SAVED BY A MIRACLE
The investigation committee finally appeared in the distance. Petrukhin
was leading it. There were all the twelve members present, the two
absentees apparently having joined the other ten.
“You see, how kind we are,” some of the soldiers said. “We are having
the committee present at your execution.”
Not one of us answered.
“We have all been to see Sablin, the Commander-in-Chief,” Petrukhin
announced as soon as he approached near enough to Pugatchov. “He said
that Botchkareva would have to be shot, but not necessarily now and
with this group.”
A ray of hope was kindled in my soul.
“Nothing of the sort!” Pugatchov bawled angrily. “What’s the matter
here? Why this delay? The list is already made up.”
The soldiers supported Pugatchov.
“Shoot her! Finish her now! What’s the use of bothering with her
again!” cried the men.
But just as Pugatchov guessed that Petrukhin had obtained the delay in
the hope of saving me, so the latter had realized that spoken words
would not be sufficient to secure the fulfilment of his order. He had
provided himself with a note from Sablin.
“Here is an order from the Commander-in-Chief,” Petrukhin declared,
pulling out a paper. “It says that Botchkareva shall be taken to my
compartment in the railway carriage and kept there under guard.”
Pugatchov jumped up as if he had been stung. But the committee now
rallied to the support of Petrukhin, maintaining that orders were
orders, and that I should be executed later.
Not the least interested spectator of the heated discussion was myself.
The officers followed the argument breathlessly, too. The soldiers
grumbled. The forces of life and death struggled within me. Now the
first would triumph, now the second, depending on the turn of the
quarrel.
“That won’t do!” shouted Pugatchov, thrusting aside the order of the
Commander-in-Chief. “It’s too late for orders like that. We will shoot
her! Enough of talking!”
At this moment I became aware that one of the two newly-arrived members
of the committee was staring at me intently. He took a couple of steps
toward me, bent his head sideways and fixed his eyes on me. There was
something about that look that electrified me. As the man, who was a
common soldier, craned his neck forward and stepped out of the group, a
strange silence gripped everybody, so affected were all by the painful
expression on his face.
“A-r-e y-o-u Y-a-s-h-k-a?” he sang out slowly.
“How do you know me?” I asked quickly, almost overpowered by a
presentiment of salvation.
“Don’t you remember how you saved my life in that March offensive, when
I was wounded in the leg and you dragged me out of the mud under fire?
My name is Peter. I should have perished there, in the water, and many
others like me, if not for you. Why do they want to shoot you now?”
“Because I am an officer,” I replied.
“What conversations are you holding here?” Pugatchov thundered. “She
will have to be shot, and no arguments!”
“And I won’t allow her to be shot!” my God-appointed saviour answered
back firmly, and walked up to me, seized my arm, pulled me out of my
place, occupying it himself.
“You will shoot me first!” he exclaimed. “She saved my life. She saved
many of our lives. The entire Fifth Corps knows Yashka. She is a common
peasant like myself, and understands no politics. If you shoot her, you
will have to shoot me first!”
This speech put new life into me. It also touched the hearts of many in
the crowd.
Petrukhin went up, took a place beside Peter and myself, and declared:
“You will shoot me, too, before you execute an innocent, suffering
woman!”
The soldiers were now divided. Some shouted, “Let’s shoot her and make
an end of this squabble! What’s the use of arguments?”
Others were more human. “She is not of the bourgeoisie, but a common
peasant like ourselves,” they argued. “And she does not understand
politics. Perhaps she really was going to seek a cure. She was not
captured, but came to us of her own accord, we must not forget that.”
For some time the place was transformed into a debating-ground. It
was a strange scene for a debate. There were the hundreds of bodies
scattered round us. There were the twenty of us in our under-garments
awaiting death. Of the twenty only I had a chance for life. The
remaining nineteen held themselves stoically erect. No hope stirred
within them. No miracle could save them. And amidst all this a hundred
Russian soldiers, a quarter of an hour before all savages, now half of
them with a spark of humanity in their breasts, were debating!
The members of the committee finally recovered their wits and took
charge of the situation. Turning to Pugatchov, they declared:
“Now we have an order here from the Commander-in-Chief, and it shall be
obeyed. We are going to take her away.”
They closed about me and I was marched out of the line and off the
field. Pugatchov was in a white rage, raving like a madman, grinding
his teeth. As we walked away, his brutal voice roared:
“Fire at the knees!”
A volley rang out. Immediately cries and groans filled the air. Turning
my head, I saw the savages rush upon the heap of victims with their
bayonets, digging them deep into the bodies of my companions of a few
minutes before, and crushing the last signs of life out of them with
their heels.
It was frightful, indescribably frightful. The moans were so
penetrating, so blood-curdling that I staggered, fell to the ground my
full length, and swooned.
For four hours I remained unconscious. When I came to, I was in a
compartment of a railway coach. Petrukhin sat by me, holding my hand,
and weeping.
When I thought of the circumstances that had led to my fainting, the
figure of Pugatchov swam up before my eyes, and I took an oath there
and then to kill him at the first opportunity, if I escaped from the
Bolshevik trap.
Petrukhin then told me that Peter had aroused such compassion for me
among the members of the Investigation Committee that they had agreed
to go with him to Sablin, and petition the Commander-in-Chief to send
me to Moscow for trial by a military tribunal. About fifty soldiers
were also won over to my side by Peter’s accounts of Yashka’s work in
the trenches and No Man’s Land, and of my reputation among all the men.
Petrukhin had remained at my bedside till I recovered consciousness,
but he now wished to join the deputation. I thanked him gratefully for
his kindness towards me and his desperate efforts to save my life.
Before he left, word reached him that Pugatchov had incited some of the
men against me, threatening to kidnap and lynch me before I was taken
away. Petrukhin placed five loyal friends of his at my compartment,
with orders not to surrender me at any cost.
I prayed to God for Petrukhin, and hearing my prayer he said:
“Now, I, too, believe in God. The appearance of this man, Peter, was
truly miraculous. In spite of all my efforts, you would have been
executed but for him.”
“But what are my chances of escaping death now?” I asked.
“They are still very small,” he answered. “Your record is against you.
You do not deny being a friend of Kornilov. Your strict discipline in
the Battalion and your fighting the Germans at a time when the whole
front was fraternizing, are known here. Besides, the death penalty
has become so customary here that it would be very unusual for one to
escape it. Only the other day a physician and his wife, on their way
to Kislovodsk to the springs, somehow arrived in Zverevo. They were
arrested, attached to a party about to be shot, and executed without
any investigation. Afterwards papers from their local Soviet were found
in their clothes, certifying that they were actually ill, the physician
suffering from a cancer, and requesting that they should be allowed to
proceed to Kislovodsk.”
Petrukhin kissed my hand, and left, warning me:
“Wait here till I return. Nobody will harm you in my absence.”
He locked the door behind him. I took out the little bottle of holy
water, given to me by my youngest sister, Nadia, and drank it. On my
knees before the little icon, I prayed long and devoutly to God, Jesus,
and the Holy Mother. My ears caught a noise outside the car: it came
from several menacing soldiers who wanted to get in and kill me on the
spot. I prayed with greater fervour than before, pleading for my life
in the name of my mother, my father and my little sister. My heart was
heavy with sorrow and despair.
As I was hugging the little icon, tears streaming from my eyes, I
suddenly heard a voice, a very tender voice, say to me:
“Your life will be saved.”
I was alone in the compartment. I realize that it is a daring statement
to make. I do not seek to make any one believe it. It may be accepted
or not. But I am satisfied that I did hear the voice of a divine
messenger. It was soothing, elevating. Suddenly I felt happy and calm.
I thanked the Almighty for His boundless grace and vowed to have a
public prayer offered at the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour at
the first opportunity, in commemoration of His miraculous message to me.
Then I fell asleep, and rested calmly till the arrival of Petrukhin.
His face was wreathed in smiles, he clasped my hand joyfully, saying:
“Thank God! Thank God! You are at least saved from the mob. Sablin
has ordered you to be sent to Moscow. The necessary papers are being
prepared now.”
At this point Peter came in, followed by some members of the
investigation committee. All were happy. It was a wonderful moment.
How an act of humanity transforms men’s countenances! Peter and his
comrades congratulated me, and I was too overcome to express all the
gratefulness that I felt toward these men.
Petrukhin then narrated how he had dealt with the infuriated soldiers,
who had clamoured for my life. He told them that I was being led
away to Moscow in the hope that I would there deliver up several
counter-revolutionary Generals, associated with Kornilov.
“Will she be shot afterwards?” they inquired.
“Of course,” Petrukhin declared. The lynchers went away satisfied.
I was curious to know what would be done to me in Moscow. Petrukhin
replied to my inquiries that among the papers relating to my case,
which my escort would take with them to Moscow, the chief document
was the protocol. That protocol had been drawn up by himself, in the
capacity of chairman of the Investigation Committee. He described in it
how I had lost my way while going to Kislovodsk, getting stranded at
Zverevo, and how I had reported of my own free will to the authorities,
adding that I had with me a ticket to Kislovodsk, an invitation from
Princess Tatuyeva to come to the Caucasus, _and a certificate from a
physician certifying to my ill-health_. The last was, of course, an
invention. Petrukhin sent the ticket and the letter from Tiflis, adding
that he had misplaced the physician’s certificate and would send it on
later.
“It is unlikely,” he said to me, “that you would be punished with death
in the face of such evidence. I should expect your release, sooner or
later. But in any event, here is a poison pill. I prepared it for you
originally to take in case the mob got their way, so that you should
escape torture at the hands of these savages. I hope you will not need
to resort to it in Moscow.”
I still carry with me that poison pill wherever I go....
Petrukhin gave me forty roubles for expenses, as I was penniless. I
thanked him and asked him to write a letter to my people, telling them
where I was. We then took leave of one another. Petrukhin and Peter
exchanged kisses with me, and I again and again reiterated how much I
owed to them, swearing that in any future emergency, whatever happened,
I would always be ready to do everything within my power for them. We
all realized that many a change was still in store for Mother Russia,
before she settled down to a peaceful existence.
Accompanied by my friends and surrounded by four armed guards, forming
my escort, I was led to an empty railway coach, attached to an engine.
On this train, consisting of cattle-trucks and my coach, I was taken to
Nikitino. There I was brought before the Commandant, with a request to
provide accommodation for the party on an ordinary train. It was the
very Commandant who had helped me so generously to get to Zverevo on
the munition train. Of course, he did not recognize the Sister of Mercy
in Botchkareva.
On the platform I had another striking encounter. The news that
Botchkareva had been seized and was being taken to Moscow became known
in the station and a number of Red Guards and soldiers gathered about
me, showering upon me insults, curses and threats. Among these, in the
foremost rank, was the repulsive-looking man who was in charge of the
train on which I went to Zverevo and who had proposed marriage to me.
The beast did not recognize me now. He sneered in my face, and
repeated my name syllable by syllable, taking a peculiar joy in
distorting it and railing generally at my appearance and reputation.
“The slut! We have got her, the harlot!” he raved. “Only I can’t
understand why they didn’t shoot her there. Why bother with such a
slut!”
I could not help laughing. I laughed long, without restraint. It was
so amusing. I was almost tempted to disclose to him how I had duped
him. He still has no idea that Alexandra Smirnova, whose fictitious
address at Kislovodsk he, in all probability, cherishes yet, was Maria
Botchkareva!
For three days I travelled with my escort from Nikitino to Moscow. I
was treated with consideration, but always as a prisoner. The guards
would get food for me and themselves at the stations on the way. Upon
our arrival at Moscow I was taken in a motor-car to the Soldiers’
Section of the Soviet, established in what was formerly the Governor’s
mansion. My guards delivered me to a civilian, with all the documents
of the case, and left.
“What, coming from Kornilov?” the official asked me gruffly.
“No, I was on my way to take the cure at Kislovodsk,” I replied.
“Ah, yes, we know those cures! What about the epaulets? Why did you
take them off?”
“Because I am a plain peasant woman. I have defended my country bravely
for three years. I am not guilty.”
“Well, we will see about that later,” he interrupted and ordered me to
be led away to prison.
I was locked up in a small cell, in which there were already about
twenty prisoners, officers and civilians, all arrested by agents
who had overheard them talk against the Bolshevik régime! A fine
reincarnation of the worst methods of Tsarism.
The cell was in a frightful condition. There was no lavatory in it,
and the inmates were not permitted to leave the room! The stench was
indescribable. The men smoked incessantly. The prisoners were not even
allowed to take the short, daily promenade outside, which was granted
by the old régime.
Apparently in order to make me confess, I was subjected to a new form
of torture, never practised by the Tsar’s jailers. I was denied food!
For three days I did not receive even the niggardly ration given to the
other prisoners. My companions were all kind to me, but the portions
that they received were barely enough to sustain life in their own
bodies. So for three days and three nights, I lay on the bunk, in a
heap under a cover, on the point of suffocation, starved, feverish, and
thirsty, as no water was allowed me.
During these days the Commandant of the prison, a sailor, would come in
several times daily to torment me with his tongue.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“What? You will be shot!” was his answer.
“Why?”
“Ha, ha. Because you are a friend of Kornilov’s.”
Those were the hours when I hugged the pill given me by Petrukhin,
expecting every moment an order to face a firing squad.
Soon one of the arrested officers, who had been caught cursing
Bolshevism while drunk, was set free. Before he went some of his
companions intrusted him with messages to their relatives. I thought
of the Vasilievs, who had so kindly taken me from the hospital to
their home in the autumn of 1916, and begged the officer to visit them
and tell them of my plight. He promised to do so and carried out his
pledge. I sent them a message that I expected to be executed and asked
their help.
When Daria Maximovna got the message she was horrified and immediately
set out to get permission to see me. But when she called at the
Soldiers’ Section for a pass to see Botchkareva, she was taken for a
friend of Kornilov’s and would have been badly mauled if not for the
fact that her son Stepan, who had belonged to my Company and who had
brought about the friendship between his mother and myself, was now one
of the Bolshevik chiefs. Daria Maximovna cried out that she was the
mother of Stepan Vasiliev, of such and such a department, and he was
brought to identify his mother.
This rescued her from a severe punishment. She appealed to her son to
intervene in my behalf, but he refused, saying that he could not come
to the aid of an avowed friend of Kornilov’s. He, however, obtained a
pass to my cell for his mother. Later he responded to her entreaties
and did say a few good words for me, telling the proper authorities
that I was a simple peasant woman with no understanding of politics.
On the fourth day of my imprisonment I received a quarter of a pound of
bread, some tea and two cubes of sugar. The bread was black, consisting
partly of straw. I could not even touch it and had to satisfy myself
with three cups of tea. Later in the day a sailor came in, and,
addressing me as comrade, informed me that one Vasilieva was waiting to
see me. I was weak, so weak that I could not move a few feet without
assistance. As soon as I got up and made a step, I sank back on the bed
in a helpless condition.
“Are you ill?” the sailor asked.
“Yes,” I murmured.
He took me by the arm and led me to a chair in the office. I was bathed
in perspiration after the little walk and so dizzy that I could not
see anything. When Daria Maximovna saw me she fell on my neck and wept.
Turning to the officials, she cried out bitterly:
“How could you ever have such a woman arrested and subjected to
torture? A woman who was so kind to the soldiers, and suffered so much
for your own brothers!”
She then opened a package, took out some bread and butter, and handed
them to me with these words:
“Manka, here is a quarter of a pound of bread. All we got to-day was
three-eighths of a pound. And this is a quarter of a pound of butter,
our entire ration.”
I was full of gratitude to this dear woman and her children, who
had sacrificed their own portions for me. The bread was good. The
difficulty was, according to Daria Maximovna, to get enough for them
all. Even their meagre ration was not always obtainable.
I then told her my troubles and the punishment I was expecting, begging
her to write to my mother in case of my execution.
I spent two weeks in that abominable cell before I was taken before
the tribunal. I was marched along the Tverskaya, Moscow’s chief
thoroughfare, and recognized on the way by the crowds. The tribunal was
quartered in the Kremlin. For a couple of hours I waited there, at the
end of which time I was surprised to see Stepan Vasiliev come in and
approach me.
“Marusia, how did you ever get into this?” he asked me, shaking my hand
and inviting me to sit down.
I told him the story of my going to Kislovodsk to take the cure.
“But how did you ever get to Zverevo?” he inquired.
“I had a ticket to Kislovodsk. I did not know that Zverevo was such a
forbidden place. Once they sold me a ticket, I thought it all right to
follow the regular route,” I answered excitedly.
“I spent a couple of hours yesterday examining your case and the
documents relating to it, but I could not quite understand how you got
to Zverevo,” Stepan said. “Perhaps you really did go to see Kornilov?”
“I do not deny my friendship for Kornilov,” I declared, glad at heart
that Stepan had turned up in such a position of authority. “But you
know that I am almost illiterate and understand no politics and do
not mix with any party. I fought in the trenches for Russia and it is
Mother Russia alone that interests me. All Russians are my brothers.”
Stepan answered that he knew of my ignorance of political matters. He
then went out to report to the tribunal, and shortly afterwards I was
called in. There were six men, all common soldiers, seated at a long
table covered with a green cloth, in the middle of a large hall, richly
decorated. I was asked to sit down and tell my story, and how I got
into Zverevo. The six judges were all young men, not one of them over
thirty.
I was about to rise from the chair to tell my story, but was very
courteously asked to remain seated. I then told of my wound in the
back, of the operation that I still needed for the extraction of a
piece of shell, and of my consulting a Petrograd physician who had
advised me to go to the Springs at Kislovodsk. I said that I had heard
of the fighting between Kornilov and the Bolsheviks, at Novotcherkask,
but had no idea what a civil war was like and had never thought of
a front in such a struggle. I, therefore, continued my journey to
Nikitino, where the Commandant had sent me on to Zverevo. Of course, I
failed to mention the fact that the Commandant had sent on to Zverevo,
not Botchkareva, but Smirnova, a Sister of Mercy. I concluded with the
statement that as soon as I reached Zverevo I realized that I was in a
dangerous situation, and had surrendered to the local authorities.
I was informed that it would take a week for my case to be cleared
up and a decision reached. Instead of sending me to the Butirka, the
prison in which I had spent the last two weeks, I was taken to the
military guard house, opposite the Soldiers’ Section. Drunken sailors
and Red Guards were usually confined there. The room in which I was put
was narrow and long, the windows were large but closely grated. There
were about ten prisoners in it.
“Ah, Botchkareva! Look who’s here!”
I was met with these words as soon as I crossed the threshold. They
quickly turned into phrases of abuse and ridicule. I was quiet, and
sought seclusion and rest in a corner, but in vain. The inmates were
Bolsheviks of the lowest sort, degenerates and former criminals. I was
the object of their constant ill-treatment, so that torturing me day
and night became their diversion. If I tried to sleep, I soon found
some one near me. When I ate or drank, the beasts assembled about
me, showering insults on me and playing dirty tricks. Weeping had no
effect on them. Night after night I was forced to stay awake, sometimes
throwing myself upon an intruder with my teeth in an effort to drive
him away. I implored the warder to give me a cell to myself.
“Let it be a cold, gloomy hole. Give me no food. But take me away from
these drunken brutes!” I would plead.
“We will take you away soon--to shoot you!” the warder would joke in
reply, amid the uproarious laughter of my tormentors.
The appointed week elapsed and still there was no decision in my
case. The days--long, cruel, agonizing days--passed slowly by. The
impossibility of sleeping was above all so torturing that it drove me
to a state actually bordering on insanity. Two and a half weeks I lived
in that inferno, seventeen days without a single full night’s sleep!
Then one morning the warder, who had delighted daily in telling
me stories of what would be done to me, very vivid stories of
frightfulness, came in with some papers in his hand.
“Botchkareva!” he called out to me. “You are free.” And he opened the
door facing me.
I was so surprised that I thought at first that this was another trick
to torture me.
“Free?” I asked. “Why?” I had grown to believe the warder’s tales of
what awaited me, and I could not imagine him as the carrier of such
tidings.
“Am I free for good?” I asked.
“Yes,” was the answer. “You will go with a guard to the Soldiers’
Section, where you will get the necessary papers.”
I bade farewell, with a sigh of relief, to the chamber of horrors, and
went immediately to get the document from the tribunal, which stated
that I had been arrested but found innocent of the charge and that,
as I was ill, I was to be allowed complete freedom of movement in the
country. With this passport in my pocket I was set at liberty.