‘Let us go back ... or no! I have been
in Paris; take me to Petersburg.’
‘Now?’
‘At once.... Only wrap my head in your
veil, or it will go ill with me.’
Alice raised her hand ... but before the mist enfolded
me, I had time to feel on my lips the contact of that
soft, dull sting....
‘Li-i-isten!’ sounded in my ears a long
drawn out cry. ‘Li-i-isten!’ was
echoed back with a sort of desperation in the distance.
‘Li-i-isten!’ died away somewhere far,
far away. I started. A tall golden spire
flashed on my eyes; I recognised the fortress of St.
Peter and St. Paul.
A northern, pale night! But was it night at all?
Was it not rather a pallid, sickly daylight?
I never liked Petersburg nights; but this time the
night seemed even fearful to me; the face of Alice
had vanished completely, melted away like the mist
of morning in the July sun, and I saw her whole body
clearly, as it hung, heavy and solitary on a level
with the Alexander column. So here was Petersburg!
Yes, it was Petersburg, no doubt. The wide empty
grey streets; the greyish-white, and yellowish-grey
and greyish-lilac houses, covered with stucco, which
was peeling off, with their sunken windows, gaudy
sign-boards, iron canopies over steps, and wretched
little green-grocer’s shops; the facades, inscriptions,
sentry-boxes, troughs; the golden cap of St. Isaac’s;
the senseless motley Bourse; the granite walls of
the fortress, and the broken wooden pavement; the barges
loaded with hay and timber; the smell of dust, cabbage,
matting, and hemp; the stony-faced dvorniks in sheepskin
coats, with high collars; the cab-drivers, huddled
up dead asleep on their decrepit cabs—yes,
this was Petersburg, our northern Palmyra. Everything
was visible; everything was clear—cruelly
clear and distinct—and everything was mournfully
sleeping, standing out in strange huddled masses in
the dull clear air. The flush of sunset—a
hectic flush—had not yet gone, and would
not be gone till morning from the white starless sky;
it was reflected on the silken surface of the Neva,
while faintly gurgling and faintly moving, the cold
blue waves hurried on....
‘Let us fly away,’ Alice implored.
And without waiting for my reply, she bore me away
across the Neva, over the palace square to Liteiny
Street. Steps and voices were audible beneath
us; a group of young men, with worn faces, came along
the street talking about dancing-classes. ‘Sub-lieutenant
Stolpakov’s seventh!’ shouted suddenly
a soldier, standing half-asleep on guard at a pyramid
of rusty bullets; and a little farther on, at an open
window in a tall house, I saw a girl in a creased
silk dress, without cuffs, with a pearl net on her
hair, and a cigarette in her mouth. She was reading
a book with reverent attention; it was a volume of
the works of one of our modern Juvenals.
‘Let us fly away!’ I said to Alice.
