to come on in or stay where he was.
'Oh, how annoying!' he said. 'I should have come yesterday . . . Oh, what a pity!'
Mavra was watching him sympathetically as she took in the young man's face with its familiar Rostov features, his tattered greatcoat and worn-out boots. 'What was it you was wanting to see the count for?' she asked.
'Oh dear . . . Now what shall I do?' the officer muttered in annoyance, reaching for the gate as if he intended to go away. Then he stopped again, still hesitating.
'You see,' he went on suddenly, 'I'm related to the count, and he's always been so good to me. You see how I am . . .' (He looked down with a wry smile at his coat and boots.) 'I'm in rags. I haven't a penny to my name . . . I was just going to ask the count . . .'
Mavra cut him short.
'If I could ask you to wait just a minute, sir. Only a minute,' she said. And the moment his fingers dropped from the latch she was off, tripping round to her lodge in the back court on her nippy old lady's legs.
As she trotted off on her errand, the officer walked round the courtyard, looking down at his tattered boots with a thin smile on his face.
'What a pity I have missed Uncle Ilya! What a nice old lady! I wonder where she's gone. And how can I find out the shortest way back to my regiment? By now they'll be at the Rogozhsky gate . . .' All these thoughts went through the young officer's mind while she was away. Then Mavra came back round the corner looking scared but very determined; she was carrying something wrapped up in a check handkerchief. A few steps away from him she undid the handkerchief, took out a white twenty-five rouble note, and thrust it into the officer's hand.
'If his Excellency had been at home . . . I know he would have . . . well, er, blood's thicker than water . . . but with things as they are . . . you might be able to, er . . .' Mavra was squirming with shyness and embarrassment. The officer did not refuse; neither did he hurry to take the note. He thanked her. 'If only the count had been here,' murmured Mavra apologetically. 'Christ be with you, sir. God keep you,' she said, bowing to him and showing him the way out. The officer, smiling and shaking his head in what looked like self-mockery, jogged away down the empty streets to catch up with his regiment at the Yauza bridge.
Mavra's eyes were moist as she stood there outside the closed gate for some time, shaking her head pensively and feeling a great flood of maternal affection and sympathy for the unknown boy officer.
CHAPTER 23
From a half-built house in Varvarka, where the ground floor served as a drinking-shop, came the sounds of drunken revelry and singing. A dozen factory workers were sitting on benches at tables in a dirty little room. Woozy with drink, sweating and bleary-eyed, they were belting out some kind of a song through gaping mouths. They were putting everything into it, singing their hearts out, completely out of tune, not because they really wanted to sing, but just to let the world know they were out on the town and getting gloriously drunk.
One of them, a tall, fair-haired young man in a clean blue coat was up on his feet, standing over them. He might have been handsome, with his fine, straight nose, but for his tight thin lips that never stopped twitching and a pair of lacklustre, staring, scowling eyes. He was standing over the singers, obviously transported as he solemnly and jerkily beat time over their heads with a bare, white arm and awkward fingers stuck out at all angles. His coat sleeve kept slipping down, and the young boy kept rolling it up again with his left hand, scrupulously, as if there was something special about that sinewy white arm, and it had to be kept bare for waving at them. In the midst of all the singing the outer passage and the porch erupted in sounds of fighting and shouting. The tall young man gave one final flourish.
'That's it!' he shouted magisterially. 'A fight, boys!' And he went out to the porch still rolling his sleeve up.
The workmen followed. They had brought the tavern keeper some skins from the factory that morning, he had treated them to wine, and they had stayed there drinking under the leadership of the tall young man. Some blacksmiths working not far away had heard the sounds of revelry coming from the drinking-house, and jumped to the conclusion that it had been broken into. They wanted to smash their way in as well. There was fighting in the porch.
The tavern keeper was scrapping with a blacksmith in the doorway, and the factory workers came out just in time to see the smith reel away from the tavern keeper and fall flat on his face on the pavement.
Another blacksmith was shoving the tavern keeper with his chest as he struggled to get through the door.
The young man with the rolled-up sleeve came at this intruder, hit him in the face and roared to his men, 'Come on! Our boys are getting beaten up!'
By now the first blacksmith, back on his feet, was scratching blood from his battered face, and wailing.
'Police! Murder! They're killing people! Over here, boys!'
'Holy saints! He's been beaten to death! There's a man here dead!' screamed a woman coming out of the gate next door. A crowd soon gathered round the bleeding blacksmith.
'Not satisfied with ruining people and fleecing everybody?' someone asked the tavern keeper. 'Now you've done it. You've gone and killed him, you swine!'
The tall young man, now standing by the porch, looked blearily from tavern keeper to blacksmiths and back, spoiling for a fight but not knowing which way to turn.
'You murderer!' he roared suddenly at the tavern keeper. 'Tie him up, boys!'
'Come on then. I'd like to see you try!' roared the tavern keeper, tearing himself away from his attackers. He snatched off his cap and hurled it down on the ground. It was as if this action carried some deep and ominous meaning: the factory workers crowding in on him stood where they were, unsure of themselves.
'You listen to me, mate. I knows the rules. I'm going to the police. You think I won't find them? Nobody gets away with robbery, not nowadays they don't!' bawled the tavern keeper, picking up his cap.
'We'll go too, damn you!'
'Come on then, damn you!'
The tavern keeper and the tall young man were gabbling the same things one after another, and they both moved off down the street. The bloody-faced blacksmith was keeping pace with them. The workmen and a mob of bystanders came on behind with much chattering and shouting.
Standing on the corner of Maroseyka, opposite a big house with closed shutters and a cobbler's signboard, were a couple of dozen miserable-looking boot-makers, a skinny, weary lot dressed in loose smocks and torn coats.
'Owes us our money, 'e does!' a thin workman with a straggly beard and severe scowl was saying. 'Sucks the blood out of us, and then he's off. Strung us along he has, all this week, and now look - 'e's gone.'
He stopped when he saw the mob and the bloody-faced blacksmith. The boot-makers watched them with interest, only too eager to join in with the moving crowd.
'Where's everybody going then?'
'I'll tell you where. They're going to the police.'
'Is it true our lot's had it?'
'Well, what do you think? Listen to what folks is saying!'
The air was thick with questions and answers. As the rabble grew the tavern keeper saw his chance, dropped away and went back to his house.
The tall young man never noticed his foe slipping from him; his bare arm was working away as he gabbled on, attracting everybody's attention. The mob were homing in on him in particular, somehow assuming he might have the answers to the questions that worried them.
' "What we wants is law and order!" he says. "That's what the government's for!" Isn't that right, good Christian folk?' said the tall young man, with the ghost of a smile on his face.
'Does he think there's no government? How could we get by without a government? We'd all get robbed, wouldn't we?'
'We've been listening to rubbish!' went the word through the crowd. 'They're not going to let Moscow go just like that! They been spoofing, and you've swallowed it. Plenty of troops, aren't there? They're not going to let him in. That's the government for you. You listen to what folks is saying!' they said, pointing to the tall fellow.
By the China-town wall another knot of people was gathering round a man in a rough coat holding a piece of paper.
'It's a decree. They're reading a decree!' came voices from the crowd, and the mob surged round the reader.
The man in the coat was reading the poster for the 31st of August. As the mob crowded round he seemed disconcerted but, under pressure from the tall young man, who had shoved his way through, he started to read the notice. There was a tremor in his voice.
'First thing tomorrow I shall go and see his Serene Highness, the prince,' he read ('Serineinous!' parroted the tall young man, with a triumphant smile and a deep frown), 'to hold talks, go into action and give every assistance to the troops in exterminating the enemy swine. Root and branch we too shall . . .' the reader went on, and then paused for a moment ('Hear that?' roared the tall young man triumphantly. 'He's got the measure of them!'), 'we too shall destroy them and send these visitors to hell. I'll be back by dinnertime, and we shall kick them, stick them and lick them, the enemy swine.'
These last words were delivered to a background of complete silence. The tall man's head dropped in dismay. It was obvious that nobody had taken these last words in. It was the phrase 'I'll be back by dinnertime tomorrow' that seemed to affect everybody, reader and audience alike. The sensitivities of the crowd were strained to breaking point and this was too ordinary, too down-to-earth, not what they wanted. Any one of them could have said it, and therefore it was something that should never have been said by higher authority.
They stood there, all of them, silent and crestfallen. The tall man's lips were moving, and he was swaying.
'Look! He's the one to ask! . . . It's him, isn't it? . . . Ask him! Go on . . . He'll tell us . . .' came sudden voices from the back of the crowd, and the general attention switched to a little carriage that had just driven into the square with an escort of two mounted dragoons. It was the police-chief.
The police-chief, who had received orders that morning from Count Rostopchin (along with a large sum of money that was still in his pocket) to go out and set fire to the wooden barges on the river, ordered his driver to stop when he saw a crowd bearing down on him.
'Who are these people?' he shouted, watching them sidle forward diffidently in ones and twos. 'Who are all these people? I'm asking you,' repeated the police-chief when he got no reply.
'Your Honour,' said the man in the rough coat, 'after his Excellency's proclamation, sir, they wanted to be of service, risking life and limb, not making any trouble, sir, as his Excellency said . . .'
'The count has not gone. He is still here, and he will soon be making arrangements for you,' said the police-chief. 'Get going!' he said to the driver. The crowd stood still, clustering round those who had heard the words of authority, and watching the little carriage as it drove away.
Meanwhile the police-chief looked round in alarm and said something to his driver. The horses put on speed.
'They've done us! Take us to the count!' roared the voice of the tall man. 'Don't let him go, boys! What's he got to say for himself? Hold him!' roared various voices, and the crowd rushed off after the carriage.
The mob pursued the police-chief all the way to Lubyanka, a noisy rabble.
'Oh yes, the nobs and the tradesmen have all gone, and we're left here to go under. Treat us like dogs, don't they?' went the ever-growing murmur through the crowd.
CHAPTER 24
On the evening of the 1st of September Count Rostopchin had come away from his meeting with Kutuzov feeling humiliated and offended that he had not been invited to the council of war, and that Kutuzov had completely ignored his offer to play a role in the defence of the city, and also amazed at the new way of thinking he had picked up at the camp whereby the tranquillity of the capital and its patriotic fervour were being treated as secondary considerations, if not altogether irrelevant and trivial. Thus humiliated, offended and amazed, Count Rostopchin had returned to Moscow. After supper he lay down on a sofa without getting undressed, and just before two in the morning he was woken up by a courier with a letter from Kutuzov. The letter said that since the troops were retreating to the Ryazan road on the other side of Moscow would the count kindly send some police officials to escort the troops through the town? There was nothing new in this. He had known Moscow was going to be surrendered not just since yesterday's meeting with Kutuzov on the Poklonny hill, but ever since the battle of Borodino, and the time when all the generals arriving back in Moscow had declared unanimously that another battle was impossible, and he himself had approved the evacuation of government property by night, and half the inhabitants had dribbled away. Nevertheless this communication, in the form of a simple note containing instructions from Kutuzov, received at night when he had just got to sleep, took the governor by surprise and annoyed him.
In days to come Count Rostopchin would explain his actions during this period by writing more than once in his memoirs that his main aim at the time was twofold: to maintain the peace in Moscow and to get the citizens out. If this double purpose is admitted, everything Rostopchin did seems beyond reproach. You ask why the holy relics, arms, ammunition, gunpowder and grain supplies were not taken away; why thousands of citizens were cheated into believing that Moscow was not going to be abandoned - and thus ruined? 'To keep the peace in Moscow,' comes the explanation from Count Rostopchin. Why were piles of useless papers from government offices, Leppich's balloon and things like that evacuated? 'To leave the town empty,' comes the explanation from Count Rostopchin. The mere mention of a threat to public order is enough to justify any action.
All the horrors of the Reign of Terror in France were based on nothing more than a need to keep the peace.
What foundation was there for Count Rostopchin's dread of popular disturbance in Moscow in 1812? Was there any reason for presupposing a tendency towards revolution in the city? The inhabitants were leaving; Moscow was filling up with retreating troops. Why would the people be likely to rebel in these circumstances?
As the enemy approached nothing resembling a rebellion took place anywhere, neither in Moscow nor anywhere else in Russia. On the 1st and 2nd of September more than ten thousand people were left behind in Moscow, and apart from a crowd that gathered in the commander-in-chief's courtyard, at his instigation, nothing happened. It is clear there would have been even less reason to expect popular disturbances if after the battle of Borodino, when the surrender of Moscow had become a certainty, or at least a strong probability, Rostopchin had taken steps for the evacuation of all the holy relics, gunpowder, ammunition and money, and told the people to their faces that the town was being abandoned, instead of working them into a frenzy by putting up posters and issuing weapons.
Rostopchin, a hot-headed and impulsive man, had always moved in the highest spheres of the administration, and although he was a patriot at heart he didn't have the slightest knowledge of the people he thought he was governing. From the moment the enemy first entered Smolensk Rostopchin had formed a mental picture of himself as the leader of popular feeling - the very heart of Russia. Not only did he imagine (as do all administrators) that he was directing the actual behaviour of all Muscovites, he really believed he was shaping their mental attitude by means of his appeals and posters, which were written in the kind of vulgar slang that is despised by the people in everyday situations and incomprehensible when it comes at them from on high. This rather grand role as the leader of popular feeling was so agreeable that Rostopchin simply grew into it, and was therefore caught unawares by the sudden need to drop the role and surrender Moscow without any heroic posturing. The ground was cut from under him, and he had no idea what to do. He could see it coming, but he refused to believe in the surrender of Moscow until the very last minute, and he made no preparations. The inhabitants who were leaving were going against his wishes. If government offices were being evacuated it was only at the insistence of the officials and with Rostopchin's reluctant approval. He was himself entirely absorbed in his self-appointed role. As often happens with over-imaginative people, he had known for ages that Moscow was going be surrendered, but his knowledge was of the intellectual kind; deep down he refused to believe it, and couldn't make the mental adjustment to a new situation.
All his efforts and energy (whether or not these were successful or had any effect on the people is another question) had gone into inspiring the people with his own feelings - a hatred of the French and self-confidence.
But when the catastrophe began to assume its truly historic proportions; when it was no longer enough to express hatred of the French in words alone; when it became impossible to express that hatred even by fighting; when self-confidence became irrelevant to the one issue facing Moscow; when the population rose as one man, abandoned their property, and streamed out of Moscow in a negative demonstration of their positive patriotic feeling - then the part picked out for himself by Rostopchin suddenly lost its meaning. All at once he felt forsaken, feeble and foolish, with no ground to stand on.
When they woke him up to read Kutuzov's curt missive with its peremptory tone, Rostopchin felt annoyed largely because he knew it was all his fault. Moscow was still full of things entrusted to him, government property that should have been removed. There was no chance now of getting it all away. 'Who's responsible for this? Who has let all this come about?' he wondered. 'Not me, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow, like this, in the palm of my hand! Now look what's happened! Villains, traitors!' he thought, without defining too precisely who these villains and traitors were, but feeling a deep need to hate some treacherous people who must be to blame for the false and ludicrous position he now found himself in.
Rostopchin spent the whole night issuing instructions, and he had men coming in from all over Moscow. Those close to him had never seen the count so depressed and touchy.
'Your Excellency, there's someone here from the Provincial Registrar's Department - the director is waiting for instructions . . . From the Consistory . . . the Senate . . . the Universit