The sight of this ethereal house crammed with so many existences makes her giddy The walls are already melting into the sky, the windows fading into the blue-she has just time to see the tiny attic room where her grandparents' old servant lived, a cubbyhole that smelled of the resin from burnt wood, lit by a night-light flickering in front of the icon, where, whatever the weather, the narrow window always seemed to be looking out onto a snowy night…
A young man of around twenty, her cousin, whose life used to be protected with the help of pillows tied to the trees, is already calling to her from the carriage, straightening up on his saddle, holding the reins. They are going back to St. Petersburg.
This cousin is one of the last remaining ghosts from those parties of long ago. Olga bumps into him occasionally at poetry evenings, in the restaurants where the artistic bohemia of the capital gather. In his poems he talks of the "the curse of princes" that affects him and gnaws at him. Only a small circle of initiates knows it is a reference to hemophilia. Those not in the know find his verses ridiculously overinflated and lachrymose. A different kind of verse is in fashion; Olga often declaims it like a stimulant before nights filled with rhythmic words, wine, sensuality, and cocaine:
Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne! An unwonted savor, with sparkle and sting. I have donned a disguise: a Norwegian in Spain! For my pen is drunk and my heart's on the wing!
Indeed, she often has the impression that the costume balls have not come to an end at all and that currently the whole of Russia has succumbed to this craze for dressing up. You no longer know who is who. The great wind of liberty intoxicates them. You can kill a minister and find yourself acquitted. You can insult a policeman, spit in his face, and he will not stir. Apparently that poet rising to his feet at the back of the hall, a champagne flute in his hand, is a well-known revolutionary. And the man over there with his arm around the waist of a woman whose breasts are almost bare is a police informer. The singer just making a sign to the pianist is a conspirator in the plot against the Tsarina's monstrous favorite. And this very young woman here, with a strangely pale face, her eyes ringed with black, is the daughter of one of the most celebrated families in Russia. She has broken with her background, she is the muse of several poets, but has given herself to none of them on account of a mystical vow…
Olga looks at herself in the long mirror that reflects both the room in the restaurant and the pale face with black rings around the eyes-her own…
The ball goes on. The Tsarina's favorite is killed. The Tsar is overthrown. Assisted by his children, he cuts wood. At last the country seems to be responding to the dreams formulated in the old days at her uncle's house. Its onward march accelerates: outmoded traditions are smashed to smithereens, the head of the new government has to wear his arm in a sling after shaking hands with tens of thousands of enthusiastic fellow citizens. But soon the country's breathing becomes spasmodic: menacing groans can be heard…
She joins in the ball with all the impatience of youth. She samples everything: decadence, futurism, workingmen's Sunday schools; she studies to be original in a world that is no longer surprised at anything. All around her debauchery is humdrum, insipid. One of the poets, before possessing his mistress, attaches bear's claws to his fingers. This will soon seem banal… She explains to the men in love with her that she will only give herself to the one who will kill her and take her dead. This is more surprising than the bear's claws, because of her youth, perhaps, or her livid face with a look that is meant to be hellish; or else because of the seriousness with which she utters these idiocies… Secretly she still thinks about that young horseman five years ago-galloping in the night through the white foam of the apple trees. She forbids herself to hope, but hopes all the same that her first love will have this freshness of snow. And the mocking and aggressive little voice lurking inside her never tires of sneering at this last island of sensibility in her heart…
One day, vexed by the dullness of a landscape on her easel, she paints stripes across it savagely with a brush and a painter friend of hers speaks jokingly of "Stripeism." For several weeks she finds herself at the head of a new artistic movement. Until the same joker covers a portrait with curves and, in his turn, launches "Curvism."…
She thinks she has learned all the rules of the game called "life." Two years earlier Li was just starting at medical school. "So that's her compensation as a daughter of poor parents," Olga had thought with a smile and, knowing the rules of the game, began to wait for some ludicrous twist. It came with the war: Li abandoned her studies and, with a nurse's satchel on her shoulder, plunged into the mud of the trenches.
As for the young horseman all covered in petals from the apple trees, one autumn day she will learn of his death and will try to gauge whether her own indifference is real or simulated. So often all their emotions had been a fraud… Irresolute, she will then start singing a German song, which, if there were any justice in heaven, should have brought the sky down on her head. The sky does not fall. Only a shower of freshly printed tracts thrown by someone from the roof. She will pick one up as she goes out. "Seizure of power. Peace Declared. Revolution," she will read distractedly. And she will heave a sigh: "Another one…" She will even smile: to learn that the war is over on the same day as learning of the death of that horseman of long ago will seem to her to conform perfectly to the pitiless mischief of life. The mocking voice within her will be roused and whisper, "It'll make a good masque for this evening-a dance before an open coffin!"
And she will weep all the same, for long hours, amazed herself at the abundance of her tears and the depth of feeling in them. But it will be too late.
Too late; for suddenly History seems to have had enough of their disguises and their pretensions to changing its course, accelerating its onward march. History or, quite simply, life lumbers into action like a great wild beast roused from a deep sleep and, in a monstrous pendulum swing of its mighty forces, begins to crush all these capricious, neurotic manikins embroiled in their sterile reflections. The People, whose name they had a habit of invoking between two glasses of champagne, between two stanzas, suddenly reveal themselves in the guise of a huge sailor from the Baltic, who breaks down their doors with the butt of his rifle; plunges his bayonet into their guts; rapes their wives; stifles the squeals of their children beneath his hobnailed boots. And walks out satisfied, enriched, smiling and proud, for he sniffs the wind of History. It is difficult not to fall under the spell of its elemental power…
There are some who are beguiled and disguise themselves yet again, imitating the wind of History in their costume. Others flee, also in disguise. The head of the government removes his "People's friend" cap, slips into a nurse's dress, and escapes from the palace that has very nearly become his tomb. And the masquerade continues. Those who used to dress up as beggars at costume balls in the old days now beg, swathed in rags. Those who played at being ghosts or bats now hide in lofts, listening for the sound of hobnailed boots. Those who wore the executioner's hood now become executioners, or, more often, victims… Later on, at the time of the exodus, Olga will learn that one of their footmen, now an important personage, has tortured and shot hundreds. "No doubt the very man," she conjectures, "who helped himself to a drink from a guest's glass. He wouldn't be able to pardon his masters for that…" And the man she surprised coupling with a bat woman, the one who was so fond of talking about the People, will escape by disguising himself as a peasant and growing a long beard…