The Secret City Part 20

"But I'm never inclined to laugh," said Bohun eagerly. "I may be young and only an Englishman--but I shouldn't wonder if I don't understand better than you think. You try and see.... And I'll tell you another thing, Nicolai Leontievitch, I loved your wife myself--loved her madly--and she was so good to me and so far above me, that I saw that it was like loving one of the angels. That's what we all feel, Nicolai Leontievitch, so that you needn't have any fear--she's too far above all of us. And I only want to be your friend and hers, and to help you in any way I can."

(I can see Bohun saying this, very sincere, his cheeks flushed, eager.)

Markovitch held out both his hands.

"You're right," he cried. "She's above us all. It's true that she's an angel, and we are all her servants. You have helped me by saying what you have, and I won't forget it. You are right; I am wasting my time with ridiculous suspicions when I ought to be working. Concentration, that's what I want, and perhaps you will give it me."

He suddenly came forward and kissed Bohun on both cheeks. He smelt, Bohun thought, of vodka. Bohun didn't like the embrace, of course, but he accepted it gracefully.

"Now we'll go away," said Markovitch.

"We ought to put things straight," said Bohun.

"No; I shall leave things as they are," said Markovitch, "so that he shall see exactly what I've done. I'll write a note."

He scribbled a note to me in pencil. I have it still. It ran:

Dear Ivan Andreievitch--I looked for a letter from my wife to you. In doing so I was I suppose contemptible. But no matter. At least you see me as I am. I clasp your hand, N. Markovitch.

They went away together.

II

I was greatly surprised to receive, a few days later, an invitation from Baron Wilderling; he asked me to go with him on one of the first evenings in March to a performance of Lermontov's "Masquerade" at the Alexandra Theatre. I say Lermontov, but heaven knows that that great Russian poet was not supposed to be going to have much to say in the affair. This performance had been in preparation for at least ten years, and when such delights as Gordon Craig's setting of "Hamlet," or Benois'

dresses for "La Locandiera" were discussed, the Wise Ones said:

"Ah,--all very well--just wait until you see 'Masquerade.'"

These manifestations of the artistic spirit had not been very numerous of late in Petrograd. At the beginning of the war there had been many cabarets--"The Cow," "The Calf," "The Dog," "The Striped Cat"--and these had been underground cellars, lighted by Chinese lanterns, and the halls decorated with Futurist paintings by Yakkolyeff or some other still more advanced spirit. It seemed strange to me as I dressed that evening. I do not know how long it was since I had put on a dinner-jacket. With the exception of that one other visit to Baron Wilderling this seemed to be my one link with the old world, and it was curious to feel its fascination, its air of comfort and order and cleanliness, its courtesy and discipline. "I think I'll leave these rooms," I thought as I looked about me, "and take a decent flat somewhere."

It is a strange fact, behind which there lies, I believe, some odd sort of moral significance, that I cannot now recall the events of that evening in any kind of clear detail. I remember that it was bitterly cold, with a sky that was flooded with stars. The snow had a queer metallic sheen upon it as though it were coloured ice, and I can see now the Nevski like a slab of some fiercely painted metal rising out of the very smack of our horses' hoofs as my sleigh sped along--as though, silkworm-like, I spun it out of the entrails of the sledge. It was all light and fire and colour that night, with towers of gold and frosted green, and even the black crowds that thronged the Nevski pavements shot with colour.

Somewhere in one of Shorthouse's stories--in _The Little Schoolmaster Mark_, I think--he gives a curious impression of a whirling fantastic crowd of revellers who evoke by their movements some evil pattern in the air around them, and the boy who is standing in their midst sees this dark twisted sinister picture forming against the gorgeous walls and the coloured figures until it blots out the whole scene and plunges him into darkness. I will not pretend that on this evening I discerned anything sinister or ominous in the gay scene that the Alexandra Theatre offered me, but I was nevertheless weighed down by some quite unaccountable depression that would not let me alone. For this I can see now that Lawrence was very largely responsible. When I met him and the Wilderlings in the foyer of the theatre I saw at once that he was greatly changed.

The clear open expression of his eyes was gone; his mind was far away from his company--and it was as though I could see into his brain and watch the repet.i.tion of the old argument occurring again and again and again with always the same questions and answers, the same reproaches, the same defiances, the same obstinacies. He was caught by what was perhaps the first crisis of his life. He had never been a man for much contact with his fellow-beings, he had been aloof and reserved, generous in his judgements of others, severe and narrow in his judgement of himself. Above all, he had been proud of his strength....

Now he was threatened by something stronger than himself. He could have managed it so long as he was aware only of his love for Vera.... Now, when, since Nina's party, he knew that also Vera loved him, he had to meet the tussle of his life.

That, at any rate, is the kind of figure that I give to his mood that evening. He has told me much of what happened to him afterwards, but nothing of that particular night, except once. "Do you remember that 'Masquerade' evening?... I was in h.e.l.l that night...." which, for Lawrence, was expressive enough.

Both the Baron and his wife were in great spirits. The Baron was more than ever the evocation of the genius of elegance and order; he seemed carved out of some coloured ivory, behind whose white perfection burnt a s.h.i.+ning resolute flame.

His clothes were so perfect that they would have expressed the whole of him even though his body had not been there. He was happy. His eyes danced appreciatively; he waved his white gloves at the scene as though blessing it.

"Of course, Mr. Durward," he said to me, "this is nothing compared with what we could do before the war--nevertheless here you see, for a moment, a fragment of the old Petersburg--Petersburg as it shall be, please G.o.d, again one day...."

I do not in the least remember who was present that evening, but it was, I believe, a very distinguished company. The lights blazed, the jewels flashed, and the chatter was tremendous. The horseshoe-shaped seats behind the stalls cl.u.s.tered in knots and bunches of colour under the great glitter of electricity about the Royal Box. Artists--Somoff and Benois and Dobujinsky; novelists like Sologub and Merejkowsky; dancers like Karsavina--actors from all over Petrograd--they were there, I expect, to add criticism and argument to the adulation of friends and of the carelessly observant rich Jews and merchants who had come simply to display their jewellery. Petrograd, like every other city in the world, is artistic only by the persistence of its minority.

I'm sure that there were Princesses and Grand Dukes and Grand d.u.c.h.esses for any one who needed them, and it was only in the gallery where the students and their girl-friends were gathered that the name of Lermontov was mentioned. The name of the evening was "Meyerhold," the gentleman responsible for the production. At last the Event that had been brewing ceaselessly for the last ten years--ever since the last Revolution in fact--was to reach creation. The moment of M. Meyerhold's life had arrived--the moment, had we known it, of many other lives also; but we did not know it. We buzzed and we hummed, we gasped and we gaped, we yawned and we applauded; and the rustle of gold tissue, the scent of gold leaf, the thick sticky substance of gold paint, filled the air, flooded the arena, washed past us into the street outside. Meanwhile M.

Meyerhold, white, perspiring, in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves with his collar loosened and his hair damp, is in labour behind the gold tissue to produce the child of his life... and Behold, the Child is produced!

And such a child! It was not I am sure so fantastic an affair in reality as in my rememberance of it. I have, since then, read Lermontov's play, and I must confess that it does not seem, in cold truth, to be one of his finest works. It is long and old-fas.h.i.+oned, melodramatic and clumsy--but then it was not on this occasion Lermontov's play that was the thing. But it was a masquerade, and that in a sense far from the author's intention. As I watched I remember that I forgot the bad acting (the hero was quite atrocious), forgot the lapses of taste in the colour and arrangement of the play, forgot the artifices and elaborate originalities and false sincerities; there were, I have no doubt, many things in it all that were bad and meretricious--I was dreaming. I saw, against my will and outside my own agency, mingled with the gold screens, the purple curtains, the fantasies and extravagances of the costumes, the sudden flashes of unexpected colour through light or dress or backcloth--pictures from those Galician days that had been, until Semyonov's return, as I fancied, forgotten.

A crowd of revellers ran down the stage, and a s.h.i.+mmering cloud of gold shot with red and purple was flung from one end of the hall to the other, and behind it, through it, between it, I saw the chill light of the early morning, and Nikitin and I sitting on the bench outside the stinking but that we had used as an operating theatre, watching the first rays of the sun warm, the cold mountain's rim. I could hear voices, and the murmurs of the sleeping men and the groans of the wounded. The scene closed. There was s.p.a.ce and light, and a gorgeous figure, stiff with the splendour of his robes, talked in a dark garden with his lady. Their voices murmured, a lute was played, some one sang, and through the thread of it all I saw that moment when, packed together on our cart, we hung for an instant on the top of the hill and looked back to a country that had suddenly crackled into flame. There was that terrific crash as of the smas.h.i.+ng of a world of china, the fierce crackle of the machine-guns, and then the boom of the cannon from under our very feet... the garden was filled with revellers, laughing, dancing, singing, the air was filled again with the air of gold paint, the tenor's voice rose higher and higher, the golden screens closed--the act was ended.

It was as though I had received, in some dim, bewildered fas.h.i.+on, a warning. When the lights went up, it was some moments before I realised that the Baron was speaking to me, that a babel of chatter, like a sudden rain storm on a gla.s.s roof, had burst on every side of us, and that a huge Jewess, all bare back and sham pearls, was trying to pa.s.s me on her way to the corridor. The Baron talked away: "Very amusing, don't you think? After Reinhardt, of course, although they say now that Reinhardt got all his ideas from your man Craig. I'm sure I don't know whether that's so.... I hope you're more rea.s.sured to-night, Mr.

Durward. You were full of alarms the other evening. Look around you and you'll see the true Russia...."

"I can't believe this to be the true Russia," I said. "Petrograd is not the true Russia. I don't believe that there _is_ a true Russia."

"Well, there you are," he continued eagerly. "No true Russia! Quite so.

Very observant. But we have to pretend there is, and that's what you foreigners are always forgetting. The Russian is an individualist--give him freedom and he'll lose all sense of his companions. He will pursue his own idea. Myself and my party are here to prevent him from pursuing his own idea, for the good of himself and his country. He may be discontented, he may grumble, but he doesn't realise his luck. Give him his freedom, and in six months you'll see Russia back in the Middle Ages."

"And another six months?" I asked.

"The Stone Age."

"And then?"

"Ah," he said, smiling, "you ask me too much, Mr. Durward. We are speaking of our own generation."

The curtain was up again and I was back in my other world. I cannot tell you anything of the rest of the play--I remember nothing. Only I know that I was actually living over again those awful days in the forest--the heat, the flies, the smells, the gla.s.sy sheen of the trees, the perpetual rumble of the guns, the desolate whine of the sh.e.l.ls--and then Marie's death, Trenchard's sorrow, Trenchard's death, that last view of Semyonov... and I felt that I was being made to remember it all for a purpose, as though my old friend, rich now with his wiser knowledge, was whispering to me, "All life is bound up. You cannot leave anything behind you; the past, the present, the future are one. You had pushed us away from you, but we are with you always for ever. I am your friend for ever, and Marie is your friend, and now, once more, you have to take your part in a battle, and we have come to you to share it with you. Do not be confused by history or public events or cla.s.s struggle or any big names; it is the individual and the soul of the individual alone that matters. I and Marie and Vera and Nina and Markovitch--our love for you, your love for us, our courage, our self-sacrifice, our weakness, our defeat, our progress--these are the things for which life exists; it exists as a training-ground for the immortal soul...."

With a sweep of colour the stage broke into a mist of movement. Masked and hooded figures in purple and gold and blue and red danced madly off into a forest of stinking, sodden leaves and trees as thin as tissue-paper burnt by the sun. "Oh--aye! oh--aye! oh--aye!" came from the wounded, and the dancers answered, "Tra-la-la-la! Tra-la-la-la,'"

The golden screens were drawn forward, the lights were up again, and the whole theatre was stirring like a coloured paper ant heap.

Outside in the foyer I found Lawrence at my elbow.

"Go and see her," he whispered to me, "as soon as possible! Tell her--tell her--no, tell her nothing. But see that she's all right and let me know. See her to-morrow--early!"

I could say nothing to him, for the Baron had joined us.

"Good-night! Good-night! A most delightful evening!... Most amusing!...

No, thank you, I shall walk!"

"Come and see us," said the Baroness, smiling.

"Very soon," I answered. I little knew that I should never see either of them again.

III

I awoke that night with a sudden panic that I must instantly see Vera.

I, even in the way that one does when, one is only half awake, struggled out of bed and felt for my clothes. Then I remembered and climbed back again, but sleep would not return to me. The self-criticism and self-distrust that were always attacking me and paralysing my action sprang upon me now and gripped me. What was I to do? How was I to act? I saw Vera and Nina and Lawrence and, behind them, smiling at me, Semyonov. They were asking for my help, but they were, in some strange, intangible way, most desperately remote. When I read now in our papers shrill criticisms on our officials, our Cabinet, our generals, our propagandists, our merchants, for their failure to deal adequately with Russia, I say: Deal adequately? First you must catch your bird... and no Western snare has ever caught the Russian bird of paradise, and I dare prophesy that no Western snare ever will. Had I not broken my heart in the pursuit, and was I not as far as ever from attainment? The secret of the mystery of life is the isolation that separates every man from his fellow--the secret of dissatisfaction too; and the only purpose in life is to realise that isolation, and to love one's fellow-man because of it, and to show one's own courage, like a flag to which the other travellers may wave their answer; but we Westerners have at least the waiting comfort of our discipline, of our materialism, of our indifference to ideas. The Russian, I believe, lives in a world of loneliness peopled only by ideas. His impulses towards self-confession, towards brotherhood, towards vice, towards cynicism, towards his belief in G.o.d and his scorn of Him, come out of this world; and beyond it he sees his fellow-men as trees walking, and the Mountain of G.o.d as a distant peak, placed there only to emphasise his irony.