Nevertheless, he kept on forcing himself forward as desperately as ever, and over the backs of the people in front he caught a glimpse of an open space and a strip of red carpet, but then the crowd swayed back again. The police were forcing people back because they were encroaching too close on the procession. The Tsar was making his way from the palace to the Cathedral of the Assumption. Suddenly Petya got a terrible blow in the ribs and he was so badly crushed that his eyes misted over and he fainted. When he came round a clergyman in a shabby blue cassock, with shaggy grey hair down his back – probably a deacon – was propping him up with one arm and fending the crowd off with the other.
‘Hey, there’s a young gentleman here – he’s been crushed!’ the deacon was saying. ‘Watch what you’re doing! Steady on . . . You’re squashing him to death!’
The Tsar had entered the cathedral. The crowd fanned out again, and the deacon manœuvred Petya, white-faced and scarcely breathing, over towards the big Tsar-Cannon.11 Several people took pity on Petya and before long quite a crowd had gathered round attentively. The nearest bystanders took him under their wing, unbuttoning his coat, hoisting him up on top of the cannon, and shouting at other people who were squeezing up too close.
‘You could kill somebody, squashing like that! What do you think you’re doing? Murderers! Look at ’im, poor little fellow, he’s as white as a sheet,’ said voices.
Petya soon came round and the colour came back to his face. The pain had gone, and this unpleasant little setback had gained him a seat on top of the cannon, from where he hoped to see the Tsar, because he had to come back that way. Petya had abandoned any idea of submitting his petition. Now he just wanted to see him – then he would be able to say he’d had a lucky day!
While the service went on inside the Cathedral of the Assumption, marking both the Tsar’s arrival and the peace concluded with Turkey, the crowd scattered about the square, and hawkers came round selling kvass, gingerbread and poppy-seed sweets (Petya’s favourite), and the people chatted about all the usual things. A shopkeeper’s wife showed her torn shawl and told them how much it had cost; another one complained that nowadays the prices of everything silk had gone through the roof. The deacon who had rescued Petya was talking to an office-worker about the different priests who were officiating today with the most reverend bishop. The deacon made several uses of the word ‘conciliar’, which meant nothing to Petya. Two young apprentices were having fun with some servant-girls, cracking nuts with their teeth. All this talk, especially the chit-chat with the girls, which would normally have been fascinating to someone of Petya’s age, had no appeal for him today. He sat there enthroned on his cannon, still excited at the thought of the Tsar and his love for him. The mixture of pain and panic when he was being crushed, together with the general rapture, had produced in him a passionate sense of occasion.
Suddenly cannon shots were heard from the embankment to mark the peace with Turkey, and the crowd swarmed over to the embankment to watch the firing. Petya would have liked to run across too, but the deacon, who had taken charge of his young gentleman, wouldn’t let him go. They were still firing when a number of officers, generals and gentlemen-in-waiting came running out of the cathedral. Others followed at a slower pace, caps were doffed and the people who had run across to watch the cannons rushed back again. Eventually four men in uniforms and ribbons came out through the cathedral doors to a great ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ from the crowd.
‘Which is the Tsar? Which one?’ Petya asked around in a tearful voice, but there was no answer; everybody was too excited. Petya picked one of the four, and although he could hardly see him through his tears of joy, he focused all his passionate attention on him, though in fact this wasn’t the Tsar. He roared ‘Hurrah!’ in a frenzied voice, and made up his mind once and for all that tomorrow nothing would stop him joining the army.
The crowd ran after the Tsar, went with him as far as the palace, and then began to break up. It was getting late, Petya had had nothing to eat, and he was sweating profusely, but he had no intention of going home. He stayed on with a smaller though still considerable crowd in front of the palace while the Tsar was at dinner. He gazed up at the palace windows waiting for something to happen, and envying both the grand personages driving up to the entrance to dine with the Tsar and the servants waiting at table, who could be glimpsed now and then at the windows.
Over dinner with the Tsar Valuyev glanced through the window and said, ‘The people are still out there, hoping for another sight of your Majesty.’
