by Victor Serge
“Perhaps in that way they will forget me? Do you understand?” he said to Rublev. “There were some thirty of us Poles who belonged to the old Party cadres; if four are still alive, it is surprising.”
Short, almost bald, bulb-nosed, extremely shortsighted, he surveyed Rublev through extraordinarily thick glasses; yet his expression remained cheerful and young, his thick lips were playful.
“Kiril Kirillovich, all this nightmare is basically very interesting and very old. History doesn’t give a damn for us, my friend. ‘Ah-ha, my little Marxists,’ she says, like one of Macbeth’s witches, ‘you make plans, you worry over questions of social conscience!’ And she turns Little Father Czar Iohan the Terrible loose on us, with his hysterical fears and his big ironshod stick …”
They were whispering together in a dim antechamber lined with showcases containing an exhibition of grains. Rublev answered with a faint laugh:
“You know the schoolboys think that I look like Czar Iohan …”
“We are all like him in one way or another,” said Wladek, half serious, half joking. “We are all of us professors descended from the Terrible Czar … Even I, despite my baldness and my Semitic ancestry — even I feel a little frightened when I look inside myself, I assure you.”
“I cannot in the least agree with your bad literary psychology, Wladek. We must talk seriously. I will bring Philippov.”
They arranged to meet in the woods, on the bank of the Istra, because it would not have been prudent to meet either in the city or at Philippov’s, whose neighbors were railway-men. “I never let anyone come to my place,” said Philippov. “That is the safest way. Besides, what is one to talk about?”
Without in the least knowing why, Philippov had survived several sets of economists on the Central Plan Commission. “The only plan which will be completely carried out,” he said lightly, “is the plan of arrests.” Member of the Party since 1910, president of a Siberian Soviet when the spring floods of March, 1917, carried away the double-headed eagles (thoroughly worm-eaten), later commissar with little troops of Red partisans who held the taiga against Admiral Kolchak, he had for almost two years been collaborating on plans for the production of goods of prime necessity — an incredible task, enough to get a man thrown into prison instantly, in a country where there was a simultaneous lack of nails, shoes, matches, cloth, et cetera. However, since he was a man to fear because of his long connection with the Party, directors who wanted primarily to keep out of trouble had set him to work on the plan for the distribution of popular musical instruments — accordions, harmoniums, flutes, guitars, and zithers and tambourines for the East (the equipment of orchestras being undertaken by a special bureau, orchestral instruments did not fall within his province). This appointment provided an oasis of safety, since the supply always exceeded the demand in almost all markets, except those of Buriat-Mongolia, Birobidjan, the Autonomous Region of Nakhichevan, and the Autonomous Republic of the Karabakh Mountains, which were regarded as of secondary importance. “On the other hand,” Philippov commented, “we have introduced the accordion into Dzungeria … The shamans of Inner Mongolia demand our tambourines …” He scored unexpected successes. As a matter of fact everyone knew that the thriving trade in musical instruments was due to the lack of more useful goods, and that their production in sufficient quantities was partly due to the labor of artisans refractory to co-operative organization, partly to the uselessness of the instruments themselves … But that was the responsibility of the higher echelons of the Central Plan Commission … Philippov, with his round head, his freckled face, his straight black mustache, trimmed very short, his big sagacious eyes which shone from between puffy lids, arrived at the meeting place on skis, as did Rublev. Wladek came from his villa in felt boots and a sheepskin coat, like a fantastic and extremely shortsighted woodcutter. They met under pines whose straight black trunks rose forty feet above the bluish snow before branching. Under the wooded hills, the river traced slow curves of gray-pink and pale azure such as are to be found in Japanese prints. The three men had known each other for many years. Philippov and Rublev had slept in the same room in a wretched hotel on the Place de la Contrescarpe, in Paris, shortly before the Great War; in those days they lived on brie and blood pudding; at the Bibliothèque Ste.-Genevieve they commented scathingly on the insipid sociology of Dr. Gustave Le Bon; together they read the accounts of Madame Caillaux’s trial in Juarès’s newspaper; they shopped at the stalls in the Rue Mouffetard, looking with delight at the old houses which had seen the revolutions, amusing themselves by recognizing Daumier’s types in the figures they saw emerging from corridors and halls that were like vaults … Philippov sometimes slept with little Marcella, chestnut-haired, smiling, and serious, who was generally to be found at the Taverne du Panthéon. There, late at night, she and her girl friends danced lusty waltzes in the small rooms downstairs, to the music of violins. They went to the Closerie des Lilas to see Paul Fort, surrounded by admirers. The poet always got himself up to look like a musketeer. In front of the café, Marshal Ney, on his pedestal, marched to his death, brandishing his saber — and Rublev insisted that he must be cursing: “Swine, swine!” Together they recited poems by Constantin Belmont:
Be we like the sun! …
They quarreled over the problem of matter and energy, which was being restated by Avenarius, Mach, and Maxwell. “Energy is the only cognizable reality,” Philippov asserted one evening. “Matter is only an aspect of it …” — “You are nothing but an unconscious idealist,” Rublev retorted, “and you are turning your back on Marxism … In any case,” he added, “the petty bourgeois frivolity of your private life had given me due warning …” They shook hands coldly at the corner of the Rue Soufflot. The ponderous black silhouette of the Panthéon rose from the wide deserted street with its lines of funereal street lamps. The paving stones gleamed, a solitary woman, a prostitute who kept her veil down, waited in the darkness for an unknown man. The war aggravated their long disagreement, although they both remained internationalists; but one of them had enlisted in the Foreign Legion, the other was interned. They met again at Perm in ’18, and were too busy to be surprised or to celebrate the occasion for more than five minutes. Rublev was bringing a detachment of workers into the city to suppress a mutiny of drunken sailors. Philippov, a muffler around his neck, his voice a whisper, one arm wounded and in a sling, had just escaped by the merest chance from the clubs of peasants in revolt against requisitionings. Both of them were dressed in black leather, armed with Mausers sheathed in wood, carrying urgent orders, living on boiled groats and pickled cucumbers, exhausted, enthusiastic, radiating a somber energy. They held a council of war by candlelight, guarded by proletarians from Petrograd with cartridge belts over their overcoats. Inexplicable shots sounded in the dark city; its gardens were full of excitement under the stars.
Philippov spoke first: “We have to shoot people or we’ll get nothing done.”
One of the men on guard at the door said soberly: “By God, you’re right!” — “Shoot who?” Rublev asked, overcoming his fatigue, his desire to sleep, his desire to vomit.
“Some hostages — there are officers, a priest, manufacturers …”
“Is it really necessary?”
“I’ll say it is,” growled the man at the door, “or we’re done for.” And he came toward them, holding out his black hands.
And Rublev rose, seized by wild anger. “Silence! There will be no interrupting the deliberations of the Army Council! Discipline!” Philippov put his hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his chair. Then, to end the quarrel, he whispered ironically: “Do you remember the Boul’ Miche’?”
“What?” said Rublev in amazement. “Not another word, you Tatar, I beg of you. I am absolutely against the execution of hostages. Let us not become barbarians.”
Philippov answered: “You have to consent to it. First, our retreat is cut off on three sides out of four. Second, I absolutely must have several carloads of potato
es and I can’t pay for them. Third, the sailors have behaved like gangsters, and it’s they who ought to be shot; but we can’t shoot them, they’re splendid physical specimens. Fourth, as soon as our backs are turned, the whole countryside will rise … So sign.”
The order for execution, written in pencil on the back of a receipt, was ready. Rublev signed it, muttering: “I hope we have to pay for this, you and I; I tell you we are besmirching the Revolution; the devil knows what all this is about …” They were still young then. Now, twenty years later, growing fat and gray, they glided on their skis through the admirable Hokusai landscape, and wordlessly the past reawoke within them.
Philippov lengthened his stride and shot ahead. Wladek came to meet them. They set their skis up in the snow and followed the edge of the wood, above a river of ice fringed with astonishing white shrubbery.
“It’s good to meet again,” said Rublev.
“It’s wonderful that we are alive,” said Wladek.
“What are we going to do?” asked Philippov. “ ‘That is the question.’ ”
Space, the woods, the snow, the ice, the blue, the silence, the clarity of the cold air surrounded them. Wladek spoke of the Poles, all vanished into prisons — the Left, led by Lensky, after the Right, led by Koschewa. “The Jugoslavs, too,” he added, “and the Finns … It happens to the whole Comintern …” He studded his narrative with names and faces.
“Why, it’s even worse than at the Plan Commission!” Philippov exclaimed cheerfully.
“As for me,” Philippov said, “I’m quite sure that I owe my life to Bruno. You knew him, Kiril, when he was legation secretary at Berlin — can you see his Assyrian profile? After Krestinsky’s arrest, he expected to be liquidated too and, incredible as it may seem, he had been appointed assistant director of a central bureau in Internal Affairs — which gave him access to the master files. He told me that he hoped he had managed to save a dozen comrades by destroying their cards. ‘But I am done for,’ he said. ‘There are still the dossiers, of course, and there is the Central Committee file, but one doesn’t show up so much there, sometimes names are hard to find …’ ”
“And then?”
“Finis — I don’t know how or where — last year.”
Philippov repeated: “What is to be done?”
“For my part,” said Wladek, searching his pockets for a cigarette, and looking more than ever like a mocking, prematurely old child, “if they come to arrest me, I will not let them take me alive. No, thanks.”
“But there are people,” said Philippov, “who are released or deported. I know of cases. Your solution is not reasonable. Besides, there is something about it I don’t like. It smacks of suicide.”
“Have it your own way.”
Philippov went on:
“If I am arrested I shall politely tell them that under no circumstances will I enter into any scheme, either with a trial or without. Do as you please with me … Once that is absolutely clear, I think one has a chance of getting out of it. You go to Kamchatka or you draw up plans for timber cutting. I’m willing. How about you, Kiril?”
Kiril Rublev took off his fur cap. His high forehead, under curls that were still dark, stood bare to the cold.
“Ever since they shot Nicolai Ivanovich, I have sensed that they were prowling around me, imperceptibly. And I am waiting for them. I haven’t told Dora, but she knows. So, in my case it is a very practical question, which I may have to answer any day … And … I don’t know …”
They began to walk, sinking in the snow to their calves. Above them, crows flew from branch to branch. The light was charged with wintry whiteness. Kiril was a head taller than either of his companions. He differed from them in spirit as well. He spoke in a calm voice:
“Suicide is only an individual solution — therefore not Socialist. In my case it would set a bad example. I don’t say this to shake your resolution, Wladek: you have your reasons, and I believe that they are valid for you. To say that one will confess nothing is courageous, perhaps overly courageous: no one knows precisely how strong he is. And then, it is all more complex than it appears.”
“Yes,” said the other two, stumbling through the snow.
“One has to become conscious of what is going on … become conscious …”
Rublev, repeating his words in a doubtful voice, wore an expression which was often seen on his face — the look of a preoccupied pedant. Wladek flew into a rage, turned purple, waved his short arms:
“Damned theoretician! There’s no curing you! I can still see the articles in which you cut up the Trotskyists in ’27 by maintaining that the proletarian party cannot degenerate … Because if it degenerates, obviously it is not the proletarian party … You casuist! What is going on is as clear as day-light. Thermidor, Brumaire, and all the rest of it, on an unheard-of social scale and in the country where Genghis Khan has the use of the telephone, as old Tolstoi put it.”
“Genghis Khan,” said Philippov, “is a great man not properly appreciated. He was not cruel. If he had his servants build pyramids of severed heads, it was not out of cruelty nor to satisfy a primitive taste for statistics, but to depopulate the countries which he could not otherwise dominate and which he intended to bring back to a pastoral economy, the only economy which he could understand. Already, it was differences in economies which made heads fall … Note that the only way he could assure himself that the massacres had been properly carried out, was to collect the heads. The Khan distrusted his manpower …”
They walked a little while longer in deeper snow. “A marvelous Siberia,” murmured Rublev, whom the landscape had calmed. And Wladek turned abruptly toward his two companions, planted himself in front of them in comic exasperation:
“What eloquence! One of you lectures on Genghis Khan, the other advocates becoming fully conscious! You are making a mock of your own selves, my dear comrades. Permit me to reveal something to you! It’s my turn, my turn …”
They saw that his thick lips were trembling, that there was mist on the lenses of his glasses, that straight lines cut horizontally across his cheeks. For several seconds he kept muttering “my turn, my turn” almost unintelligibly.
“But doubtless I am of a grosser constitution, my dear comrades. As for me — the fact is — I am afraid. I am deathly afraid — do you hear me? — whether it is worthy of a revolutionary or not. I live alone like an animal among all these woods and all this snow, which I loathe — because I am afraid. I live without a wife, because I don’t want two of us waking up at night to ask ourselves if it is the last night. I wait for them every night, all by myself, I take a bromide, I go to sleep in a stupor, I wake with a start, thinking they’ve come, crying out ‘Who’s there?’ and the woman next door answers, ‘It’s the blind banging, Vladimir Ernestovich, sleep well,’ and I can’t get back to sleep. I am afraid and I am ashamed, not of myself, but of all of us. I think of those who have been shot, I see their faces, I hear their jokes, and I have migraines that medicine has not yet named — a little pain the color of fire fixes itself in the back of my neck. I am afraid, afraid, not so much afraid of dying as of nothing and everything — afraid to see you, afraid to talk to people, afraid to think, afraid to understand …”
