I trust you.
Does that surprise you?"
Dasha could only blink.
The abrupt, assured phrases, the authoritative tones, the cold eyes, were rapidly enchaining her vacillating will.
She felt the same sort of relief that one feels when the doctor, seating himself at one's bedside, his spectacles gleaming sagely, says:
"Well, dear lady, from now on we're going to behave ourselves...."
She looked more attentively at the man with the handkerchief to his face.
He was not tall, wore a soft hat, a well-cut fawn overcoat and leather leggings.
His clothes and his precise movements gave him a foreign air, but he spoke with a Petersburg accent, and his voice was somewhat vague and hollow.
"Where are you staying?"
"Nowhere—I came straight from the train."
"Good.
You will now go to Tverskaya Street, to the Cafe Bom, order something to eat.
A man will come up to you—you will recognize him by his wearing a death's-head tiepin.
He will give you the password:
'God speed you on your way.'
You will then show him this." (He tore the pasteboard triangle in two, handing one half to Dasha.) "Don't let anyone see you showing it.
He will give you further instructions.
You must obey him implicitly.
Have you any money?"
He drew two thousand-ruble "Duma" notes from a pocketbook.
"Your expenses will be paid.
Try and keep this money for emergencies, for bribes, or possible flight.
Anything may happen to you.
Go now.... But first—do you understand all I have told you?"
"Yes," faltered Dasha, folding up the money into smaller and smaller squares.
"Not a word of having seen me!
Not a word to a soul that you have been here!
Go now."
Dasha went on foot to Tverskaya Street.
She was hungry and tired.
The trees lining the boulevard, and the few sombre-looking pedestrians, seemed to float by in a mist.
But she was at peace, for her agonizing inactivity was over, and incomprehensible events had caught her up as in a tornado, and were whirling her on to some wild life.
Two women in bast shoes approached her, flitting past, vague as shadows thrown on a screen.
Glancing at Dasha, one of them said in low tones: '
"Brazen hussy—she can hardly stand!"
A tall lady floated by, her grizzled locks screwed up in a tousled knot, pitiful, tragic lines at the corners of her puffy lips.
Intense bewilderment was imprinted on what must have once been a handsome countenance.
Her long black skirt was conspicuously patched with a different material.
She was carrying a bundle of books beneath a long shawl, the point of which trailed on the ground, and addressed Dasha under her breath as she passed:
"I have Rozanov's banned works and a complete set of Vladimir Solovyov."
A little further on she noticed three old men bending over a park bench. As she passed, Dasha saw that two Red Army men were sitting close together on the bench, fast asleep with their mouths open and their rifles between their knees. The old men were whispering foul words over them.
Beyond the trees a dry wind was chasing the dust.
A solitary tram passed by, one of its steps broken loose and clattering against the cobblestones.
Soldiers hung in grey swarms from the handrails, and on the brakes at the back.
Blithely indifferent to revolution, the sparrows hopped about the head of the bronze Pushkin.
Dasha turned into Tverskaya Street: a cloud of dust sprang up behind her, blowing scraps of paper on to her and propelling her towards the Cafe Bom—the last bulwark of the old, carefree days.
Here there gathered poets of all schools, ex-journalists, literary timeservers, brisk youths, easily and adroitly adapting themselves to the troublous times, young women dazed with boredom and cocaine, anarchist small fry—all seeking for keen sensations, while ordinary citizens were attracted by the cakes to be obtained.
Dasha had hardly settled down in a seat at the back of the cafe, beneath the bust of a famous writer, when a man threw up his hands in astonishment, plunged through the clouds of tobacco-smoke, and slumped into a seat beside her, giggling moistly and exposing a set of rotten teeth.
She recognized him as an old friend—the poet Alexander Zhirov.