“The truth is that ever since Nina’s birthday-party I had been anxious. I knew really that everything was right. Vera is of course the soul of honour—but something had occurred then which made me. …
“Well, well, that doesn’t matter now. The only point is that I was thinking of Vera a great deal, and wondering how I could make her happy. She wasn’t happy. I don’t know how it was, but during those weeks just before the Revolution we were none of us happy. We were all uneasy as though we expected something were going to happen—and we were all suspicious. …
“I only tell you this because then you will see why it was that the Revolution broke upon me with such surprise. I had been right inside myself, talking to nobody, wanting nobody to talk to me. I get like that sometimes, when words seem to mean so much that it seems dangerous to throw them about. … And perhaps it is. But silence is dangerous too. Everything is dangerous if you are unlucky by nature. …
“I had been indoors all that Monday working at my invention, and thinking about Vera, wondering whether I’d speak to her, then afraid of my temper (I have a bad temper), wanting to know what was the truth, thinking at one moment that if she cared for someone else that I’d go away … and then suddenly angry and jealous, wishing to challenge him, but I am a ludicrous figure to challenge anyone, as I very well know. Semyonov had been to see me that morning, and he had just sat there without saying anything. I couldn’t endure that very long, so I asked him what he came for and he said, ‘Oh, nothing.’ I felt as though he were spying and I became uneasy. Why should he come so often now? And I was beginning to think of him when he wasn’t there. It was as though he thought he had a right over all of us, and that irritated me. … Well, that was Monday. They all came late in the afternoon and told me all the news. They had been at the Astoria. The whole town seemed to be in revolt, so they said.
“But even then I didn’t realise it. I was thinking of Vera just the same. I looked at her all the evening just as Semyonov had looked at me. And didn’t say anything. … I never wanted her so badly before. I made her sleep with me all that night. She hadn’t done that for a long time, and I woke up early in the morning to hear her crying softly to herself. She never used to cry. She was so proud. I put my arms round her, and she stopped crying and lay quite still. It wasn’t fair what I did, but I felt as though Alexei Petrovitch had challenged me to do it. He always hated Vera I knew. I got up very early and went to my wood. You can imagine I wasn’t very happy. …
“Then suddenly I thought I’d go out into the streets, and see what was happening. I couldn’t believe really that there had been any change. So I went out.
“Do you know of recent years I’ve walked out very seldom? What was it? A kind of shyness. I knew when I was in my own house, and I knew whom I was with. Then I was never a man who cared greatly about exercise, and there was no one outside whom I wanted very much to see. So when I went out that morning it was as though I didn’t know Petrograd at all, and had only just arrived there. I went over the Ekateringofsky Bridge, through the Square, and to the left down the Sadovaya.
“Of course the first thing that I noticed was that there were no trams, and that there were multitudes of people walking along and that they were all poor people and all happy. And I was glad when I saw that. Of course I’m a fool, and life can’t be as I want it, but that’s always what I had thought life ought to be—all the streets filled with poor people, all free and happy. And here they were! … with the snow crisp under their feet, and the sun shining, and the air quite still, so that all the talk came up, and up into the sky like a song. But of course they were bewildered as well as happy. They didn’t know where to go, they didn’t know what to do—like birds let out suddenly from their cages. I didn’t know myself. That’s what sudden freedom does—takes your breath away so that you go staggering along, and get caught again if you’re not careful. No trams, no policemen, no carriages filled with proud people cursing you. … Oh, Ivan Andreievitch, I’d be proud myself if I had money, and servants to put on my clothes, and new women every night, and different food every day. … I don’t blame them—but suddenly proud people were gone, and I was crying without knowing it—simply because that great crowd of poor people went pushing along, all talking under the sunny sky as freely as they pleased.
“I began to look about me. I saw that there were papers posted on the walls. They were those proclamations, you know, of Rodziancko’s new government, saying that while everything was unsettled, Milyukoff, Rodziancko, and the others would take charge in order to keep order and discipline. It seemed to me that there was little need to talk about discipline. Had beggars appeared there in the road I believed that the crowd would have stripped off their clothes and given them, rather than that they should want.
“I stood by one proclamation and read it out to the little crowd. They repeated the names to themselves, but they did not seem to care much. ‘The Czar’s wicked they tell me,’ said one man to
