The White Terror and The Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia Page 8

  CHAPTER VII.

  "TERRORISM WITHOUT VIOLENCE."

  One afternoon, in December of the same year, Pavel sat in a studentrestaurant, in the capital, eating fried steak and watching the door fora man with whom he had an appointment. He ate without appetite andlooked fatigued and overworked. He had been out from an early hour,bustling about on perilous business and dodging spies. It was extremelyexhausting and enervating, this prowling about under the perpetualstrain of danger. He was liable to be arrested at any moment. It waslike living continually under fire.

  The restaurant was full of cigarette smoke and noise. Somebody in therear of Pavel, who evidently had nothing to say, was addressing somebodyelse in high-flown Russian and with great gusto. His fine resonantvoice, of which he was apparently conscious, jarred on Pavel's nerves,interfering with what little relish he had for his meal. He was eyeingthe design on the frost-covered door-glass and lashing himself into afury over the invisible man's phrase-mongery, when he was accosted by afair-complexioned young woman:

  "Pardon me, but if I am not mistaken you are Prince Boulatoff?"

  "That's my name. And with whom have I the pleasure----?"

  "Oh, that would really be uninteresting to know. I'll tell you, though,that I belong to Miroslav."

  He reluctantly invited her to a glass of tea, which she accepted,saying: "It may look as if I were forcing myself upon your acquaintance,prince, but I really could not help it. Whatever comes from Miroslav isirresistible to me." And talking rapidly in effervescent, chokingsentences, she told him that her name was Maria Andreevna Safonova(Safonoff), that she was a student at the Bestusheff Women's College andthat her brother was a major of gendarmes.

  Pavel had heard of there being a daughter or a sister of a Miroslavgendarme officer at the Bestusheff College; also that she made afavourable impression on her classmates; but he had been too busy togive the information more than passing notice.

  "Is your brother in Miroslav?" he asked.

  "Yes, and I can assure you he is a gentleman, even if he is in thegendarme service. Some day, I hope, he'll give it up. He is really toogood to be in the business."

  Pavel ascribed her ebullition to the nature of the subject, but he soonfound that she was in the same state of excitement when a railroadticket was the topic. She looked twenty-three but she had the cheeks andeyes of a chubby infant, while her arms and figure had the lank,immature effect of a girl of thirteen.

  While they sat talking, a dark man in the military uniform of theMedico-Surgical Academy entered the cafe. It was Parmet, the man Pavelwas waiting for. Finding him engaged, the newcomer passed his tablewithout greeting him, took a seat in a remote corner and buried himselfin a book.

  Mlle. Safonoff did all the talking. She had not sat at Boulatoff'stable half an hour nor said much about Miroslav before she had pouredout some of her most intimate thoughts to him.

  "If you think it a pleasure to be the sister of a gendarme officer youare mistaken," she said. "It is not agreeable to be treated by everybodyas though you had been put at the college to spy upon the girls, is it?My brother is a better man than the brothers and fathers andgrandfathers of all the other student-girls put together, I assure you,prince. But then, of course, you may think I'm trying to spy on you,too."

  "No, I don't," said Boulatoff with a laugh, pricking up his ears.

  "Don't you, really?" And her eyes bubbled.

  "Of course, I don't."

  "Oh, if you knew how good he is, my brother. Do you remember the timewhen poor Pievakin left Miroslav? I know you do. You were in the eighthclass then. Well, I may as well tell you, prince"--she lowered hervoice--"had it not been for my brother there would have been no end ofarrests at the railroad station. He simply told his men not to make afuss. You see, I can confide in you without hesitation, for who wouldsuspect a Boulatoff of--pardon the word--spying? But I, why, I am thesister of a gendarme officer, so it is quite natural to suppose, and soforth and so on, don't you know."

  "Do you know the girl who made that speech?"

  "There you are," she said dolefully. "I happened to be at the other endof the room just then. When I tried to find out who she was everybodywas mum. Fancy, my best girl-friend said to me: 'If I were you, Masha, Ishouldn't want to know her name if I could. Suppose you utter it insleep and your brother overhears you.' The idiots! They didn't know itwas my brother who saved that girl from being arrested. And, by the way,if she had been arrested by some of his men, it would not have been hardfor her to escape. I know I am saying more than I should, but I reallycan't help it. You have no idea how I feel about these things. And now,at the sight of you, prince--a man from Miroslav--I seem to be going topieces altogether. Well, I don't mean, though, that my brother wouldhave let her escape. But then I have an aunt, who is related to thewarden of the Miroslav prison by marriage, so she can arrange thingsthere. Oh, she's the greatest revolutionist you ever saw. Of course, Idon't know whether you sympathise with these things, prince, but I'lltell you frankly, _I_ do. It was that aunt of mine who talked it intome. She is simply crazy to do something. She is sorry there are nopolitical prisoners in Miroslav. If there were she would get them out.She's just itching for a chance to do something of that sort. And yetshe never met a revolutionist in her life, nor saw a scrap ofunderground paper."

  To question the ingenuousness of this gush seemed to be the rankestabsurdity. The Russian spies of the period were poor actors. Pavel wasseized by a desire to show her that he, at least, did not suspect her ofspying, and quite forgetting to restrain the "idiotic breadth" of hisRussian nature for which he was often rebuked by a certain member of therevolutionary Executive Committee who was forever berating his comradesfor their insufficient caution, he slipped a crisp copy of the _Will ofthe People_ into her hand.

  "Put it into your muff," he said.

  The colour surged into her chubby face. Her whole figure seemed tensewith sudden excitement, as though the fine glossy paper in her handwere charged with electricity.

  "How shall I thank you?" she gasped.

  Pavel saw a moist glitter in her eyes, and as he got up, his slendererect little frame, too, seemed charged with electricity. When she hadgone he asked himself whether it had not all been acting, after all. Hecursed himself for his imprudence, but he said: "Oh, well, what must bewill be," and as usual the phrase acted like an effectual incantation onhis frame of mind.

  * * * * *

  Parmet had been dubbed Bismarck, because he bore considerableresemblance to Gambetta. Another nickname, one which he had inventedhimself, on a similar theory of contrasts, was Makar. Makar was astypically Slavic as his face was Semitic. His military uniform, which hehad to wear because his Academy was under the auspices of the WarDepartment, ill became him. Instead of concealing the rabbinicalexpression of his face, it emphasised it. When they came out of therestaurant, a man, shouldering a stick, was running along thesnow-covered pavement, lighting the street-lamps, as though in dread ofbeing forestalled by somebody.

  "Guess who that girl is," Pavel said.

  "Have I heard of her?"

  "No. Quite an amusing sort of a damsel. Seething and steaming for allthe world like a samovar. You should have seen her calflike ecstasy whenI handed her something to read. I was afraid she was going to have afit."

  Makar trotted silently on, continually curling himself in his wretchedgrey cloak and striking one foot against the other, to knock the cakeddrab-coloured snow off his boots. Pavel wore a new furred coat.

  "She may be useful though," Pavel resumed, after a pause. "That is,provided she is all she seems to be. Her brother is a gendarme major.What do you think of that?"

  "Is he?" Makar asked, looking up at his companion in beatific surprise.

  "Yes, and she says he's a good fellow, too. Of course, she's quite afull-fledged ninny herself, and ought to be taken with a carload ofsalt, but she referred to some facts with which I happen to befamiliar." While he was describing the girl's aunt, a passing so
ldiersaluted Makar, mistaking him for an army officer. Makar, however, wastoo absorbed in his companion's talk to be aware of what was going onabout him. Pavel shrieked with laughter. "He must be a pretty raw sortof recruit to take _you_ for a warrior," he said. When he had finishedhis sketch of the woman who was longing to set somebody free, themedical student paused in the middle of the sidewalk.

  "Why, she's a godsend, then," he said.

  "Moderate your passions, Mr. Army Officer," Pavel said languidly,mocking his old gymnasium director. "If she does not turn out to be aspy we'll see what we can do with her. She strikes me rather favourably,though."

  "Why, you oughtn't to neglect her, Pasha. If I were you I would lose notime in making her brother's acquaintance. Think of the possibilities ofit!"

  "Bridle your exuberance, young man. Her brother lives many miles fromhere. He is on the hunt for sedition in the most provincial ofprovinces. Want to make a Terrorist of him? Go ahead. He lives inMiroslav. There."

  "In Miroslav!" Makar echoed, with pride in the capital of his nativeprovince.

  Presently they entered a courtyard and took to climbing a steep stonystaircase. Strong, inviting odours of cabbage soup and cooked meatgreeted them at several of the landings. Makar's lodging was on thesixth floor. He had moved in only a few days ago and the chief object ofPavel's visit was to make a mental note of its location.

  The first thing Makar did as he got into the room was to put a pitcheron one of his two windows. The windows commanded a little side street,and the pitcher was Makar's safety signal. When he had lit his lamp asofa, freshly covered with green oil-cloth, proved to be the best pieceof furniture in the room, the smell of the oil-cloth mingling with thestale odours of tobacco smoke with which the very walls seemed to besaturated.

  "Ugh, what a room!" Pavel said, sniffing. They talked of a revolutionistwho had recently been arrested and to whom they referred as "Alexandre."Special importance was attached by the authorities to the capture ofthis man, because among the things found at his lodgings was a diagramof the Winter Palace with a pencil mark on the imperial dining hall. Asthe prisoner was a conspicuous member of the Terrorists' ExecutiveCommittee, the natural inference was that another bold plot was underway, one which had something to do with the Czar's dining room, butwhich had apparently been frustrated by the discovery of the diagram.The palace guard was strongly re-enforced and every precaution was takento insure the monarch's safety. Now, the Terrorists had their man in thevery heart of the enemy's camp, and the result of the search ofAlexandre's lodgings was no secret to them. This revolutionist, whosegloomy face was out of keeping with his carefully pomaded hair, kidgloves, silk hat, showy clothes and carefully trimmed whiskers a laAlexander II., was known to Makar as "the Dandy." Less than a yearbefore he had obtained a position in the double capacity of spy andclerk, at the Third Section of his Majesty's Own Office, and so likedwas he by his superiors that he had soon been made private secretary tothe head of the secret service, every document of importance passingthrough his hands. Since then he had been communicating to the ExecutiveCommittee, now a list of new suspects, now the details of a contemplatedarrest, now a copy of some secret circular to the gendarme offices ofthe empire.

  While they were thus conversing of Alexandre and the Dandy, Pavelstretched himself full length on the sofa and dozed off. When he openedhis eyes, about two hours later, he found Parmet tiptoeing awkwardly upand down the room, his shadow a gigantic crab on the wall. Pavel brokeinto a boisterous peal of laughter.

  "Here is a figure for you! All that is needed is an artist to set towork and paint it."

  "Are you awake? Look here, Pasha. Your gendarme's sister and her auntare haunting my mind."

  "Why, why, have you fallen in love with both of them at once?" Pavelasked as he jumped to his feet and shot his arms toward the ceiling. Helooked refreshed and full of animal spirits.

  "Stop joking, Pasha, pray," Makar said in his purring, mellifluousvoice. "It irritates me. It's a serious matter I want to speak to youabout, and here you are bent upon fun." Pavel's story of the gendarmeofficer's sister had stirred in him visions of a mighty system ofcounter-espionage. He had a definite scheme to propose.

  Pavel found it difficult to work himself out of his playful mood untilMakar fell silent and took to pacing the floor resentfully. When he haddesisted, with a final guffaw over Makar's forlorn air, the medicalstudent, warming up to fresh enthusiasm, said:

  "Well, to let that prison stand idle would be criminal negligence. Thatgirl's aunt must be given a chance."

  "What's that?" Pavel said, relapsing into horseplay. "Do you wantsomebody nabbed on purpose to give a bored lady something to excite hernerves?" He finished the interrogation rather limply. It flashed uponhim that what Makar was really aiming at was that some revolutionistshould volunteer to be arrested on a denunciation from the Dandy or someother member of the party with a view to strengthening its position inthe Third Section.

  Makar went on to plead for an organised effort to get into the variousgendarme offices.

  "It is a terrible struggle we are in, Pasha. Our best men fall beforethey have time to turn round. If we had more revolutionists on the otherside, Alexandre might be a free man now."

  "Well, and sooner or later you and I will be where he is now and beplunged into the sleep of the righteous, and there won't even be a goatto graze at our graves. Let the dead bury the dead, Makashka. We wantthe living for the firing line. We can't afford to let fresh blood turnsour in a damp cell, if we can help it."

  "But this is 'the firing line'," Makar returned with beseeching, almostwith tearful emphasis. "If you only gave me a chance to explain myself.What I want is to have confusion carried into every branch of thegovernment; I want the Czar to be surrounded by a masquerade of enemies,so that his henchmen will suspect each other of being either agents ofthe Third Section or revolutionists. Do you see the point? I want theCzar to be surrounded by a babel of mistrust and espionage. I want himto be dazed, staggered until he succumbs to this nightmare of suspicionand hastens to convoke a popular assembly, as Louis XVI. was forced todo; I want the inhabitants of our tear-drenched country to be treatedlike human beings without delay. My scheme practically amounts to asystem or terrorism without violence, and I insist that one good man inthe enemy's camp is of more value than the death of ten spies." His low,velvety voice rang clear, tremulous with pleading fervour; his facegleamed with an intellectual relish in his formula of the plan. As hespoke, he was twisting his mighty fist, opening and closing it again,Talmud-fashion, in unison with the rhythm of his sentences.

  Ejaculations like "visionary!" "phrase-maker!" were on the tip ofPavel's tongue, but he had not the heart to utter them. Aerial as thescheme was, Makar's plea had cast a certain spell over him. It was likelistening to a beautiful piece of mythology.

  "Let us form a special force of men ready to go to prison, to bedestroyed, if need be," Makar went on. "The loss of one man would mean,in each case, the saving of twenty. Think how many important comrades asingle leak in the Third Section has saved us. It's a matter of plainarithmetic."

  "Of plain insanity," Pavel finally broke in.

  "Don't get excited, Pasha, pray. Can't you let me finish? If I am wrongyou'll have plenty of time to prove it."

  His purring Talmudic voice and the smell of the fresh oil-cloth wereunbearable to Pavel now.

  "It's like this," Makar resumed. "In the first place [he bent down hislittle finger] every honest man is sure to be arrested some day, andwhat difference does it make whether the end comes a few months sooneror a few months later? In the second place [he bent down the nextfinger] there must be some more people like that girl's aunt. It isquite possible that most of those who would be arrested on this planwould get out, and that itself would be a good thing, for it would addto the prestige of the party. Everything that reveals the weakness ofthe government on the one hand, and the cleverness and daring of ourpeople on the other, is good for the cause. Every success scored by the'Will of the P
eople' is a step in the direction of that for which menlike yourself are staking their lives, Pasha. Don't interrupt me, pray.I'll go a step further. I am of the opinion that under certainconditions, where an escape is assured, it wouldn't be a bad idea to letone's self be arrested just in order to add another name to the list ofpolitical gaol-breakers, that is to say, to the list of the government'sfiascos. Every little counts. Every straw increases that weight whichwill finally break the back of Russia's despot."

  "Do you really mean what you say, Makar? Do you actually want to bearrested?" Pavel asked.

  "Not at all. All I want is that another good man should gain theconfidence of the Third Section and that another political prisonershould escape."

  "And what if all Mlle. Safonoff says turns out to be as idiotic a dreamas all this tommyrot of yours?"

  "'If one is afraid of wolves one had better keep out of the woods.' You,yourself, have taken much greater chances than that, Pasha. If I amarrested with papers and the worst comes to the worst they won't hangme."

  "I see you take it seriously after all. Well, if you think I'll let youdo anything of the kind you are a fool."

  "You can't prevent me from doing what I consider to be right. Nor do Iwant anybody else to send the denunciation which is to result in myarrest. I'll send it myself. All I want is that somebody should claimcredit for it afterward, when I am in prison--on that very day, ifpossible. The search and arrest will be ordered from St. Petersburg, andthen some of our men will say at the Third Section that the anonymousletter was his, adding some details about me. Details can be worked outlater. Where there is a will there is a way. At any rate, I don't expectanybody but myself to bear the moral responsibility for my arrest."

  He talked on in the same strain until Pavel sprang to his feet, flushedwith rage. "It's all posing--that's all there's to it!" he shouted. "Onthe surface it means that you are willing to sacrifice yourself withouteven attracting attention, but in reality this subtle modesty of yoursis only the most elaborate piece of parading that was ever conceived.It's love of applause all the way through, and you are willing to stakeyour life on it. That's all there is about it."

  Makar grew yellow in the face and sweat broke out on his forehead. "Inthat case, there's no use talking, of course," he said in a very lowvoice. "If I am a humbug I am a humbug."

  "And if you are a fool, you are a fool," Pavel rejoined, with aconciliatory growl.

  "You need not back out, Pasha. Maybe you are right," Makar rejoined."Who is absolutely free from vanity? Human nature is such a complexmechanism. One may be governed by love of approbation and, perhaps,also, by a certain adventuresome passion for the danger of the thing.The great question is whether there is something besides this. No, it isnot all posing, Pasha. There are moments when I ask myself why I shouldnot live as most people do, but I only have to realise all that is goingon around us; the savage tyranny, the writhing millions, the hunger,the bottomless darkness, the unuttered groans,--I only have to think ofthis and of the dear comrades I have known who have been strangled onthe gallows or are wasting away in the casemates; I need only pictureall this, I say, to feel that even if there be an alloy of selfishnessin my revolutionary interests, yet, in the main, it is this sense of theGreat Wrong which keeps me from nursing my own safety. Do you know thatthe dangling corpses of our comrades are never absent from my mind? I amnot without a heart, Pasha."

  "Nobody says you are, only you are a confounded dreamer, Makashka,"Pavel answered. "We have no time for dreams and poetry. Our struggle isone of hard, terrible prose."

  "You are even more of a dreamer than I, Pasha," Makar retorted,blissfully.

  When Makar resumed speaking the last echo of resentment was gone fromhis voice. "After all, one gets more than one gives. When I think of themoments of joy the movement affords me, of the ties of friendship withso many good people--the cream of the generation, the salt of the earth,the best children Russia ever gave birth to--when I think of theglorious atmosphere that surrounds me, of the divine ecstasy with whichI view the future; when I recall all this I feel that I get a sort ofhappiness which no Rothschild could buy. To be kept in solitaryconfinement is anything but a pleasure, to be sure, but is there nothingto sweeten one's life there? And how about the thought that over yonder,outside, there are people who are going on with the struggle and whothink of you sometimes? Sooner or later the government will yield. Andthen, oh then somebody--some comrade of ours--will throw the cell-dooropen, and I'll join in the celebration of our triumph. Really, Pasha, Iam strong as a bull, and a few years of confinement would not kill me.While some of our people may die by the hand of the hangman, my lifewould be spared. Did you ever stop to think of the time when the cellsof Siberia and of Peter and Paul are thrown open and one says to theimmured comrades, 'Out with you, brothers! You're free! The nation isfree!' Come, another year or two and this will be realised."

  "You had better save your sentimentalities for novices," Pavel said."And, by the way, your eloquence is certainly of more use than yourdreaming in a dungeon would be."

  He was arguing with a rock of stiff-necked will-power.