I
On the very day when the awful disaster to the Russian fleet at
Tsushima was nearing its end, and the first vague and alarming reports
of that bloody triumph of the Japanese were being circulated over
Europe, Staff-Captain Ribnikov, who lived in an obscure alley in the
Pieski quarter, received the following telegram from Irkutsk: _Send
lists immediately watch patient pay debts_.
Staff-Captain Ribnikov immediately informed his landlady that he was
called away from Petersburg on business for a day or two, and told
her not to worry about his absence. Then he dressed himself, left the
house, and never returned to it again.
Only five days had passed when the landlady was summoned to the police
station to give evidence about her missing lodger. She was a tall woman
of forty-five, the honest widow of an ecclesiastical official, and in
a simple and straightforward manner she told all that she knew of him.
Her lodger was a quiet, poor, simple man, a moderate eater, and polite.
He neither drank nor smoked, rarely went out of the house, and had no
visitors. She could say nothing more, in spite of all her respectful
terror of the inspector of gendarmerie, who moved his luxurious
moustaches in a terrifying way and had a fine stock of abuse on hand.
During this five days’ interval Staff-Captain Ribnikov ran or drove
over the whole of Petersburg. Everywhere, in the streets, restaurants,
theatres, tramcars, the railway stations, this dark lame little officer
appeared. He was strangely talkative, untidy, not particularly sober,
dressed in an infantry uniform, with an all-over red collar--a perfect
type of the rat attached to military hospitals, or the commissariat, or
the War Office. He also appeared more than once at the Staff Office,
the Committee for the Care of the Wounded, at police stations, at the
office of the Military Governor, at the Cossack headquarters, and at
dozens of other offices, irritating the officials by his senseless
grumbling and complaints, by his abject begging, his typical infantry
rudeness, and his noisy patriotism. Already every one knew by heart
that he had served in the Army Transport, had been wounded in the head
at Liao-Yang, and touched in the leg in the retreat from Mukden. ‘Why
the devil hasn’t he received a gratuity before now! Why haven’t they
given him his daily money and his travelling expenses! And his last two
months pay! He is absolutely ready to give his last drop of blood--damn
it all--for the Czar, the throne, and the country, and he will return
to the Far East the moment his leg has healed. But the cursed leg
won’t heal--a hundred devils take it. Imagine only--gangrene! Look
yourself----’ and he put his wounded leg on a chair, and was already
eagerly pulling up his trouser; but he was stopped every time by
a squeamish and compassionate shyness. His bustling and nervous
familiarity, his startled, frightened look, which bordered strangely
on impertinence, his stupidity, his persistent and frivolous curiosity
taxed to the utmost the patience of men occupied in important and
terribly responsible scribbling.
In vain it was explained to him in the kindest possible way that he
had come to the wrong place; that he ought to apply at such and such
a place; that he must produce certain papers; that they will let him
know the result. He understood nothing, absolutely nothing. But it was
impossible to be very angry with him; he was so helpless, so easily
scared and simple, and if any one lost patience and interrupted him,
he only smiled and showed his gums with a foolish look, bowed hastily
again and again, and rubbed his hands in confusion. Or he would
suddenly say in a hoarse, ingratiating tone:
‘Couldn’t you give me one small smoke? I’m dying to smoke. And I
haven’t a cent to buy them. “Blessed are the poor.... Poverty’s no
crime,” as they say--but sheer indecency.’
With that he disarmed the most disagreeable and dour officials. He
was given a cigarette, and allowed to sit by the extreme corner of
the table. Unwillingly, and of course in an off-hand way, they would
answer his importunate questions about what was happening at the war.
But there was something very affecting and childishly sincere in the
sickly curiosity with which this unfortunate, grubby, impoverished
wounded officer of the line followed the war. Quite simply, out of mere
humanity, they wanted to reassure, to inform, and encourage him; and
therefore they spoke to him more frankly than to the rest.
His interest in everything which concerned Russo-Japanese events was
so deep that while they were making some complicated inquiry for him
he would wander from room to room, and table to table, and the moment
he caught a couple of words about the war he would approach and listen
with his habitual strained and silly smile.
When he finally went away, as well as a sense of relief he would leave
a vague, heavy and disquieting regret behind him. Often well-groomed,
dandified staff-officers referred to him with dignified acerbity:
‘And that’s a Russian officer! Look at that _type_. Well, it’s pretty
plain why we’re losing battle after battle. Stupid, dull, without the
least sense of his own dignity--poor old Russia!’
During these busy days Captain Ribnikov took a room in a dirty little
hotel near the railway station.
Though he had with him a Reserve officer’s proper passport, for some
reason he found it necessary to declare that his papers were at
present in the Military Governor’s office. Into the hotel he took his
things, a hold-all containing a rug and pillow, a travelling bag, and a
cheap, new box, with some underclothing and a complete outfit of mufti.
Subsequently, the servants gave evidence that he used to come to the
hotel late and as if a little the worse for drink, but always regularly
gave the door porter twopence for a tip. He never used to sleep more
than three or four hours, sometimes without undressing. He used to get
up early and pace the room for hours. In the afternoon he would go off.
From time to time he sent telegrams to Irkutsk from various post
offices, and all the telegrams expressed a deep concern for some one
wounded and seriously ill, probably a person very dear to the captain’s
heart.
It was with this same curious busy, uncouth man that Vladimir Ivanovich
Schavinsky, a journalist on a large Petersburg paper, once met.