Читать книгу Peter and Alexis - Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky - Страница 5

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It was the twenty-sixth of June, 1715; a festival in honour of Venus had been arranged for that day in the Summer Garden. Her statue, newly arrived from Rome, was to be placed in the pavilion overlooking the Neva.

“I will have a braver garden than the French King at Versailles,” boasted Peter. When away on campaigns, at sea or in foreign lands, the Tsaritsa used to supply him with news about his favourite nursling: “Our garden has come on beautifully, better than last year. The avenue leading from the palace is almost entirely overshadowed with maple and oak trees. Whenever I go out, I am grieved not to have you, my heart’s joy, with me. Our garden is gradually becoming green, there is already a strong smell of resin in the air,”—she was referring to the scent of the trees just bursting into leaf.

The Summer Garden, in fact, was laid out on the same plan as the renowned park at Versailles, with smoothly shorn trees, flower beds in geometrical figures, straight canals, square lakes, swans, islets, bowers, ingenious water-sprays, endless avenues, prospects, high leafy hedges, and espaliers which resembled the walls of some grand reception hall. Here people were encouraged to walk about, and when tired to seek rest and seclusion, for which a goodly number of benches, pavilions, labyrinths and green lawns were provided.

Yet, nevertheless, the Tsar’s garden was far inferior to the gardens at Versailles.

The pale northern sun drew but puny tulips from the fat Rotterdam bulbs. Only the humbler boreal flowers grew freely, such as, for instance, Peter’s favourite, the scented tansy, double peonies, and melancholy bright dahlias. Young trees, brought here with incredible trouble by sea and by land even a distance of 1,000 miles—from Prussia, Poland, Pomerania, Denmark, and Holland—were also far from flourishing; the foreign soil nourished their roots but scantily. On the other hand, as at Versailles, all along the main alleys marble busts and statues were placed. Roman emperors, Greek philosophers, Olympian gods and goddesses seemed to look at one another in amazement, unable to understand how they got into this wild country of the “Hyperborean Barbarians.” These statues, however, were not the antique originals, but feeble imitations by second-rate Italian and German masters. The gods appeared to have only just taken off their wigs and embroidered coats, the goddesses their lace-trappings and robes; they seemed to wonder at their scarcely decent nakedness, and resembled affected cavaliers and dames who had been taught the delicacies of French politeness at the court of Louis XIV. and the Duke of Orleans.

Alexis was walking along one of the side alleys, which led from the large lake in the direction of the Neva. He was accompanied by a funny, hobbling, bow-legged creature, who wore a shabby foreign-cut coat, a huge wig and a flurried confused expression, like some one suddenly aroused from his sleep. He was the head of the Armoury department and of the new Printing Works, the first master-printer in Petersburg—Michael Avrámoff.

The son of a deacon, at the age of seventeen, Avrámoff had been taken straight from the Breviary and Psalms to a trading vessel at Kronslot; the vessel was bound for Amsterdam with a cargo of tar, skins, leather, and a dozen “Russian youths,” who had been selected by Peter’s command from “sharp youngsters,” for instruction abroad. After some study of geometry and more at classic mythology, Avrámoff had received commendations and a diploma from his teachers. Not stupid by nature, he seemed to have been stunned and baffled by a too sudden transition from the Psalms and Breviary to the Fables of Ovid and Virgil, and never to have recovered. His mind had undergone something like a fit of convulsions to which little children are subject, when suddenly startled from their sleep, and ever since his face had retained that expression of stupefaction.

“Tsarevitch, I confess to you, as before God,” spoke Avrámoff in a monotonous whining tone, like the buzzing of a gnat, “my conscience is uneasy, in that being Christians we yet worship idols.”

“What idols?” asked the Tsarevitch in amazement.

Avrámoff pointed to the marble statues along both sides of the alley.

“Our fathers and forefathers placed holy icons in their houses and along the roads, but we are ashamed to do likewise, and set up shameless idols instead. When God’s images have God’s power in them, the devil’s images in like manner will surely hold the devil’s power. In the Most Foolish Conclave with the Kniaz-Pope we have been serving the drunken god Bacchus; and now, to-day, we are preparing to worship that dissolute and obscene goddess Venus. These ceremonies are termed masquerades and are not accounted to us for sin; for, they say, these gods have never existed, and their lifeless statues are placed in house and garden solely for the sake of ornament. But that is where folk fatally err; because these ancient gods do really and verily exist.”

“You believe in their existence?” Alexis’ surprise increased.

“Your royal Highness, according to the witness of holy men, I believe that the gods are evil spirits, who, being cast out of their temples in the name of the Crucified, sought refuge in dark and desert places, there pretending to be dead and non-existent till their hour should come. But when ancient Christianity grew feeble and a new infamy had sprung up, then these gods began to regain life, and leave their hiding places; just as various worthless creeping things, scarabees and such like poisonous vermin, emerging from their eggs sting people, so the evil spirits emerging from their larvae, these ancient idols, sting and ruin Christian souls. Do you remember Father Isaac’s vision, recorded in the Holy Fathers? How beautiful young men and maidens with faces bright as the sun, catching hold of the saint’s hands, whirled him away in a mad dance to the strains of sweet music, and how when they had tired and dishonoured him they left him almost dead, and disappeared? Then the Holy Father knew that he had been visited by the ancient Greek and Roman gods, Jove, Mercury, Apollo, Venus and Bacchus. Now the evil ones appear unto us sinners to-day, but in disguise, so to speak. And we welcome them, and mingling with them in obscene masquerades, we prance and dance, till in the end, we shall all rush headlong into some deep Tartarus, or, like a herd of swine, into the sea; ignorant fools, not to realize that these beautiful, new, radiant, white devils are far more dangerous than the most churlish and blackest Ethiopian monstrosities!”

It was almost dark in the garden, though it was but the middle of June. Low, black, oppressive storm-clouds crept over the sky. Neither the fireworks nor the festival had as yet been started. The air was as still as in a room. Distant heat lightnings lit up the horizon, and each flash revealed marble statues of almost painfully dazzling whiteness among the green espaliers on both sides of the alley—it seemed as though white phantoms were flitting along the glades.

After all Avrámoff had been telling him the Tsarevitch looked at them with a new feeling. “Really,” he thought, “they are just like white devils.”

Voices became audible. By the sound of one of them, not loud but slightly husky, and also by the red glowing spot, which to all appearance came from the Dutch clay pipe, and disclosed the gigantic stature of the smoker, Alexis recognised his father. He swiftly turned the corner of the alley into a side path leading to a maze of lilac and box shrubs. “Like a hare,” he angrily termed his action, which though almost instinctive was nevertheless cowardice.

“What in the devil, Avrámoff, are you always talking about?” he continued, feigning annoyance in order to cover his shame. “Excess of reading seems to have muddled your brain.”

“I speak the pure truth, your royal Highness,” retorted Avrámoff, not in the least hurt, “I have myself experienced the power of those evil spirits; it was Satan who enticed me when I asked your father, the Tsar, to let me print Ovid and Virgil. I have already issued one book with drawings of the gods and their mad doings, and ever since I seem to have been beside myself, and subject to insatiable lechery. The Lord has forsaken me, and all sorts of strange gods, especially Bacchus and Venus, have begun to haunt my dreams.”

“In what guise?” asked Alexis, his curiosity now aroused.

“Bacchus appeared to me in the shape of Martin Luther the heretic, just as you see him in paintings, a red-faced German with a belly as round as a beer barrel. Then Venus took the form of a girl whom I had known during my stay in Amsterdam: a nude body, white as foam, scarlet lips and impudent eyes. And when I awoke in the bath-house, for this devil’s work happened there, the sly witch had changed to the priest’s serf girl, Akoulína, who reviling me for hindering her having a bath, impudently struck me across the face with a bunch of wet birch twigs, and jumping into a snow drift in the yard—it happened in winter—she melted away in thin air.”

“But this might very possibly have really been Akoulína,” laughed the Tsarevitch.

Avrámoff was going to retort but stopped short. Again voices became audible. Again a blood-red spot glimmered in the darkness. The narrow path of the dark maze had again brought father and son together in a place too narrow to avoid one another. Again the desperate thought flashed across Alexis’ mind to hide himself somewhere, to slip through, or again dart as a hare into the low wood. But it was too late; Peter had already caught sight of him from a distance, and called out:

“Zoon!”

The Dutch “Zoon” signifies son; he called him thus only in rare moments of graciousness. Alexis was all the more surprised, as of late his father had quite given up talking to him either in Dutch or Russian.

He advanced towards his father, took his hat off, made a low bow, and kissed first the lappet of his coat, then the hard horny hand. Peter was attired in a well worn commander’s uniform of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. It was of dark green cloth with red facings and brass buttons.

“Thank you, Aliósha,” said Peter, and Alexis’ heart thrilled at this long unheard “Aliósha.” “Thank you for the present you sent me. It came just in the nick of time. My own supply of oak, which was being floated down on a raft from Kazan, perished in a storm on the Ládoga. But for your present, we should scarcely have finished our new frigate before the autumn; the wood was of the best and strongest, like yours—true iron. It is long since I have seen such exceptionally good oak!”

The Tsarevitch knew that nothing pleased his father more than good timber for ship-building. On his own estate in the Poretzkoye district of the Novgorod government, Alexis had for some time secretly reserved a fine plantation of oak for the day when he should be in special need of his father’s favour. When he learnt that they would soon be wanting oak in the dockyard, Alexis had the timber felled and floated on a raft down the Neva just in time to supply his father. It was one of those timid, awkward services, which he had rendered frequently at one time, but of late more and more rarely. However, he did not deceive himself; he knew it would soon be forgotten, like all his previous services, while increased severity would follow this momentary tenderness.

Nevertheless a bashful joy flushed his face; his heart throbbed with mad hope. He muttered something in a low, halting tone, about “always glad to give my father pleasure,” and stooped again to kiss his hand. But Peter raised his head with both his hands. For one instant Alexis saw the familiar face, so terrible yet so dear to him, with its full round cheeks, the curly moustache, and the charming smile which flitted across the curved, almost femininely tender lips, he saw the large, dark, lucid eyes, which so fascinated him that he used to dream about them, as a love-sick youth would dream about the eyes of a beautiful woman. He recognised the odour familiar from his childhood: a mixture of strong tobacco, brandy, sweat, and something else, not disagreeable, a smell of soldiers’ barracks, which usually filled his father’s working room, “the office.” He felt the touch, familiar also to him from his earliest years, of the hard, slightly bristly chin with the dimple in the centre, which seemed strangely out of place on this formidable face. He remembered, or was it only a dream, kissing this odd dimple, saying with delight: “It is just like Granny’s,” when as a child his father used to take him on his knees.

Peter, kissing his son on the forehead, said in his broken Dutch speech:

“Good beware ú!”

This slightly stiff Dutch “you” in place of “thou” sounded to Alexis charmingly amiable.

He seemed to have felt and seen all this in a flash of lightning. The lightning faded away and all disappeared. Peter had already passed a good way on, his head thrown back as was his wont, slightly twitching his shoulder, waving his right hand in a soldierly manner, walking at his usual rapid pace, which was so quick that those who accompanied him were obliged to keep up by running.

Alexis went in the opposite direction following the same narrow path of the dark maze. Avrámoff kept close behind; he again began talking, but now about the Archimandrite of the Alexander Monastery, the Tsar’s chaplain Theodosius Janovski, whom Peter had appointed “Administrator of Religious Affairs,” and had thus raised above the first prelate, the aged occupant of the Patriarchal throne,—Stephen Javorsky. Theodosius was suspected of leanings towards Lutheranism, of secretly plotting to abolish the worship of icons, relics, the keeping of fasts, monasteries, the Patriarchate and other ancient statutes and customs of the Orthodox Church. Others surmised that Theodosius was dreaming of himself becoming Patriarch.

“This Theodosius is a veritable atheist and a most insolent pagan,” Avrámoff continued. “He has wormed his way into the hard-worked monarch’s holy confidence and enthralled him. He boldly destroys Christian laws and traditions, and introduces an ambitious, luxurious, epicurean, almost swinish way of living. He, this mad heresiarch, tore the crown off the wonder-working Kazan icon of the Virgin; ‘Sexton, a knife!’ he cried, cut the wire, tore off the embossed golden ornament, and put the spoil in his pocket, barefacedly, before the eyes of all; and those who saw it were amazed and bewailed such impudence. Meanwhile he, the unclean vessel, the obscene one, turned away from God, made a compact with Satan, and, mad goat that he is, even wanted to spit and trample on the Life-giving Cross, the Saviour’s image!”

The Tsarevitch gave no heed to Avrámoff’s prattle. He was musing over and trying by arguments to choke this unreasonable, and as it now seemed, childish joy. What was he expecting? What was he hoping for? A reconciliation with his father? Was it possible? Did he himself really wish for one? Had not something taken place, which could never be forgotten or forgiven? He remembered hiding himself in cowardly fear a moment ago; he remembered Dokoukin and his “denunciatory petition against Peter,” and many other far more terrible, unanswerable denunciations. It was not for his own sake merely that he had rebelled against his father. And yet, a few kind words, one smile, had sufficed to melt and soften his heart. He is again willing to fall at his father’s feet, forget and forgive everything and himself implore for pardon, as if he alone were the guilty one. He is ready, for another such caress, another such smile, to surrender his soul to him anew. “Is it possible,” he thought almost terrified, “that I love him so much?” Avrámoff continued talking like a gnat humming in one’s ear. The Tsarevitch caught his last words: “When St. Mitrofane of Voronesh saw Bacchus, Venus and other gods standing on the roof of the Tsar’s palace, he said: ‘I cannot enter the house until the Tsar orders these idols, which mislead the people, to be taken down.’ And the Tsar, honouring the holy man, had them all removed. That’s how it was in the past; but to-day, who dares speak the truth to the Tsar? Not Theodosius the unclean one, who turns icons into idols. Woe unto us! It has come to such a pass that, this very day, at this very hour the Virgin’s holy picture will be replaced by a devilish, mischievous image of Venus! And the monarch your father——”

“Leave me alone, you fool,” the Tsarevitch exclaimed wrathfully. “All of you leave me alone! What are you always at me for? Damnation!” and he used some ribald expressions. “What have I to do with you? I neither know nor desire to know anything. Go and complain to my father: he will see to your rights—”

They were approaching the Skipper’s square near the fountain in the middle alley. A crowd had gathered there. They soon attracted attention and many an ear tried to catch their conversation. Avrámoff had paled, he seemed to have shrunk and grown shorter, and eyed Alexis with a furtive look, the look of a child frightened in his sleep, who at any moment might be taken by a fit of convulsions. Alexis felt sorry for him.

“Don’t fear, Avrámoff!” he said with a kind, bright smile, which recalled not his father’s, but the smile of his grandfather Alexis. “Never fear—I won’t denounce you, I know you love me—and my father. Only don’t talk such a lot of trash again!” And with a sudden shadow over-casting his countenance, he added in a lower tone: “Even if you should be right, what is the good of it; who wants truth nowadays? The lash cannot vie with the axe; nobody will listen to you, nor to me.”

Between the trees flashed the first lights of the illuminations: many-coloured lanterns, firepots, pyramids of tallow candles placed in the windows and between the carved pillars of the open roofed gallery overlooking the Neva.

Everything had been very ingeniously and plentifully decorated. The gallery consisted of three long narrow pavilions, in the centre of which, under a glass dome, specially constructed by the French architect Leblond, a place of honour had been prepared—a marble pedestal for the Venus of Petersburg.