_October._
_Darling ones:--_
There is the most careful avoidance of any official responsibility here
in trying to find out where our passports are, and who is to return
them. We have already unraveled yards of red tape, and still there is no
end. Of course, ever since Peter came he has followed a schedule of
visits--one day to the English Consul; another day to the secret police,
then to the Military Governor, the Civil Governor, the Chief of Staff,
and back, in desperation, to the English Consul. There is an American
Vice-Consul here, but he is wholly ineffectual, since he has not yet
been officially received. His principal duty consists in distributing
relief to the Polish refugees. Mr. Douglas, the English Consul, is our
one hope, and he is untiring in his efforts to help us. If we ever get
out, it will be due to him. The English Government is behind its
representatives here in a way that the American State Department is not.
Partly, I suppose, this is because America has no treaty with Russia,
on account of the Jew clause. At any rate, you might just as well be a
Fiji Islander as an American, for all the consideration you get from
officialdom.
Did I write you about the naturalized American Jew in the detention
camp? He had come back to Galicia in the summer of 1914 to see his
sister married. After the outbreak of the war, he was refused permission
to leave the country, and when the wholesale clean-up started, he was
deported with the others. The day I visited the detention camp he had
just arrived, and, knowing we were Americans, he tried to secure our
aid. He had managed to keep his American passport, and brought it out to
us to prove his naturalization and to strengthen his demand to be set
free as an American citizen. The overseer, hearing his excited voice and
seeing us examine a large sheet of paper, came up. He looked like a
butcher, in his dirty-white linen coat, his legs planted apart, his
hands fingering his short whip. The way in which he joined our group and
made himself one with us, without so much as by your leave, was
disturbing. The cool self-assurance of even a petty Russian official is
sinister. They are straw men to your reason, but hard facts if you bump
up against them. Our curiosity flagged, conscious as we were all the
time of his unblinking ferret-eyes on us, and we showed a certain
alacrity to return the passport to its rightful owner. When we were
handing it back to the Jew, the overseer thrust out his hand and said,
"Let me see it."
There was nothing for the Jew to do but hand it over. The overseer could
not read a word of English, of course, but from the big red American
seal he could recognize it as an official document.
Suddenly, he tore it in halves, and as the Jew tried to grab it out of
his hands, he cuffed the Jew down, and continued deliberately to tear it
into tiny bits.
"I am an American and that is my passport," the Jew cried.
"That's what I think of an American passport," the overseer replied,
looking us over with incredible impudence as he walked away.
The rest of Russian officialdom must regard American rights in much the
same way, since it is four months now that we have been detained.
I went to the headquarters of the secret police the other day with Mr.
Douglas. It is located in the opposite end of the town, down a quiet
side street--an unobtrusive, one-storied brown house that gives the
impression of trying to hide itself from people's notice. It is reached
by a narrow, stone-flagged path, crowded in between two houses which
block its view from the street. There are four windows in a row on the
front façade, all with the curtains drawn. These four blind windows add
to the secretive appearance. Over the front steps the yellowing leaves
of a lime tree rustled in the wind and detached themselves one by one.
We rang the bell. While we waited, I was conscious of being watched,
and, glancing up quickly, I saw the curtain at one of the windows fall
back into place. The door opened a crack, and a white face with a long,
thin nose, and horn-rimmed spectacles with smoky glass to hide the eyes,
peered out at us furtively. Mr. Douglas handed the spy his card and the
door was shut softly in our faces.
In about three minutes the door was opened again, and a gendarme in
uniform ushered us into a long room thick with stale tobacco-smoke. He
gave me a chair, and while we waited I looked about at the walls with
the brightly colored portraits of the Czar and the Czarina and the royal
family, and the ikon in one corner. "Give up all hope all ye who enter
here."
The room was silent except for the scratch of pens on paper. The
secret-service spies sat at long tables, writing laboriously, and
smoking. They all wore civilian clothes, and I recognized most of them.
I had passed them on the street or sat beside them in restaurants, and
three had come with the chief to arrest us. I wondered what they were
writing. Some one was being betrayed or ruined. That was how they lived.
I looked for the mark of their calling on them, but at first they
appeared an ordinary crowd, pale, with a thick, unhealthy pallor, as
though from an indoor life. Their suits were poor enough,--worn
threadbare,--and their fingernails were dirty. Furtively they glanced up
at me and examined me curiously, and then gave quick, frightened looks
on either side to see if their comrades had observed their interest in
me. What a mediocre, shabby crowd, with their low foreheads and
dead-white skin and dirty linen, and, yes, the stamp on them that made
them infamous! It was as though their profession affected them the way
that living in a close, dark room would, stupefying and making them
bestial.
And then the chief came in, accompanied by two spies with black
portfolios under their arms. When he saw us, he grew white with anger.
He looked like a German, spurred and booted, with square head and jaw
and steel-like eyes and compressed, cruel lips. He was the only
well-dressed one in the crowd, but his livery was the same as theirs. He
was their superior, that was all, and how I loathed him!
"He's angry because we were brought in here," Douglas whispered under
his breath.
The chief turned his back on us.
The spies scribbled away furiously, their noses close to their paper,
not daring to look up.
We were taken into another room, a small back room, bare except for a
table and sofa and a tawdry ikon in the farthest corner. And there we
waited fully fifteen minutes in absolute silence. How silent that house
was, full of invisible horrors! The headquarters of the secret
police--why shouldn't it be terrifying when you think of the men and
women who have been brought here in secret, and their existence suddenly
snapped off: secret arrest, secret trial, or no trial at all, and then a
secret sending-off up north, out of the reach of the world! What strange
abortions of life this Government brings forth! Is it curious that
thinking men and women, who have lived apparently well-regulated lives,
suddenly throw bombs at a minister in a railway station, or at an
official as he drives to the palace in dress uniform, with jeweled
decorations on his breast? I ran my hand over the faded sofa-covering,
wondering who had sat there before me.
Suddenly the chief came into the room, closing the door carefully behind
him. He was quite calm again.
"What do you want?" He looked at Douglas.
Douglas explained how anxious we were to get out of Russia, how we had
insufficient money for cold weather, how my husband's business called
for his immediate presence, and so forth, all of which we had gone over
at least three times a week since my arrest, and all of which was a
matter of complete indifference to the secret police. They had failed to
find any proof of espionage, which was their charge against us, and my
letter, their only evidence, had been passed on and was snarled up
somewhere in official red-tape. Now they washed their hands of me.
"We can do nothing. It is out of our hands." He was extremely courteous,
speaking German for my benefit. "It is unfortunate that Frau Pierce
should have written the letter. I was obliged to send it on to the
General Staff. You should have a reply soon."
There was nothing more to be said. Douglas was conciliatory, almost
ingratiating. My nerves gave way.
"A reply soon!" I burst out. "I'm sick of waiting. If we have the
liberty of the city, surely there can't be anything very serious against
us. It's an outrage keeping our passports. I'm an American and I demand
them." I was almost crying.
"You must demand them through your Ambassador, meine Frau."
I knew that he knew we had been telegraphing him since our arrest and my
impotence made me speechless with rage. Douglas took advantage of my
condition to beat a hasty retreat.
As we were going through the doorway, the chief said carelessly, "By
the way, how did you happen to find this house?"
"I have been here before," Douglas replied.
"Thank you. I was only curious."