m.. ^L n...-^L0^.P^J'%J^'.^:^^-^^mf'~

% '#■

mi^' ^< '^ ''

HeivriiiRi

pftl^e^i

^

THE RED GARDEN

	NEW BORZOI NOVELS FALL, IQ22 The Quest Pio Baroja The Room G. B. Stern One of Ours fVilla Gather A Lovely Day Henry Ceard Mary Lee Geoffrey Dennis Tutors' Lane fVilmarth Lewis The Promised Isle Lanrids Bruun The Return IFalter de la Mare The Bright Shawl Joseph Hergesheimer The Moth Decides Edivard A I den Jewell Indian Summer Emily Grant Hutchings

THE RED GARDEN

TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH OF

HENNING KEHLER

BY FRITHJOF TOKSVIG

NEW YORK ALFRED • A • KNOPF mcmxxii

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.

Pvblished, July, 19S3

Bet up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York, N. Y. Bound by the H. Woltl Estate, New York, N. Y.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO MY TRAVELING COMPAJNION

PAQB

CONTENTS

Kerensky's Summer in Petrograd, 9

At the Railway Station of Vitebsk, 15

Russian Court Martial, 25

The Bolshevik in the Province, 35

Village Bolshevism, 51

Russian Cavalry, 66

Galician Jews, 78

Cederblom, 94

Dr. Diamond, 107

Hapsburg Officers, 123

The Red Garden, 138

Russian Bourgeoisie, 160

Alexander and Ivan, 176

The Flight Through Siberia, 189

r

Kerensky^s Summer in Petrograd

'^fN the beginnmg was the Word!" Never has the word played such a role as it did in the hearts of the people of Petrograd during the summer of 1917. Kerensky, the man who won his fame on the rostrum of the Duma, was the hero of this sum- mer, its chief speaker. The Revolution's Hydra de- voured its own heads with its final, last and only one: Kerensky's, True to its need of a radical solution, Russia, in a great wave of feeling, washed away all revolutionary stages. Convention and regicide they would have none of, hut they demanded their Napo- leon at once, and, strong in the people's faith, Keren- sky cultivated a vertical wrinkle between his brows and had photographs taken with his hand hidden in his breast. His career was as senseless as the en- thusiasm that created it. In two months Minister, Premier, Commander-in-Chief of the forces on land and sea: Dictator. But it was too much for Kerensky, he swayed in his role as a child in leading strings. He grasped at history so as not to fall: I can see him sitting, drunken for want of sleep, turning the pages of his books to conjure up the spirit of the Emperor in support of his technique.

But the only real Kerensky was the orator. Only when speaking did he exist, then he was Caesar to himself and the throng. Gradually as his nervous-

10 The Red Garden

t • I ■ II I. — ■

ness grew, he spoke more and more, until at last he spoke all the time: from windows, from balconies and church doors, from automobiles and at theatres, for Ministers, diplomats, delegations, soldiers, man and beast. He spoke with antique calm, staccato as Na- poleon, harmonious as the Russian who draws his sentences out of his throat with the dexterity of a sleight-of-hand artist, and then passionately and feverishly as Kerensky, and at last screaming hoarsely and cutting off his words, his face yellow and dis- torted as a sick man's. He had long ago dropped his mask, and his hand raging in the air vied with his voice.

The Russian loves oratory and he loves to make speeches himself. Does not "Slav'' originally mean "the talkers," the opposite of "Njemtsi" (the Ger- mans) "the dumb"? In three months his enthusi- asm for Kerensky was, as we say, boundless. But in reality it was brain fever, a holy frenzy in which the nation talked their tongues dry. To a Dane, popu- larity poured out in such dimensions, is like a display of natural powers. Words flowed from Kerensky's lips out over the land and sent new words into the world. They spread in milliards before the street corner winds, vanished in the cigarette smoke of the cafes and were aired out with the exhalations of Pullman cars. The newspapers printed them in blackface and capitals, spaced and half -spaced, small and ordinary type, and threw them out on the market in bundles that were taller than the boys that sold

Kerensky^s Summer in Petrograd 11

them. Hundreds of people fought and tugged at each other to get a paper. They went from dealer to dealer to get all, as if they had never read before. And in a certain sense they hadn't. That which was worth reading in the old Russian press was between the lines and therefore escaped the casual reader. Skill was needed to write it and a clear head to inter- pret it. But now words had been liberated and the very ones that had been the most fettered were now used most frequently. People nearly lost their eyes staring at these words, that only four months ago would have brought about the suppression of the paper and life imprisonment in damp Schliisselburg for the editor and his associates. People took pos- session of these words, played with them, rolled them on their tongues, and tried their worth as sounds and outcries, as ideas, arguments and abuse. The illiter- ate got the papers read to them by the more knowing who kept track of the lines with their forefinger and the still more learned afterwards expounded the text to its smallest detail. It was an orgy! —

Summer is never more summer than when a storm rises blue-black on the horizon. Under Petrograd's colourless sky a low thunder rumbled incessantly. All could hear and yet they didn't, as is true of all monotonous sound. But its result was bivouacked in the consciousness as a dull expectation.

At Haparanda on the Finnish border the exiles con- tinued to stream back into Russia. Every train up through the Northland had during that summer its

12 The Red Garden

flock of Russian revolutionists, whom one could not mistake amid the Entente diplomats and delega- tions and the ordinary adventurers and travellers. Napoleon's Old Guard was a Corps but this was no less so and the uniform they were known by was the fire of the eyes, the bright ashen pallor of the skin through the dark stubble, the thick lips, the hooked nose. Already in Russian Tomea they began their work. They were arrested, and held speeches for their guards. They spoke of their long exile in foreign lands, about the new world order, of the Revolution in danger, of that which must not be for- gotten; of that which must be done at once. The women talked eagerly and wildly. When they had been detained a few hours or days they were let go again, for the Englishmen stationed up there, well, they didn't understand what was said, they were so used to all Russians being crazy; and the Russians felt that the strangers spoke well and there was no doubt that they were right but it was dangerous to listen to. Why, the safety of the frontier was likely to be threatened. So they let them go their way. They had turned the first spadeful.

The demonstrations continued in Petrograd. The masses had learned to like them during the revolution in February. At first the Russians found enjoyment enough in flocking together. It was something new, this going by thousands down the middle of the thoroughfare without needing to fear the Cossacks' nagaika at the end of the street. I have seen hundreds

Kerensky^s Summer in Petrograd 13

of these citizen-and-soldier processions, with white, red or black banners, but otherwise not easy to differ- entiate; unceasingly they pass by, these faces, blue, unseeing eyes lost in the vegetative pleasure of mere walking. Does the animal predominate in these features as in those adults who have remained in the state of childhood? Or is it the childlike, as in small children whose intellect has not yet wakened? Im- penetrable riddle — never solved by him who has lived among the Russian peasantry and cursed them daily while his heart was overflowing with tender pleasure in them.

At the head of the demonstrators was the music — The Russians will not march without a brass band. It played the Marseillaise in season and out, but not in French, that would have gone poorly with the Russian marching cadence, no, the Marseillaise had become the Russian national hymn. At night it was this Mar- seillaise that I heard before I went to sleep and the morning breeze bore it through the windows when I woke, now roaring nearby — ^now bits of it from distant streets, but always slow, as slow as if it were a dirge.

In the evening I often went out to Kamennij Ostrof. Here was the zoological park, at that time swarming with people, back of the Fortress of Peter and Paul. And here lived Lenin in the Kjesinsky palace; I was told that it had belonged to a ballet dancer, the Tsar's mistress; now it was Bolsheviki headquarters. A half army corps of soldiers, deserters and recruits lay and stood and walked about in the garden and the

14 The Red Garden

court-yard, dawdling, loafing, waiting. Curiosity had brought us there, botli them and me.

They waited apathetically for something to happen, which almost never did. Very few of them were armed, but there was a number of sailors, dashing fellows with smoothly-shaven skulls; they were al- ways clean and smart in comparison with the troops of the line. The windows on the ground floor stood open and some naked rooms could be seen, where a pair of swarthy youths sat at a type-writer. The floor was littered with the husks of sun-flower seeds. Since then the sun-flower seed has gone its victorious way over all the parquet floors of Russia. The man who came unknown to Russia and moved into the ballet dancer's palace swept Kerensky away from the Tsar's writing desk and down the stairs of history. While it was summer in Petrograd and Kerensky talked, Lenin sat in darkness and enveloped himself in a myth. When folk no longer believe in God, they still hang on to the Devil. The Russian people had let the Tsar fall and had clamoured for freedom. Led by an un- swerving religious instinct, it threw itself in the dust before Lenin and he put his foot on its neck.

At the Railway Station of Vitebsk

IN January, 1918, 1 travelled to South Russia for the Danish Embassy to negotiate with the Ukrain- ian Rada at Kiev. I departed from the embassy during a delightful snowfall at five o'clock in the afternoon. Petrograd is never more beautiful than when it is full of new- fallen snow and the sky is hidden by a woolly gloom which is snow that has not yet fallen. My train was to leave from Nikolajski Vaksal a little before six but I was forced to wait nearly five hours and my feet sang with the cold. I had reservations for the so-called "Staff Car," but I could not bring myself to leave and go into the waiting room because I knew that those who came too late, would have to be content with the ac- commodations in the aisle. Gradually over a thou- sand people gathered and shivered from cold and stamped their feet on the frozen asphalt. It struck me that those whom I judged had reservations for the spe- cial car appeared to be the most anxious. The others who knew that in any case they would have to ride one on top of the other were more unconcerned. The wait- ing soldiers formed groups and proclaimed to each other the fixed and settled political conviction that was theirs today, even though they could do nothing but shout a name: Kerensky, Nikola j, Lenin and Trotsky.

15

16 The Red Garden

But it was fully as amusing to see two joyous dancers, who, to the music of an accordion and squatting on their haunches, kicked their legs out from under them and vied with one another and laughed and sweated despite twelve degrees of freezing. It was a Czardas and a breath of the old Russia which has now hidden its face.

And when finally about ten o'clock the train came sliding into the platform, the human waves were such that it was an impossibility to keep one's feet. All had seized their bundles, knapsacks and teakettles; they rushed to meet the train and conquered it before it came to a stop. Luckily the reserved car had alert guards with fixed bayonets. A Bolshevik Command- ant parleyed with the seat-seekers holding a revolver in his hand. But what a relief it was to get inside and find room and discover that the compartment was heated! How trivial everything else seemed, espe- cially the fight outside! / was along, and was utterly indifferent whether we came to Kiev in two days or ten, knowing that I was lying in an upper berth and could feel the warmth creeping back into my toes.

The next day I made the acquaintance of my fellow travellers, an elderly Russian from Dvinsk, a Pole and a barely twenty-year-old Jew just home from exile in a threadbare suit of blue cheviot and broken boots, but with eyes that were fire. He was an Under-Commissar in the food distribution bureau at Petrograd, he said. We four had the compartment as far as Mogilov, staff

At the Railway Station of Vitebsk 17

headquarters where Krylenko now resided after the murder of General Dukonin. The "Staff Car" went no further but, enough for the day —

The conversation turned to commonplaces now that events had closed the political discussion and Power once more talked solo in a new concise language. But we seemed to get along very well together. The Russian made tea, the Commissar furnished sugar, the Pole offered cigarettes and I cut up a roast chicken from the embassy kitchen. And as a stranger I was the only one who could engage in a more serious con- versation with my fellow-travellers when I got them alone in the aisle outside, or occasionally in the com- partment while the others played "Preference," the Russian's favorite game, in an adjoining one. The Pole entertained me in polite French; everything he said was of a very secret and weltpolitik nature but as he was Polish I did not exert myself to remember what it was all about. With the Commissar I dis- cussed Imperialism and Communism; he also spoke French. He was very courteous but there was a tone in his voice that reduced argumentation to a matter of secondary importance and although he spoke far from candidly it seems to me that it amounted to this: We Bolsheviki hate and we have the upper hand here and we mean to use our power and we shall get it elsewhere too and we won't fail to break the necks of all who oppose us, and gladly yours too, but everything is so very clear, don't you think: the Party is straightfor-

18 The Red Garden

ward and unmasked, and those who won't die, can fight — There are many types of Bolsheviki, but this is the real and dangerous one.

I sat alone with the Russian one dark afternoon, while the train slowly rumbled over the flat White Russia plain that was as wintry white as its name and disconsolately desolate. I could only talk to him with difficulty, for at that time I knew very little Russian but neither was he very communicative. And yet he could not control his emotions but talked in a choked voice of the great Russia that had fallen. The tears rolled down his cheeks. Never among all the Russians I have met have I loved Russia more than in this middle-aged man, about whom I knew nothing but who sat here in the dusk and wept before me, a stranger. Is there any sorrow deeper than that of a plain man weeping for his country?

We came to Vitebsk in the afternoon of the second day after a tedious journey. The Commissar and I went in the station for something to eat. The way was very difficult, first up over a bridge and then down through a long tunnel. Although there was every pos- sibility that the train would not leave for several hours and maybe not until far into the night, I was very un- easy and to be on the safe side I took my fur coat along with me. Taken all together, I have spent over four months on Russian railways and have never missed a train, but never have I been able to get rid of this nervousness.

The waiting room at Vitebsk offered a sight that can

At the Railway Station of Vitebsk 19

never be made real for him who has not seen Russia. First that smell of leather and vile cigarette-tobacco, Mahorka, which has as its chief ingredient the stalks of the tobacco plant. An atmosphere that for the moment changes the surroundings to a dream in which the individual plays only an unimportant role, but which now — in reminiscence — has also been changed to poesy from a distant land. The entire third class waiting room was unbelievably full of soldiers. It would have been impossible to go through if one had not pressed forward without re- gard for the sleeping men and their bundles. But they did not stir; it takes more to wake a Russian.

Mass was being said in the corner of the room be- fore a large image and many small ones. A pope chanted with his face turned to the ikon. The two big candles fluttered softly in their giant candlesticks. The priest was clad in a gold-worked chasuble and his long soft Christ-hair billowed over his shoulders; "Gospodi, Gospodi . . ." he sang, and a half dozen soldiers with fat, red faces crossed themselves de- voutly when they heard the Lord's name. Noth- ing would do for one of them but that he must down on his knees and kneel in the dust and dirt and sun- flower husks.

In the first class waiting room, where the refresh- ments were, things were not much better. Every seat was taken. Other soldiers and officers, easily recognizable by their torn-off" insignia and the cloth and cut of their uniforms, stood behind each chair

20 The Red Garden

and waited their turn. The side tables and benches were crowded with sleeping persons but in front of them and on top of them were others who ate. And under the benches more soldiers were asleep. It seems impossible, but nothing is impossible when one must sleep.

We placed ourselves at a side table where it looked as if there might be room. The waiters bored their way through the eager crowd, greasy, sweating and shouting for room for the platters of piping hot soup and the ordinary Russian buffet dishes of roast goose and sucking pig. The whole place was enveloped in a damp fog from the food and the steam from the new-comers who brought the cold in with them. The two long tables in the middle of the room were a chaos of feeding heads, steaming dishes, green plants, refuse and tableware that might easily have been sil- ver, at least I have so seen it elsewhere, for example, at Jekaterinburg, shortly after the murder of the Tsar's family and the flight of the Bolsheviki. Silver is no precious metal in Russia. In the background could be seen the buff"et with its array of all sorts of empty bottles, a sad reminder of the good old days when you could meet in the waiting room and slake your thirst with a multitude of international drinks and liqueurs before the bell rang and you went back to the sleeping car and there partook of caviar and other good Zakuska and real Vodka. On a separate table stood the restaurant's Samovar; it was impos-

At the Railway Station of Vitebsk 21

. — - — ■ '

sible not to see it, it held water enough for three hundred glasses of tea and had to be brought to the boiling point every half hour during the rush periods. The glasses were filled in a hurry and there was no such thing as washing them.

We had given the waiter a three ruble note and as soon as possible he waved away two soldiers who had finished eating and we sat down on the further end of the bench. Some seven or eight persons were still at the table. On the bench on the other side of the table a sailor was sleeping or seemed to sleep. But no one bothered him. When we had gotten our soup, a young dark-haired officer just as handsome and dis- tinguished as a Russian officer can be, was given a seat directly opposite the man. Sitting upright, the sailor laid his elbows on the table and with an evil look at the officer, began to pick his teeth. The latter did not look at him.

When the waiter had brought the young officer his soup, I could see that something or other rose in the sailor. He still stared at the officer but certain work- ings that came and went across his features told of a plan that he was turning over in his mind. The officer was absolutely unconcerned. Not the slightest movement in his face or the least change in his colour showed that he was annoyed. He made no attempt to ignore the sailor; he was as calm as if he were unaware of the coarse, hulking fellow who was trying to stare him out of countenance. I felt my face grow

22 The Red Garden

clammy and thought lo myself: you are deathly pale.

The officer had begun to eat and as the sailor made a slight movement of impatience, I thought; now it's coming; he's going to spit in the soup.

With a quick, abrupt gesture the sailor put his hand to his head and pulling out two hairs, he reached over the table and let them fall in the officer's soup. He did it without hurrying, almost lingeringly, and a hid- den smile played about his mouth. The young officer did not try to stop him but merely looked up and met his enemy's eyes. The sailor leisurely lit a cigarette and looked away.

The officer ordered another plate of soup. No one at the table said a word while he waited. My Com- missar was red in the face and his look told me that this was a case of lying low. I was the last man on the bench and four would have to rise before I could get out. I hesitated, and while I did so the waiter brought the officer a fresh plate of soup.

He began to eat as if nothing had happened. The sailor repeated his action and again let several hairs fall into the soup. As before, the officer made no at- tempt to hinder him, but he was pale as he looked up and there was a bright gleam in his eyes.

"I regret, Gdspada," he said in a melodious voice and with an easy bow to the table, but without looking at us, "that it's necessary for me to disturb you."

And before we knew what was coming ... he already had the revolver in his hand ... he shot the

At the Railway Station of Vitebsk 23

sailor. I heard the report and heard the bullet enter and the sailor's head hit against the wall. He sat there for a minute with outstretched arms ; in one hand he held a Browning pistol, and there where his right eye had been was a ghastly pool of blood and shreds that ran down his face.

While we still, horrorstricken, stared at the body, there came a second shot and the officer sank down on the bench. He had shot himself in the temple and the wound bled only slightly. His cap had fallen off and we could see his dark-brown, well-combed and rather glistening hair. His head had fallen on his breast and for a Russian waiting room with its many sleeping people there was hardly anything unnatural in his position. But directly across from him was the frightful, stiffening corpse of the sailor with its gap- ing bloody hole in the eye socket.

What happened afterward is not just clear to me. People jumped up, armed soldiers came, a comman- dant asked questions, we showed credentials, and the bodies were carried out. But by that time a number had already seated themselves and continued eating. Only the nearby and some women pressed forward to see what had taken place.

The Commissar was not long in settling things with the commandant and the two of us made our way back to the train. I was too shaken to notice how the scene had affected him, and in the short time we were still together we exchanged no words about it. But I

24 The Red Garden

have retained the impression that he had me by the arm and led me in a manner as tender and friendly as if I were a little child.

The train left an hour after and in the evening of the next day we were in Mogilov, where we parted, and where I changed cars.

Russian Court Martial

IN February, 1918, I was in Kiev. I was unable to make my way out of the city until the third day after Maravief's troops had dislodged the Ukrainians under Petljura. They were memorable days of murder and pillage, of heavy bombardment and of many corpses in the streets. Afterwards, for another seventy-two hours, sinister carts with dirty tarpaulin covers rumbled over the pavements. Above the sides, arms and bluish white feet protruded, both naked and in under-drawers. In spite of the hasty trot, they retained an unnatural stiffness loath- some to see.

The Commissar of Civil Affairs received in the imperial yellow place, situated on one of the city's hills, far above the valley of the Dneiper. During the war it had been the residence of Maria Fyodor- ovna. In order to get in, we had to go through the courtyard and pass the queue of many thousands of people who were stamping their cold feet in the melt- ing snow and among the bodies of forty-five Ukrain- ian students and volunteers. They had been ex- ecuted early in the morning, and obviously with steel, rifle butts and pistol shots. They lay where they had sunk to the ground in their last dash for life.

The queue continued into the palace through long corridors and several large rooms. The people were

still a prison grey from fear and cellar life. To my

25

26 The Red Garden

surprise I recognized under a tattered military ulster an eighteen-year-old Adonis from the Polish Legion, whom I had last seen flirting with his own fantasti- cally uniformed reflection in the dining room mirrors of the Hotel Cosmopolite. Those who were waiting set up a howl when I tried to pass without taking my turn, but my guide repeated monotonously: "Way, paschaV sta, for the Danish Embassy, be so good as to make way!" In the innermost room, which was chokingly hot and crowded to overflowing, Tschudof- skij sat at a big writing table, and near him three or four small, plump Jewesses clattered away at their Underwoods until it seemed that their fingers would fall off" in the eff"ort to satisfy the demand for the new identification papers that Tschudofskij without look- ing signed as fast as they were put before him.

Tschudofskij himself was a big, handsome Jew, about thirty years of age. He had kind brown eyes; his hair was thick and long, and his face pale from over-exertion and bad air. His cheeks had red fever spots. He hadn't shaved for several days, and his voice had dwindled to a hoarse whisper. If he let himself go, he would fall asleep on the desk at once. Although a Jew, he was enough of a Russian not to finish one thing at a time, but jumped from conversa- tion to conversation, always receptive to the interrup- tions of the nearest bystanders. "At once, Tavar- isch," he said to me. My guide persisted. "The Danish Consul," Tschudofskij repeated mechanically, and turned to me. "I speak ver' good Danish," be

Russian Court Martial 27

, I

interrupted me. He had lived eight months in Copen- hagen in Landmaerket. He was willing to give me a paper that would guarantee my safety, but travelling permits he had nothing to do with. But he would give me a letter to a friend of his on the staff. One of the little secretaries took the letter from a dictation that constantly threatened to drown in a deluge of queries and answers. At last it was ready for his signature. "Go along Lutheranskaja. You will find the staff straight ahead on the Kretschatik." For a second his feverish eyes dwelt upon me, then the queue boiled over him again. But we toiled back through the rows of waiting people, past rifle stacks and machine guns in the vestibule, over snoring soldiers and out into the spring sun that shone on the yellow palace and the blue domes of Kiev, on the ice- bright ribbon of the river, and on the corpses in their blood.

In the evening I got away by the first train the Bol- sheviki sent away from Kiev to Moscow after their conquest. It was to leave about ten o'clock from the freight station, as the Central Railway station still was a chaos of charred cars and other confusion. I took a droshky, but when we got outside the city and still had some distance to go, the driver stopped and would go no further. It was too dark, he said. So I had to pick up my bag and follow the tracks. While I was crawling back and forth among the rows of cars, I collided, literally, with a man, who turned out to be a Russian journalist, who had also

28 The Red Garden

decided to take a chance. Finally we managed to make our way to the Commandant of the station. He congratulated us on being still alive. Every night, people had been killed by the marauders who roved around under cover of darkness, and had their lairs among the many thousands of cars. He had last night's bodies near at hand to show us, if we wanted to see them.

He was also obliging in other ways and gave us seats in a small special coach that was to take two high railway officials to Kursk. All night the train was being made up in a way that involuntarily caused us to collect our thoughts and consider the nearest danger. Several times we flew horizontally out of our berths and fell on the floor before we learned to remain lying there. Toward morning the train started. I heard a rattling of iron, it was the long . bridge over the Dneiper river and swamps, and I felt I had escaped.

The next forenoon I was awakened by the fact that the train had not moved for some time. I tumbled out. It was a still, frosty day with sunshine on the fresh snow. We were at a little Rasiest or siding, about a hundred kilometers from Kiev. My travel- ling companion was already outside and talking with two lumber men. Our car seemed to be the cause of the trouble. It had reached the limit of its useful- ness during the night and now threatened to derail the whole train. It was therefore uncoupled and prob- ably is still standing where we left it. It was the only

Russian Court Martial 29

decent coach in the train, which, as we discovered, was only a feeler for one which was going to follow with commissars and military, also going to Moscow. Hence our whole train consisted of troop cars that were filled with chance joy-riders who were travelling free of charge. With real sorrow we left our little coach where we had private sleeping berths and a salon with table and horse-hair sofa, to camp in a box-car among Tavarisches and Mujiks, deserters and peasant women. However, they willingly gave us the best places, after their first natural sulkiness at this addition to the company had died down, and ex- empted us from tending the fire, and in other ways showed themselves to possess unchangeable good nature.

Not until the next morning did we reach Kursk, where there was a stop of twelve hours. While we were waiting, an uproar arose in a car a little further ahead in the train. The cause of it was a peasant woman who with marvellous vocal display was ac- cusing a soldier of having stolen a hundred ruble note — zarskij djengi — from her. I drew near the car. A large mob of the curious and of Red Guards from the station watch had already gathered around it. Suddenly the door to the telegraph office in the station was wrenched open and a Bolshevik officer, easily recognizable, despite his lack of shoulder straps, by his fine military equipment, bore down on us across the tracks, hurriedly buckling his long black cavalry sabre around him.

30 The Red Garden

He parted the assembled throng by the sheer force of his expression of armed severity. "What's going on here? I, the Commandant of Stanzia Kursk, com- mand immediate silence!" he shouted in the face of the peasant woman who hadn't ceased accusing her fellow traveller of the theft. "Arrest those two," he added.

The soldiers took the pair between them, and we all made our way to the station building. The inquiry was commenced in the Commandant's office. The entire room and the hall outside was full of people. The Commandant's voice sharply cut off all unneces- sary talk. It was plain that the witnesses were against the soldier. They pointed their fingers at him; one had even seen him take the money. The ac- cused was quite young, light-haired, pock-marked, and clad in the usual uniform. He answered un- convincingly and with rising confusion. No one re- cognized the name of his village which lay in the Tambof somewhere. "Jebog, I didn't do it, God knows I didn't do it," he kept repeating.

But now the Commandant ordered him searched. Two soldiers laid their rifles aside and began to go through his clothes. The result was put on the desk, and consisted of some lumps of rye bread, a salted cucumber in a newspaper, a piece of candle, a fine comb, a cigarette lighter made from a cartridge, and a small linen bag of tobacco. And, furthermore, some silver rubles and a gold fountain pen. But in the turned-back cuff of his overcoat were found sev-

Russian Court Martial 31

, __ — — «

eral hundred rubles in yellow and green Kerensky rags, — and a folded Romanoff hundred ruble note. The woman shrieked when she saw it, "And then the swine, whom God will surely punish, has crumpled it all up for me!"

The Commandant had turned red in the face. He broke off the squabble by rising from the table with a kick that sent the chair from under him. With folded arms, he looked at the accused peasant. The latter became still more nervous under the gaze which seemed to pierce him.

"That's enough," said the Commandant, after de- laying a moment. "Give the woman her money. For you, Tavarisch, I can do nothing. Because of the activities of the White bands, the Kursk military district is considered to be in a state of war, and this provides for the instant execution of all thieves and hooligans caught red-handed. You are not con- demned because of your offence, but out of regard for the safety of the Soviet Republic and the need of absolute peace and order behind the front in the mer- ciless struggle against the counter revolution. I am only following my explicit instructions. Take that man out and shoot him at once."

The Commandant had spoken with almost passion- ate politeness. His features quivered with deter- mined inflexibility. He presented a picture of grim military beauty as he stood there. The upper part of his body was clad as in polished armour by a black leather jacket, decorated by the order of St. George

32 The Red Garden

* I

in orange and girded at the waist by sword and revol- ver. He wore long patent leather boots, and his strong legs were in dark riding-breeches with a red stripe. — "I didn't do it, — jebog," the soldier re- peated, as he was being pushed out by the others.

A deadly silence had come over the gathering. They stole away, almost before they were told to. Nobody had been prepared for this outcome of an affair that originally had started as an attempt to amuse themselves while they were waiting. Who the devil could keep track of all the "states of war," pro- claimed now by one side now by the other? The one purpose always seemed to be to separate people from their lives without law and sentence and on the loosest suspicions. Anybody might walk right into it. Death up against a wall, in this case the lot of a nice, quiet fellow traveller, might just as well have hit one's self. No one is blameless, and we are all sinners. And how little is needed to be in the minority and one against the many! This commandant had certainly exceeded the most daring expectations. He couldn't take a joke. With all respect for the man's formal politeness, this was much worse than being sentenced to the lash by a damned police officer, who first swore and then laughed mischievously in his beard.

But perhaps the box-car would have forgotten the man and his sad fate quickly, anyway, since the times had robbed it of any startling importance, if Babus- chka hadn't along toward noon laid her fingers on her own hundred ruble note, as she absentmindedly

Russian Court Martial 33

dug down in her one red Avoollen stocking, in search of something that itched. Her consternation took on such overwhelming proportions that it could hardly fail to attract the attention of the others to her dis- covery. She shrieked aloud in terror and stared with drenched eyes at both her notes. Her uncontrolled repentance reached the furthest borders of that con- ception. But her weeping and contrition did not ease the others. Nor could they hide that they too were moved. A certain feeling of shame prompted them to give tongue and convert their energy into active contempt. Damned hag! She would get innocent people shot, would she? She was downright danger- ous. An unanimous resolution lifted her out of the car, and she was dragged back to the commandant.

When matters had been explained to him, and the two notes laid on the table for comparison, the hard Bolshevik grew deadly pale for a moment. He gasped for breath dramatically, tore open his coat, so that a sweater was visible, and gripped the edge of the table. A tug at the red, braided lanyard brought his long Mauser pistol into his hand, and he looked at the crone as if he himself was about to shoot her down then and there. But instead he splintered the ink- well in front of him so that the ink squirted out on the table; he spat loudly in her face, and she in her fear ceased howling, and let her water fall on the floor with an unpleasant noise. His cap had fallen off, his hair clung clammily to his forehead, he gritted his teeth at her with an expression that said clearly that

34 The Red Garden

■ ■■ — ■■■■ - ■ ■■ ■ - - , J

death was too easy a punishment for her error which furthermore was an injustice to him.

When his rage had run its course, he continued to pace up and down the floor before the table. "What in the name of Satan shall I do with you, Babu- schka!" he shouted to her each time he passed her.

"Gospodi, help me," she said just as often. Only the aid of the soldiers kept her on her feet.

Justitial doubts and clouds of anger passed over the face of the Commandant. He was really a prey to the deepest perplexity. In this instance, neither martial law nor his special instructions offered him any guidance. He had to act according to his own lights. A proper regard for his own dignity and anger, and for the righteous impulses of all these men, forced him to take the responsibility of a deci- sion. "What in Satan's name shall I do with you, Babuschka?" he repeated. His voice had become quite gentle from pondering.

Just then a train slid into the station. It must be the military transport from Orel which had delayed so long and because of which the road had been held open.

"Tschort!" the commandant swore, as he lifted his arm to look at his watch. "Oh, in the name of the devil, take her out and shoot her too!" He picked up his cap, and pressed it with both hands firmly on his head, so that it sat with the correct slant, and erect and without looking right or left, he went out on the platform.

The Bolshevik in the Province

BJELOF is in the Tula government, southwest of the town of Tula and only a hundred versts from Tolstoy's famous estate, Jasnaja Poljana. The region where the great writer followed the plough in his soft unbleached shirt and shiny leather belt, and where he went into the low huts of the peasants to leave behind him a thoughtfully forgotten gold piece, is rather commonplace, mostly beech-woods and flat land. The white buildings are neither plundered nor burnt. They look deserted ; as I drove by, a score of glistening ravens flew up and left on the road the bloody bones of the carcass they had been rending.

But along towards Bjelof Nature unfolds a wider prospect. It was early spring, the snow had only just melted. The country-side was fresh and sunny, the earth grey and brown with large light-green spots where flocks of black sheep grazed. From a distance they lay on the land-scape as blots from a scratchy pen. Warm gusts came and went and towards noon it was quite summerlike, although winter might easily come once more before the real heat sets in and of a sudden everything is green and it is unexpectedly summer.

I came to Bjelof as it was growing dark. The only

hotel in the town, formerly known as the "Metropol"

had been requisitioned by the Bolsheviki for the use

35

36 The Red Garden

( » I ■ 1^1 I I ■ . I. ■■■■I I !,■■ . ,

of the peoples' commissars. I had the choice of only two inns, Rossija and Francia, as two of the hotels in a Russian town are always called, and I chose "Francia." Thanks to my broken Russian and whole foreign appearance, I was shown into the best room on the first floor and given a candle. The fur- nishings were not much but doubtless sufficient: an old iron bed with a red-striped mattress, that looked as if it had gone through a great deal, a table and a chair — bolsje nitchevo, that was all. The washing facilities were in the hall and for the common use of six rooms. It was an old cupboard-like thing with a black tin basin and a tank, that forbade any wasting of the water.

The next morning I had a couple of eggs and a samovar served to me in the tap room; a cloth had been put on the table and from the spots on it I could study the quality of my hostess's soup. If I never tasted it, it was not because I doubted its goodness and fatness. Nor was it because of any natural back- wardness due to the fact that the kitchen was separ- ated from another fully as necessary room only by a screen, but wholly because it was in Bjelof that I was tendered a hospitality surprising even in Russia.

My visit in Bjelof — I found it necessary to get various signatures to my credentials before I went out on my mission to some camps for prisoners of war — developed as follows: Between eleven and twelve I went up to the former Metropol, a red brick building of about the same size and appearance as a

The Bolshevik in the Province 37

I ,1 '

High School Home in a Danish country town. The street was guarded by the military who lay in the sun against the wall and slept. A light wagon drawn by a handsome grey trotting horse stood before the en- trance to the hotel. The first room I came into har- boured "The Third Internationale Executive and Agitation Committee of Bjelof for the Propagation of Bolshevistic Ideas among the Prisoners of War in Russia." Here sat a Hungarian, and a Viennese Jew, but evidently they were not the ones I was to see. The corridor on the first floor was full of people. They were petitioners and persons waiting to see the head commissar of Bjelof, sent out by the Soviets* central committee in Moscow — Mr. Rosenfeld, the very man I wished to get in touch with. As it was still in those times when a foreigner in Russia com- manded just so much respect as he demanded, I went past the whole mob right into the audience room.

There were six or seven persons in the place, and it was a little while before I got my bearings. Two soldiers sat on a bed, with their rifles between their boots, and smoked cigarettes, and another man in a soldier's cape lay in a comer and slept loudly on a pile of cartridge behs. A pale man, with a face like yellow peas, sat at a small table on which there was a typewriter, and ate soup. In the middle of the room a man, whom I supposed to be Rosenfeld, without a collar and wearing long boots, was conferring with two tousled youths in the black blouses of the Russian Intelligentsia. Rosenfeld was a fattish Jew of about

38 The Red Garden

35-40 years. I drew his attention to me by handing him a glazed card with all the titles which a foreigner travelling in Russia does not disdain to claim. Rosenfeld willingly let himself be impressed, he overwhelmed me with politeness and excuses for the untidiness of the place, with bows and noble gestures. He personally took a machine gun off an armchair that I might sit down. He was apparently figuring out something else while he studied me and my er- rand. The man with the soup was set to click off a flattering letter of introduction for me and Rosenfeld gave all my papers his personal vise. I rejoiced — only those, who have had the experience will under- stand the happiness that comes with each addition to the typewritten, rubber-stamped collection of docu- ments, signed and triple signed by the proper Com- missar or General and his secretary and adjutant of the day, without which one feels that he has no legal claim on life in Russia. I have had them all taken from me twice and both times I had one leg in the grave.

Although I conversed in Russian witV Rosenfeld to the best of my ability, he willingly picked up the thread of the conversation in French, which did not better our mutual understanding in the least, as he knew still less French than I did Russian. The two pale youths were presented to me; they were the com- missars of sanitation and of the commissariat. The sleeping man in the comer had awakened and had furnished himself with a sword and revolver. He

The Bolshevik in the Province 39

I — -«

turned out to be the commissar for the war depart- ment, the Voinskij Natjalnik of the town. Rosen- feld, himself, no doubt, had charge of the finances. I was the Danish Ambassador to Russia.

But now Rosenfeld got up and declared that I must go along with him to the court-house and meet all the important personages, the "heads of the town." He swept the papers together on the table and flung open the door for me, and we went past all the waiting petitioners, widows, wives, girls, soldiers, pensioners, discharged officials, etc., whom Rosenfeld with preoc- cupied gestures told to come again the next day.

The trotting horse was at the disposition of Rosen- feld, and things went by in a hurry as we drove up to the court-house. Rosenfeld introduced a great num- ber of eminent men to me. He had much verve and I was not unaware that he wished to dumbfound the whole community with his phenomenal savoir faire, so that they could not help but get the impression that the town was greatly blessed in Mr. Rosenfeld, who was a man of breeding, a man of the world, who knew how to handle a ticklish international situation with tact and dignity! Rosenfeld spoke French over the heads of the town dignitaries: Oui, naturellement, avec plaisir, tres possible, voila and cest comme get — the same incontrovertible truths that hold so much consolation for the debutant Legation secretary.

I was invited for one o'clock luncheon at the former civic club, where the not too Tsaristically inclined citizens now were the evening guests of the Bolsheviki.

40 The Red Garden

Large placards, printed in red type, glared conspic- uously and proclaimed that the Agitation Committee and the Committee for Public Education had ar- ranged moving pictures, dancing and an exhibition of modem dancing for every evening and for Sunday evening a masquerade with a prize for the most fetch- ing gown and the most beautiful woman. Times may change. Red may take the place of White, but the ex- ertions of the revolution or of the counter-revolution are equally rewarded by the popular approval of the garrison philanderer's heroic and well-dressed ap- pearance, and the conqueror swings in the dance to- day with the glowing girl who will be cradled in a new victor's arms tomorrow.

Rosenfeld came to lunch with a collar on but with- out a tie and wearing a somewhat dilapidated dinner coat that I was sure had figured before in the club on some dapper officer. There were two others there, apparently the wealthiest of tlie town dignitaries, whom Rosenfeld particularly tried to flatter and honour, and me with them. Their names were Vas- silij Maximovitch and Ivan Ivanovitch — their last names I have forgotten but if I once more come to Bjelof, I will be just as welcome in spite of that. The first was a handsome, though very fat, old man with venerable Jewish features and snow-white hair and beard. He wore a Prince Albert coat and soft elastic- sided shoes. Maybe he wasn't a Jew, perhaps he had been baptized in this or the past generation, at any rate he crossed himself with all the ritual which, like

The Bolshevik in the Province 41

^■^^^^— "^ I I 1.1 I I.I I II- I . ■ I . ■ . ■! I I rf

all concessions to formality, gives the real Russian so much charm. His voice, however, was the most char- acteristic thing about him, it was at once impressive and subdued and full of fat organ-like notes, as that of an actor who has grown old in worthy traditions and good food. Ivan Ivanovitch was on the other hand a pure merchant type, of peasant stock, and not for nothing the richest man in town. His blinking eyes ran with both drink and slavic sweetness and false- ness; they told of experience in life, that on his part was complete and hardened in exercise of all those vices known to the Old Testament.

The luncheon was lavish, and I was hungry. We ate steadily for three hours. Rosenfeld had brought two flasks of whisky along in the pockets of his dinner coat and in the middle of the meal a soldier came with reinforcements in the shape of a bottle of the kind that the Russians call Tschetvert, holding from two to three quarts. It was filled with pure alcohol, which the waiter and the soldier under Ivan Ivano- vitch's kindly and interested advice prepared with a little water, a bit of cognac, some sugar, herbs and some similar asafetida, after which it was run through a sieve and at last was as smooth and strong and aromatic as the imperial vodka itself. The soldier sat down at the table and drank too and then I noticed for the first time that it was the militar}^ commissar.

Rosenfeld drank as I have never before seen a Jew drink, he sweated great drops and with each minute grew paler and more unshaven. He led the con-

42 The Red Garden

> — — . I

versation, that is to say, his mouth was never still for a moment; the two old men ate and drank and were more reserved. Vassilij Maximovitch drank only the official toasts and regarded me with smiling benevo- lence. Ivan Ivanovitch glanced at me slyly and drank to excess as if he wanted to get drunk, if that were possible. The commissar was a coarse-grained young man, who drank boastfully, spilled his liquor, and be- came offensively drunk at once.

When we had had our dessert, preserved peaches and apricots, the two merchants drove away, after Ivan Ivanovitch earnestly had gotten the others to explain to me that I was invited to a dinner in my honour, at his house that evening. He would ab- solutely not concede that I understood a word of what he said. Rosenfeld lit one cigarette after the other and dozed.

"Very rich people," he said suddenly, "very rich people." He took out an old, greasy wallet, that split and gaped with money, old Tsar money with pic- tures of Catherine and Peter the Great, and new Ker- ensky thousand ruble notes. He smiled at me, an in- toxicated augur's smile and said: "I am the finance commissar — and here is the treasury, three hundred thousand rubles — that is more than I used to carry with me when I was a longshoreman at Le Havre and London — before the Revolution. But the wallet is the same." — "It's better to keep it on you these days," he added and put it back into his breast pocket and grew thoughtful again.

The Bolshevik in the Province 43

I slept on the red mattress at the Francia that after- noon but at half after nine Rosenfeld came with the trotter to bring me to the dinner.

Ivan Ivanovitch's house lay back of the market place. The warehouse was in front and back across the court yard was the dwelling house with a pair of wooden stairs running parallel to its faQade. There were a number of large rooms and very little furni- ture but many green plants, standing in wooden tubs in the middle of the "great room." In the corners were big collections of old ikon images with a fine patina, and new ostentatious pieces flaming with gilt.

The guests had already gathered. There were eight- een and each man was peculiar in his own way. If one was too tall another was too short, if one was yel- lowish and had red pimples, another was red and had yellow ones, if one was long-haired and saddle-nosed, another was thin bearded and cross-eyed. It was a company that Dickens would have raved about on his death bed. There was a postmaster and a Volost writer, two notaries and three teachers from a girl's school, a former pope, and a discharged intendant with his fingers full of diamonds, a landed proprietor without property and a sailor from the Sebastopol fleet. There was a man in an undershirt and striped trousers, a commissar in a black blouse and with a general's red stripes on his light blue trousers. There were some in long boots and some in tennis shoes. The atmosphere was dignified, careful and, if not oppressive, then sensitive to what might occur.

44 The Red Garden

Every one had his best clothes on and moved side- ways along the green rubber plants without as yet feeling each other out.

The Zakuska, the obligatory Russian hors d'oeuv- res, was laid in the dining room. On a long table that stood up against the wall, there was placed an unsurveyable amount of food. There were seven kinds of sausage, three roast geese, great stacks of pancakes, and bowls of sour cream, deep cups with butter sauce, white and red and pink salmon, not thin slices from a delicatessen store, but enormous full sized fish, rolls stuffed with soup herbs and onions and chopped meat, red and yellow salads, small roasted birds, smoked eels, quivering suckling pig with Smetana. There were fish in oil and fish in tomatoes and caviar — grey, glistening caviar, reared up in mounds of small hail in tureens, old milk cheese and whey cheese, mountains of bread and a clay dish with white, unsalted butter that was still moist from the churn. There were many decanters with white and yellowish vodka and looming over it all, a metre- high samovar surrounded by large and small glasses, smooth and fluted glasses, crystal glasses, and glas- ses of green bottle glass, glasses from the good old days and wartime glasses. — I came from Petrograd where people and dogs in the course of a night leave only the hooves of a dead horse on the cobblestones.

Ivan Ivanovitch filled the schnapps glasses three times and tlien the tea was carried around by a pea-

The Bolshevik in the Province 45

I ,

sant lass in down-at-the-heel slippers and with a wool shawl around her head for the tooth ache. The com- pany had already livened up considerably at the sight of the food and, loudly conversing, patronized the long table without urging. There was a man to take care that the glasses were kept filled and the decanters re- placed, and when he became drunk another servant took his place. Ivan Ivanovitch drank the health of all the guests who in turn toasted each other. After the Zakuska we remained sitting for* a short time and smoked cigarettes to settle our food before we started to eat dinner.

The table was set in the "great room." The green plants had been moved together at the windows. It was a large table and its extreme bareness did not make it look any smaller. There was absolutely nothing on it besides twenty unmatched glasses full of red wine, a plate and three utensils per convert, to- gether with a salt dish for common use in the centre of the table. There were no napkins, no dishes were changed and no finger bowls were given. Serevno! as the Russian says when he is, as we say in Copenhagen, indiff'erent: there was food.

First the filled Vodka decanters were set on the table and then we sat down, and the soup was car- ried around in dishes, yellow, steaming soup, too fat, strong and spiced. There was a hunk of beef and a piece of fowl in each portion. After that, fattened veal roast with greens, then wood-grouse,

46 The Red Garden

already carved, but the pieces, even to the dead eyes and beaks, had been skillfully joined together again. Browned potatoes, red cabbage, pumpkins, cucumbers, whole plums, quinces and numerous kinds of jelly. It was a dinner where the old hackneyed saying of the best being none too good took on a deeper meaning.

Rosenfeld, who sat at the middle of the table on my left — on my right I had my host's daughter, Vjera Ivanova, who was Intelligentsia — spoke in my honour. Modesty forbids me to report its more personal parts, but he felt honored to bid the representative of a friendly nation welcome on be- half of the town. He knew that his sentiments were shared by all those present — Denmark was a small, democratic country, her people the most lovable and liberal on earth, unfortunately the police still spoiled this idyll by their dirty reac- t^bnarism — and then too he loved Copenhagen, a city he knew from personal observation, wonderful place. Tivoli, Adelgade, smokke Pige ... of course he spoke Danish too, (and then we all laughed) ... he would propose a toast for little Denmark and great communistic Russia!

Ivan Ivanovitch had ordered the glasses to be kept filled to the rim ... he tried to embrace me . . . his eyes glazed and ran with a sharp clear moisture. As I, somewhat embarrassed at being the company's centre of attention, eased Vjera off me a little, I saw through a fog eighteen reddish-

The Bolshevik in the Province 47

purple or greenish-pale faces turned to me and dis- torted in a meaningless roar that made the dogs in the yard bark for a long time after.

I remained standing and responded with an ap- propriate toast to the Russian woman, who loves so much, that much shall therefore be forgiven her. Vjera leaned her ringleted bobbed head against me, as I spoke. She was constantly in need of much help. She said she could not stand to drink very much. She wanted so to learn French, she had studied it at school but she only knew un petit pen . . . she also wanted so much to know me better, and she pressed my hand and looked at me with large lovely eyes. . . .

For some reason or other there was a disturbance among the many drunken people at the table. The sailor drew an enormous Browning pistol out of his back pocket and banged on the table with it. As by a stroke of magic, a silence that was broken only by the barking of the dogs fell over the table and every one glanced warily at each other, at Rosen- feld and at me. Rosenfeld was drunk to be sure but he dragged a heavy automatic out of his pocket and said to me: "We've all got those — a little helper comes in handy now and then." Smiles were again unbound and suddenly all had their re- volvers out and sat there and chatted, explaining and sighting. It was a remarkable collection, from long horse-pistols to pistols from the Crimean War, and small silver-mounted ladies' revolvers, Austrian of-

48 The Red Garden

ficers' pistols, Mausers, small Brownings without pistol barrels, that one could hold in the palm of his hand, and Smith and Wesson revolvers with rotating magazines. This lasted until Ivan Ivanovitch once more had the glasses refilled and the incident was forgotten.

There were still a number of speeches — I remem- ber that Rosenfeld spoke in honour of Vassilij Maximovitch, who sat, fat, white-haired and digni- fied, directly opposite me and neither ate nor drank much, but enjoyed the veneration of the gathering in such a matter of fact way that it was strengthened by it. I got the impression that it was he who led the others, as sheep, that obey blindly. Rosenfeld spoke for a long time, grandly and lyrically, with an abundance of adjectives that described Vassilij Maximovitch as Man, Citizen and Capitalist. It was with men such as he that the people's commissars had to and wished to work — he was a great philanthro- pist, even in the Tsar's time he had donated 25,000 rubles to a school for girls, and now because the school had never been finished during the corrupt Tsaristic reign, he had renewed his gift with twice the sum. He was a true man of the people. To be sure not yet a communist in principle, that meant nothing, — ^he understood the new times — both he and Ivan Ivanovitch, who recently had paid a biggish fine for illegal traffic in liquors, had shown that they were good co-workers in the cause of liberty and pro- gress. He, Rosenfeld, did not underestimate Capital,

The Bolshevik in the Province 49

it is our enemy but we need it to carry through our plans. — Long live the generous and noble Vassilij Maximovitch!

Then Vassilij Maximovitch spoke of Rosenfeld with deep feeling and with elegant diction that was accompanied as by the twanging of a bass string by his fat, full voice, and when he was finished they kissed each other on both cheeks. And Rosenfeld spoke of Ivan Ivanovitch — and others spoke, who sprang up on chairs and on the table: no one knew his voice for his own. The table-cloth was littered with refuse and dripped with alcohol, the room was hot with human breath, smoke and the penetrating fumes of liquor. Two great cream tarts were car- ried in but no one took heed of them, all walked about or stood up and presently took their places at the table again.

I remember still that we had some strong cognac with our coffee and that Ivan Ivanovitch persisted in trying to drink to me and kiss me on both cheeks. It was Russian, po russkij.

I felt his whiskers and breath singe my face and pushed the drunken man from me.

Vjera had disappeared, and the sailor, and various others that I did not see again. — Rosenfeld drove me back to the Francia.

The next afternoon we had a parting luncheon at the house of Vassilij Maximovitch. Rosenfeld came and woke me; it was necessary, he said, Vassilij Maximovitch would feel offended if you did not

50 The Red Garden

t — I

coma when you had been at the house of Ivan Ivano- vitch.

At Vassilij Maximovitch's, I saw Ivan Ivanovitch again, looking the same as ususal, and the other guests of the night before. Their faces were swollen as if they had been in a fight. Vjera was there too and now for the first time I noticed that she was preg- nant. At Vassilij Maximovitch's we also had every possible kind of cold dishes and there was Vodka for Ivan Ivanovitch and a mild sweet fruit brandy for the rest of us. Everything went along in a dignified way and only one speech was made, one to me by Vassilij Maximovitch. When we had eaten and I was about to go, Ivan Ivanovitch embraced me and bade me come as his guest for as long as I wished. Vassilij Maximovitch too I had to promise to come again. And Vjera shook hands with me and blushed.

"Come again," she said, "some other time."

The wagon waited below with my baggage. Rosenfeld had gotten me two good horses and a re- liable driver and at a spanking trot we drove, with bells tinkling, up the street, across the market place and out toward the country. My friends waved as long as they could see me.

Soon we were outside the town and when I looked back, I saw Bjelof hovering in the air like something seen in a dream. Here from the wide open country all that I saw of it was the long white wall about the old convent, the green roofs, the blue and golden domes. Russia, unforgettable, beautiful Russia!

Village Bolshevism

TERAKOVO lies on the crest of a hill in the middle of the wide open country. Seen from a distance it resembles, especially in the springtime with its grey, clay-daubed outhouses and numerous wooden peasant huts, a geological compo- nent and natural elevation of the landscape. It has an enormous expanse and is really a city in the coun- try with five or six thousand souls. It is not merely the collection of building blocks arranged as dwell- ings for lesser hucksters and craftsmen around the railway station, the church and the creamery, that we since the flight of the people, call a village.

In the middle of the town can be seen — still from a distance — a large bald spot. For some myster- ious reason the houses have given way before and around this broad space, where the clay bank is al- lowed to show its naked body, yellow and steep from the spring streams of melting snow. But close at hand we see that it is only the road. — The road through the Russian village which from old custom broadens like a river and which in case of fire and favourable winds offers the possibility that only half the village will bum. If one rides from Galicia or Poland by horse and wagon, it is neither the land- scape nor the people, the colour of the cattle, nor the

amount of filth that tells us when we have come to

51

52 The Red Garden

*—— — ■ — ■ — I

Russia. It is this broad street in the first Russian village that with a new and lavish conception of space ushers in the great, Asiatic, unused and turgid main- land of which Europe is only the peninsula.

I came to Terakovo in the early summer of 1918. I came at noon. It was burning hot and the village was hushed and still. Dogs and big rough-haired swine lay in the shade of the houses, black-spotted and dirty-white, and among them tow-headed chil- dren with open mouths. Everything living slept, singly and in bunches, where the heat and sleepiness had surprised them in the comradely study of the mysteries of the road and the manure heap. Now and then the wagon joggled over a pair of young pigs who had made themselves comfortable in the deep ruts that the carts had cut that spring in the slough of mud. The wheels ran over them lengthwise and they let out heartrending squeals and then stood awhile and pondered whether or no they should do any more about it. Finally they decided to go to sleep again. In the middle of the village we came by the tradi- tional little stone chapel in which varicoloured and gilded images were protected from the rain by a roof. We reached the end of the village street un- noticed. A large plot of long-stalked sun-flowers surrounded the last houses and their green leaves excited Nature's already withered yellow into a burn- ing orange tone that shrieked aloud with thirst.

During my visit to a big internment camp for prisoners of war that lay a half score versts further

Village Bolshevism 53

east, I learned a good deal about the peasants in the village and how freedom had come to Terakovo.

The revolution itself took place very quietly, the only sign of it in the community was the disappear- ance of the gendarme. He had been surprised by soldiers at the station of Bokoruzka and some said that he had been killed, but others were of the opin- ion that he had gone back to his village on the Volga and one would yet hear that he had become a commis- sar. At first the children wondered because he was no longer there, much as we should wonder if one day the sun didn't rise, but would no doubt in spite of that still go to our work in the court and in the bank, send off our letters and read the newspapers. For a long time no excesses took place except that the peasants cut wood in the forests of the estates with- out taking pains to hide it. Later they became bolder and broke through the fences of the park and cut down a number of old elms, sawing them off a good yard above the ground to make it easier. The children, who before had gone to school on the estate twice a week, now took a vacation. When the deserters began to come home, the general's wife and daughters no longer dared to walk in the garden. They were insulted and at night stones were thrown through the window at them. They became so terri- fied that they fled to Moscow and then the manor house stood empty. Now the depredations came in rapid succession, the manager fled and it grew worse as more soldiers came home. They related that at

54 The Red Garden

the front the officers no longer had command. It was the soldiers themselves who decided whether they would fight and everything else and there was a coun- cil, a soviet in each battalion and higher up. Also, many strangers had come from Petrograd and from far foreign lands who spoke much and spoke well. They said that now peace would be made all over the world by the private soldiers, that the officers were paid by the rich to make war and let the poor be killed so that there would not too many of them but now no one would be rich or poor any more and no one would own anything in the future but every- body would own all. The German soldiers would not fight any more either and there was no doubt of it because they came up out of the trenches and waved white flags. And not only was there no shoot- ing of each other any more, but they talked together and the Germans had Vodka that they bartered for tobacco and they gave fifty rubles for a rifle and two hundred for a machine gun. And furthermore the strangers said that all the land that belonged to the estates would be divided among the peasants and all that the rich in the country possessed was the prop- erty of the poor. It was strange talk and a new order that came home to the village, but much of it sounded very seductive and was not hard to grasp and it was accordingly brought into execution.

First the peasants took up the task of dividing the land. It had suddenly become unreasonable to put off^ until tomorrow what could be done today.

Village Bolshevism 55

' «

The older peasants in great excitement walked around on the unfenced areas, calculated by rule of thumb, paced off distances and began from the be- ginning again when they lost track of their count. For the worst of the work a sort of surveyor from Ardatof was fetched. It may not have been abso- lutely fair but neither was it wholly unreasonable. It so chanced that the rich peasants got most. But sufficient consideration was given to those who were still at the front or who were prisoners of war. They had families who looked out for their interests. When the division of the land was at an end, conscience and remorse awoke but along with it was the desire to own and bequeath the good land that had been won so easily and free from debt. The rational thing to do was to get rid of the evil and danger at its root. Realistically endowed as the Great Russians are and with their feelings shrouded in such dim clouds, it did not take the peasants long to come to the conclusion that the estate should be destroyed. In this way would vanish the apparent and material possibility that the masters would ever return. After large and repeated councils in front of the church, action was finally taken. The ani- mals on the estate were the first to be parcelled out. This was an involved exchange and one that took many weeks before it came to an end, as the old miracle of the loaves and the fishes did not repeat it- self at this unholy occasion. As every family had to have its share of the cattle and horses, they found

56 The Red Garden

- ■ - - I II I ■ ■ _ ■ _ I

it necessary to dig down to their own hens and geese as small change in order to bring about a settlement. And when a sow gave birth to a litter and a mare had a colt while the division was in process, a new and unexpected strife arose as to who should have the offspring. A great prize stallion proved to be an un- solvable bone of contention. There was nothing left to do but to hit it on the head and divide the skin and the meat. In this way peace and justice were given all due consideration.

After the animals came the turn of the farm machinery. But most of it would not do for the or- dinary husbandry which still does its work with the sickle and the wooden plow. So on that account they were broken up for the iron in them and the pieces dealt out. The less heavy furniture and household articles were also divided up and in the library any one could help himself if he felt so in- clined. Of course it wasn't easy to figure out what the books could be used for and for that reason I could buy, in Terakovo, at postojanoje dwor where I drank tea, the 15th. volume of Balzac^s Oeuvres Completes and the 67th. of Voltaire's for fifty ko- pecks each. When there was nothing left on the es- tate that could not be used in an ordinary peasant's house, the place was set afire and when I saw it only the blackened walls with their sorrowful window openings were standing. The trees too, nearest to the ruins, were badly scorched but nevertheless green

Village Bolshevism 57

branches here and there strained upwards after the sun. . . .

Bolshevism had conquered; not its teachings, its ideas or its leaders. It conquered in the action by which the village burned its boats, and at the same time burned its complicity into its own, stupid, slug- gish heart.

The peasant is not Bolshevik; he is nothing. He has only ordinary ideas and conceptions of privilege. He believes in a Tsar. Kozjain nada, says he, for he knows that even the smallest undertaking needs a master. Then too, under the Tsar there were manu- factures and real money. But if the Tsar was the empire and religion peace and quiet, he was also domestic discipline, punishment and reckoning. To- wards Bolshevism the peasant feels an instinctive distrust; it is new and has come in a time of mis- fortune. And yet he does not declare himself against it, for it is a guarantee against the gendarmes and the cossacks, against retribution and the rein- - statement of his former rulers. Reason, the inner voice and tradition were arrayed against the emotions and the nearest danger. And the emotions won as they always do. And while the peasants wait on the future and bear the day's burden and want with a heavy and silent heart, they prudently let the vast new fields lie fallow. One can never tell — and it would indeed be a sin and shame to waste the seed and let the master reap what the peasant has sowed.

58 The Red Garden

But it was no use letting gloomy thoughts dwell on the mbrrow. The new times were not without the joys of the moment. As for example when the big distillery in Ard'atof was plundered. Home made whiskey is good enough for ordinary use of course but in the Tsar's good old Vodka, none of which was sold during the war, there was nevertheless more festivity. So when the peasants in Terakovo heard that now things were wide open at the liquor ware- house in Ardatof, they started from where they walked and stood and lay. On horse, foot and in wagons, the Women and children last, but all drag- ging, riding and driving with all they could bring with them of piggins and pails, jugs and jars. Many thousands of people were all headed for Ardatof as if to a great lire or to a Kazanian procession for the Virgin Mary. They drank well and fast and long but there was so much more Vodka, both in gallons and in bottles and in pure spirits in barrels in the great warehouse, than was possible to drink at a stretch, even if all were to and did get thoroughly drunk. Much was spilled during the debauch and the whole distillery was destroyed, but still there was a great deal left and some of it they tried to bring home to the neighbouring villages. Outside of Terakovo, two wagons broke down under the weight of the mighty liquor barrels. The wheels went completely to pieces and the liquor ran out on the field where for a long time it lay like an entire lake before it drained into the ground. But many

Village Bolshevism 59

> .

who had not gotten so sufficient a supply and who were thoroughly addicted to drink, opinioned that it was a shame that so much good stuff should go to waste. They set about filtering the earth through which the liquor had recently sunk and the result of their labours was a not inconsiderable quantity of a yellowish and somewhat earthy fluid. To be sure, it did not taste quite as it should but it had an exhil- arating and pow:erful effect for all that. After sev- eral days' happy partaking of this drink the parties concerned were stricken by a slight indisposition which however quickly developed into a species of typhus. This typhus took on so many complications that according to an Austrian regimental surgeon, a prisoner, who had the opportunity of observing this disease on the spot, the patients galloped through most of the internally treated sicknesses ere they be- came blind and raving and at last began to rot before they really died. In this way over five hundred peo- ple died in Terakovo in the course of three weeks — .

Before I left the camp at Terakovo I witnessed a catastrophe that may not be unusual for Russia but which for a stranger involuntarily becomes a remem- brance. Terakovo caught fire. It happened as I shall now tell.

A Hungarian lived in Terakovo who went by the name of Ivan. He was not the only prisoner of war in the village but he occupied a distinct place and it was a long time since he had been a common servant and thrall. The peasants held him in high

60 The Red Garden

> <

esteem. Among other things he had, when the land was being divided, shown a fund of knowledge and ability that had been of benefit to the whole village. He was a handsome, dark-haired fellow, that I can say, although I have only seen his corpse, and he was the father of a number of children around in the village, which could not fail to knit him more closely to the families. He finally married a soldier's widow and took the place of father to her two chil- dren about the same time that she presented him with a third one of his own. He had adopted the orthodox belief and wore under his shirt a cross suspended from a string around his neck just as the real Russians. Also he was a good friend of the pope for whom he procured beer and old vodka from a commissar in Ardatof. He spoke Russian so well that it was difficult to hear that he was a for- eigner. When he married the widow the peasants made him a member of the Mir, the village society, an honour very rarely shown extra-parochial Rus- sians. Yet, I have spoken with two other prisoners who had had just as good fortune as Ivan; having while the war still was going on, been accepted in their village as real peasants where they could have married had they wished. Ivan had, during the di- vision of the property, been given the position of arbiter. And as he constantly represented the means of procuring for the village through barter with his friend the commissar in Ardatof, sugar and tea, nails, calico and simlilar scarce wares, his position

Village Bolshevism 61

and authority were, in consideration of his age and extraction, quite unusual.

Now the dramatic, which in Russia is common- place even if it is elsewhere rare and hard to be- lieve, happened: the husband, Sergeij Petrovitch, looked upon as dead, came home to the village. He was sallow and yellow as a corpse but otherwise quite alive. He had been in prison in Kiev and had during that time been sentenced to death for some breach of discipline but had been pardoned or for- gotten. At any rate no one heard from him. When the Bolsheviki in February, 1918, occupied Kiev, he was released together with all the other prisoners. After three months of wandering and interrupted travel by train, he had now reached home and de- nianded that which was his.

If he had come back as a ghost he would prob- ably have been met with sympathy and understand- ing. Ghosts as a rule are harmless and easy to get along with. As he came, a living apparition, he was highly inconvenient and unwelcome, and he barely won their tolerance. There was entirely too much that spoke for his having remained away. Even his old friends gave him the cold shoulder and turned away when they saW him coming. His own children did not know him and his wife sought shelter back of the Hungarian who looked right through him and around him but did not let him come in. He slept in an outhouse and there at least the dog licked his hand as of old that of the returning Odysseus.

62 The Red Garden

The third day after his arrival he went away and when he came back he was armed. He had a rifle on his shoulder and his pockets full of cartridges. He entered his house and shot the Hungarian with a revolver. A bullet pierced Ivan's neck and severed his windpipe. The body he threw out on the street where it lay for a long time and was a source of nausea to the inhabitants, while the hogs gathered and bit at it.

The woman, who carried her and the Hunga- rian's baby at her breast, Sergeij did not harm and she met fate with bowed head. Ivan had been more handsome but still Sergeij was her first husband and her only one now that the other was dead. And undeniably to him belonged the hut, the land, the livestock and the lives of her and her children. For all parties concerned it was best that she and Sergeij agreed and agreeing kept that which was theirs.

As for the peasants, well, they remembered that that which is done can not be undone and despite regret they were not disinclined to accept the accom- plished. In that respect primitive diplomacy is not one jot behind the most modern. Now that he, Ivan, Was dead, it was on second thought also more appar- ent that he had been an outsider and a prisoner of war, while Sergeij was Russian and bom in the vil- lage and obviously in the right.

But Ivan's friend, the commissar in Ardatof, felt the loss of his comrade of battle, and of war im- prisonmentj a fellow countryman and a useful con-

Village Bolshevism 63

I — I

nection in Terakovo. He was burning to revenge the murder and came to Terakovo himself with thirty Red Guards and a machine gun. When the peasants perceived that neither contributions nor requisitions of grain were wanted, and that their lives and their property were not threatened, they concluded to render the stronger part friendly neutrality. To this point of view, the growing feeling that Sergeij had at Ivan's death come into an inordinately large in- heritance, very naturally contributed.

Sergeij 's house was surrounded and while the Red Guards consulted among each other as to how they should begin, a shot suddenly crashed out, followed by others and in the same instant a soldier toppled to the ground, dead. The others at once took cover. After many hours of careful skirmishing and ad- vancing, Sergeij had run out of ammunition and they were able to dash in and make an end of him.

Inside the house the wife and the two half -grown children lay dead. Whether Sergeij had shot them or they had been struck by bullets from without was never cleared up. Either was possible as the hut was as full of holes as an old target. Only the Hungarian's infant still lived ; it lay silent by the side of its dead mother. It would have undeniably have been more convenient if it too had gone hence but — schto djelat, what was to be done about it? It lived and took its place as a belated twin at a peasant girl's breast.

But the same afternoon the village burned, that is

64 The Red Garden

% ■■^■1 II ■ I I II. I I ■■»■» » ■ ■—■II 11 I Ml I I

one half of it, for the wind was favourable. Sergeij had set his hay afire before he gave himself up to the revenge of his enemies. When the flames were first seen bursting out of the barn it was too late to put them out. All hurried to their homes, to drive out the cattle, save the children and the samovar and what else there was time for before the fire hemmed in all it could reach with its swift, clamorous flames.

I got there just as the fire was burning fiercely and on this occasion I heard the whole story from a Viennese who had been in the expedition against Sergeij. We stood outside the town and watched it burn. The Viennese was deeply moved and said a number of times, sighing: "If only people could live at peace with one another!"

The conflagration itself was less impressive than the descriptions usually given that kind of occur- rences by writers, who in sheer eager imagination let themselves be enticed into the fiery ocean and see it all from within and in the middle of the element's blustering fury. I, outside where the wind blew away from me, saw nothing other than a dark, gi- gantic wall of smoke from the depths of which came a monotonous soughing. Once in a while the smoke was tinged lilac or violet but no flames were visible. If any horrors were taking place within, we saw noth- ing of them. Once a pig came running out of the smoke and right at us. It was black but it may have been so by nature and there was apparently nothing the matter with it. When the fire was at its height

Village Bolshevism 65

we saw nothing other than a bright, almost white haze.

That, which burned, burned thoroughly and to the ground. Nothing but ashes on the bare ground was left of one half of Terakovo. Of that which had been caught in the fire, as for example the bodies of Sergeij and his family, scarcely a trace was to be seen. As soon as the next morning the peasants were walking gingerly over the warm earth while they poked in the ashes and pushed at the blackened, partly-plastered stone foundations. They searched for the places where their houses had been and had great difficulty in finding them. But most of them no doubt had a little treasure of gold, silver, or cop- per money and old Tsar notes buried somewhere. And that which is underground does not burn.

Before I went away I stopped to see the Hunga- rian's child. It was a little boy with beautiful brown eyes and hair that was already dark. He smiled, which Russian infants hardly ever do. He lay in a basket that hung, suspended by a string, from the ceiling of the room. I bade the young foster- mother take good care of him.

And if he isn't dead, he is still living and will some time become a little wave on the crest of the ocean, a life in the swarm of humanity and a soldier in the host which Russia will once again raise when it resumes its march to the sea.

Russian Cavalry

THERE is a window open in a house on the fash- ionable and palatial Millionaja, aristocracy's street in Petrograd with the golden, clinking name. The air between the red and yellow walls is full of clattering hoof-beats. A lancer regiment is marching by on its way to the parade ground at the Winter Palace where it is to pass in review before it leaves for the front. The colonel rides first. But he is no old, peace-time colonel with white whiskers, high red collar pricking his chin, drooping stomach and gouty toes cramped in his riding boots. The commander of the regiment is a dashing and khaki- coloured warrior whose moustache curves like a dark sickle against his sunburnt face. His breast is cov- ered by various grades of the Order of St. George with their black and orange ribbons. Two narrow rows of brightness carry the French, English, Bel- gian and Serbian colours and on the tunic below his heart, the red Vladimir sparkles. The heavy sabre, doubtless an heirloom, with its long silver hilt and black leather scabbard with Caucasian silver-work, is set off by his black riding breeches and brand new patent leather boots. He is riding a black thorough- bred that looks as if it might at any moment execute a dance on its hind legs and roll its eyes coquettishly

and foam at the bit, while it in reality goes along

66

Russian Cavalry 67

like a lamb and only for appearances' sake does it jump sideways and make the spurs necessary. On the colonel's left rides the adjutant, tall and slender, handsome as a young girl's dream. He wears a shining cross of the Order of St. George and on his shoulders the long white braids with their golden tassels. Red and white vie in his complexion. His face is open and yet slightly dreamy. Its insou- ciance is bathed as by the glow of a recent parting. A parting he has already forgotten.

Next ride the musicians with their Balalaika in- struments and after them the entire regiment passes by, great strong fellows on small Russian horses. The first section of each squadron carry the long lances at their backs. These are weapons that can be seen, this forest of thick poles that in slanting lines rule off the sky. Some of the lances have streamers but most of them are bare and only the short steel points flash in the sunlight. The other section have only carbines but all are armed with the Russian cavalry sabre, yellow and black, hang- ing from new raw-coloured leather bandoliers. The majority of the horsemen are young men, long downy-lipped country boys, blond and red haired, almost white haired, pock marked, freckled or cov- ered with ripe pimples; their features are about as flippant and mischievous and thoughtful as slices of French bread. But among the many grown up man- pups who still gape unrestrainedly at the world through their light blue goggle eyes, ride small com-

68 The Red Garden

pact Tartars with blackish-brown polished eyes, smooth hair and a latent fatness hidden in the nice rounded cheeks. And here and there ride types of the pure Mongolian with flat noses, dark-yellow cheek bones and wiry pig tail shocks of hair, and on the extreme flank ride real horsemen, old cavalry- men with their caps set precariously on back of their heads while their thick hair in front is combed for- ward in an oily and ringleted lock that hovers over their forehead like an immense hair puff" or stiff" streamer and divides the impression of their owner into warrior and petticoat pensioner.

The first squadron ride brown horses, the second have black, then come the brown again. The fourth however, is composed entirely of white horses — only the little colts that run by their dams, tripping and shambling along, with their comical canine body swaying on the four long soft legs, provide an occa- sional variation in colour. But before them, of course, the cavalry regulations are powerless. The small, Russian horses are said to be too light for the big cavalry onslaughts where weight determines su- periority and outcome. But they have the sweetest short noses and long manes that hang into the kind- est and most patient eyes. No other animal deserves the love of man more than the little Russian horse that trots faithfully along without ever stopping to think that its rider too has legs. It endures treat- ment that would strike the larger stall-fed horses with a score of incurable ailments. ... It stands

Russian Cavalry 69

I — I

out in the coldest of winter with a snowstorm liter- ally on top of it. It is thoughtlessly used, mis- used, beaten and starved and never balks but is equally undismayed and kind-eyed up to the day, when face to face with the moment's impossibility, it stretches out its legs to die, as unostentatious and unassuming in death as it was during its life of toil. And yet — on an attempt to pet it and rub its nose, it turns its head away and one becomes aware that the Russian horse does not understand that kind of famil- iarity because its instinct for caresses has never been awakened. The mares foal every year and their colts, too, are something apart. They are not like other playful, lazy, light-hearted colts that roll on their backs and waggle their legs. From the very moment of their birth they are a collection of small, shaggy, reticent creatures with wise old eyes, that totter along where their mothers go and if born in the regiment, run, on the march, in war and to parade along the column's flank, generally mouthing and drooling, engrossed in the one thing that to them is life's infallible meaning; to be abreast of the good mother milk should there be a pause in the march.

Now the Balalaika band plays. But it is no mar- tial melody they play, for in that sense the Russians are no warlike people. They can be put into the ranks, but at heart they are wanderers. The songs they know are the sorrowful and little varied hymns that with fascinating melancholy still convey some of the repetitive rhythm of primitive people. This

70 The Red Garden

' ;; ; <

music acts with entrancing and suggestive force on the most sluggish soul and penetrates all the culture of the sophisticated. As it fills the heart, it opens vistas of the great plains with their many hundred thousand homes, of the mainland where Volga the Great Mother flows, and of the vast steppes where the Calmucks and the Kirghiz still shift their tents. And when the Balalaika dies out, singing is heard from the regiment, first a leading voice and then a little chorus, in which the individual is still rasp- ingly felt, and then the whole regiment joins in and the raw primitive voices mingle in a solemn and mighty chant, quite the opposite of any student sing- ing society in its naive vocal abandonment to that no thought and purpose which is the festive mood in all folk song.

After the squadrons come riders with led horses, and field cars with hay in large, flat pressed bales, wagons with arms and equipment, horses with ma- chine guns on their backs and more carts with lances, brass instruments and ammunition boxes and last the field kitchens, horses, men, and more wagons and little colts. And when the whole procession had passed and the street again was quiet, a belated rider came darting by on a little horse. He posted in his saddle like a rubber man, not a beat behind the ani- mal's movements although the horse flashed like a dark flame over the cobble stones, its mane flying in the wind, the sparks spreading fans of fire where its hoofs struck and raising a din like a minute-long

Russian Cavalry ' 71

^ ■ ■ ..11 ■ I ■ I »■ ■ — ■■ ■ ■ , ■ . I , i

storm of hail and thunder. They can run too, these small Russian horses, they place their small strong legs to the pavement like slender steel rods beating in raging tempo, where the big dragoon horses would wince as if their hoofs were corns supporting their own oat-stuffed weight.

Thus the Russian cavalry went to the front.

A year later they came home again. It was dur- ing the days of the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. The war was over as far as the Russians were con- cerned, long before peace was signed and irrespec- tive of whether it ever would be. A special commis- sariat sat in Moscow and demobilized the army, but the regiment came back to Kazan, where it had its permanent garrison, in two Tjepluska trains which it had requisitioned and brought through by the aid of a few and effective gestures with revolvers when the track could not be cleared quickly enough. There were ten horses in each Tjepluska and the sol- diers were installed in cars, which if one could judge by the Roman numerals, had at one time been first class sleepers but when they arrived in Kazan only the walls and that which was nailed fast remained of all that at one time had been plush and pillows, con- veniences and bathroom porcelain. From the sta- tion they rode up the Voskresenskaja, the main street in Kazan that reaches from the university to the old Kremlin with the Tartar tower. The dashing col- onel was missing, the adjutant not there either. No

72 The Red Garden

officers at all were to be seen, for those that possibly might be left, had no more shoulder straps or marks of distinction. In front rode a red-headed soldier and on a black thoroughbred was a sailor in a navy cap with long yellow and black ribbons, a seaman's blouse and wide uniform trousers. It was a curious sight to see a sailor on horse-back and the animal reared and snorted under him but he sat as if moulded to the saddle and conversed imperturbably with his companion. He carried no other weapon than a heavy Browning at his belt. The squadrons were now made up without regard to the colour of the horses but went according to the friendship of the riders. No one carried lances any more, why drag along those heavy flag poles that were anything but fit for offensive purposes. The majority of them, however, had secured pistols which they wore in hol- sters strapped to their waists, preferably gendar- merie revolvers with a bright red lanyard that went from a ring in the butt up around the neck. It ap- pealed to their love of colour and made such a fine ornamental effect.

The regiment clattered up the street in all kinds of gaits and paces. The horses still kept place where they could but the men were impatient and broke ranks to get by one and ahead of another, or they suddenly turned their horses and rode back amid tumult and laughter and abuse. Many rode up on the sidewalks and banged gaily away with re- volvers and carbines. The bullets whizzed through

Russian Cavalry 73

the air in all directions and some flattened them- selves on the chimneys while others crashed through the windows and knocked the plaster off" ceilings on the third floor. The colts were nearly crazed during this bedlam and pandemonium and were constantly becoming separated from the mares. And the peo- ple of the town fled panic stricken around the corners or if they had not gotten quickly enough away, pressed themselves up against the houses, pale-faced and praying that this terrible cavalry would be well past before harm came to them.

When the horsemen reached the barracks on the outskirts of the town, they rode their mounts right into the stables and up into the stalls and remained in the saddle while they put halters on the animals and made them fast. The wagons that were left were run together in a bunch in the court and there they still stand but sunk in the ground to the hubs. The machine guns were set up in the gateways and then all started investigating the barracks. First they ate and drank what could be discovered and prepared in a hurry and celebrated their homecoming and the new liberty, equality and fraternity and then made preparations for spending the night. The sailor and the red-haired one took the colonel's bed. They sprawled right in between the white sheets in clothes and boots, spurs and weapons and the others lay down to rest around in the officers' room. But many too, merely collapsed in the officers' mess or wher- ever they happened to be and slept it off" with their

74 The Red Garden

heads on the table and their legs on the floor or with their heads on the floor and their legs on a chair.

As long as there was plenty to eat and drink in the barracks, a tremendous uproar continued to come from it all day and far into the night. The inhabi- tants of the town and all those who held life dear, kept at a safe distance from the revels that so easily became excesses. One day three bullet-rid- dled soldiers were brought to the hospital and some- thing like a half-score men were hastily buried, the outcome of a fight that arose over some trivial mis- understanding. The barracks were in a frightful condition, the eagles had been torn from the door- ways, the windows were knocked out or shot full of stars, the white plaster had fallen off" the walls in long flakes, the furniture was splintered, the pictures in the officers' mess served as a lodging place for bullets, and where that of the Tsar had hung was now a picture of Lenin, fastened to the wall with four thumbtacks. The superintendent who had been sur- prised by the regiment on its arrival had fled and lay hidden in a cellar in Kazan. He said that the church had been dumped full of manure and that the pope had been tied up in the wheelwright's smithy where he had sat and licked axle grease, before he was allowed to slip away, half dead from hunger and tliirst. But the regimental physician, who had al- ways been a coarse rascal, the wild fellows had fetched from the town and manacled to a sentry box

Russian Cavalry 75

where he remained until one day he was accidently shot.

Gradually, however, the homecomers disappeared. The Tartars had immediately gone to their homes; the Turk is methodically cruel but all Bolshevik ex- cesses are foreign to his phlegmatic nature. The rest went, singly and in small groups, home to their villages. The leading Bolsheviki had long ago moved into the town and lived at hotels or were quar- tered at the houses of the rich citizens. Others also got greater or lesser commissions in the administra- tion of the local commissariats or of the soviet gov- ernment. At last all were gone and the great bar- racks, waste and empty, and with a strange burnt out appearance stood in its desolate field.

But the uproar did not abate, on the contrary, it continued, and increased. It became a heartrend- ing and terrible howl, an uninterrupted finale of shrill screams, that might have been the neighing of evil spirits who had into the bargain been stricken with raging insanity, and yet it was only the horses who stood forgotten in the long stables and tugged at their halters and when they gave way, galloped back and forth, trampling down all that lay in their path, flaying long shreds from each other with their long flat fore teeth, their eyes bloodshot, and no longer animals in their frightful sufferings from hunger and thirst. The people in the town heard and some of them wondered perhaps, but who in the

76 The Red Garden

» — — — — — — I

world was going to risk his life first for the madmen who might still be holding sway out there, then for the still more insane animals which the devil himself could not approach in the condition they were in now. And who was going to procure tlie hay, and who was going to pay for it, and whose business was it anyway — and besides the noise soon grew weaker and at last died quite away and people no longer gave a thought to the barracks, where no one now had errands and which not even attracted thieves after the regiment had gotten through with it.

But a month later, as the weather became warmer, the town again had to remember the barracks and what had really happened there, for certain winds carried a frightful stench through the streets, yes, into the very house. It became so bad that the com- missariats had to take a hand and three or four hun- dred prisoners of war, of those who had not al- ready enlisted in the Red Guard, were hurriedly driven together to get the carcasses out of the way. It was a hard task, the ground was yet too frozen to bury them, the stinking bodies had to be brought out of the town in carts to be flung on a meadow down by the Volga. It may be that a prisoner or two fainted and some died too, but then prisoners of war die so easily and nobody misses them and anyway some one had to do the work unless all were to pre- pare themselves for the worst.

Those who sailed on the Volga past the town of Kazan in the summer and autumn of 1918 could have

Russian Cavalry 77

seen great flocks of birds circle over a certain spot on the north bank of the river. It is here that many- carcasses were brought to to their last rest. Here I myself have seen for the last time the regiment of cavalry that I first saw from a beautiful woman's window, as it went to review* before the red Winter Palace. Most of the bodies were already plucked of all flesh and the last bloody shreds were drying in the summer heat upon the white skeletons. Fat ravens still sat on the gruesome skulls and picked at what- ever puddles of decayed matter there was left. It was a beautiful evening, but an ugly sight to see these many stripped and eyeless skulls guarded by these brazen and imperturbable feathered creatures, and yet my thoughts turned most to the little colts that were always so unreasonably sweet and which I al- ways wanted to pet but who always drew their heads away and wouldn't understand what it was all about.

Galician Jews

IT was in the spring of 1917 that Denmark, replac- ing the Americans, took over the interests of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Russia. Such is the diplomatic expression and the last link in the official chain is the increase of foreign grand crosses and orders of knighthood in the court calendar. The reality that lies between is a book the size of the Bible, a gigantic tragedy and a comic epos, a robber romance, and a Divina Commedia that took place in Hell on earth. There were several millions of sta- tistics of which only a few still exist. Among my countrymen in the foreground I remember people with honest faces, also people who looked like scoundrels, hypocritical climbers, and swindlers with the Red Cross on their arms, many adventurers and very few heroes.

It began with letters that in increasing streams poured over the writing desks of the embassy. Let- ters from prisoners of war, from officers, from sol- diers, from prison camps and labour battalions, from jails and coal mines, from Murman and Bok- hara, from Habarovsk on the Pacific Ocean to Kras- novodsk by the Caspian Sea. Letters that came from Austro-Hungarian subjects whom the Russians at the outbreak of the war had held back, deported or in- terned by the thousands or whom they had later

78

Galician Jews 79

dragged along with them on their successive retreats into Galicia and had sent further east to Siberia and to the stretches of the Volga.

I still dream with strong distaste of the mighty piles of fools-cap, generalia and personalia, of the complaints and pleas for aid, most of them carefully worked out in fancy handwriting either with small, fine latin letters or large gothic flourishing ones, in round and upright writing with spirals and curls and all tlie massive etiquette of Austrian bureaucracy on both sides of the sheet. But there were also others that were written with difficulty and mis-spelling on small-chequered letter paper and where the Right Worshipful Sir in the salutation was replaced by the poor man's na'ive: "Gnddige Herr Konsulai"'!

But the contents were known before the letters were opened for it was always distress and loss and dire straits and prayers for help and favourable inter- vention. It was about scurvy and frost bites, pay that was never received, and mail that was never sent; about brutal Cossacks, swindling camp officers, inva- liding home and exchange. It was of sick who could not get operations performed and others who de- manded credentials, and there were requests for loans and impatient questions as to when the war would end. In Ust-Syssolsk they had no bread, in Tambof the civilian prisoners were not allowed on the streets after six in the evening, in Petropavlovsk the privates among the officers refused to salute their officers, in the camp at Totzkoje half the camp were

80 The Red Garden

dead of spotted typhus, and in Krasnojarsk were fifteen Austrian officers who had been transported from Moscow to Siberia in fourth class coaches!

I remember the young civilian prisoner who wrote that he would soon be dead of tuberculosis but would like to marry his fiancee in Klagenfurt ere he did die. And the artiste at Rostof who at the out- break of the war had lost all his registered baggage, twenty automatic dolls with complete wardrobe . . . and Dr. Gold, I remember, the very important Rechts- anwalt and politician, Dr. Solomon Gold who every week day sent out a calligraphed communication taking up four pages to hasten his exchange with the illegitimate son of a grand-duke and two pensioned Russian generals whom the war had surprised in Carlsbad. . . . Every day new affairs that resulted in new notes on glazed paper in fine French style with indexed corners. Notes that without humour and also without bitterness always ended with a re- quest to receive an answer aussitot que possible — and also long after we had come to know that no favourable answer could be written. It was a task one did well not to put too much imagination into, but neither is it in that manner that one advances in the diplomatic service.

No one wrote so often and so pitifully as the Gali- cian Jews. When I think of these I must still ask myself what miracle of earthly stupidity possessed the Russians to send as many of the Galician Jews as they could manage into holy Russia and its de-

Galician Jews 81

pendencies. As if they didn't have Jews enough and weren't weary of them. But there is only this explanation that just as certain people must sneeze in sunshine so the Russians could not stand the sight of a Jew without at once decreeing over him and mov- ing him about. During the war large portions of the German and Jewish population in Poland and the East Prussian provinces were forcibly sent to- ward the east and now this whole extra Ghetto from East Galicia came here, mostly old men, women and children, for the young men were of course mobi- lized. Many had seen their homes sacked or burned over their heads by Cossacks or by Hungarian hus- sars, which was still worse. Naturally there was pri- vation and wretchedness among them and they pos- sessed a marked dislike of dying unnoticed.

They wrote continually, on all kinds of paper, in Russian, in Polish and in German and with a great deal of Yiddish among it no matter what they wrote. I venture to guess that they wrote to all the possible Jewish relief committees in the world from New York to Cape Town, from Copenhagen to Valparaiso. They wrote to the Red Cross and to the authorities of the Russian government, high and low, near and distant, who were not awakened by much louder up- roar and who not even in their dreams would have done anything for them. They wrote at last to us, their official accredited guardians within the Russian frontiers and described in monotonous expressions their hunger and their sorrow, their sickness and bare

82 The Red Garden

( ■ ,

legs, their rags and their lice and how all had been stolen from them and they had been allowed to earn nothing. It was a lamentation and a moaning that always went to the extremest borders of suffering and ended with sworn assurances of death's quick com- ing, signed by Leib and Aaron, Amster and Lobl, by Regenstreif and Sonnenglanz, Tichbein and Ruben- stein. If it hadn't been laid on so thick it would have moved a stone.

About New Year, 1918, shortly before the peace at Brest-Litovsk, the repatriation of the prisoners not of military age began. At first only those who were able to pay at least part of the travelling expenses, were allowed to go. By thousands then, Austro- Hungarian civilian prisoners from all sections of Russia and all the way from far Siberia, streamed to the embassy at Petrograd and also to the consulates at Moscow and Kiev. And none came more quickly than the Galician Jews. In the old rococo palace in the Sergievskaja where the Hapsburg ambassa- dor had resided, they stood in thick swarms on the old parquet floors that now were warped and cracked from want of care. They overflowed out into the corridors and were camped all the way down the stairs with their bundles and trunks and the Pole, who with a pale face and clammy from nausea, Hooked out for their passports, nearly gave up the ghost from powerless Anti-Semitism. To be sure we could have had a Jew in his place but then it would have been impossible to hear a sound for the squab-

Galician Jews 83

ble that would have arisen, and time was precious. Now they were content to exude an indescribable and perfectly absurd stench, the stench of the Ghetto, and if it had not been for that, we from the north, who never before had seen real Jews, would have thought it all a dream where the people of Israel, who await the descent of Moses from the mountain, mingled with the portraits on the walls of Aehrenthal and Franz Josef and with Ivan, the lanky, uniformed "Swiss" at the door of the embassy. For there was Jacob with his son Benjamin, and there Samuel, and there the red Aaron and there the faithful Eliezer, and yonder a Prophet and here a Pharisee. Pale Jews and Jews with long beards and curly front hair, black and reddish Jews, noses, eyes, and flat feet, dignified Rabbis who held their gowns together about them, "spitting" Jews and old handsome Jews with their entirely white hair in cork-screw curls and with rings in their ears; every one of them a true picture of old Isaac in Ivanhoe whom the cruel Nor- man has his black slaves lay on the red hot gridiron. Jews in top hats, in peaked caps, in sable-brimmed plush hats, in Astrakhan fur hats, all in high boots and robes of wonderfully good cloth, and yet as they all stood there together, with an unmistakable stamp of almost ragged poverty lying in the soul of their blackish-brown eyes.

How many of these Galician Jews secured pass- ports and got home that spring, I don't know, but I believe it was the majority. And many continued to

84 The Red Garden

be left. When I, in the early summer came to Sim- birsk on the Volga, there was still a great deal to be done in securing passports for those civilian priso- ners who had not yet gone and in dividing the not plentiful funds among the most needy. Without my good secretary, Dr. Josef Diamond, lawyer and hos- tage of war from Stanislau, I should never have got- ten along but would have become an easy prey to my credulity and sentimentality and would no doubt have gone raving mad from giving ear to the accusa- tions that the civilian prisoners made against each other. Of hidden wealth, unlawful sources of in- come, swindling and embezzlement, in short of un- bounded dishonesty, not excluding bigamy, feticide and murder. But Dr. Diamond knew the civilian prisoner and the mysteries of his life. He spoke Ukrainian with the Ruthenians, Polish with the Poles, German with the Austrians, Russian with the Ruma- nians and the Hungarians, and Yiddish with the Jews until both parties were wet in the face and had to wipe the sweat out of their eyes. He knew who made money by unlawful traffic in liquor, who by usury, who by speculation in merchandise, by ped- dling, by trading in gold, silver and precious stones, by gambling and by honest work.

He knew who constantly postponed their depar- ture because they were making good money where they were, and who came and begged for assistance despite the fact that they had accumulated tidy little fortunes. He knew when a civilian prisoner had

Galician Jews 85

had caviar, a three course dinner and coffee with cakes at one and a half rubles each, at the "Passage" hotel; who were thick with the Bolsheviki, and who were members of the Red Guard where they got 300 rubles a month, uniform and complete maintenance, of which the daily three pieces of sugar could be sold for 50 kopecks apiece. He knew what girls did not need 30 rubles a month for support inas- much as they wore silk stockings at 75 rubles a pair, and no Jew, however wretched or ragged he might be, could moan his Way to assistance if Dr. Dia- mond's legal nose had smelled money on him. Dr. Diamond did a great and unpleasant work for a modest salary and his impulsive eloquence often placed him in situations where he was called swin- dler and scoundrel and he actually received threats against his life. Then he became very frightened and for several days would have the doors locked and let no one in unless he knew his voice, and he talked with pale composure and great seriousness of giving up his position. But one or two days after his voice and liveliness had again their old resound- ing strength and he appeared again in one of those virtuoso-like cross-examinations in which he brought unworthy applicants to silence and badly hidden shame. I sat in an adjoining room where I had all the advantages of being outside and when Dr. Dia- mond had ended by declaring in a sudden sugar- sweet transition that after all it wasn't up to him, no one could reproach him in any way, for he was only

86 The Red Garden

■- ■■ --■ — - I I

a humble servant, a secretary and an instrument of a higher voice and of course every one was free to try to advance his case with the consul himself, then there was, after Dr. Diamond's exultant indis- cretions, very rarely any one who had any desire to talk to me, who — and who could tell — might be still worse.

Only once did Dr. Diamond burn his fingers, but it was excusable: it was his heart that ran away with him. Among the civilian prisoners we had an old blind Jew from Limanova who had been in Russia since 1914. He had only lost his eyesight a year before we came however. We presumed that he also had, before his misfortune, known how to turn a pretty penny just as the other civilian prisoners who unexpectedly had seen their crafty aptitude and more West-European initiative invested in surroundings of virgin Russian laziness and sleeping sickness. But of course we knew nothing for certain, for Galician Jews do not carry their riches where tliey can be seen, if they have any and yet after all it was per- haps only as so much other envious innuendo, at least that was my opinion. When blind Abraham came and wept for us, and he did almost every day I was generally inclined to yield in spite of Dr. Diamond's scepticism. Abraham was a quite stately man, more broad than tall, with a handsome face and a beard that despite his age was only slightly grey. At his temples there were pretty grey curls. His eyes looked as if a light grey film had glided down

Galician Jews 87

over them. He wept without tears and his features retained even while weeping a peculiar doltish smile. His shirt was always clean and white but he never wore a collar and he always wore soft morning shoes. Dr. Diamond did not love him, but after all the poor fellow was blind and when he came and wept and swore that a blind man couldn't live on 50 or a 100 rubles a month, then it was all too true and ended by his being given an additional sum. But two or three days later he was back again with piteous wails: he had to pay for the least help he got! Dr. Diamond and I came to the conclusion that it was best we send him home to Galicia.

We arranged a passport for him too, but a blind man can not travel alone from Simbirsk to Limanova. Abraham had no relations or friends. They had gone back home, he said, and it was useless to ask why they had not taken him along. We had to find a guide for Abraham but we could not take any ci- vilian prisoner at random. It had to be a Jew. But the Jews who were going home were not interested in Abraham: "We have trouble enough ourselves, we have children, I have an old father, I have a sick mother, I am sick myself," etc., etc. One after another went away and Abraham came constantly to us and wept: "I won't be a burden, I ask so little. Only some one to get me boiling water for my tea and help me when I have to get off the train. But they want money, that's what they want, they won't do it for nothing for they think I'm rich and I have,

88 The Red Garden

God help me, not a red cent, not the smallest little coin — the greedy vultures! . . ."

"Maybe he keeps it in bills!" said Dr. Diamond to me in an aside, but nevertheless he swore at the thought of the godless rabble who would not help a blind old man of the tribe of Judah to get to the same Galicia that they were going to.

One day Abraham came to us accompanied by a young Jew we had not seen before. He was willing to see Abraham home if he could get 200 rubles and a passport. He had a squint in one eye but that was hardly ground for exemption and on the other hand he insisted that he was only seventeen years of age which we could believe in a pinch: Jews are so ma- ture. Worse was it that he couldn't prove he was an Austrian, but this we overlooked to get Abraham on his way. When Abraham trusted him, far was it from us to doubt his honesty. He was given 50 rubles in advance. Several days later the passport was ready and with great relief Dr. Diamond paid him 150 rubles more and for once again Abraham got a litttle sum of money for travelling and our blessings on the journey and Dr. Diamond sighed as they went and said to me: "If only I dared believe he wouldn't come again."

Dr. Diamond's evil forebodings unfortunately came true. Three days later old blind Abraham came to us and wept and told of his troubles. His guide had left him and had not come back. He had taken the two hundred rubles with him and also ten

Galician Jews 89

rubles belonging to Abraham. Dr. Diamond raised such a scene that the neighbours, wakened from their noon-day sleep, came to their windows and Abraham wept still higher and I went and had dinner at the "Passage" . . .

The same night, it must have been about two o'clock, some one knocked loudly at the street door of the house where I lived on the second floor. It was a two story wooden house on the outskirts of the town. I sprang out of bed, put my head out of the window and saw a half score heavily armed men below. When they caught sight of me, I was cov- ered by their weapons and received a sharp injunc- tion to shut the window and come down in a hurry. Shortly after, I stood on the steps outside of the street door in pyjamas and slippers, surrounded by thirteen Red Guards armed with rifles. Only two or three of them were in uniform. Their leader carried a hand grenade in his belt and a cocked revolver in his hand. However he was neither coarse nor unpolite and consequently I got the greater courage to appeal to all international law and the inviolable rights of diplomacy, at the same time inviting him up to see my papers. But all this did not aff^ect him in the least, he had papers himself and by the flare of a match he showed me a small type-written strip of paper that bore a curt order to arrest a person of my name. Therefore I got into my clothes and we set out through the dark, sleeping town where, by the way, all traffic was forbidden between nine in the

90 The Red Garden

* ' ■ - ■ .— I — ,1 II,.. . ^

evening and six the next morning, down to the former residence of the governor where I well knew that an extraordinary commission (for combatting the counter revolution) was sitting.

I was brought into a room that was crowded with other arrested persons and with soldiers who slept and with soldiers who leaned their heads on their rifle barrels and nodded from sleepiness. The first per- son I saw was my secretary who had apparently been arrested at his place of lodging. He was attired in shirt, trousers, overcoat and morning shoes only and was deathly pale and frightfully unshaven. But per- haps I wasn't any too pretty myself. When he saw me he gave me an expiring look but no sound came from his lips.

I was immediately brought into the room of the head commissar. It was less swinish than is usual in a commissariat and there was still massive evi- dence of former magnificence. It had apparently been the private office of the governor. Two men were left sitting by me with fixed bayonets but I con- fess that I sank into one armchair with my feet on another and fell asleep, for as long as I was in Rus- sia I was always a sound sleeper. It was already growing light when I was wakened and presented for the commissar, a young Jew with a highly sympa- thetic personality, and for his adjutant who quite the opposite was a highly sinister person, no doubt a Pole, who looked as if he might very well be his own executioner also.

Galician Jews 91

The commissar with a polite gesture bade me sit down on the opposite side of the writing table. Dr. Diamond was fetched so that he could act as inter- preter if necessary, but he certainly did not look as if he could be of much service, poor man. How- ever the inquiry was conducted in German and he had therefore only to answer when he himself was questioned. This he did with a meekness and a mien that alone ought to have proved our innocence.

For that of which we were accused was not trifling. The complaint was that here from the Danish con- sulate passes had been issued to counter revolution- ary persons and among them to officers of the Tsaris- tic regime. I denied absolutely that there was a shred of truth in the complaint and Dr. Diamond looked as if he wanted to speak but there was some- thing that paralysed his tongue.

The commissar in the meantime was turning over his documents and handed me a sheet of paper that I took, conscious of his sharp staring gaze at the bot- tom of which played an unpleasant smile. "Have you seen that before?" he asked. "It was found on a former staff captain who was using it to flee to the Ukraine." I looked at it. It was a passport, made out to David Silberman, Austrian subject from Limanova in Galicia, signed by me and provided with the seal of the Danish consulate, and counter- signed and stamped by the commissariat for war and civilian prisoners. The age and the year of birth had been erased and changed so that the age of the

92 The Red Garden

bearer read 37. ... It was tlie passport that we had issued to blind Abraham's squint-eyed guide.

The explanation I gave the commissar, whose smile grew broader and broader, I will not dwell on — and Dr. Diamond had also regained a little of his powers of speech and could substantiate what I said — but now blind Abraham was fetched from the town. The commissar offered tea and cigarettes while we waited and we had an interesting conversa- tion about world politics. When Abraham had been brought in between two soldiers and was confronted with the facts, he broke down and confessed with prodigious weeping that he had arranged with the squint-eyed one to swindle the consulate out of two hundred rubles, travelling expenses and a passport. The passport the guide had sold for 100 rubles of which Abraham had received 50. When the com- missar volunteered the information that in reality the passport had brought 500 rubles, Abraham's grief took on greater proportions and he gave willingly all possible information that might lead to the appre- hension of the scoundrel.

When Abraham was searched, they found on him, sewed into various parts of his clothing, 3300 rubles, mostly in old-time 500 ruble notes. Also two dia- monds and a ruby. Abraham wept when it was all taken from him.

Dr. Diamond and I went home in the bright morn- ing light in a droshky. The commissariat paid. It looked as if it was going to be a lovely warm day.

Galician Jews 93

The air was full of balmy breezes. Dr. Diamond shivered a little in his shirt under his overcoat.

"Do you know what I am thinking of?" he asked.

"No," I said although I guessed it.

"He had money anyway, the old Spitzbub! Glau- ben Sie mir, sehr verehrter Herr Konsul, ein alter Advocat irrt sich selten in solchen Sachen, wenn es auch ein blinder Jude ist."

But old blind Abraham never came and wept for us again. Several days afterward I learned by chance that he and the squint-eyed one, who thus came to guide him after all, had been shot that same morning about five o'clock.

Cederblom

OF all the many Swedes I have met in Russia, in adversity and pleasure, Karl Johan Ceder- blom plays the most minor role in my emo- tional life. I have only seen him once. That was at the Nikolaj railway station where we had gone to bid a friend farewell who was going into the interior of Russia as an embassy delegate. When we reached the station he had already secured a travel- ling companion. This was Cederblom, a stiff, slightly fat, blond gentleman, clad in a self-designed khaki uniform and polished tan riding puttees. He too was going into Russia as a delegate to some govern- ment, I didn't pay close attention as to which govern- ment, because at that time I wasn't nearly so orien- tated in Russian geography as I have since become. I sauntered up and down the platform with my friend and Cederblom. They had made sure of good seats in a coach that was reserved for official travellers. Cederblom was in high spirits and talked enthusias- tically of the trip and his joy over all the new and unknown that he was going out to see, and I heartily envied the two adventurers who were setting out into the great Russia where I too had dreamt of losing myself.

But my turn came. I w'as already rich in travel

and experience when, in the spring of 1918, 1 received

94

Cederblom 95

orders to go from Moscow to Simbirsk, where I was to take over the work of caring for the Austro-Hun- garian war and civilian prisoners. No Danish em- bassy delegate had been in Simbirsk, but lately a tre- mendous number of letters and accounts of hardships had come from there. The prisoners of war who had gone over to the Red Guard or the Third Internation- ale were with great energy making life a hell for the officers and men who had not yet done so. It was intended that before my departure I should have the opportunity of studying all the documents relating to the government of Simbirsk, but they couldn't lay their hands on them at the Main Consulate, and I was suddenly ordered to leave on six hours' notice a week before I expected to leave. I was to get the ticket at the railway station from a man I didn't know, five minutes before the train left. And the official pa- pers from the Central Soviet, — well, they would be sent to me! It so happened however, that when I went to Tula a few months before, I had gotten an obliging commissariat adjutant to fill out my delega- tion pass with not only Tula, but with half a score other governments as well. Among these was by a lucky presentiment also Simbirsk. But of course I said nothing about that. Besides there wasn't much time left to protest, and I wanted to go, and I did. About Simbirsk I knew nothing execept that rumour didn't make it too pleasant. However, I was at lib- erty to find the Danish bureau for civilian prisoners, die chief of which was Dr. Joseph Diamond, who was

96 The Red Garden

*■ — .

no doubt an excellent man, and one who knew what he was talking about, and who would certainly be able to tell me whatever I wanted to know. They were well acquainted with his address at the consu- late but had mislaid it for the moment.

I had a pleasant journey from Moscow to Nishnij Novgorod. In Nishnij we ran ip.to a dry snow storm although it was the middle of April. Nishnij lies grandly on three banks where the Olga and the Volga join. From the white Kremlin on the right bank, which is the Volga's left, I saw through the storm the joining of the two rivers, opened by spring, a heavy grey and blue view. Only in Russia can you be a hundred miles from the coast and yet see the sea. During the journey down the river to Kazan we had fine weather. We sailed past long lonely islands and large white cloisters with domes in blue and green colours; they appeared before the steamer at a sudden bend in the river, glided by as sights from a more beautiful reality, and disappeared as if they had never been.

During the whole journey I kept the name "Dia- mond" firmly in my mind. It seemed to me to be the only fixed point in my future existence. From Nishnij I sent a telegram haphazard to the "Danish Relief Bureau, Simbirsk," to reserve a room for me. When I came to Kazan, I went by train to Alatyr to visit some prison camps and from there I drove to Simbirsk by horse and wagon. I reached the town late one afternoon, and I saw some prisoners of war

Cederblom 97

who knew nothing either of Dr. Diamond or of a Danish Relief Bureau. After driving around a long time I saw a man whom I without thinking put down as a Jew. Luckily he happened also to be a Gali- cian civilian prisoner, and could give us information. We had to go all the way back, for Dr. Diamond lived on the outskirts of the town in a cozy green street that had almost a village air. My d*river stopped without being told before a little worm-eaten wooden house, apparently a sort of furnished room house. Nomera Gottlieba in Russian letters was over the entrance. I tugged at the bell but no sound came. Then I went in and in the kitchen I came upon a big, obese female who crossly informed me that Dr. Diamond was not home and had not been home in the last two or three days more than five min- utes at a time. I asked if I could wait for him and was shown into a boudoir-like room. On the door hung a cardboard placard and on it in four different languages; Russian, Polish, German, and Hungarian: Dr. Joseph Diamond, Advokat, Attorney at Law & Authorized Representative of the Royal Danish General Consulate. Office Hours 10-12 Except Saturday and Sunday. And in Russian below writ- ten in pencil "It's no use coming here. All the money has been given out!" The room was wretch- edly furnished: a small iron bed, a table, a chair and a bureau. Over the bureau a cracked mirror, in a comer some clothes, a satchel and a pair of rubbers, on the table some Polish and Hebrew books and a

98 The Red Garden

I I

whole pile of receipt blanks. Beyond any possible

doubt it was the Royal Danish Relief Bureau! I carried in my baggage and went out to settle with the thin-bearded Tartar who had driven me the last 60 versts. We had just succeeded in disagreeing thoroughly as to whether he was to be satisfied with the sum that we had decided upon beforehand, when a wagon came dashing towards us in full gallop. Standing up in it was a little stout gentleman with bare, bald head and rolling eyes, who swung his arms excitedly. When the wagon stopped, he drew near with a deep bow and an expression of the most kindly deference in his protruding eyes. He was shabbily dressed but wore a collar and otherwise looked like a European. He straightway put a soft hand on my arm as if he respectfully wanted to steal a march on me, and with furious haste began: "Diamond — Dr. Diamond at the Consul's service . . . Very hon- oured . . . great pleasure! . . ." and it was the truth too, I could see that. Words flowed from him, they couldn't come out quickly enough, and when in the middle of the flood of his speech he thought of something better and more pretentious, as he did constantly, then a veritable explosion took place in his mouth and the air was damp for yards around. I remember this only from his outpouring of wel- come: that for the last two days and nights he had spent most of his time at the railway station, for he had positively expected me by train, but then no one knew how they ran any more ... he had run up a

Cederblom 99

small fortune in droshky bills for the stupid asses didn't know what to charge, but that didn't make the least bit of difference for he often took money out of his own pocket for all kinds of expenses . . . but fortunately a good friend had told him that I was coming by wagon, which by the way he had already thought for a moment, and now he Was here and en- tirely at my service for whatever I might command! The room was reserved — at the "Passage," the best hotel in town but of course I could not expect the comfort that was due me. But now he would give himself freely up to the joy of seeing me and I must realize what it meant to him. Both the responsibil- ity that now was lifted from his shoulders and the security that my coming represented, for it had gone so far as threats against his life. But above all he welcomed the personal contact; the opportunity of talking again to a European and a cultured person. He was a lawyer himself and a Dr. Jur . . . but um Gottes Himmels WiUen, he forgot himself, I was sure to be tired and hungry and he himself had hardly tasted food the last few days, for Russian buffets are so; — is it not so? One is after all a cultured per- son! . . .

Here I took the opportunity to get in, not a word but a gesture towards my Tartar whose foxy phiz un- der the little black skull cap had stiffened in a hope- ful smile. The Doctor grasped my meaning as one does a stick, and like a flash, took charge of the situa- tion. It was absolutely overwhelming to see the

100 The Red Garden

> ■ ^— t

quickness with which the affable little man changed from respectful glances and an air which might al- most be described as refined to the most extreme ex- citement and uncontrollable anger during which he stamped his foot and abused the unsuspecting Tartar with the intensity of a small volcano, and a bub- bling technique in his choice of words. He bade him take God and the prophets, not excluding his own, to witness what a rascal and vile profiteer and son of a bad word he was! Or did he in his utter lazy igno- rance think for a moment that he was dealing with speculators, hoarders, Kulaks or low usuring Jews? Or perhaps he would grasp without forcible urging that it was with Kultur people, first, in all modesty, Diamond, Dr. Diamond, imperial, imperatorskij Austrian advokat, — although what did a beast of a Tartar know about law, — better say Doctor Diamond, that is to say vratch or physician, one of humanity's silent benefactors who in vain do their deeds of mercy, if you can understand that, you infamous shopthief, bread profiteer, hooligan, Kalmuck swine! And this honourable gentleman for whom you have had the honour of driving and whom you would rob! — Bah, I spit! He is a high official, a consul, an Amerikaner, who by raising his finger can have you arrested and put in prison for an indefinite period, if you are so lucky as to evade the firing squad as re- ward for your unbelievable brazenness and shameless behaviour to an inviolable diplomat. . . .

And with this Dr. Diamond took some bills out ol

Cederblom 101

the wallet he had held in readiness, paid both driv- ers and slammed the door in the face of the Tartar, who too late went into his fit of frenzy and yelled and clamoured in front of the house before he drove away, swearing, and lashing his horses.

Dr. Diamond proved himself a solicitous host. He had laid in provisions so as to regale me hand- somely: eggs, cold beef, sausage, caviar of red sal- mon, honey and a small piece of cheese. The land- lady set up a samovar and Diamond wrapped the eggs in a cloth and adroitly cooked them in the samovar. Eating utensils were scarce but there I could help him out.

Diamond at once proudly set two bottles of vodka on the table and with a waggish smile showed me a bottle of cognac he had hidden in the bed. I had no idea what it had cost but I knew that it was expensive stuff. Dr. Diamond produced a large glass for me and a quite small one for himself and poured. It gave me a queer feeling and I reflected that all that glitters is not gold and that I had 150,000 rubles on me; it still had some value at that time. Bub when I protested, Diamond looked both in surprise and en- treaty at me and said that I' really ought to drink, the glass had been M. Cederblom's who had been here a number of months the year before, a matchless chap who had lit up Dr. Diamond's existence the whole time he had been here. They had had many cozy evenings together, and in larger gatherings too of course, and with ladies, and Cederblom had sung, oh,

102 The Red Garden

SO wonderfully — in Scandinavian, and it would be such a remembrance if I now would drink from Con- sul Cederblom's glass. And of course I drank and touched my glass to that of Dr. Diamond who raised his glass and toasted me as elegantly as any Swede. After Dr. Diamond had cleared off the table I lit a pipe and sat on the bed and dozed. Dr. Diamond chattered away and told me the story of his life, his childhood in Stanislau, student days in Vienna, about his hochselige Father and his good mother who be- lieved that the angels in Paradise speak Yiddish, about his brother who died so young and the lovely children he left, a niece and a nephew, so indescrib- ably beautiful, especially the boy, who by the way was almost perversely super-talented. And Dr. Dia- mond told me examples of the boy's brightness. And of Cederblom he spoke, merrily and with impro- priety, while we sipped at a cognac toddy in which the strong stuff had not been spared. Diamond could not find words enough to praise Cederblom's charm and lovable personality and still he managed to convey his impression of me in such a manner that I could well feel myself flattered by the comparison. But nevertheless I thought with a certain anxiety of Cederblom's social talents, particularly his singing voice; I would never be able to enjoy the popularity in Simbirsk that Cederblom evidently had known how to procure. And I also became more and more tired and I was not free from feeling the hundred and fifty versts that I had ridden the last few days in a

Cederhlom 103

Russian Tjelega; even if there had been a whole load of hay in the wagon, and bells on the lead horse, be- sides, the last day! I therefore wanted to go back to a hotel but when Dr. Diamond declared that no drosh- kys were to be had on the outskirts of the town and that he would urgently ask me not to risk my life by going out at night on foot, in which case he would have to guide me anyway as I did not know the town, I found no powers of resistance, but agreed to spend the night with him. I was to sleep in Dr. Diamond's bed and he would fix up a place for himself on the floor.

I removed my collar and boots and lay down on the bed with my fur coat over me. The bed clothes and my travelling rug I left for Dr. Diamond. I only remember seeing him in a woollen undershirt with a small, dirty shirt bosom jutting out from under his chin. . . .

I suppose that I slept especially soundly that night as I usually do, so I must conclude that it really was a great uproar that made me tumble out of bed and ask what the matter was. Dr. Diamond was already up and had struck a light. He stood by the wall and listened; his bare legs visible beneath a flowered nightshirt. From the next room we could hear ex- cited voices and noise of furniture being moved about as if those who were quarrelling were also using them against one another. . . . "It is Tatjana Mikailovna who has come home!" I succeeded in getting out of Dr. Diamond who was intently following the tide of

104 The Red Garden

h--- ■- ■-■'■ ' ' ■■ — — — — ■■- '' 4

battle. — "Who did you say?" — "A young lady who has the room next door. She is a dentistry stu- dent." "Does she draw teeth for some one in the middle of the night?" — The uproar had in the mean- time died down a little and only a low bickering could be heard from the other side of the wall. Dr. Diamond came over and sat down on the edge of the bed and said to me in a whisper while he constantly kept an ear cocked at the wall. "You don't know Tatjana Mikailovna, Mr. Consul, but you will think that she is an unusually pretty girl — and intelligent. She is a little wild, that is, passionate, you under- stand. But what about morals taken altogether here in Russia? You know, Mr. Consul, you are a young man who have been around a bit, I can't tell you any- thing new and yet I assure you it is worse than you think. In the schools even . . . conditions so un- believable. ... I won't even mention the married women who are utterly without shame. Tatjana is seventeen. Just at present she has an intrigue with an Austrian cadet. He wants to marry her; can you imagine his parents' faces, old Magyar nobility? But she no doubt has become tired of him. The one with her to-night is a German civilian prisoner, Beh- ren, who has cast in his lot with the Bolsheviki. He is the commander of the Karl Marx Battalion and has great influence. . . ."

Here my patience burst. I restrained a strong de- sire to swear and in a sharp tone ordered the light out and Dr. Diamond to bed. But it was impossible

Cederhlom 105

for me to fall asleep again, although I counted to a hundred both forwards and backwards. First I had been bitten so forcibly about the wrists that they itched as if they were on fire. Also I had become wakeful and let myself be influenced by the least noise, and it was very still of course and I tossed and was now too warm and now too cold, and thought not without bitter irony of how meaningless and casual it was that I lay here side by side with Dr. Diamond and what that baggage of a Tatjana looked like any- way.

An hour or three passed before I fell asleep again but then I slept right through undisturbed. The sun shone through the windows wihen I woke. Dr. Diamond was fully dressed and had put the room in the most beautiful order. At the side of my bed was a wooden stand on which there was a bowl of warm water and a piece of soap. Dr. Diamond now sat at the table, and now walked melancholy and very cau- tiously up and down the room. When I showed signs of being awake, he livened up immensely, Wished me good morning, inquired as to my health and deplored deeply and at length the night's dis- turbances and said that as usual he had been up since 7 o'clock. It was then half past eleven.

I went out and borrowed the kitchen so as to take a wash in my rubber bathtub. When I was coming back through the small, half dark corridor I opened the wrong door and before I knew what I was doing, stood in a room that at first sight I might easily have

106 The Red Garden

taken for Dr. Diamond's, for it was of the same size and furnished in the same way. Luckily there was no one in it for I was rather lightly clad after my bath. The bureau was littered with perfume bottles, empty and half-filled, and there were plenty of traces of face powder everywhere. A pair of black silk stock- ings with holes in the toe were coiled on the bed. And as I was about to go, I noticed, on the wall be- tween the Tsar and Lenin, a handsomely framed pho- tograph of a man whom I thought I knew. He was clad in a khaki uniform and shiny puttees, and across the picture written in a firm hand was a dedication from Karl Johan Cederblom, Royal Delegate.

Dr. Diamond

WHILE we were at breakfast in the Passage Hotel I said to Dr. Diamond that it would be necessary to find rooms for the consulate as soon as possible and that I would be glad if he would exert himself to make the arrangements need- ful. It was Dr. Diamond's least trick to carry out this wish. As early as the next day I was able to move into the house of a rich JeWish dry goods mer- chant, Tschardegskij who during the flight eastward from Kiev had stopped in Simbirsk temporarily and had there bought a house and lived on his money and occasional business deals. Dr. Diamond was a friend of the family, and they gladly accepted diplo- matic billeting. It was always an extra protection in unquiet times. Under my supervision a large Dan- ish flag was made out of two Russian ones of the old regime. Day and night our "Dannebrog" waved over the street door and was the cause of warranted sensation. It was a beautiful flag, not quite accurate perhaps in regard to regulation dimensions but with an immense diplomatic split. The Lord only knows where it is now.

At first after my arrival in the town my time was taken up in making visits to the various commissa- riats. Dr. Diamond and I drove from one Herod to

another and while I presented myself, and in poor

107

108 The Red Garden

* -■—■-■■ ' i ■ ■ ■■ - — I I mi ■ I. ^m^^^^^m^

Russian gave my view of the stale of affairs, he stood with pent-up impatience at my side and looked with concern at the bullet holes in the ceiling plaster or out of a window by way of diversion. But no sooner did I get stuck than he was there in an instant, had grasped the gist of the conversation and explained both what I had said and that which I had not suc- ceeded in saying and that which I had never thought of saying, much better than 1 could have done myself.

If I had for a minute been inclined to think that perhaps it was best to limit official co-operation with Dr. Diamond as much as possible, the ungrateful thought at any rate choked itself at birth. To be- gin with, this idea never even occurred to Dr. Dia- mond, and secondly there was no sense at all in let- ting an aesthetic prejudice stand in the way of the utilization of Dr. Diamond's unmistakable ability and energy. And a more helpful and disinterested secretary than Dr. Diamond I would be hard put to find. I knew well that philanthropy alone was not the motive power. But I also knew that the sole ob- ject of his willingness to serve was to please me per- sonally and it is also very possible that he had his own ax to grind, but at any rate I never discovered it. He Ytras naturally self-sacrificing and quite tender in his relation to me, whom he regarded with the feeling of both a father and a servant. How of- ten have I not been almost ashamed of myself that I could not return his affection as it deserved.

Dr. Diamond's own demands on the material good-

Dr. Diamond 109

ness of life were ridiculously small, but for his friends nothing was too good and their worst digres- sions were forgivable. In relation to financial mat- ters he possessed a sober rational outlook on life excluding that kind of disastrous hazard in regard to the treasury which is connected with a more roman- tic, Christian view of money. His authority among the civilian prisoners was about that of a Rabbi and in all disputes he took the part of judge. And the Christian prisoners had, in spite of all, more faith in him than they had in each other. The officers among the prisoners did not favour him but he treated them with a deferential and inexpensive politeness that dis- armed them, and besides he arranged loans for them gratis among the various Jewish civilian prisoners who had made money and wanted to have their earn- ings converted into Austrian valuation in a profitable manner. In short how much better wasn't he than the more ornamental lieutenants I often saw as' secre- taries for my colleagues. They had nothing but girls on their minds and stood with their heels to- gether and hopes of promotion in their hearts every time an old much-bemedalled fashion-plate trooped up and naively thought it was all for his sake. To- ward the private soldier they were overbearing and promised him sulphur and hell fire as soon as they got home from war captivity as if they were living in the undisturbed bureaucracy of old Austria and not in Red Russia. Dr. Diamond knew how to stick his finger in the ground and smell his way. He was

110 The Red Garden

humble when it cost nothing and rough to the borders of the poetical when there was no danger. He went to the authorities and waited, was turned away and still came back and waited until he got in. He wrote and I signed. He ran and I rode. He shrieked himself hoarse at the railing and I showed myself in the room with a silent gloomy expression. During the whole time he was with me we worked together in the best of harmony and understanding. His only moral fault was that he did not have the natural ability to differentiate between truth and un- truth. It wasn't seldom that I caught him in the very act of inexcusable slips of memory. But even then his childlike and open self-confidence was so strong that it was more often I who became embarrassed. I remember that once when he had gone out I no- ticed on his table a letter that had been given to him to dispatch days before. It was a delicate matter concerning a camp commander who privately was selling the flour that he received for the maintenance of the prisoners. As we had constantly received no answer I had requested Dr. Diamond to make a move in the case. But there lay the letter! When Dr. Diamond came in and unsuspectingly had seated himself at the writing table, I took a chair across from him and in a casual tone inquired whatever could be the matter with the commissariat that they did not reply to such a serious epistle. Dr. Dia- mond raised his eyes to Heaven and wondered long and fluently at the Russian lack of politeness, thrift,

Dr. Diamond 111

honesty, punctuality, etc., at their laziness, ignorance, impudence, and so on and so on. He had by the way even remonstrated with the commissar in regard to the unseemly, shocking and wholly scandalous as- pect of the matter. . . . Just then he caught sight of the letter which I had placed quite conspicuously on the table and grew pale but did not give in. With splendid self-control he kept up a flood of talk for yet a while, while he deftly pushed a sheet of white paper over tlie evidence. "If you wish, Mr. Consul, I'll go to the commissar again to-day!" I took the sheet of white paper as if lost in thought and folded it eight times each way while I reflected what an im- possible situation it would be if I took the letter, not to speak of irreparably destroying the existing rela- tion of mutual confidence. I therefore said that per- haps after all it would be best to wait; one never knew whether the commandant concerned would take it into his head to revenge himself, and who knew whether or not the commissar was personally interested in the matter . . . and Dr. Diamond upon whose forehead great beads of sweat had sprung out, nodded as eagerly as if it was his own most innermost thought I uttered, and constantly kept his gaze away from the uncovered letter. No, I would rather go up to the commissar myself one of these days. If Dr. Diamond would privately secure a pound of tobacco for me that I could take along as a sort of little chance mark of attention that would be! the best way. And then I, quite nervous myself from repugnance, got up and

112 The Red Garden

went without taking the letter. But Dr. Diamond who was no fool, vowed afterward and even behind my back that I was not only an exceptional man and a fine man but also an unusally wise man, a joy to my father and a true ornament for the nation that had bred me.

Dr. Diamond had remained out in Nomera Gott- lieba for personal and practical reasons. He liked the place and the surroundings and the people. The food was "koscher" and he played "Preference" with his host Gottlieb. Besides, the rent was cheap, a fact which helped the Relief treasury as it defrayed house rent under the head of office expenses. Dr. Diamond constantly received a tremendous number of civilian prisoners who came to him for all possible purposes and although he often complained that he had no peace by night or by day, yet he was, after all, also proud of being sought after by so many people. The money for aid to the civilian prisoners he still paid out at the old office because friend Tschardeskij was loth to have on his stairs such a frightful invasion by his kindred race.

One evening about eight o'clock as I sat at home and drank tea the war prisoner who acted as servant came in and said there was a Jew outside the house who absolutely would speak with me and despite the late hour vehemently insisted on seeing me. I went out to him and recognized the little Jew of whom I had asked my way the evening I came to Simbirsk. His first name was Majer and he was never known

Dr. Diamond 113

otherwise. As soon as he saw me he burst out as if he were parting with his soul: ''Herr Konsulat. Der Dr. Diamond liegt ermordet zu Hause!" I wasted no time in words but dragged the little Jew along down the street. So Dr. Diamond's constant and sedulously expressed forebodings had come true! Majer leaped rather than walked a few inches be- hind me and supplemented breathlessly his first la- conic communication. Well, thank the Lord, Dia- mond had not been murdered. It had only been very close to it. But the money that he had had for dis- tribution had been stolen. Majer had come — so he related — about half past seven to get the thirty rubles that he was entitled to monthly but which he had not received because of the intervening events. He had no doubt but that I would pay him, however. There was no one at home at Gottlieb's, and neither did he get any answer when he knocked at Dr. Diamond's door. He was about to turn away discouraged when he thought he heard groaning from within the room. He knocked again and shouted: "This is Majer! Are you at home, Dr. Diamond?" — "Ach, help help!" he now heard in Dr. Diamond's voice, "have the rob- bers gone?" — "Robbers?" cried Majer, "Have you been attacked, dear Doctor? Are you alive?" — "Yes, I'm alive," wailed Dr. Diamond, "but half dead and tied up. The door is locked. Hurry! Get the police' and the Consul!"

Meanwhile we had reached Dr. Diamond's lodg- ing. A knot of people stood in front of the house

114 The Red Garden

and I had great difficulty in making a way through the little corridor and into the room which was filled with militia, people in uniform and people in civilian clothes, rifle-men and young detectives in black blouses, mere boys with big automatic pistols at tlieir belts. On the bed sat the chief of police, my good acquaintance Vladimir Stefanovitch Kruvaschin, a huge indolent Russian of such unusual dimensions that he, even while sitting, towered over his right hand man, the little, cruel and loathsome Caucasian Grigorij Nikolajevitch, who was conducting the pro ceedings. Opposite these two men stood Dr. Dia mond, freed from his bonds and apparently un harmed although seen in the lamp light he was yel lowish pale and trembling. I greeted him and Via dimir Stefanovitch, who invited me to sit on the bed with him and at once struck me for cigarettes. The little Caucasian imperturbably continued the hearing. He had planted himself before Dr. Diamond and his gruesome, stabbing eyes bored into the other's wavering ones. Each of his questions was accom- panied by a slash of his riding whip against his boots, a sound which just as regularly caused the frayed nerves of Dr. Diamond to react so that he shuddered and showed the whites of his eyes. Poor man, when one knew him as I did it was all too easy to imagine what he had already gone through, and now, in addi- tion to that, he was being treated not as a victim of an audacious crime but rather as a suspected crim- inal being cross-examined.

Dr. Diamond 115

A record was being made of what the robbers had taken from Dr. Diamond. There had been two men, both masked. The room showed visible signs of how brutally they had set about the robbery. All of Dr. Diamond's possessions lay where they had been thrown in the middle of the floor, which was littered with pieces of clothing, books and hundreds of re- ceipt blanks. Diamond's handsome, tan briefcase — a lonely reminder of the wealthy Lemberg law- yer— had been slashed open on both sides with a sharp knife. Diamond shuddered with horror and rage as he demonstrated how they had flayed out the contents.

The booty of the bandits was several thousand nibles of the consulate's money, about 15000 rubles which Dr. Diamond had had in safe-keeping for his fellow-countrymen, a trifling sum of his own and four dainty caracal skins (Persian) of the very- finest quality that he had bought during the first year of his exile for twelve rubles each but which were now at least worth their 225 rubles apiece and not even at that price would he have sold them had it been off'ered him.

The swarthy Caucasian sneered and curtly inter- rupted Dr. Diamond in his flood of words: "Enough! Answer what I'm asking you! What did the robbers look like?" — Dr. Diamond: "I told you they were masked!" — "That's no answer. Don't you remem- ber any special marks of recognition?" — Dr. Dia- mond did not remember any. — "Were they tall or

116 The Red Garden

short, what kinguage did they speak and what kind of clotlies did they wear?" — "One was tall and the other was short," opinioned Dr. Diamond, "and they spoke only in gestures and wore brown military capes as every one else in Russia does now." — "And their eyes?" asked the Caucasian. "What did they look like?" — "As murderers' eyes, I suppose," said Dr. Diamond With a faint sputtering. — "What kind of weapons did they carry?" — "Revolvers," answered Dr. Diamond and added with marked distaste, "and knives." He measured with his hands a length that at any rate was not too small. — "What kind of re- volvers?"— Dr. Diamond shook his head angrily. — "I mean what system, what type?" — But here Dr. Diamond lost his patience. If his life had been at stake he would have had to speak. "Are you com- pletely crazy, man! Do you suppose that people notice the calibre of a revolver when one is stuck up under their nose? And with absolute murderous in- tent? Are you trying to make a fool of me or are you as stupid as a musjik?"

I wondered at Dr. Diamond's courage for of course to get rough with the police was not the right method of procedure. They are no wiser in Russia than elsewhere and they are quick to utilize the natural advantages that their position offers. Dr. Diamond must have been very upset to forget this and in such a careless manner to let himself get awiay from the cautiousness and self-control, that he always im- pressed on me. The Caucasian, apparently well sat-

Dr. Diamond 117

isfied, dictated to the man taking down the record that Dr. Diamond had refused to answer the questions of the police, that he had entangled himself in self-con- tradictions and had given other suspicious signs of an uneasy conscience. Kruvaschin leaned toward me, took a cigarette from my case and said smilingly: "Thought so, Mr. Consul, the damn Jew has arranged the whole thing himself. I saw which way Grigorij Nikolajevitch was heading at once. He is a crafty fellow, we have worked together for twenty years and I assure you, he can smell a criminal a mile away." What could I do in tlie face of the turn that the case had suddenly taken. I assured Kruvaschin of my sincere belief in the Doctor's innocence, I protested, I threatened — without result. Vladimir Stefano- vitch showed his white teeth under the black droop- ing moustache and said with fine and smiling insinua- tion: "Calm yourself, Mr. Consul, there is not tJie least talk of bothering you. Tschestno slovo: I give you my word of honour that you will not be mixed up in the case except possibly as a witness. This has been a pleasure. Will you allow me to take another cigarette?"

Two detectives had in the meanwhile gone through Dr. Diamond's pockets and searched his person. Be- fore they started off with him I promised him full personal rnd official aid and bade him take it all courageously. But he had gone utterly to pieces and blamed only himself for the fate that he had met. It was a heartrending sight to see him taken away. I

118 The Red Garden

was soon left alone in the ravaged room and was also about to go when little Majer popped out from somewhere and wrung his hands and said with a wail in his voice: "Ach, what misfortune, Mr. Consulate! Will they shoot the poor Doctor at once? And I who didn't get my thirty rubles! And God knows, Mr. Consulate, I can't get along without them. . . ." The floor was littered with receipts. I found one that had not been used, filled it out, had him sign it and paid him the money after which he withdrew thanking me and bowing deeply.

When I came home the people in the house had already heard of the assault but the full extent of the misfortune was now first made clear to them. Then a wailing and a weeping arose for Dr. Diamond was deeply loved there in the house both as Jew and as man, for his unswerving willingness to serve and for his; personality and when even I apparently could not save him from prison and possibly worse things, what security did life then off"er here on earth. The good people saw the ground open at their feet and spoke of selling house and home and continuing the flight eastward, to Siberia, to Kharbin, to Japan or preferably all the way to America. I tried to repre- sent to them that Dr. Diamond would soon be set free, for after all he had been arrested on the most casual suspicion. But they looked deeper into things than I did. They did not doubt that it was the police themselves who had committed the robbery. In the militia all kinds of elements were to be found,

Dr. Diamond 119

also people just released from jail and as for Vladi- mir Stefanovitch and Grigorij Nikola jevitch, they are worse than the worse Bolsheviki. By some miracle or other, or else perhaps just because of their arrant rascality, they had understood how to retain the lead- ership of the criminal police, also after the Bolshe- viki had taken the helm, although no people were more filled with the spirit of reaction and Black Hun- dred than they. Mr. Tschardefskij had no good ex- pectations from that quarter, quite the contrary.

My exertions to free the Doctor were unsuccessful. He was brought to the prison of the government and to get his release before his case had come up was out of the question. As always in Russia I was shown from one to the other and at last back to the first one again, but the only result was that Dr. Dia- mond had food brought in to him, which Tscharef- skij had by the way already attained through a little arrangement with one of the jailers.

Tscharefskij's expectations did not fail of fulfill- ment. One day he came and told me that both he and others who were friends of Dr. Diamond had been visited by an emissary of the police who re- ported that Dr. Diamond's case looked very serious. Evidence of his participation in the activities of a counter-revolutionary organization had been found, and if he was turned over to the Bolshevistic counter espionage he would most certainly be shot at once. However the criminal police did not believe that he was as guilty as he appeared to be and if a sum of

120 The Red Garden

( — I

money was placed at their disposal — to be accounted for later of course — they would work in the right places to save his life. If not, perhaps he would be shot already that night. 4000 rubles had been de- manded of Tscharefskij and he had temporarily paid out 1000. — "What shall I do," he said to me quite shaken, "they have the upper hand and I can't let the Doctor be murdered; and then I thought too that pos- sibly the consulate could reimburse me for my ex- penditure as the case most closely concerns it."

Under these circumstances I said to Tscharefskij that I would contribute, if he could procure 4000 rubles from Dr. Diamond's friends. In any case it would be cheaper to act together and at once. The money was gotten together and already the day after, I went to Vladimir Stefanovitch Kruvaschin who, broad-shouldered and mighty, received me at once in his little office where many a criminal and now and then an innocent person must have suffered bitter pangs. The Caucasian was there with him but when we had talked a little about the weather and smoked a couple of cigarettes, Kruvaschin found something for him to do so that he was obliged to leave the office which he did with all visible signs of angry and re- pressed ill-will. When we were alone, we lit cigar- ettes again and I broached the case and explained to him how the arrest of Dr. Diamond and the constant suspicion that rested on him not only affected the consulate but also the royal Danish government. I had therefore decided to offer a reward of 5000 rub-

Dr. Diamond 121

les for the apprehension of the robbers to be divided amona; the detectives at the discretion of Kruvaschin. The 2500 I would pay at once and the rest would follow when Dr. Diamond was set free. Kruvaschin showed his teeth in a smile and said that the police were absolutely forbidden to accept money. During the twenty years that he had been its chief there had not yet been a single instance of any detective accept- ing as much as a kopeck for work it was his duty to perform. But in this instance where it was a foreign government that did the £tat the honour of wishing to reward its dangerous exertions he would deviate from his principles and accept the money — but only under receipt. Then he took the envelope I handed him and without looking at the contents wrote on a little strip of paper: "Received 2500 rubles on ac- count— Kruvaschin." We talked a while longer, shook hands and parted. The receipt I had rolled together in a little ball; it lay on the floor when I went. The last I saw was the face of Grigorij Nikolajevitch, the Caucasian scowling at me from the window.

Shortly afterward Dr. Diamond was released. His stay in prison had lasted three weeks. His nat- ural optimism had carried him through this bad time. However, there had been many cultured people to talk to in the jail. Also they had played cards and thanks to the friendly jailer had constantly received food and mail from without. But Diamond did not know how much his life had hung by a thread. It

122 The Red Garden

' — -t

was Tscharefskij who informed him what his friends

had suffered on his account, and what it had cost

them. Dr. Diamond was so moved that he wept.

"I'll repay them, Mr. Consul, and every one else and with six per cent. I'm no beggar. My legal practice the last year before the war brought me in 25,000 Austrian kroner and I own two houses in Lemberg. But I will not because of that forget what I owe the hearts and willing help of my friends." Again and again he referred to the charity that had been shown him and no one could be more effusively grateful for a trifling and matter of course evidence of friendship than Dr. Diamond for whom goodness and sacrifice was the daily salt of life.

As far as the further development of the case is concerned, there is only this to tell, that the robbers were never found but that Kruvaschin unexpectedly was arrested several weeks later and put in the gov- ernment prison while Grigorij Nikolajevitch took over the leadership of the criminal police. Whether he thought that we only had done what was right from our point of view or whether he had been afraid to get into trouble with the consulate — or other reasons were present, I leave unsaid. The fact remained that we got no further unpleasantries from that quarter.

Hapsburg Officers

THE 22nd Evacuation Hospital in Simbirsk is a large red building tliat has never been quite finished. It lies north of the town, out on the high left bank of the Volga and from its front can be seen an enchanting view of the waters and islands of the river and particularly of the high sky that is never the same.

Dr. K. the Austrian chief physician showed

me around. It was shortly after my arrival in Sim- birsk and my first visit to the hospital. We went through long corridors where old, unshaven prisoners of war in dirty smocks but otherwise naked ceased sweeping to look dully after us. In the big ward where there were more than fifty beds, the air was thick with poverty and the sweat and wretchedness of many people. The sick for the most part were up and sat on the edge of the beds staring dully in front of them, or looked at those who whittled, patched clothes or repaired their frightful wrecks of boots or who ate some extra food that they themselves had bought. Some played cards with filthy rags that apparently had served through the campaign and sev- eral years of war imprisonment. There were few real invalids. They had already been exchanged. There was only an occasional one whose arm had

been amputated and several who were blind or in-

123

124 The Red Garden

sane. Otherwise they were men with internal sick- nesses and injuries, cancer, heart trouble, asthma and tuberculosis. Yes, tuberculosis, they all had that, I think, they looked so white and grey. But there are so many technical names for its various stages. The sick did not pay much attention either to the physi- cian or myself. They didn't rise, and used no polite phrases. They were indifferent and could no longer be disappointed.

In the small rooms we visited last it was at once apparent that here it was not worth while to keep up the patient's hopes by giving his sickness a name. For here sickness was Death and those who lay here knew they were to die. This look can easily be recognized on the sick if one has ever had the oppor- tunity of observing it. Such a parsimonious expres- sion comes into their faces because they will not any more waste their last thoughts on anything between Heaven and Earth, but lie and impress on them- selves that which in this brief respite is most impor- tant to keep fixed in the memory. They lie nice and quiet in their beds, every little unnecessary exer- tion they must pay for with much cold sweat and coughing. How wretched they are, and thin and weak! They can barely talk, their voices leave them only as weak breaths. Even when they lie stretched out on their backs and still as mice, it is as cautiously as if the mere pressure of their own weight could squeeze out what little life there was still left in them and they therefore wished to remain hovering in the

Hapsburg Officers 125

air. Some had been long dying. Illness had slowly tapped their strength for three long years of impri- sonment.

Maybe they could live a while longer, perhaps three weeks, perhaps three months, perhaps a year. But some had been overtaken with galloping speed in less than three months. They still remembered what the others had forgotten, that they had once been sturdy warriors who strode along and drew breath without thinking of their bodies. And now their emaciated remnants lay here, with those others whom they, as healthy men, had known as hopeless sick, and if it had not been for the bit of soul that still burned in the mute eyes, one could believe that these wax-like limbs and deathly pale faces already waited for the unplaned board cofiins. But corpses are less uncanny. Corpses are nothing and make no appeal even to the intellect and these living unextinguished eyes with their dumb expression of black suffering and unfathomed, fixed idea filled me with horror and to me it seemed brutal that I should make my rounds here as healthy and well-dressed as any kingly supernumerary, here where the abyss of death al- ready divided for ever he who was to live from them who knew they were to die — .

When Dr. K, had shown me round he said: "I

presume you will also pay a visit to the honourable officers. My assistant will show you the way. I can't very well," he added a bit embarrassed. "You see, in a hospital there can only be one chief and that

126 The Red Garden

must be the physician. But that is a point of view which all officers do not find equally easy to acquire. Perhaps you will find that they have already formed an ill opinion of you because you called on me first." He smiled as he said this and we parted.

The officers occupied a very large and airy room on the second floor. There wasn't much more furni- ture than the beds that stood in two precise rows along the walls on the long sides of the room. In the middle of the floor was a table where chess was being played as I entered. All rose to their feet at once with the exception of several who were bedrid- den. An elderly officer with a markedly shrunken turkey neck and small chin whiskers took three for- mal paces forward to meet me. He was a colonel and the ranking officer. I also recited my titles and we again bowed stiffly to each other. The colonel presented me for the staff officers: there were two more, a Lt. colonel and a major. The major pre- sented me for the lieutenants and the senior lieuten- ants lor the cadets. The ceremony was a long one and in dead earnest. Those who were presented for me snapped their heels together with vigour, also those who had their bare feet in hospital slippers. The three senior officers and I seated ourselves at the table while the younger officers formed a ring around us some distance away. Only the staff^ offi- cers took part in the conversation. The others stood and alternately put the right leg in front of the left and vice versa.

Hapsburg Officers 127

The three staff officers were individually good types and taken altogether were almost an allegory. First the colonel, kaiserlich und koniglich, right to his finger tips, thin legged in his riding breeches, gentleman, and with the same expression of intelli- gence in his face as a playing card. He wore a faded dark-blue uniform with gold braid, apparently an old dress uniform that he was wearing out in his war imprisonment. The lieutenant-colonel on his right was a Hungarian, stout and elderly, but not un- warlike, with a petticoat-chaser's eye and with that slightly dandified arrogance over his person which is the special contribution of the Magyar to the Bal- kan type. And finally the Major on his left who had only to open his mouth to betray his native Vienna. He completed the trio with his spotted, slipshod tunic that sat on him like a house jacket and his round- bearded and jovial face in whose smile belief in all big words and values melted as sugar in water. The colonel took the lead haltingly and the two others sup- ported him. The conversation dragged. I noticed that in the interrupted chess game both the white bish- ops, strange to say, stood on the black! When the conventional things had been said, we fell of course

head first into the hospital conditions and Dr. K.

got it right and left. He encouraged Bolshevism, undermined the authority of the officers over the men, destroyed discipline and ignored him, the colo- nel, who was the much higher ranking officer. "I am here as a convalescent and not as a patient and

128 The Red Garden

I I

am in full possession of my faculties and he can therefore not deny me the right to exercise the author- ity due me as ranking officer in purely military and disciplinary affairs especially When I see how matters are going under his leadership! But he wants to set me at nought here and he isn't ashamed to play the Russians, those infamous traitors of the fatherland, against me. He threatens to discharge me as cured, a plan which approaches high treason as only by get- ting home as an invalid can I again place my arms and my experience at the disposal, in the field, of my Kaiser and War Lord." — The major smothered a smile and I hastened to acquaint the colonel with the fact that he was touching on a dangerous theme as I as a representative of a neutral power ought not to get the impression that the invalids in whose re- patriation I was interested, possibly were less dis- abled than their testimonials certified.

Before I left I had a talk alone with the colonel in the little room that he occupied together with the lieu- tenant-colonel. The colonel uncovered from under his bed some heavily bound and sealed packages. "It is of the utmost importance," he said, "to get these documents to their address: the k. u. k. War De- partment in Vienna." For an instant I was slightly nonplussed. Everything seemed to indicate that I was within a hand's breath of military secrets of the Lord knows what importance and danger. The colo- nel continued : "As former ranking officer in the camp at D (he named one of the big Siberian camps for

Hapsburg Officers 129

officers where several thousands at a time could be interned) I have at my transfer as invalid to this hospital, from which I contrary to my expectations have not yet been sent further on and home, thought it my duty to bring with me from the camp at D vari- ous records of matters that came up. As camp com- mander I felt responsible for their fate and the exist- ing anarchistic conditions in Russia make it hardly possible for me to leave these matters in the care of the Russians until after the end of the war. These are records of the various affairs of honour that na- turally have come up in a camp where so many of- ficers are lumped together under difficult conditions, for the most part court of honour decisions handed down under my chairmanship. Reports of the re- lations between various officers and documents relat- ing to breaches of discipline — you will readily see of what extraordinary and deciding importance this material is for future promotions in the army and how quite especially the certainty that these matters are in their proper place will tend to strengthen the spirit in the army and tlie common responsibility and feeling of honour in the officers' corps. As it furthermore would be a personal satisfaction to me and in some degree I think, a service by which I will be remembered, to have contributed my part to the successful sending home of the documents, I urgently request you to stand by me in word and deed!"

I sat mutely and weighed in my thoughts the four heavy packages. Considered as luggage they were

130 The Red Garden

not inviting. To get out of it I asked if they really contained nothing but that which the colonel had mentioned. But that didn't work; I was free to cen- sor, or, what was easier, to take his word of honour as an officer. Well, then I had to promise to do my best to find a way out but I stipulated that in case I succeeded in getting a hospital train^ for the acknowl- edged invalids, that then the colonel was to take his packages along with him to Moscow where he could turn them over to the Danish General Consu- late if he feared to risk getting them through the customs at the frontier — .

Some time afterward I received a telegram that I would get a hospital train for my invalids as soon as possible. Two Russian physicians also came and began to classify the prisoners of war all over again, both those in the hospital and the camp and those who worked in the town, without regard as to whether they had been acknowledged invalids two or three times beforehand. However they were not severe and the procedure was not wholly unfair, for in many places in Siberia invalid certificates had been cheap.

One afternoon I was visited by an officer from the hospiital. Von S was his name and he was a first lieutenant in a dragoon regiment and a tall blond fellow with a somewhat brusk manner. He came to complain that the commission had rejected him al- though he had certification that he was unfit for mili- tary service because of bronchitis. He wanted me

Hapsburg Officers 131

very much to influence the commission so that he could leave any way. I insisted that if the physi- cians who knew their business couldn't make an inva- lid out of him, then I, who knew nothing about it could not possibly help him even if he had pulmon- ary consumption. My task was to see that those pri- soners of war were sent away who had received law- ful invalid certificates at the hands of the commis- sion. But the lieutenant was balky and at last he actually became rough and said that other delegates had a diff'erent idea of their position, etc., and one word led to another until I had to ask him to step outside and convince himself that he wasn't in an Austrian barrack but in a royal Danish consulate.

Already the next morning I received a letter in which I was informed in correct phrases that Ober- leidnant von S felt that his honour as an officer was impugned by my utterances and a negotiation with whomever I would show the honour of entrust- ing the care of my interest would be welcomed with pleasure. With assurance of sincere and particular esteem, von R k. u. k., Hauptman in the k. u. k. Heavy Artillery Regiment Nr. 8.

When my secretary. Dr. Josef Diamond, showed up I gave him the communication which he read and reread without saying a word. He had become very pale. "Um Gottes Himmel Willen!" he said hoarsely, "You're not going to risk your life at the caprice of this crack-brained lieutenant! Besides he must be mad to call you out! Your life is precious

132 The Red Garden

I — ,

to us all and then to think in what a frightful situation, with what responsibility and in what sorrow you would leave me, if — which God forbid. . . ."

Dr. Diamond had talked himself into a state of emotion but as I was not yet dead, I explained to him that we could hardly fight at once since then we should probably have to take turns at shooting with my little vest pocket automatic. The duel at the very soonest could only take place at a remote date. Dr. Diamond quickly felt much reassured. I then told him that in the meanwhile something had to be done so that the laws of honour could be satisfied, if not for any other reason than because of the Danish colours which I was pledged to represent with full honour and glory, and I proposed therefore that he, as my friend and closest companion in Simbirsk, should look up this Captain von R and discuss the matter seriously with him and without showing any compliance that could be misconstrued.

Dr. Diamond excused himself but there was no firmness in his refusal. I could see that the affair stimulated his spirit of enterprise and his weakness for sensation! He was to negotiate with a von R. as a second and therefore on an equal footing. That was something new and unusual. He agreed on the condition that I would loan him a black necktie.

When Dr. Diamond had once agreed he immed- iately became so hasty and arrogant that I had fears he, under the impression that the danger to my life belonged to a distant and uncertain future, would

Hapsburg Officers 133

be a party to, if not propose himself, some such ar- rangement as horsepistols at six paces distance until the magazines were empty or one of the combatants, lay on the field of honour. Therefore I bade him go easy and told him that if the affair could not be settled with honour, I would, both as the offended and challenged party, choose the weapons, and I chose swords. "Swords!" Dr. Diamond burst out in disappointment. He had an aversion for cold steel. "Of course," I said loftily, "I only want to discipline the fellow. I'm no murderer!" Dr. Diamond's natural good nature and love of mankind at once came to life again. He praised my magnaminity and promised to turn the conversation in this direc- tion when he met the other second.

Dr. Diamond's mission had hardly so honourable a course as he had thought it would have. When von R. guessed on what errand Dr. Diamond came to him (for Dr. Diamond came a great deal to the of- ficers as middleman for loans in rubles which were to be paid back in kroner) he choked a fit down with the greatest difficulty and rushed so vehemently at the unfortunate Dr. Diamond that the latter had to withdraw in confusion. Afterward von R. revenged himself further by overwhelming the lieutenant colo- nel, who had been the cause of this unspeakable af- front, with quite uncontrolled expressions so that the two gentlemen brawled. From this on they were as air for each other in the room, while a pair of their colleagues sitting on the edge of a bed but otherwise

134 The Red Garden

' — — I

correct, decided what the consequences of the broil

must be and recorded and signed the result which

finally was handed to the colonel for sanction and

keeping.

All this I did not learn from Dr. Diamond who had been very reserved and close-mouthed regarding the result of his mission. It was the jovial major whose sympathy I had won who thus enlightened me and at the same time gave his merriment free rein over what had passed : "You should have seen von R. when your Dr. Diamond trooped up and presented himself as second. I had to go outside and laugh. You see, he's Polish, this von R. and he has a strong drop of the Blood himself as one can easily see and he is of course quite fanatic on that point. But then too, it was a wild idea of yours and you would have had another duel on your hands if I hadn't stepped in and explained that the downright heavenly conditions in your native land excused your behaviour and natural blindness in regard to that question. We Austrians have good reason to envy you, that you in that sense have been dealt with less lavishly from nature's hand than we — "

I did not attempt to contradict his ideas and for a moment he was lost in thought of the idyllic Denmark of which he had heard so many things and which he wanted so much to make his new fatherland. ""Wir sind ja so wie so kaput," he added with melancholy. Before we parted he offered to arrange my difference with the OberleutJiant von S for me, which I ac-

Hapsburg Officers 135

cepted gladly. As the affair was now commonly known, a reconciliation could no longer be brought about, and it was therefore definitely decided that we, after the close of the World War, should meet at a place, which at that time should be more closely agreed upon, to engage in a rencontre with swords until blood flowed. The protocol was drawn up and signed in triplicate of which the colonel received one for his collection. The major personally brought me my copy and as we sat in the garden smoking Crown cigars bought in Moscow and beside a bottle of port wine procured by Dr. Diamond, he made a gesture in the direction of the hospital and said in his broad Viennese while his pleasant smile caressed the wine in his glass: "It's easy enough for us to sit here now and grin at it all. But out of regard for the others and for their prestige that was the best way. With these people one shouldn't reason. It's a mere waste of words. If they ever stand in a rag- ged uniform and sell papers in Kartnerstrasse then they will be no wiser and they will die in the be- lief that it is an episode. God grant that their duels are settled in Heaven!" And with that he set his glass to his mouth and emptied it.

The week after a hospital train came from Moscow and took my invalids back there and further on to the border. I stood at the hospital and saw the little crowd of a couple of hundred turn down Kazan- skaja. At the head were two wagons with the heavi-

136 The Red Garden

est baggage and the very weakest of the prisoners of war who never could have endured the six or seven versts down through the town and out on the other side to the railway station. It was pitiful enough to see them on top of the loads, wasted and chalky white and constantly groping with their thin hands among the bundles and chests and the colonel's four heavy packages for a position that would ward off the remorseless jolting of the springless wagon. Then came the colonel and a group of officers and lastly the men in a tattered mass flanked by a pair of indifferent Red Guards. It was a friendly summer evening as light and mild and full of fragrance and peace as if there were nothing in the world but na- ture's gentle beauty to protect the happiness of human beings. But the people on this broad green Volga street were an unreal flock of ghosts and a column of worn and beaten prisoners who with bent backs dragged themselves toward home where they felt it so much easier to die. I wonder if these broken beings who with a terrible parodied effect wore the grey-blue remnants of their uniforms, still remem- bered how they had marched away to the sound of drums and trumpets, now that they without any other sound than their own tired and irregular footbeats were driven in a flock to the last marche macabre of their military life?

When the column far down the street turned from Kazanskaja into Gontcharofskaja, a half score men had already dropped back at various distances from

Hapsburg Officers 137

the main body. They were unable to keep up and no one looked back to see what had become of them. For such is war and war's eternal law.

The Red Garden

IT was in July, 1918. Since three o'clock in the morning I had been pacing back and forth in the railway station of Alatyr, waiting for the train from Kazan. It did not come. In the waiting room it was impossible to breathe for snoring peasants and soldiers. I could have stayed in the hotel and slept, but it was in the town and the town was as usual five full versts from the station so that the train might come and go many times before I could be notified. No, there was nothing to do but wait; to doze on a travelling bag with my back against the wall or with my head in my hands; to eat soup and drink tea at the buff'et when that variation offered itself, and to light one cigarette with the butt of another.

Along toward noon an armoured train arrived from the north. Now I had that to look at, anyway. It was manned by a choice selection of human scum, escaped convicts with low criminal foreheads and runaway schoolboys whose pale features bore marks of mental bewilderment and early physical decay. But otherwise it was an impressive train. First class Entente ware. In front was an armoured tower with a quick-firing cannon in a revolving turret and with slits in the sides from whose depths machine gun barrels gleamed brassily. After this came the mon- ster locomotive, monitor-grey like the rest. It was

138

The Red Garden 139

armoured right down to the tracks. In organic con- nection with it was a long corridor car for riflemen, large enough to hold the entire crew of the armoured train during combat. The rest of the train was com- posed of three elegant slender Pullman cars, four tjepluskas, or box cars, with ammunition and bag- gage, and last of all a flat freight car on which stood a black automobile and an aeroplane.

About four or five o'clock in the afternoon, there were signs of life in the train, and the engine began to get up steam. It was going to leave and in the direction I wanted to go. I asked a railway man if he thought there was any chance of my being able to go along. "What do you want to mix up with that Red gang for?" he said, when he saw and heard that I was a stranger. "Unless, of course, you want to go straight to hell. But now it looks as if we might be getting rid of this plague. The Czecho- slovaks are on their way. There's fighting going on not a hundred versts from here. And anybody can see what the Reds are good for. They put seven- teen wounded in the hospital, but what kind of Wounds do you think they were? Swine, I say, ten- fold damned swine! But the Commandant is stand- ing over there, if you want to ask him anything."

The Commandant of the train was a sailor from the Baltic fleet. He stood on a step which was let down from the locomotive and he was talking with the engineer. I ventured to interrupt the conversa- tion by handing him my card and dropping a few

140 The Red Garden

words to the effect that it was hard for a diplomatic official to have to waste his valuable time at a damned tiresome railway station. The sailor seemed to understand. He was an unusually handsome fellow with a winning smile. There wasn't a trace of vil- lainy about him. With blue eyes in a sun-burnt, 'dare-devil face, a fine curved nose and soft curly hair, he answered completely to the standard descrip- tion of the hero in a regular boy's story. Apparently such people do exist if one only knows where to look for them. His smile hinted at dazzling teeth as he bade me take a seat in the foremost car and if the guard made any trouble to refer him to his per- mission. Anyway he was coming himself, right away. We were leaving in ten minutes.

I entered the foremost car. There was no guard and the door to the corridor stood open. The first compartment was a kitchen. On a table stood a sam- ovar and an alcohol burner. On the floor lay a pile of wheat bread in round loaves, a half -emptied firkin of butter, and several large biscuit boxes with sugar. It was almost impossible to get sugar. I had only a little left in the bottom of my canteen but now I got it filled.

The next compartment was apparently for various members of the crew, but they were not there at the moment. The floor and the sofa seats were littered with playing cards, bits of bread, cast-off clothing, tin cups, cartridges and sun flower seeds. The bag- gage racks were crammed with rifles, belts, sabres,

The Red Garden 141

and hand grenades and with leather articles for mil- itary use, ranging from belts and map cases to boots and brand new saddles. In a compartment further along, the sleeping accommodations on one side had been broken down, and the wall from ceiling to floor covered with a General Staff map over the Volga re- gion. To all appearances this was the Commandant's compartment. I went in, put my travelling bag, which contained several hundred thousand rubles, well up under the berth, cleared off the seat and sat down on my raincoat to await events.

On the window shelf stood a typewriter which had been stopped in the middle of an order. There was also a pile of papers, telegrams and such, but I was not a spy. On the other hand, I had no scruples about studying the map to see if it were possible to find out how far the Czecho-Slovak revolts had reached. But, unfortunately, it contained no stra- tegic information. Then I examined two Browning revolvers and a Maxim pistol and found them loaded in all chambers. Lastly I turned to the room's col- lection of books, which consisted of one volume of Jules Verne's collected romances, in Russian transla- tion, and a hideously printed pamphlet dealing wiith history's most notorious regicides. The cover showed a picture of the execution of Louis the Six- teenth. The red blood flowed in a thick stream down over the black letters. ,

Both ten and twenty minutes passed but I was still alone in the car. I was almost going to sleep. But

142 The Red Garden

I decided not to when I heard a woman humming in the next compartment, the last in the row, and the only one I hadn't investigated. Soon I lit a cigarette and went out into the corridor.

The door was ajar and gave me enough of a glimpse of the compartment to disconcert me con- siderably. It was hung from ceiling to floor with vari-coloured silks, and these were again decorated with military portraits and other photographs be- longing to the international genre: nu artistique. A crumpled sky-blue quilt covered the sofa, and on the floor a genuine rug had been folded several times. It looked as if the services of a powerful vacuum cleaner would do it no harm. At the window, be- fore a dressing table and with her back to the door, sat a feminine figure clad in thin silky pyjamas that still had a pink tendency, and with her feet in a pair of downy slippers.

With deftly wielded brush and pencil she was in the act of practicing that intimate art which women the whole world over call to their aid in the hope of renewing and refining their natural charm. But what struck the eye more than anything else in this extraordinary boudoir on wheels was the really opu- lent collection of bottles, flasks and vials, jars, cans and jugs which were spread over the whole room wherever there was a vacant edge. Judging has- tily, there was everything here from expensive Pari- sian essences to brutally stinking Moscow perfumes, rice powder, lip sticks, alum and cold cream, pom-

The Red Garden 143

ades, rouges, formols, sublimates, and other much more mysterious antiseptic arcana.

The occupant of the compartment had ceased hum- ming and was subjecting the resuh of her work to a critical inspection. Presumably she caught a