MELNIKOFF
Some three weeks later, on a cold Sunday morning in January, I sat in
the Doctor’s study at his small flat in one of the big houses at the
end of the Kamenostrovsky Prospect. The news had just arrived that the
German Communist leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, had been
killed in Berlin, the former in attempted flight, the latter mobbed by
an incensed crowd. Nobody in Russia had any idea who these two people
were, but their deaths caused consternation in the Communist camp, for
they had been relied upon to pull off a Red revolution in Germany and
thus accelerate the wave of Bolshevism westward across Europe.
Little known as Liebknecht and Luxembourg had been outside Germany
until the time of their death, in the hierarchy of Bolshevist saints
they were placed second only to Karl Marx and Engels, the Moses and
Aaron of the Communist Party. Russians are noted for their veneration
of ikons, representing to them the memory of saintly lives, but their
religious devotion is equalled by that of the Bolsheviks. Though he
does not cross himself, the true Bolshevik bows down in spirit to the
images of Marx and kindred revolutionaries with an obsequiousness
unexcelled by devotees of the church. The difference in the two creeds
lies in this: that whereas the orthodox Christian venerates saintly
lives according to their degree of unworldliness, individual goodness,
and spiritual sanctity, the Bolsheviks revere their saints for the
vehemence with which they promoted the class war, fomented discontent,
and preached world-wide revolution.
To what extent humanity suffered as the result of the decease of
the two German Communists, I am unable to judge, but their loss was
regarded by the revolutionary leaders as a catastrophe of the first
magnitude. The official Press had heavy headlines about it, and those
who read the papers asked one another who the two individuals could
have been. Having studied the revolutionary movement to some extent,
I was better able to appreciate the mortification of the ruling
party, and was therefore interested in the great public demonstration
announced for that day in honour of the dead.
My new friend, the Doctor, was both puzzled and amused by my attitude.
“I can understand your being here as an intelligence officer,” he
said. “After all, your Government has to have someone to keep them
informed, though it must be unpleasant for you. But why you should take
it into your head to go rushing round to all the silly meetings and
demonstrations the way you do is beyond me. And the stuff you read! You
have only been here three or four times, but you have left a train of
papers and pamphlets enough to open a propaganda department.”
The Doctor, who I learned from the woman at the lodge was Melnikoff’s
uncle, was a splendid fellow. As a matter of fact, he had sided
wholeheartedly with the revolution in March, 1917, and held very
radical views, but he thought more than spoke about them. His nephew,
Melnikoff, on the contrary, together with a considerable group of
officers, had opposed the revolution from the outset, but the Doctor
had not quarrelled with them, realizing one cardinal truth the
Bolsheviks appear to fail to grasp, namely, that the criterion whereby
men must ultimately be judged is not politics, but character.
The Doctor had a young and very intelligent friend named Shura, who
had been a bosom friend of Melnikoff’s. Shura was a law student. He
resembled the Doctor in his radical sympathies but differed from both
him and Melnikoff in that he was given to philosophizing and probing
deeply beneath the surface of things. Many were the discussions we had
together, when, some weeks later, I came to know Shura well.
“Communist speeches,” he used to say, “often sound like a tale told
by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. But behind
the interminable jargon there lie both an impulse and an ideal. The
ideal is a proletarian millennium, but the impulse is not love of
the worker, but hatred of the bourgeois. The Bolshevik believes that
if a perfect proletarian state be forcibly established by destroying
the bourgeoisie, the perfect proletarian citizen will automatically
result! There will be no crime, no prisons, no need of government. But
by persecuting liberals and denying freedom of thought the Bolsheviks
are driving independent thinkers into the camp of that very section of
society whose provocative conduct caused Bolshevism! That is why I will
fight to oust the Bolsheviks,” said Shura, “they are impediments in the
path of the revolution.”
It had been a strange interview when I first called on the Doctor and
announced myself as a friend of Melnikoff’s. He sat bolt upright,
smiling affably, and obviously ready for every conceivable contingency.
The last thing in the world he was prepared to do was to believe me.
I told him all I could about his nephew and he evidently thought I was
very clever to know so much. He was polite but categorical. No, sir,
he knew nothing whatsoever of his nephew’s movements, it was good of
me to interest myself in his welfare, but he himself had ceased to be
interested. I might possibly be an Englishman, as I said, but he had
never heard his nephew mention an Englishman. He had no knowledge nor
any desire for information as to his nephew’s past, present, or future,
and if his nephew had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities it
was his own fault. I could not but admire the placidity and suavity
with which he said all this, and cursed the disguise which made me look
so unlike what I wanted the Doctor to see.
“Do you speak English?” I said at last, getting exasperated.
I detected a twinge--ever so slight. “A little,” he replied.
“Then, damn it all, man,” I exclaimed in English, rising and striking
my chest with my fist--rather melodramatically, it must have
seemed--“why the devil can’t you see I _am_ an Englishman and not a
_provocateur_? Melnikoff must have told you something about me. Except
for me he wouldn’t have come back here. Didn’t he tell you how we
stayed together at Viborg, how he helped dress me, how he drank all my
whisky, how----?”
The Doctor all at once half rose from his seat. The urbane, fixed
smile that had not left his lips since the beginning of the interview
suddenly burst into a half-laugh.
“Was it _you_ who gave him the whisky?” he broke in, in Russian.
“Of course it was,” I replied. “I----”
“That settles it,” he said, excitedly. “Sit down; I’ll be back in a
moment.”
He left the room and walked quickly to the front door. Half suspecting
treachery, I peered out into the hall and feeling for the small
revolver I carried, looked round to see if there were any way of escape
in an emergency. The Doctor opened the front door, stepped on to the
landing, looked carefully up and down the stairs, and, returning,
closed all the other doors in the hall before re-entering the study. He
walked over to where I stood and looked me straight in the face.
“Why on earth didn’t you come before?” he exclaimed, speaking in a low
voice.
* * * * *
We rapidly became friends. Melnikoff’s disappearance had been a
complete mystery to him, a mystery which he had no means of solving.
He had never heard of Zorinsky, but names meant nothing. He thought
it strange that so high a price should be demanded for Melnikoff,
and thought I had been unwise to give it all in advance under any
circumstances; but he was none the less overjoyed to hear of the
prospects of his release.
After every visit to Zorinsky I called on the Doctor to tell him the
latest news. On this particular morning I had told him how the evening
before, in a manner which I disliked intensely, Zorinsky had shelved
the subject, giving evasive answers. We had passed the middle of
January already, yet apparently there was no information whatever as to
Melnikoff’s case.
“There is another thing, too, that disquiets me, Doctor,” I added.
“Zorinsky shows undue curiosity as to where I go when I am not at his
house. He happens to know the passport on which I am living, and
examination of papers being so frequent, I wish I could get another
one. Have you any idea what Melnikoff would do in such circumstances?”
The Doctor paced up and down the room.
“Would you mind telling me the name?” he asked.
I showed him all my documents, including the exemption certificate,
explaining how I had received them.
“Well, well, your Mr. Zorinsky certainly is a useful friend to have,
I must say,” he observed, looking at the certificate, and wagging his
head knowingly. “By the way, does he cost you much, if one may ask?”
“He himself? Nothing at all, or very little. Besides the sixty thousand
for Melnikoff,” I calculated, “I have given him a few thousand for
odd expenses connected with the case; I insist on paying for meals; I
gave his wife an expensive bouquet at New Year with which she was very
pleased; then I have given him money for the relief of Melnikoff’s
sister, and----”
“For Melnikoff’s sister?” ejaculated the Doctor. “But he hasn’t got
one!”
_Vot tibie ná!_ No sister--then where did the money go? I suddenly
remembered Zorinsky had once asked if I could give him English money. I
told the Doctor.
“Look out, my friend, look out,” he said. “Your friend is certainly a
clever and a useful man. But I’m afraid you will have to go on paying
for Melnikoff’s non-existent sister. It would not do for him to know
you had found out. As for your passport, I will ask Shura. By the way,”
he added, “it is twelve o’clock. Will you not be late for your precious
demonstration?”
I hurried to leave. “I will let you know how things go,” I said. “I
will be back in two or three days.”
The morning was a frosty one with a bitter wind. No street-cars ran on
Sundays and I walked into town to the Palace Square, the great space in
front of the Winter Palace, famous for another January Sunday--“Bloody
Sunday”--thirteen years before. Much had been made in the Press of the
present occasion, and it appeared to be taken for granted that the
proletariat would surge to bear testimony to their grief for the fallen
German Communists. But round the base of a red-bedizened tribune in the
centre of the square there clustered a mere handful of people and two
rows of soldiers, stamping to keep their feet warm. The crowd consisted
of the sturdy Communist veterans who organized the demonstration and
onlookers who always join any throng to see whatever is going on.
As usual the proceedings started late, and the small but patient crowd
was beginning to dwindle before the chief speakers arrived. A group
of commonplace-looking individuals, standing on the tribune, lounged
and smoked cigarettes, apparently not knowing exactly what to do with
themselves. I pushed myself forward to be as near the speakers as
possible.
To my surprise I noticed Dmitri, Stepanovna’s nephew, among the
soldiers who stood blowing on their hands and looking miserable. I
moved a few steps away, so that he might not see me. I was afraid he
would make some sign of recognition which might lead to questions by
his comrades, and I had no idea who they might be. But I was greatly
amused at seeing him at a demonstration of this sort.
At length an automobile dashed up, and amid faint cheers and to
the accompaniment of bugles, Zinoviev, president of the Petrograd
Soviet, alighted and mounted the tribune. Zinoviev, whose real name
is Apfelbaum, is a very important person in Bolshevist Russia. He is
considered one of the greatest orators of the Communist Party, and now
occupies the proud position of president of the Third International,
the institution that is to effect the world revolution.
It is to his oratorical skill rather than any administrative ability
that Zinoviev owes his prominence. His rhetoric is of a peculiar
order. He is unrivalled in his appeal to the ignorant mob, but,
judging by his speeches, logic is unknown to him, and on no thinking
audience could he produce any impression beyond that of wonderment at
his uncommon command of language, ready though cheap witticisms, and
inexhaustible fund of florid and vulgar invective. Zinoviev is, in
fact, the consummate gutter-demagogue. He is a coward, shirked office
in November, 1917, fearing the instability of the Bolshevist coup, has
since been chief advocate of all the insaner aspects of Bolshevism,
and is always the first to lose his head and fly into a panic when
danger-clouds appear on any horizon.
Removing his hat, Zinoviev approached the rail, and stood there in his
rich fur coat until someone down below gave a signal to cheer. Then he
began to speak in the following strain:
“Comrades! Wherefore are we gathered here to-day? What mean this
tribune and this concourse of people? Is it to celebrate a triumph
of world revolution, to hail another conquest over the vicious ogre
of Capitalism? Alas, no! To-day we mourn the two greatest heroes
of our age, murdered deliberately, brutally, and in cold blood by
blackguard capitalist agents. The German Government, consisting of the
social-traitor Scheidemann and other supposed Socialists, the scum and
dregs of humanity, have sold themselves like Judas Iscariot for thirty
shekels of silver to the German bourgeoisie, and at the command of
the capitalists ordered their paid hirelings foully to murder the two
chosen representatives of the German workers and peasants ...” and so
on.
I never listened to Zinoviev without recalling a meeting in the summer
of 1917 when he was the chief speaker. He had just returned to Russia
with a group of other Bolshevist leaders (very few of whom were
present during the revolution) and was holding incendiary meetings in
out-of-the-way places. He was thin and slim and looked the typical
Jewish student of any Russian university. But after a year’s fattening
on the Russian proletariat he had swelled not only politically but
physically, and his full, handsome features and flowing bushy hair
spoke of anything but privation.
Contrary to custom, Zinoviev’s speech was short. It must have been
cold, speaking in the chilly wind, and in any case there were not many
people to talk to.
The next speaker was more novel--Herr Otto Pertz, president of the
German Soviet of Petrograd. Why a German Soviet continued to live and
move and have its being in Petrograd, or what its functions were,
nobody seemed to know. The comings and goings of _unsere deutsche
Genossen_ appeared to be above criticism and were always a mystery.
Herr Otto Pertz was tall, clean shaven, Germanly tidy, and could not
speak Russian.
“_Genossen! heute feiern wir_----” he began, and proceeded to laud
the memory of the fallen heroes and to foretell the coming social
revolution in Germany. The dastardly tyrants of Berlin, insolently
styling themselves Socialists, would shortly be overthrown.
_Kapitalismus_, _Imperialismus_, in fact everything but _Kommunismus_,
would be demolished. He had information that within a week or two
_Spartacus_ (the German Bolshevist group), with all Germany behind it,
would successfully seize power in Berlin and join in a triumphant and
indissoluble alliance with the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet
Republic.
As Otto Pertz commenced his oration a neatly dressed little lady of
about fifty, who stood at my side near the foot of the tribune, looked
up eagerly at the speaker. Her eyes shone brightly and her breath came
quickly. Seeing I had noticed her she said timidly, “_Spricht er nicht
gut? Sagen Sie doch, spricht er nicht gut?_”
To which I of course replied, “_Sehr gut_,” and she relapsed bashfully
into admiration of Otto, murmuring now and again, “_Ach! es ist doch
wahr, nicht?_” with which sentiment also I would agree.
The crowd listened patiently, as the Russian crowd always listens,
whoever speaks, and on whatever subject. The soldiers shivered and
wondered what the speaker was talking about. His speech was not
translated.
But when Otto Pertz ceased there was a commotion in the throng. For
some moments I was at a loss as to what was in progress, until at last
a passage was made and, borne on valiant Communist shoulders, a guy,
the special attraction of the day, was produced. The effigy, made of
pasteboard, represented a ferocious-looking German with Kaiser-like
moustachios, clothed in evening dress, and bearing across its chest in
large letters on cardboard the name of the German Socialist,
SCHEIDEMANN.
At the same time an improvised gallows was thrust over the balustrade
of the tribune. Amid curses, jeers, and execrations, the moustachioed
effigy was raised aloft. Eager hands attached the dangling loop and
there it hung, most abject, most melancholy, encased in evening dress,
and black trousers with hollow extremities flapping in the breeze.
The crowd awoke and tittered and even the soldiers smiled. Dmitri, I
could see, was laughing outright. This was after all worth coming to
see. Kerosene was poured on the dangling Scheidemann and he was set
alight. There were laughter, howls, and fanfares. Zinoviev, in tragic
pose, with uplifted arm and pointed finger, cried hoarsely, “Thus
perish traitors!” The bugles blew. The people, roused with delight,
cheered lustily. Only the wretched Scheidemann was indifferent to the
interest he was arousing, as with a stony glare on his cardboard face
he soared aloft amid sparks and ashes into eternity.
Crowd psychology, I mused as I walked away, has been an important
factor on all public occasions since the revolution, but appreciated to
the full only by the Bolsheviks. Everyone who was in Russia in 1917 and
who attended political meetings when free speech became a possibility
remembers how a speaker would get up and speak, loudly applauded by the
whole audience; then another would rise and say the precise opposite,
rewarded with equally vociferous approbation; followed again by a third
who said something totally at variance with the first two, and how the
enthusiasm would increase in proportion to the uncertainty as to who
was actually right. The crowds were just like little children. Totally
unaccustomed to free speech, they appeared to imagine that anybody who
spoke must _ipso facto_ be right. But just when the people, after the
Bolshevist _coup d’état_, were beginning to demand reason in public
utterance and deeds instead of promises, down came a super-Tsarist
Bolshevist censorship like a huge candle-snuffer and clapping itself on
the flame of public criticism, snuffed it out altogether.
Public demonstrations, however, were made an important item in the
curriculum of the Bolshevist administration, and soon became as
compulsory as military service. I record the above one not because of
its intrinsic interest (it really had very little), but because it was,
I believe, one of the last occasions on which it was left to the public
to make the demonstration a success or not, and regiments were merely
“invited.”
I made my way to Stepanovna’s in the hope of meeting Dmitri. He came in
toward the close of the afternoon, and I asked him if he had enjoyed
the demonstration.
“Too cold,” he replied; “they ought to have had it on a warmer day.”
“Did you come voluntarily?”
“Why, yes.” He pulled out of the spacious pocket of his tunic a parcel
wrapped up in newspaper, and unwrapping it, disclosed a pound of bread.
“We were told we should get this if we came. It has just been doled
out.”
Stepanovna’s eyes opened wide. Deeply interested, she asked when the
next demonstration was going to be.
“Why didn’t more soldiers come, then?” I asked.
“Not enough bread, I suppose,” said Dmitri. “We have been getting it
irregularly of late. But we have a new commissar who is a good fellow.
They say in the regiment he gets everything for us first. He talks to
us decently, too. I am beginning to like him. Perhaps he is not one
like the rest.”
“By the way, Dmitri,” I said, “do you happen to know who those people
were for whom we demonstrated to-day?”
From the depths of his crumb-filled pocket Dmitri extracted a crumpled
and soiled pamphlet. Holding it to the light he slowly read out the
title: “_Who were Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg?_”
“We were each given one yesterday,” he explained, “after an agitator
had made a long speech to us. Nobody listened to the agitator--some Jew
or other--but the commissar gave me this. I read little nowadays, but I
think I will read it when I have time.”
“And the speakers and the guy?” I queried.
“I didn’t notice the speakers. One of them spoke not in our
way--German, someone said. But the guy! That was funny! My, Stepanovna,
you ought to have seen it! How it floated up into the air! You would
have split your sides laughing. Who was it supposed to represent, by
the way?”
I explained how the revolution in Germany had resulted in the
downfall of the Kaiser and the formation of a radical Cabinet with a
Socialist--Scheidemann--at its head. Scheidemann was the guy to-day, I
said, for reasons which I presumed he would find stated in “_Who were
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg?_”
“But if the Kaiser is out, why do our Bolsheviks burn--what’s his
name----?”
“Ah, but, Dmitri,” I put in, “if you had understood the German
speaker to-day, you would have heard him tell how there is shortly
to be another revolution in Germany like that which happened here in
November, 1917, and they will set up a Soviet Government like Lenin’s.”
As our conversation proceeded, Stepanovna and Varia stopped their
work to listen, their interest grew apace, and at last they hung on to
every word as if it were of profound significance. When I repeated the
substance of Otto Pertz’s predictions, all three of my companions were
listening spellbound and with mouths agape. There was a long pause,
which at length Stepanovna broke.
“Is it really possible,” she exclaimed, slowly, and apparently in utter
bewilderment, “that the Germans--are--such--fools?”
* * * * *
“Evasive, Doctor, very evasive,” I said, as we sat over tea and a few
dry biscuits the Doctor had procured from somewhere. “Yesterday evening
he gave me some interesting information about industrial developments,
alteration of railway administration, and changes in the Red fleet;
but the moment Melnikoff is mentioned then it is, ‘Oh, Melnikoff? in a
day or two I think we may know definitely,’ or ‘My informant is out of
town,’ and so on.”
“Perhaps there is a hitch somewhere,” suggested the Doctor. “I suppose
there is nothing to do but wait. By the way, you wanted a passport,
didn’t you? How will that suit you?”
I have forgotten the precise wording of the paper he handed me, for
I had to destroy it later, but it was an ordinary certificate of
identification, in the name of Alexander Vasilievitch Markovitch, aged
33, clerical assistant at the head Postal-Telegraph Office. There
was no photograph attached, but in view of the strict requirements
regarding passports, which included their frequent renewal (except in
certain cases no passports might be made out for more than two months),
and the difficulty of getting photographs, the latter were dropping out
of general use.
“Shura procured it,” the Doctor explained. “A friend of his, by name
Markov, arrived recently from Moscow to work at the Telegraph Office.
A week later he heard his wife was seriously ill and got special
permission to return. A week in Petrograd was enough for him anyway,
for living is much better in Moscow, so he doesn’t intend to come back.
Shura asked him for his passport and after Markov had got his railroad
pass and paper showing he was authorized to return to Moscow, he gave
it him. If they ask for it in Moscow, he will say he has lost it. He
would have to have a new one anyway, since a Petrograd one is useless
there. My typewriter at the hospital has the same type as this, so we
altered the date a little, added ‘itch’ to the name--and there you are,
if you wish, a ready-made postal official.”
“What about clothing?” I said. “I don’t look much like a postal
official.”
“There is something more important than that. What about military
service?”
From my pocket I produced a new pamphlet on the soviet system. Opening
a pocket of the uncut leaves at a certain page, I drew forth my blank
exemption certificate and exhibited it to the Doctor.
“What are you, a magician?” he asked admiringly. “Or is this another
gift from your friend Z.?”
“The certificates were born twins,” I said. “Zorinsky was accoucheur to
the first, I to the second.”
In an hour I had filled in the blank exemption form with all
particulars relating to Alexander Vasilievitch Markovitch. Tracing the
signatures carefully, and inserting a recent date, I managed to produce
a document indistinguishable as regards authenticity from the original,
and thus was possessed of two sets of documents, one in the name of
Krylenko for the benefit of Zorinsky, the other in that of Markovitch
for presentation in the streets and possible registration.
Considering once more the question of uniform I recalled that at my
own rooms where I had lived for years I had left a variety of clothing
when last in Petrograd six or eight months previously. The question
was: How could I gain admittance to my rooms, disguised as I was and
with an assumed name? Furthermore, a telephone call having elicited no
response, I had no idea whether the housekeeper whom I had left was
still there, nor whether the apartment had been raided, locked up, or
occupied by workmen. All these things I was curious to know, quite
apart from obtaining clothing.
I enlisted the services of Varia as scout. Varia was the first person
to whom I confided my English name, and doing it with due solemnity,
and with severe cautionings that not even Stepanovna should be told,
I could see that the girl was impressed with my confidence in her.
Armed with a brief note to my housekeeper purporting to be written by
a fictitious friend of mine, and warned to turn back unless everything
were precisely as I described, Varia set out on a voyage of discovery.
She returned to impart the information that the front door of the house
being locked she had entered by the yard, had encountered nobody on the
backstairs, and that in answer to persistent ringing a woman, whom I
recognized by the description as my housekeeper, had opened the kitchen
door on a short chain, and, peering suspiciously through the chink, had
at first vehemently denied any acquaintance with any English people at
all. On perusing the note from my non-existent friend, however, she
admitted that an Englishman of my name had formerly lived there, but
she had the strictest injunctions from him to admit nobody to the flat.
Pursuing my instructions, Varia informed the housekeeper that my
friend, Mr. Markovitch, had just arrived from Moscow. He was busy
to-day, she said, and had sent her round to inquire after my affairs,
but would call himself at an early opportunity.
The one article of clothing which I frequently changed and of which I
had a diverse stock was headgear. It is surprising how headdress can
impart character (or the lack of it) to one’s appearance. Donning my
most bourgeois fur cap, polishing my leather breeches and brushing my
jacket, I proceeded on the following day to my former home, entering
by the yard as Varia had done and ringing at the back door. The house
appeared deserted, for I saw no one in the yard, nor heard any sounds
of life. When, in reply to persistent ringing, the door was opened on
the chain, I saw my housekeeper peering through the chink just as Varia
had described. My first impulse was to laugh, it seemed so ridiculous
to be standing on one’s own backstairs, pretending to be someone else,
and begging admittance to one’s own rooms by the back door.
I hadn’t time to laugh, however. The moment my housekeeper saw the
apparition on the stairway she closed the door again promptly and
rebolted it, and it was only after a great deal of additional knocking
and ringing that at last the door was once again timidly opened just a
tiny bit.
Greeting the woman courteously, I announced myself as Mr. Markovitch,
close personal friend and school companion of the Englishman who
formerly had occupied these rooms. My friend, I said, was now in
England and regretted the impossibility of returning to Russia under
present conditions. I had recently received a letter from him, I
declared, brought somehow across the frontier, in which, sending his
greetings to Martha Timofeievna (the housekeeper), he had requested
me at the earliest opportunity to visit his home and report on its
condition. To reduce Martha Timofeievna’s suspicions, I assured her
that before the war I had been a frequent visitor to this flat, and
gave numerous data which left no doubt whatsoever in her mind that
I was at least well acquainted with the arrangement of the rooms,
and with the furniture and pictures that had formerly been in them.
I added, of course, that on the last occasion when I had seen my
friend, he had spoken of his new housekeeper in terms of the highest
praise, and assured me again in his letter that I should find her
good-mannered, hospitable, and obliging.
The upshot was that, though Martha Timofeievna was at first categorical
in her refusal to admit any one to the flat, she ultimately agreed
to do so if I could show her the actual letter written by “Monsieur
Dukes,” requesting permission for his friend to be admitted.
I told her I would bring it to her that very afternoon, and, highly
satisfied with the result of the interview, I retired at once to the
nearest convenient place, which happened to be the Journalist’s, to
write it.
“Dear Sasha,” I wrote in Russian, using the familiar name for
Alexander (my Christian name according to my new papers), “I can
scarcely hope you will ever receive this, yet on the chance that you
may----etc.,”--and I proceeded to give a good deal of imaginary family
news. Toward the end I said, “By the way, when you are in Petrograd,
please go to my flat and see Martha Timofeievna----etc.,” and I gave
instructions as to what “Sasha” was to do, and permission to take
anything he needed. “I write in Russian,” I concluded, “so that in case
of necessity you may show this letter to M. T. She is a good woman
and will do everything for you. Give her my hearty greetings and tell
her I hope to return at the first opportunity. Write if ever you can.
Good-bye. Yours ever, Pavlusha.”
I put the letter in an envelope, addressed it to “Sasha Markovitch,”
sealed it up, tore it open again, crumpled it, and put it in my pocket.
The same afternoon I presented myself once more at my back door.
Martha Timofeievna’s suspicions had evidently already been considerably
allayed, for she smiled amiably even before perusing the letter I put
into her hand, and at once admitted me as far as the kitchen. Here she
laboriously read the letter through (being from the Baltic provinces
she spoke Russian badly and read with difficulty), and, paying numerous
compliments to the author, who she hoped would soon return because she
didn’t know what she was going to do about the flat or how long she
would be able to keep on living there, she led me into the familiar
rooms.
Everything was in a state of confusion. Many of the pictures were torn
down, furniture was smashed, and in the middle of the floor of the
dining-room lay a heap of junk, consisting of books, papers, pictures,
furniture, and torn clothing. In broken Russian Martha Timofeievna
told me how first there had been a search, and when she had said that
an Englishman had lived there the Reds had prodded and torn everything
with their bayonets. Then a family of working people had taken
possession, fortunately, however, not expelling her from her room. But
the flat had not been to their liking, and, deserting it soon after,
they took a good many things with them and left everything else upside
down.
Between them, the Reds and the uninvited occupants had left very little
that could be of use to me. I found no boots or overclothing, but among
the litter I discovered some underclothing of which I was glad. I also
found an old student hat, which was exactly what I wanted for my postal
uniform. I put it in my pocket and, tying the other things in a parcel,
said I would send Varia for them next day.
While I was disentangling with my housekeeper’s aid the heap of stuff
on the floor I came upon my own photograph taken two or three years
before. For the first time I fully and clearly realized how complete
was my present disguise, how absolutely different I now appeared in a
beard, long hair, and glasses. I passed the photo to Martha Timofeievna.
“That is a good likeness,” I said. “He hasn’t altered one bit.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Was he not a nice man? It is dreadful that he had
to go away. I wonder where he is now and what he is doing?”
“I wonder,” I repeated, diving again into the muck on the floor. To
save my life I could not have looked at Martha Timofeievna at that
moment and kept a straight face.
Failing to obtain an overcoat from the remnant of my belongings, I
searched the markets and from a destitute gentleman of aristocratic
mien procured a shabby black coat with a worn velvet collar. In this
and my student hat I was the “complete postal official.” I adopted this
costume for daytime purposes, but before every visit to Zorinsky I went
to “No 5,” where I kept what few belongings I possessed, and changed,
visiting Zorinsky only in the attire in which he was accustomed to see
me.
As the end of January approached my suspicion that Zorinsky would
not secure Melnikoff’s release grew. Once or twice he had not even
mentioned the subject, talking energetically in his usual vivacious
manner about other things. He was as entertaining as ever, and
invariably imparted interesting political news, but if I broached the
subject of Melnikoff he shelved it at once.
So I resolved, in spite of risks, to see if I could obtain through
the Policeman information as to Melnikoff’s case. I had not seen the
Policeman since I had returned from Finland, so I told him I had been
delayed in that country and had only just come back. Without telling
him who Melnikoff was, I imparted to him the data regarding the
latter’s arrest, and what I had learned “through accidental channels”
as to his imprisonment. I did not let him know my concern, lest he
should be inclined purposely to give a favourable report, but charged
him to be strict and accurate in his investigation, and, in the event
of failing to learn anything, not to fear to admit it.
About a week later, when I ‘phoned to him, he said “he had received an
interesting letter on family matters.” It was with trepidation that I
hurried to his house, struggling to conceal my eager anticipation as I
mounted the stairs, followed by the gaze of the leering Chinaman.
The little Policeman held a thin strip of paper in his hand.
“Dmitri Dmitrievitch Melnikoff,” he read. “Real name Nicholas
Nicholaievitch N----?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He was shot between the 15th and 20th of January,” said the Policeman.