The Secret of the Night
She drew a key from her gown, gave it to the young man and said a few
words in Russian to Ermolai, to enforce upon him that he must obey the
little domovoi-doukh in anything, day or night.
“Now tell me where Natacha has gone.”
“Boris’s parents came to see us a little while ago, to inquire after
the general. They have taken Natacha away with them, as they often have
done. Natacha went with them readily enough. Little domovoi, listen to
me, listen to Matrena Petrovna--Anyone would have said she was expecting
it!”
“Then she has gone to lunch at their house?”
“Doubtless, unless they have gone to a cafe. I don’t know. Boris’s
father likes to have the family lunch at the Barque when it is fine.
Calm yourself, little domovoi. What ails you? Bad news, eh? Any bad
news?”
“No, no; everything is all right. Quick, the address of Boris’s family.”
“The house at the corner of La Place St. Isaac and la rue de la Poste.”
“Good. Thank you. Adieu.”
He started for the Place St. Isaac, and picked up an interpreter at the
Grand Morskaia Hotel on the way. It might be useful to have him. At the
Place St. Isaac he learned the Morazoffs and Natacha Trebassof had
gone by train for luncheon at Bergalowe, one of the nearby stations in
Finland.
“That is all,” said he, and added apart to himself, “And perhaps that is
not true.”
He paid the coachman and the interpreter, and lunched at the Brasserie
de Vienne nearby. He left there a half-hour later, much calmer. He
took his way to the Grand Morskaia Hotel, went inside and asked the
schwitzar:
“Can you give me the address of Mademoiselle Annouchka?”
“The singer of the Krestowsky?”
“That is who I mean.”
“She had luncheon here. She has just gone away with the prince.”
Without any curiosity as to which prince, Rouletabille cursed his luck
and again asked for her address.
“Why, she lives in an apartment just across the way.”
Rouletabille, feeling better, crossed the street, followed by the
interpreter that he had engaged. Across the way he learned on the
landing of the first floor that Mademoiselle Annouchka was away for the
day. He descended, still followed by his interpreter, and recalling
how someone had told him that in Russia it was always profitable to be
generous, he gave five roubles to the interpreter and asked him for some
information about Mademoiselle Annouchka’s life in St. Petersburg. The
interpreter whispered:
“She arrived a week ago, but has not spent a single night in her
apartment over there.”
He pointed to the house they had just left, and added:
“Merely her address for the police.”
“Yes, yes,” said Rouletabille, “I understand. She sings this evening,
doesn’t she?”
“Monsieur, it will be a wonderful debut.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Thanks.”
All these frustrations in the things he had undertaken that day instead
of disheartening him plunged him deep into hard thinking. He returned,
his hands in his pockets, whistling softly, to the Place St. Isaac,
walked around the church, keeping an eye on the house at the corner,
investigated the monument, went inside, examined all its details, came
out marveling, and finally went once again to the residence of the
Mourazoffs, was told that they had not yet returned from the Finland
town, then went and shut himself in his room at the hotel, where he
smoked a dozen pipes of tobacco. He emerged from his cloud of smoke at
dinner-time.
At ten that evening he stepped out of his carriage before the
Krestowsky. The establishment of Krestowsky, which looms among the Isles
much as the Aquarium does, is neither a theater, nor a music-hall, nor a
cafe-concert, nor a restaurant, nor a public garden; it is all of these
and some other things besides. Summer theater, winter theater, open-air
theater, hall for spectacles, scenic mountain, exercise-ground,
diversions of all sorts, garden promenades, cafes, restaurants, private
dining-rooms, everything is combined here that can amuse, charm, lead
to the wildest orgies, or provide those who never think of sleep till
toward three or four o’clock of a morning the means to await the dawn
with patience. The most celebrated companies of the old and the new
world play there amid an enthusiasm that is steadily maintained by the
foresight of the managers: Russian and foreign dancers, and above all
the French chanteuses, the little dolls of the cafes-concerts, so long
as they are young, bright, and elegantly dressed, may meet their fortune
there. If there is no such luck, they are sure at least to find every
evening some old beau, and often some officer, who willingly pays
twenty-five roubles for the sole pleasure of having a demoiselle born
on the banks of the Seine for his companion at the supper-table. After
their turn at the singing, these women display their graces and their
eager smiles in the promenades of the garden or among the tables where
the champagne-drinkers sit. The head-liners, naturally, are not driven
to this wearying perambulation, but can go away to their rest if they
are so inclined. However, the management is appreciative if they accept
the invitation of some dignitary of the army, of administration, or of
finance, who seeks the honor of hearing from the chanteuse, in a private
room and with a company of friends not disposed to melancholy, the
Bohemian songs of the Vieux Derevnia. They sing, they loll, they talk
of Paris, and above all they drink. If sometimes the little fete ends
rather roughly, it is the friendly and affectionate champagne that is to
blame, but usually the orgies remain quite innocent, of a character that
certainly might trouble the temperance societies but need not make M. le
Senateur Berenger feel involved.
A war whose powder fumes reeked still, a revolution whose last defeated
growls had not died away at the period of these events, had not at all
diminished the nightly gayeties of Kretowsky. Many of the young men who
displayed their uniforms that evening and called their “Nichevo” along
the brilliantly lighted paths of the public gardens, or filled the
open-air tables, or drank vodka at the buffets, or admired the figures
of the wandering soubrettes, had come here on the eve of their departure
for the war and had returned with the same child-like, enchanted smile,
the same ideal of futile joy, and kissed their passing comrades as gayly
as ever. Some of them had a sleeve lying limp now, or walked with a
crutch, or even on a wooden leg, but it was, all the same, “Nichevo!”
The crowd this evening was denser than ordinarily, because there was the
chance to hear Annouchka again for the first time since the somber days
of Moscow. The students were ready to give her an ovation, and no one
opposed it, because, after all, if she sang now it was because the
police were willing at last. If the Tsar’s government had granted her
her life, it was not in order to compel her to die of hunger. Each
earned a livelihood as was possible. Annouchka only knew how to sing and
dance, and so she must sing and dance!
When Rouletabille entered the Krestowsky Gardens, Annouchka had
commenced her number, which ended with a tremendous “Roussalka.”
Surrounded by a chorus of male and female dancers in the national
dress and with red boots, striking tambourines with their fingers, then
suddenly taking a rigid pose to let the young woman’s voice, which
was of rather ordinary register, come out, Annouchka had centered the
attention of the immense audience upon herself. All the other parts
of the establishment were deserted, the tables had been removed, and a
panting crowd pressed about the open-air theater. Rouletabille stood up
on his chair at the moment tumultuous “Bravos” sounded from a group of
students. Annouchka bowed toward them, seeming to ignore the rest of
the audience, which had not dared declare itself yet. She sang the old
peasant songs arranged to present-day taste, and interspersed them with
dances. They had an enormous success, because she gave her whole soul
to them and sang with her voice sometimes caressing, sometimes menacing,
and sometimes magnificently desperate, giving much significance to words
which on paper had not aroused the suspicions of the censor. The
taste of the day was obviously still a taste for the revolution, which
retained its influence on the banks of the Neva. What she was doing was
certainly very bold, and apparently she realized how audacious she was,
because, with great adroitness, she would bring out immediately after
some dangerous phrase a patriotic couplet which everybody was anxious to
applaud. She succeeded by such means in appealing to all the divergent
groups of her audience and secured a complete triumph for herself. The
students, the revolutionaries, the radicals and the cadets acclaimed the
singer, glorifying not only her art but also and beyond everything else
the sister of the engineer Volkousky, who had been doomed to perish with
her brother by the bullets of the Semenovsky regiment. The friends of
the Court on their side could not forget that it was she who, in front
of the Kremlin, had struck aside the arm of Constantin Kochkarof,
ordered by the Central Revolutionary Committee to assassinate the Grand
Duke Peter Alexandrovitch as he drove up to the governor’s house in
his sleigh. The bomb burst ten feet away, killing Constantin Kochkarof
himself. It may be that before death came he had time to hear
Annouchka cry to him, “Wretch! You were told to kill the prince, not to
assassinate his children.” As it happened, Peter Alexandrovitch held
on his knees the two little princesses, seven and eight years old. The
Court had wished to recompense her for that heroic act. Annouchka had
spit at the envoy of the Chief of Police who called to speak to her
of money. At the Hermitage in Moscow, where she sang then, some of
her admirers had warned her of possible reprisals on the part of the
revolutionaries. But the revolutionaries gave her assurance at once that
she had nothing to fear. They approved her act and let her know that
they now counted on her to kill the Grand Duke some time when he was
alone; which had made Annouchka laugh. She was an enfant terrible,
whose friends no one knew, who passed for very wise, and whose lines of
intrigue were inscrutable. She enjoyed making her hosts in the private
supper-rooms quake over their meal. One day she had said bluntly to one
of the most powerful tchinovnicks of Moscow: “You, my old friend, you
are president of the Black Hundred. Your fate is sealed. Yesterday you
were condemned to death by the delegates of the Central Committee at
Presnia. Say your prayers.” The man reached for champagne. He never
finished his glass. The dvornicks carried him out stricken with
apoplexy. Since the time she saved the little grand-duchesses the police
had orders to allow her to act and talk as she pleased. She had been
mixed up in the deepest plots against the government. Those who lent
the slightest countenance to such plottings and were not of the police
simply disappeared. Their friends dared not even ask for news of them.
The only thing not in doubt about them was that they were at hard labor
somewhere in the mines of the Ural Mountains. At the moment of
the revolution Annouchka had a brother who was an engineer on the
Kasan-Moscow line. This Volkousky was one of the leaders on the Strike
Committee. The authorities had an eye on him. The revolution started.
He, with the help of his sister, accomplished one of those formidable
acts which will carry their memory as heroes to the farthest posterity.
Their work accomplished, they were taken by Trebassof’s soldiers. Both
were condemned to death. Volkousky was executed first, and the sister
was taking her turn when an officer of the government arrived on
horseback to stop the firing. The Tsar, informed of her intended fate,