Читать книгу The Green Book; Or, Freedom Under the Snow - Mór Jókai - Страница 5

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It is the last day of "Butter-week." Despite the excessive cold, the streets of St. Petersburg are thronged with a tumultuous crowd. To-day meat may still be eaten, to-morrow the great fast begins; every butcher's shop will be shut; for seven whole weeks oil is in the ascendant. Every one is in haste to make a good meal to-day.

The great Haymarket, the "Szenaja Plostadt," is the attraction to the hungry throng. There, in long rows before the butchers' booths, stand on their four feet frozen oxen, bucks, and wild boars, with heads outstretched, the butcher either sawing or chopping off the desired joint for his customers; his knife would make no impression upon the hard-frozen meat. Quantities of small game—hares, partridges, pheasants, and black-cock—from other countries, preserved by the icy atmosphere, hang in festoons from the booths. The venders of bear's flesh have their separate quarter; the centre of the square is taken up by the fish shops, where great heaps of bemaned sea-lions are offered as delicacies. Purchasers in tens of thousands pass before the booths, some on foot, others in sleighs with bells jingling, the greater part of them women, while the sellers are all men. No women hawkers are to be found here. Even the special delicacy of Butter-week, the "blinnis," are made by men bakers; these are omelets soaked in butter and spread with caviare. Then there are the Raznocsiks, tall young fellows, their fur coats fastened with a girdle round their waists, who, with baskets on their heads piled high with every kind of eatable, go in and out of the crowd with untiring cry, "Come, buy pirogo! saikis! kwast!" The venders of tea are keeping it boiling hot in their great samovars; the doors of the spirit-booths are forever on the swing. Pirog especially disposes to a good drink. It is a flat cake, composed of chopped fish, meat, and coarse vegetables—a choice morsel—and this is the last day on which it may be enjoyed; to-morrow it may not even be thought of. All St. Petersburg is in the streets. It is a lovely day in March; not a day of spring and violets, but of frost and icicles. The north wind of yesterday has sent down the thermometer fourteen degrees. Splendid weather!

At midday, just as the great clock of Isaac Church begins to strike, a fresh hubbub arises among the noisy throng. Down the long, straight street, called Czarskoje Zelo Prospect, a party of huntsmen were seen coming along in full pursuit of a magnificent twelve-antlered stag. A stag-hunt at that season of the year is forbidden by the common laws of hunting. The new antlers are not yet grown; they are but knots grown over with tender hide. No less is it permitted to follow a hunt through the streets of a city, more especially of St. Petersburg during Maflicza week. But this distinguished party does not seem bound by ordinary laws.

The hunting-party consists of some twelve men and three of the opposite sex, not counting about fifty huntsmen and packs of hounds. They send the people flying the whole length of the street before them.

It may have been that the start had been in Czarskoje Zelo Deer Park, that the stag had broken away and had taken his course towards the town, the huntsmen after him. A huntsman's zeal does not stop to inquire which way is permitted or which prohibited.

The stag dashes across Fontankabridge. In vain the toll-keepers put up the barrier, it clears it at a bound. Then, seeing the hunting-party in pursuit, the terrified toll-keepers prepare to reopen the passage. "Leave it alone!" shouts the foremost, and the company, following the example of the stag, clears it. Mr. Stag has meanwhile reached one of the principal streets, the hounds on his track; the gaping country bumpkins at the street corners rush back in panic as the huntsmen dash past them.

At the entrance to the barracks of the Imperial Cadet Corps stands a grenadier on guard. If he has any sense he will shoot down the approaching stag, that it may not injure the crowd in its mad career. But military etiquette goes before common-sense. The soldier on guard, recognizing his superior in command, lowers his gun and presents arms. The rebellious stag meanwhile, knowing no such etiquette, springs upon the guard, and, catching him on its antlers, tosses him into the air. The guard on reaching the ground again will probably present arms once more from that lowly position. The stag, by this time, has reached a cross street. This is one of the most frequented promenades in the imperial city. The loungers rush away in all directions, women screaming, men swearing, dogs barking—one runs against and upsets the other—sledges overturn upon fallen foot-passengers. The stag and hunting-party spring over outstretched bodies and overturned sledges alike. It is capital sport—no one can take any hurt, the snow lies too thick. Now the stag, reaching the Haymarket, seems somewhat bewildered. For one second it stands affrighted, the dense throng blocking up the great square. The next something attracts its attention. It is the row of stags, which it takes for a herd, standing up before the game-dealers' booths. Now the instinct of all hunted animals is to seek refuge in a herd if they come upon one. So away into the thick of the throng! Now the roar, the screams, and curses become a very pandemonium. Booths and butchers' stalls overturned bear witness to the creature's wild career; but no sooner has it reached its lifeless fellows and, with quick instinct, scented blood, than, maddened with fury and with antlers lowered, it forces itself a passage back into the Garten Strasse, and tears off panting and snorting towards the Costinoi Dwor. This is one of the curiosities of St. Petersburg—the great bazaar.

The Costinoi Dwor is a distinct quarter in itself, where everything of most costly nature, from Persian carpets to diamond necklaces, is to be bought. Here the stag evidently thinks to find shelter. All the doors stand open. From among the thousand shops he must needs select that of a Venetian glass-dealer, huntsmen and hounds in hot pursuit. In the vast apartment, supported by pillars, are massed crystal ornaments, amounting in value to hundreds of thousands of rubles, artistically piled into pyramids of fairy-like elegance, the walls hung with Venetian mirrors reaching from floor to ceiling. The unhappy Italian proclaims himself bankrupt as he sees the stag make for his shop, containing such costly and perishable wares, and it is a comical sight to see the poor signor and his fauteuil fall back head over heels when the crash comes. But no sooner does the stag see an innumerable number of its fellows reflected in the mirrors all around him, hounds upon them, closely followed by galloping huntsmen, than it completely loses the little remnant of wits it had retained, and, turning its back on the raving Italian, it dashes through the ranks of its pursuers towards the Appraxin Dwor, where Turks, Jews, Armenians, Persians, brokers, second-hand dealers, Little and Great Russians, Copts, and Raskolniks, Gruses, and Finlanders abound, their stalls crammed with old rubbish from every quarter of the globe, and they themselves standing out in the middle of the street to better attract the passers-by, two or three seizing the unwary customer by the arm at the same time, crying up their own wares, depreciating those of their neighbors, squabbling among themselves, vociferating oaths, lying, cheating, bargaining—playing the rogue in every barbaric language under the sun. And to them, in their very midst, the excited, maddened stag! Now the real fun begins. It was a sight to see the terrified peddlers scattered right and left among their heaps of rubbish, to hear their agonized adjurations to all the powers of heaven and earth; to see them crawl on all fours, frog-like, into their holes, as the huntsmen and hounds went galloping in full course over their fallen bodies; and to watch the angry company, after the wild hunt had passed, streaming back again to their desecrated wares with loud laments, proclaiming that the world was coming to an end. The stag simply flew over the heads of the densely packed throng; the hunt could not follow up so rapidly; it required the huntsmen's whips to keep the dogs together in such a bewildering crowd. Thus it gained a certain advantage, and, reaching the Boulevard of the Fontana Canal, dashed across the frozen stream to the opposite bank, and sped down the Goronschaja Street before its pursuers came up with it. [At the time of our story (1825) a palace, surrounded by a large park, the Bulasky Gardens, stood there. The great fire of 1862 has since laid it, as well as the whole Appraxin Dwor, in ruins; the railway-station of Czarskoje Zelo now occupies the site.]

The park is surrounded by a high gilded railing, through which sprigs of vine-covered firs push their way. Perhaps the stag takes it for its native home. Close by palace and park lies the great Obuchow Hospital; some five hundred patients, men and women (most of them epileptics) are just coming down the opposite street, returning from Trinity Church, where they have been attending mass. Should the affrighted creature rush in among the panic-stricken crowd, there would be no escape for them—their crippled, infirm forms, their enfeebled brains, would render it impossible. The very fright alone might kill them, deadened as are their senses. Now a chorus of horror arises from the procession of imbeciles, who, as if under a spell, come to a halt, helplessly awaiting the attack of the incomprehensible foe. Infirmity has not crippled their feet alone, but their thinking powers also. Nothing intervenes to stop the approaching stag. As it flies in full career past the principal gate of the Bulasky Gardens a shot resounds in the air. The stag makes a side spring, throws back its head, sinks down, struggles up again, plunges its bleeding nose into the snow, then stretches itself out, resting its stately antlered head on the threshold of the gate, as though in gratitude to him whose well-directed aim has released it from its pursuers.

Sport was spoiled.