The journey to Riga had not been too bad, except for examination of
passports and luggage at odd times of the day and night, at unexpected
frontiers. This happened each side of “the Polish corridor,” which had
been made by the Treaty of Versailles like a wedge driven through
Germany to Danzig. It happened again on the frontiers of Lithuania and
Latvia.
An American in the train called it the “Get-in-and-get-out-express.” It
stopped for six hours at Eydtkuhnen on the border of East Prussia, and
there was time to walk about and see something of the devastation made
by the great Russian drive in the early years of the war. Here were
still the blackened ruins of farmhouses and barns and peasants’
cottages, but German industry had built up the villages again, very neat
and pretty under their new red roofs, wonderful in contrast to the poor
attempts at reconstruction in the war zone of France.
Bertram had to wait four days in Riga before he could get a train to
Moscow. The Soviet agents there were unhelpful and rather insolent. The
stamp of the Moscow Executive Committee on his special passport did not
seem to inspire them with any zeal. They informed Bertram that he might
have to wait three weeks for a train—or longer. The thought seemed to
amuse them.
Three weeks in Riga! The idea was affrighting because of its boredom. In
three days Bertram had exhausted the interests and amusements of a city
that seemed dead all day and only wakened to life at one in the morning,
when the night cafés and dancing-halls were filled with a company of
Letts, Poles, Russians, Finns, and Germans, drinking large quantities of
_schnapps_ in quick gulps until their eyes watered and their noses
reddened, and they became quarrelsome with their women and each other in
a medley of languages.
In one of these cafés Bertram sat opposite an American who opened a
friendly conversation.
“Staying long in this City of Departed Glory?”
“Not longer than I can help. I want to get to Moscow, but the trains
don’t work.”
The American asked his business there, and raised his eyebrows with a
smile when Bertram said, “Journalism. I want to find out the truth about
the famine.”
“Well, there’s a famine, I’m told,” said the American. “You might call
it a famine, without much exaggeration. About twenty-five million people
starving to death, more or less. I’m pushing up some food. A relief
train is going to-morrow with the first supplies. That’s my job. I’m A.
R. A.”
He pronounced the letters as though they spelt a word—“Ara.” They
conveyed nothing then to Bertram, though afterwards he came to know them
as the greatest hope of life in Russia for the starving children from
Petrograd to the Volga Valley, and the Russians spoke of “Ara” as though
it were God. It meant the American Relief Administration.
“Any chance of a place on that train?” he asked.
The American smiled again.
“I expected that question. Is your passport all right for Moscow?”
Bertram showed it, and the American nodded.
“Any objection to lice?” he asked.
“I don’t invite them to dinner,” said Bertram, “but we were on speaking
terms in the trenches. ‘Chatty,’ the men used to call it.”
“They’ll give you the glad hand in that _train de luxe_.”
“Then I can get a place?”
“I’ll fix you up. Better take supplies with you. Cheese. Biscuits. A
kettle. Enamel mugs. Candles. Blankets. There’s not a restaurant car,
nor a _wagon lit_.”
He smiled grimly, and Bertram knew why on the next night when he boarded
the train to Moscow. It was nearly midnight, and the station was dimly
lit, and after stumbling over grass-grown rails, Bertram found a train
in darkness, except in one or two carriages where candles had been
lighted and put on the window ledges. A number of Lettish porters
staggered along under heavy bundles, and there were more of them in the
corridor of the train from which a frightful smell met the open air. The
carriages were wooden compartments, stripped of all upholstery, with
plank beds, and they seemed to be entirely occupied by Americans and
Russians who were quarrelling with each other for vacant possession.
There was a jabber of both languages rising into violent oaths of the
choicest brand from New York, Omaha, Kansas, and Kentucky. One voice
rose higher than all the rest, with a bull-like bellow.
“For Christ’s sake! If all you Tavarishes don’t get out of this bug-box,
I’ll get the Cheka on to you and have you minced by Chinese torturers!”
The owner of this voice, as Bertram saw in the candlelight of one
carriage, was a young man of Herculean build, in a felt hat, Garibaldi
shirt, riding-breeches, and top boots. To make clear the mystical
meaning of his words, he seized one of the porters, lifted him up as
though he were a sack of potatoes, and flung him at six others massed in
the dark corridor. It had the effect of clearing a space and creating a
moment’s quietude.
“Who the hell are you?” asked the genial giant, peering at Bertram and
putting a flash-light close to his nose. “Do you belong to this outfit?”
Bertram mentioned the name of the American who had “fixed him up.” It
was an ordinary name, but produced an immediate and softening effect.
“Good enough! You’re the young guy who’s going to the famine districts?
Glad to meet you.”
Bertram found his hand in an enormous fist, and recovered it in a limp
and boneless state.
“My name’s Cherry,” said the young giant. “I’m from Lynchburg, Virginia.
I do the courier stunt for Ara, from Riga to Moscow. I also boss this
train, and make it move. When it stops, I make it move again. Sometimes.
If I get out and push. I inspire terror among Tavarishes. When they play
tricks I treat ’em rough. When they play straight I’m full of
loving-kindness. It’s the only way to get anything done by these lousy
Tavarishes.”
“What’s a Tavarish?” asked Bertram.
“A Comrade,” said Cherry of Lynch, Virginia. “It’s a nice way of saying
Bolshevik. Call them Tavarish all the time. It makes them feel good.
Human equality and all that punk. Have you brought any bug-powder?”
“No.”
“I’ll lend you some. Otherwise you’ll be eaten alive.”
But for Cherry, Bertram would have reached Moscow even more of a wreck
than he did. In spite of the powder, he was attacked by many different
species of insect as he lay on an upper plank, with Cherry beneath. He
saw them crawling in legions up the wooden walls. They ambushed him
beneath his blanket, sent out scouts and advance guards and then
attacked in mass formation. The nights were torture. In the day time the
enemy retired to their hiding places.
The train was crowded with Russian and Lettish couriers, all in charge
of heavy packing-cases and sacks. Next to them, four to a carriage, was
a contingent of young Americans, going out as clerks to the headquarters
staff of the A. R. A., in Moscow. Certain mysterious young men who
talked to each other in low voices, were pointed out by Cherry as
Russian Soviet officials belonging to the secret police of the
Extraordinary Commission, known as “the Cheka,” because each letter of
that dreaded word formed the initial of the full Russian title for this
organisation.
There was no heat in the train, and it was cold after crossing the
Russian frontier in the rainy season of early autumn.
Bertram’s cheese and biscuits, which he had bought in Riga, became
utterly distasteful to him after two days, and he yielded to Cherry’s
insistent invitation to share his bully beef, pork and beans, tinned
butter, and fresh bread. It was Cherry, also, who taught him how to get
the one source of comfort available on Russian journeys—a plentiful
supply of hot water at every wayside station. The pass-word was
“kipyitok,” and this was yelled by Cherry to the _provodnik_, or guard,
of the train, who filled the passengers’ kettles so that they could make
tea in their carriages.
The Russian frontier was at a place called Sebesh, the other side of a
long stretch of flat, barren, abandoned country which seemed to be a
kind of No-Man’s Land. The train was immediately boarded by a number of
hairy men in sheepskin coats and fur caps, accompanied by two soldiers
of the Red Army. Bertram felt a thrill at his first sight of Bolsheviks
and Red Soldiers. His mind went back to the atrocity tales of Countess
Lydia and her sister, and other refugees from the Russian Terror. These
men who pushed their way down the corridor were agents of that terrible
new social code and faith which had declared war upon all civilisation
based upon individualism and private property, and proclaimed Communism
as the new gospel which mankind must accept, whether they liked it or
not. Those soldiers represented the power by which that code was
enforced upon one hundred and fifty million people. It was their Army
which had defeated Koltchak, Denikin, Judenitch, Wrangel, and all the
counter-revolutionary forces—financed, armed and equipped by the Allied
Powers—which had invaded Russia, laid great districts in ruin and
flame, hanged many peasants to the branches of trees, and retreated in
disorderly masses from the relentless pursuit of “the Reds.”
The two soldiers escorting the hairy Bolsheviks were not formidable in
appearance. They were both about eighteen, with puffy, pale faces, and a
hang-dog, under-fed look. They wore long grey overcoats, reaching to
their heels, and curious cloth caps, shaped like Assyrian helmets, with
stiff peaks behind, and in front the Red Star, five-pointed, of the
Soviet Republic.
“See how these Tavarishes love me!” said Cherry.
Certainly the small group of Bolshevik officials who came to examine
passports and baggage, greeted Cherry with a kind of forced amusement,
in which, as it seemed to Bertram, there was a hint of fear. Perhaps it
was due to the vice-like grip with which he insisted upon shaking hands
with them; and the bear-like way in which he thumped them on the back.
“_Dobra den, Tavarish!_ How goes it, old face-fungus? _Kraseeva_, eh?
Fine and dandy, what? Well, _dos vidanya_, you darned old hypocrite, and
don’t you come poking your nose into my car. _Niet! No pannamayo?_”
He fondled the head Bolshevik’s beard, patted him playfully on both
cheeks, gave him a mighty dig in the ribs which took his breath away.
“That’s how I treat ’em,” he told Bertram. “A touch of good humour works
wonders with them. Look at those two young murderers! Laughing like
hell! It’s the first time they’ve laughed since I came this way before.”
The two young soldiers regarded him with eyes of wonder and admiration,
between guffaws of laughter. When he stepped down on to the platform, a
group of Russian porters and peasants gathered round him, listening to
his oration in American and Russian, gazing at his mighty girth with
astounded smiles. He towered above them, and occasionally pushed at a
man’s chest, and pummelled a Russian boy with ogre-like playfulness.
Six hours at Sebesh.
“Come and see the flight from the Famine,” said Cherry. “It’ll take away
your appetite for my bully beef. Cheap for me!”
He strode down the rails for five hundred yards and halted before a long
stationary train without an engine. It was divided into a number of
box-like cattletrucks, from which, as they drew near, came a
pestilential stench through half-opened doors. In the dirty straw of
each of the trucks squatted a group of human beings, men, women, and
children. They were hunting vermin in their rags. Some of them lay
curled up in the straw, sleeping, or dying. Perhaps dying, thought
Bertram, for even those who were sitting up had a grey, haggard, deathly
look, as they stared out at him with deep-sunk eyes, in which there was
no interest, no life, no spirit.
“Letts,” said Cherry, “on their way home from the famine districts.
They’ve been dying all the way. Hunger, weakness, typhus. Look at that
girl. Typhus, beyond a doubt.”
The girl was lying on the grass by the side of the train. Her head
turned from side to side. Her face was flushed and puffed.
“It’s the vermin that gets ’em,” said Cherry. “They’re eaten up with
it.”
A tall, bearded peasant, clothed in rags tied about him with bits of
string, came up to Bertram and spoke to him in English, with an American
accent.
“Say, mister, can you change a hundred thousand roubles into German
marks?”
Bertram laughed, and was astounded.
“A hundred thousand roubles! I’m not a millionaire.”
“No need to be,” said Cherry. “It’s worth about six shillings in English
money.”
He took some dirty bits of paper from the bearded peasant, and gave him
some German notes.
“There you are, Nunky. How do you come to speak the American lingo?”
“I worked in Detroit,” said the man. “Before the world went wrong.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Ufa.”
He turned and pointed eastward.
“Three thousand miles.”
“How long on the road, brother?”
“Five months. I am nearly at the journey’s end. Across the frontier.”
“How is it in Ufa?”
The man looked at Cherry with tragic eyes. He spoke in simple, Biblical
words.
“In Ufa there is great death. The people have no food. The mothers are
glad when their children die, because it is sad to hear their weeping. I
am one who escaped in time. God has forsaken Russia.”
“I guess that’s a sure thing,” said Cherry.
Back in the train to Moscow the American boys were singing negro
choruses in harmony, and queer rag-time songs from the Winter Garden,
New York. Cherry went into their carriage, and led new choruses, and
college yells, with his enormous hands. Spasmodically, hour after hour,
until late at night, these songs broke out, while Bertram lay alone on
the wooden plank above Cherry’s bunk, with his thoughts travelling
faster than that slow-going train which every hour or so panted like an
exhausted monster, reduced speed to a crawl, made one or two ineffective
jerks and tugs, and then came to a dead halt. There was no more fuel.
The provodnik and his comrades descended and searched around for logs of
wood. Cherry stimulated their energy by shouts and curses, and roars of
laughter, and back-thumpings, and general noises of encouragement to
make them “get a move on.” One hour, two hours, three hours—once
fourteen hours—passed before the train lurched forward again with an
immense rattle of wheels and wood.
Bertram stared out of the window for hundreds of versts, at the flat,
dreary, monotonous panorama of Russia. It seemed lifeless and abandoned,
except at wayside stations where groups of peasants stood about the
wooden sheds, staring at the train as though it were a miraculous
advent. Away from these stations there was but little sign of human
life. Now and then Bertram saw a _droschke_ driving along a road which
led to some distant village of wooden houses with a white-washed church
rising above them. A woman gathering faggots with one hand while she
carried a baby in her shawl, raised her head and looked at Bertram as
the train halted near her bundle of sticks. It seemed to him that she
had some message for him in her eyes. She drew her shawl on one side,
and showed her child, a little wizened thing, monkey-like.
At another place a peasant was kneeling before a wayside _ikon_. He
knelt with his head bent and his beard on his chest, and crossed himself
again and again.
An immense melancholy came out of this Russian landscape, and darkened
Bertram’s spirit. In imagination, without knowledge, by instinct only,
he was stirred by the sense of travelling through a country of despair
and immeasurable misery. The silence of the countryside was intense and
brooding. No sound of laughter, of human gossip, even of human toil,
came from its woodlands or open fields. There was no clink of hammer on
anvil, no rhythm of an axe at work, no shout of ploughman to his team.
The peasants in the wayside stations seemed to have no work to do, no
object in life, except to stand and stare with gloomy eyes. “God has
forsaken Russia,” said the man from Ufa. The vital energy of life itself
seemed to have burned low in these people.
Away back in the train an American chorus rang out.
“Just hear that whistle blow!
I want you all to know
That train is taking my sweet man away
From me to-day!
Don’t know the reason why,
I must just sit and cry—”
Nigger melodies, Russian forests, the chug-chug of the train, Cherry’s
boisterous voice, the sad eyes of a peasant woman with a sick child, a
line of bugs crawling up the carriage wall, the smell of a Latvian
cheese, the melancholy of life, the isolation of the human soul, the
death of Kenneth Murless, the mystery of Joyce, the typhus-stricken girl
lying by the railway line, the endless monotone of this Russian
landscape, the puzzle of his own life, made up the incoherence of
Bertram’s thoughts on the way to Moscow.
Kenneth’s death would make no difference, except to Joyce. No difference
to Bertram. He had left Joyce forever. She had finished with him, and he
with her. Perhaps she would go back to Holme Ottery for a time, until
the American took possession. What did it matter where she went? He must
cut her out of his mind. It was only a year’s habit, and weak sentiment,
that made him think of her so much, with a dull ache of pain. . . . How
long to Moscow, on this abominable journey? Damn those bugs!