In a crisis he would suddenly drop his instruments on the floor and rely upon his naked hands, which by the way, he never washed between has clients. He was always one of two things: either extremely optimistic, when he said that the most violent pain was nothing; or very pessimistic, when he said that nothing could be done to alleviate the pain. Sometimes he was extremely indolent and said that nothing was required to be done and all was well; and sometimes violently enthusiastic for huge undertakings, for the most drastic and sweeping reforms, for extracting all the remaining teeth in the Admiral’s mouth and substituting gold all over, and all sorts of crowns and bridges of his own invention that ran into four-figure dollars and were evidently going to hang loose in the Admiral’s mouth. All the while he would talk and inflict his own political views on his clients, which were that the English were both fools and clever knaves: the apparent contradiction did not disturb him in the least; and if the Admiral showed any inclination to contradict some amazing insinuation, he would just press the needle a little and manipulate it on the nearest nerve in the tooth and so silence all opposition. He would talk of the exchange at Vladivostok and of how easy it was to make money, and when asked how to do it he would say you had only to turn one currency into another, whether yen, dollars, sterling or roubles, and a vast fortune was assured you, evidently quite irrespective of the order of turnover, or the particular currency, or the amount employed, or the rate at which the transactions were being effected. He would talk all the while, never stopping the whole time the client was there; and then at the finish stick a piece of saturated cotton-wool into any hole in any tooth, take no heed of your protests, and tell you to come again any time, any day—when he would keep you waiting for whole hours at a stretch. He would see you out, shouting in the passage in reply to any question you might have put: “Orright! Orright!” as he closed the door upon you; and then turn to the next patient.
He attended to the Admiral’s teeth twice in Vladivostok, and then hearing through a third person that the Admiral was not quite satisfied with the finality of his work, he left the coast and joined the Admiral on his own initiative at Omsk (in order to evade military service at the Base), and now stated that he was a member of the Admiral’s party. He was followed by Baron Wunderhausen, now a second lieutenant in Kolchak’s Army, who arrived in Omsk and asked the Admiral to take him on as his interpreter. This was conceded. The young Baron, who said that he was anxious to help, displayed a curious lack of judgment, or if his aim was flattery, a curious ignorance of the art. He held that Russia was a “feminine” nation, which should be controlled and directed by a “masculine” nation like England; and that Great Britain should raise, equip, and officer an army of Buriats, Khirghiz, Kalmucks, and other native races in order to conquer Russia. As for himself, the Baron wanted to wash his hands of the whole business, to get into the British Army, to renounce his Russian nationality, and get a post somewhere in Persia or Mesopotamia. It seemed more and more as one lived longer that to get White Russia on her legs was like trying to get a featherbed to stand on end.
Occasionally we would visit the front, and the Admiral would interfere in everything. He would look and shake his head: the pace and method of extermination would appear to him thoroughly inadequate. We stood behind a gunner who kept on firing at a tree, as such; apparently for no other reason.
“What are you firing at?” the Admiral asked.
The man pointed at the tree.
“Are there any Reds behind?”
The man shrugged his shoulders. The question to him seemed immaterial.
“Have you got a telephone there?”
The man shook his head.
“But what are you aiming at?”
He pointed at the tree.
It transpired that four regiments composing the division had gone over to the enemy that very morning. Of the division there remained just fourteen men, the Commander and his divisional headquarters, comprising about three hundred officers. We saw the Commander in his office and asked him what he thought he would do. He said that he would wait; he thought the men might return.
“Who are you counting on,” said the Admiral sarcastically, “God?”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” sighed the Commander, “we have no one else to count upon.”
And the Admiral felt shamed.
But the men, it seems, did not return. They ran as fast as their legs would carry them over to the Bolshevik lines, and the Bolsheviks, thinking that they were being attacked by overwhelming numbers, fled in disorder.…
The Admiral was gloomy. The wind cut us in the face in our rapid drive. Slowly and gradually afternoon evolved into evening.
“That Peking and Tientsin News,” I broke the silence, “seems to be somewhat pro-Bolshevik.” “It’s always pro-Something,” the Admiral grunted.
He looked out of the window of the car on the vast snow-covered plains stretching all around us and brooded darkly.
“Some people,” said he, “think snow beautiful. I think it idiotic.”
Although technically the presence of Nikolai Vasilievich’s family on our train was but a temporary measure, yet it was recognized by all, through that deeper human instinct that defies illusion, that there was an element of permanence about it that would give points to the oak tree. Of course, the Admiral could always have cleared his train of the family by subjecting them to a prolonged machine-gun fire; but, as with soldiers, diplomats and politicians, the personal morality of sailors is much above their national morality. Need I say that they remained? The motive of their journey was that Nikolai Vasilievich was perpetually compelled to see some General in some town along the line about his gold-mines, for his gathering suspicions concerning the integrity of the punitive expedition had now been amply justified. And then, as time went on, the motive, as motives do, dissolved into a habit. But the relations between the Zina-Uncle Kostia wing and that of Fanny Ivanovna and the three sisters, and similarly, the relations between Fanny Ivanovna and Magda Nikolaevna, were far from satisfactory. At wayside stations and impromptu halts in fields and glades and valleys, when we all left the train and hastened to take exercise, there had been awkward situations; and when the three sisters had occasion to pass Zina or any of her little sisters they never failed to put out their tongues at them—presumably as a sign of disapproval of Nikolai Vasilievich’s approval of them.
We parted with them as we got back to Vladivostok; but they continued coming to our parties; and the rumour spread that Fanny Ivanovna was, as they say, bien vue at the Admiral’s “Court.” Only once, the very haughty wife of an insignificant officer, newly landed at the port, sounded the alarm: “A Problem has arisen in Society! Can we receive a German, or can we not?” But the problem, like so many problems, died its death without solution.
VII
IT WAS THE DAY AFTER GENERAL GAIDA’S unsuccessful rising. “They’ve gone out for a walk with those three American naval officers,” Fanny Ivanovna told me when I called. “Just the two of us, as usual,” she added somewhat bitterly. Kniaz, seated in the corner, audibly confirmed her statement, as it were, by sucking sweets. There was an acute scent of eau-de-Cologne in the room.
“How charming!” I exclaimed, bending forward to examine a tiny little jumper that she was knitting.
“Oh, that’s for my godchild.”
“Who?”
“Oh, the little girl I christened. Madame Olenin’s little daughter. She’s just three weeks old to-day. A dear little thing.”
“Another niece for Uncle Kostia, what! They do turn them out in that family. Zina has more cousins than any girl alive!”
“Well,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “the little thing can’t help being her cousin. And Madame Olenin is really very nice. What does it matter after all if she’s her aunt? I respect her all the same, and she did so want me to be the godmother, and the little girl is called Fanny after me.”
The canary hopping to and fro punctuated the swift movement of her accustomed fingers.
“My dear Andrei Andreiech,” she burst out in answer to my question as to when Nikolai Vasilievich would be back, “there was a time when I knew all about his movements. But that time is over. I feel more and more as we live longer that my hold on him is weakening. And I feel with every day it’s getting weaker and weaker, and he is slipping away from me, and I am powerless to stop him. And soon I shall cease to bother altogether. He can stay there all night if he pleases.”
“I’ve seen Zina lately. She looks quite grown up.”
“Oh, what a headache I have!” She dipped her folded handkerchief into a bowl of eau-de-Cologne and pressed it to her forehead. “If I hadn’t Nina to console me—Oh, you have no idea what a tender, loving heart our Nina has.”
“Nina tender?”
“You don’t know her. Do you remember that day you arrived here, and I was so anxious to know where she had been? Well, she wouldn’t tell me then because … she thought it might upset her plan. Afterwards she told me. She had been to see her mother.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, it seems her mother wants to make it up with me—wants, in fact, that we should start a business together. Hats.”
“And won’t you?”
She thought for a time. “I don’t think I could,” she said at last, “after what she’s said about me.”
There was a pause of silence, which the canary, though, did nothing to observe. “But if I do, it will be solely for Nina’s sake. Poor child, she so wants to make our peace.”
“But doesn’t Sonia, as the eldest sister, ever take the lead?”
“Sonia?” She laughed. “Why, look at Sonia. We have a nickname for her—’Miss Moon.’ It suits her admirably. And Sonia is deceitful. Yesterday she lied to me. She said that they had been to see their mother, but as a matter of fact Nina told me afterwards that they had gone to a dance on the American cruiser with Mr. Ward and White and Holdcroft.”
“What, again!”
“Yes, I am very much against it,” she confided. “I was furious. I said to Nina: ‘Andrei Andreiech and your father had nearly lost their lives looking for you everywhere during the firing.’ But all she said was, ‘There was no need to.’ ”
“They had been on the American Flagship … on the American Flagship.…” My mind could not digest the news. Yesterday when the firing had begun, Nikolai Vasilievich rushed in, panic-stricken, and said that the three sisters had been lost in the upheaval. I had been sitting in the little office with Sir Hugo, who was writing to a Czech Colonel of his acquaintance to apologize for misspelling the Colonel’s name in a recent letter. This done, Sir Hugo looked through some old minutes of past meetings to see if there was any matter which had not been quite thoroughly thrashed out. He thought he was about to find such a matter, when a rifle report echoed sharply through the air, and was immediately followed by a multitude of others. We rose and looked out of the window. The projected coup had broken out.
There was a continuous rattle of machine-gun fire. The station building and the square before it were being attacked by Gaida’s men and defended by British-trained cadets from Russian Island School. A fearless cadet in British khaki lay on the bridge that traversed the rails, fully exposed to view, and rattled off his machine-gun; then he lay still. Several bodies were already lying on the square, some dead, others wriggling with pain.
Most of the remaining family had been removed to an empty barracks near the station before fighting had become desperate. But it was not till we had launched into the streets that we asked ourselves how we proposed to set about our task. On we walked, looking in at stray houses, inquiring at private flats; but I think at heart we realized that our action was more by way of satisfying our consciences, for we had not a ghost of an idea where to look for them. Returning, we perceived the two mothers lamenting bitterly the death of the same children (which they had been quick to take for granted)—but still not on speaking terms with each other. A window had been knocked out by a stray shell.
Firing subsided and then resumed and grew in intensity, as darkness descended upon the town. A drizzling November snow now fell upon the wrangling troops. The station changed hands more than once. Some wounded men had been picked up and dragged into a hospital rigged up in the barracks, and were heard moaning and groaning the long night through, while the city shook under fire of field-guns.
The morning unveiled a gruesome picture. The snow that had fallen in the night, and was still falling, now covered the ground and its dead bodies some inches deep. The square, the streets, the yards, the rails, and sundry ditches betrayed them lying in horrid postures, dead or dying. Those that were not dead, when discovered were finished with the bayonet by the “loyal” troops, amid unspeakable yells. Then they lay still and stiff in horrible attitudes. Men and women would stoop over them, gaze and wonder. Perhaps there is nothing that brings home so clearly the conviction of the temporary nature of human things as the sight of a dead body. What a moment since had been a human being with a life and purpose of his own was now an object, like a stone or a stick.…
“I shall not forget that night,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “nor what I saw this morning. The faces of the prisoners, some almost green from fright, as they stood with their hands up in the cold grey light of the morning, and the babyish face of that Cossack subaltern—a veritable mother’s darling—as he detailed them into two parties. And then that other boy of about the subaltern’s own age, awfully good looking, who had been hiding in the chimney all night and was forgotten and only remembered as the prisoners had been marched off to the station to be killed. Then came that terrible rattle of machine-guns from within. He was hurried up to the boyish subaltern who motioned in an offhand manner in the direction of the station; and then a soldier ran across with him—the soldier in front, the boy following—hastening to be in time for the firing-party. But the firing had just that moment come to an end. The boy fumbled in his pocket and gave some folded paper to the soldier; then vanished into the station. And some moments afterwards there came those three solitary shots.”
“When I entered the station,” I said, “I saw piles of dead bodies lying on the steps on which rich red blood trickled down all the way; and on top of all that handsome boy, with the back of his scalp blown off. They were shot at by machine-guns as they were being driven down the stone staircase in the station, and their boots had been removed and appropriated by their executioners. One man three hours afterwards was still breathing heavily. He lay on the steps, bleeding, and covered by other bleeding bodies. Another man in the pile was but slightly hit. He lay alone in the pile of dead, with a curious mob and sight-seeing soldiery walking about him, shamming death. After three hours he rose and walked away, but was caught and shot.”
“Horrible!” she said. “It’s shameful! The Whites kill the Reds, the Reds kill the Whites … and nobody is any the farther. If people would only realize that killing is the first thing they shouldn’t do.”
“The proposition would appear self-evident. But it seems as if the one idea of the Kolchakites is bloodshed to suppress bloodshed; and that this also happens to be the idea of the Bolsheviks; and that the Kolchakites are shocked at it.”
“Why can’t human beings settle things by conference?”
“They must be human beings for that, Fanny Ivanovna.”
“Sir Hugo surely—”
“Sir Hugo’s chief preoccupation at a conference is to commit another allied gentleman into saying ‘Yes’ on any given point, and then by a series of masterful, elaborate and elusive thrusts of speech to commit him into saying ‘No’; and then to point out the contradiction. It is what Sir Hugo calls ‘displaying the good old fighting spirit.’ His attention is essentially devoted to the careful recording of documents that find their way into our office accidentally, documents which in themselves he regards as inessential and unimportant. And the Admiral hates Sir Hugo’s love of detail and exactitude which seems bent on proving to him very clearly and precisely th
e uncertainty and vagueness of his own position.”
She sighed.
“It is a consolation,” said she, “to think that there are other useless people in the world besides ourselves.…”
The snow still fell in heaps as I walked home, and it grew markedly colder, and one felt the onset of winter; while prisoners, it was said, were being killed in prison—noiselessly—out of consideration for the Allies in the city.
VIII
WHO CAN CONVEY AT ALL ADEQUATELY THAT sense of utter hopelessness that clings to a Siberian winter night? Wherever else is there to be found that brooding, thrilling sense of frozen space, of snow and ice lost in inky darkness, that gruesome sense of never-ending night, and black despair and loneliness untold, immeasurable? Add to this the knowledge of a civil war fumbling in the snow, of people ill-fed, ill-clothed and apathetic, lying on the frozen ground, cold and wretched and diseased. A snowstorm is blowing furiously; the wooden house groans and yells in the night; the tin roof squeals in agony, fearful lest it be cast to the winds; and the storm now howls like a beast, now sobs like a child, now dies away, gathering for another outburst.…
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