Murless, on the 19th of this month, at the British Embassy in Paris, the Honourable Kenneth Murless, of pneumonia. Aged twenty-seven.
Murless, on the 19th of this month, at the British Embassy in Paris, the Honourable Kenneth Murless, of pneumonia. Aged twenty-seven.
Bertram read the lines three or four times before the meaning of them fully reached his consciousness. He uttered a sharp exclamation, startling the German folk in his carriage. In his mind was a strange mingling of pity for Joyce and gladness for himself.
Kenneth had died not much more than a month after the dinner at the Griffon. Perhaps Joyce had not gone to him so soon. . . .
That was a rotten way of looking at things. What a tragedy for Joyce! And for Kenneth, that very perfect gentleman, who had tried to play the game “according to the rules!”
XLVIII
The journey to Riga had not been too bad, except for examination of passports and luggage at odd times of the day and night, at unexpected frontiers. This happened each side of “the Polish corridor,” which had been made by the Treaty of Versailles like a wedge driven through Germany to Danzig. It happened again on the frontiers of Lithuania and Latvia.
An American in the train called it the “Get-in-and-get-out-express.” It stopped for six hours at Eydtkuhnen on the border of East Prussia, and there was time to walk about and see something of the devastation made by the great Russian drive in the early years of the war. Here were still the blackened ruins of farmhouses and barns and peasants’ cottages, but German industry had built up the villages again, very neat and pretty under their new red roofs, wonderful in contrast to the poor attempts at reconstruction in the war zone of France.
Bertram had to wait four days in Riga before he could get a train to Moscow. The Soviet agents there were unhelpful and rather insolent. The stamp of the Moscow Executive Committee on his special passport did not seem to inspire them with any zeal. They informed Bertram that he might have to wait three weeks for a train—or longer. The thought seemed to amuse them.
Three weeks in Riga! The idea was affrighting because of its boredom. In three days Bertram had exhausted the interests and amusements of a city that seemed dead all day and only wakened to life at one in the morning, when the night cafés and dancing-halls were filled with a company of Letts, Poles, Russians, Finns, and Germans, drinking large quantities ofschnappsin quick gulps until their eyes watered and their noses reddened, and they became quarrelsome with their women and each other in a medley of languages.
In one of these cafés Bertram sat opposite an American who opened a friendly conversation.
“Staying long in this City of Departed Glory?”
“Not longer than I can help. I want to get to Moscow, but the trains don’t work.”
The American asked his business there, and raised his eyebrows with a smile when Bertram said, “Journalism. I want to find out the truth about the famine.”
“Well, there’s a famine, I’m told,” said the American. “You might call it a famine, without much exaggeration. About twenty-five million people starving to death, more or less. I’m pushing up some food. A relief train is going to-morrow with the first supplies. That’s my job. I’m A. R. A.”
He pronounced the letters as though they spelt a word—“Ara.” They conveyed nothing then to Bertram, though afterwards he came to know them as the greatest hope of life in Russia for the starving children from Petrograd to the Volga Valley, and the Russians spoke of “Ara” as though it were God. It meant the American Relief Administration.
“Any chance of a place on that train?” he asked.
The American smiled again.
“I expected that question. Is your passport all right for Moscow?”
Bertram showed it, and the American nodded.
“Any objection to lice?” he asked.
“I don’t invite them to dinner,” said Bertram, “but we were on speaking terms in the trenches. ‘Chatty,’ the men used to call it.”
“They’ll give you the glad hand in thattrain de luxe.”
“Then I can get a place?”
“I’ll fix you up. Better take supplies with you. Cheese. Biscuits. A kettle. Enamel mugs. Candles. Blankets. There’s not a restaurant car, nor awagon lit.”
He smiled grimly, and Bertram knew why on the next night when he boarded the train to Moscow. It was nearly midnight, and the station was dimly lit, and after stumbling over grass-grown rails, Bertram found a train in darkness, except in one or two carriages where candles had been lighted and put on the window ledges. A number of Lettish porters staggered along under heavy bundles, and there were more of them in the corridor of the train from which a frightful smell met the open air. The carriages were wooden compartments, stripped of all upholstery, with plank beds, and they seemed to be entirely occupied by Americans and Russians who were quarrelling with each other for vacant possession. There was a jabber of both languages rising into violent oaths of the choicest brand from New York, Omaha, Kansas, and Kentucky. One voice rose higher than all the rest, with a bull-like bellow.
“For Christ’s sake! If all you Tavarishes don’t get out of this bug-box, I’ll get the Cheka on to you and have you minced by Chinese torturers!”
The owner of this voice, as Bertram saw in the candlelight of one carriage, was a young man of Herculean build, in a felt hat, Garibaldi shirt, riding-breeches, and top boots. To make clear the mystical meaning of his words, he seized one of the porters, lifted him up as though he were a sack of potatoes, and flung him at six others massed in the dark corridor. It had the effect of clearing a space and creating a moment’s quietude.
“Who the hell are you?” asked the genial giant, peering at Bertram and putting a flash-light close to his nose. “Do you belong to this outfit?”
Bertram mentioned the name of the American who had “fixed him up.” It was an ordinary name, but produced an immediate and softening effect.
“Good enough! You’re the young guy who’s going to the famine districts? Glad to meet you.”
Bertram found his hand in an enormous fist, and recovered it in a limp and boneless state.
“My name’s Cherry,” said the young giant. “I’m from Lynchburg, Virginia. I do the courier stunt for Ara, from Riga to Moscow. I also boss this train, and make it move. When it stops, I make it move again. Sometimes. If I get out and push. I inspire terror among Tavarishes. When they play tricks I treat ’em rough. When they play straight I’m full of loving-kindness. It’s the only way to get anything done by these lousy Tavarishes.”
“What’s a Tavarish?” asked Bertram.
“A Comrade,” said Cherry of Lynch, Virginia. “It’s a nice way of saying Bolshevik. Call them Tavarish all the time. It makes them feel good. Human equality and all that punk. Have you brought any bug-powder?”
“No.”
“I’ll lend you some. Otherwise you’ll be eaten alive.”
But for Cherry, Bertram would have reached Moscow even more of a wreck than he did. In spite of the powder, he was attacked by many different species of insect as he lay on an upper plank, with Cherry beneath. He saw them crawling in legions up the wooden walls. They ambushed him beneath his blanket, sent out scouts and advance guards and then attacked in mass formation. The nights were torture. In the day time the enemy retired to their hiding places.
The train was crowded with Russian and Lettish couriers, all in charge of heavy packing-cases and sacks. Next to them, four to a carriage, was a contingent of young Americans, going out as clerks to the headquarters staff of the A. R. A., in Moscow. Certain mysterious young men who talked to each other in low voices, were pointed out by Cherry as Russian Soviet officials belonging to the secret police of the Extraordinary Commission, known as “the Cheka,” because each letter of that dreaded word formed the initial of the full Russian title for this organisation.
There was no heat in the train, and it was cold after crossing the Russian frontier in the rainy season of early autumn.
Bertram’s cheese and biscuits, which he had bought in Riga, became utterly distasteful to him after two days, and he yielded to Cherry’s insistent invitation to share his bully beef, pork and beans, tinned butter, and fresh bread. It was Cherry, also, who taught him how to get the one source of comfort available on Russian journeys—a plentiful supply of hot water at every wayside station. The pass-word was “kipyitok,” and this was yelled by Cherry to theprovodnik, or guard, of the train, who filled the passengers’ kettles so that they could make tea in their carriages.
The Russian frontier was at a place called Sebesh, the other side of a long stretch of flat, barren, abandoned country which seemed to be a kind of No-Man’s Land. The train was immediately boarded by a number of hairy men in sheepskin coats and fur caps, accompanied by two soldiers of the Red Army. Bertram felt a thrill at his first sight of Bolsheviks and Red Soldiers. His mind went back to the atrocity tales of Countess Lydia and her sister, and other refugees from the Russian Terror. These men who pushed their way down the corridor were agents of that terrible new social code and faith which had declared war upon all civilisation based upon individualism and private property, and proclaimed Communism as the new gospel which mankind must accept, whether they liked it or not. Those soldiers represented the power by which that code was enforced upon one hundred and fifty million people. It was their Army which had defeated Koltchak, Denikin, Judenitch, Wrangel, and all the counter-revolutionary forces—financed, armed and equipped by the Allied Powers—which had invaded Russia, laid great districts in ruin and flame, hanged many peasants to the branches of trees, and retreated in disorderly masses from the relentless pursuit of “the Reds.”
The two soldiers escorting the hairy Bolsheviks were not formidable in appearance. They were both about eighteen, with puffy, pale faces, and a hang-dog, under-fed look. They wore long grey overcoats, reaching to their heels, and curious cloth caps, shaped like Assyrian helmets, with stiff peaks behind, and in front the Red Star, five-pointed, of the Soviet Republic.
“See how these Tavarishes love me!” said Cherry.
Certainly the small group of Bolshevik officials who came to examine passports and baggage, greeted Cherry with a kind of forced amusement, in which, as it seemed to Bertram, there was a hint of fear. Perhaps it was due to the vice-like grip with which he insisted upon shaking hands with them; and the bear-like way in which he thumped them on the back.
“Dobra den, Tavarish!How goes it, old face-fungus?Kraseeva, eh? Fine and dandy, what? Well,dos vidanya, you darned old hypocrite, and don’t you come poking your nose into my car.Niet! No pannamayo?”
He fondled the head Bolshevik’s beard, patted him playfully on both cheeks, gave him a mighty dig in the ribs which took his breath away.
“That’s how I treat ’em,” he told Bertram. “A touch of good humour works wonders with them. Look at those two young murderers! Laughing like hell! It’s the first time they’ve laughed since I came this way before.”
The two young soldiers regarded him with eyes of wonder and admiration, between guffaws of laughter. When he stepped down on to the platform, a group of Russian porters and peasants gathered round him, listening to his oration in American and Russian, gazing at his mighty girth with astounded smiles. He towered above them, and occasionally pushed at a man’s chest, and pummelled a Russian boy with ogre-like playfulness.
Six hours at Sebesh.
“Come and see the flight from the Famine,” said Cherry. “It’ll take away your appetite for my bully beef. Cheap for me!”
He strode down the rails for five hundred yards and halted before a long stationary train without an engine. It was divided into a number of box-like cattletrucks, from which, as they drew near, came a pestilential stench through half-opened doors. In the dirty straw of each of the trucks squatted a group of human beings, men, women, and children. They were hunting vermin in their rags. Some of them lay curled up in the straw, sleeping, or dying. Perhaps dying, thought Bertram, for even those who were sitting up had a grey, haggard, deathly look, as they stared out at him with deep-sunk eyes, in which there was no interest, no life, no spirit.
“Letts,” said Cherry, “on their way home from the famine districts. They’ve been dying all the way. Hunger, weakness, typhus. Look at that girl. Typhus, beyond a doubt.”
The girl was lying on the grass by the side of the train. Her head turned from side to side. Her face was flushed and puffed.
“It’s the vermin that gets ’em,” said Cherry. “They’re eaten up with it.”
A tall, bearded peasant, clothed in rags tied about him with bits of string, came up to Bertram and spoke to him in English, with an American accent.
“Say, mister, can you change a hundred thousand roubles into German marks?”
Bertram laughed, and was astounded.
“A hundred thousand roubles! I’m not a millionaire.”
“No need to be,” said Cherry. “It’s worth about six shillings in English money.”
He took some dirty bits of paper from the bearded peasant, and gave him some German notes.
“There you are, Nunky. How do you come to speak the American lingo?”
“I worked in Detroit,” said the man. “Before the world went wrong.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Ufa.”
He turned and pointed eastward.
“Three thousand miles.”
“How long on the road, brother?”
“Five months. I am nearly at the journey’s end. Across the frontier.”
“How is it in Ufa?”
The man looked at Cherry with tragic eyes. He spoke in simple, Biblical words.
“In Ufa there is great death. The people have no food. The mothers are glad when their children die, because it is sad to hear their weeping. I am one who escaped in time. God has forsaken Russia.”
“I guess that’s a sure thing,” said Cherry.
Back in the train to Moscow the American boys were singing negro choruses in harmony, and queer rag-time songs from the Winter Garden, New York. Cherry went into their carriage, and led new choruses, and college yells, with his enormous hands. Spasmodically, hour after hour, until late at night, these songs broke out, while Bertram lay alone on the wooden plank above Cherry’s bunk, with his thoughts travelling faster than that slow-going train which every hour or so panted like an exhausted monster, reduced speed to a crawl, made one or two ineffective jerks and tugs, and then came to a dead halt. There was no more fuel. The provodnik and his comrades descended and searched around for logs of wood. Cherry stimulated their energy by shouts and curses, and roars of laughter, and back-thumpings, and general noises of encouragement to make them “get a move on.” One hour, two hours, three hours—once fourteen hours—passed before the train lurched forward again with an immense rattle of wheels and wood.
Bertram stared out of the window for hundreds of versts, at the flat, dreary, monotonous panorama of Russia. It seemed lifeless and abandoned, except at wayside stations where groups of peasants stood about the wooden sheds, staring at the train as though it were a miraculous advent. Away from these stations there was but little sign of human life. Now and then Bertram saw adroschkedriving along a road which led to some distant village of wooden houses with a white-washed church rising above them. A woman gathering faggots with one hand while she carried a baby in her shawl, raised her head and looked at Bertram as the train halted near her bundle of sticks. It seemed to him that she had some message for him in her eyes. She drew her shawl on one side, and showed her child, a little wizened thing, monkey-like.
At another place a peasant was kneeling before a waysideikon. He knelt with his head bent and his beard on his chest, and crossed himself again and again.
An immense melancholy came out of this Russian landscape, and darkened Bertram’s spirit. In imagination, without knowledge, by instinct only, he was stirred by the sense of travelling through a country of despair and immeasurable misery. The silence of the countryside was intense and brooding. No sound of laughter, of human gossip, even of human toil, came from its woodlands or open fields. There was no clink of hammer on anvil, no rhythm of an axe at work, no shout of ploughman to his team. The peasants in the wayside stations seemed to have no work to do, no object in life, except to stand and stare with gloomy eyes. “God has forsaken Russia,” said the man from Ufa. The vital energy of life itself seemed to have burned low in these people.
Away back in the train an American chorus rang out.
“Just hear that whistle blow!I want you all to knowThat train is taking my sweet man awayFrom me to-day!Don’t know the reason why,I must just sit and cry—”
“Just hear that whistle blow!I want you all to knowThat train is taking my sweet man awayFrom me to-day!Don’t know the reason why,I must just sit and cry—”
“Just hear that whistle blow!I want you all to knowThat train is taking my sweet man awayFrom me to-day!Don’t know the reason why,I must just sit and cry—”
“Just hear that whistle blow!
I want you all to know
That train is taking my sweet man away
From me to-day!
Don’t know the reason why,
I must just sit and cry—”
Nigger melodies, Russian forests, the chug-chug of the train, Cherry’s boisterous voice, the sad eyes of a peasant woman with a sick child, a line of bugs crawling up the carriage wall, the smell of a Latvian cheese, the melancholy of life, the isolation of the human soul, the death of Kenneth Murless, the mystery of Joyce, the typhus-stricken girl lying by the railway line, the endless monotone of this Russian landscape, the puzzle of his own life, made up the incoherence of Bertram’s thoughts on the way to Moscow.
Kenneth’s death would make no difference, except to Joyce. No difference to Bertram. He had left Joyce forever. She had finished with him, and he with her. Perhaps she would go back to Holme Ottery for a time, until the American took possession. What did it matter where she went? He must cut her out of his mind. It was only a year’s habit, and weak sentiment, that made him think of her so much, with a dull ache of pain. . . . How long to Moscow, on this abominable journey? Damn those bugs!
XLIX
Moscow—and old Christy! Bertram saw him on the platform amidst a group of Red soldiers, bearded porters, anddroschkedrivers in fur caps and long blue coats. He was wearing the same old grey suit in which Bertram had last seen him in London, with the addition of a sheepskin waistcoat. His lean, ugly face was twisted into a humorous smile as he saw Bertram.
“Welcome to our city!”
“God in Heaven!” said Bertram. “This is a grand meeting.”
For some reason, inexplicable to himself, the sight of Christy was like finding a solid raft after shipwreck.
“Follow me, and don’t rub shoulders with your fellow men,” said Christy.
He led the way from the platform into the station hall. It was a great place with white-washed walls and filled with such a stench of human filth that Bertram felt like vomiting. The great floor space was entirely covered with the heaped-up bodies of men, women, and children. They lay piled up on sacks and bags, and across each other’s legs and arms, in a tangled mass of sheepskins, rags, and mangy fur, all brown with mud and dirt as though they had been dipped in the slime of Flanders, as Bertram had known it in war-time winters. It was nightfall, and they were settling down to sleep, restlessly, so that there was a heaving of bodies, and a tossing of arms. Some slept with stertorous breathing. Children wailed. Girls who were almost women lay in the arms of bearded men. One man lay dead among the living, as Bertram saw at a glance, not unfamiliar with death. His head was thrown back on a bit of sacking, showing a thin, turkey-like neck with loose wrinkled skin. His eyes were wide open and glazed.
“What’s all this?” asked Bertram.
“Refugees from famine,” said Christy. “The end of the journey. To-morrow they go into camp. Apart from typhus, they’re all right now.”
Bertram breathed deeply of fresh air when they emerged from the station.
“Can I get into a hotel?” he asked presently.
“Can you do what?”
Christy laughed quietly at the question.
“This is Bolshevik Russia! The Carlton doesn’t function at the moment. There are no hotels. TheNarcomindjelprovides you with a billet, if they like the look of you.”
“Who may they be?”
“The Soviet Foreign Office. East side Jews from New York deal with us, mostly. Not bad fellows, if you’re civil.”
“Supposing they don’t like the look of me?”
Christy smiled grimly.
“You’ll get another kind of billet. With bars to the windows.”
“Any chance of that?”
“Not now. Bolshevism is busted. They want help from the outside world. That’s why they’ve let me stay and let you come. Things are changing pretty rapidly. I’ll tell you all about it presently. First the Foreign Office, and Mr. Weinstein.”
He hailed adroschke, spoke a few words of Russian—amazing fellow!—and Bertram found himself driving through Moscow at night, with Christy by his side. Moscow—or some fantastic city of a dream after a goblet of absinthe? The moon was up, and shone brightly down upon a vision of white palaces, red walls, turreted gateways, tall bell-towers, and clusters of pear-shaped domes, all golden and glistening in the white moonlight. Under the gateways were deep caverns of blackness, and high walls with fan-shaped battlements flung black shadows across broad squares all flooded with the moon’s milky radiance. Thedroschke, pulled by a lean and wiry horse, lurched over cobbled roads like a boat in a rough sea, and pitched into holes and pitfalls which more than once brought the horse to its knees. Under a gateway, very narrow, with a turret overhead, a red lamp was burning, and there seemed to be an altar in the little chamber at the side, glinting with gilt candlesticks. The driver pulled off his fur cap, and crossed himself.
“The shrine of the Iberian Virgin,” said Christy. “A thousand years old, and more powerful than Lenin in the peasant mind!”
There was a great open square on the other side of the gateway, below a steep wall of red brick. At one end of it was a fantastic church, with a twisted dome painted in all the colours of the rainbow. In the high wall were arched gateways, lit by hanging lanterns, guarded by Red soldiers whose bayonets flashed like quicksilver. At one angle of the wall was an open staircase of red brick, leading to a high turret. Each of its steps was clear-cut by a light behind, with strange theatrical effect. Beyond seemed an endless vista of golden cupolas, surmounted by shining crosses, above white walls, all glamorous and shadow-haunted.
“The Kremlin,” said Christy. “From that high tower—old Ivan Velike—Napoleon saw Moscow burning, and read his doom in its smoke and flame. We’re passing through the Red Square. Every stone of it has been wet with blood. Those walls have looked down on a thousand years of human cruelty—not ended yet. . . .”
“A cut-throat looking place,” said Bertram, and shivered a little. There were few people about. There was no sound in the city except the klip-clop of the lean horse, and the footsteps of sentries pacing under the Kremlin walls.
“It holds the biggest drama in the world,” answered Christy. “What’s happening here is going to alter history everywhere. Peace or war, perhaps civilisation itself, is going to be decided by the brain that is working at this hour of midnight, beyond those walls. The ruthless brain of a fanatic who is also a realist. He experiments with human nature like a vivisector with guinea-pigs, without compassion, in the interests of science. To prove or disprove a theory.”
“Lenin?”
“Lenin. . . . Genius or maniac? Damned if I know!”
The Foreign Office, which Christy called by its incomprehensible name, was in a big block of buildings at the corner of an open place beyond the Red Square. A young soldier in an overcoat made for a bigger man, so that the sleeves came below his hands, barred the way with his rifle at the foot of a staircase, until Christy said, “Tavarish Weinstein.”
At the top of the staircase, Christy plunged down a corridor, turned sharply to the left, knocked at a door, and opened it without waiting for an answer. It was well past midnight, but at a desk heaped with papers, a man sat working. He was a delicate-looking man, past middle age, with a pointed beard and moustache, like a French painter. Like such a type, also, he wore a jacket of brown velveteen. He looked up at Christy’s entrance, and Bertram saw that the pleasant aspect of his face was spoilt by “crossed” eyes.
“Good evening, Mr. Weinstein! This is my friend, Bertram Pollard ofThe New World.”
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Pollard. A tiring journey, I’m sure.”
He shook hands with Bertram, with a limp, soft touch, and spoke in a gentle, tired voice. As chief of the propaganda department of the Soviet Republic, he did not come up to Bertram’s expectations of a leading Bolshevik. He might have been the editor ofThe Ladies’ Home Journal, or one of the most respectable members of the Royal Academy. He did not even look like a Jew.
“You purpose to visit the Famine region of the Volga?” he asked Bertram, and then, in a melancholy voice, said something about the tragic conditions in that part of Russia. The Republic was doing its best to cope with them. But it was very difficult. They needed foreign help. From England and the United States.
“We have nothing to hide,” he said presently. “Go where you like, see what you like. Write what you like. We only ask you to tell the truth. So many lies have been told about us. Incredible! We welcome the truth. We wish the world to know.”
“My friend Pollard is a glutton for truth,” said Christy, with just the flicker of a wink at Bertram. “Where are you going to billet him, Mr. Weinstein? With me, I hope?”
“Certainly. You are comfortable?”
“Luxurious, even.”
“That is good. We like to treat our guests well.”
He rang up a number on the telephone, and spoke rapid Russian. Then he turned to Christy again.
“It is settled. Sophieskaya, 14. They have prepared a room for him. Good evening, Mr. Pollard. I shall read your articles with interest, I am sure.”
Christy led the way out of the building, and asked Bertram to get into thedroschkeagain. They drove across a bridge, turned at right angles along the bank of the river. On the other side was an astonishing view of the Kremlin again in the white moonlight, with great blocks of darkness between its churches and palaces and towers.
“An ‘Arabian Nights’ Dream!” said Bertram, in a low voice.
Christy did not answer him directly.
“That fellow Weinstein is not a bad fellow. As gentle as an invalid lady at Bournemouth. As subtle as a Chinese mandarin. I don’t think he’d hurt a spider, willingly. But of course he’d vote for the death of any counter-revolutionary, man, woman, or child. That’s fear. Fear is the father of cruelty. Well, here we are.”
Thedroschkedriver pulled up his horse with a clatter of hoofs. Two soldiers standing by a sentry-box came forward with a lantern, and held it up to Christy’s face, and Bertram’s.
“That’s all right, my children,” said Christy. “Now for a hundred thousand roubles.”
“In Heaven’s name, what for?” asked Bertram, still ignorant of Russian money.
“To pay theisvostchik—meaning the cabby. Hear him howl when I give it him.”
Christy was right. The man wailed and whined, raised his hands to heaven, called upon the moon as witness, flung his fur cap on the ground, spat on the mass of paper which Christy had given him.
“Skolka?” said Christy.
The man renewed his loud plaint, until one of the Red soldiers struck him on the chest with the butt-end of his rifle.
“I paid him forty thousand roubles too much,” said Christy. “He wanted fifty thousand more. Such is the greed and dishonesty of man!”
“What’s this house?” asked Bertram, staring up at a great mansion with a classical façade. “It looks like a palace.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” said Christy. “This is where I live. Nothing less than a palace for dear old Christy! An English aristocrat must have his four-poster bed and Louis Quinze suite.”
He went up a flight of steps and pulled a chain. There was the loud jangling of a bell, and presently a great rattling of bolts.
“They keep us under lock and key, so that we don’t escape without paying our bill,” said Christy. “You’ll find these Bolsheviks bleed the Western capitalist.”
The door was opened by a pretty, sleepy girl, with a shawl round her head. She greeted Christy with a smile, a yawn, and a German “Güten Abend.”
“Don’t be frightened at anything you see,” said Christy. “What you don’t see is much more alarming.”
The first aspect of things was not frightening. Bertram found himself in a great and splendid hall, panelled in richly carved oak, with gilded decorations. Beyond was a wide flight of stairs, leading up to a corridor hung with tapestries. It was at the corner of the corridor that he had his first shock. From behind a curtain, or through some door which he had not seen, six figures appeared in single file, utterly silent. They looked like Chinese mandarins in wonderful robes of cloth of gold. Their pig-tails swung as they passed.
Christy turned round and winked at Bertram, and then led the way through a noble salon, all gilt and brocade, in the Louis Quinze style. Round the walls were portraits of men and women of the old régime, in white wigs and flowered silks. Immense candelabra, like those at Versailles, were suspended from a ceiling painted with cherubs and naked goddesses.
At the farthest door another unexpected figure stood motionless. It was a Turkish soldier in a red fez, and embroidered sash round blue baggy breeches. Christy passed through the salon, and led the way down another corridor where Bertram was startled again by a man suddenly opening a door, looking out, and shutting it with a bang. In that brief glimpse Bertram had seen an Indian prince, as he seemed, in a high white turban, and robe of cream-coloured silk.
Further down the corridor, another door opened, and a man came right out into the passage. He wore a flannel shirt and pepper-and-salt trousers, with his braces hanging down. His feet were bare, and he was carrying a wine-bottle in one hand and a wet sponge in the other. He looked like a respectable butler in a good English household, retiring for the night. As he passed Christy, he crossed himself with the wine bottle, and squeezed a drop of water out of the sponge on to the polished boards.
“Le diable est mort!” he said, with great joyfulness.
Christy passed into another room, which was an almost exact reproduction of the Louis Quinze salon. A grand piano was open, and a young man without a collar was playing “Three Blind Mice,” with one finger.
“This way,” said Christy.
He pulled back a heavy curtain, opened a door, and led Bertram into a room which might have been a king’s study. It was panelled with oak, and furnished with oak chairs and tables, elaborately carved with Gothic decoration. A marble Venus stood on a high pedestal in the corner of the room, and on one of the tables was a bust of Napoleon. A figure of St. George and the Dragon in coloured marble inlaid with gold, was in front of the window, which looked across the river to the Kremlin.
On an enormous hearth, with iron dogs, some big logs were burning.
Two candles were alight in beer bottles, next to the bust of Napoleon, and in the centre of the room was an iron bedstead and a tin bath.
“Here we are,” said Christy. “Home at last!”
Bertram was silent for a moment, looking unutterable things. Then he asked a series of questions, quietly but firmly.
“Tell me, have I gone raving mad? Or is this a real house in Bolshevik Russia? Who were all those strange people? Or did I only think I saw them?”
“It’s quite all right,” said Christy, soothingly. “I know how you feel, because I’d the jim-jams myself when I first came here. This is the Guest House of the Soviet Republic. It is also infested with theChekaor secret police, who will take down anything you say as evidence against you, as the London Bobbies say, if you speak too loud, and unwisely of dangerous things. It used to be the palace of the Sugar King of Russia. It’s one of the few houses in Moscow which was left untouched by the Revolution.”
“Those Orientals?” asked Bertram.
“A mission from the Far Eastern Republic.”
“That fellow with the wine bottle and the wet sponge?”
“An American newspaper correspondent. Jemmy Hart. One of the best.”
“And the dreamy fellow playing ‘Three Blind Mice’?”
“Kravintzki—one of the bright spirits of the Cheka. His signature is necessary for all executions. That’s why he plays the piano with one finger.”
“I don’t follow that.”
“Not to tire his wrist.”
“Well, now I know!”
He took hold of Christy’s arms and squeezed him tight.
“It’s good to see you again, you ugly old chameleon. Let’s sit and talk. I’ve a thousand things to tell and to ask. Since you left me I’ve been through the Slough of Despond, and the Valley of Doubt. I’m carrying a dead heart in my body. I’m in darkness, and can’t see a ray of light ahead.”
“Well, you’re a cheerful kind of blighter to come to Moscow!” said Christy, with a grin. “You won’t find any rosy hope in the Volga Valley! Nor any blaze of light ’twixt Moscow and Petrograd. But let’s talk in front of the fire. God, how good it is to talk! How good and useless, except to one’s own soul!”
All through the night in a Guest House of Bolshevik Russia, they talked as only men can whose friendship is proved. Bertram spoke a little of Joyce, and learnt that Christy’s wife was dead. They were both lonely men, and glad of this comradeship.
L
Moscow by day was more squalid, but more cheerful, than Moscow by night.
The Kremlin as seen from Bertram’s “billet” in the Sugar King’s palace was still magnificent and glittering under the sun’s rays, but lost some of its mystery and fantasy as he had seen it under moonlight. The streets were no longer deserted, but crowded with every type of Russian life, with Asiatics among them, as they existed after a revolution which had destroyed one of the richest, most luxurious, and most corrupt aristocracies in Europe.
In Europe geographically, but Oriental in character and race. It did not need Christy’s remark, “This is the East and not the West, which explains a lot,” for Bertram to see that. Many of the people in the streets of Moscow were Eastern types, Slav and Tartar, and Semitic. The typical peasants of Moscow had blue eyes and straw-coloured hair, but the flatness of cheek-bone did not belong to Western physiognomy. Some of them were Mongolian in the slant of their eyes, in the blackness of their hair, and the sparseness of their beards. They wore shaggy goatskin caps brought far back behind their heads, with a mass of mangy hair,—distinguished from the fur cap of the usual Russian peasant. Men from the Caucasus, wearing the astrachan fez passed by, with Cossacks of the Don in long black coats, square cut across the shoulders and falling to their feet.
These crowds were tramp-like in their way of dress, careless of rags and broken boots. It was difficult to distinguish any difference of class or caste among them, except that Red Army officers and officials were smarter than the rest, with top boots more weather tight, and fur caps less shaggy. In the coldness of early autumn, when the first snow began to fall, every one in Moscow was muffled up to the ears with shawls or bits of fur, and those who had no boots swathed their legs around with wrapping over sandals or clogs and seemed warm enough, and well enough shod for the mud and slush.
There was no visible sign of hunger in the faces of the passers-by, and the children especially looked fairly plump and healthy, surprisingly well.
“There’s no famine here—yet,” said Christy. “There’s an old proverb, ‘All things roll down to Moscow.’ It holds good now. This is the seat of the Administration. It’s stuffed with Soviet officials. They’ve a call on the supplies of the country. And the kids get first serve. It’s fair to say that.”
Christy was scrupulously fair to the Soviet Republic, and Bertram thought he erred on the side of generosity. He accused him even, though not seriously, of having been “converted” to the black cult of Bolshevism.
But Christy in that long night talk had been illuminating, and impartial. He had studied the Bolshevik theory and practice, as he had seen it working, with a penetrating vision. Theoretically, he thought there was a lot to be said for the Communist idea. What was it, after all, but an endeavour to carry out the commands of Christ to His apostles who had “all things in common”? It was a fanatical revolt against the crimes of Capitalism and Individualism—Sweated Labour, Profiteers, Warmongers, the blackguardism of Trusts, the corruptions and cruelties of Caste.
“We can’t deny these things,” said Christy. “We can’t pretend that all is well with Western civilisation. As we know, Pollard, it stinks with iniquity!”
The Soviet system was simple—in theory. In return for service to the state, the citizen would receive food, shelter, clothing, education, all the elementary needs of life, and even its arts, graces, and amusements. Service to the state was recognised by the membership of a Trade Union. Once a man had his “ticket,” whatever his class of work—it applied, of course, to women too—he drew his ration of food, clothes, and so on, received his opera and theatre passes, was entitled to all the culture and gifts of the state.
“Very much like a soldier in the British Army or any other,” said Christy.
The Soviet Government was made up of a body of men elected as the Central Executive Committee by a series of Soviets starting with the villages and sending one of their members to a big and more important body. They elected members in their turn to still more important groups, until finally the Central Committee was reached.
“Very indirect,” said Bertram.
“Precisely. Not democratic. A weak point in the system. The Central Executive is as far removed from the people as the Greek tyrants.”
Theoretically, however, the idea of common reward for common service, thought Christy, was the ideal towards which mankind had always been groping.
“And actually,” said Bertram, “how has it worked?”
“It hasn’t,” answered Christy. “It’s failed to work, hopelessly. It’s landed them all into an unholy ruin. They admit, with reservations, their own ghastly failure.”
The chief cause of failure, beyond any doubt, was the resistance of the peasant to the system of requisition. To ration every citizen, it was, of course, necessary to commandeer the peasant’s labour and produce. All that he produced over and above his own needs belonged to the State. Red soldiers went down to his farmstead to remind him of the fact, and to collect his grain, potatoes, flax, butter, vegetables, eggs, poultry, and milk. The peasant said, “Why should I sow that others should reap?” He concealed his produce, bartered it secretly for jewels, furs, trinkets, any old thing, with city folk who didn’t find their daily ration enough for daily life. When caught, he was shot or imprisoned. When many had been shot, the others ceased to sow, undercultivated their fields,—even burnt their grain!
This peasant revolt against Communism broke the country, already ruined by war, revolution, and counter-revolutionary armies. The Central Executive could not get their supplies to ration the city folk. Factory workers, not getting food, abandoned the factories for the fields. No more engines could be made or repaired. The transport system broke down. It became more difficult to convey food to the cities. They disintegrated. In Petrograd there were three million people at the beginning of the war. There were now seven hundred and fifty thousand. All industry had ceased. No spades, ploughs, reaping machines could be replaced. The whole machinery of Russian life had collapsed. Now the Famine on the Volga threatening twenty-five million people with starvation, had hit the only class which was comparatively comfortable, the peasants of Russia.
“How much is the famine due to Bolshevism?” asked Bertram.
Christy pondered.
“It’s due to the drought. Last year and this. An act of God, as men say, though I don’t believe it, if there is a God, and He is kind. But its severity was increased by the System. The Bolsheviks requisitioned the peasants’ reserves to feed the Red Army defending Russia against Koltchak, Denikin, Wrangel, and the rest. There were droughts and famines in Russia before. The peasants expected them, and kept reserves of grain for a lean year. Now there are no reserves. In that way Bolshevism is responsible for the famine. But in no other way. Let’s be fair.”
“You’re too damned fair,” said Bertram. “How about the atrocities—the inhuman cruelties—the Chinese tortures?”
Christy lowered his voice. They were talking in the palace of the Sugar King, infested with secret police.
“I’ve no personal knowledge. TheChekakeeps its secrets. There have been many executions—in batches. Men and women, without mercy. Perhaps in Eastern Russia Mongols have done the dirty work. But I’ll say just this—to be fair again. All Governments, especially in time of Revolution, are ruthless against those who challenge their authority and seek to overthrow their power. So it would be in any country in some degree. These people hold their place against hordes of enemies, within and without. They proclaimed the Reign of Terror against all plotters and counter-revolutionaries. Fear made them cruel. Fear made them kill the Czar, as the French killed poor old Louis and Marie Antoinette. Now there are no more counter-revolutions, and the Terror has abated.”
“Why have counter-revolutions ceased?” asked Bertram.
“The people are sick of bloodshed. The game’s too dangerous. And Russia is so stricken that even the last of the old régime, who still linger on in holes and corners, believe that the overthrow of the Soviet Republic would be the last blow to the life of Russia. At least it functions. It makes a train move, now and then. It gets some supplies from the peasants. It sends some seeds to the Volga valley. It works. . . . And it has abandoned Communism.”
“What’s that?” asked Bertram, astounded.
“The whole thing has been scrapped by Lenin, its chief, author and organiser. On October the eighteenth he ‘blew the gaff’ on the whole show, confessed the utter breakdown of the Communist system—for the reasons I’ve given, and some others. ‘We’ve suffered a terrible defeat on the Economic front,’ he said. ‘The only way by which we may save ourselves is by a strategic retreat on prepared positions. He’s restored private property, to a great extent, and the right of private trading, as you’ll see. He has abandoned rationing, and re-established money for wages and payment. The kind of money I paid to ourisvostchiklast night—thedroschkedriver! Four hundred thousand roubles to the English pound. One has to carry a carpet-bag instead of a purse.”
“God!” said Bertram. “An awful mess!”
“The worst mess in the world. The greatest tragedy in modern history. Another experiment in human progress has ended in disaster to a hundred and fifty million people. Famine has stricken them, and will creep even to the edge of Moscow before the winter is out. Pestilence sweeps them like a scourge. And Lenin, in the Kremlin, is trying to think of some way out of ruin. I think he’s found a way, which at least he will try.”
“Tell me.”
Christy lowered his voice still further.
“Alliance with Germany. Red soldiers in exchange for railway engines. Arsenals in return for economic aid. A threat of war to France and Poland, with all the Continent afire, unless Europe comes to her aid. International blackmail.”
“That’s Hell,” said Bertram.
“If it happens,” answered Christy. “You’ve just come in time to see the transition from Communism to Capitalism. You’ll find it interesting before you get down to the Famine. This city is a melodrama, if you keep your eyes open.”
Bertram kept his eyes open, and his ears. Building on Christy’s outline of information, he was able to fill in the details of Russian life from personal observation, and plunged into it.