_October._
_Dearests:--_
There seems no beginning or end to my stay here. How strange it is to
look back to July and remember the long, hot days and the languorous
nights when, in spite of the war, people walked in the gardens and
listened to the music and drank punch out of tea-cups, pretending it was
tea. The still, starlit nights of July.
I remember a dinner Princess P---- gave at Koupietsky Park a few nights
after my arrival in Russia. Everything was so new to me. Our table was
set out on the terrace, overlooking the Dnieper, with the music and stir
of people in the distance. An irresponsible joy filled my heart as I
looked down at the black, winding river with its shadowy banks and the
fantastic shimmer of lights on the water. The city lights crowded down
to the very water's edge; then the drifting red and green lights of
steamers and ferry-boats moving on the black, magic stream, and beyond,
the flat plain, silent and mysterious, with, over the horizon rim, the
thunder and clang of war. But war was far away those first days I was in
Russia. I hardly thought of it.
The dome and square walls of a monastery were momentarily whitened by a
wheeling searchlight, and high up against the dusky, starlit sky was
printed a shining gold cross. Women's dresses glimmered in the darkness
like gray, widespread wings of moths, and laughter came from the curve
of the terrace overlooking the monastery garden.
"My child, there are tears in your eyes; how pretty!" the Princess
cried, taking my hand in hers and stroking it with her small, cold
fingers.
There were other Americans present beside myself, and I knew the
Princess loved one of them. It was to make him jealous, I knew, that she
held my hand in hers throughout dinner. She, herself, hardly ate
anything, only smoked one cigarette after another. There were all sorts
of _zakouski_, stuffed tomatoes and cucumbers and queer little fishes in
oil, and pickled sturgeon and mushrooms, and salads and caviar, and
there was _kvass_ to drink,--deep red,--and a champagne cup served in a
teapot, and cigarettes all through the meal.
The Princess was middle-aged and wanted to appear youthful; so she dyed
her hair blue-black which was harsh for her pointed face, and wore
costly, too elaborate clothes from Paris. But her body showed delicately
round under the laces and chiffons, and she was quick and light in her
gestures like a bird. Her husband, who had been twice her age, had died,
leaving her large estates and much money. Now she moved about Russia
with a maid and a wee little dog and numberless trunks, frivolously
seeking her pleasure. Her eyes were black and glittering, and her mouth
red and thin and flexible. She had caressing, spoiled ways with every
one from the American whom she called "Meester" to her chow dog, and all
she asked from any one was amusement.
"I like Americans," she said with shameless flattery. "So much I like
them. The women--_and_ the men. I shall go to New York after the war,
and you will show me your famous cabarets, and--what do you call it?"
She appealed to "Meester."
"Broadway--good old Broadway," he replied indulgently.
"Ah, yes. B-r-r-oadway. And I will dance all night. I dance
magnificently. Is it not so, Meester? Yes, I will go to New York and
become just like an American."
After dinner we went to a wrestling-match, and "Meester" took the
Princess, radiant and vivacious and paying all the bills, back to the
Continental.
Since July war has come nearer Kiev. The hospitals are full of maimed
and wounded soldiers who fought to defend Russia. They made a bulwark of
their breasts. It was as though one single giant breast, hundreds of
versts broad, thrust itself between the Germans and home.
And it is winter now. The days are short with an icy, gray mist from the
Dnieper, and flurries of snow. There is a shortage of coal, and we sit
shivering in our apartment. We drag the covers off the beds and wrap
ourselves up in them while we read books from the circulating library or
play three-handed bridge. The wind rattles the windows and streaks the
panes with snow and rain. But however dirty they get, they must remain
unwashed till spring; for they are sealed for the winter with putty, and
you can open only one small pane at the top. The apartment is darker
than ever. Not once does the sun shine into our rooms. We see the
sunlight in the street, but the dark shadow of the building lengthens
minute by minute, stretching itself across the street and reaching up
over the convent wall like the smothering black hand of a giant, till
only the tips of the cypresses and poplars in the gardens are red in the
late sunlight.
At tea-time we go to "François's" or to some other little sweet-shop, in
order to get warm. There, we drink glass after glass of weak tea and eat
little Polish cakes, and look over the English and French periodicals.
It is dark when we go out into the street again, and the air is frosty.
The officers wear short gray coats, braided and lined with fur, and fur
caps. The women are muffled in seal and sable, which make the skin look
clear and white and their eyes brilliant. Even the peasants wear
sheepskin coats, bell-shaped and richly embroidered. Marie has winter
clothes, but the warmest thing I possess is my traveling suit I wore
here in June, which has been getting thinner and thinner ever since. My
feet, in low summer pumps, are swollen and burning with chilblains. I
must get some high shoes when our next money comes. You see, that is the
trouble. We are promised our passports from day to day, and, expecting
to go at any time, we try to get along with what money we have, and wait
to buy clothes till we get back to Bucharest. But our passports are not
given us and our money gets low. We are waiting for money now, and, of
course, a cold snap has set in just when we can't possibly buy anything.
Peter's summer suit hangs on him in folds. The heaviest iron couldn't
crease it into even temporary shape. When we went to the cinematograph
last night he wore Marie's black fur coat to keep from freezing.
"Look at that man," we heard a woman say in the street. "He's wearing a
woman's coat!"
Yes, we go from café to cinematograph and try and keep warm.
I've never liked moving pictures before. Here they are presented
differently than in America. Some of the plays I've seen have the
naïveté and simplicity of a confession. Others interpret abnormal,
psychopathic characters whose feelings and thoughts are expressed by the
actors with a fine and vivid realism. There is the exultation of life,
and the despair, the aggression and apathy, the frivolity and the
revolt. The action is taken slowly. There are no stars. You look at the
screen as though you were looking at life itself. And the films don't
always have happy endings, because life isn't always kind. It often
seems senseless and cruel and crushes men's spirits. I wish we could
have these films in America instead of the jig-saw puzzles I've seen.
_October._
There is a gypsy who sells fruit at the corner of Institutska Oulitza, a
woman so enormous that she resembles a towering mountain, and her
customers look, beside her, like tiny Russian toys. Every one looks at
her curiously, and I have seen several gentlemen in fur pelisses, with
gold-headed canes, stop and speak to her. In the morning she wheels up
her cart by the curbing and polishes the pears and apples with the end
of her shawl till they shine. Then she piles them up in red and yellow
pyramids and waits for customers, her hands on her hips. Everything
about her is crude and flaming and inextinguishable like life itself.
Her scarlet skirt lights up the whole street. It floats about her, and
when she bends over to serve a customer, you can see the edges of green
and yellow and pink and brown petticoats underneath as her overskirt
tilts up. The lines of her body are brutal and compact. Her dark,
mulberry-colored shawl is stretched tightly across her full bosom. Her
eyebrows meet over her nose in a heavy, broad line like a smudge of
charcoal, and her nose is spongy, and her lips swollen and red from
taking snuff. She holds her black and silver snuff-box in her hand or
hides it away in a pocket in her voluminous skirt when she serves some
one. Her fingers are covered with rings and she wears yellow hoops in
her ears. I am repulsed as well as attracted. She is like a bold,
upright stroke of life, and then I see her crafty eyes and notice how,
in spite of her size, when she moves it is with the softness and
flexibility of a huge cat.
Peter went to Petrograd to-day and he will stay there till he gets our
passports. He would have gone a month ago, but first came the panic
from the German advance, and then the railways were used only for
military purposes. Now, Marie and I are alone, waiting for a telegram
from him.
V
_October._
To-day, the chief of the secret service came and told us all political
prisoners were to be sent on to Siberia. He told us to make a small
bundle of necessary things and be ready to leave at any time. With Peter
in Petrograd! I asked him where we were going and he shrugged his
shoulders. I went to Mr. Douglas, who has wired Peter. Also, he is going
to see the chief and try and keep in touch with us. We won't leave till
the last moment. But already many of the hospitals have been moved, and
certain prisoners. I suppose I must destroy these letters to you. But I
will wait till the last moment. I want so much for you to get them and
know what has happened, because I shan't see you, to tell you with my
voice, for over a year still. I have written so fully for that reason.
_A few days later._
We are still here, and there is more hope in the situation. There is a
persistent report in the papers, and it is repeated in the streets and
houses, that the Germans have been stopped by Riga and Dvinsk. Large
bodies of troops are moved through Kiev, day and night, for the front.
Regular train service is suspended by this movement of troops.
Huge vans pass through the city, carrying aeroplanes to the aviation
field outside the barracks. Once we saw a wrecked one being sent to be
repaired. A troop of small boys followed it, looking curiously at the
broad, broken wings and the tangle of steel framework.
Guns are arriving, too. We see them being carted through the streets.
And early this morning we heard cannon. Our first thought was of the
Germans, and we lay in bed, stiff with fright. Later, we heard they were
the new cannon being tried out before being sent to the front. They say
that fresh ammunition has been received from Japan and America. All
trains are held up to let these trainloads of guns and cannon and
ammunition go tearing over the rails to the front to save Russia. And
just in time. I see the open cars packed and covered and guarded by
soldiers. I lie in bed and hear the whistle and shriek of the trains in
the night, and I imagine row upon row of long iron-throated cannon
staring up at the stars.
The Czar has arrived in Kiev for a conference at Headquarters. He came
during the night, and no one knows when he will leave. There was no
demonstration, and the police break up any groups of more than three
persons in the streets.
A dozen or so Japanese officers passed through Kiev, too. They were
bound for the front, escorting their guns and ammunition. How curious
they looked beside the big, naïve Russians. They were like porcelain
figurines with impenetrable, yellow faces, mask-like, and tiny hands and
feet. What a finished product they appear, and yet they go to the front
and observe the latest methods of warfare and multiply their merchant
marine while the rest of the world is spending itself.
_October._
I went to a military hospital to-day. It was up on a hill, a huge place,
formerly a school, I think, with a broad piazza where the convalescents
walked in their gray bathrobes. Inside were rows and rows of cots, and
on every cot a wounded man. It appeared that a fresh batch had arrived
from the front, and the doctors were just finishing with them. There was
a foul smell of blood and sweat and anæsthetics, and the light came
dismally through the dirty window-panes, showing dimly the rows and rows
of pale, weary faces on the thin pillows. Sometimes the gray blankets
came up to the chin, and the man looked dead already, he was so
dreadfully still, with his closed eyes and waxlike face. Another moaned
continuously, moving his head from side to side--"Oh, oh--Oh, oh." His
eyes were open, and hard and bright with fever. Several had their heads
wound with strips of bandages. You would hardly have known they were
human. Two or three were blind, with the bandage only round their eyes,
and it was strange to see the expression their hands took on--workmen's
hands with stubby fingers, now white and helpless-looking, and picking
at the cover aimlessly.
A nurse told me how an officer who had been blinded and was about to be
discharged and sent home, had committed suicide the other day. In some
way one of his men, who had been wounded in the arm, had been able to
smuggle in a revolver to him. The officer killed himself in the middle
of the night.
"I don't suppose he knew whether it was day or night, and took a chance
that no one was looking," I said.
"I think he knew it was night," she replied. "He could tell by the
others' breathing. I was night nurse. He was dead before I reached him.
The soldier gave himself up of his own accord. He will be
court-martialed, of course, though every one knows he did the best
thing. He said to us, 'He was my captain. He ordered me to get the
revolver, and I only obeyed orders. I would do it again.' We had a hard
time the rest of the night to quiet the men."
In a small room to one side were six men gone mad. They were quite
harmless and lay quietly in bed. Besides having their reason smashed to
bits by the horrors at the front, they were badly wounded. I was ashamed
to stand there looking at them. What was I? Suddenly, one of them, a
young boy surely not more than twenty-one or twenty-two, caught sight of
us, and he fixed his eyes upon us in a curious, concentrated way as if
to assure himself we were real. And then, all at once, abject terror
leapt into his eyes. His mouth opened and the cords of his neck stood
out. He threw both arms before his face as if to ward off somebody or
something. He began to scream out quick, unintelligible words in a
high-pitched, staccato voice. I looked fearfully at the others to see if
his terror would be communicated to them. But they were apparently
oblivious of each other, wrapped up in their separate lives and
experiences. One middle-aged man, with a rough, reddish beard, was
smiling mildly and smoothing the sheet as though it had been somebody's
hair. We left the room, leaving the nurse to calm the screaming man. I
thought of the terrors and fears and memories in that room: the snatches
of memories pieced together that made up the actual lives, now, of those
broken men in there.
"Are they--do they suffer?" I asked the doctor.
"No. They don't seem to realize that they are wounded and suffer the way
normal people would with their wounds. The only thing is, they all have
moments of terror, when it's all we can do to quiet them. They think the
wall of the room is the enemy moving down on them. I guess they went
through hell all right, there at the front!"
"Will they get better?"
"We can't tell. We have a specialist studying just such cases. These men
seem pretty well smashed, to me."
In one corner lay a young man propped up with pillows. A nurse was
holding his hand. His eyes were looking at her so trustfully. He hardly
seemed to be breathing and his face was bloodless--even his lips were
dead white. And as I looked, he gave a little sigh, and his eyes closed
and his body sagged among the pillows. The nurse bent over him and then
straightened herself. Quickly she arranged a screen round the bed. When
she walked away, I could see she was crying uncontrollably.
"Is he--?"
"Yes. He's dead," the doctor replied. "He's been dying for a week. He
was terribly wounded in the stomach, and there was nothing we could do
for him. It was a repulsive case to care for, but Sister Mary had full
charge of it. She sat with him for hours at a time. In the beginning, to
encourage him, she bought a pair of boots he was to wear when he got
well. For days, now, he's been out of his head and fancied she was his
mother."
And life presses as close to death as that--while I was looking at him,
he had died. I just managed to reach the door before I fainted.
_October._
The Governor of Kiev has been removed. He was too cautious. It was a bad
example!