DEPARTURE FROM MOSCOW
ALL the winter I had been in correspondence with Kharkov in connection
with my lost luggage. Early in April I received a notification that the
box had been found. The Customs House then sent me in a bill of charges,
so much for every day the box had remained in their possession. The
railway and Customs made two pounds profit out of the loss of my box;
they actually charged me for the loss! So slowly, moreover, did the
business go forward that it seemed to me I should not recover my
property before I left Moscow. Even after they received the money they
seemed in no hurry to proceed. But one day I did actually go out to a
goods station and get my box into a sledge and take it home. The end was
sudden, so sudden that I could not help laughing at the contrast. A
carter took me down into a dark cellar to identify the box, and the said
box, high up among large packing-cases, was identified. In its transit
from that high position to _terra firma_ it managed to displace a
quarter of a ton case, which came down with a crash like thunder. We
were both knocked down, and both very badly bruised, though I think the
carter came off second best; a stream of blood was pouring down his
face. “Oh, Lord God!” I heard him exclaim. He was looking at the Ikon in
the room; it sounded as if he was swearing at it.
“Any limbs broken?” said he.
“No.”
“Then, praise the Lord! There’s your box.”
Two days after this there was an immense thaw and the sledges gave way
to wheeled carriages. On the Wednesday it had been a white city; on
Thursday it was black and there was not a sledge to be seen. The sun had
been getting hotter and winning its way each day, just a little, against
the snow, and then suddenly one night a west wind swept in from Europe
and the Atlantic, and with it a flood of rain. Winter was drowned. No
one was sorry; for winter by all accounts had stayed too long. The
Sunday was Palm Sunday, the day of branches. The Russians call it
_Verba_, and it is a great festival in Moscow. Shura and Nicholas and I
went to the Kremlin to enjoy the sights.
It was a day of ecstasy. The sun shone as it had not done since I came
to Moscow. It was suddenly full of promise, and one felt the promise in
one’s blood. One’s fingers tingled with the desire to live, the eyes
rested with envy upon the green branches that the people carried. In the
Kremlin there was a din as of a carnival. Ten thousand silly squeakers
and hooters sounded in the air. Inflated pigs were expiring, ridiculous
sausages were deflating and collapsing, toy geese were quacking, boys
and girls were blowing whistles and trumpets, and students also were
blowing, and even staid old gentlemen. This day commemorated the
triumphal entry into Jerusalem; it was also the triumphal entry of
spring into Moscow, of life into death. The crowd huzzaing was delirious
with the news that the winter was over. Even the rich people in their
carriages, passing in solemn state into the Kremlin, seemed part of the
new life. They were all in spring dresses—the women in purples and soft
greens, and the men in light tweeds.
It seemed to me, however, that those on foot were having the gayer time.
We were crushed as tightly as I have ever been in a London crowd.
Everyone was laughing and chaffing, especially the girl students from
the University, and the confetti was flying thick and fast.
_Verba_ week was my last in Moscow. On Easter Sunday I left for the
South.
Easter Eve came at last, the greatest night in the Russian holy year. At
midnight we were all in the Kremlin, that is, I was there, and Nicholas
and Shura, and everyone else in Moscow surely. Phrosia, the servant whom
I had accompanied to the shrine at Sergievo, had taken a large sweet
Easter loaf and a cake of sugar-cream, _paskha_, to be consecrated at
church. I saw her in a yard outside the little monastery in the
Petrovka. There were two or three hundred cakes waiting with hers, all
set out on informal tables on trestles. In the centre of each cake a wax
candle was burning. Each table was a little forest of candles, some
long, some short, some just lit, and some burning out. Every now and
then a priest came and took a cake into the church just as the candle
was expiring. Phrosia had evidently just come, for the candle on her
_pashka_ was newly lit. The church was a casket, a precious case of
gems. The priests moving to and fro, the pale faces of the Ikons lit up
by many candles seemed the glamour of a fairy tale. The cakes being
brought in, the priest sprinkling holy water, seemed rites which I, a
mortal, only saw by accident. Indeed, any Englishman would have found
Easter Night strange and wonderful. It is one of the two occasions in
the year when one can see again what is below the surface of Moscow life
of to-day. One can see what Moscow was before it became so
commercialised. At six o’clock on Easter Eve the electric trams cease to
run; from that moment Moscow becomes the holy city of old time. The
strange mystery and sacredness which must have enwrapped it in ancient
days is again felt in the streets. The shops are all shut and dark, the
churches are all open and bright. The thousand-and-one street temples
are decorated with coloured lamps, the doors stand wide open, the sacred
faces of the Ikons look out into the roads. Even the air is infected
with church odours, and the multitudinous domes of purple and gold rest
above the houses in enigmatical solemnity—they might be tents and
pavilions of spirits from another world.
In the streets men and women are carrying lighted candles hither and
thither, and every now and then one sees a person carrying his _paskha_
cake to church. Outside the Cathedral of the Annunciation a regiment of
guards is drawn up and an officer is giving them instructions as to the
duties for the night. Presently the rich and aristocratic families of
Moscow will drive up one by one to do homage to the Ikons in the
cathedral. At midnight the Kremlin is so thronged that it is difficult
to move. All are waiting for the _Resurrection_, all are waiting for the
booming forth of the great bell of St John’s Church, the largest bell of
Moscow and of Russia, rung only once a year. That will signify that
“Christ has risen.” The priests are praying before the Ikons and
searching their hearts. Shortly after midnight they will rise from their
knees and announce to the people, “We have found him. He is risen.
_Christos Voskrece._”
I wandered among the merry crowds to the tower of St John’s, and as I
was passing the great cannon, the Tsar of cannons, I overheard someone
speaking English. I directed my steps in that direction and found the
people, two clean-shaven young men, in English clothes, high English
collars and bowler hats—immaculately English. They were talking loudly,
evidently taking it for granted that no one could understand them. I
took up my stand quite close and listened. This is what I overheard. It
was very small talk, but it sounded very strange to hear it in this
Russian crowd.
“The Moscow people are very rough, they’ve no manners at all. They don’t
care who they jostle or push as long as they get along.”
“Yes, I was going through one of the Kremlin gates yesterday and a
fellow knocked my hat off. Of course it was very nice of him, but he
didn’t stop to tell me why he did it. I thought he was mad, but they
told me afterwards it was a sacred gate. I saw several people take off
their hats as they went through. They say the sentry has orders to fire
on anyone who does not lift his hat. I felt I wanted to apologise to
someone. It’s a beautiful custom, and I hadn’t any intention of
infringing the law. I believe in doing as Rome does in Rome. I wonder if
the sentry would shoot. Nice row there’d be if they shot a British
subject.”
“You’re right, but what’d they care. They’re a rotten lot. I’d like to
pole-axe the Governor. By-the-bye, have you heard anything of White
recently? He said he thought his firm was sending him out.”
“No.”
“Did you know him at all? He was a thorough gentleman.”
“No, not much; he didn’t live my way, you know. I met him several times
down the county ground.”
“Yes, he was fairly mad over Surrey, wasn’t he? We played many games
together, he and I; he bowled an awfully tricky ball, a gentle lob-dob,
nearly full pitch. You thought you were going to put it out of the
ground for six, and then suddenly you found your wicket down.”
At this point a disreputable beggar interrupted them.
“What d’you make of him—a drunken monk, eh?” said the cricketer. Both
the Englishmen put on a look suggesting the principles of Political
Economy, and signified by a frown that they did not encourage beggars.
The “drunken monk,” however, did not budge for five minutes, he looked
up at them and grinned. The people all round grinned also and turned to
watch the scene. Then, suddenly, the beggar, after churning his mouth
for some time, spat on the Harris overcoat of the cricketer’s companion
and exclaimed:
“German pigs.”
“Beast,” said the Englishman, looking at his coat.
“They ought to be coming out soon. It’s only a short procession, they
say—out of the church round the wall and back again; then the bells will
begin. It’s after midnight now.”
I moved away at this point and left the cricketer putting his watch to
his ear to see if it was going. I had promised to meet Shura and
Nicholas and go up into the steeple with them. I found them on one of
the stone galleries where the little bells of the church nestle
together. They had a collection of squibs and crackers and coloured
lights which they were letting off so as to allow girl students below to
pretend to be terrified.
“The priests have come out,” said Nicholas, all at once pointing to a
little procession just proceeding from the Uspensky. “_Christos
Voskrece, Christos Voskrece_,” we heard all around us, and everyone was
kissing one another. Then all the little bells of the churches began to
tinkle, first a few and then more and more in confused ecstatic
jangling. Moscow bells do not sound in the least like English bells, the
chime is not musical or solemn. Our bells chant, their bells cheer. On
Easter Night it is ten thousand bells, the voice of a thousand churches
praising God. A wild, astonishing clamour, and then suddenly came one
sound greater in itself than all the little sounds put together, the
appalling boom of the great bell of St John Veleeky:
“Ting a ling, ling, ling, ling,
Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong,
Ding, ding, dong a dong, ding,
Dang, dang, dang,
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
DOOM . . _m_ . _m_ _m_!”
Suddenly Katia passed me—the girl I took to the theatre.
“_Christos Voskrece_,” said I, “Christ is risen.”
“Yes,” said she, “He is risen,” and threw a handful of confetti in my
eyes.
We all ate _paskha_ cake together in the Kislovka room at three in the
morning, and drank students’ champagne, purchased by Shura at two
shillings a bottle. so Easter Day dawned, my last at Moscow, the day of
my parting with Nicholas, the day of my departure to the Caucasus.
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