The city of Kazan was buried in snow, frozen hard, and glittering on its
surface as though strewn with myriads of diamonds. It was a little
Moscow, more Oriental, less ruined by street fighting, strangely
beautiful with its gilt-domed churches and Russian mansions, and wooden
hovels, all canopied in snow. It had been a rich city before the
Revolution. Many great nobles had had summer houses here. Its market
received the wealth of the Volga and merchandise from the Far East. A
third of its population was Tartar, and under the Soviet régime it had
been made the capital of a new state called the Tartar Republic, subject
to Moscow, but with a certain independence for local business.
The Tartar type was striking, in its contrast to the blue-eyed,
yellow-bearded peasants amidst whom they dwelt, and Bertram, staring at
the tall, lean men with Mongolian cheekbones, leathery skin, and
straight black hair, thought of Ghengis Khan and his hordes of men like
this, who had swept across Europe in the Middle Ages to the very gates
of Vienna.
Kazan was now on the edge of the famine. Hunger was creeping about the
city itself, though even here there was meat to be had in the market for
those who had money to buy it. The peasants along the Volga valley were
killing the last of their cows, for lack of fodder, and the flesh was
sent up to Kazan by the last boats that could make the journey before
the Volga froze. After that there would be no more meat, as now there
was no grain, no milk, and but small stocks of bread and potatoes.
Soviet officials were still getting rations direct from Moscow, but that
system was to be abandoned, except for a favoured few, owing to the “New
Economic Laws” which had been framed mainly because the means of
rationing had broken down.
The Colonel of the A. R. A. and his party were met at the station with
sleighs by four or five young Americans, in heavy fur coats and Tartar
caps, remarkably cheery, in spite of the frightful picture they painted
of the local conditions. They had established the first food kitchens in
Kazan, and had pushed out the first relief to the villages beyond.
“What’s the situation?” asked the Colonel.
Cyrus Sims, a young man looking like a Bolshevik bandit, until he pulled
off his shaggy cap with ear-flaps and revealed a good American head,
typical of Harvard, gave a few preliminary facts to “put the Colonel
wise,” as he called it, before an interview with the President of the
Tartar Republic.
“The situation, sir? Well, briefly, these people are waiting for death.
They can’t see any escape, except by our help, which won’t amount to
much for some time to come, as you know. We’ve undertaken to feed
fifteen hundred children within three weeks from now. Sounds good.
There’s a child population in this state of one million seven hundred
thousand, all hungry, and mostly starving. Child population, you
understand, sir! Of course we’re not going to feed adults. They’ll die.
The Volga’s trying to freeze. Another week or two and no boats can pass.
That’ll mean sleigh transport to the starving villages. We shall want
three thousand five hundred horses to feed those fifteen hundred babes.
And the horses are dropping dead along the roads. No fodder. Certain
supplies have come down from Moscow by Soviet authority. Potatoes
mostly. They’re rotting on the barges.”
“Why, in God’s name?” asked the Colonel.
“Same reason, sir. Dearth of horses for sleigh transport.”
“We shall have to get a move on,” said the Colonel. “Keep the horses
alive. There’s lots of fodder to be had if we raise Hell. . . . Are you
well billeted?”
“Sure,” said the young American, resuming his disguise as a Bolshevik
bandit, and tying the ear-flaps of his Tartar cap under his chin.
“Better come along, Colonel, and get warm.”
The whole party was crowded into sleighs, and set off in a procession,
with a merry jingling of sleigh-bells. Dr. Weekes and Bertram had Nadia
for their fellow traveller, and the doctor pulled the rug over her and
packed the straw about her feet.
“It’s as cold as Calgary,” he said, “and that’s the coldest place I
know.”
“In Russia,” said Nadia, “our blood is a mixture of fire and ice.”
“That’s a darned queer mixture,” said the doctor. “Unknown to chemical
science.”
“It’s the secret of Russian history,” she answered.
Peasants halted on the foot-walks to stare at the passing sleighs. Their
faces were haggard, and their eyes looked dead.
“There is hunger here,” said Nadia. “In Moscow we haven’t enough to eat,
but here they starve.”
The sleighs halted outside a marble-fronted house with many windows, and
Nadia gave a little cry of surprise.
“I know this house! It belonged to my father’s brother. I was here as a
child, with my mother and Alexis. My uncle was the Governor of Kazan,
and very kind to me. They shot him dead in the street one day.”
Bertram looked at her, and saw how she was stirred with the remembrance
of old days before the agony of Russia had touched her life. For a
moment her dark eyes filled with tears, but when she stepped down from
the sledge, taking his hand to help her, she spoke brave words.
“How lucky I am to be with those who have come to rescue Russia!”
There were log fires burning in all the rooms of the house, and little
camp beds in most of them.
“A good billet,” said the Colonel. “You boys know how to grab at
luxury.”
“Not much luxury, sir, and plenty of bugs,” said the young man named
Sims, who was in command of the “outfit” at Kazan. “This place was used
for refugees, until we came. It’s still a menagerie.”
“Work for me,” said Dr. Weekes. “I’m the world’s light-weight
vermin-killer.”
The Russian ladies were invited to lunch, but a special billet had been
arranged for them in a house near by.
“A good scheme,” said the Colonel. “We don’t want any scandals for the
Hearst Press. And I can see you boys have already fallen in love with my
Princess.”
“She’s a peach,” said one of them. “But we’re too busy for amorous
dalliance, Colonel.”
The Colonel winked at Bertram.
“You see the virtue of the A. R. A.? Marvellous, don’t you think? Almost
incredible!”
Perhaps his cold clear eyes had perceived the comradeship of Bertram and
“his” princess. If so, he was discreet, and made no personal remarks,
and it was by his suggestion that Nadia was asked to go with Bertram and
Dr. Weekes to inspect the hospitals and homes for abandoned children in
Kazan.
“You’d better take the Princess with you, Doctor. I’ve faith in a
woman’s eyes, and anyhow, I’m going to put her in charge of the local
committee for child-feeding, so she must get about and see things. You’d
like to join them, Pollard?”
It was Nadia who acted as interpreter, and it was by her side, getting
courage from her, that Bertram went into places which made him cry out
to God in his heart, and filled him with horror, and turned his stomach
so that he could hardly prevent himself from vomiting, as he had done in
the barrack yard at Petrograd.
The children’s homes seemed worst of all. In the first of them were
fifteen hundred who had been abandoned by their parents.
“Why abandoned?” asked Bertram.
Nadia bent down to one child, a girl of twelve or so, stark naked, and
so emaciated that all her ribs were visible beneath the tight-drawn
skin. Word by word she translated the child’s monologue, told with the
gravity of an old woman.
“She says her father belonged to Lubimovka. Once his barns were filled
with grain and he had twenty cows. When the drought came, the standing
wheat was burnt black in the fields. Red soldiers came and took the
grain from the barn, all but a very little. Then the cows died, one by
one. There was no food in the house. This little one had six brothers
and sisters. Three of them died, because they had no food. The mother
wept very much when they died. The father did not weep, until one day he
took his children for a long, long walk away from Lubimovka to the town
of Tetiushi. Then he said, ‘Wait here a little while, my children.
Perhaps God will send his angels with food for you.’ And then he wept,
and walked away. They waited a long while, and he did not come back. And
God did not come with His angels. So they lay down to die. It was little
Anna that died. The two others were fed by the market people in
Tetiushi, and then put on a train that came to Kazan. So they were
brought to this house, with many other children who were like
themselves. They had bread once a day, and potato soup. They would be
glad to have some clothes, because it is very cold.”
Nadia turned to Bertram, and her eyes were shining with tears.
“This little one knows why her father abandoned her. It was because he
loved her, and could not bear to hear her crying out for food when there
was nothing in the house.”
“Why are these children naked?” asked Bertram. “They will perish of cold
in this house. It’s an ice-well.”
Nadia spoke to a sad-eyed man in a linen coat.
“He says it is the only way of keeping down typhus. When the children
come in their clothes are crawling with vermin. He takes off their
clothes and burns them. But there are no means of replacing them.”
“Surely they could make fires in the house?”
Nadia shook her head.
“It is impossible to get fuel.”
“There are great woods around Kazan.”
“There is no means of transport for the timber.”
“Men could haul it.”
“The men are weak, he says, and despair makes them lazy. And anyhow, he
could not pay for their labour.”
They walked through room after room, all crowded with children. Their
heads had been shaved, and in their nakedness they lay huddled close
together, so thin, with such deep-sunk eyes, that they were unlike
children of the human race, but like a tribe of white monkeys, clinging
to each other for warmth in a frozen world. They did not play, or
chatter, or laugh. They were utterly silent, with drooping heads, and a
terrible old sadness in their little sunken eyes. Because there was no
fuel, there was no hot water, and because there was no hot water, there
was no cleanliness. A frightful stench pervaded the rooms. Some of the
children lay in filth. . . .
“To-morrow I shall come here and do some work,” said Nadia. “The good
man means well, but he has no energy.”
Dr. Weekes made some notes in a little book.
“Blankets. Clothes. Soap.”
He whispered a warning to Bertram.
“Don’t brush against the door-posts as you pass. They’re alive with
vermin.”
They passed into another room, where there was row after row of children
lying on the bare boards, in a kind of feverish sleep, with their heads
flopping from side to side.
“Typhus,” said Nadia.
Among the children was a girl of about twenty, in a cotton frock. She
lay amidst a group of them, with one arm over their naked bodies,
sleeping, with a flame of colour on her face.
Nadia spoke to the man in the linen coat, and then turned to Bertram and
Dr. Weekes.
“It is the Countess Narishkin. She was a nurse here. Yesterday she
developed the typhus fever. There is no kind of hope for the poor
child.”
She knelt down on the bare boards, and put one arm under the girl’s head
and raised it a little, smoothing her hair back.
“Princess,” said Dr. Weekes, sternly, “you know enough about typhus to
avoid unnecessary risks.”
“That is true,” said Nadia. “For the sake of others.”
She rose from her kneeling position, laying the girl’s head very gently
on the boards again.
“I have some medicine,” said the young doctor, “I will give her an
injection this afternoon. But I’m afraid—”
He looked at Nadia, and she said “Yes,” understanding him.
That afternoon, using their sleigh, they went to twelve such homes for
abandoned children, and in each of them were the same scenes of stricken
childhood, and in each of them the same amount of fever, of vermin, of
filth, and of stench.
“God!” said Bertram, at last, “It’s too awful. Can you bear to see any
more, Nadia?”
She put her hand on his arm.
“It is only the beginning of the things we shall see. It makes you
suffer, dear comrade! That is good. You will write such pictures that
the world will be moved to tears and charity. They will forgive the sins
of Russia because of all this agony. By your words of truth and pity you
will help to save those little ones.”
“I’ll try,” said Bertram.
It was a dedication.
In the great hospital of Kazan, once famous in the history of medical
science, they plunged deeper into human misery. It was crowded with men
and women suffering from every kind of disease, but mostly from typhus
and dysentery caused by vermin and hunger and weakness. Whatever their
disease, the patients lay huddled together, not on beds, for they had
been burnt for fuel, but on the bare boards. They had a few blankets,
but not many, which covered four at a time, two lying one way and two
the other. There was no heat in the stoves.
Dr. Weekes questioned the chief medical officer, who looked in a dying
condition, utterly pallid, and with hardly the strength to walk about
his wards.
“Have you any drugs?”
“Very few!”
“Any anæsthetics—chloroform—morphia?”
“None.”
“Any castor-oil?”
“A tiny drop.”
“And disinfectants?”
“No.”
“Any soap?”
“Not for two years.”
“Any bandages, cotton wool, surgical dressings?”
“None, sir.”
“My God!” said Dr. Weekes, and it was the first word of dismay that
escaped his lips.
In ward after ward they saw the huddled victims of pestilence and
famine. Their clothes had not been burnt, like those in the children’s
homes, and they were hunting vermin ceaselessly in their sheepskins and
rags. It was difficult to give a guess at the age or class of these
people. Young girls looked like old women. Young men had the worn,
wrinkled look of extreme age. They were all reduced to a dead level of
misery and squalor, and dirt; though among them, said Nadia, who spoke
with many, were women of education and even of learning. She went about
among the beds. Some of the women lying on the boards, raised themselves
a little and kissed her hands.
A strange scene happened downstairs, as they were leaving. The news had
gone round among the nurses that an officer of “Ara” had come to inspect
the hospital, with means of help. Twenty of them suddenly came
clamouring round Dr. Weekes, all crying together, all stretching out
their hands to him, like a Greek chorus, with burning eyes in white
faces. It was almost dark in the passage there, and Bertram was alarmed
by those women’s eyes and by the almost savage anguish of their voices.
“What do they say?” asked Dr. Weekes, turning to Nadia. “What’s their
trouble, anyhow?”
“They say they are starving. They implore you to send them bread. How
can they nurse the sick, they say, when they are so weak and famished?
Only last week two of them died of dysentery, caused by hunger. Soon
they will all be dead, they say, unless they get some food.”
“Tell them,” said Dr. Weekes, “that the A. R. A. will send them food,
though we are here only to feed the children of Russia.”
He turned to Bertram with troubled eyes.
“I think the Colonel will stand for that pledge. We can’t let these
women starve.”
It was Nadia who translated the promise to them, and as though she were
the Lady Bountiful who had been the means of rescue, they pressed round
her, kissing her hands and her dress, until she laughed and protested,
and pointed to the doctor as their champion. He hurried out with deep
embarrassment, because one of them seized his hands and tried to kiss
them.
That night, as a strange contrast to those scenes, Bertram went to the
opera of Kazan with the Colonel and his little crowd. They were playing
Boris Goudonoff to a crowded house of young Russians, who were warmly
clad, and, in appearance, well fed.
“How is it possible that these people have enough to eat, and enjoy
themselves,” asked the Colonel, “while millions are starving all
around?”
“They enjoy themselves,” said Cyrus Sims, “but they’re all hungry.
There’s not a single man or woman here that’s had enough to eat to-day.
But they come to the opera as the one little gleam of light and joy and
colour in the monotony of misery.”
“I cannot believe it,” said the Colonel. “Those people aren’t hungry. I
guess they’re Soviet officials who have hoarded up secret stores.”
“Some of them, perhaps. But there’s not much chance of that. They’ve
been rationed as Soviet workers until a week ago. Now the rations are
cut off, and they’re tightening their belts.”
“It’s a new _bourgeoisie_,” said the Colonel. “The Bolsheviks declared
war on the old _bourgeoisie_, and then set up a new one of their own.
There’s no more equality in Soviet Russia than there is in the United
States.”
Bertram agreed with him, but that night he had to admit, after an
amazing invasion of the A. R. A., that the glamour and glitter of the
opera only concealed the sharp tooth of hunger. It showed itself naked
and unashamed when the door was opened to a ringing of bells and a party
of opera singers desired to know if they might invite themselves to
supper with _Messieurs les Américains_?
How could a party of young Americans, six thousand miles from home,
refuse to share their bully beef with art in distress?
“Come right in!” said Sims, in command of “the bunch.”
They came right in, six ladies and three men, including the Prima Donna,
who was a Persian lady, with a wonderful voice, enormous black eyes, and
a ferocious appetite. The American boys brought out their tinned beef
and biscuits, their cheese and butter, and made a picnic meal with hot
cocoa. The Russian ladies of the opera, speaking but a few words of
French and German, which was their only conversational link with their
American hosts who had picked up a smattering of those languages, after
two years in Europe, made no concealment of their delight in the
presence of this food. They fell upon it like harpies, and it was the
beautiful Persian girl who devoured the last of a Dutch cheese with her
big black eyes raised in ecstasy.
One of the Americans produced a gramophone, and turned on a jazz tune,
and initiated the Persian lady into the mysteries of the fox-trot, while
she screamed with laughter. The others, still roving round for stray
biscuits, laughed up and down the scale.
Bertram slipped away to his camp bed in a little salon which had once
been the writing-room of Nadia’s uncle, Governor of Kazan in Imperial
Russia. Those dancers in the next room were like the merry ladies of the
Decameron, surrounded by plague.
He looked out of his window to the white night, with a moon above the
snow. It was very quiet in Kazan, with its houses filled with naked
children, and starving people, where typhus prevailed.