Markovitch

“ It was the first time that he had mentioned Semyonov.
“He’s coming back,” I said.
“Oh, is he?” snarled Markovitch. “Well, he’d better look out.” Then his voice, his face, even the shape of his body, changed once again. “I’m not a bad man, Ivan Andreievitch. No, I’m not.... You think so of course, and I don’t mind if you do. But I love Vera, and if she loved me I could do great things. I could astonish them all. I hear them say, ‘Ah, that Nicholas Markovitch, he’s no good... with his inventions. What did a fine woman like that marry such a man for?’ I know what they say. ”

“ I found Markovitch, his wife Vera Michailovna, his sister-in-law Nina Michailovna, his wife’s uncle Ivan Petrovitch and a young man Boris Nicolaievitch Grogoff. Markovitch himself was a thin, loose, untidy man with pale yellow hair thinning on top, a ragged, pale beard, a nose with a tendency to redden at any sudden insult or unkind word and an expression perpetually anxious. ”

“ I saw that the point of Markovitch was that he must have some ideal to live up to. If he couldn’t have Vera he’d have Russia, and if he couldn’t have Russia he’d have his inventions. When we first came along a month or two ago he’d lost Russia, he was losing Vera, and he wasn’t very sure about his inventions. A bad time for the old boy, and you were quite right to tell me to look after him. Then came the Revolution, and he thought that everything was saved. Vera and Russia and everything. Wasn’t he wonderful that week? Like a child who has suddenly found Paradise.... ”

“ Your plunges into Russian psychology are as naïve as the girl who pays her ten kopecks to see the Fat Woman at the Fair! Markovitch and I understand one another. We trust one another. He is a simple fellow, but I trust him. ”

“ I do not now remember many of the Markovitch and Semyonov relations. There was a tall thin young man, rather bald, with a short black moustache; he was nervous and self-assertive, and he had a high, shrill voice. He talked incessantly. There were several delightful, middle-aged women, quiet and ready to be pleased with everything—the best Russian type of all perhaps, women who knew life, who were generously tolerant, kind-hearted, with a quiet sense of humour and no nonsense about them. ”

“ Vera, who had been to her always a mother rather than a sister, seemed an infinite age. It was ridiculous that Vera should fall in love—Vera so stately and stern and removed from passion. Those days were over for Vera, and, with her strong sense of duty and the fitness of things, she would realise that. Moreover Nina could not believe that Lawrence cared for Vera. Vera was not the figure to be loved in that way. Vera’s romance had been with Markovitch years and years ago, and now, whenever Nina looked at Markovitch, it made it at once impossible to imagine Vera in any new romantic situation. ”

“ These words came in so strange a note, a tone so different from Markovitch’s ordinary voice, that they were, to Bohun, like a warning blow on the shoulder.
“There’s gratitude—when I’m trying to interest you! How childish, too, not to face the real situation! Do you think you’re going to improve things by pretending that anarchy doesn’t exist? So soon, too, after your beautiful Revolution! ”

“ Bohun exclaimed.
“Yes... I don’t want to be melodramatic, but there’s trouble coming there; and if you’re the friend of them all, you can help—more than you know. Only none of the other business—”
Bohun flushed. “She doesn’t know—she never will. I only want to be a friend of hers, as you put it. Anything else is hopeless, of course. I’m not the kind of fellow she’d ever look at, even if Markovitch wasn’t there. But if I can do anything... I’d be awfully glad. What kind of trouble do you mean?” he asked.
“Probably nothing,” I said; “only she wants a friend. And Markovitch wants one too.” ”

“ She had never loved a man before; but it seemed to her now that she had known all these sensations always, and that she was now, at last, her real self, and that the earlier Vera had been a ghost. And what ghosts were Nina and Markovitch! ”

“ That had always seemed to him before impossible enough, but now, at the very moment when Markovitch was at his queerest, he was also at his most pathetic, looking there in the mist and shadows too untidy and dirty and miserable to be really alarming. Henry then took courage. “That’s all nonsense, Markovitch,” he said. “I suppose by ‘your English friend’ you mean Lawrence. He thinks the world of your wife, of course, as we all do, but he’s not the fellow to be in love. I don’t suppose he’s ever been really in love with a woman in his life. ”

“ He heard the dripping of the tap in the bathroom, the creaking of some door in the wind (the storm had risen again) and all the thousand and one little uncertainties, like the agitated beating of innumerable hearts that penetrate the folds and curtains of the night. As he lay there he thought of what he would do did Markovitch really go off his head. He had a revolver, he knew. He had seen it in his hand. And then what was Semyonov after? ”

“ Semyonov leant over the table and whispered something in Markovitch’s ear. I had seen that Markovitch had already been longing to speak. He jumped up on to his feet, fiercely excited, his eyes flaming.
“It’s nonsense that you are talking, sheer nonsense!” he cried. “Russia’s lost the war, and all we who believed in her have our hearts broken. Russia won’t be mended by a few vapouring idiots who talk and talk without taking action.”
“What do you call me?” screamed Grogoff. ”

“ I said testily. “You may be a kind of Galahad, Lawrence, outside all natural law. I don’t know, but you’ll forgive me if I go for a moment on my own experience—and that experience is, that you can start on as highbrow an elevation as you like, but love doesn’t stand still, and the body’s the body, and to-morrow isn’t yesterday—not by no means. Moreover, Markovitch is a Russian and a peculiar one at that. Finally, remember that I want Vera Michailovna to be happy quite as much as you do!” ”

“ The maternal uncle, kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch, spoke smoothly, softly, and with a tremor in his voice. He began with saying that youth has its rights and its peculiar temptations. Which of us has not been young, and who has not been led astray? To say nothing of ordinary mortals, even great men have not escaped errors and mistakes in their youth. ”

“ In an hour I had filled in the blank exemption form with all particulars relating to Alexander Vasilievitch Markovitch. Tracing the signatures carefully, and inserting a recent date, I managed to produce a document indistinguishable as regards authenticity from the original, and thus was possessed of two sets of documents, one in the name of Krylenko for the benefit 146 of Zorinsky, the other in that of Markovitch for presentation in the streets and possible registration. ”

“ Amazing the things that Russians will gather together and keep, one must suppose, only because they are too lethargic to do away with them. On the walls of the Markovitch dining-room all kinds of pictures were hung—old family photographs yellow and dusty, old calendars, prints of ships at sea, and young men hanging over stiles, and old ladies having tea, photographs of the Kremlin and the Lavra at Kieff, copies of Ivan and his murdered son and Serov’s portrait of Chaliapine as Boris Godounov. Bookcases there were with tattered editions of Pushkin and Lermontov. ”

“ I said. “But you must remember that the Markovitch situation isn’t exactly funny just now—and we’re both in the middle of it. Oh! if only I could find Nina back home and Semyonov away, I believe the strain would lift. But I’m frightened that something’s going to happen. I’ve grown very fond of these people, you know, Bohun—Vera and Nina and Nicholas. Isn’t it odd how one gets to love Russians—more than one’s own people? The more stupid things they do the more you love them—whereas with one’s own people it’s quite the other way. Oh, I do want Vera and Nina and Nicholas to be happy!” ”

“ Semyonov, meanwhile, continued: “What were those words you used to me not so long ago? Something about free Russia, I think—Russia moving like one man to save the world—Russia with an unbroken front.... Too optimistic, weren’t you?”
The padding feet stopped. In a whisper that seemed to Bohun to fill the room with echoing sound Markovitch said:
“You have tempted me for weeks now, Alexei.... I don’t know why you hate me so, nor why you pursue me. Go back to your own place. If I am an unfortunate man, and by my own fault, that should be nothing to you who are more fortunate.” ”

“ Sasha Uskoff sat outside the door and listened. He felt neither fear nor shame nor tedium—only weariness and spiritual vacuity. He felt that it did not matter a kopeck whether he was forgiven or not; he had come here to await his sentence and to offer a frank explanation, only because he was begged to do so by kindly Ivan Markovitch. He was not afraid of the future. It was all the same to him, here in the corridor, in prison, or in Siberia.
"Siberia is only Siberia—the devil take it!"
Life has wearied Sasha, and has become insufferably tedious. ”

“ Rozanov’s party may be said to have been really the turning-point of his life. It was the night that he came out of his shell, grew up, faced the world—and it was the night that he discovered that he cared about Nina.
The vision of her poor little tired face, her “rather dirty white dress,” her “grown-up” hair, her timidity and her loneliness, never left him for a moment. All the time that I thought he was occupied only with the problem of Markovitch and Semyonov, he was much more deeply occupied with Nina. So unnaturally secretive can young men be! ”

“ A man dies more simply than you thought—only resolution... only resolution.”
I know that that evening I found it impossible to remain in my lonely rooms; I went round to the Markovitch flat. I found Vera Michailovna and Bohun preparing to go out; they were alone in the flat. He looked at me apprehensively. I think that I appeared to him at that time a queer, moody, ill-disposed fellow, who was too old to understand the true character of young men’s impetuous souls. It may be that he was right....
“Will you come with us, Ivan Andreievitch?” Vera Michailovna asked me. ”

“ Then suddenly, towards the end of 1916, she changed her mind and announced to the Embassy that she was ready for any one whom they could send her. Henry Bohun was offered, accepted, and prepared for. Ivan Petrovitch was a happy man once more.
I never discovered that Markovitch was much consulted in these affairs. Vera Michailovna “ran” the flat financially, industrially, and spiritually. Markovitch meanwhile was busy with his inventions. I have, as yet, said nothing about Nicolai Leontievitch’s inventions. ”

“ You’ve known Semyonov for years. You can explain. What’s it all about, and what’s he trying to do to Markovitch?”
“I can scarcely think what to tell you,” I said at last. “I don’t really know much about Semyonov, and my guesses will probably strike you as insane.”
“No, they won’t,” said Bohun. “I’ve learnt a bit lately.”
“Semyonov,” I said, “is a deep-dyed sensualist. All his life he’s thought about nothing but gratifying his appetites. That’s simple enough—there are plenty of that type everywhere. ”

“ It will come!” Markovitch urged. “It must come! You didn’t walk, Alexei, as I did last night, through the streets, and see the people and hear their voices and see their faces.... Oh! I believe that at last that good has come to the world, and happiness and peace; and it is Russia who will lead the way.... Thank God! Thank God!” Even as he spoke some instinct in me urged me to try and prevent him. I felt that Semyonov would not forget a word of this, and would make his own use of it in the time to come. I could see the purpose in Semyonov’s eyes. I almost called out to Nicholas, “Look out! ”

“ By the way, Ivan Andreievitch,” his voice suddenly dropped, “you haven’t ever had—by chance—just by chance—any photograph of Marie Ivanovna with you, have you? Just by chance, you know....”
“No,” I said shortly, “I never had one.”
“No—of course—not. I only thought.... But of course you wouldn’t—no—no.... Well, as I was saying, you’d better leave us all to our fate. You can’t prevent things—you can’t indeed.” I looked at him without speaking. He returned my gaze.
“Tell me one thing,” I said, “before I answer you. What are you doing to Markovitch, Alexei Petrovitch?”
“Markovitch!” ”

“ Now they stare at you as though they’d eat you, and I know that Markovitch feels them because he keeps looking up at the beastly thing. Then there’s—But no, I’m not going to talk any more about it. It isn’t any good. One gets thinking of anything these days. One’s nerves are all on edge. And that flat’s too full of people any way.”
“Yes, it is,” I agreed.
We arrived at Rozanov’s house, and went up in a very elegant heavily-gilt lift. Once in the flat we were enveloped in a cloud of men and women, tobacco smoke, and so many pictures that it was like tumbling into an art-dealer’s. ”

“ What I wanted to know was what was happening to Nicholas, to Vera, to Lawrence, and the others. Even whilst I was restlessly wondering what I could do to put myself into touch with them, my old woman entered with a letter which she said had been brought by hand.
The letter was from Markovitch.
I give this odd document here exactly as I received it. I do not attempt to emphasise or explain or comment in any way. I would only add that no Russian is so mad as he seems to any Englishman, and no Englishman so foolish as he seems to any Russian. ”