"And what about the Germans?" I asked him. "Does it occur to you that when you've collected your spoils the Germans will come in and take them?"
"Ah, you don't understand us, Barin," he said, laughing. "You're a good man and a kind man, but you don't understand us. What can the Germans do? They can't take the whole of Russia. Russia's a big country.... No, if the Germans come there'll be more for us to take."
We stood for a moment under a lamp-post. He put his hand on my arm and looked up at me with his queer ugly face, his sentimental dreary eyes, his red nose, and his hard, cruel little mouth.
"But no one shall touch you--unless it's myself if I'm very drunk. But you, knowing me, will understand afterwards that I was at least not malicious--"
I laughed. "And this mysticism that they tell us about in England. Are you mystical, Rat? Have you a beautiful soul?"
He sniffed and blew his nose with his hand.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Barin--I suppose you haven't a rouble or two on you?"
"No, I haven't," I answered. He looked up and down the bridge as though he were wondering whether an attack on me was worth while. He saw a policeman and decided that it wasn't.
"Well, good-night, Barin," he said cheerfully. He shuffled off. I looked at the vast Neva, pale green and dim grey, so silent under the bridges. The policeman, enormous under his high coat, the sure and confident guardian of that silent world, came slowly towards me, and I turned away home.
The next day, Sunday, I have always called in my mind Nina's day, and so I propose to deal with it here, describing it as far as possible from her point of view and placing her in the centre of the picture.
The great fact about Nina, at the end, when everything has been said, must always be her youth. That Russian youthfulness is something that no Western people can ever know, because no Western people are accustomed, from their very babyhood, to bathe in an atmosphere that deals only with ideas.
In no Russian family is the attempt to prevent children from knowing what life really is maintained for long; the spontaneous impetuosity of the parents breaks it down. Nevertheless the Russian boy and girl, when they come to the awkward age, have not the least idea of what life really is. Dear me, no! They possess simply a bundle of incoherent ideas, untested, ill-digested, but a wonderful basis for incessant conversation. Experience comes, of course, and for the most part it is unhappy experience.