The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (18 page)

I remarked facetiously, “I perceive that your friend practices self-preservation.”

The mole-like gentleman made an evasive gesture and replied, “Well, that’s Communism, isn’t it?”

“But where are we going?”

“Before the Committee of Surveillance of the City of Nikolaïa.”

I lowered my voice, already afraid of pronouncing the cursed name, and asked, “To the Tcheka?”

“Yes, and nowhere else.”

“Am I accused of something?”

“Yes, if you choose to put it that way.”

“What has the Tcheka got against me?”

The mole smiled sardonically and looked at me with commiseration. He seemed to say,
Poor young innocent! As if anyone could possibly know what the Tcheka has against you
! But this brief conversation had sufficed to make the Red giant decidedly impatient. He kicked my valise viciously, ordered me to carry it, and growled at his companion:

“We must be going, Comrade.”

We went out into the night. A lugubrious promenade between my two guards down a badly lighted street. An alternate wave of serenity and anxiety flashed through my brain. I felt confident that my passport, signed by Varichkine, countersigned by the officials at Moscow, would enable me to alleviate any suspicions as to my
status quo
. They would surely release me sometime during the day and I would have enjoyed the interesting experience of having passed a few hours with political prisoners.

We arrived at the municipal schoolhouse. Another Red guard, standing under a lamp, looked at us indifferently. We entered the building and came to a stop before a gray door.

“Here we are,” the mole announced. “We go downstairs. The cells are in the basement.”

“But isn’t there some official who can consider my case immediately?”

“No, not until noon tomorrow. We may as well unpack your valise.”

Still another custodian came toward us, intrigued by this last order. He was followed by two more whom he had just awakened. Five in all, dressed in somber black, bending over
my suitcase like so many vultures; five harpies, ready to tear each other to pieces in order to devour the entrails of an abandoned corpse. The big fellow went through my pockets and the mole said:

“No revolver?”

“No weapons of any sort.”

My pocketbook disappeared rapidly, thanks to an excellent sleight-of-hand exhibition on the part of the larger guard. My watch seemed to appeal to the mole, who explained politely:

“You won’t need to know the time while you’re here. I’ll give this back to you if you ever get out. Yes, that’s all right.”

The first assistant picked out a striped silk shirt. The second appropriated a pair of tan shoes. The third selected a bottle of Eau de Cologne and asked me simply, “Is this vodka?”

“No,” I said. “It’s perfume.”

“Ah!”

He seemed disappointed. Then he consoled himself by removing my razor and my shaving soap. I burst out laughing and entreated the mole to ask his associates if their Excellencies desired anything else. My interpreter obeyed. The robbers dispersed with the exception of the giant, who leaned over and extracted my pearl scarf-pin. His finger, reposing comfortably on the trigger of his revolver, was sufficient to convince me that any remonstrance would be useless. He opened the door and directed me to the stairway which led to the cellar.

An asphyxiating odor like the stench of sweaty bodies came up to me. I passed two grilled doors from which issued deep, rhythmical snores. A jailer sitting on the damp floor, his revolver by his side, rose cursing to his feet. I was shown into a cell and my empty valise was thrown in after me. Then the door was firmly bolted.

The steps of my escorts died away in the corridor. A harsh laugh rang through the place. My captivity had commenced.

The atmosphere was suffocating. The smell of the rooms in the ancient French dungeons would have seemed as sweet as Arabian perfumes compared with what entered my nostrils. The acid aroma of sour milk was mixed with that of perspiration, moldy walls, dirty leather, and rotten food. The flickering light from the lamp in the corridor barely penetrated the peep-hole in my door. However, my eyes soon accustomed themselves to the semi-darkness.

I pulled down the covers on the narrow bed and, to my great surprise, I found a body. It was a man in a heavy sleep. He was wearing a worn jacket but was without collar or shoes. I looked at him more closely. Long black hair about the pale, inoffensive visage of an intellectual of some kind. Long, delicate fingers. An artist? He suddenly awoke, shuddered, made a terrified gesture and sat up, staring at me with haggard eyes. I explained to him that I could not speak Russian.

At last, he took a deep breath and said in German, “Forgive me, Comrade, but you frightened me. Once in these cells, the specter of anguish continually confronts us all. So the Tcheka’s claws have clutched you, too? May heaven help you! Who are you? Where do you come from?”

If my presence was any consolation to this recluse, the presence of the poor wretch was certainly a comfort to me. He would help me immeasurably to pass away the dreary hours of a captivity which I optimistically presumed would be of short duration. I told him a little about myself and then questioned him.

His name was Ivanof. He was a professor of music from a private institution in Moscow. Just a man cursed with an education, valueless to the new régime, a superfluous being
who had been conquered in the unfair battle between brute force and brain power. In 1918 the Extraordinary Commission charged with combating the counter-revolution had made him a suspect. Comrade Mindline, the famous judge, had sent him, for this reason alone, to number 14 Grande Loubianka Street, that glacial prison, that hell-hole of terror, where the condemned inmates lived in the horrible expectation of a trialless execution. Released eight months later, he had fled to Georgia and had almost forgotten his Calvary, when, six years later, in the course of the bloody repression of the Georgian insurrection, he had been arrested again. Dragged from one jail to another, moved from dungeon to cell, he was now wasting away in Nikolaïa, accused, without proofs, of having spied on the Reds for the sake of the insurgents.

“Ah, my friend,” sighed Ivanof, pulling his dirty blanket closer about him, “I am going to endure again the frightful nightmare which I knew in the Loubianka. For eight months I vegetated there in an underground hole, amidst a quantity of equally miserable men, guilty of no other crime than of having refused to accept the Soviet régime; in proximity to frightful faces ravaged by privation and fear, crazed only too frequently by the horror of an imminent death. Oh, my friend, may God will that you don’t pass a multitude of sleepless nights here, altered only by fitful slumber disturbed by cruel awakenings, followed by days comparable to those of a harnessed beast and that your mind will not become fevered with the work of embroidering endless designs of hope on the wide borders of the future. The love of sunshine and light, the desire to live again surges up in one and swells one’s heart to bursting. One wishes that all was over and then, the next moment, prays for mercy. But a heavy door always swings open beside one. A call rings out. It is Death coming to reap the harvest. It is like a bird
of prey whose blind tentacles grope at random in the black depths of the cells, carrying away this victim, sparing that one for no apparent reason.”

Ivanof’s ravings, in this sinister place, banished all thought of sleep from my mind. It was already three o’clock in the morning. I was cold even in my heavy overcoat.

“I see that you are not yet accustomed to the temperature of Russian prisons,” my companion said. “Stretch yourself out here, beside me. It will be warmer for us both.”

I followed his advice. I crawled under the putrid blanket and stopped talking so as not to disturb Ivanof. But the poor fellow moved about restlessly. Obviously my unexpected arrival had excited him.

“Ah,” he shuddered through clenched teeth, “you, a foreigner, have, at least, some chance of getting out of this, but I—I have none!”

He dug his bony fingers into the covers and added, more quietly, “I had just become engaged to be married when they arrested me. And it’s four months now since I’ve had a single word from Anna Feodorovna. Poor little white dove who surely writes me faithfully and whose letters are always intercepted by those brutes.”

Suddenly a song, deadened by the thick walls, a sort of drowsy melody, came faintly to us. I listened to the dreary voices.

I turned to Ivanof. “What is that?”

“The
Doubinouchka
. The song of the Volga boatmen. Surely, you must know it.”

“But who are the singers?”

“The Red guards. That, along with the
Internationale
, comprises their entire repertoire.”

The melancholy strains of the old chant came back to my
memory. I recalled having heard the popular melody in Russian cabarets in London and Paris, while nibbling burnt almonds, in a setting of jewels and flowers, amid bare shoulders and costly scarves. Then I had been surrounded by snobs, with enormous pearl studs and bedizened cigars. Women, bending their languorous heads, folding their violet eyelids over the lassitude of their eyes, were deriving amusement from a pretended trembling to the exotic
leit-motif
. Spoiled children, playing frivolously with the Russian Revolution. Young girls shuddering prettily to the distant echo of the scarlet war.

But, on this night, dilettantism was no longer holding sway. It was no more the mode to flirt with Slavic sentiment, or to taste, glass in hand, the seductive mysteries of this hallucinating folklore. This time it was not a band of happy fugitives, who were humming the
Doubinouchka
to the accompaniment of a dreamy pianist or a
balalaïka
player with the forehead of a satrap. It was a gathering of real Red soldiers—aggressive, hostile custodians of the prisoners whom they surveyed.

The last notes of the song died away in the night. Silence, ominous and fearful, reigned once more. My companion sighed wearily. Then we heard the noise of heavy footsteps. Suddenly Ivanof sat up, a rigid figure, his jaw set firmly.

I asked, “What is happening?”

He motioned to me to be quiet and whispered hoarsely, “Where are they going?”

The owner of the clumsy feet came to a halt outside in the corridor. It was the always grumbling jailer. His keys ground in the lock. The door of a cell squeaked on its rusty hinges.

“Next door,” muttered Ivanof.

He had arisen hurriedly and, to hear better, had glued his ear to the peep-hole in the entrance to our cell. We listened intently. A scraping sound followed by a rough voice, which articulated distinctly:

“S veschtami po gorodou!”

In the course of my dinner with the hotel proprietor, I had learned the meaning of this awful phrase: “Your street clothes!”

That is the horrible euphemism with which those condemned to die are saluted. The prisons of the Loubianka in Moscow, the cells of the Gorokhovaia, and the dungeons of the fortress Peter and Paul in Petrograd, will echo this funebrial formula for centuries to come.

An indescribable scream rang out.

I arose in my turn, my forehead and my hands moist with perspiration. Ivanof seized my wrist. I heard a stifled struggle in the other cell.

I asked, “How many men are in there?”

“Six. It must be Gouritzki whom they are taking out. Poor boy—”

“What crime is he supposed to have committed?”

“They accuse him of having tried to poison the waterworks in Batoum with the idea of killing soldiers of the Red army. What consummate stupidity! Gouritzki, a pacifist school teacher. Why the poor little fellow wouldn’t hurt a fly! Listen.”

The jailers were becoming impatient. I could hear curt orders. A thin, gasping, suppliant voice replied. Doubtless it was Gouritzki. Then there came the noise of a fight, followed by groans of pain. It sounded as though a body was being dragged along the floor.

Ivanof said, “They are taking him to the executioner. He is resisting. Wait! What did I tell you?”

The roar of a big automobile came from outside.

“Well! Where are they going with him?”

“Nowhere. That’s a trick. They race the motor to drown out the revolver shots.”

Pressed close to the tiny opening in our door, Ivanof and
I, our hearts pounding madly, our teeth clenched, our brains beating with anguish, heard the death toll of the poor wretch. The motor still roared loudly. Suddenly my companion gripped my arm fiercely. Three shots rang out almost muffled by the whirling engine.

“Well! That’s over!” murmured Ivanof. Shuddering, he said, “Tomorrow night perhaps it will be my turn.”

At ten o’clock in the morning, the jailer arrived with a big bowl of greasy soup and some chunks of black bread. A few smoked herrings were soaking in the soup. I implored Ivanof to ask if the Tcheka would soon consider my case. The answer was supremely sarcastic:

“His Excellency can wait. There is no hurry.”

And he locked the door behind him.

The afternoon dragged slowly by. Night came. This inexplicable incarceration tried my patience rudely. I paced the floor like a beast in a cage.

Ivanof lay on the bed and looked at me resignedly. He said, “That’s just what I did in the beginning. I was almost beside myself with rage and helplessness. I cried out, my nose pressed against the door. At last I calmed down. I tired of bouncing from one wall to the other. The pendulum ceased to swing. In two or three weeks you, too, will have attained the dead center.”

“In two or three weeks? You’re joking!”

“You’ll see. Our only salvation is the insensibility which comes with sleep on this hard bed, beneath this ratty blanket. ‘To sleep: perchance to dream,’ as Hamlet says in his soliloquy. If Shakespeare had known anything about Communism, what masterpieces he might have written with that pen of his, dipped deep in filth and blood!”

My second night was a bad one. Ivanof’s words whirled through my brain. My helplessness exasperated me. At about four in the morning, completely exhausted, I crawled into bed beside my companion and fell asleep.