e la Grave" like a ghost from another world warning me.

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. That vast crowd on the Nevski
seemed to be a dream. I was in a world that had fallen into decay and
desolation, and I could smell rotting wood, and could fancy that frozen
blades of grass were pressing up through the very pavement stones.
Suddenly an Isvostchick stumbled along past me, down the empty street,
and the bumping rattle of the sledge on the snow woke me from my
laziness. I started off homewards. When I had gone a little way and was
approaching the bridge over the Neva some man passed me, looked back,
stopped and waited for me. When I came up to him I saw to my surprise
that it was the Rat. He had his coat-collar turned over his ears and his
dirty fur cap pulled down over his forehead. His nose was very red, and
his thin hollow cheeks a dirty yellow colour.

"Good-evening, Barin," he said, grinning.

"Good-evening," I said. "Where are you slipping off to so secretly?"

"Slipping off?" He did not seem to understand my word. I repeated it.

"Oh, I'm not slipping off," he said almost indignantly. "No, indeed. I'm
just out for a walk like your Honour, to see the town."

"What have they been doing this afternoon?" I asked. "There's been a
fine fuss on the Nevski."

"Yes, there has...." he said, chuckling. "Bu