STEPANOVNA
Meanwhile, as time progressed, I made new acquaintances at whose houses
I occasionally put up for a night. Over most of them I pass in silence.
I accepted their hospitality as a Russian emigrant who was being
searched for by the Bolsheviks, a circumstance which in itself was a
recommendation. But if I felt I could trust people I did not hesitate
to reveal my nationality, my reception then being more cordial still.
I often reflected with satisfaction that my mode of living resembled
that of many revolutionists, not only during the reign of Tsarism, but
also under the present régime. People of every shade of opinion from
Monarchist to Socialist-Revolutionary dodged and evaded the police
agents of the Extraordinary Commission, endeavouring either to flee
from the country or to settle down unobserved under new names in new
positions.
One of my incidental hosts whom I particularly remember, a friend
of the Journalist and a school inspector by profession, was full of
enterprise and enthusiasm for a scheme he propounded for including
gardening and such things in the regular school curriculum of his
circuit. His plans were still regarded with some mistrust by those
in power, for his political prejudices were known, but he none the
less had hope that the Communists would allow him to introduce his
innovations, which I believe he eventually did successfully.
The Journalist was promoted to the position of _dieloproizvoditel_ of
his department, a post giving him a negligible rise of salary, but
in which practically all official papers passed through his hands.
At his own initiative he used to abstract papers he thought would
be of interest to me, restoring them before their absence could be
discovered. Some of the things he showed me were illuminating, others
useless. But good, bad, or indifferent, he always produced them with
a sly look and with his finger at the side of his nose, as if the
information they contained must be of the utmost consequence.
I persuaded him to sell off some of his books as a subsidiary means
of subsistence, and we called a Jew in, who haggled long and hard.
The Journalist was loth to do this, but I refused ever to give him
more than the cost of his fuel, over which also I exerted a control
of Bolshevist severity. He had no conception whatever of relative
values, and attached though he was to me I thought I sometimes detected
in his eye a look which said with unspeakable contempt: “You miserly
Englishman!”
I was unfortunate in losing Maria as a regular companion and friend.
She returned to Marsh’s country farm in the hope of saving at least
something from destruction, and visited town but rarely. In her
place there came to live at the empty flat “No. 5” the younger of
the two stable-boys, a dull but decent youth who had not joined the
looters. This boy did his best no doubt to keep things in order, but
tidiness and cleanliness were not his peculiar weaknesses. He could
not understand why glasses or spoons should be washed, or why even in
an untenanted flat tables and chairs should occasionally be dusted.
Once, the tea he had made me tasting unusually acrid, I went into the
kitchen to investigate the tea-pot. On removing the lid I found it to
be half full of dead beetles.
Stepanovna continued to be a good friend. Dmitri’s regiment was removed
to a town in the interior, and Dmitri, reluctant though he was to
leave the capital, docilely followed, influenced largely by the new
regimental commissar who had succeeded in making himself popular--a
somewhat rare achievement amongst commissars. Even Stepanovna
admitted this unusual circumstance, allowing that the commissar was a
_poriadotchny tchelovziek_, _i. e._ a decent person, “although he was a
Communist,” and she thus acquiesced in Dmitri’s departure.
It was in Stepanovna’s company that I first witnessed the extraordinary
spectacle of an armed raid by the Bolshevist authorities on a public
market. Running across her in the busy Siennaya Square one morning I
found she had been purchasing meat, which was a rare luxury. She had an
old black shawl over her head and carried a bast basket on her arm.
“Where did you get the meat?” I asked. “I will buy some too.”
“Don’t,” she said, urgently. “In the crowd they are whispering that
there is going to be a raid.”
“What sort of a raid?”
“On the meat, I suppose. Yesterday and to-day the peasants have been
bringing it in and I have got a little. I don’t want to lose it. They
say the Reds are coming.”
Free-trading being clearly opposed to the principles of Communism, it
was officially forbidden and denounced as “speculation.” But no amount
of restriction could suppress it, and the peasants brought food in to
the hungry townspeople despite all obstacles and sold it at their own
prices. The only remedy the authorities had for this “capitalist evil”
was armed force, and even that was ineffective.
The meat was being sold by the peasants in a big glass-covered shed.
One of these sheds was burnt down in 1919, and the only object that
remained intact was an ikon in the corner. Thousands came to see the
ikon that had been “miraculously” preserved, but it was hastily taken
away by the authorities. The ikon had apparently been overlooked, for
it was the practice of the Bolsheviks to remove all religious symbols
from public places.
I moved toward the building to make my purchase, but Stepanovna tugged
me by the arm.
“Don’t be mad,” she exclaimed. “Don’t you realize, if there is a raid,
they will arrest everybody?”
She pulled me down to speak in my ear.
“And what about your...? I am sure ... your papers ... are....”
“Of course they are,” I laughed. “But you don’t expect a clown of a Red
guard to see the difference, do you?”
I made up my mind to get rid of Stepanovna and come back later for some
meat, but all at once a commotion arose in the crowd over the way and
people began running out of the shed. Round the corner, from the side
of the Ekaterina Canal, appeared a band of soldiers in sheepskin caps
and brown-grey tunics, with fixed bayonets. The exits from the building
were quickly blocked. Fugitives fled in all directions, the women
shrieking and hugging their baskets and bundles, and looking back as
they ran to see if they were pursued.
Stepanovna and I stood on a doorstep at the corner of the Zabalkansky
Prospect, where we could see well, and whence, if need be, we could
also make good our escape.
The market place was transformed in the twinkling of an eye. A moment
before it had been bristling with life and the crowded street-cars
had stopped to let their passengers scramble laboriously out. But
now the whole square was suddenly as still as death, and, but for a
few onlookers who watched the scene from a distance, the roadway was
deserted.
From fifty to sixty soldiers filed slowly into the shed and a few
others, with rifles ready, hurried now and again round the outside of
the building. A fiendish din arose with the entry of the soldiers.
The shrieking, howling, booing, cursing, and moaning sounded as if
hell itself had been let loose! It was an uncanny contrast--the silent
square, and the ghastly noise within the shed!
Stepanovna muttered something, but the only word I caught was “devils.”
Sacks and bundles were being dragged out by the guards and hoisted on
to trucks and lorries. At one door people were let out one by one after
examination of their clothes and papers. The women were set at liberty,
but the men, except the old and quite young boys, were marched off to
the nearest Commissariat.
“What does it all mean?” I exclaimed, as we moved off along the
Zabalkansky Prospect.
“Mean, Ivan Pavlovitch? Don’t you see? ‘Let’s grab!’ ‘Down with
free-trading!’ ‘Away with speculators!’ That is what they say.
‘Speculation’ they call it. I am a ‘speculator,’ too,” she chuckled.
“Do you think I ever got any work from the labour bureau, where I have
been registered these three months? Or Varia, either, though we both
want jobs. The money Ivan Sergeievitch left us is running out, but we
must live somehow, mustn’t we?”
Stepanovna lowered her voice.
“So we have sold a sideboard.... Yes,” she chuckled, “we sold it to
some people downstairs. ‘Speculators,’ too, I expect. They came up
early in the morning and took it away quietly, and our house committee
never heard anything about it!”
Stepanovna laughed outright. She thought it a huge joke.
For all your furniture, you see, was supposed to be registered and
belonged not to yourself but to the community. Superfluous furniture
was to be confiscated in favour of the working-man, but generally
went to decorate the rooms of members of the committee or groups of
Communists in whose charge the houses were placed. Sailor Communists
seemed to make the largest demands. “Good-morning,” they would say on
entering your home. “Allow us, please, to look around and see how much
furniture you have.” Some things, they would tell you, were required by
the house committee. Or a new “worker” had taken rooms downstairs. He
was a “party man,” that is, he belonged to the Communist Party and was
therefore entitled to preference, and he required a bed, a couch, and
some easy-chairs.
It was useless to argue, as some people did and got themselves into
trouble by telling the “comrades” what they thought of them. The wise
and thoughtful submitted, remembering that while many of these men were
out just to pocket as much as they could, there were others who really
believed they were thus distributing property in the interests of
equality and fraternity.
But the wily and clever would exclaim: “My dear comrades, I am
delighted! Your comrade is a ‘party man’? That is most interesting, for
I am intending to sign on myself. Only yesterday I put some furniture
by for you. As for this couch you ask for, it is really indispensable,
but in another room there is a settee you can have. And that picture,
of course, I would willingly give you, only I assure you it is an
heirloom. Besides, it is a very bad painting, an artist told me so last
week. Would you not rather have this one, which he said was really
good?”
And you showed them any rotten old thing, preferably something _big_.
Then you would offer them tea and apologize for giving them nothing but
crusts with it. You explained you wished to be an “idealist” Communist,
and your scruples would not permit you to purchase delicacies from
“speculators.”
Your visitors were not likely to linger long over your crusts, but
if you succeeded in impressing them with your devotion to the Soviet
régime they would be less inclined to molest a promising candidate for
comradeship.
But Stepanovna possessed no such subtlety. She was, on the contrary,
unreasonably outspoken and I wondered that she did not get into
difficulties.
Stepanovna and Varia often used to go to the opera, and when they came
home they would discuss intelligently and with enthusiasm the merits
and demerits of respective singers.
“I did not like the man who sang Lensky to-night,” one of them would
say. “He baa-ed like a sheep and his acting was poor.”
Or, “So-and-so’s voice is really almost as good as Chaliapin’s, except
in the lowest notes, but of course Chaliapin’s acting is much more
powerful.”
“Stepanovna,” I once said, “used you to go to the opera before the
revolution?”
“Why, yes,” she replied, “we used to go to the _Narodny Dom_.” The
_Narodny Dom_ was a big theatre built for the people by the Tsar.
“But to the state theatres, the Marinsky opera or ballet?”
“No, that was difficult.”
“Well, then, why do you abuse the Bolsheviks who make it easy for you
to go to what used to be the Imperial theatres and see the very best
plays and actors?”
Stepanovna was stooping over the samovar. She raised herself and looked
at me, considering my question.
“H’m, yes,” she admitted, “I enjoy it, it is true. But who is the
theatre full of? Only school-children and our ‘comrades’ Communists.
The school-children ought to be doing home-lessons and our ‘comrades’
ought to be hanging on the gallows. Varia and I can enjoy the theatre
because we just have enough money to buy food in the markets. But go
and ask those who stand in queues all day and all night for half a
pound of bread or a dozen logs of firewood! How much do they enjoy the
cheap theatres? I wonder, ah!”
So I said no more. Stepanovna had very decided notions of things. If
she had been an Englishwoman before the war she would have been a
militant suffragette.
It was at the beginning of February that I saw Stepanovna for the last
time. My acquaintance with her ceased abruptly, as with other people
under similar circumstances. Varia, it transpired, got into trouble
through trying to communicate with Ivan Sergeievitch in Finland.
Before going to Stepanovna’s flat I always ‘phoned and asked, “Is your
father any better?”--which meant, May I come and stay the night? To
which she or Varia would reply, “Quite well, thank you, and he would
like you to go and see him when you have time.”
On the last occasion when I called up, Stepanovna did not at once
answer. Then in a voice full of indecision she stammered, “I don’t
know--I think--I will ask--please wait a moment.” I waited and could
hear she had not left the telephone. At last she continued tremblingly,
“No, he is no better, he is very bad indeed--dying.” There was a pause.
“I am going to see him,” she went on, stammering all the time, “at
eleven o’clock to-morrow morning, do--do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said; “I will go too and wait for you.”
Wondering if we had understood each other, I stationed myself at
the corner of the street a little before eleven, and watched from a
distance the entrance to Stepanovna’s house. One glance, when she came
out, satisfied her I was there. Walking off in the other direction, she
followed Kazanskaya Street, only once looking round to make sure I was
behind, and, reaching the Kazan Cathedral, entered it. I found her in a
dark corner to the right.
“Varia is arrested,” she said, in great distress. “You must come to our
flat no more, Ivan Pavlovitch. A messenger came from Viborg the day
before yesterday and asked Varia, if she could, to get out to Finland.
They went together to the Finland Station and got on the train. There
they met another man who was to help them get over the frontier. He was
arrested on the train and the other two with him.”
“Is there any serious charge?” I asked. “Simply running away is no
grave offence.”
“They say the two men will be shot,” she replied. “But Varia only had
some things she was taking to Ivan Sergeievitch’s wife.”
I tried to reassure her, saying I would endeavour to discover how
Varia’s case stood, and would find some means of communication.
“I am expecting a search,” she went on, “but of course I have made
preparations. Maybe we shall meet again some day, Ivan Pavlovitch. I
hope so.”
I felt very sorry for poor Stepanovna in her trouble. She was a fine
type of woman in her way, though her views on things were often crude.
But it must be remembered that she was only a peasant. As I was
crossing the threshold of the cathedral, something moved me to turn
back for a moment, and I saw Stepanovna shuffle up to the altar and
fall on her knees. Then I came away.
I was resolved to get the Policeman on the job at once to find out the
circumstances of Varia’s case, which I felt sure could not be serious.
But I was not destined to make this investigation. I never saw either
Varia or Stepanovna again, nor was it possible for me to discover what
ultimately became of them. Tossed hither and thither by the caprice of
circumstance, I found myself shortly afterwards suddenly placed in a
novel and unexpected situation, of which and its results, if the reader
have patience to read a little further, he will learn.