The Secret City quotes

… tell me that any aspect of Russia psychological, mystical, practical, or commercial seen through an English medium is either Russia as she really is or Russia as Russians see her, I say to you, without hesitation, that you don’t know of what you are talking.

Of Russia and the Russians I know nothing, but of the effect upon myself and my ideas of life that Russia and the Russians have made during these last three years I know something.

You are perfectly free to say that neither myself nor my ideas of life are of the slightest importance to anyone.

At least, as I have said, I have endeavoured to keep my own history, my own desires, my own temperament out of this, as much as is humanly possible. …

And the facts are true.

He saw Russia glittering with fire and colour, and Russians, large, warm, and simple, willing to be patronised, eagerly confessing their sins, rushing forward to make him happy, entertaining him forever and ever with a free and glorious hospitality.

“I really think I do understand Russia,” he would say modestly. He said it to me when he had been in Russia two days.

Then, in addition to the success of his poems and the general interest that he himself aroused the final ambition of his young heart was realised. The Foreign Office decided to send him to Petrograd to help in the great work of British propaganda.

“Keep them in order!” That tickled his sense of humour. He was to laugh frequently, afterwards, when he thought of it.

He always chewed a joke as a cow chews the cud.

So that he was in no pleasant temper when he met Bohun on the decks of the Jupiter. That journey must have had its humours for any observer who knew the two men.

… winding passages of the France, creeping in and out across boards that shiver and shake, with walls pressing in upon you so thin and rocky that the wind whistles and screams and the paper makes ghostly shadows and signs as though unseen fingers moved it.

There is that smell, too, which a Russian hotel alone, of all the hostelries in the world, can produce, a smell of damp and cabbage soup, of sunflower seeds and cigarette-ends, of drainage and patchouli, of, in some odd way, the sea and fish and wet pavements.

It is a smell that will, until I die, be presented to me by those dark half-hidden passages, warrens of intricate fumbling ways with boards suddenly rising like little mountains in the path; behind the wainscot one hears the scuttling of innumerable rats.

In his mild blue eyes Bohun fancied that he saw all kinds of things—power, wisdom, prophecy—a figure apart and symbolic.

But how easy in Russia it is to see symbols and how often those symbols fail to justify themselves!

Well, I let Bohun have his fancies. “I should know that man anywhere again,” he declared. “It was as though he knew what was going to happen and was ready for it.”

“I like them because they are so essentially Russian,” he said to me, pointing out a red spotted cow and a green giraffe. “No other country could have been responsible for them.”

Poor boy, I had not the heart to tell him that they had been made in Germany.

However, as I have said, in spite of his painted toys and his operas he was, at the end of three weeks, a miserable man. Anybody could see that he was miserable, and Vera Michailovna saw it.

“Oh,” I heard Bohun say, “I’m not really very young, Vera Michailovna. After all, it’s what you’ve done rather than your actual years. …”

“You’re older than you’ll ever be again, Bohun, if that’s any consolation to you,” I said.

We had arrived. The cinema door blazed with light, and around it was gathered a group of soldiers and women and children, peering in at a soldiers’ band, which, placed on benches in a corner of the room, played away for its very life.

Now when he spoke of his wife his whole body changed.

“She married me out of pity,” he told me. “I hated her for that, and I loved her for that, and I hate and love her for it still.”

Here I interrupted him and told him that perhaps it was better that he should not confide in me the inner history of his marriage.

The Peter and Paul Fortress, the towers of the Mohammedan Mosque were thin, immaterial, ghostly, and the whole line of the town was simply a black pencilled shadow against the ice, smoke that might be scattered with one heave of the force of the river.

The Neva was silent, but beneath that silence beat what force and power, what contempt and scorn, what silent purposes?

I saw then, near me, and gazing, like myself, on to the river the tall, broad figure of a peasant, standing, without movement, black against the sky.

I was able, now, to notice the general effect of his arrival.

It was as though a cold wind had suddenly burst through the windows, blown out all the candles upon the tree and plunged the place into darkness.

Those who did not know him felt that, with his entrance, the gaiety was gone. Markovitch’s face was pale, he was looking at Vera who, for an instant, had stood, quite silently, staring at her uncle, then, recovering herself, moved forward.

“We will see,” he would say, smiling at me in the friendliest fashion.

He was the only absolutely happy Russian I have ever known.

He had no passages of despair. He had been in prison, he would be in prison again. He had spasms of the most absolute ferocity.

I remember a friend of mine, James Maradick, once saying to me,

“It’s no use trying to keep out of things. As soon as they want to put you in⁠—you’re in. The moment you’re born, you’re done for.”

It’s just that spectacle of some poor innocent being suddenly caught into some affair, against his will, without his knowledge, but to the most serious alteration of his character and fortunes, that one watches with a delight almost malicious—whether it be The Woman in White, …

But she was my friend, and Marie I had loved. … The difference in that! And how much easier now to help than it had been then, simply because one’s own soul was one’s own and one stood by oneself!

How happy a thing freedom is⁠—and how lonely!

She told me many things that I need not repeat here, but, as she talked, I saw how, far more deeply than I had imagined, Nina had been the heart of the whole of her life.

“Vera,” I said. “Believe me. I’m much older than you, and I know.

Love’s always selfish, always cruel to others, always means trouble, sorrow, and disappointment. But it’s worth it, even when it brings complete disaster. Life isn’t life without it.

”

Lawrence said that he would walk with me down the quay before turning into bed. My host and hostess pressed me to come as often as possible. The Baron’s last words to me were:

“Have no fears, M. Durward. There is much talk in this country, but we are a lazy people.”

The “we” rang strangely in my ears.

“It’s Vera Markovitch. … I’d give my body and soul and spirit for her happiness and safety. … God forgive me, I’d give my country and my honour. … I ache and long for her, so that I’m afraid for my sanity.

I’ve never loved a woman, nor lusted for one, nor touched one in my whole life, Durward⁠—and now⁠ ⁠… and now⁠ ⁠… I’ve gone right in.

I’ve spoken no word to anyone; but I couldn’t stand my own silence. … Durward, you’ve got to help me!”

… act when I would have given my soul to hold aloof, and in this town, whose darkness and light, intrigue and display, words and action, seemed to derive some mysterious force from the very soil, from the very air, the smallest action achieved monstrous proportions.

When you have lived for some years in Russia you do not wonder that its citizens prefer inaction to demonstration⁠—the soil is so much stronger than the men who live upon it.

Nevertheless, for a fortnight I did nothing. Private affairs of an especially tiresome kind filled my days—I saw neither Lawrence nor Vera, and, during that period, I scarcely left my rooms.

Of course nothing occurred. It may be safely said that, in Russian affairs, no crisis occurs, either in the place or at the time, or in the manner in which it is expected.

Time with us here refuses to be caught by the throat.

That is the revenge that it takes on the scorn with which, in Russia, it is always covered.

He was on his best behaviour tonight, and over the points of his high white collar his peaked, ugly, anxious face peered, appealing to the Fates for generosity.

But the Fates despise those who appeal.

I very soon saw that he was on excellent terms with Semyonov, and this could only be, I was sure, because Semyonov had been flattering him. Very soon I learnt the truth.

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 Duchesses for anyone who needed them, and it was only in the gallery where the students and their girlfriends were gathered that the name of Lermontov was mentioned.

Then at the corner of the English shop where the Morskaia joins the Nevski Prospect, I realised that something had occurred.

It was as though the world that I had known so long, and with whom I felt upon such intimate terms, had suddenly screwed round its face and showed me a new grin.

The broad space of the Nevski was swallowed up by a vast crowd, very quiet, very amiable, moving easily, almost slothfully, in a slowly stirring stream.

… She was, poor child, supremely confident, and that not through conceit or vanity, but simply because she was a fatalist and believed that destiny had brought Lawrence to her feet. …

It was the final proof of her youth that she saw the whole universe working to fulfil her desire.

The other proof of her youth was that she began, for the first time, to suffer desperately. The most casual mention of Lawrence’s name would make her heart beat furiously, suffocating her, her throat dry, her cheeks hot, her hands cold.

I heard the same voice call out once more sharply, and a second later I felt rather than heard a whizz like the swift flight of a bee past my ear; I was conscious that a bullet had struck the brick behind me.

That bullet swung me into the Revolution.⁠ ⁠…

He got up, smiling. He put his hand on my shoulder.

“He shall be driven by ghosts,” he answered, and turned off to the stairs.

He looked back for a moment. “The funny thing is, I like you, Durward,” he said.

People say now that it was their apathy, that they were taken by surprise, that they were like animals who did not know where to go, but I tell you, Ivan Andreievitch, that it was not so.

I tell you that it was because just for an hour the soul could come up from its dark waters and breathe the sun and the light and see that all was good.

Oh, why cannot that day return? Why cannot that day return? …”

And they never think of Russia, our revolutionaries. You will have noticed that yourself, Ivan Andreievitch. Nothing so small and trivial as Russia! It must be the whole world or nothing at all. Democracy … Freedom … the Brotherhood of Man!

Oh, the terrible harm that words have done to Russia! Had the Russians of the last fifty years been born without the gift of speech we would be now the greatest people on the earth!

“But I loved Russia from end to end.

He told them on another occasion that “he was pleased with life—although one never knew of course when it might come down upon one—”

Well, it had come down on him now.

A more pitiful object Vera had never seen. He was dressed in a dirty black suit and wore a shabby fur cap, his padded overcoat was torn.

“The Czar has abdicated. … The old world has gone, the old wicked world!

Russia is born again!

”

It was all utterly still, not a sound nor a movement anywhere; only one figure, that of a woman, was coming slowly towards me. I felt, as one always does at the beginning of a Russian spring, a strange sense of expectation.

Spring in Russia is so sudden and so swift that it gives an overwhelming impression of a powerful organising Power behind it.

Suddenly the shutters are pulled back and the sun floods the world! Upon this afternoon one could feel the urgent business of preparation pushing forward, arrogantly, ruthlessly. I don’t think that I had ever before realised the power of the Neva at such close quarters.

Then I had a very shrewd suspicion that there was considerable truth in what Semyonov had said, that I was interfering in what only remotely concerned me. At any rate, that was certainly the view that Grogoff would take, and Nina, perhaps also.

I felt, as I rang the bell of No. 3, that unpleasant pain in the pit of the stomach that tells you that you’re going to make a fool of yourself.

Well, it would not be for the first time.

I felt, as I rang the bell of No. 3, that unpleasant pain in the pit of the stomach that tells you that you’re going to make a fool of yourself.

Well, it would not be for the first time.

“Boris Nicolaievitch, doma?” I asked the cross-looking old woman who opened the door.

… admired the pictures (a beautiful one by Somoff I especially remember—an autumn scene with eighteenth-century figures and colours so soft and deep that the effect was inexpressibly delicate and mysterious), talked and then fell into one of those Russian silences that haunt every Russian party.

I call those silences “Russian,” because I know nothing like them in any other part of the world.

It is as though the souls of the whole company suddenly vanished through the windows, leaving only the bodies and clothes. Everyone sits, eyes half closed, mouths shut, hands motionless, host and hostess, desperately abandoning every attempt at rescue, gaze about them in despair.

I call those silences “Russian,” because I know nothing like them in any other part of the world.

It is as though the souls of the whole company suddenly vanished through the windows, leaving only the bodies and clothes.

Everyone sits, eyes half closed, mouths shut, hands motionless, host and hostess, desperately abandoning every attempt at rescue, gaze about them in despair.

… Well, that link has snapped. I must go. Meanwhile, after I am gone, remember that there is more in life, Ivan Andreievitch, than you will ever understand. Who am I? … Rather ask, what am I?

I am a Desire, a Purpose, a Pursuit⁠—what you like.

If another suffer for that I cannot help it, and if human nature is so weak, so stupid, it is right that it should suffer. But perhaps I am not myself at all, Ivan Andreievitch. Perhaps this is a ghost that you see.

Is it Nicholas that I pursue? Is not Nicholas dead, and is it not my hope of release that I follow? … Don’t be so sure of your ground, Ivan Andreievitch. You know the proverb: ‘

There’s a secret city in every man’s heart. It is at that city’s altars that the true prayers are offered.

’ There has been more than one Revolution in the last two months.”

“Do not think too badly of me, Ivan Andreievitch, afterwards.

I’m a haunted man, you know.

”

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.

I must have received this letter, I think, late on Sunday afternoon, because I was, I remember, up and dressed, and walking about my room. It was written on flimsy grey paper in pencil, which made it difficult to read.

… But oh! I do not want to live with him any more, I am tired of him, his experiments, his lamentations, his weakness, his lack of humour—tired of him, sick of him. And yet I cannot leave him, because

I am soft, soft without bones, like my country, Ivan Andreievitch.

… My lover is strong. Nothing can change his will. He will go, will leave me, until he knows that I am free. Then he will never leave me again.

“Ah! you are incorrigible! You have drunk Dostoevsky until you can see nothing but God and the muzhik!

But I am alive, Ivan Andreievitch, not a heroine in a book! Alive, alive, alive!

Not one of your Lisas or Annas or Natashas.