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

by Abraham Cahan

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  THE REVELATION.

  Every resident in the capital was being scanned and spied after, andevery house-porter was kept peeking and seeking and reporting at thepolice station of his precinct. The railway stations were teeming withspies and a system was introduced by which every hack-driver wasexpected to spy on his fare. The effect of it all was that the greatmajority of St. Petersburg's population was in a state of unspeakableterror. Curiosity, pity and everything else had given way to a nervousfeeling of self-preservation. People walked through the streets hastily.The sight of a policeman was enough to send a twinge of fright into theheart of the most loyal government clerk; everybody was afraid ofeverybody else. One avoided to utter such words as "Czar," "police,""government." As to the Nihilists, one literally dreaded to think ofthem. People who had never had a liberal thought in their brain weretremulous with distrust of their own souls.

  And through all this all-pervading panic Clara was busy postingrevolutionary proclamations in the streets, distributing tracts amongstudents and working-people, keeping "business" appointments with her"illegal" friends. Pavel, in his turn, had all he could do to attend tothe needs of some of the out-of-town "circles." The revolutioniststhroughout the country were clamouring for information, forproclamations, for speakers; so that the seventy or eighty men and womenwho formed the innermost organisation were as feverishly busy in theirway as the police and the gendarmes were in theirs.

  The authorities were ransacking the capital for Nihilists in general andfor the cheesemonger couple in particular, but during the first fewhours following the two explosions their eagerness was centered on theman who had thrown the fatal bomb. The search for that man soon provedsuperfluous, however.

  The civilian who was picked up unconscious near where the Czar wasstricken down had been taken to a hospital. Late in the evening he had abrief interval of consciousness.

  "Who are you?" an officer then asked him.

  "I don't know," he answered. He had a relapse from which he never awoke.The front of his body, particularly the inner side of one arm, wascovered with ghastly wounds, from which experts inferred that at thetime of the explosion he could not have stood more than three feet fromthe Czar. This, according to some eye-witnesses of the catastrophe, wasthe distance between the deceased monarch and the man who threw thesecond bomb. After two days of searching and sniffing the policediscovered the unknown man's lodging, where they found somerevolutionary literature and other evidence that pointed to him as theauthor of the fatal explosion. He had stood so close to the Czar that itwas impossible for him to make a target of his victim without making oneof himself. His real name still remained unknown.

  As to the first bomb-thrower, he proved to be a college student namedRysakoff. In the hands of the gendarme officers and the procureur hebroke down and told all he knew; but it appeared that he knew verylittle. He had been one of a number of volunteers who offered to attackthe Emperor under the command of Zachar. When Zachar's arrest becameknown to the Executive Committee things had begun to be rushed. SophiaPerovskaya, the ex-governor's daughter, had taken his place, and it wasdecided to make the assault without delay. Zachar had been arrested onFriday evening. As it was known to Sophia that the Czar would visit theRiding Schools on the next Sunday, the attempt was fixed for thatoccasion. The Terrorists immediately connected with the plot held theirgatherings at a "conspiracy lodgings" kept by a man and woman Rysakoffdid not know. There the volunteers met Sophia and one of the inventorsof the self-igniting shell (the man with the priestly face whom we sawat the meeting of the Executive Committee at which Clara's wedding wasto be celebrated). On Sunday morning (the day of the assassination) thevolunteers--three college men and an artisan--called at the samegathering place. They found two finished bombs there and soon Sophiaarrived with two more. Where the bomb factory was Rysakoff did not know.Sophia explained that it took a whole night to make the four portablemachines and that more than four volunteers could not be accommodated.She then drew a rough map of the Czar's expected route, with four dotsfor the posts of the four bomb-throwers. There were two sets of dots onthe diagram. In case the Czar failed to include Little Garden Street inhis route, the Terrorists were to shift their positions to CatharineCanal and two neighbouring streets.

  That afternoon, as Rysakoff stood on his post near Little Garden Street,Sophia passed by him, her handkerchief to her nose (the same sort ofsignal which the same young woman had given a year and a half before tothe man who fired the mine which blew up the imperial train nearMoscow). That meant that the Czar was not passing through Little GardenStreet. Accordingly, Rysakoff hastened over to Catherine Canal. There,after he had thrown the bomb and while the Czar was speaking to him, hesaw the three other volunteers each on his post.

  The second bomb-thrower was known to Rysakoff under the name of "theKitten." His real name he did not know.

  He also gave the police the address of the "conspiracy lodgings," whichwere located on the sixth floor of a house on Waggon Street, and an houror two later, at midnight, two days after the killing of the Czar, theprocureur, accompanied by gendarmes and police, knocked at one of thedoors of that apartment.

  "Who is there?" a masculine voice asked from within.

  "Police and the procureur."

  "What do you want?"

  "Open the door at once or we'll break it down."

  While they were raining blows on the door, a succession of pistol shotswas heard within. Another door flew open, at the end of the corridor,and a woman made her appearance.

  "We surrender," she said. "Pray send for a doctor. Look out, don't passthrough this door. There are explosives there."

  Inside they found the fresh corpse of a man lying in a pool of blood. Itwas the gay poet; and the woman was Hessia Helfman, the dark littleJewess with the frizzled hair who was married to Purring Cat. It was sheand the man now lying dead from his own pistol shots who had been incharge of this "conspiracy lodgings." Among the things found in theapartment were the two bombs which had been brought back from the sceneof the assassination; the rough map made by Sophia on the morning beforethe attack and a large quantity of revolutionary literature.

  The former "conspiracy lodgings" were now a police trap, and on the verynext morning it caught a big burly man whom Rysakoff identified asTimothy Michailoff, the one mechanic among the four men who had beenarmed with bombs on the fatal morning. Michailoff's memorandum bookfurnished the police some important addresses, but the great surprise ofthat eventful week did not come until the following day, March 17th, andwhen it did it was anything but a source of self-congratulation to theauthorities.

  About ten o'clock in the morning of that day the porters of the house onLittle Garden Street where the Koboseffs kept their shop reported to theroundsman that the cheese dealer and his wife had not been home sincethe previous evening, and that their shop was still closed. Theroundsman, who, like every member of the St. Petersburg police duringthose days, was overworked and badly in need of rest, made no reply. Anhour later the porter accosted him again:

  "The shop is still closed. Customers have been around and there isnobody in."

  "Oh, I have no time to bother about it."

  "But I think I saw something in that store, some strange looking tools,"pleaded the porter.

  "The devil you did," the roundsman said, as much with irritation as withamazement.

  The statement was reported to the captain, who communicated it to hissuperiors, until finally an order was obtained to raid the shop. Asearch was made, more thorough than the first, and with quite differentresults. The lounge in the living room upon which General Mrovinsky hadsat while speaking to Koboseff was found to contain a heap of earth, andwhen the planks under the window of the middle room were removed--thevery ones which General Mrovinsky had made a feeble attempt to detach inthe presence of Koboseff and the police--a large yawning hole presenteditself to view. When this part of the wall had been torn down, theaperture proved to be the mouth of a subte
rranean passage enclosed inwood. Seven feet from the shop began a charge of a hundred pounds ofdynamite with an electric battery near by and wires running along thegallery back to the middle room. Everything was in complete readiness.All that was necessary to explode the mine was to connect the wires.

  As was learned subsequently, this mine had been the leading feature ofthe plot, the bombs having been added in case the Czar left LittleGarden Street out of his route or the mine failed of its deadly purposefor some other reason. Of the existence of such a mine Rysakoff had notthe remotest idea until he heard of it at the trial.

  * * * * *

  On the Friday afternoon immediately preceding the arrest of Jeliaboff(Zachar) the porter of the house where he and Sophia were registered asbrother and sister met them at the gate as they were leaving the housetogether; and later, at 9 o'clock in the evening, he saw Sophia returnalone. The next morning, after Jeliaboff had spent his first night inprison, the police, in their effort to discover his residence, orderedevery porter in the city to ascertain who of his tenants had been absentfrom home that night. When the porter rang Sophia's bell that morningthere was no response. He reported it at the police station where hewas told to try again. At 2 o'clock he saw Sophia.

  "I have received some blanks from the police," he said. "Every tenantmust state his occupation and place of business."

  "My brother is working now," Sophia answered. "When he comes home I'lltell him about it."

  Two hours later she went out again, and in order to avoid passing theporter at the gate, she gained the street through a little dry goodsshop that had a rear door into that yard, buying something for apretext. She came back, by way of the same dry goods shop, at 9 o'clockin the evening and that was the last that was ever seen of her in thatneighbourhood. The next morning the porter reported the disappearance ofthe couple.

  When the police searched the deserted apartment they found a number ofrevolutionary publications, several tin boxes like those which formedthe shells of the two exploding machines seized at the "conspiracyhouse" kept by Hessia and the "gay poet," and several cheeses bearingthe same trade-mark as those in Koboseff's shop.

  Meanwhile Jeliaboff had heard the solemn tolling of the bells in hisprison cell. In the excitement of the hour a gendarme on duty in theprison corridor answered his questions through the peep-hole, inviolation of regulations. Jeliaboff at once sent word to the procureur,assuming responsibility for the entire plot, as an agent of theExecutive Committee.

  Sophia knew through a certain high official all that transpired betweenJeliaboff and the procureur. She knew that the authorities were turningthe capital inside out in their search for the woman who had lived withJeliaboff as his sister and for the Koboseff couple, yet in spite of allthe pressure the Nihilists brought to bear on her, persuading her toseek temporary retirement, she, like Urie and Baska, remained in theheart of St. Petersburg, in the very thick of her party's activity.Clara saw her at a meeting during that week.

  "You need rest, Sonia. You look tired."

  "Do I?" Sophia answered with a smile. "So do you. Everybody does thesedays."

  Her smile was on her lips only. Her blue eyes were inscrutably grave,but Clara saw a blend of lofty exaltation and corroding anguish in them.She knew how dear Jeliaboff was to her. She had been craving to speak toher of him, of Hessia and of the "gay poet," who had committed suicideat the time of Hessia's arrest; but at this moment it was Sophia herselfwho filled her mind.

  "Sonia!" Clara said, huskily.

  "What is it, child?" the other asked, kindly.

  For an answer Clara looked her in the face, smiling shame-facedly. Shedid feel like an infant in her presence, although Sophia, with her smallstature and fresh boyish face, looked the younger of the two. She didnot know herself what she wanted to say. She was burning to cover herwith kisses and to break into sobs on her breast, but Sophia was graverand more taciturn than usual to-day, so she held herself in check. Herpassion for tears was subdued. She sat by Sophia's side absorbed in herpresence without looking her in the face, tingling with something likethe feeling of people in a graveyard, in a moment of solemn ecstasy.

  Clara came away burdened with unvoiced emotion. She said to herself thatwhen she saw Pavel she would find relief in telling him how she adoredSophia and how thirsty her heart was because she had not unbosomedherself of these feelings to her; but when she and Pavel were alone shesaid nothing.

  * * * * *

  The porters of the house from which Sophia had vanished were asked atthe police station whether they would be able to single her out in astreet crowd. They had to admit that they were not sure whether theywould. She had lived under their eye for eight months, but she hadalways managed to pass through the gate, where they were usually onduty, so as to leave no clear impression of her features on their minds.Finally, on the sixth day, it was discovered that the proprietress ofthe little dry goods store had a clear recollection of her face. Thiswoman, accompanied by a police officer, then spent hours driving aboutthrough the busiest streets, until, with a shout of mixed joy andfright, she pointed out Sophia in a public sleigh.

  It was not many days before Kibalchich, the man with the Christlikeface, who was one of the inventors and makers of the four bombs, andanother revolutionist were arrested in a cafe, through an address foundin Timothy Michailoff's note-book.

  * * * * *

  The trial of the six regicides so far captured, Jeliaboff, Sophia,Kibalchich, Hessia, Rysakoff, and Timothy Michailoff, was begun by aspecial Court of the Governing Senate for Political Cases, on April 8.That Purring Cat and the man with the Tartarian face, both of whom werein prison now, had taken part in the digging of the Koboseff mine, wasstill unknown to the police. Nor had the authorities as yet beeninformed of the fact that another "political" in their hands--theundersized man who had played the part of shop-boy to thecheese-dealer--had had something to do with the same conspiracy.

  Complete reports of the trial appeared in the newspapers, and thetestimony and speeches of the accused were read and read again.

  Jeliaboff ("Zachar") declined a lawyer, taking his defence in his ownhands. His legal battles with the presiding judge, his resource, histact and his eloquence, made him the central figure of the proceedings.He began by challenging the court's jurisdiction in the case. "Thiscourt represents the crown, one of the two parties concerned," he said,"and I submit that in a contention between the government and therevolutionary party there could be only one judge--the people; thepeople either by means of a popular vote, or through its rightfulrepresentatives in parliament assembled, or, at least, a juryrepresenting public conscience." Declarations of this kind, Kibalchich'snarrative as to how the blind brutality of the government hadtransformed peaceful social workers into Terrorists, and the effect ofsimple, dignified sincerity which marked the conduct of all theprisoners produced such a profound impression, that at the time of thenext important political trial scarcely any reports were allowed to bepublished.

  The six regicides were sentenced to death, the execution of HessiaHelfman, who was about to become a mother, being postponed and latercommuted. When the parents of Kolotkevich (Purring Cat) asked to beallowed to bring up their son's child, the request was refused on theground that it was the child of two regicides and should be brought upunder special care. The result of this special care was that the child,like its pardoned mother, soon died.

  Sophia and the four condemned men died on the gallows, on a publicsquare. They were taken to their death on two "shame waggons," dressedin convict clothes, each with a board inscribed with the words "criminalof state" across his or her breast. The procession was accompanied by aforce of military large enough to conquer a country like Belgium. Sophiawas the first woman executed on Russian soil since 1719.