INTERVENING IN SIBERIA
I
Certain fragments of scene and speech come back to me with a peculiar
insistence, as I write this third portion of my book. I have no
hesitation in setting them down as I do, I think accurately enough, if
not word for word. I remember them well because they had impressed me.
That is the secret of memory. I have forgotten much, but there are
scenes I cannot forget, fragments of speech that still ring in my ear,
and I shall remember them always; at least, till I have finally pinned
them to paper.
The Admiral and I, and a few others--interesting types, I can assure
you--travelled to Siberia, where we engaged in a series of comic opera
attempts to wipe out the Russian revolution. By now, “Intervention” has
been relegated to the shelf of history. But I cannot but remember it,
not merely as an adventure in futility, as admittedly it was, but as an
ever-shifting, changing sense of being alive. For the experience of
love is inseparable from its background. Alone it does not exist. It is
a modulation of impressions, an interplay of “atmospheres,” a quickening
of the fibres of that background into throbbing tissues of an elusive,
half-apprehended beauty.
It was raining heavily when we arrived in Vladivostok, and the port, as
we surveyed it from the boat, looked grey and hopeless, like the Russian
situation. A flat had been allotted us, a bare, unfurnished flat in a
deserted house standing in a grim and desolate by-street; and there the
Admiral made his temporary headquarters. It poured all day long, and it
seemed, indeed, as though the rain, playing havoc with the town, would
never cease, even as the misery and blundering in Russia would never
cease, and that our efforts were not wanted and could do no good.
That night I entertained General Bologoevski at dinner at the famous
restaurant ‘Zolotoy Rog’--nicknamed by British sailors the ‘Solitary
Dog.’ He had travelled with us all the way from England, seemingly under
vague instructions from some Allied War Office, and had attached himself
to our party of his own accord. As we sat down, the head waiter came up
to us and respectfully informed the General that by order of the
Commander-in-Chief Russian officers were not admitted into restaurants.
The General protested feebly, stressing his hunger as a reason for
remaining, whereon the head waiter suggested, in an undertone, that the
obvious alternative was to remove the epaulets.
“What! Remove my epaulets! I, a Russian officer? Never!” he protested.
Whereon a brain-wave struck him. “I know,” said he, looking round the
restaurant. It was nearly empty. And instantly he compromised by putting
on his mackintosh. “Now,” said he, “in my English Burberry they will
take me for an English officer. Ah!” he smiled, and then added his
invariable English phrase: “It is a damrotten game, you know.” And,
after a momentary contemplation: “I give dem h-h-hell!”
I ordered chicken soup. The General talked loosely about the Siberian
situation. About five minutes after I had ordered soup the waiter
returned without being called and very amiably volunteered the
information that the soup would be served immediately. When,
three-quarters of an hour later, I asked the waiter about the soup, he
repeated “Immediately,” but the word now somehow failed to inspire in us
the same confidence. The General talked of the Siberian situation for
about an hour and a quarter, when we observed that the soup had not been
served. I again called the waiter.
“What about that soup?” I asked.
“I am afraid, sir,” said the waiter, “you will have to wait a while, for
soup is a troublesome thing to prepare nowadays.”
“How long?”
“About three-quarters of an hour.”
General Bologoevski then continued about the situation. I gathered that
there was a General Horvat who had formed an All-Russia Government, and
that there was also a Siberian Government, defying General Horvat on the
one hand and the Bolsheviks on the other, and that there were various
officer organizations grouped about this or the other government, and
some rather inclined to be on their own, all looking forward to a
possible intervention by the Allies. After an hour or so had elapsed I
interrupted General Bologoevski by observing that the soup had not yet
been served, and I called a waiter who was passing and told him to fetch
the waiter who had been serving us.
“He has gone to bed,” came the answer, “and I am on the night shift.”
“Oh!” And I inquired about the soup.
“Soup?” said the new waiter, evidently disowning all responsibility for
his predecessor, and after some hesitation he promised us some soup in
about three-quarters of an hour. General Bologoevski then continued
about the situation. He spoke for an intolerably long time, stopping
only once or twice to inquire about the soup and whether it was coming.
The clock in the corner chimed midnight, and then one. I was now
devilishly hungry, and the General looked misused and maltreated. I
shouted for the waiter, who with eyes closed slumbered in a standing
posture in the distant corner of the room. “What about that soup?” I
repeated in excited tones when the waiter showed signs of recovering
consciousness.
“Soup?” he asked. “Well, you see you can’t have soup nowadays ...
unless you choose to wait----”
“_Wait!_” I said.
“Three-quarters of an hour or so,” he said.
Whereupon the General rose. He rose in a threatening manner. It seemed
to me that the General’s manner of rising was deliberately
remonstrative, a protest undisguised.
“General!” I shouted, as he ran across to his hat and sword. “Come back
and have something. A chicken cutlet. General!”
But he was gone. I sat alone at my table and waited for the cutlet. As I
looked before me I observed sitting at a distant table a man with a
familiar face. I could not believe it. My heart leapt within me. I
dashed from my chair.
“Nikolai Vasilievich!”
“Andrei Andreiech!”
“Is it possible? Is it really you?”
Nikolai Vasilievich was kissing me on both cheeks, in confirmation of
his identity.
“Well, I never thought that you were here! I never thought that you
could be here, Nikolai Vasilievich.”
“I am here,” said Nikolai Vasilievich sadly.
“And who else is here, who else, Nikolai Vasilievich?”
“All,” sighed Nikolai Vasilievich.
“All! How do you mean all?”
“_All._”
“Fanny Ivanovna here?”
“Yes, she is here.”
“Nina?”
“Yes, she is here.”
“And Pàvel Pàvlovich?”
“Yes, both Pàvel Pàvlovichi are here.”
“And Eberheim?”
“Yes, he is here too ... they’re all here.”
“You don’t say so!... And Čečedek?”
“All here--all.”
“And Vera?”
“Yes.”
“And Sonia?...”
“Yes, all--my wife and all.”
“Which wife, Nikolai Vasilievich?”
“How do you mean? I only have one--Magda Nikolaevna.”
“Oh, you haven’t married Zina then?”
“No, but she is here. They are all here--all her family ... Uncle Kostia
... all.”
“How are they all? Tell me, Nikolai Vasilievich ... the grandfathers
dead, I suppose?”
“Oh no, both here. But I don’t think--nobody thinks--they can last very
long now, either of them.”
“Oh, they’re alive. That’s good.... And so Magda Nikolaevna is here
too--with Čečedek, of course.”
“Yes, and Eisenstein.”
“She has married Čečedek?”
“No, she has married no one--except me, of course. But I expect it won’t
be very long now till I get a divorce.”
My voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “Why are they all here,
Nikolai Vasilievich?” I asked.
“Andrei Andreiech, don’t ask me. Why is it that they followed me here
all the way from Petrograd? And when I had to go over to Japan just for
a fortnight on a matter of business ... well, they all followed me there
... all ... every one of them!... You see, they are, so to speak,
economically dependent on me. That is why I suppose they follow me about
wherever I go. We are inseparable--financially. We are a chain. Russia
being what she is to-day--disjointed, with neither railway nor postal
communication that you can rely on, they simply have to be where I am if
they are to get money out of me. I quite understand their position. So
they follow me, you see....”
“Nikolai Vasilievich!” And I shook him long and warmly by the hand.
We sat together long into the morning, and Nikolai Vasilievich
complained of his lot. The mines, it seemed, were still the chief
deterrent to his happiness. His family, he said, had decided to leave
Petrograd and go east because their house, which, strictly speaking,
belonged to them no longer, had, since the Bolshevik revolution, been
invaded by a host of undesirable people and there was hardly a room left
in the house that they could call their own. Another reason which
prompted them to leave the capital was that the Bolshevik authorities
had restricted individuals from drawing on their current accounts in the
banks; and what was more important still, Nikolai Vasilievich had
really nothing left in the bank to draw upon. So he had naturally turned
to his other source of income--the gold-mines in Siberia. He had poured
considerable money into these gold-mines in the past, in the hope that
some day they would make him very wealthy. For years and years they had
a way of ever being on the eve of making him wealthy, yet always some
minor, unforeseen incident occurred which temporarily postponed the
realization of his hopes. The gold-mines were about to begin to pay,
when war broke out and temporarily affected the output. Then in the war
he perceived the opportunity of placing them on a military footing. The
governor, a friend of his, had promised to assist him, when unhappily
the revolution came and the governor was arrested and dismissed.
Kerenski’s time was the most trying time of all. For then the miners
began to call committee-meetings and talk as to what they would do when
they seized the mines; but they confined their revolutionary schemes to
a violent expression as to what they _would_ do, in the meantime doing
nothing, either in the taking over of the mines or in the working of
them. With the Bolshevik revolution things began to move, and the men
seized the mines. At first the news was a great shock to Nikolai
Vasilievich, for he knew that there were many families dependent on him.
Then he perceived that he could actually buy the gold from the men at
exactly the same price as it had cost him to produce it. He was much
relieved, and for the first time in his life he was actually doing good
business.
It was then that they decided to leave Petrograd for Siberia, and his
families, dependents and hangers-on naturally all followed him. He
travelled with Fanny Ivanovna, Sonia, Nina, Baron Wunderhausen, Kniaz,
Eberheim and the book-keeper Stanitski. His wife was in the same train,
but in a different carriage, and she insisted on having Vera with her,
for she was not well, and Čečedek was merely a man. Eisenstein followed
her. At times it seemed as if he had lost sight of them; but he
invariably turned up by the next train in every town they halted.
Eberheim was a great trouble. He suffered terribly. At several wayside
stations they had to take him out and put him into hospital. Sometimes
there was no hospital, only a doctor. Sometimes there was no doctor, and
Zina’s father attended to him as best he could. Eisenstein too was
helpful. On more than one occasion Zina’s family--the largest family of
all--and Magda Nikolaevna’s party, had gone on not knowing that Nikolai
Vasilievich’s party had remained behind; and Nikolai Vasilievich thought
that he would never see them again. But they had discovered his absence
and waited for him in the next town along the line, before proceeding
farther. The two old grandfathers stood the journey very well on the
whole, considering their advanced age and the hardships of the trip.
What made it very unpleasant for Nikolai Vasilievich was that the
various parties who were financially dependent on him were not on
speaking terms with one another. He was besieged with notes requesting
private interviews, and there were violent disputes which he was called
upon to settle. When at length he had arrived at the headquarters of his
gold-mines, he learnt that the Czecho-Slovak troops in their recent
offensive against the Bolsheviks had recaptured the mines, shot the
miners’ leaders, imprisoned many other miners, and then handed the mines
back to his manager; whereon the miners killed the manager and refused
to resume work. Mr. Thomson, his consulting-engineer, despairing of the
situation, had returned to England. And Nikolai Vasilievich perceived
that his recent scheme of purchasing the gold from the men had been
completely knocked on the head.
He was now considering another scheme that had been suggested to him by
a number of financiers in the Far East, which involved the active
co-operation of two influential generals--to organize and dispatch a
punitive expedition to the gold-mines in order to compel the miners to
restart work. This somewhat complicated scheme had necessitated a trip
to Tokio to interest another Russian general who was there in the
scheme; and all the families, no doubt thinking that he was trying to
escape from his responsibilities, followed him to Tokio, thus
unnecessarily increasing his expenses. He had had great difficulty in
finding accommodation for his family in Vladivostok; but for Fanny
Ivanovna, Sonia, Nina, Vera, Baron Wunderhausen and himself he had
procured the ground floor of a little house. All the others had also
settled down in Vladivostok. And the Baron would, no doubt, find it
difficult to evade military service.
“And how are you?” asked Nikolai Vasilievich. “I wondered if you would
be coming with the Admiral. We half expected that you would. Well, what
do you think of it?”
“Think of it!” I said. “Why, we are the men of the hour. You should have
seen the deputations, proclamations, speeches, hailing him as the new
Lafayette. He said to-day, jokingly of course, that he would have to
work out a time-table for seeing people. Dictators, say, from 7 to 10;
supreme rulers between 10 and 1; prime ministers could be admitted
between 2 and 5. Then till seven he would be free to cabinet ministers
of the rank and file. Supreme commanders-in-chief could come from 8 to
1. And so forth, down to common general officers commanding. Yes, it was
hardly an exaggeration....”
Nikolai Vasilievich smiled one of his kindly smiles. “Do you think it
will be all right?” he asked.
“Rather!” I replied irrelevantly. “It’s the climax of his career. He has
been called upon by four joint deputations representing, I think, four
separate All-Russia Governments whose heads conferred on him the title
of ‘Supreme Commander-in-Chief of All the Armed Military and Naval
Forces operating on the Territory of Russia,’ or something of this
sort. And he made a speech to them; said that Foch was wrong and Douglas
Haig was wrong, and all those muddle-headed politicians! The war was to
be won on the Eastern Front.”
“I too think it will be won on the Eastern Front,” said Nikolai
Vasilievich. “It ought to, anyhow.”
“Why?”
“Well, because the Eastern Front has unquestionably the greater
resources in mineral wealth. The gold-mines ought to be cleared of the
enemy before anything else if you want to win the war.”
“Yes,” said I with an assumed and exaggerated pensiveness, “that is
unquestionably the case.”
We arranged to meet again to-morrow, as we descended arm in arm the
shabby flight of steps, and it was decided that Nikolai Vasilievich
should call for me and drive me home to see the family.
The rain had ceased. We parted at the cross-roads.
* * * * *
When I turned into my bedroom I beheld the Admiral and a little
dark-haired man, aquiline featured, sitting on my bed and talking like
two conspirators. The dark-haired little man then rose with the
precision common to Russian officers, and shook hands. He was, I learnt
afterwards, Admiral Kolchak.
It was very late that night when I fell asleep. I was thinking of my
meeting on the morrow with the family, with Nina. I pictured to myself
her image as I last remembered it. And, interlacing with these thoughts,
there was the thought of the gallant Admiral in the bedroom opposite,
tucked away between his heavy blankets, his teeth in a glass of water
on the table at his side--no presentable sight!--seeing visions of a
Napoleonic ride athwart the great Siberian plain, at the head of his
vast new armies marching onward to take their stand on the
re-established Eastern Front.
Then in the small hours of the morning he was wakened by the noise of a
dog that ran through the half-open door of his bedroom in pursuit of a
cat. I heard the Admiral strike a match, then jump out of bed and fumble
with his stick under the bed and cupboards and chest of drawers,
evidently looking for the animals. I went in to him and offered my
services in the chase.
“Can you see the dog?” came the Admiral’s sturdy voice from under a
cupboard.
“I’m looking for the cat, sir.”
“Cat! Where did _that_ come from?”
“I saw it run into your room after a rat.”
“Nonsense!”
“I did, sir, and the dog ran in after the cat.”
We fumbled with our sticks.
“I don’t believe there was a rat,” said the Admiral.
“There was, sir. I saw it myself.”
“I don’t mind the dog so much. Cats I hate. But I can’t stick the rat.
Why did you tell me?”
I did not answer this.
“Can’t find them, sir,” I said, rising.
“They’ve gone, I hope,” said the Admiral.
“They’ve hidden themselves somewhere, I think.”
“Damn them! I shan’t be able to sleep all night.”
“Good night, sir,” said I.
The Admiral could not sleep. I heard him get out of bed and fumble with
his stick beneath the furniture. I think the uncertainty of the
whereabouts of the animals disturbed his peace of mind. Then I heard him
creep into bed, and all was still. I could just hear the rain drum
against the window-pane; and I thought that by now the cat had probably
eaten up the rat.
II
Nikolai Vasilievich was to call for me after lunch. At lunch there were
many guests, and the conversation was necessarily political. I was
impatient, for Nikolai Vasilievich might call at any moment; and the
entire scheme of “Intervention” seemed to me, in my mood of acute
expectancy, singularly unimportant. I watched the Admiral who in his
serious, deliberate way looked straight into his principal guest’s eyes
and listened very earnestly and nodded with approval, while the guest, a
Russian General, was talking arrant nonsense. In that stiff and martial
attitude common to a certain type of Russian officer (who assumes it as
it were in proof of grim determination) the guest was saying: “All these
complaints about arrests and executions by the loyal troops--I decline
to take them seriously. In the present wavering state of mind of the
population you can’t guarantee that there won’t be people who will
complain because the sun shines in the daytime only and not at night as
well.”
The Admiral gave an emphatic nod; and at a glance I could see that he
had classed his guest as a “good fellow.” The Admiral, I may explain,
divided the world into two big camps: the humanity that he called “good
fellows,” and the humanity that he called “rotters”--and there you are!
Simple. (As a matter of fact, he used a substitute for this last word,
but I am afraid the original is unprintable.) But while the guest was
being engaged by General Bologoevski, a quiet silver-haired British
Colonel took the opportunity of telling the Admiral in his quiet silvery
manner the conclusion he in his quiet silvery mind had quietly arrived
at after interviewing for many months innumerable Russian officers. “I
am afraid,” said he, “that whenever you come to examine very carefully a
Russian officer’s scheme for the restoration and salvation of his
country, it invariably boils down to giving him a job.”
And at a glance I could see that the Admiral had classed the fellow as a
“rotter.”
I forget the substance of the conversation of that lunch, which stands
out in my memory merely on account of its coincidence with the day on
which I met the family; but I remember how a remark of General
Bologoevski’s, that he understood the Bolshevik commissaries never
washed, lit up the Admiral’s face with ominous glee, and one could guess
at sight that he condemned the Bolshevik commissaries.
* * * * *
About two o’clock Nikolai Vasilievich called for me. We drove uphill,
the driver flogging his two horses with unwarranted zeal. The day was
bright, but the roads were muddy from the flood overnight. As we
arrived, another cab drove up at the porch, and from it emerged Fanny
Ivanovna and Kniaz. Kniaz made an insincere attempt to pay the cabfare;
but when Fanny Ivanovna said “It’s all right, I have some money,” Kniaz
said “Very well,” and replaced the empty purse in his pocket....
And for the next few minutes the three-roomed lodging of the little
house was the scene of a happy reunion.
Nina alone was absent from the household. Fanny Ivanovna was much
annoyed and tackled Sonia on the subject.
“How do I know where she is?” Sonia remonstrated. Then she smiled and I
felt that she knew all right; and then immediately she grew angry, and I
felt that after all, perhaps, she did not know.
“We have no means of knowing, Fanny Ivanovna,” said Baron Wunderhausen.
“Pàv’l Pàvlch,” she said, “please don’t annoy me. You annoy me with your
inconsequent talk, and I have asked you not to meddle ... and to wash
your neck.”
“He’s like Uncle Kostia!” Vera cried. “Has a bath once a year--whether
clean or dirty.” She was pretty, growing prettier.
Baron Wunderhausen only shrugged his shoulders.
Then the door opened and Nina slipped into the room. I was staggered by
her looks. To my mind she was irresistible. When she saw me she stopped
dead.
“Where have _you_ come from?” she asked.
I explained confusedly, and a minute later she dismissed me and my
arrival as a thing entirely commonplace, and turned to the others.
“Nina,” said Fanny Ivanovna sternly, “where have you been? I insist on
your telling me.”
“And I won’t tell,” said Nina curtly.
“Nina,” I took it up, jokingly but with a sneaking sense of secretive
authority resting on our “engagement” of four years ago, “where have you
been? I too insist on your telling me.”
She looked at me with the expression that comes over people who are
about to put out their tongue at you, and said:
“And I won’t tell.”
“And how do you find us?” Fanny Ivanovna asked. “Have we grown older? I
think I have grown older. And Nikolai Vasilievich, too. And Kniaz.”
“No,” I lied. And assuredly the lie pleased her.
“And the children are just the same?”
“The children are just the same,” I agreed. “A bouquet. Three pretty
kittens.”
Vera purred like one.
“But you haven’t much room here, have you?” I observed.
“What can we do?” she asked. “The town is packed with refugees. We can’t
find anything better.”
“_À la guerre comme à la guerre_,” remarked the Baron.
“Still, it is more comfortable than living in an hotel. Sonia, Nina and
Vera sleep here on the sofa and the bed we drag out from the other room.
The adjoining room is Nikolai Vasilievich’s and mine. The third is Pàv’l
Pàvlch’s, the Baron’s. The others have remained at the hotel--I mean
Kniaz and Eberheim. I don’t care what Magda Nikolaevna does, but I think
she has now found a house. And Uncle Kostia and the rest of them will
probably settle at his sister’s, the Olenins. Kniaz comes here for his
meals and spends the day with us ... though lately”--she smiled--“he has
been going out hunting.”
“Hunting!” I exclaimed, looking at the Prince’s well-shaved chin.
Kniaz passed his fingers between his skinny neck and his stiff collar in
a nervous gesture and giggled feebly.
“He’s bought a gun,” said Nina.
“You should see the gun!” Vera cried.
Fanny Ivanovna smiled; and as we settled down to tea Nikolai Vasilievich
chaffed Kniaz in his timid, deferential manner. “I went out hunting with
him once. It’s a comedy! We see a hare. Kniaz pulls the trigger
once--misfire. Pulls at it again--misfire. Pulls at it a third time--and
the gun misfires for the third time. When he had pulled the trigger a
fourth time there was a terrible explosion; a blaze of fire burst forth
from the muzzle; the butt end hit him violently in the shoulder. And
when the smoke had gradually dispersed we saw that the hare had
evidently escaped undamaged. His instrument of murder was the only
victim; and there I saw Kniaz looking at his gun: the trigger and most
of the front piece had blown off in the concussion. But there he stood,
still holding the instrument in his hands, puzzled beyond words.”
Nikolai Vasilievich looked at Kniaz and smiled kindly, as though to make
up by it for any pain that his recital may have caused him.
Nina stretched a plate of sweets to me.
I looked at her interrogatively.
“With your tea,” she said.
“There is no sugar,” said Nikolai Vasilievich apologetically.
“I want to speak to you very seriously,” said Baron Wunderhausen, “about
transferring to the English Service.”
“Now that Andrei Andreiech has arrived,” said Fanny Ivanovna gaily, “we
shall be able to get sugar and everything from the English.”
“The English are all right,” said Nikolai Vasilievich. “I always did
have confidence in the English. If the English once begin a job you may
be sure they’ll see it through. And if the first step is taken and the
mining area is liberated, the war will soon be over.”
“I want to speak to you about my special qualifications for transferring
to the English Service. I was born and educated----”
“Pàv’l Pàvlch,” cried Fanny Ivanovna, “please don’t interrupt. I want
you, Andrei Andreiech, to translate an English letter Nikolai
Vasilievich has received from his former mining-engineer, Mr. Thomson.
Our English is not quite sufficient, though I’ve understood parts of
it.”
I took the letter. Mr. Thomson, writing from an obscure address in
Scotland, stated that the afterwar conditions prevailing in the west of
Europe had frankly disappointed him, and solicited an invitation to be
reinstated in his former post as consulting-engineer in Nikolai
Vasilievich’s gold-mines.
“It’s such a pity,” Fanny Ivanovna sighed. “Mr. Thomson is such a nice
man. And now it seems he is so badly off. It must be terrible for his
wife and children.”
“Well,” said Nikolai Vasilievich, “I say this: it’s no use Mr. Thomson
coming out here _at present_, while the mines are still in Bolshevik
hands. And I don’t want to hold out false hopes to Mr. Thomson, for one
can never quite be sure what may happen in Siberia yet. But between
ourselves, I may tell you that now that the English have arrived
and--well, that this punitive expedition to the mines has been arranged,
we have good reason to feel optimistic.”
“Well, let’s hope, let’s hope,” said Fanny Ivanovna.
But the three sisters looked as if they didn’t care a hang about Mr.
Thomson, the English, the mines or anybody else.
“Are you going to the dance?” said Nina.
“Which dance?”
“The Russian one--at the Green School.”
“But it will be Russian dances all the time.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Russian music, too.”
“We can dance fox-trots to krokoviaks, one-steps to march music, slow
waltzes to anything you like. You must come.”
I knew I was going, but I liked to be asked, and I resisted lingeringly,
to prolong the pleasure.
Of course I was going. Who could have resisted this sliding side-long
look; this shining semicircle of white teeth that revealed itself with
each full smile; this lithe, sylphine young body?
The three sisters affected a stationary fox-trot.
The passions were aroused.
“Nikolai Vasilievich! Papa!”
He was dragged, like a resisting malefactor, struggling, to the piano,
and made to play his one and only waltz. The Baron claimed Vera. Nina
came automatically into my arms. I recaptured some of her familiar
fragrance, as we danced between the sofa and round the table, dodging
sundry chairs. Sonia stood demurely at the wall, abandoned by her
husband in favour of a younger sister, but affecting an unconvincing
_moue_ of mirth. Then, owing to the shortness and simplicity of the
tune, Nikolai Vasilievich’s technique broke down.
“I want to talk to you on this very serious question of transferring to
the English Service.” The Baron had come up to me again. And I resorted
to the classic answer of doubting whether there was “any vacancy.”
“It doesn’t matter _where_,” he said. “In Persia, or perhaps in
Mesopotamia. I can’t serve here any longer.”
We sat silent in the heated room of the little wooden house creaking in
the wind, and I felt lost and hidden amid all this sun and fir and
solitude around us. Nikolai Vasilievich drank his tea and wondered if
the Bolsheviks would hand him back his house and money at the bank, and
if the Czechs, as obviously they ought, would compensate him for his
loss on the gold-mines. He had great hopes, he said, of the punitive
expedition; but there was one aspect--a moral one--that disturbed him
greatly. He wondered whether the punitive expedition would turn out to
be quite honest and would not do him out of his interests in the
gold-mines altogether.
Afterwards he came up to me and said in a weary undertone: “You know, it
will be very dull to-night--nothing but Russian dance music. Honestly,
it would only spoil your evening if you went.”
“Don’t take any notice of him,” cried the three sisters simultaneously.
“It will be very jolly. He’s only thinking of himself.”
“Nikolai!” cried Fanny Ivanovna. “What nonsense! You’ve already promised
me to come. You’re their father and it’s your duty to take your children
out. I refuse to go alone with them.”
* * * * *
As I entered the brilliantly illuminated ball-room, the three sisters,
each claimed by an Allied officer, were fox-trotting, in defiance of the
congregation. Nikolai Vasilievich, wearing a dinner-jacket, looked very
angry, very lonely and very bored; and Fanny Ivanovna looked ominously
triumphant.
“Poor Nikolai Vasilievich!” I said when Fanny Ivanovna and I were alone.
“That dinner-jacket of his looks miserable and frightened as though it
felt the outrage of being dragged into this mock festivity. It seems to
say: ‘What have _I_ done?’”
“Doesn’t matter. He is better where he is.
“He would only be with that girl of his if I had not insisted on his
coming with us,” she added by way of after-thought.
“Zina?”
“_Ach!_ Andrei Andreiech! It makes me so ill, so angry to think of it.”
Then Nikolai Vasilievich, ludicrously festive, strolled up to us.
“Well,” he muttered, yawning into his white-cuffed hand.
“Jolly dance,” I said.
“For those who dance,” he retorted in a voice as though I had foully and
grievously betrayed him.
Then the music ceased abruptly. The three sisters, scantily and
deliciously attired, glided up, and were met with an involuntary
critical examination from the eyes of Fanny Ivanovna, who effected a
few, to all appearance needless, pulls at their evening-gowns.
“I could hardly recognize Nina with her hair like this,” I remarked
aloud.
With sylphine litheness, she slid between me and Baron Wunderhausen to
the drawing-room.
“Really, I don’t like the way you’ve done your hair,” I said. “There’s
nothing at the front.”
Instantly she vanished to the dressing-room; and in her absence the
Baron tackled me again about a billet in Persia or Mesopotamia. I
expressed a mild surprise. “Have we not come here to help the Russian
national cause?” I asked. “Is that then of no interest to you?”
“You know,” he said nonchalantly, “nothing will come of it.”
“Why?”
“The Czechs are such awful swine. They’re all Bolsheviks.”
And then added, “And the Americans, too, are Bolsheviks. President
Wilson. Nothing will come of it all.”
And, involuntarily, the conversation at lunch surged back to my mind. I
thought this equalled it in point of sheer “constructive statesmanship.”
And then Nina, now in her original coiffure, returned.
We sat under dusty imitation palm-trees, my sleeve every now and then
touching her shapely naked girlish arms; till Nikolai Vasilievich came
up and gave us supper, insisting on paying for it all himself. I thought
of the poor, long-suffering mines who would eventually have to square
all this, as I surveyed the debris on the table-cloth, while Nikolai
Vasilievich paid the waiter.
When the music, after the due interval, broke out into a resounding
waltz, we all flocked back into the ball-room.
General Bologoevski, who had turned up at the eleventh hour, stood at my
side, and we admired Nina, who now fulfilled a carelessly contrived
engagement. “What eyes! What calves! What ankles!” he was saying. “Look
here, why in heaven don’t you marry her?...”
Driving through the dark and muddy streets, I sat on the folding seat;
the car was packed with members of the family. Tucked away in the corner
opposite, like a purring kitten, was Nina. We began to part
provisionally at their gate; but they asked me to come in. We had cold
ham and tinned salmon and tea with sweets. There was a certain subdued
agitation about my presence in the household at this hour, and once I
heard Fanny Ivanovna’s shrill voice from the adjoining room explain
excitedly to Sonia: “You needn’t drag the bed into the drawing-room till
Andrei Andreiech is gone.”
I had been _going_ for an hour or so. We had said “good night”
innumerable times. Nina clung to me whimsically, ignoring Nikolai
Vasilievich’s desire to be rid of me. They all came out into the tiny
hall and added to the difficulty of my withdrawal. Nina fastened my
great sheepskin overcoat, which appealed to her by reason of its many
straps. I was to come again to-morrow night to supper, and the day
after, and every, every day....
III
My tangled memories of Siberia come to me to-day largely as a string of
dances, dinners, concerts, garden-parties, modulated by the atmosphere
of weather and the seasons of the year, with the gathering clouds of the
political situation looming always in the background. And I remember, in
particular, the Admiral’s first _thé dansant_. As he ran through my
provisional list of guests he frowned and growled a little. “What are
all these women?” he asked.
“You should see them, Admiral,” smiled General Bologoevski.
“Good-looking?”
The General kissed his finger-tips.
“And who is Fanny Ivanovna?”
“A German.”
A shadow came across his face. “I’m damned if I want any Huns in my
house,” he growled; but gave in grudgingly.
Through inadvertence on somebody’s part, the officers of the U.S.
Flagship arrived half an hour before time--an incident which taxed my
capacity for consuming liquor to the utmost pitch. They had also
overdone their kindness by sending us two jazz bands instead of one,
with the result that their almost simultaneous employment in the two
adjoining rooms reserved for dancing proved an experience unsatisfactory
to the ear. As the Hawaian string-band flowed and quivered in a languid,
plaintive waltz, the adjoining brass-band fairly knocked sparks out of
it by bursting into an intoxicating one-step.
Some two hours earlier I had met Vera in the street. She had been to see
their dressmaker about the frock in which now, radiant but bashful, she
appeared. Almost immediately, the family was followed by the Zina-Uncle
Kostia wing, and by Magda Nikolaevna and Čečedek. But they would not
speak to one another. Nikolai Vasilievich had been to see me in the
morning about bringing Zina; and now he tried to dance with her. But
both were awkward and bashful, and the experiment proved unsatisfactory;
while Fanny Ivanovna looked on at them sarcastically. Nina whispered to
me as we one-stepped: “After them! Go after them!” her triangular,
fur-bordered hat bobbing up into my face in the excitement. And as we
overtook them: “Oh, my God!”
Stepping like a duck, Zina would not turn unless warned beforehand, and
even then only half the circle; and Nikolai Vasilievich, exasperated by
his futile efforts, asked impatiently: “Are you dancing in goloshes?
Have you rubber soles on your shoes? Or what _is_ it?”
They gave it up at last and stood by the wall, in everybody’s way,
shamefaced and pitiful; and Zina looked as though she regretted her
insistence on coming to this dance.
“Will you dance?” said I.
“I’ve never danced before,” said she. “But I don’t mind trying.” She
looked up at her lover. Evidently their experiment did not count.
Nikolai Vasilievich smiled feebly.
And, as a preliminary, she stepped on my toe....
My next dance was with Magda Nikolaevna, a beautiful woman enough, but
so delicate and with such an elaborate concoction of accessories by way
of dress that the chief sensation yielded from the dance with her was
one of infinite precaution.
As a _pièce de résistance_, I danced with a little niece of Uncle
Kostia, Olya Olenin. She was stout and round, like a football, and we
banged into people and against walls carelessly and with the
harmlessness of a football.
“To-day I have grown ten years older,” confided Nikolai Vasilievich, as
I came up to him. “I shall not forget it.”
“You take it much too seriously,” I said.
“I blame myself for being such a fool as to have listened to her. I
didn’t want to come.”
“Nikolai Vasilievich, really!”
“Oh, please don’t take it that way. It was charming of you to ask us. I
like your Admiral ... and that other officer, his assistant, who says
‘Splendid! Splendid!’”
“Sir Hugo,” I supplied.
Then Uncle Kostia, spectacled, and with the air of a profound
philosopher taking stock of his impressions, joined us. “I’ve been
talking to your Admiral,” he said.
“Well?”
“Fine-looking man. Combines the manner of Napoleon I with the mind, I
think, of Napoleon III. Wants to get to Moscow. But what he’ll do when
he gets there (if he gets there), curiously enough doesn’t seem to have
occurred to him! The simplicity of the scheme is touching. All right,
let’s assume he gets there and plants a constitutional Russian
government and retains an Allied army to support it. Will he keep the
Allied troops there indefinitely? And when at last they go, what’s to
prevent the government from collapsing like a pack of cards at the hands
of a population inevitably resentful of foreign interference? Then
there’s your country. You think your country will support you. But it
will be divided.”
“I disagree,” said Nikolai Vasilievich. “I’d much rather, for example,
the gold-mining area was occupied by English troops, or even by the
Japanese, than by the Russians. I know what I am talking about. I am a
typical Russian myself. There are honest men in Russia, and there are
clever men in Russia; but there are no honest clever men in Russia. And
if there are, they are probably heavy drinkers.”
Uncle Kostia “pooh-poohed” this sweeping charge; but Nikolai Vasilievich
continued:
“To take my book-keeper Stanitski. Andrei Andreiech knows him. Dishonest
as you make them. And still I am obliged to keep him on. Why? Because if
I took an honest man he would make such a hash of all the books that I
wouldn’t know where I was at all.”
“But do you know where you are with a dishonest book-keeper, Nikolai
Vasilievich?” said Uncle Kostia with that keen spasmodic interest that
highly abstract men have of taking, periodically, in practical affairs,
almost as a relief from themselves. “I am a man of letters, no business
man in any sense; still it would seem to me----”
“To be candid,” said the other, “it doesn’t matter much either way just
now. Till we can get the gold-mines back there is no doing any business.
I get money in advance occasionally. He sees to the paying of the
interest, which is paid out of the same money, and puts it down in the
books. For the present that is all.”
“Hm!... Still, I should do something about that,” said Uncle Kostia, “if
I may presume to give advice in these matters.”
“When we get the gold-mines there will be time enough to act,” Nikolai
Vasilievich answered somewhat gruffly. “I only mentioned it as an
illustration of the political situation we have to contend with. The
foreigners here must laugh at our methods!”
“Why? They’re only muddling up our issues.”
“The idea,” I attempted to amend Uncle Kostia’s proposition, “is that
the Allied troops should help to raise and train Russian _cadres_ and so
lay the foundation for a new Russian Army which, in its turn, would make
it possible to rebuild the State. It’s not an invasion by foreign
troops. You may rest your mind in peace on that point.”
“Oh!... Oh!... If that’s the idea,” said Uncle Kostia in augmented
tones, “then I am doubly alarmed; for I can guess the elements which
will form the backbone of this new White Russian Army--monarchists
altogether too brainless to realize that theirs is a lost cause.”
“Most of them, I think, would favour a Constitutional Monarchy,”
proffered Nikolai Vasilievich.
“A constitutional monarchy in Russia,” retorted Uncle Kostia, “would
invariably be more monarchical than constitutional.”
“Anyhow,” I said, “do have a drink.”
I could see Sir Hugo’s ruddy, weather-beaten face, as he served Fanny
Ivanovna with her ice-cream; and as I came up to her I overheard her say
to him in German: “I think the Bolsheviks are bound to be beaten soon
because it is impossible to do any trade while they are in power.”
“Splendid!” said Sir Hugo somewhat inconsequently. “Splendid!”
“We simply can’t recover our mines, and Nikolai Vasilievich----”
She stopped....
She danced heavily; and as I turned her each time, revolved a few times
of her own momentum. She sought to direct me by sheer strength of will.
“Who is steering, Fanny Ivanovna? You or me?” I asked in exasperation.
“I am sorry, Andrei Andreiech,” she answered. “I do it unintentionally.”
The Baron asked me for the third time about Persia or Mesopotamia; but
the Admiral’s approach frightened him away.
We watched Kniaz, who was shaking hands cordially with everybody as he
took his leave. “That Kniaz of yours looks as if one day he’d been
unspeakably astonished--and remained so ever since.”
“Look at General Bologoevski, sir, dancing with that painted woman.”
The Admiral’s face drew out and darkened. “That man,” said he, “is the
_biggest_ fool in the Russian Army.” He pondered. “The Russian men are
no damned good. But the women are splendid! What about that Czech
concert to-night? You can bring your women if you like into the box.
Don’t want the men. Ha! ha! ha! Look at old Hugo talking to the young
girls!”
“I’ll ask the three sisters....”
“Those three there sitting on the window-sill?”
“Yes.... And Fanny Ivanovna,” I added.
“All right. Let’s have the Hun.
“Well, Nikolai Vasilievich,” he turned to his guest. “I hear you know
English very well. Where have you picked it up?”
“No, no,” blushed Nikolai Vasilievich; and said in Russian, “Your
English spelling is so difficult. In English you spell a word ‘London’
and pronounce it ‘Birmingham.’”
“Ha! ha! ha! ha!” laughed the Admiral loudly, but with dignity; and then
asked, “Are you comfortable in Vladivostok? Can you get all the food you
want for your family? I hope you will tell me if there is anything I can
do?”
“I am very grateful,” bowed the Russian.
“Now mind you don’t forget to ask....”
Nikolai Vasilievich, as things went, did not forget; nor did he wait to
be asked twice. On the spot he said that he understood the Admiral was
shortly travelling by special train up-country, and all he, Nikolai
Vasilievich, requested was one modest coupé in that special train, as it
was urgent that he should see a certain Russian general at Omsk,
relative to the forthcoming punitive expedition to his gold-mines.
The Admiral returned the classic answer: “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Will you kindly introd_oo_ce me to the young lady yonder?” said a very
smart, stiff-collared U.S. naval officer. He looked in the direction of
the window-sill.
“Which one?”
The next moment he was dancing with Nina.
“Who’s that officer?” asked General Bologoevski.
“Ward.”
“What eyes! What calves! What ankles!” he sighed again. “Look here,
really, why in the world don’t you marry her?”
“And now,” said I, “it’s my turn,” as the waltz subsided on the last
three beats.
“_Tell me_,” whined Nigger voices, “_why nights are lonesome_,” and the
cymbals beat the pulse; “_tell me why days are blue_....” And we moved
rhythmically to the incantation, stooping, jerking gently, swaying
smoothly, like plants in the water. When the song ceased it was
immediately encored. And when the bands went, a handful of us, those who
had enjoyed it most, lingered for a while. I and Nina, the Baron and his
painted lady, Vera and Holdcroft, danced to the husky gramophone; and
Sonia sat on the window-sill and stared at Holdcroft with unmitigated
admiration.
* * * * *
And in the evening I called for them in our car and took them to the
concert. We arrived a little late because at a point in the journey our
progress had been impeded by a car that blocked the road. Inside was a
drunken gentleman who was being urged by the chauffeur to pay his fare.
“Don’t want to pay,” the gentleman responded.
“Then get out!”
“Don’t want to get out.”
“Get out, _you_----”
“Who’re you talking to?” came from within. “Don’t you know I’m an
officer?”
“Officer. There’s a lot of you here, we know your kind.... Get out!”
“Don’t want to get out.”
“Then kindly pay your fare.”
“Don’t want to pay.”
At length our chauffeur succeeded in disentangling our car. “I’m always
so frightened for the children. Awful language these drunkards use,”
said Fanny Ivanovna.
The theatre, as we entered the box, was a gallery of distinguished
generals, admirals and Allied high commissioners; and the orchestra was
sending forth the plaintive strains of the familiar Czecho-Slovak
marching song.
I sat next to Nina, and the Admiral was in the other corner, half
screened from the public view by the dusty curtain. To the great
delight of Sonia and Fanny Ivanovna, there was the Overture to
_Tannhäuser_; and as the initial pilgrims’ chorus was being repeated in
its last resort, the conductor urging the executants to ever greater
efforts, and the trombones blazed away their utmost perturbation, a
chuckle of glee and satisfaction spread over the Admiral’s fine-set
face. “There’s more discipline in an orchestra like this,” said he,
“than in a battalion of Marines,” and clapped his hands uproariously.
The concert over, the Admiral dispatched me first in his car with the
family and waited for me to return for him. Driving home through the
warm and starry night, Fanny Ivanovna praised the immaculate politeness
of Sir Hugo; but added afterwards, “He’s frightfully nervous, and keeps
fiddling with something or other all the time.”
“And keeps saying ‘Splendid! Splendid!’” added Nina.
“There’s something curious about his mind, too,” she said.
“Ah! you’ve discovered that!” I laughed. “It’s a grasp of the
inessential, a passion for detail and exactitude unexcelled in creation.
You don’t know him. To-day, for instance, I met him on the landing,
before lunch. ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘Full of work?’ Now it had seemed to me
that he said ‘Full of drink?’ and naturally enough I said, ‘No, not at
this hour, sir.’ ‘At what hour do you start, pray?’ he began, and
thinking he was talking about cocktails, I said, ‘Oh, just before
dinner.’ ‘Hm!’ he said. ‘Just before dinner. I shall have to look into
that.’ ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said, ‘I think I must have heard you wrong.
Do you mind telling me again what you said?’ ‘Hm!’ he said, ‘I’ve been
talking to you on this landing for the last three minutes on the basis
of my original inquiry, and you now ask me what it was I said. I said--I
think these were the exact words I used--I said: “Hello!” I said. “Full
of work?”’ ‘Full of work?’ I cried, ‘and I thought you said “Full of
drink.”’ ‘Full of drink,’ he said, ‘full of drink indeed. Good morning
to you!’ And he went his way.”
The car had pulled up.
“Good night, Andrei Andreiech, and thank you very, very much.”
“Good night,” smiled the three sisters.
The Admiral was bucked as we drove home. I knew that he was fond of
young girls. On the other hand, he liked mature women. He praised the
girls. I breathed to him that they had praised him.
The Admiral smiled one of his most adorable smiles.
“Fanny Ivanovna,” I said, “was struck by your appearance.”
The gallant Admiral blushed like a girl.
“There is something in having an appearance,” he said at last.
He looked out into the dark and silent night. Some minutes later he
said, with conviction, “She’s a good woman, that Fanny Ivanovna.”
“Russian women are so much more interesting and fascinating,” I babbled,
“than other women.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But she’s a Boche.”
“Unfortunately,” I sighed.
The Admiral yawned. “Never mind,” he said. “I don’t mind the Germans.
What I can’t stick are the dirty Bolsheviks.”
“Russian girls,” I continued, “are far more interesting and clever than
other girls.”
“All girls,” the Admiral replied, “are stupid.”
IV
Much of my experiences must now appear in the nature of a farce. This is
not my fault. A good deal of life is a hilarious farce, and yet, as in
the case of the affiliation of Nikolai Vasilievich’s family, it all
comes about in the proper constitutional way, through a string of human
motives. For a week or so Nikolai Vasilievich kept on applying to the
Admiral for a coupé in his train to Omsk, in the teeth of implacable
refusals. Then, after much opposition from the Admiral, and a
passionate, though somewhat vague attempt on the part of Nikolai
Vasilievich to identify his personal misfortunes with that of “honest”
Russia, and the doings of the Czechs, the miners, and the punitive
expedition whose disinterestedness he had begun to doubt, with that of
international Bolshevism, this was conceded. But on hearing of this
step, Fanny Ivanovna at once concluded that Nikolai Vasilievich was
trying to escape from her--a suspicion she always entertained--and she
immediately applied to see the Admiral in person and asked for two
additional coupés, to accommodate her and the three sisters. The Admiral
was a sailor and a gentleman. He promised her two coupés.
I forget which wing of the family was the next to apply. I remember that
every day that week our waiting-room was crowded with petitioners. The
Admiral said No. He found himself saying No innumerable times each day.
Now it is an intrinsic part of the Russian character that it does not
accept No for No. It is constitutionally incapable of doing so. Its
institutions are all a negation of that principle. And what is more, it
refuses to confine that fact to within the Russian border. It regards it
in the light of worldwide application, assuming that it is indeed
nothing less than human nature.
The Admiral still said No. He held that it was not human nature but just
Russian nature, and as an illustration of his point he meant to show
that when an Englishman says No he does mean No. But none of them would
understand the Admiral’s interpretation of No. They had all grown up
with the idea that No meant Yes after an adequate amount of pressure and
insistence. The pressure was of various kinds, according to the age, sex
and nature of the applicant. There were tears, entreaties. There were
questions, such as the “object” of the Allies in Siberia, since they
monopolized the best trains and refused to help the Russians in their
primary needs. There were direct questions which it was thought must
needs shatter the impregnability of the Admiral’s No, such as, for
instance: Did the Admiral wish to starve them, as he evidently did, by
cutting them adrift from Nikolai Vasilievich, the bread-winner?
The Admiral still said that No was No, and would they please understand
it? They all replied that No was not the point, the point being: _What
were they to do without Nikolai Vasilievich?_ Whereon the Admiral
replied that when he said a thing he meant it, this being the sterling
value of British character. But they persisted all the same, treating
him as if he were just human like the rest of them. Then the Admiral
became a little angry. It annoyed him that they should fail to
understand the primary fact that an Englishman was not a Russian and
that hence any laxity that held good in Russian character did not hold
good in that of a native of the British Isles. But the Russians hammered
on in spite of all; till the Admiral was heartily amused that they
should indeed know no better than to think that he would give in just
because they persisted, for, the ignorance of human nature that, he
thought, such a belief implied--a quaint and childish ignorance--began
to fascinate him. He looked at them and looked at them again, as they
poured forth their woes ... and marvelled. Indeed, their touching
innocence fascinated him so much that finally he felt he wanted to
humour them, as one is inclined to humour quaint, unreasonable children
who know no better. And it was by way of humouring them that the Admiral
gave way. No (for once only) was to mean Yes. They thanked him
cordially. He sighed and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. The
Russian character had won the day.
That night we started on our trip along the great, now pitiably
disorganized Siberian track. It was a lovely night in late autumn. The
Admiral’s special train had been brought over on the main line; and the
General and I, both somewhat under the influence of liquor, walked arm
in arm up and down the platform; and the General, in an overflow of
feeling, spoke piteously of his ruined soul, his wasted life, and how he
felt, and what he felt, and why he felt it. The Admiral and Sir Hugo had
already settled down in the drawing-room of the coach, and were
drinking. As the train moved, we too stepped into the carriage and threw
ourselves back on our cushions; and the General’s hand stretched for the
bottle. But I lay back musingly in the dark carriage, thinking of all
things and none in particular, in that agreeable half-conscious way that
is known to precede slumber, as the train rattled on its way to Omsk.
Two carriages behind us was Nikolai Vasilievich with a substantial
proportion of his family, all bound for Omsk. When I closed my eyes I
could see Nina, and my drowsy thoughts would linger: “She is _à moi_....
Tucked away in that compartment with her sisters.... _À moi_.... Now
they were undressing for the night.... _À moi_.... At a handstretch.
Always there. But there was no hurry. O life ... leisurely life ...!”
I was wakened by the General, and we went and joined the Admiral and
Sir Hugo. It seemed that they were both what is known as “lit up.”
“You’re drunk,” the Admiral greeted me.
“And so are you,” I said.
“I know I am, damn you!”
And we were all very jolly and sang “_Stenka Razin_,” the Russian robber
song, while the train rattled westward. And the General’s eyes were
moist with tears: he was happy in his melancholy. And, tearfully
emotional, he crept to the Admiral, and clinging to his neck tried to
kiss him.
“Go away!” cried the Admiral in the manner of an innocent young girl
about to be accosted; and then in a more manly tone:
“Damn your eyes!”
And then the General leaned back with that exaggerated leisure peculiar
to his condition, and sang a Russian gipsy song. He spoke of the good
old pre-war days. He sighed, sighed deeply. Now everything seemed to
have gone wrong, no doubt because his wife who ran him was not here to
look after him. But he expected her to come and then all would be well.
If he was in a muddle, if he was in debt, as he invariably was, he
merely turned to his creditors and said, “I don’t understand all this.
Wait till my wife arrives. It’s a damrotten game, you know, without my
wife. My wife she is a clever woman. She will put it all right with you.
My wife she is a dragoon.”
In the night the train stopped at a wayside station and seemed as though
it would never start again. The Admiral then sent out the General to
find out what was the matter, and Sir Hugo, who attributed the cause to
“bad staff work,” proffered the suggestion of “negotiating” with the
station-master. But the General said he thought the station-master was a
most “damrotten fellow,” in the case of which type he usually relied on
“elemental” measures. Accordingly he drew out his pistol and threatened
to shoot the station-master like a dog unless he cleared the line
immediately. The station-master, used to these methods, took no heed of
the warning, but said that he would lodge a vigorous protest through the
usual channels. Whereon the General replaced the pistol in his pouch,
remarking that life was a “damrotten game.”
What a trip!...
In the morning I observed the Admiral talking to Fanny Ivanovna in his
deliberate manner, looking into her eyes. And the impression I received
was that the Admiral thought Fanny Ivanovna was a “good fellow.” But the
three sisters, bashful though they were when he spoke to them in
English, had somehow overlooked him; though Nina once remarked, “How
awfully funnily his mouth protrudes when he looks at you so seriously. I
feel so shy because I feel _he_ does.”
“Now with all this English influence behind him Nikolai Vasilievich
ought to be able to find out something definite about his mines at
Omsk,” Fanny Ivanovna confided to me. “And there is no doubt this time
we’re travelling in comfort. The children are so pleased. You know,
they are so childish. Any change like this amuses them.” And then, in a
lowered voice: “Anything like that--love--I assure you, they know
absolutely nothing about. They’re such children!”
“But Sonia’s married!” I remonstrated.
“_Ach!_ how that angers me! And to whom, to _whom_! He can’t even wash
his neck. It’s all that mother!”
And so we covered verst after verst, as our luxurious train, freshly
painted, beautifully furnished, admirably kept, rushed through a
stricken land of misery. On our choice engines we moved like lightning,
or perchance stood long hours at lonely wayside stations, the glamour of
innumerable electric lights within our carriages presenting to a
community of half-starving refugees the gloating picture of the Admiral
and his “staff” at dinner.
And so we arrived at Lake Baikal, that crystal sea imprisoned in a frame
of snow-capped mountains. We stopped our train and lingered on the
rocks, drank in the harmony of a strange light, glassy water, snow, fir,
and perfect quietude; and when at last we said good-bye to Lake Baikal,
that proudest of lakes, a gale fearful and furious had blown in upon
this serenity of beauty and lashed huge waves in the inky blackness of
the night.
On went the train, rushing and swaying through the windy space of the
fields.
What a trip! How we argued and wrangled the long journey through!
Sometimes we would almost come to blows; for the ordinary Russian does
not argue: he shouts, and his opponent, to score his point, shouts
louder and quicker. The Russian General combined intellectual vagueness
with an emotional temperament; and, contriving to identify his country
with his class, he discovered that his country had been grievously
insulted by me. All was over between us. He would never speak to me
again.
But that evening, after dinner, we sat together over a bottle of whisky,
and the General became emotional. “You are young and foolish,” he said,
“and you probably don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t. But
you love Russia. Tell me you love Russia; don’t you? We both love
Russia. She’s been degraded and trampled on; but she is a fine country.
She will arise. She must arise. And we both love Russia.” He cried.
“Tell me you love Russia. Tell me you love her. We Russians are lazy,
drunken, good-for-nothing swine; but we are good people, aren’t we? It’s
a holy land. It’s a holy people. Look at her.” He gazed out of the
window.
I rose and stood by him, and we looked at Russia, whirling past. Then I
left him. When I returned, the General was still lying on the sofa, but
his melancholy had vanished and he was spitting at the ceiling, probably
for want of anything better to do.
On we went. Two days before we had left Irkutsk. The train rushed and
roared and rattled. It was a weather that breeds pessimists. I stood
looking out upon the steppes, these immense, monotonous Siberian
plains, dull and melancholy in the rain, when Zina came to me and said
her mother wished to see me privately. As I entered her coupé the old
lady was drinking tea. She bade me sit down.
“It’s about Uncle Kostia,” she began. She sighed, and there was a
prolonged pause. “Cleverness! Wisdom!... Oh, I don’t know, Andrei
Andreiech. God in heaven knows”--she crossed herself--“that we are
groping in the dark and none of us know what we are about or what’s
what, and I am an old ignorant, sinful woman. But if you ask me, Andrei
Andreiech, I’d just as soon have a fool as a wise man. Take Uncle
Kostia. Such a clever man--and what’s the good of it? I am stupid, dotty
in my old age, but really I don’t see where all his cleverness is
leading to. And I say it is time he did something and gave up living
upon others. Zina tells me she can’t keep on asking Nikolai Vasilievich
for money, and I really do think it is time Uncle Kostia began to work
... and published something. I thought perhaps you could get the Admiral
to place him on some paper--propaganda of some sort. It isn’t that one
is sorry to keep Uncle Kostia. He is clever, they all say. Heaven knows
he has lived on his brother long enough, and one was never sorry to give
him all he wanted since the man is clever, you understand, and writes.
But now there is nothing to give ... since there _is_ nothing, you see?
I don’t want to appear obdurate or unfeeling; but I thought perhaps you
could talk it over with Uncle Kostia. I know he likes you and he might
listen to you.”
I went, promising to do what I could.
When I knocked at the door of Uncle Kostia’s coupé it was late in the
afternoon. The train rushed, and the dreary monotonous steppes receded,
whirling past. Twilight was falling within and without. The candles had
not yet been lit. Then the door of the coupé was pulled open and
revealed Uncle Kostia sitting on the sofa, laboriously rubbing his eyes.
I inquired if I had disturbed him. He assured me that I had not. He
sprinkled some _eau de Cologne_ on his hands and rubbed his face--a
substitute for washing--then made room for me on the sofa, and rubbing
his eyes with his fists he yawned widely and looked at the window. The
melancholy of the Siberian plain must have communicated itself to both
of us. For a time we sat in silence, contemplating the unspeakable
disorder of the coupé. I was about to frame an adequate sentence to open
conversation when he preceded me.
“There!” he said, and struck his forehead with his palm. “And I am
called a clever man. Andrei Andreiech, I have been thinking. I have been
thinking a good deal these last days.” He stopped abruptly.
“What have you been thinking about, Uncle Kostia?” I asked.
“That’s just the trouble,” he said, “I can’t tell you.”
I waited.
“I don’t know myself,” he explained.
I still waited.
“I have been thinking of this and that and the other, in fact, of one
thing and another--precious but elusive thoughts, Andrei Andreiech.
Beautiful emotions. A kaleidoscope of the most subtle colours, if I may
so express myself. And, Andrei Andreiech, it has taught me a great
truth. It has taught me the futility of writing.”
“But now really, Uncle Kostia,” I remonstrated.
“Don’t interrupt me,” said Uncle Kostia. “It is a truth that only ten
per cent, if that, of the substance of our thoughts and feelings can be
transferred on paper. It can’t be done, Andrei Andreiech--and that’s all
there is to it.
“And when I think what a fool I have been, writing all these years,
toiling, slaving at a desk like a clerk--when I ought to have been
thinking, only thinking.”
“But, Uncle Kostia----” I began.
“Andrei Andreiech, it’s no use. How can I _write_ down what I think? The
subtlety, the privacy, the exquisite intimacy, the thousand and one
inexplicable impulses that prompt and make up thought and stir
emotion.... Andrei Andreiech, how can I? Think! how can I? Oh, you are
hopeless ... hopeless!... To-day I have been thinking. It will seem
nothing to you if I tell you; it will seem nothing to me if I tell it;
but, believe me, it was something infinitely deep, infinitely complex,
infinitely beautiful just when I thought of it--without the labour of
exertion.”
“What was it, Uncle Kostia?” I inquired.
“It was vague,” he said evasively.
“Oh, come, Uncle Kostia?”
“How can I tell? I know too much.”
I was aware of the unpleasant shrinking of ideas when set down on paper.
So I persisted:
“Come on, Uncle Kostia! out with it!”
“Well,” said Uncle Kostia, and his face became that of a mystic. “I
thought, for instance--I wonder if you will understand me?--I thought:
_Where_ are we all going?”
“Hm,” I said significantly.
“I thought: _Why_ are we all moving?”
“You have not far to seek for motives,” said I. “I presume there are
motives in each case.”
“Motives!” he cried. “That is the very point. There are no motives. The
motives are naught. It is the consequences. _Where_ are we going? _Why_
are we going? Look: we are moving. _Going_ somewhere. _Doing_ something.
The train rushes through Siberia. The wheels are moving. The
engine-drivers are adding fuel to the engines. Why? Why are we here?
What are we doing in Siberia? Where are we heading for? Something.
Somewhere. But _what? Where? Why?_”
I think I must have misunderstood Uncle Kostia’s subtle thoughts. Or was
it that my commission was continually in my mind? But I asked him:
“Is it that you are doomed by your sense of inutility, Uncle Kostia?”
His eyes flashed. He spoke impatiently: “_My_ inutility! _Your_
inutility! What the devil does it matter _whose_ inutility? Is your
Admiral very _utile_, may I ask? What I was saying was that we all
behaved as if we were actually _doing_ things, boarding this
Trans-Siberian Express as if in order to _do_ something at the end of
the journey, while actually the journey is in excess of anything we are
likely to achieve.”
But I thought I would keep him to the point, that is to say, _my_ point.
“Then would you rather not travel in this train, Uncle Kostia?”
An anxious look came into his eyes.
“Why? I like travelling in this train. I am comfortable.”
“But the futility of it?”
“Oh!” groaned Uncle Kostia at my stupidity. “Can’t you understand that
it is the very fact of this physical futility that inflates me with a
sense of spiritual importance?”
I looked at him with a blank expression.
“When I am at home--I mean anywhere at a standstill--I am wretched
intolerably. I write and I think----” He stopped.
“What?”
“_What_ am I writing for: what on earth am I thinking for?”
“So you have doubts?”
“Yes, at moments I am seized by misgivings: what is it all for? I ask.”
“I see.”
“Now it is different. We are moving, apparently _doing_ something,
_going_ somewhere. One has a sense of accomplishing something. I lie
here in my coupé and I think: It is good. At last I am doing something.
Living, not recording. Living! Living! I look out of the window, and my
heart cries out: Life! Life! and so living, living vividly, I lapse into
my accustomed sphere of meditation, and then before I know exactly where
I am I begin to meditate: Where are we all going to? Isn’t our journey
the kernel of absurdity? And so, by contrast, as it were, I gain a sense
of the importance of meditation.... That is how we deceive ourselves,
Andrei Andreiech.”
“And you can do it in spite of being conscious of the deception
involved?”
“I have been unconscious of it,” he said, “until you forced me into
introspection.”
Then, after a pause, I was tickled into inquiring:
“Why don’t you--er--publish some of it, eh, Uncle Kostia?”
Uncle Kostia grabbed his beard into his fist and looked at me with pity
rather than with scorn and made a movement as if he was going to spit
out of sheer disgust, but evidently thought better of it. “You have a
front of brass,” he said. “I cannot penetrate it.”
“Look here, Uncle Kostia,” I cried impatiently, “you must be reasonable
and think of poor Nikolai Vasilievich. He can’t go on supporting
everybody.”
“He hasn’t said anything, has he?” he asked anxiously.
“No ... but....” I paused to enable him to say the obvious.
“He wouldn’t,” said Uncle Kostia. “He is wonderful. I admire him.”
I returned to my coupé. It was evening now and the lights were lit.
Dismal forests stretched over hundreds of versts. I lay back and the
ideas let loose by Uncle Kostia set to work in my mind. And I thought:
Where are we heading? Why? What is it all for? And then I thought of the
war with its hysterical activity; I pictured soldiers boarding trains,
to return to the front; the loading of ships with war matériel; the rush
in the Ministry of Munitions. I thought of the Germans seething with
energy in just the same way; and I contrasted in my mind this hustling
activity, this strained efficiency with the pitiable weakness in the
intellectual conception of the conflict, and I understood that the man
had been essentially right, that our journeys were in excess of our
achievements. Our life was an inept play with some disproportionately
good acting in it. Then, as I dreamed away, I heard Fanny Ivanovna
talking to somebody in the adjoining coupé. I pulled my door open and I
could now hear her voice distinctly. I listened. I was vastly tickled. I
wondered to whom it was that she was telling her autobiography. Then I
heard occasional expressions of assent in Sir Hugo’s trim and careful
Russian. I leaned forward, the incarnation of attention.
* * * * *
“He would come to me in the evening and say, ‘Fanny, I don’t know what
I would do without you....’
* * * * *
“He came to me one evening in April and said, ‘Fanny, I must speak to
you very seriously....’
* * * * *
“‘It is love, this time, real love. I thought that I had loved, I _had_
loved, _you_, Fanny, but this is the love that comes once only, to which
you yield gloriously, magnificently, or you are crushed and broken and
thrust aside....’”
* * * * *
I felt my heart beat violently within me. I waited for Sir Hugo’s
detailed cross-examination; but indeed there was little of it. Only
once, when Fanny Ivanovna referred to Nikolai Vasilievich’s wife did Sir
Hugo stop her with an apology, to inquire “_Which_ wife?”
The train rushed through the autumn night; the windows now were black
and revealed nothing. Interlacing with the din, squeal and rattle of the
wheels, now and then my ear would catch familiar fragments of the
monologue.
* * * * *
“‘Nikolai!’ I cried. ‘_Du bist verrückt_ ... _wahnsinnich!_ ...’
* * * * *
“I cried and he cried with me....
* * * * *
“‘Think of the children, Nikolai! They are your children....’
* * * * *
“I said to him: ‘I shall wait till you pay me off. I shall not leave
otherwise.’”
* * * * *
I felt indeed I was on the summits of existence. Why should _I_ be
treated to such stupendous depths of irony? There beyond the clouds the
gods were laughing, laughing voluptuously. I could not sit still. With
all my heart I craved to have a peep, if only at Sir Hugo’s face. I
thought I’d give my life to know what was his verdict on the situation.
Noiselessly I stole into the corridor, and bending forward with infinite
precaution, I peeped at the interior of the coupé. They sat next each
other. Under the shaded light projected the ruddy weather-beaten face of
Sir Hugo. Sir Hugo looked--how shall I describe it?--he looked as if he
thought it was a case of damned bad staff work.
The train rushed on, noisily swaying through the silence of the night. I
went back to my coupé, and passing Uncle Kostia’s kennel I overheard the
finale of what must have been a frantic theological discussion between
Uncle Kostia and the General. The General, drunk, his fundamental
principles of faith all uprooted and scattered in disorder about the
coupé, furious, with hair dishevelled, cried out to Uncle Kostia:
“Well, _is_ there a God, or _is_ there no God?”
“How do _I_ know?” snapped Uncle Kostia angrily. “Go away!”
V
When the train arrived at Omsk, the new régime of Kolchak had been
established. The Admiral was distinctly pleased with the change; for he
no longer believed in granting the Russian people a Constituent Assembly
because he had grounds for thinking that the Russian people, if given
this opportunity, would take advantage of it and elect a government
other than that of Kolchak. And the Admiral was rather fond of little
Kolchak, whose interpretation of democracy was that of denying the
people the choice of government until such time as by some vague,
mysterious, but anyhow protracted, system of education he hoped their
choice would fall upon his own administration. We lived in our train, a
verst or thereabouts from the station--a thoroughly unwholesome place;
and the Admiral diverted most of his time by throwing empty tobacco tins
at the pigs that dwelt in the ditches around the train. “You have no
conception what a pig a pig really is,” he said, “till you see an Omsk
pig.”
“Splendid!” said Sir Hugo. “Splendid!”
“There she goes again!” yelled the Admiral, and hit an old big sow with
a Navy Cut tobacco tin.
“Splendid effort!” said Sir Hugo. “Splendid effort!”
“I give dem h-h-hell!” roared General Bologoevski. “Damrotten pigs!”
But, as usual, his threat remained an empty one.