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Updated: May 28, 2025
Then Nina's flight overwhelmed everything. That must have been the most awful thing. She never liked Grogoff, never trusted him, and had a very clear idea of his character. But more awful to her than his weakness was her knowledge that Nina did not love him. What could have driven her to do such a thing? She knew of her affection for Lawrence, but she had, perhaps, never taken that seriously.
"It's only water and that's bad luck." "Oh, you can challenge any amount of bad luck I'm sure," he called back to her. I fancied that Grogoff did not like this. He was drinking a great deal. He roughly called Nina's attention. "Nina... Ah Nina!" But she, although I am certain that she heard him, paid no attention. He called again more loudly: "Nina... Nina!" "Well?"
What she did it for I can't imagine. Fancy going to a fellow like Grogoff! Lawrence has been coming every day and just sitting there, not saying anything. Semyonov's amiable to everybody especially amiable to Markovitch. But he's laughing at him all the time I think. Anyway he makes him mad sometimes, so that I think Markovitch is going to strike him.
At the sound of my pet name I took courage again. "But tell me, Nina.... Do you love this man?" She turned round and looked at Grogoff as though she were seeing him for the first time. "Love?... Oh no, not love! But he will be kind to me, I think. And I must be myself, be a woman, not a child any longer."
"Call me that and I'll show you!" "I do call you it!" There was an instant's pause, during which we all of us had, I suppose, some idea of trying to intervene. But it was too late. Grogoff raised his hand and, with all his force, flung his glass at Markovitch. Markovitch ducked his head, and the glass smashed with a shattering tinkle on the wall behind him.
What I think I really feel now, on looking back, is that each of us myself, Semyonov, Vera, Nina, Lawrence, Bohun, Grogoff, yes, and the Rat himself was a part of a mysterious figure who was beyond us, outside us, and above us all. The heart, the lungs, the mouth, the eyes... used against our own human agency, and yet free within that domination for the exercise of our own free will.
"Fight!" he laughed. "They're dam sick of it all, that's what they are. And a revolution would leave 'em like a lot of silly sheep wandering on to a precipice. But there won't be no revolution. Take my word." It was at that moment that I saw Boris Grogoff come in.
Very different again was the young man Boris Nicolaievitch Grogoff. No relation of the family, he seemed to spend most of his time in the Markovitch flat. A handsome young man, strongly built, with a head of untidy curly yellow hair, blue eyes, high cheek bones, long hands with which he was for ever gesticulating.
We three had stood back, a little in the shadow, gazing about to see whether we could hail a cab. As we waited I took my last look at Grogoff, his stout figure against the purple sky, the masts of the ships, the pale tumbling river, the black line of the farther shore. He stood, his arms waving, his mouth open, the personification of the disease from which Russia was suffering. A cab arrived.
I don't know that that Face that stared at him cared very greatly for Europe, but it is certain that a breath of emotion passed across it, that there was a stir, a movement, a response.... He sat down, there was a roar of applause; he regarded them contemptuously. At that moment I caught sight of Boris Grogoff. I had been on the watch for him. I had thought it very likely that he would be there.
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