Vasilievich to the heart. He sat there at his desk, brooding
darkly, while Stanitski, gently, like a cat, felt his way out of the
flat.
Fanny Ivanovna sighed conspicuously.
“An optimistic gentleman--Stanitski,” I remarked. “What a belief in the
kindliness of things! What a claim on the favour of Providence!”
“And, as it happens, he is not far wrong in his calculations,” said the
Baron with a bitterness which showed that he, as son-in-law, was
dissatisfied with the management of the family’s finances. “I call this
state of things disgraceful.”
“God have mercy upon us!” whispered Fanny Ivanovna, almost ironically.
“An optimist,” I digressed aloud, “is a fool, since he can’t see what
awaits him--disillusionment. But he is wise without knowing it, since,
however bad the present, he remains an optimist as to the future, and so
his present seems never quite so bad to him as it really is.”
“Say it again,” breathed Nina.
“A fool,” said Nikolai Vasilievich, “is an optimist. He is optimistic
about himself, optimistic about his folly. _I_’m an optimist!”
He stood up, his hands in his trouser pockets, and gazed at the window.
Twilight was falling swiftly. Nina, perched up on the sofa, sat silent,
her head bent.
“What’s the good of being miserable?” I said to her.
“As though I deliberately chose to be miserable!” To console herself,
she took an apple.
“Optimists that we are!” sighed Fanny Ivanovna.
“Warranting considerable pessimism,” supplied the Baron.
“It is easier to hope,” said Nikolai Vasilievich, “and be disappointed,
it is easier to hope knowing that one will be disappointed, than not
hope at all.”
“Why don’t the writers--the novelists--why don’t they write about this,
this real life,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “this real drama of life, rather
than their neat, reasoned, reasonable and--oh! so unconvincing novels?”
“This philosophizing won’t help us,” jeered Nikolai Vasilievich mildly.
“We ought to _do_ things. I want to _do_ things. This moment I am
teeming over with energy. I could do and settle things to-day, square up
our affairs, and start life afresh.... But....”
The Baron looked at him. “Well?”
“But----” A gesture at the window indicated the obstacle. “What can I do
with _this_? What can anybody do? All is tumbling, going to ruin. In a
month or so all business will stop, works will close down. The rouble
will be valueless. There will be _nothing_....”
“Now don’t lose courage, Nikolai,” said Fanny Ivanovna hopefully. “We
shall pull through; somehow we shall; and then on the other side of the
grave we shall be safe.”
“Her most optimistic moment in life!” jeered Nikolai Vasilievich.
“It’s a surprising thing what the human soul will stand, Andrei
Andreiech,” she said. “I can venture only this explanation; it is habit.
You see, the cup is ever filled to the brim, but--lo! the miracle! the
cup expands. No trouble. None!... And here we are.”
“Life gets you,” came from the window; “sooner or later it gets you all
the same.”
“I don’t know what it’s for, why, or who wants it. It seems so
unnecessary, useless, even silly. And yet I cannot think that it’s all
in vain. There must be ... perhaps a larger pattern somewhere in which
all these futilities, these shifting incongruities are somehow
reconciled. But shall we know? Shall we ever know the reason?”
“Philosophy!” jeered Nikolai Vasilievich mildly.
“Perhaps,” I said, “when we awaken on the other side of death and ask to
be told the reason, they will shrug their shoulders and will say, ‘We
don’t know. It is beyond us. Do _you_ not know?’ ... And we shall never
know. _Never_....”
“How awfully funnily your mouth moves when you speak,” said Nina, who
had been listening to me attentively.
“Frightfully!”
“There is no proof,” said Baron Wunderhausen, “that death _is_ the end.
But there is no proof, as yet, that death is _not_ the end.”
“So there is no proof of anything?” asked Nikolai Vasilievich.
“No.”
“Thank you,” said Fanny Ivanovna.
The Baron bowed.
Then Nikolai Vasilievich passed into the hall and put his coat on. As it
was time for me to go, we went out together. I remember there was
something hopeless about that night, a sense of dread about the
political and economic chaos, that seemed to harmonize with Nikolai
Vasilievich’s state of mind. I think it may be that he found a kind of
ghastly pleasure in the thought that if he was miserable, if destitution
stared him in the face, the whole world also seemed to be tumbling about
him into decay and ruin. As we crossed the Palace Square we were
challenged by a soldier who had emerged from behind a pile of firewood
dumped before the Winter Palace. He stepped forward with fixed bayonet
and demanded money, while pointing his bayonet at my breast; he held his
finger on the trigger. He was considerably drunk. Neither of us happened
to have any money. “Got any cigarettes, Comrades?” he asked.
Neither of us had cigarettes.
“And I,” explained the drunken soldier, “go about, you know, letting the
guts out of the _bourgouys_.”
“That’s right, Comrade,” ventured Nikolai Vasilievich. “Kill them all,
the dirty dogs!”
“I will,” said the soldier cheerily, and stalked off into the night,
while we went our way.
Nikolai Vasilievich only shook his head and sighed and shook his head
and sighed. He muttered something, but the wind that overtook us carried
off his words. I could just catch “ ... my house ... the mines....”