The White Terror and The Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia Page 3

  CHAPTER II.

  THE WHITE TERROR.

  Miroslav was trisected longitudinally by a clear, cheerful river and byKasimir Street, its principal thoroughfare, which contained most of itspublic buildings and best shops. The middle one of the three sectionsthus formed was the home of the higher nobility and the official class;the district across the bridge from here was inhabited by Christianburghers and workmen, with here and there a clay hovel, the home of apeasant family, gleaming white in the distant outskirts; while the hillyquarter beyond Kasimir Street was the seat of Jewish industry and Jewishpoverty, part of this neighbourhood being occupied by the market placesand "the Paradise," as the slums of the town were called ironically. Thegovernor's house, which faced Governor's Prospect--a small square with afountain in the centre--and Anna Nicolayevna's were the two mostimposing buildings in Miroslav.

  The countess' residence was the only structure in town that had acolonnaded front. The common people called it the Palace and the sectionof Kasimir Street it faced the Pillars. The sidewalk opposite was thefavourite promenade of the younger generation, and every afternoon, inauspicious weather, it glittered with the uniforms of army officers andgymnasium boys. The Palace was built by her grandfather in the closingdays of the previous century. It abutted on a long narrow lane formedon one side by Anna Nicolayevna's garden and leading to Theatre Square,where stood the playhouse and the Nobles' Club. When the white rigidityof these buildings was relieved by the grass of its lawns and thefoliage of its trees the spot was the joy of the town.

  During the winter of the year following the countess' sojourn at theGerman watering place, Miroslav was stirred by a sensation, the centralfigure of which was Pavel's tutor, the instructor of geography andhistory in the local gymnasium, Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin. Pavelwas then in the graduating class.

  Besides being connected with the male gymnasium Pievakin taught at thefemale high school of Miroslav. The town was fond of him and he was fondof the town and upon the whole he was contented. One of the things thatgalled him was the fact that his superior, the newly appointed directorof the school, was his inferior both in years and in civil rank.Pievakin was a "councillor of state," while Novikoff, the head of themale gymnasium, was only a "collegiate assessor." Novikoff was apainstaking, narrow-minded functionary, superciliously proud of hisoffice and slavishly loyal to the letter of the law. He was a slender,dark-complexioned man of forty, but he tried to look much older andheavier. He copied the Czar's side-whiskers, walked like a corpulentgrandee, perpetually pulling at his waistcoat as though he were burdenedby a voluminous paunch, and interlarded his speech with aphorisms fromthe Latin Grammar.

  One day as the director strutted ponderously along one of the twocorridors, the word "parliament" fell on his ear. It was Pievakin'svoice. The old man was explaining something to his class with greatardour. Novikoff paused, his lordly walk congealing into the picture ofdignified attention. The next minute, however, his grandeur melted away.His face expressed unfeigned horror. Pievakin was drawing an effusiveparallel between absolute monarchies and limited. This was distinctly inviolation of the Circular of the Ministry of Public Enlightenmentenjoining teachers of geography, in cases of this kind, to adherestrictly to the bare terminology of the approved text-book withoutventuring into anything like an elucidation. Not that Pievakin wasbetraying any partiality for limited monarchies. Indeed, to him thedistinction between the two forms of government was neither of more norof less interest than the difference between a steppe and a prairie or asimoon and a hurricane. It appealed to him because it was geography, andin his ecstasy over the lesson all thought of the Ministry and itsCirculars had escaped his mind.

  That afternoon he was summoned to the director's office on the floorbelow.

  Novikoff was at his large, flat-topped desk, studiously absorbed in somepapers. He silently motioned the teacher of geography to a seat, andwent on with his feigned work. After a lapse of some minutes hestraightened up, played a few scales upon the brass buttons of hisuniform, and said:

  "It pains me to have to say it, Alexandre Alexandrovich, but these arequeer times and the passions of youth should be moderated, held incheck, suppressed, not aroused. The imagination of one's pupils is notto be trifled with, Alexandre Alexandrovich."

  He paused mournfully. The little old man, who had not the least ideawhat he was driving at, waited in consternation. The room wasoverheated, and the pause had an overpowering effect on him. He felt onthe verge of fainting.

  "The point is," Novikoff resumed, with a sudden spurt in his voice,"that in your class work you sometimes suffer yourself to say thingsthat cannot but be regarded as dangerous. Dangerous particularly in viewof the evil influences at work among the young of our generation; inview of the very sad fact that college students will disguise themselvesas peasants----"

  "What do you mean, sir?" Pievakin burst out, reddening violently. "Howdare you liken me to those fellows? I was serving the Czar while youwere still a whippersnapper. I'm a councillor of state, sir. How dareyou make these insinuations?"

  "I expected as much," Novikoff answered, nervously polishing hisbuttons. "Defying one's superior is of a piece with the views you'retrying to instill into the minds of your scholars."

  "What is of a piece with what? Speak out, sir," Pievakin shrieked.

  "Bridle your temper, sir. I can't allow that."

  "Then tell me what it's all about," the teacher of history and geographysaid in a queer, half-beseeching, half-threatening voice.

  "Well, this morning you were expatiating upon the blessings of aconstitutional government. Yes, sir. There are no spies to eavesdrop onone in this building, but it seems you never speak so loud nor with somuch gusto as when you get to the subject of constitutions andparliaments and things of that kind."

  "It isn't true. I merely said a word or two on the various forms ofgovernment. It's practically all in Smirnoff's Geography."

  "'Practically'! It's against the law. I am very sorry, but it becomes myduty to report it to the curator."

  Here Pievakin, losing control of himself, shouted "Spy!" and"Scoundrel!" and darted out of the room.

  This happened at a time when the "peasantist" movement, the peaceful,unresisting stage in the history of what is commonly known as Nihilism,was at its height. The educated young generation was in an ecstasy ofaltruism. It was the period of "going to the people," when hundreds ofwell-bred men and women, children of the nobility, would don peasantgarb and go to share the life of the tillers of the soil, teaching themto read, talking to them of universal love, liberty and equality. Thegovernment punished this "going to the people" with Asiatic severity.Russia has no capital punishment for the slaying of common mortals, theaverage penalty for murder being about ten years of penal servitude inSiberia; and this penalty the courts were often ordered to impose onabsolutely peaceable missionaries, on university students whopractically did the same kind of work as that pursued by the "universitysettlements" in English-speaking countries. There were about onethousand of these propagandists in the political prisons of the empire,and their number was growing. They were kept in solitary confinement incold, damp cells. Scores of them went insane or died of consumption,scurvy or suicide before their cases came up for trial.

  * * * * *

  Pievakin's house was searched by gendarmes, but no "underground"literature was discovered there. He was not arrested, but spies shadowedhis movements and about a month after the domiciliary visit he wasofficially notified by the curator's office that he was to betransferred to the four-year "progymnasium" of a small town aconsiderable distance off. This implied that his work was to berestricted to boys of fourteen and less in a town out of the way of"dangerous tendencies." He grew thin and haggard and a certain look offright never left his eye. The other instructors at the gymnasium, allexcept one, and many of his private acquaintance plainly shunned him. Hehad become one of those people with whom one could not come in contactwithout attracting the undesirab
le attention of the police. One of thosewho were not afraid to be seen in his company was the "truncated cone.""My crooked back is the only one that does not bend," the deformed manwould joke. The tacit philosophy of his attitude toward the world seemedto be something like this: "You people won't consider me one of you. Iam only a hunchback, something like an elf, and you will take many anunwelcome truth from me which you would resent in one like yourselves.So let us proceed on this understanding."

  When Boulatoff heard that his favourite teacher was to be exiled to asmall town "to render him harmless," he was shocked. AlexandreAlexandrovich Pievakin was the last man in the world he would havesuspected to be guilty of seditious agitation. His only idol at schoolwas thus shattered. Pievakin had not the courage to visit the countess'house now, and Pavel, on his part, held aloof from him. The old man washateful to him, not only as a rebel, but also as an impostor and ahypocrite. He felt duped. His blood rankled with disgust and resentment.At the same time the situation did not seem quite clear to him.Something puzzled him, although he could not have put his finger on it.