The other man’s laughter was so soft it was almost silent. ‘That makes you either a very dangerous man, or an exceptionally useful one.’
‘I needn’t have told you,’ Virginsky pointed out.
‘And so I should trust you?’
‘Sir, permit me to remind you: you initiated this conversation. You held on to my arm. You forced your manifesto on me. I asked nothing of you, least of all that you should trust me.’
The other man smiled and nodded approvingly. ‘I chose you not just because of your hunger — ’
‘My hunger?’
‘For the flames,’ explained the stranger. ‘I chose you also for your intelligence.’
‘I do not appreciate being chosen.’
‘Of course you don’t. Which is another reason why I chose you!’ The man was delighted at his paradoxical remark.
Virginsky gave an exasperated sigh.
The man seemed to relent. ‘If you were to look for me in a tavern, you would do well to start in Haymarket Square.’
Suddenly, the night seemed to cry out in protest. It was a bestial sound, a baying, looping roar, vibrating with panic and wild fury, a hundred contorted throats stretched in the darkness. For a moment, Virginsky could not explain it, and it frightened him for that reason: it was as if pure irrationality had been given voice. Was this what the great idea released? You started from reason and rationality and ended with this: the sound of animal terror in the night.
It frightened him too because it was so close.
He looked towards the source of the noise. It was coming from the Zoological Gardens, he realised with relief. The animals were jittery at the unnatural brightness that seemed to surround them, and at the whiff of fire in their nostrils.
When he looked back, he saw that his companion had gone. Virginsky thought he detected a lingering smell of something pungent and combustible where the man had been.
Ahead of him he could see the contained flickering of the beacons at the top of the twin rostral towers on the Strelka. The ceremonial lights seemed feeble in comparison to the destructive wildness of the fire he had just come from. A plank walkway led across the ice towards the tip of Vasilevsky Island; in a day or so, it would be replaced with a pontoon bridge.
The walkway was clear. Wherever his companion had gone, he had not crossed the river there.
The boards creaked and dropped dangerously as Virginsky stepped onto them. His heart lurched. He took two steps and the boards sank sharply. His arms windmilled as he struggled to keep his balance.
Virginsky swore under his breath, suddenly unsure that he would make it to the other side. The walkway had felt more solid when he had crossed it earlier that evening. All the comings and goings to and from the fires must have weakened the ice beneath it. In many ways it was the worst possible place to cross the river, now that the river was so close to thawing.
But he did not want to get caught on the Petersburg side.
He took slow, shuffling steps, his arms extended either side of him, a tightrope walker suspended over the icy depths of the Neva. He counted his steps. It was an old habit, from his student days, when he had wandered the streets of the city, often in a semi-starved trance.
By the time he got to the other side, he had counted eight hundred and twelve. His calves were aching with tension, almost locked solid. But as soon as he set foot on the Strelka, and felt the firm kick of the ground beneath him, his legs turned to jelly.
There were scattered groups of drunkards wandering over the Strelka, shouting raucously and passing bottles around. Virginsky hurried quickly on.
He crossed the Bolshaya Neva by the Isaakievsky Bridge and soon found himself in Admiralty Square. The square was filled with looming shapes, monstrous silhouettes stalking the night. It took a moment for Virginsky to understand what he was seeing. These were the temporary constructions of the fair, the balagany — great square booths for street theatre and puppet shows; he could also make out two towering ice mountains, a dormant carousel and a row of swingboats idling in their frame. It had all been thrown up in the days before Easter. The square was almost empty now, just a few drunken revellers staggering bewildered between the closed-up booths. It made an eerie impression on Virginsky’s nerves. The ghosts seemed to be waiting for him to leave so that they could continue their revelry. At one moment he thought he could hear the echoing din of the clashing sounds that would fill the square tomorrow. It was as if something violent and yet vital was about to be unleashed on the city.
He realised it was just the cries of the roaming drunks.
*
Back in his rented room on Gorokhovaya Street, Virginsky lit a tallow candle and set it on the small desk beside his bed. His bottle-green civil-service uniform was hanging on the back of his door. It seemed to look down on him disapprovingly.
Virginsky shook his head at the notion. He was simply projecting his own self-disapproval onto the uniform, turning a set of clothes into a conscience. Wasn’t this how man created God in the first place? If it wasn’t a set of clothes it was an idolatrous object, or some more sophisticated refinement of that — a symbol or a set of stories.
At any rate, the uniform was nothing more than the externalisation of his conscience. Still, it made him uncomfortable. He turned his back on it deliberately.
He wanted tea, but it was too late to disturb Anya, his landlady’s servant.
One day I will have my own samovar, he decided. Then I can drink tea whenever I want.
Virginsky imagined the axe-headed man’s sarcastic smile, as though he had overheard his thoughts and was mocking their pseudo-revolutionary tenor. Samovars for all!
He sat at the desk and took out the handbill. What he read chimed strangely with his own recent sentiments
God the Nihilist
I do not say that God is dead,
Nor deny that God exist.
But this I affirm instead:
God is a Nihilist.
God is man-made, but no less real;
Of man’s fears, does he consist.
Stitched from such stern material,
No wonder God’s a Nihilist.
The only Truth is human reason.
God knows this and does not resist.
Religion is a dog with fleas on,
So says God the Nihilist.
Thus God assents to his own undoing,
And ushers in the realists.
Faith’s a juice for slaves to stew in,
Now all our Gods are Nihilists.
For every nation creates its own God,
And on its God, it does insist.
Which I think you’ll agree is odd,
Knowing God’s a Nihilist.
Human conscience governs all.
The one true Law is humanist.
There was no apple and no fall,
And the only God, a Nihilist.
Virginsky couldn’t resist a smile. It was undoubtedly nonsense, and would not stand up to scrutiny, but still there was a certain originality to the central idea. God a nihilist, indeed! He would have to remember that for Porfiry Petrovich. He dared say it would succeed in provoking the old man.
But really, what was the point of it all? What did the author hope to achieve?
In truth, the poem struck him as quite tame and harmless, even with the added call to arms that was printed beneath in bolder typeface:
Christ the enslaver, Not the saviour. Pull down the icons! Steal the precious stones! Set fire to the crosses! Desecrate the churches! A church is itself a desecration of the one Truth
— Human reason. He would add it to his collection, but he had to confess he was disappointed.
Petersburg burns
Demyan Antonovich Kozodavlev chose to remain at his apartment, watching the orange glow that was visible from his fifth-storey room. But he was a journalist, for God’s sake! Wasn’t it his duty to get out there and report what was happening? For, undeniably, momentously, something was happening.