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

by Abraham Cahan

  CHAPTER V.

  PAVEL'S FIRST STEP.

  When Pavel arrived in St. Petersburg, in the last days of July, hisrecent tribulations seemed a thing of the faded past. The capital was afascinating setting for the great university which he was soon to enterand in which he was bent upon drinking deep of the deepest mysteries ofwisdom. His "certificate of maturity"--his gymnasium diploma--was asolemn proclamation of his passage from boyhood to manhood--a changewhich seemed to assert itself in everything he did. He ate maturely,talked maturely, walked maturely. He felt like a girl on the eve of herwedding day.

  He had not been in the big city for six years, and so marked was thedistinction between it and the southern town from which he hailed, thatto his "mature" eyes it seemed as if they were seeing it for the firsttime. The multitude of large lusty men, heavily bearded and wearingblouses of flaming red; the pink buildings; the melodious hucksters; thecherry-peddlars, with their boards piled with the succulent fruit ontheir shoulders; the pitchy odor of the overheated streets; the soft,sibilant affectations in the speech of the lower classes; the bustlinglittle ferry-boats on the Neva--all this, sanctified by the presence ofthe university buildings across the gay river, made his heart throb witha feeling as though Miroslav were a foreign town and he were treadingthe soil of real Russia at last.

  He matriculated at the Section of Philology and History, St. Petersburg.Before starting on his studies, however, he went off on a savage debauchwith some aristocratic young relatives. The debauch lasted a fortnight,and cost his mother a small fortune. When he came to the university atlast, weary of himself and his relatives, he settled down to a winter ofhard work. But the life at the university disturbed his peace of mind.He found the students divided into "crammers," "parquette-scrapers" and"radicals." The last named seemed to be in the majority--a bustling,whispering, preoccupied crowd with an effect of being the masters of thesituation. There was a vast difference between Elkin and his followersand these people. Pavel knew that the university was the hotbed of thesecret movement, of which he was now tempted to know something. Therewas no telling who of his present classmates might prove a candidate forthe gallows. The wide-awake, whispering, mysterious world about himreminded him of the Miroslav girl and of his rebuff upon trying todiscover who she was. When he made an attempt to break through the magiccircle in which that world was enclosed his well-cared-for appearanceand high-born manner went against him. A feeling of isolation weighed onhis soul that was much harder to bear than his ostracism at thegymnasium had been. Harder to bear, because the students who kept awayfrom him here struck him as his superiors, and because he had a humblefeeling as though it were natural that they should hold aloof from him.And the image of that Miroslav girl seemed to float over thesewhispering young men, at once luring and repulsing him. He often wentabout with a lump in his throat.

  One day he met a girl named Sophia Perovskaya, the daughter of a formergovernor of the Province of St. Petersburg and the granddaughter of acelebrated cabinet minister. She was a strong-featured, boyish-lookinglittle creature, with grave blue eyes beneath a very high forehead. Hehad known her when he was a child. There was something in her generalappearance now and in the few words she said to him which left apeculiar impression on Pavel. As he thought of her later it dawned uponhim that she might belong to the same world as those preoccupied,whispering fellow-students of his. He looked her up the same day.

  "I should like to get something to read, Sophia Lvovna," he said,colouring. "Some of the proscribed things, I mean." Then he added, withan embarrassed frown, "Something tells me you could get it for me. If Iam mistaken, you will have to excuse me."

  The governor's daughter fixed her blue eyes on him as she said, simply:

  "All right. I'll get you something."

  She lent him a volume of the "underground" magazine _Forward!_ and someother prints. The tales of valour and martyrdom which he found in thesepublications, added to the editorials they contained calling upon thenobility to pay the debt they owed to the peasantry by sacrificingthemselves for their welfare, literally intoxicated him.

  "Dear Mother and Comrade," he wrote in a letter home, "I have come tothe conclusion that the so-called nobility to which I belong has neverdone anything useful. For centuries and centuries and centuries we havebeen living at the expense of those good, honest, overworked people, thepeasantry. It is enough to drive one to suicide. Yes, mamma darling, weare a race of drones and robbers. The ignorant, unkempt moujiks that wetreat like beasts are in reality angels compared to us. There issomething in them--in their traditions and in the inherent purity oftheir souls--which should inspire us with reverence. Yet they areliterally starved and three-fourths of their toil goes to maintain thearmy and the titled classes."

  Further down in the same letter he said: "Every great writer in thehistory of our literature has been in prison or exiled. Our noblestthinker and critic, Chernyshevsky, is languishing in Siberia. Why? Why?My hair stands erect when I think of these things."

  When it came to posting the letter, it dawned upon him that suchsentiments were not to be trusted to the mails, and, feeling himself aconspirator, he committed the epistle to the flames.

  He was touched by the spirit of that peasant worship--the religion ofthe "penitent nobility"--which was the spirit of the best unproscribedliterature of the day as well as of the "underground" movement.Turgeneff owed the origin of his fame to the peasant portraits of his_Notes of a Huntsman_. Nekrasoff, the leading poet of the period, and ascore of other writers were perpetually glorifying the peasant, goinginto ecstasies over him, bewailing him. The peasant they drew was acreature of flesh-and-blood reality, but shed over him was the goldenhalo of idealism. The central doctrine of the movement was a theory thatthe survival of the communistic element in the Russian village, wasdestined to become the basis of the country's economic and politicalsalvation; that Russia would leap into an ideal social arrangementwithout having to pass through capitalism; that her semi-barbaricpeasant, kindly and innocent as a dove and the martyr of centuries,carried in his person the future glory, moral as well as material, ofhis unhappy country. As to the living peasant, he had no more knowledgeof this adoration of himself (nor capacity to grasp the meaning of themovement, if an attempt had been made to explain it to him) than asquirrel has of the presence of a "q" in the spelling of its name.

  * * * * *

  Sophia disappeared from St. Petersburg, and Pavel found himself cut offfrom the "underground" world once more. The prints she had left him onlyserved to excite his craving for others of the same character. Thepreoccupied, mysterious air of the "radicals" at the universitytantalised him. He was in a veritable fever of envy, resentment,intellectual and spiritual thirst. He subscribed liberally to thevarious revolutionary funds that were continually being raised under theguise of charity, and otherwise tried to manifest his sympathy with themovement, all to no purpose. His contributions were accepted, but hisadvances were repulsed. One day he approached a student whom he had oncegiven ten rubles "for a needy family"--a thin fellow with a very longneck and the face of a chicken.

  "I should like to get something to read," he said, trying to copy thetone of familiar simplicity which he had used with Sophia. "I have readone number of _Forward!_ and another thing or two, but that's all I havebeen able to get."

  "Pardon me," the chicken-face answered, colouring, "I really don't knowwhat you mean. Can't you get those books in the book-stores or in thepublic library?"

  Pavel was left with an acute pang of self-pity. He felt like a pamperedchild undergoing ill-treatment at the hands of strangers. His mother andall his relatives thought so much of him, while these fellows, whowould deem it a privilege to talk to any of them, were treating him asa nobody and a spy. The tears came to his eyes. But presently heclenched his fists and said to himself, "I _will_ be admitted to theirset."

  In his fidget he happened to think of Pani Oginska. As the scene at theGerman watering-place came back to him, he was
seized with a desire toefface the affront he had offered her. "How can I rest until I have seenher and asked her pardon?" he said to himself. "If I were a real man andnot a mere phrase-monger I should start out on the journey at once. But,of course, I won't do anything of the kind, and writing of such thingsis impossible. I _am_ a phrase-maker. That's all I am."

  But he soliloquized himself into the reflection that Pani Oginska waslikely to know some of her imprisoned son's friends, if, indeed, she wasnot in the "underground" world herself, and the very next morning foundhim in a railway car, bound for the south.

  * * * * *

  Pani Oginska's estate was near the boundary line between the province towhich it belonged and the one whose capital was Miroslav, a considerabledistance from a railway station. Pavel covered that distance in apost-sleigh drawn by a troika. His way lay in the steppe region. It wasa very cold forenoon in mid-winter. The horses' manes were covered withfrost; the postilion was bundled up so heavily that he looked like anold woman. The sun shone out of a blue, unconcerned sky upon a waste ofeery whiteness. There were ridges of drifts and there were black patchesof bare ground, but the general perspective unfolded an unbroken planeof snow, a level expanse stretching on either side of the smooth road,seemingly endless and bottomless, destitute of any trace of life savefor an occasional inn by the roadside or the snow-bound hovel andouthouses of a shepherd in the distance--a domain of silence and numbmonotony. That this desert of frozen sterility would four or five monthslater, be transformed into a world of grass and birds seemed asinconceivable as the sudden disappearance of the ocean.

  The last few versts were an eternity. Pavel's heart leaped with aforetaste of the exciting interview.

  "Lively, my man," he pressed the postilion. "Can't your horses get amove on them?"

  The postilion nodded his muffled head and set up a fierce yelp, for allthe world like a wolf giving chase; whereupon the animals, apparentlyscared to death, broke into a desperate gallop, the scud flying, thesleigh dashing along like an electric car in open country, its bellringing frostily.

  "That's better," Pavel shouted with a thrill of physical pleasure andspeaking with difficulty for the breakneck speed that seemed to flingthe breath out of his lungs. "That's better, my man. You shall get agood tip. But where have you learned the trick?"

  The postilion gave a muffled grunt of appreciation and went on howlingwith all his might.

  They passed through a small village. The chimneys of some of the whiteclay hovels on either side of the road poured out clouds of sweetish,nauseating smoke. Wood being scarce in these parts, the peasantry madefuel of manure.

  At last the sleigh swung into the great front yard of Pani Oginska'smanor house. It was greeted by the curious eyes of half a dozenservants. Pavel entered a warm vestibule with a painted floor, where hefound waiting to meet him Pani Oginska and an aged man with hair aswhite as the snow without. He bowed politely and asked, in French, withnervous timidity:

  "Do you remember me, Madame Oginska?"

  She screwed up her eyes as she scanned his flushed, frozen face.

  "Prince Boulatoff!" she said in a perplexed whisper.

  "I have come all the way from St. Petersburg to beg your pardon, MadameOginska," he fired out. "I acted like a brute on that occasion. I was anidiotic boy. Forgive me."

  "Have you actually come all the way from St. Petersburg, to tell methat?" she asked with a hearty peal of laughter. She introduced him tothe white-haired man, her father, who first made a bow full ofold-fashioned dignity and then gave Pavel's cold hand a doddering grasp.

  "So you have really come for that express purpose?" Pani Oginskaresumed, while a servant was relieving the newcomer of his fur-linedcoat, fur cap, heavy gloves, muffler and storm shoes. "A case ofcompunction, I suppose?"

  Her father followed them as far as the open door of a vast, plainlyfurnished parlour, and after looming on the threshold for a minute ortwo, in an attitude of pained dignity, he bowed himself away. PaniOginska gently pressed the young man into a huge, rusty easy-chair, sheherself remaining in a standing posture, her mind apparently dividedbetween hospitality and an important errand upon which she seemed tohave been bent when he arrived. She wore a furred jacket, her head in agrey shawl and her feet in heavy top-boots--a costume jarringly out ofaccord with her pale, delicate, nunnish face. She made quite a newimpression on the young prince.

  "I was blind then," he began, when they were left alone. "My eyes wereclosed."

  "Oh, you needn't go into detail," she rejoined with an amused look. "Ithink I can guess how it has come about. You have caught the contagion,haven't you?"

  "Why call it 'contagion?' It's the truth; it's justice. If I hadn't beensuch a silly boy when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, I shouldcertainly not have acted the way I did."

  "A boy? And what are you now, pray? An old man with the weight ofexperience on your shoulders?" she asked with motherly gaiety. "Well,we'll talk it over later on, or, indeed, we'll find better things totalk about; and meanwhile I want you to excuse me, prince, and makeyourself comfortable without me. You are hungry, of course?"

  "Not at all. I had luncheon at the station."

  "Well, you shall have some refreshments at any rate, and by and by Ishall be back. I am a rather busy woman, you see. I have to be my ownmanager, and there are a thousand and one things to look after, and thesnow is rather deep"--pointing at her heavy boots. "Well, here are somebooks and magazines. _Au revoir._" She made for the door, but facedabout again. "By the way, prince, does your mother know of this crazytrip of yours?"

  "I confess she does not," he answered, feeling helplessly like a boy."Why?"

  "Why! Because she is the best woman in the world, and because it's toobad you did anything so foolish without letting her know at least. Bythe way, this is anything but a desirable place for a young man tovisit. Since my son got into trouble the police have tried to keep aneye on us; but then the police are so stupid. Still, I am sorry youdidn't first consult your mother. If you boys would only let yourselvesbe guided by your mothers you would be spared many a trouble."

  "Is that the prime object of life--to guard against harm to oneself?"Pavel protested.

  She fixed him with a look of amusement, and then remarked sadly: "You_have_ caught the contagion, poor thing. I'll write your mother aboutit. Let her put a stop to it if it isn't too late."

  He took fire. "I don't know what you are hinting at, Madame Oginska," hesaid. Asking her to introduce him to Nihilists seemed out of thequestion.

  "I am hinting at those 'circles,' prince. You probably belong to one ofthem; that's what I am hinting at. Don't you, now?"

  "I don't belong to any circles. Nor do I know what you mean, madame."

  "Well, well. You have come to ask me not to be offended with you, andnow it seems to be my turn to ask you not to be angry with me. Don't beuneasy, prince. I shan't write to your mother. Indeed, she couldn'tafford to be in correspondence with me at all. However, if you reallyaren't yet mixed up in those dreadful things"--there was a dubioustwinkle in her eye--"you had better keep out of them in the future, too.Think of your charming mother and take care of yourself, prince. Well, Ihave got to go. It's barbaric of me to leave you, but I'll soon be back.Here are some books and magazines. Or wait, I have another occupationfor you. I want you to meet the best Jew in the world. I want you toexamine him in 'Gentile lore,' as his people would put it. They wouldkill me, his people, if they knew he came to read my 'Gentile books.'"

  "He is a brainy fellow," she went on, leading the way through alabyrinth of rooms and corridors, "chockful of that Talmud of theirs,don't you know. Now that he is married they are trying to make abusiness man of him, but he prefers worldly wisdom and that sort ofthing. I let him use my library, the only place he has for his 'unholy'studies, in fact. He is supposed to come on business here. He lives in asmall town a mile from here."

  She was speaking in Russian now, a language she had perfect command of,but which
she spoke with a strong Polish accent, making it sound toPavel as though she was declaiming poetry. Twelve years ago, before sheinherited this estate, and when she still lived in Poland, herbirthplace, she could scarcely speak it at all.

  She took him into a room whose walls were lined with books, mostly oldand worn, and whose two windows looked out upon a frozen pond in frontof a snow-covered clump of trees.

  "Monsieur Parmet, Prince Boulatoff," she said, as a man sprang to hisfeet with the air of one startled from mental absorption. He was ofstrong, ungainly build, with the peculiar stamp of rabbinicalscholarship on a plump, dark-bearded face. "See how much he knows,prince. He thinks he can take the examination for a certificate ofmaturity and enter the university. But then he thinks he knowseverything." With this she left them to themselves.

  Pavel was in a whirl of embarrassment and annoyance, but the abashedsmile of the other mollified him. "What I need more than anything elseis to be examined in Latin and Greek," Parmet said. "I haven't had myexercises looked over for a long time, and it may be all wrong for all Iknow." His Russian had a Yiddish accent. He spoke in low, purring tonesthat seemed to soften the heavy outline of his figure. He was alumbering mass of physical strength, one of those bearlike giants whomvillage people will describe as bending horseshoes like so many bladesof grass or driving nails into a wall with their bare knuckles for ahammer. His dark-brown eyes shone meekly.

  "Have you learned it all by yourself?" Pavel asked.

  "Not altogether."

  Pavel began with an air of lofty reluctance, but he was soon carriedaway by the niceties of the ancient syntax, and his stiffness meltedinto didactic animation. As to Parmet, his plump, dark face was an imageof religious ecstasy. Pavel warmed to him. His Talmudic gestures andintonation amused him.

  "There's no trouble about your Latin," he said, familiarly; "no troublewhatever."

  "Isn't there? It was Pani Oginska's son who gave me the first start,"the other said, blissfully, uttering the name in a lowered voice. "If ithad not been for him I should still be immersed in the depths ofdarkness."

  "'Immersed in the depths of darkness!' There is a phrase for you! Whyshould you use high-flown language like that?"

  Parmet smiled, shrugging his shoulders bashfully. "Will you kindly tryme on Greek now?" he said.

  "One second. That must have been quite a little while ago when PaniOginska's son taught you, wasn't it?"

  Parmet tiptoed over to the open door, closed it, tiptoed back and said:"Not quite two years. If you knew what a man of gold he was! They areslowly killing him, the murderers. And why? What had he done? He couldnot harm a fly. He is all goodness, an angel like his mother. He was ofdelicate health when they took him, and now he is melting like acandle. Why, oh why, should men like him have to perish that way?"

  "Isn't it rather risky for you to be coming here?" Pavel demanded,looking him over curiously.

  Parmet smiled, a queer, outlandish smile, at once naive and knowing, ashe replied:

  "Risky? No. What does an old-fashioned Jew like myself care aboutpolitics? I am supposed to come here on business. Did you know Eugene?"

  "Who is Eugene? Pani Oginska's son?"

  "Yes. I thought you knew him."

  "I wish I had. People like him are the only ones worth knowing. Most ofthe others are scoundrels, humbugs, cold-blooded egoists; that's whatthey are."

  So talking, they gradually confided to each other the story of theirrespective conversions and tribulations. Parmet followed the prince'stale first with a look of childlike curiosity and then with an air thatbetrayed emotion. As he listened he kept rubbing his hand nervously.When Pavel had concluded, the Jew took to tiptoeing up and down theroom, stopped in front of him and said, with great ardour:

  "Don't grieve, my dear man. I may be able to help you. I know a friendof Eugene's who could put you in touch with the proper persons."

  "Is he in St. Petersburg?"

  "No, but that's no matter. He can arrange it. He knows somebody there.I'll see him as soon as I can, even if I have to travel many miles forit."

  Pavel grasped his hand silently.

  "Well," the other said. "There was a time when I thought every Christianhard-hearted and cruel. Now I am ashamed of myself for having harbouredsuch ideas in my mind. Every Christian whose acquaintance I happen tomake turns out to be an angel rather than a human being."

  "Why these compliments?" Pavel snarled. "Most of the Christians I knoware knaves. The whole world is made up of knaves for that matter."

  When Pani Oginska came home and saw them together, she said:

  "I knew I should find you two making love to each other."

  * * * * *

  A month or two after Pavel's return to St. Petersburg a tall blond youngman with typical Great-Russian features looked him up at the university.

  "I have received word from the south about you," he said, withoutintroducing himself.

  "I am pleased to meet you," Pavel returned gruffly, "but I hope I won'tbe kept on probation and be subjected to all sorts of humiliations."

  "Why, why," the other said, in confusion. "I'll be glad to let you haveany kind of literature there is and to introduce you to other comrades.That's why I have been looking for you. Why should you take it thatway?"

  Pavel's face broke into a smile. "Dashed if I know why I should.Something possessed me to put on a harsh front. It was mere parading, Isuppose. Don't mind it. What shall I call you?"

  "Why--er--oh, call me anything," the other answered, colouring.

  "Very well, then. I'll call you Peter; or no, will 'godfather' do? Thatis, provided you are really going to be one to me," Pavel said, in avain struggle to suppress his exultation.

  "It'll be all right," his new acquaintance replied with bashful ardour.

  "Godfather, then?"

  Godfather introduced him to several other "radicals," who gave himunderground prints and a list of legitimate books for a course of"serious" reading. He would stay at home a whole week at a time withoutdressing or going down for his meals, perusing volume after volume,paper after paper. When he did dress and go out it was to get more booksor to seek answers to the questions which disturbed his peace. He was ina state of vernal agitation, in a fever of lofty impulses. And so muchlike a conspirator did he feel by now, that he no longer even thought ofopening his mind to his mother. Indeed, the change that had come overhim was so complete that she was not likely to understand him if he had.To drive her to despair seemed to be the only result he could expect ofsuch a confession. The secret movement appealed to him as a host ofsaints. He longed to be one of them, to be martyred with them. It wasclear to him that some day he would die for the Russian people; die aslow, a terrible death; and this slow, terrible death impressed him asthe highest pinnacle of happiness.

  When his mother came to see him, a year later, she thought he was inlove.

  He was in the thick of the movement by that time. He was learningshoemaking with a view to settling in a village. He would earn hislivelihood in the sweat of his brow, and he would carry the light of hislofty ideas into the hovels of the suffering peasantry. But his plans inthis direction were never realized. The period of "going to the people"soon came to an end.

  The mothlike self-immolation of university students continued, but thespirit of unresisting martyrdom could not last. Violence was bound toresult from it.

  The next year saw the celebrated "trial of 193," mostly college men andcollege women. They were charged with political propaganda, and the boldstand they took thrilled the country. The actual number tried was,indeed, much less than 193, for of those who had been kept in prison inconnection with that case as many as seventy had perished in their cold,damp cells while waiting to be arraigned. Of those who were tried manywere acquitted, but instead of regaining their liberty a large number ofthese were transported to Siberia "by administrative order." Moreover,hundreds of people were slowly killed in the dungeons or exiled toSiberia without any process of law wh
atsoever. School children wereburied in these consumption breeding cells; whole families were ruinedbecause one of their members was accused of reading a socialistpamphlet. Student girls were subjected to indignities by dissoluteofficials--all "by administrative order."

  The Russian penal code imposes the same penalty for disfiguring the eyesof an imperial portrait as it does for blinding a live subject of theCzar. But political suspects were tortured without regard even to thiscode.

  It gradually dawned upon the propagandists that instead of beingdecimated in a fruitless attempt to get at the common people they shouldfirst devote themselves to an effort in the direction of free speech. Bya series of bold attacks it was expected to extort the desired reformsfrom the government. Nothing was lawless, so it was argued, whendirected, in self-defence, against the representatives of a system thatwas the embodiment of bloodthirsty lawlessness.

  Thus peaceful missionaries became Terrorists. The government inaugurateda system of promiscuous executions; the once unresisting propagandistsretaliated by assassination after assassination. Socialists were hangedfor disseminating their ideas or for resisting arrest; high officialswere stabbed or shot down for the bloodthirsty cruelty with which theyfought the movement; and finally a series of plots was inauguratedaiming at the life of the emperor himself.

  The White Terror of the throne was met by the Red Terror of theRevolution.