“I think that you people are under a curse.”
He made no sound. It was only on the pavement outside the gate that I
heard him again.
“I should like to walk with you a little.”
After all, I preferred this enigmatical young man to his celebrated
compatriot, the great Peter Ivanovitch. But I saw no reason for being
particularly gracious.
“I am going now to the railway station, by the shortest way from here,
to meet a friend from England,” I said, for all answer to his unexpected
proposal. I hoped that something informing could come of it. As we stood
on the curbstone waiting for a tramcar to pass, he remarked gloomily--
“I like what you said just now.”
“Do you?”
We stepped off the pavement together.
“The great problem,” he went on, “is to understand thoroughly the nature
of the curse.”
“That’s not very difficult, I think.”
“I think so too,” he agreed with me, and his readiness, strangely
enough, did not make him less enigmatical in the least.
“A curse is an evil spell,” I tried him again. “And the important, the
great problem, is to find the means to break it.”
“Yes. To find the means.”
That was also an assent, but he seemed to be thinking of something else.
We had crossed diagonally the open space before the theatre, and began
to descend a broad, sparely frequented street in the direction of one of
the smaller bridges. He kept on by my side without speaking for a long
time.
“You are not thinking of leaving Geneva soon?” I asked.
He was silent for so long that I began to think I had been indiscreet,
and should get no answer at all. Yet on looking at him I almost believed
that my question had caused him something in the nature of positive
anguish. I detected it mainly in the clasping of his hands, in which he
put a great force stealthily. Once, however, he had overcome that sort
of agonizing hesitation sufficiently to tell me that he had no such
intention, he became rather communicative--at least relatively to
the former off-hand curtness of his speeches. The tone, too, was more
amiable. He informed me that he intended to study and also to write. He
went even so far as to tell me he had been to Stuttgart. Stuttgart, I
was aware, was one of the revolutionary centres. The directing committee
of one of the Russian parties (I can’t tell now which) was located in
that town. It was there that he got into touch with the active work of
the revolutionists outside Russia.
“I have never been abroad before,” he explained, in a rather inanimate
voice now. Then, after a slight hesitation, altogether different from
the agonizing irresolution my first simple question “whether he meant to
stay in Geneva” had aroused, he made me an unexpected confidence--
“The fact is, I have received a sort of mission from them.”
“Which will keep you here in Geneva?”
“Yes. Here. In this odious....”
I was satisfied with my faculty for putting two and two together when I
drew the inference that the mission had something to do with the
person of the great Peter Ivanovitch. But I kept that surmise to myself
naturally, and Mr. Razumov said nothing more for some considerable time.
It was only when we were nearly on the bridge we had been making for
that he opened his lips again, abruptly--
“Could I see that precious article anywhere?”