Petersburg (22 page)

‘Just wait: soon it will change.’

‘God grant that it will be to something good, sir; you can’t go against the evil spirit, as you yourself know.’

‘No, indeed, one can’t …’

The individual was not a bad sort; and constable Brykachev was not a bad sort either: and they both laughed; and a five-copeck piece flew into Brykachev’s fist.

The following day what happened again was that one went out for a walk – and what?
Quiet and harmonious was the sunset; there was still the same contentment in nature; the theatres and the circuses were all in action; the urban water supply was also in good working order; and – yet no: everything was all wrong.

Cutting across a public garden, a street, a square, shifting dolefully from one foot to the other in front of the monument to a great man, yesterday’s good-natured individual began to walk with his enormous cudgel; sternly, silently, solemnly, so to speak, with emphasis, the individual advances his feet in galoshes and lacing boots with turned-up flaps; sternly, silently, solemnly the individual strikes his cudgel on the pavement; with constable Brykachev not a word; and constable Brykachev does not say a word, either, but just stares into space, with determination.

‘Move along now, gentleman, move along, don’t block the thoroughfare.’

And one looks: somewhere superintendent Podbrizhny is circulating.

My protester’s eye fairly jumps: this way and that way; have any other protesters like himself gathered in a little group in
front of the monument to the great man?
Have they gathered on the square in front of the transit prison?
But the monument to the great man is surrounded by police; while on the square there is no one.

He walks, he walks, my individual, sighs with commiseration; and returns to his quarters; and his mother gives him tea with cream to drink.
– You may as well know: that day the newspapers had criticized something: something – some: measure – of prevention, so to speak: whatever it was; if they criticized a measure – the individual would begin to ferment.

The following day there is no measure: and the individual is not on the streets either; and my individual is content, and my constable Brykachev is content; and superintendent Podbrizhny is content.
The monument to the great man is not surrounded by police.

Did my protesting individual appear on this nice October day?
He appeared, he appeared!
In the street the shaggy Manchurian hats also appeared; both those individuals and those hats dissolved in the crowd; but this way and that way the crowd wandered aimlessly; while the individuals and the Manchurian hats made their way in one direction – to the gloomy building with the crimson summit; and outside the gloomy building that was crimson with sunset the crowd was exclusively made up of individuals and hats; a young lady from an educational establishment was also involved in it all.

But now they were barging, and barging at the entrance-porch doors – how they barged, how they barged!
And how could it be otherwise?
A working man has no time to spend on propriety: and there was a bad smell; while the crush began on the pavement.

Along the corner, near the pavement, good-naturedly embarrassed, a small detachment of police stamped their feet up and down (it was cold); while the officer in charge was even more embarrassed; grey himself, in a little grey coat, he was shouting like an unnoticed shadow, deferentially tucking up his sabre and keeping his eyes down; while to his back he received verbal comments, reprimands, laughter and even: indecent abuse – from the artisan Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, from his spouse, Ivanikha, from his worthiness the merchant of the First Guild Puzanov (fishery and steamship company on the Volga) who had been passing here and had risen up together with the rest.
The grey little officer in charge was shouting ever more timidly:

‘Move along, gentlemen, move along!’

But the dimmer he grew, the more insistently did the many-legged horses snort there behind the fence: from behind the teeth made of logs – no, no – a shaggy head rose; and if one were to peep over the fence, one would be able to see that it was only some kind of folk who had been driven in from the steppes who had whips in their fists and rifles behind their backs and who were angry about something, angry: impatiently, angrily, silently those ragged fellows danced on their saddles; and their shaggy little horses – they also danced.

It was a detachment of Orenburg Cossacks.

Inside the gloomy building there was a saffron-yellow darkness; here everything was lit by candles; it was impossible to see anything except bodies, bodies and bodies: bent, half-bent, barely bent and not bent at all: those bodies were sitting round, standing round everything that could be sat and stood round; they occupied an amphitheatre of seats that soared aloft; the rostrum was not visible, nor was the voice that bequeathed from the rostrum:

‘Ooo-ooo-ooo.’ There was a hooting in space and through this ‘ooo’ one heard from time to time:

‘Revolution … Evolution … Proletariat … Strike …’ And then again: ‘Strike …’ And again: ‘Strike.’

‘Strike …’ – a voice blurted out; the hooting grew even louder: between two loudly uttered
strikes
there just barely stole out: ‘Social democracy.’ And again disappeared into the bass-voiced, continuous, dense ooo-ooo …

Obviously what was being said was that in this place and that place and this place there already was a strike; that in this place and that place and this place a strike was being prepared, and so they ought to strike – here and here: to strike right in this very place; and – not to budge!

Escape

Aleksandr Ivanovich was returning home along the empty prospects that ran parallel to the
Neva; the light of a court carriage went flying past him; from beneath the vault of the Winter Canal the Neva was revealed to him; there, on the small, curved bridge, he observed the nightly shadow.

Aleksandr Ivanovich was returning to his wretched abode in order to sit in solitude amidst the brown stains and to follow the life of the woodlice in the dampish cracks in the walls.
His morning trip outside after the night sooner resembled an escape from the creeping woodlice; Aleksandr Ivanovich’s repeated observations had long ago led him to the thought that the tranquillity of his night quite simply depended on the tranquillity of the day he had spent: only what he had experienced in the streets, in the little restaurants, in the tearooms had he brought home with him of late.

So with what was he returning today?

His experiences trailed after him like a flying, power-laden tail that was invisible to the eye; Aleksandr Ivanovich experienced these experiences in reverse order, letting his conscious retreat into the tail (that is, behind his back): at those moments it always seemed to him that his back had opened and that from that back, as from a door, some giant’s body was preparing to hurl itself into the abyss: this giant’s body was the experience of that day’s twenty-four hours; the experiences began to smoke like a tail.

Aleksandr Ivanovich was thinking: he had only to return home and the events of that day’s twenty-four hours would start to break down the door; he would none the less try to trap them in the garret door, ripping the tail from the back; and the tail would break in all the same.

Behind him Aleksandr Ivanovich left the bridge a-glitter with diamonds.

Further on, beyond the bridge, against the background of a nocturnal St Isaac’s, before him the perennial rock rose out of the green darkness: extending a heavy and green-covered hand the perennial Horseman
³⁹
raised aloft above the Neva his bronze-laurel crown; above a grenadier who had fallen asleep under his shaggy hat the horse had flung out its two front hooves in bewilderment; while below, under its hooves, the shaggy grenadier’s hat that belonged to the drowsing old man slowly swayed.
As it fell from the hat, the metal badge struck his bayonet.

A vacillating semi-shadow covered the Horseman’s face; and the
metal of his face was divided by an ambiguous expression; the palm of a hand cut into the turquoise air.

Since that fraught time when the metal Horseman had come tearing to the bank of the Neva, since that time fraught with days when he had thrown his steed on to the grey Finnish granite
⁴⁰
– Russia was divided in two; divided in two were the very destinies of the fatherland; divided in two, suffering and weeping, until the last hour, is Russia.

Russia, you are like a steed!
Into the darkness, into the emptiness your two front hooves have raced; and firmly in the granite soil have struck root – your two back ones.

Do you too want to detach yourself from the stone that holds you, as some of your reckless sons have detached themselves from the soil – do you too want to detach yourself from the stone that holds you and hang in the air without bridle, in order later to go plunging down into the watery chaoses?
Or do you want, perhaps, to rush, tearing the mists to shreds, through the air, in order together with your sons to disappear in the clouds?
Or, having reared up on your hind legs, Russia, have you fallen into reflection for long years before the menacing fate that threw you here – in the midst of this gloomy North, where even the very sunset is a matter of many hours, where time itself lunges in turn now into frosty night, now into diurnal radiance?
Or will you, frightened by the leap, once again lower your hooves
⁴¹
in order, snorting, to carry the great Horseman into the depths of the flat expanses out of the illusory lands?

But it will not be!
…

Once it has soared up on its hind legs, measuring the air with its eyes, the bronze steed will not lower its hooves: a leap over history – there will be; great will be the turmoil; the earth will be cleaved; the very mountains will come crashing down because of the great
shaking of the earth
,
⁴²
and our native plains will be made everywhere humped because of the
shaking of the earth
.
Nizhny, Vladimir and Uglich
⁴³
will end up on humps.

But Petersburg will sink.

In those days all the peoples of the earth will come rushing from their places; there will be a great strife – a strife without precedent in the world: yellow hordes of Asiatics, having moved from their
long-occupied places, will turn the fields of Europe crimson with oceans of blood; there will be, there will be – a Tsushima!
⁴⁴
There will be, there will be – a new Kalka!
⁴⁵

Kulikovo Field,
⁴⁶
I wait for you!

On that day the final Sun will shine above my native land.
If, Sun, you do not rise, then, oh, Sun, the shores of Europe will sink beneath the heavy Mongol heel, and above these shores the foam will curl; the creatures born of earth will once more sink to the bottom of the oceans – into the primordial, the long-forgotten chaoses …

Arise, oh, Sun!

A turquoise breach rushed across the sky; while towards it through the storm clouds flew a stain of burning phosphorus, suddenly changed there into a solid, brightly shining moon; for an instant everything flared: the waters, the chimneys, the granites, the silvery flutings, the two goddesses above the arch, the roof of the four-storeyed house; the cupola of St Isaac’s looked bathed in light; they flared – the Horseman’s brow, the bronze-laurel crown; the lights of the islands died; while an ambiguous vessel in the middle of the Neva turned into an ordinary fishing schooner; from the captain’s bridge a bright point of light shone sparklingly; perhaps it was the glow from the pipe of the blue-nosed bosun, wearing a Dutch hat with earflaps, or the bright lantern of a sailor on watch.
Like a gentle soot, from the Bronze Horseman flew a gentle semi-shadow; and the shaggy-headed grenadier was drawn more blackly, together with the Horseman, on the paving slabs.

For an instant human fortunes were clearly illumined to Aleksandr Ivanovich: one could see what was going to happen, one could perceive what would never happen: thus all became clear; fate seemed to brighten; but he was afraid to look into his own fate; stood before fate shaken, agitated, experiencing anguish.

And – the moon cut into a cloud …

Again ragged arms of cloud went furiously racing; the misty strands of some kind of witches’ tresses kept racing; and ambiguously among them gleamed the burning stain of phosphorus …

At this point resounded – a deafening, inhuman roar: its enormous
headlamp unendurably gleaming, a motor car raced past, puffing kerosene – from beneath the arch towards the river.
Aleksandr Ivanovich studied how the yellow, Mongol mugs
⁴⁷
cut across the square; the unexpected nature of it made him fall; in front of him fell his wet hat.
Behind his back there then arose a mumbling that resembled a ritual lamentation.

‘Lord Jesus Christ!
Save us and have mercy on us!’

Aleksandr Ivanovich turned round and realized that near him the old Nikolayevsky grenadier had begun to whisper.

‘Merciful Lord, what is that?’

‘A motor car: some eminent Japanese visitors …’

Of the motor car there was not a trace.

The spectral outline of a lackey’s cocked hat and the wing of an overcoat stretched into the wind raced from mist to mist with the two lights of a carriage.

Styopka
⁴⁸

Near Petersburg, from Kolpino the high road winds: this place – there is no gloomier place!
As you ride on the train towards Petersburg of a morning, you have woken up – you look: outside the windows of the carriage all is dead; not a single soul, not a single village; as though the human race had died out, and the very earth were a corpse.

Here on the surface, which consists of a tangle of frozen bushes, a black cloud presses itself against the earth from afar; the horizon there is leaden; gloomy estates creep away under the sky …