INTERLUDE
I
Take your atlas, find Siberia, locate Vladivostok in the northwest
corner of the Japan Sea and trace your finger inland. Follow the
Trans-Siberian railroad. One branch will travel upward along the Amur
River, as though in the United States the traveler started from Boston,
went northward and down the St. Lawrence, to reach Buffalo. Another
branch of the Trans-Siberian drops in a southwesterly direction toward
Harbin, Manchuria, then up to Chita, away across the steppes to Lake
Baikal and beyond, thousands of miles beyond, almost in a straight line
into European Russia. Transposing Vladivostok for Boston, Harbin would
be Binghamton, Chita would be Buffalo, Lake Baikal would be Lake
Michigan, Irkutsk would be Chicago. Further west Omsk would be Lincoln,
Nebraska, Ekaterinburg would be Denver, the Urals would be the Rockies,
Petrograd would be San Francisco, Moscow would be Los Angeles. The
geographical similarity of the two countries is extraordinary. Only
Siberian distances are three times as great and Siberian populations
one-thirtieth as large.
If any lasting gain is totaled from the great Russian bedlam, emphasized
in it prominently must be the opening of Siberia to the world. As boys
and girls, and even as grown men and women, we thought of Siberia as an
arctic waste of snow and ice, ravaged by man-hunting wolves, dotted with
world-lost exile mines, peopled by a strange semi-barbaric race in fur
and lambskin and dwelling in half-real dusk beneath the bondage of the
knout.
It is only the winter picture which has come to us; then only such a
picture as a Russian traveler in America might carry home by describing
conditions around a Hudson Bay trading post in late January.
Siberia is a pleasant, smiling land, a land of sunshine and blue
distances, of green fields and wild flowers. It is a land of bowered
forests, baked prairies, heat-soaked deserts, babbling brooks, plashing,
purling rivers.
And the eye of mortal man since Eden has never gazed upon such sunsets!
It has great cities with paved streets, electric car lines, pretentious
stores, massive theaters, imposing mansions. And a high-caste Siberian
Tartar knows how to make his residence imposing. Many of the great
railroad stations, when lighted and viewed at a distance by night,
resemble the marble halls which come to us in dreams. But alas, Siberia
has its little earth-lost country villages—its “small towns” too—its
Podunk Corners and its Gilberts Mills, its East Gileads and its Hastings
Crossings. Russian writers have dwelt unduly upon peasant life in these
earth-lost villages—as though an American Tolstoi drew a picture of
contemporaneous American life solely from Rupert Hughes’s “Carthage” or
Sinclair Lewis’s “Gopher Prairie”, eliminating and ignoring entirely
Boston, New York, Palm Beach, New Orleans, San Francisco. There are many
intermediate steps in Russian living between six log huts clustered on a
prairie where half-wild males and females rear families like animals,
and the Imperial Ballet at St. Petersburg or the Grand Mosque at Moscow,
as both existed before the cataclysm.
In the heart of Eastern Siberia is Great Baikal, a lake sixty miles long
and twenty to thirty miles wide. On the northwest corner of this lake,
back on the Irkut River, lies the city of Irkutsk. In size it compares
with Springfield, Massachusetts, or Cincinnati, Ohio. The river flows
through the metropolis. The railroad station and freight yards are set
upon the western bank, the main part of the city upon the eastern.
Connecting the two is a dilapidated floating bridge of gray,
weather-beaten, flood-racked timbers.
Irkutsk was the farthest western point reached by Japanese or Yankee
troops in the recent Intervention. From Irkutsk westward to the Urals,
the Germans were checkmated from shipping submarines in sections across
the Trans-Siberian for submersion in the Japan Sea and “unrestricted”
warfare in the Pacific, by a stout little army of pro-Ally Slavs who
should have a place in history with Ulysses on his Odyssey and Leonidas
at the Pass.
From Russian internment camps under Kerensky “the Talker”, the
Czecho-slovaks—pronounced “Checko-slow-vacks”—started for France, via
Siberia, Japan, America, the Atlantic. The Germans, through Lenine,
heard and said they should not go. France said they should go and
supplied the money. The Czechs were willing, eager, to go. So they
fought their way forward, holding the Trans-Siberian as they moved, to
journey no farther than Vladivostok.
But there were no _Lusitania_ horrors in the Pacific.
II
Far down the southern end of the Irkutsk railroad yards on a muddy night
in September, 1918, three men in khaki sat in a caboose freight car
around a small sheet-iron stove. Upon a near-by shelf-table, a lone
candle burned in an empty bottle.
The interior of the car was warm but sordid. Living utensils and army
paraphernalia were strewn around, with scraps of food. In an alcove
behind, two rumpled bunks showed indistinctly. Outside the wind was
blowing, bringing down the febrile, incessant tootings of locomotive
switchers up the yards, where swarthy engineers in lambskin hats
signaled their yardmen with maximum of noise and blunder.
They were lean-jawed, copper-faced men with khaki shirts torn open
roughly at their throats. One had the insignia of the United States
Engineering Corps (officially known as the “Stevens Mission”) on his
pocket. The others were Red Triangle “secretaries.” And the air was blue
with their pipe smoke. They talked horrors which will never be written
in books.
A pause came in their conversation. The locomotive blasts died down. For
a time the silence was so deep the only sound was the crackle of the
flames in the stove or a meditative tapping of a briar-stem against the
smaller man’s teeth. The deepness of that silence was suddenly disturbed
by a noise. It was a noise like a cry. It was followed by a thud. Some
one had fallen on the outside steps.
A burly young fellow from Scranton, Pennsylvania, in charge of the Y.
train at the moment, leapt up and opened the door. “What do you want?”
he cried irritably into the dark. Some drunken trainman was probably
after “_pappyroose_”—Russian cigarettes—again.
“Give me a hand, will you? This is the Y. car, isn’t it? I’m—all—in!”
“My God!” cried the Y. man. “It’s a Yank!”
They helped the stranger into the car. The door was closed, shutting out
the murky night. The stranger sank on an inverted box by the wall shelf
and for a minute leaned his forehead over on his wrist. Then he raised a
gaunt, haggard face and looked at each man in turn.
The three saw a fellow countryman of twenty-eight or thirty who might
have come through the well-known Inferno as amanuensis for the late Mr.
Dante. His uniform was foul with grease, dried mud, stains of origin
beyond explanation. His eyes were deep-sunken. Hair fell an inch over
his collar. His thin beard was stringy and ragged. He wore an old
Russian hat with a great chunk of the lamb-wool missing in front.
“I just got in,” he said, “train pulled in a few minutes ago—haven’t
eaten anything for two days—rode for the past forty-eight hours packed
away in a dark berth behind two stinking Chinamen. Who’s got
a—cigarette?”
Three pairs of hands began frantically fumbling in six pairs of pockets.
“What’s your name, ’bo? Where’ve you come from—now?”
“Forge is my name—Nat Forge. I’ve just come through from—from—Moscow.”
_Crack!_ One of the briars had fallen to the floor and the hard-rubber
stem had broken in two pieces.
“Forge? Nat Forge? God in heaven! Are you—the fellow—that started in
toward Moscow with Dick Wiley a year ago? Where’s Wiley?”
“Dead,” responded Nat simply. “They shot him. Let me have that
cigarette.”
They got him his cigarette. They got him many cigarettes. They rolled
them for him as fast as he could smoke them, meeting each other’s eyes
blankly. The fellow from Scranton dug around in his boxes and cartons
for food. The fire was poked in thick silence. A battered pot was set
thereon. Coffee was sifted in from a scoop of open fingers down in a
bag.
They finally set food before him. They had sense enough not to prod the
famished, emaciated man with damfool questions until he had partially
recovered his strength.
“War? Gad, boys—I’ve seen enough war! You guys at this end of the
country don’t know anything about it. This is the first square meal I’ve
eaten in seven months. I mean it. Seven months. Since last February when
we left Omsk, going east.”
It was pathetic, the way he ate that food. A square meal!
“You been in Moscow—ever since?”
“No. We reached Moscow, turned right round and walked right out again.
I’ve been with the Czechs at Kolybelsk. I’m on my way out—to Harbin or
Vladivostok—to see if I can’t hustle along some supplies. Medical
supplies. They’re chopping off arms and legs down there with butcher
knives and no anesthetics.”
Ten minutes had elapsed before more was spoken. The sudden introduction
of food into the man’s weakened vitals distressed him. He drank cup
after cup of the vile coffee. But it was hot. Heat was what counted.
Then more cigarettes. Eleven of them.
“I know my clothes must smell like hell, boys, but if you’d seen what
I’ve been thrown among, coming across from——”
“I’ve got an extra outfit you can change into,” offered the man from
Scranton. “Jake, turn some fresh water into that kettle and put it on.
Forge’ll want to shave.”
“Yes,” said Nat, with a choke of emotion at being among his countrymen
again. “And which of you boys is a barber? Some one’s got to harvest
this hair. Nothing fancy. Anything to get it off.”
Nat took a sponge bath, nude at one side before them, at the huge
samovar. He changed into clean garments. He removed his stringy beard
with scissors and shaved his face. His hair was sheared. He came back
and sat down at the stove.
“When did they shoot Wiley? What for?”
“They shot him at Krasnoyek. We got there in the rainy dark. We were on
our way back toward Ekaterinburg. Something was the matter with his
papers—a ‘t’ wasn’t crossed or an ‘i’ dotted somewhere. He was standing
within three feet of me—without a word they asked him to step aside—an
official pumped four bullets from an automatic into his chest and
stomach before he knew what it was all about—he looked at me in
surprise—sort of sickly—he just sank down to a sitting posture on the
ground, holding himself up on a stiffened arm, his other hand at his
stomach—then he laid his forehead down on his wrist—he never spoke a
word—just died. God damn this bloody country and all the low-browed
fiends in it! It’s getting just what it deserves—my papers happened to
be all right—thank the Lord for tobacco—how long you fellows been here,
anyhow—and for the love of Mike, tell me what’s happening in France?”
III
The Americans were “doing things” in France. The German steam-roller had
smashed head-on into another steam-roller and the second steam-roller
had not been the one reduced to pig iron.
“We’re givin’ ’em hell!” informed the Stevens man. “Consulate here got a
long wire this morning. We’re hangin’ our dirty shirts on the Hindenburg
line and pepperin’ Chinless Willy’s pants with buckshot so he looks like
a country signboard.”
“Down where we were, not a word’s come through since the fuss at
Château-Thierry. Won that, didn’t we?”
“Won it? Won it? Think the Yanks come across to hold a tea party, maybe?
God! They’re only stoppin’ the slaughter o’ Huns when their rifles get
hot and plug. This war’s goin’ to be over by Christmas, I’d almost be
willin’ to bet by Thanksgiving. I hear there was one time they ordered
the Yanks to retire but the order to retire couldn’t catch up with ’em
fast enough so they used it to wipe German blood off their pants. And
went out and killed a few thousand more before supper just to call it a
day! You been out here since it first started, ain’t you?”
“Wiley and I came up a year ago last July. A year ago last July!
Fellows, it seems like—it seems like—eighteen years!”
They were very sober. They understood.
“And what do you hear from America—home?”
They told him all they had heard from America and—home.
At eleven o’clock that night, Nathan was still talking.
“——in those get-away trains from Moscow the poor devils were even
hanging to the locomotives—like flies—some standing on the red-hot
piston boxes, gripping the cow-catchers. They slammed us into a freight
car and locked us in—pitch dark!—men and women, Lord it didn’t make any
difference who or what we were!—two hundred and twenty-one of us slammed
in a _tepluska_, crammed so tightly we couldn’t raise our hands to our
shoulders—twenty-four hours of it—agony just standing up, and when we
couldn’t stand up any longer we just sagged on those about us—they took
out seventy-eight corpses when they finally unlocked the door and let us
out—rode with a dead woman pushed so hard into my right side her cold
body hurt my ribs—she was a well-dressed woman too; her fur boa kept
tickling my ear—and the typhus down there! What do you hear from the Red
Cross? Any trains come out this way?”
“Doc Seaver and Cleeve are headed this way with a train. The Consulate
expects them some time the last of next week.”
Nathan leaned forward with his face in his hands.
“Thirty million dead in Russia since the bust started—think of it,
fellows—thirty million! That’s an awful mass of dead bodies.”
“Yes,” said the Scranton man tersely. And the railroad man observed,
“I’m natcherly a peaceable yap. But for once, if they’d lynch that dam’
Kaiser, believe me, I’d pull on the rope!”
“Amen!” said the small man who had not spoken.
“I wonder what the chances are for getting transportation through to
Vladivostok? Lord, I’ve got to get through! Those poor devils off there
at ‘Cold-belly’ as we called it, are dying like flies, just for bandages
and disinfectant.”
“Better go over to the Consulate in the morning and ask Thompson. He’ll
know. There’s a he-man.” This from the engineer.
“They run a string of ‘empties’ through to Harbin for supplies about
once a week,” added the chap from Scranton. “There’s a consular courier
named Roach going out when the next one starts. Maybe you could kick in
with him.”
IV
Hartshorn, the Scranton man, offered Nat the upper bunk in the caboose
car that night. And Nathan crawled in between blankets for the first
time in weeks.
It was very easy to think, lying awake there in the dark. But Nathan did
not want to think. He wanted to forget—forget quickly.
Yet he did think.
One great, vital fact stood out white-hot above all other facts in his
consciousness—_he was alive!_ He wasn’t out of the mêlée yet. But to
date he was alive! A year had passed—gone like a terrific nightmare. And
he was alive. Alive, alive, alive! He couldn’t get over that stunning
realization.
There were days and even weeks in that year which were blurred. His mind
had been so filled with impressions that it had absolutely refused to
absorb any more. Oh, how picayune all his introspection, his love
affairs, his family troubles, his Golgotha of small-town life had been
back home, compared with life stripped stark naked as he had seen it out
here! He seemed to be living now in another incarnation. He was not—he
couldn’t be—the same fellow who had once lived in the Pine Street house
with Milly, who had read poetry with old Caleb Gridley, who had drummed
the trade from Wilkes-Barre up to Syracuse for the Thorne Mills, selling
dozens and grosses of ladies’ and misses’ “thirty-sixes” and
“forty-fours” and “spring-needle union suits with reënforced seats.”
How different life would appear when he got back—if he ever did get
back!
What was his mother doing at this moment, Edith with her increasing
family, Ted Thorne, myself? The boy’s mind grew sluggish; vague thoughts
trooped helter-skelter across the filmy playground of his brain: Main
Street, Paris—the Élite Bakery and Lunch Room with smoky ham-and-eggs
frying at the back—the rumbling roll of the door in the box-shop that
opened out upon the shipping platform—shaking down the furnace the last
thing before going to bed in the Preston Hill home—Milly’s
bake-bean-flavored pantry of a Sunday morning and most of the beans
burned in the pot on top—how the March wind washed through the bare tree
limbs the night he had sat in the dark and caught Milly with
Plumb—Bernie Gridley’s colorless face bathed in blue cigarette smoke as
her forked eyes impaled him that night in Chicago—a girl raised just
above him in a hotel window, a girl with a clear-cut profile and calm
eyes—queer, indeed, the things that stick in a man’s mind across the
months and years!
He fell asleep. But he was alive!
He was headed out toward Vladivostok and when the war was ended, he
would go back to—what?
His disordered imagination, twisted and wracked by the horrors he had
witnessed, bathed him in icy sweat all night.
Milly tied hand and foot to a rail fence, a big cavalry officer in front
of her with a saber—little Mary crying across a vast space, tiny hands
blood-smeared—his father crawling along railroad tracks with eyes seared
out, holding to the ties in hope of some one picking him up—his mother
sitting in the midst of multitudinous household goods and wanting him to
listen while she told him what the Germans had done! All night
long!—horrible specters! handless, headless! Then along toward morning
the girl of the hotel window, the girl of the calm eyes, leaning out of
that window, reaching a hand down toward him, telling him not to
mind—the fellow who had been her escort had gone—she was not his wife!
She had never been his wife! Wouldn’t he find his way in at the door and
finish the meal with her——
He awoke with some one’s hand upon his shoulder. A bleary-eyed face was
close to a candle beside the bunk.
“For Heaven’s sake, Forge, old man—what’s the trouble? You’ve been
groaning horribly the last five hours. It’s almost more than a fellow
can stand, to hear you.”
“It’s all that coffee I drank,” apologized Nat. “I shouldn’t have taken
so much. I’m sorry!”
But it was not the coffee.
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