“Well, now, we seem to be out of it,” said Bohun, with a sigh of relief. “I must say I’m not sorry. I don’t mind France, where you can tell which is the front and which the back, but this kind of thing does get on one’s nerves. I daresay it’s only local. We shall find them all as easy as anything at the Astoria, and wondering what we’re making a fuss about.”
At that moment we were joined by an English merchant whom we both knew, a stout elderly man who had lived all his life in Russia. I was surprised to find him in a state of extreme terror. I had always known him as a calm, conceited, stupid fellow, with a great liking for Russian ladies. This pastime he was able as a bachelor to enjoy to the full. Now, however, instead of the ruddy, coarse, self-confident merchant there was a pallid, trembling jellyfish.
“I say, you fellows,” he asked, catching my arm. “Where are you off to?”
“We’re off to the Astoria,” I answered.
“Let me come with you. I’m not frightened, not at all—all the same I don’t want to be left alone. I was in the 1905 affair. That was enough for me. Where are they firing—do you know?”
“All over the place,” said Bohun, enjoying himself. “They’ll be down here in a minute.”
“Good God! Do you really think so? It’s terrible—these fellows—once they get loose they stick at nothing. … I remember in 1905. … Good heavens! Where had we better go? It’s very exposed here, isn’t it?”
“It’s very exposed everywhere,” said Bohun. “I doubt whether any of us are alive in the morning.”
“Good heavens! You don’t say so! Why should they interfere with us?”
“Oh, rich, you know, and that kind of thing. And then we’re Englishmen. They’ll clear out all the English.”
“Oh, I’m not really English. My mother was Russian. I could show them my papers. …”
Bohun laughed. “I’m only kidding you, Watchett,” he said. “We’re safe enough. Look, there’s not a soul about!” We were at the corner of the Moika now; all was absolutely quiet. Two women and a man were standing on the bridge talking together. A few stars clustered above the bend of the Canal seemed to shift and waver ever so slightly through a gathering mist, like the smoke of blowing candles.
“It seems all right,” said the merchant, sniffing the air suspiciously as though he expected to smell blood. We turned towards the Morskaia. One of the women detached herself from the group and came to us.
“Don’t go down the Morskaia,” she said, whispering, as though some hostile figure were leaning over her shoulder. “They’re firing round the Telephone Exchange.” Even as she spoke I heard the sharp clatter of the machine-gun break out again, but now very close, and with an intimate note as though it were the same gun that I had heard before, which had been tracking me down round the town.
“Do you hear that?” said the merchant.
“Come on,” said Bohun. “We’ll go down the Moika. That seems safe enough!”
How strangely in the flick of a bullet the town had changed! Yesterday every street had been friendly, obvious, and open; they were now no longer streets, but secret blind avenues with strange trees, fantastic doors, shuttered windows, a grinning moon, malicious stars, and snow that lay there simply to prevent every sound. It was a town truly beleaguered as towns are in dreams. The uncanny awe with which I moved across the bridge was increased when the man with the women turned towards me, and I saw that he was—or seemed to be—that same grave bearded peasant whom I had seen by the river, whom Henry had seen in the Cathedral, who remained with one, as passing strangers sometimes do, like a symbol or a message or a threat.
He stood, with the Nevski behind him, calm and grave, and even it seemed a little amused, watching me as I crossed. I said to Bohun, “Did you ever see that fellow before?”
Bohun turned and looked.
“No,” he said.
“Don’t you remember? The man that first day in the Kazan?”
“They’re all alike,” Bohun said. “One can’t tell. …”
“Oh, come on,” said the merchant. “Let’s get to the Astoria.”
We started down the Moika, past that faded picture-shop where there are always large moth-eaten canvases of cornfields under the moon and Russian weddings and Italian lakes. We had got very nearly to the little street with the wooden hoardings when the merchant gripped my arm.
“What’s that?” he gulped. The silence now was intense. We could not hear the machine-gun nor any shouting. The world was like a picture smoking under a moon now red and hard. Against the wall of the street two women were huddled, one on her knees, her head pressed against the thighs of the other, who stood stretched as though crucified, her arms out, staring on to the Canal. Beside a little kiosk, on the space exactly in front of the side street, lay a man on his face. His bowler-hat had rolled towards the kiosk; his arms were stretched out so that he looked oddly like the shadow of the woman against the wall.
Instead of one hand there was a pool of blood. The other hand with all the fingers stretched was yellow against the snow.
As we came up a bullet from the Morskaia struck the kiosk.
The woman, not moving from the wall, said, “They’ve shot my husband … he did nothing.”
The other woman, on her knees, only cried without ceasing.
The merchant said, “I’m going back—to the Europe,” and he turned and ran.
“What’s down that street?” I said to the woman, as though I expected her to say “Hobgoblins.” Bohun said, “This is rather beastly. … We ought to move that fellow out of that. He may be alive still.”
And how silly such a sentence when only yesterday, just here, there was the beggar who sold
