In the afternoon I had a piece of business that took me across the
river. I did my business and turned homewards. It was almost dark, and
the ice of the Neva was coloured a faint green under the grey sky; the
buildings rose out of it like black bubbles poised over a swamp. I was
in that strange quarter of Petrograd where the river seems, like some
sluggish octopus, to possess a thousand coils. Always you are turning
upon a new bend of the ice, secretly stretching into darkness; strange
bridges suddenly meet you, and then, where you had expected to find a
solid mass of hideous flats, there will be a cluster of masts and the
smell of tar, and little fierce red lights like the eyes of waiting
beasts.
I seemed to stand with ice on every side of me, and so frail was my
trembling wooden bridge that it seemed an easy thing for the ice, that
appeared to press with tremendous weight against its banks, to grind the
supports to fragments. There was complete silence on every side of me.
The street to my left was utterly deserted. I heard no cries nor
calls--only the ice seemed once and again to quiver as though some
submerged creature was moving beneath it.
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