"TERRORISM WITHOUT VIOLENCE."
One afternoon, in December of the same year, Pavel sat in a student
restaurant, in the capital, eating fried steak and watching the door for
a man with whom he had an appointment. He ate without appetite and
looked fatigued and overworked. He had been out from an early hour,
bustling about on perilous business and dodging spies. It was extremely
exhausting and enervating, this prowling about under the perpetual
strain of danger. He was liable to be arrested at any moment. It was
like living continually under fire.
The restaurant was full of cigarette smoke and noise. Somebody in the
rear of Pavel, who evidently had nothing to say, was addressing somebody
else in high-flown Russian and with great gusto. His fine resonant
voice, of which he was apparently conscious, jarred on Pavel's nerves,
interfering with what little relish he had for his meal. He was eyeing
the design on the frost-covered door-glass and lashing himself into a
fury over the invisible man's phrase-mongery, when he was accosted by a
fair-complexioned young woman:
"Pardon me, but if I am not mistaken you are Prince Boulatoff?"
"That's my name. And with whom have I the pleasure----?"
"Oh, that would really be uninteresting to know. I'll tell you, though,
that I belong to Miroslav."
He reluctantly invited her to a glass of tea, which she accepted,
saying: "It may look as if I were forcing myself upon your acquaintance,
prince, but I really could not help it. Whatever comes from Miroslav is
irresistible to me." And talking rapidly in effervescent, choking
sentences, she told him that her name was Maria Andreevna Safonova
(Safonoff), that she was a student at the Bestusheff Women's College and
that her brother was a major of gendarmes.
Pavel had heard of there being a daughter or a sister of a Miroslav
gendarme officer at the Bestusheff College; also that she made a
favourable impression on her classmates; but he had been too busy to
give the information more than passing notice.
"Is your brother in Miroslav?" he asked.
"Yes, and I can assure you he is a gentleman, even if he is in the
gendarme service. Some day, I hope, he'll give it up. He is really too
good to be in the business."
Pavel ascribed her ebullition to the nature of the subject, but he soon
found that she was in the same state of excitement when a railroad
ticket was the topic. She looked twenty-three but she had the cheeks and
eyes of a chubby infant, while her arms and figure had the lank,
immature effect of a girl of thirteen.
While they sat talking, a dark man in the military uniform of the
Medico-Surgical Academy entered the cafe. It was Parmet, the man Pavel
was waiting for. Finding him engaged, the newcomer passed his table
without greeting him, took a seat in a remote corner and buried himself
in a book.
Mlle. Safonoff did all the talking. She had not sat at Boulatoff's
table half an hour nor said much about Miroslav before she had poured
out some of her most intimate thoughts to him.
"If you think it a pleasure to be the sister of a gendarme officer you
are mistaken," she said. "It is not agreeable to be treated by everybody
as though you had been put at the college to spy upon the girls, is it?
My brother is a better man than the brothers and fathers and
grandfathers of all the other student-girls put together, I assure you,
prince. But then, of course, you may think I'm trying to spy on you,
too."
"No, I don't," said Boulatoff with a laugh, pricking up his ears.
"Don't you, really?" And her eyes bubbled.
"Of course, I don't."
"Oh, if you knew how good he is, my brother. Do you remember the time
when poor Pievakin left Miroslav? I know you do. You were in the eighth
class then. Well, I may as well tell you, prince"--she lowered her
voice--"had it not been for my brother there would have been no end of
arrests at the railroad station. He simply told his men not to make a
fuss. You see, I can confide in you without hesitation, for who would
suspect a Boulatoff of--pardon the word--spying? But I, why, I am the
sister of a gendarme officer, so it is quite natural to suppose, and so
forth and so on, don't you know."
"Do you know the girl who made that speech?"
"There you are," she said dolefully. "I happened to be at the other end
of the room just then. When I tried to find out who she was everybody
was mum. Fancy, my best girl-friend said to me: 'If I were you, Masha, I
shouldn't want to know her name if I could. Suppose you utter it in
sleep and your brother overhears you.' The idiots! They didn't know it
was my brother who saved that girl from being arrested. And, by the way,
if she had been arrested by some of his men, it would not have been hard
for her to escape. I know I am saying more than I should, but I really
can't help it. You have no idea how I feel about these things. And now,
at the sight of you, prince--a man from Miroslav--I seem to be going to
pieces altogether. Well, I don't mean, though, that my brother would
have let her escape. But then I have an aunt, who is related to the
warden of the Miroslav prison by marriage, so she can arrange things
there. Oh, she's the greatest revolutionist you ever saw. Of course, I
don't know whether you sympathise with these things, prince, but I'll
tell you frankly, _I_ do. It was that aunt of mine who talked it into
me. She is simply crazy to do something. She is sorry there are no
political prisoners in Miroslav. If there were she would get them out.
She's just itching for a chance to do something of that sort. And yet
she never met a revolutionist in her life, nor saw a scrap of
underground paper."
To question the ingenuousness of this gush seemed to be the rankest
absurdity. The Russian spies of the period were poor actors. Pavel was
seized by a desire to show her that he, at least, did not suspect her of
spying, and quite forgetting to restrain the "idiotic breadth" of his
Russian nature for which he was often rebuked by a certain member of the
revolutionary Executive Committee who was forever berating his comrades
for their insufficient caution, he slipped a crisp copy of the _Will of
the People_ into her hand.
"Put it into your muff," he said.
The colour surged into her chubby face. Her whole figure seemed tense
with sudden excitement, as though the fine glossy paper in her hand
were charged with electricity.
"How shall I thank you?" she gasped.
Pavel saw a moist glitter in her eyes, and as he got up, his slender
erect little frame, too, seemed charged with electricity. When she had
gone he asked himself whether it had not all been acting, after all. He
cursed himself for his imprudence, but he said: "Oh, well, what must be
will be," and as usual the phrase acted like an effectual incantation on
his frame of mind.
* * * * *
Parmet had been dubbed Bismarck, because he bore considerable
resemblance to Gambetta. Another nickname, one which he had invented
himself, on a similar theory of contrasts, was Makar. Makar was as
typically Slavic as his face was Semitic. His military uniform, which he
had to wear because his Academy was under the auspices of the War
Department, ill became him. Instead of concealing the rabbinical
expression of his face, it emphasised it. When they came out of the
restaurant, a man, shouldering a stick, was running along the
snow-covered pavement, lighting the street-lamps, as though in dread of
being forestalled by somebody.
"Guess who that girl is," Pavel said.
"Have I heard of her?"
"No. Quite an amusing sort of a damsel. Seething and steaming for all
the world like a samovar. You should have seen her calflike ecstasy when
I handed her something to read. I was afraid she was going to have a
fit."
Makar trotted silently on, continually curling himself in his wretched
grey cloak and striking one foot against the other, to knock the caked
drab-coloured snow off his boots. Pavel wore a new furred coat.
"She may be useful though," Pavel resumed, after a pause. "That is,
provided she is all she seems to be. Her brother is a gendarme major.
What do you think of that?"
"Is he?" Makar asked, looking up at his companion in beatific surprise.
"Yes, and she says he's a good fellow, too. Of course, she's quite a
full-fledged ninny herself, and ought to be taken with a carload of
salt, but she referred to some facts with which I happen to be
familiar." While he was describing the girl's aunt, a passing soldier
saluted Makar, mistaking him for an army officer. Makar, however, was
too absorbed in his companion's talk to be aware of what was going on
about him. Pavel shrieked with laughter. "He must be a pretty raw sort
of recruit to take _you_ for a warrior," he said. When he had finished
his sketch of the woman who was longing to set somebody free, the
medical student paused in the middle of the sidewalk.
"Why, she's a godsend, then," he said.
"Moderate your passions, Mr. Army Officer," Pavel said languidly,
mocking his old gymnasium director. "If she does not turn out to be a
spy we'll see what we can do with her. She strikes me rather favourably,
though."
"Why, you oughtn't to neglect her, Pasha. If I were you I would lose no
time in making her brother's acquaintance. Think of the possibilities of
it!"
"Bridle your exuberance, young man. Her brother lives many miles from
here. He is on the hunt for sedition in the most provincial of
provinces. Want to make a Terrorist of him? Go ahead. He lives in
Miroslav. There."
"In Miroslav!" Makar echoed, with pride in the capital of his native
province.
Presently they entered a courtyard and took to climbing a steep stony
staircase. Strong, inviting odours of cabbage soup and cooked meat
greeted them at several of the landings. Makar's lodging was on the
sixth floor. He had moved in only a few days ago and the chief object of
Pavel's visit was to make a mental note of its location.
The first thing Makar did as he got into the room was to put a pitcher
on one of his two windows. The windows commanded a little side street,
and the pitcher was Makar's safety signal. When he had lit his lamp a
sofa, freshly covered with green oil-cloth, proved to be the best piece
of furniture in the room, the smell of the oil-cloth mingling with the
stale odours of tobacco smoke with which the very walls seemed to be
saturated.
"Ugh, what a room!" Pavel said, sniffing. They talked of a revolutionist
who had recently been arrested and to whom they referred as "Alexandre."
Special importance was attached by the authorities to the capture of
this man, because among the things found at his lodgings was a diagram
of the Winter Palace with a pencil mark on the imperial dining hall. As
the prisoner was a conspicuous member of the Terrorists' Executive
Committee, the natural inference was that another bold plot was under
way, one which had something to do with the Czar's dining room, but
which had apparently been frustrated by the discovery of the diagram.
The palace guard was strongly re-enforced and every precaution was taken
to insure the monarch's safety. Now, the Terrorists had their man in the
very heart of the enemy's camp, and the result of the search of
Alexandre's lodgings was no secret to them. This revolutionist, whose
gloomy face was out of keeping with his carefully pomaded hair, kid
gloves, silk hat, showy clothes and carefully trimmed whiskers a la
Alexander II., was known to Makar as "the Dandy." Less than a year
before he had obtained a position in the double capacity of spy and
clerk, at the Third Section of his Majesty's Own Office, and so liked
was he by his superiors that he had soon been made private secretary to
the head of the secret service, every document of importance passing
through his hands. Since then he had been communicating to the Executive
Committee, now a list of new suspects, now the details of a contemplated
arrest, now a copy of some secret circular to the gendarme offices of
the empire.
While they were thus conversing of Alexandre and the Dandy, Pavel
stretched himself full length on the sofa and dozed off. When he opened
his eyes, about two hours later, he found Parmet tiptoeing awkwardly up
and down the room, his shadow a gigantic crab on the wall. Pavel broke
into a boisterous peal of laughter.
"Here is a figure for you! All that is needed is an artist to set to
work and paint it."
"Are you awake? Look here, Pasha. Your gendarme's sister and her aunt
are haunting my mind."
"Why, why, have you fallen in love with both of them at once?" Pavel
asked as he jumped to his feet and shot his arms toward the ceiling. He
looked refreshed and full of animal spirits.
"Stop joking, Pasha, pray," Makar said in his purring, mellifluous
voice. "It irritates me. It's a serious matter I want to speak to you
about, and here you are bent upon fun." Pavel's story of the gendarme
officer's sister had stirred in him visions of a mighty system of
counter-espionage. He had a definite scheme to propose.
Pavel found it difficult to work himself out of his playful mood until
Makar fell silent and took to pacing the floor resentfully. When he had
desisted, with a final guffaw over Makar's forlorn air, the medical
student, warming up to fresh enthusiasm, said:
"Well, to let that prison stand idle would be criminal negligence. That
girl's aunt must be given a chance."
"What's that?" Pavel said, relapsing into horseplay. "Do you want
somebody nabbed on purpose to give a bored lady something to excite her
nerves?" He finished the interrogation rather limply. It flashed upon
him that what Makar was really aiming at was that some revolutionist
should volunteer to be arrested on a denunciation from the Dandy or some
other member of the party with a view to strengthening its position in
the Third Section.
Makar went on to plead for an organised effort to get into the various
gendarme offices.
"It is a terrible struggle we are in, Pasha. Our best men fall before
they have time to turn round. If we had more revolutionists on the other
side, Alexandre might be a free man now."
"Well, and sooner or later you and I will be where he is now and be
plunged into the sleep of the righteous, and there won't even be a goat
to graze at our graves. Let the dead bury the dead, Makashka. We want
the living for the firing line. We can't afford to let fresh blood turn
sour in a damp cell, if we can help it."
"But this is 'the firing line'," Makar returned with beseeching, almost
with tearful emphasis. "If you only gave me a chance to explain myself.
What I want is to have confusion carried into every branch of the
government; I want the Czar to be surrounded by a masquerade of enemies,
so that his henchmen will suspect each other of being either agents of
the Third Section or revolutionists. Do you see the point? I want the
Czar to be surrounded by a babel of mistrust and espionage. I want him
to be dazed, staggered until he succumbs to this nightmare of suspicion
and hastens to convoke a popular assembly, as Louis XVI. was forced to
do; I want the inhabitants of our tear-drenched country to be treated
like human beings without delay. My scheme practically amounts to a
system or terrorism without violence, and I insist that one good man in
the enemy's camp is of more value than the death of ten spies." His low,
velvety voice rang clear, tremulous with pleading fervour; his face
gleamed with an intellectual relish in his formula of the plan. As he
spoke, he was twisting his mighty fist, opening and closing it again,
Talmud-fashion, in unison with the rhythm of his sentences.
Ejaculations like "visionary!" "phrase-maker!" were on the tip of
Pavel's tongue, but he had not the heart to utter them. Aerial as the
scheme was, Makar's plea had cast a certain spell over him. It was like
listening to a beautiful piece of mythology.
"Let us form a special force of men ready to go to prison, to be
destroyed, if need be," Makar went on. "The loss of one man would mean,
in each case, the saving of twenty. Think how many important comrades a
single leak in the Third Section has saved us. It's a matter of plain
arithmetic."
"Of plain insanity," Pavel finally broke in.
"Don't get excited, Pasha, pray. Can't you let me finish? If I am wrong
you'll have plenty of time to prove it."
His purring Talmudic voice and the smell of the fresh oil-cloth were
unbearable to Pavel now.
"It's like this," Makar resumed. "In the first place [he bent down his
little finger] every honest man is sure to be arrested some day, and
what difference does it make whether the end comes a few months sooner
or a few months later? In the second place [he bent down the next
finger] there must be some more people like that girl's aunt. It is
quite possible that most of those who would be arrested on this plan
would get out, and that itself would be a good thing, for it would add
to the prestige of the party. Everything that reveals the weakness of
the government on the one hand, and the cleverness and daring of our
people on the other, is good for the cause. Every success scored by the
'Will of the People' is a step in the direction of that for which men
like yourself are staking their lives, Pasha. Don't interrupt me, pray.
I'll go a step further. I am of the opinion that under certain
conditions, where an escape is assured, it wouldn't be a bad idea to let
one's self be arrested just in order to add another name to the list of
political gaol-breakers, that is to say, to the list of the government's
fiascos. Every little counts. Every straw increases that weight which
will finally break the back of Russia's despot."
"Do you really mean what you say, Makar? Do you actually want to be
arrested?" Pavel asked.
"Not at all. All I want is that another good man should gain the
confidence of the Third Section and that another political prisoner
should escape."
"And what if all Mlle. Safonoff says turns out to be as idiotic a dream
as all this tommyrot of yours?"
"'If one is afraid of wolves one had better keep out of the woods.' You,
yourself, have taken much greater chances than that, Pasha. If I am
arrested with papers and the worst comes to the worst they won't hang
me."
"I see you take it seriously after all. Well, if you think I'll let you
do anything of the kind you are a fool."
"You can't prevent me from doing what I consider to be right. Nor do I
want anybody else to send the denunciation which is to result in my
arrest. I'll send it myself. All I want is that somebody should claim
credit for it afterward, when I am in prison--on that very day, if
possible. The search and arrest will be ordered from St. Petersburg, and
then some of our men will say at the Third Section that the anonymous
letter was his, adding some details about me. Details can be worked out
later. Where there is a will there is a way. At any rate, I don't expect
anybody but myself to bear the moral responsibility for my arrest."
He talked on in the same strain until Pavel sprang to his feet, flushed
with rage. "It's all posing--that's all there's to it!" he shouted. "On
the surface it means that you are willing to sacrifice yourself without
even attracting attention, but in reality this subtle modesty of yours
is only the most elaborate piece of parading that was ever conceived.
It's love of applause all the way through, and you are willing to stake
your life on it. That's all there is about it."
Makar grew yellow in the face and sweat broke out on his forehead. "In
that case, there's no use talking, of course," he said in a very low
voice. "If I am a humbug I am a humbug."
"And if you are a fool, you are a fool," Pavel rejoined, with a
conciliatory growl.
"You need not back out, Pasha. Maybe you are right," Makar rejoined.
"Who is absolutely free from vanity? Human nature is such a complex
mechanism. One may be governed by love of approbation and, perhaps,
also, by a certain adventuresome passion for the danger of the thing.
The great question is whether there is something besides this. No, it is
not all posing, Pasha. There are moments when I ask myself why I should
not live as most people do, but I only have to realise all that is going
on around us; the savage tyranny, the writhing millions, the hunger,
the bottomless darkness, the unuttered groans,--I only have to think of
this and of the dear comrades I have known who have been strangled on
the gallows or are wasting away in the casemates; I need only picture
all this, I say, to feel that even if there be an alloy of selfishness
in my revolutionary interests, yet, in the main, it is this sense of the
Great Wrong which keeps me from nursing my own safety. Do you know that
the dangling corpses of our comrades are never absent from my mind? I am
not without a heart, Pasha."
"Nobody says you are, only you are a confounded dreamer, Makashka,"
Pavel answered. "We have no time for dreams and poetry. Our struggle is
one of hard, terrible prose."
"You are even more of a dreamer than I, Pasha," Makar retorted,
blissfully.
When Makar resumed speaking the last echo of resentment was gone from
his voice. "After all, one gets more than one gives. When I think of the
moments of joy the movement affords me, of the ties of friendship with
so many good people--the cream of the generation, the salt of the earth,
the best children Russia ever gave birth to--when I think of the
glorious atmosphere that surrounds me, of the divine ecstasy with which
I view the future; when I recall all this I feel that I get a sort of
happiness which no Rothschild could buy. To be kept in solitary
confinement is anything but a pleasure, to be sure, but is there nothing
to sweeten one's life there? And how about the thought that over yonder,
outside, there are people who are going on with the struggle and who
think of you sometimes? Sooner or later the government will yield. And
then, oh then somebody--some comrade of ours--will throw the cell-door
open, and I'll join in the celebration of our triumph. Really, Pasha, I
am strong as a bull, and a few years of confinement would not kill me.
While some of our people may die by the hand of the hangman, my life
would be spared. Did you ever stop to think of the time when the cells
of Siberia and of Peter and Paul are thrown open and one says to the
immured comrades, 'Out with you, brothers! You're free! The nation is
free!' Come, another year or two and this will be realised."
"You had better save your sentimentalities for novices," Pavel said.
"And, by the way, your eloquence is certainly of more use than your
dreaming in a dungeon would be."
He was arguing with a rock of stiff-necked will-power.