The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (10 page)

Varichkine made a reassuring gesture. “I have taken every precaution. The man who is serving us is also in the service of my private agents, although the valet, I discovered yesterday, is in the employ of Madam Mouravieff.”

“Isn’t that amusing! You each have your special army of spies?”

“It’s absolutely necessary. You will not be surprised, Lady Wynham, to learn that you are not exactly
persona gratissima
in Madam Mouravieff’s eyes and that, consequently, she employs, in your case, the usual procedure of our good city of Moscow.”

“Which is the capital of the spy system, if I am not misinformed.”

“Exactly. The Tcheka without spies would be a newly married woman without her husband—or a Soviet without an executioner!”

I poured out some Rudesheimer for Varichkine, at the same time asking him to explain his jest.

“Why, it’s perfectly obvious, old fellow. We don’t pretend for an instant that the Soviet Government is an expression of the will of the majority of the Russian people. When your French and English Communist papers comment on the demands of Russian public opinion, they are speaking of the opinion of an extremely active but very small minority.
With us, the freedom of the press, along with the other sorts of freedom, has not existed since nineteen-eighteen, and it’s a good thing because liberty is as injurious for a race of people as it is for women.”

Lady Diana listened attentively to these words.

“But,” she asked, “how can you endure an atmosphere of perpetual espionage?”

Varichkine offered her one of his best cigarettes, lighted it for her with extreme grace, and in his gentlest tone, replied, “My dear Lady Wynham, it’s a matter of habit, I might say, even an acquired taste. Our Tcheka, which is a kind of political Committee of Surveillance, plays the role of a doctor whose duty it is to tap the arteries of our citizens at every hour of the day and night. Consequently, it has in its employ some thousands of benevolent nurses, who apply the stethoscope to the door, listen to the conversation and diagnose the malady.”

“One is, then, at the mercy of the denunciations of these people, who, I presume, are not round-shouldered from an excess of honesty. But who would accept such degrading work?”

“Pardoned speculators, acquitted murderers, and policemen of the days of Czarism, who thus buy their personal safety. Thanks to their revelations, we are able to crush all attempts at counter-revolution, which state of affairs, for a régime like ours, is the beginning of real development.”

“And yet the result must be quantities of unjust accusations inspired by vengeance and of false reports.”

“Most assuredly! And as anyone who is accused of counter-revolution, even if there is no proof, is automatically condemned to death, those innocent people end up in the dungeons of the Loubianka. But all that is of no importance for it is better to shoot ten innocent people than to let one dangerous agitator escape.”

Lady Diana’s white shoulders trembled slightly. She looked at Varichkine in such a way as to make him regret his cynical avowal. Very gently, just as one comforts a frightened child with kind words, he added:

“But remember, Lady Wynham, that the Red Peril has undoubtedly already made more victims than it ever will in the future. It is always best to forget the past. Dead people are soon forgotten, you know. Between us, tell me if the last European rulers are still thinking about the massacre of the Czar and his family? Does the tragic fate of that lost potentate prevent the King of Spain from the mad pursuit of pleasure, or the Prince of Wales from disguising himself at Masquerade Balls? All right, then don’t be more of a royalist than the kings, those living fossils of a worthless age, and don’t bother yourself about the sad destiny of a few thousand aristocrats or ordinary people, who would soon have died of paralysis or appendicitis. My dear friend, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, are great names in the history of France. My dear Lady Wynham, you aren’t ashamed, are you, of being the compatriot of Cromwell, who caused the head of your king Charles the First to be cut from his shoulders? Explain to me how the ax or the guillotine are superior to the machine-gun of our executioners. You say we have killed more people. Yes, but there are more than a hundred million Russians. The proportion of the blood shed remains approximately the same. And, after all, we are only imitating the Americans.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, astounded.

Varichkine drained his glass. “We kill in series, like Mr. Ford. But not with automobiles.”

Lady Diana half parted her pretty lips, allowed some rings of cerulean smoke to circle slowly toward the ceiling, and said:

“Mr. Varichkine, you terrify me.”

The Russian protested, “Dear Lady Diana—you can’t be serious. I, such a modest little person, how could I frighten you? But I swear to you that you have all about you British aristocrats and cosmopolitan bankers who hide the minds of
satraps beneath their harmless exteriors. Do you really believe that tyrants are born into the world just like musicians or taxpayers? After all, what does the cruelty of tyrants signify? It is but a manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation, nothing more nor less. A harmless piece of flesh and bone, forced by destiny to command a million individuals who hate him, is bound to become a perfect Caligula. Don’t think for a minute that he kills his equals to preserve a leader for them. He merely wipes them out to do away with eventual assassins. For there are Tamerlanes who don’t know their own proclivities in the same way that there are women of fathomless passion who have yet to be awakened.”

I waited until the roast had been served before I objected.

“You overlook the voluntary cruelty of the apostle who is convinced that he is working for the good of his kind, old man. Every profound faith has engendered an outrage on humanity. Torquemada and Ximenes, who applied the platform of the Council of Verona, have for a successor, Lenin, serving Death to impose upon the ideals of the Third International. Your heretics are those who repudiate happiness according to Marx’s formula and your unbelievers are the millions of civilized people, who worship the gods—false gods, according to you—of personal Liberty, equal Justice, and Tolerance. The cruelest irony in your case is that innumerable Russian Socialists who for more than thirty years submitted to the frightful hardships of Czarist oppression are now living, sheltered in the same jails by the order of their own revolutionary comrades of former times. There was less distance from reformist and pacifist Socialism under the absolutism of Nicholas II than there is under the Communist autocracy. And, moreover, the inhuman repressions of the old imperial régime have changed only in
name; the Eagle has become the Red Star and the Tcheka has replaced the Okhrana.”

“No sincere Communist would deny your statement, my friend. But I answer by saying that if the human animal is awakened, it is the fault of your World War, which certainly whetted the appetite for death. War’s ambassador is presently at large upon the earth. A vicious fever is devouring it. Our planet has the plague. The value of life has sunk to nothing and the finer senses of men are numbed. The rats are battling in the fields. The microbes are destroying one another. Your imperialists have launched their legions across the frontiers. The struggle between classes waxes hotter than ever before. Everything is going at full speed. The French, the Germans, and the Bulgarians no longer fight each other; they fight among themselves without explosives—the better class with the proletariat in the interiors of nations. It is war in a tightly closed jar. The red and white corpuscles defy one another beneath the skin of the social body. There is not, as formerly, a single front, stretching from the sea to Switzerland. There are as many fighting fronts as there are villages, as many trenches as there are streets, and as many dugouts as there are houses. You refuse to understand, presumptuous occidentals that you are, that in your own countries you are living in a state of latent, cat-like conflict. You are mobilized from the first to the last day of the year. The hostile forces intermingle and observe one another, spy on and defy one another, always awaiting the first wave of assault.”

Lady Diana shook her head in protest.

Varichkine went on, “Be frank, Lady Wynham, and tell me if in your spacious house in Berkeley Square you are not camped day and night in the face of the enemy. What enemy? What enemy? Why, your maid, who envies you; your
chef, who robs you in petty ways, hoping always for a better chance—and the plumber who installs your bathrooms—the locksmith who makes the keys to your doors. A beggar goes by beneath your windows. He dreams of getting into your house. He crosses the no man’s land of your vestibule and knocks. You fire on him with your seventy-five in the shape of a pound note. You repulse him with the hand-grenade of graciousness or with a promise. The enemy withdraws, but he will attack again one day and, in spite of your barrage of illusory philanthropy, he will drive you from your stronghold. You are, all of you, living in dubious security. Have you never asked yourself why the best seats in the theater are not invaded, some evening, by the thousands of common people whom the police would be powerless to dislodge? Or why, in the railroad stations, the poor people climb docilely into the third-class carriages when nothing would prevent their taking possession of the sleeping cars? Do you find in this tacit discipline, in this moral servitude, quite natural laws which no one would ever dare to transgress? Take heed. One day all the invisible barriers will fall and you will be astonished to discover, one night, that there are wolves’ teeth in the mouths of all the sheep.”

Lady Diana was enslaved by Varichkine’s eloquence. She listened with a sort of secret admiration, although the Slav’s prophecies were anything but reassuring. She listened with that same fearful voluptuousness which the lamas inspire in the Mongols when they talk to them of Bogdo Gheden, the living Buddha of Ourga.

“Mr. Varichkine,” she began hesitatingly, “after what you have said I no longer dare hope that you will see fit to further my cause.”

The Communist’s black eyes shone with a bright flame. His voice was more suave than ever.

“I don’t want you to entertain any such idea, Lady Diana. You know very well that there are exceptions to every rule. Besides, our friend Séliman will tell you that though Communism may be a rough bearskin we never forget to brush it carefully before we enter the
salons
of beautiful ladies.”

“You make me feel more cheerful, Mr. Varichkine.” And Lady Diana sighed superbly.

I watched her discreetly and I wondered if her charming and rather plaintive humility was not being skillfully affected. As we were having dessert, I decided to mention our business before I left them alone.

“My dear friend,” I said to Lady Diana, “it would be very wrong of you to suppose that Mr. Varichkine did not want with all his heart to make your wish come true. It seems that Moscow raises no objection.”

The Russian smiled. “Provided it is agreeable to Lady Diana to carry out the indispensable formalities, there is no doubt but that the oil lands of Telav will soon be paying dividends.”

Lady Diana assumed an air of innocence which Romney would surely have delighted in painting on canvas for the sake of posterity. Her brows raised, her eyes alight with an angelic candor, her hands clasped on the pearls of her necklace, the “Madonna of the Sleeping Cars” seemed almost defenseless. She played admirably the spoiled child of a well-policed society, which respects the peace and quiet of the rich and drives from its palaces the grumbling people who have failed. She gazed at Varichkine with fascinating coquettishness; she took a straw, wrapped in tissue paper, from its silver stand, tapped lightly the Slav’s hand and laughed.

“Unless, dear Mr. Varichkine, it is you who should carry out the indispensable formalities.”

Her listener was visibly disconcerted. He was at a loss to
know whether she was joking or politely rebuking him. I, too, was puzzled. Whatever the case I judged that my presence was no longer necessary and I asked Lady Diana’s permission to retire.

It was a beautiful evening. The stars were shining above the bronze frieze of the Brandenburger Tor. I smoked a cigarette beside the Roland of Berlin and wandered about in the shadows of the Bellevuestrasse and past the Potsdam Station.

The dazzling globes of the lamps in the arch of the Leipzigerstrasse attracted me. I passed by the granite columns of the Cathedral where Mr. Wertheim sold his cotton goods and household articles, and I bought some matches from an aged Feldgrau with the Iron Cross. I ventured into the Passage Panoptikum where I admired, in a shoemaker’s shop, a large colored portrait of the defunct Empress, ribboned with Prussian colors. At 11:30 I returned to the hotel. As I passed Lady Diana’s door, I heard an animated conversation and at the end of the corridor, I perceived the
maitre d’hotel
, who, a discreet sentinel, was guarding his sector. Remarking to myself that Varichkine was well protected, I went to bed and read myself to sleep with the final edition of the
Berliner Tageblatt
.

I awoke about one o’clock. Surprised not to have received a visit from Lady Diana, I listened at the communicating door. As they were still conversing in the
salon
I went back to sleep.

Some loud knocks on the same door awoke me again. It was then three o’clock in the morning. Lady Diana came in and turned on the light. I was blinded for an instant. She smiled, made an ironical reverence before my bed, and announced:

“Prince, I have the honor of informing you that Mr. Varichkine, Soviet delegate to Berlin, has just asked Lady Diana Wynham’s hand in marriage.”

I sat up straight. Incredulous at first, I interpreted what Lady Diana implied, and I replied:

“Come, my dear friend, no solemn formulas between us! What you call your hand in marriage is really but a temporary loan of yourself, isn’t it?”

“Not at all, Gerard,” she retorted gravely. “I call a spade a spade and I call Varichkine my future husband.”