I
One of the Crowd
The snow glittered brilliantly in the frosty sunshine on the afternoon of March 11, 1917. The Nevsky Prospect was almost deserted. The air was tense with excitement and it seemed as if from the girdling faubourgs of the beautiful city of Peter the Great rose a low, muffled rumbling as of many voices. Angry, passionate voices, rolling like distant thunder, while in the heart of the city all was still and quiet. A mounted patrol stood here or there, or paced the street with measured step. There were bloodstains on the white snow, and from the upper end of the Prospect still resounded the intermittent crack of rifles.
How still those corpses lay over there! Their teeth grinned ghastlily. Who were they and how did they die? Who knew or cared? Perhaps a mother, a wife. … The fighting was in the early morning. A crowd—a cry—a command—a volley—panic—an empty street—silence—and a little group of corpses, hideous, motionless in the cold sunshine!
Stretched across the wide roadway lay a cordon of police disguised as soldiers, prostrate, firing at intervals. The disguise was an attempt to deceive, for it was known that the soldiers sided with the people. “It is coming,” I found myself repeating mechanically, over and over again, and picturing a great cataclysm, terrible and overwhelming, yet passionately hoped for. “It is coming, any time now—tomorrow—the day after—”
What a day the morrow was! I saw the first revolutionary regiments come out and witnessed the sacking of the arsenal by the infuriated mob. Over the river the soldiers were breaking into the Kresty Prison. Crushing throngs surged round the Duma building at the Tauride Palace, and towards evening, after the Tsarist police had been scattered in the Nevsky Prospect, there rose a mighty murmur, whispered in awe on a million lips: “Revolution!” A new era was to open. The revolution, so thought I, would be the Declaration of Independence of Russia! In my imagination I figured to myself a huge pendulum, weighted with the pent-up miseries and woes of a hundred and eighty millions of people, which had suddenly been set in motion. How far would it swing? How many times? When and where would it come to rest, its vast, hidden store of energy expended?
Late that night I stood outside the Tauride Palace, which had become the centre of the revolution. No one was admitted through the great gates without a pass. I sought a place midway between the gates and, when no one was looking, scrambled up, dropped over the railings, and ran through the bushes straight to the main porch. Here I soon met folk I knew—comrades of student days, revolutionists. What a spectacle within the palace, lately so still and dignified! Tired soldiers lay sleeping in heaps in every hall and corridor. The vaulted lobby, where Duma members had flitted silently, was packed almost to the roof with all manner of truck, baggage, arms, and ammunition. All night long and the next I laboured with the revolutionists to turn the Tauride Palace into a revolutionary arsenal.
Thus began the revolution. And after? Everyone knows now how the hopes of freedom were blighted. Truly had Russia’s foe, Germany, who despatched the proletarian dictator Lenin and his satellites to Russia, discovered the Achilles heel of the Russian revolution! Everyone now knows how the flowers of the revolution withered under the blast of the Class War, and how Russia was replunged into starvation and serfdom. I will not dwell on these things. My story relates to the time when they were already cruel realities.
My reminiscences of the first year of Bolshevist administration are jumbled into a kaleidoscopic panorama of impressions gained while journeying from city to city, sometimes crouched in the corner of crowded boxcars, sometimes travelling in comfort, sometimes riding on the steps, and sometimes on the roofs or buffers. I was nominally in the service of the British Foreign Office, but the Anglo-Russian Commission (of which I was a member) having quit Russia, I attached myself to the American Y.M.C.A., doing relief work. A year after the revolution I found myself in the eastern city of Samara, training a detachment of boy scouts. As the snows of winter melted and the spring sunshine shed joy and cheerfulness around, I held my parades and together with my American colleagues organized outings and sports. The new proletarian lawgivers eyed our manoeuvres askance, but were too preoccupied in dispossessing the “bourgeoisie” to devote serious attention to the “counter revolutionary” scouts, however pronounced the anti-Bolshevik sympathies of the latter. “Be prepared!” the scouts would cry, greeting each other in the street. And the answer, “Always prepared!” had a deep significance, intensified by their boyish enthusiasm.
Then one day, when in Moscow, I was handed an unexpected telegram. “Urgent”—from the British Foreign Office. “You are wanted at once in London,” it ran. I set out for Archangel without delay. Moscow, with its turbulences, its political wranglings, its increasing hunger, its counterrevolutionary conspiracies, with Count Mirbach and his German designs, was left behind. Like a bombshell followed the news that Mirbach was murdered. Leaning over the side of the White Sea steamer, a thousand kilometres from Moscow, I cursed my luck that I was not in the capital. I stood and watched the sun dip low to the horizon; hover, an oval mass of fire, on the edge of the blazing sea; merge with the water; and, without disappearing, mount again to celebrate the triumph over darkness of the nightless Arctic summer. Then, Murmansk and perpetual day, a destroyer to Pechenga, a tug to the Norwegian frontier, a ten-day journey round the North Cape and by the fairyland of Norwegian fjords to Bergen, with finally a zigzag course across the North Sea, dodging submarines, to Scotland.
At Aberdeen the control officer had received orders to pass me through by the first train to London. At King’s Cross a car was waiting, and knowing neither my destination nor the cause of my recall I was driven to a building in a side street in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square. “This way,” said the chauffeur, leaving the car. The chauffeur had a face like a mask. We entered the building and the elevator whisked us to the top floor, above which additional superstructures had been built for war-emergency offices.
I had always associated rabbit-warrens with subterranean abodes, but here in this building I discovered a maze of rabbit-burrow-like passages, corridors, nooks, and alcoves, piled higgledy-piggledy on the roof. Leaving the elevator my guide led me up one flight of steps so narrow that a corpulent man would have stuck tight, then down a similar flight on the other side, under wooden archways so low that we had to stoop, round unexpected corners, and again up a flight of steps which brought us out on the roof. Crossing a short iron bridge we entered another maze, until just as I was beginning to feel dizzy I was shown into a tiny room about ten feet square where sat an officer in the uniform of a British colonel. The impassive chauffeur announced me and withdrew.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Dukes,” said the colonel, rising and greeting me with a warm handshake. “I am glad to see you. You doubtless wonder that no explanation has been given you as to why you should return to England. Well, I have to inform you, confidentially, that it has been proposed to offer you a somewhat responsible post in the Secret Intelligence Service.”
I gasped. “But,” I stammered, “I have never—May I ask what it implies?”
“Certainly,” he replied. “We have reason to believe that Russia will not long continue to be open to foreigners. We wish someone to remain there to keep us informed of the march of events.”
“But,” I put in, “my present work? It is important, and if I drop it—”
“We foresaw that objection,” replied the colonel, “and I must tell you that under war regulations we have the right to requisition your services if need be. You have been attached to the Foreign Office. This office also works in conjunction with the Foreign Office, which has been consulted on this question. Of course,” he added, bitingly, “if the risk or danger alarms you—”
I forget what I said but he did not continue.
“Very well,” he proceeded, “consider the matter and return at 4:30 p.m. tomorrow. If you have no valid reasons for not accepting this post we will consider you as in our service and I will tell you further details.” He rang a bell. A young lady appeared and escorted me out, threading her way with what seemed to me marvellous dexterity through the maze of passages.
Burning with curiosity and fascinated already by the mystery of this elevated labyrinth I ventured a query to my young female guide. “What sort of establishment is this?” I said. I detected a twinkle in her eye. She shrugged her shoulders and without replying pressed the button for the elevator. “Good afternoon,” was all she said as I passed in.
Next day another young lady escorted me up and down the narrow stairways and ushered me into the presence of the colonel. I found him in a fair-sized apartment with easy chairs and walls hidden by bookcases. He seemed to take it for granted that I had nothing to say. “I will tell you briefly what we desire,” he said. “Then you may make any comments you wish, and I will take you up to interview—er—the Chief. Briefly, we want you to return to Soviet Russia and to send reports on the situation there. We wish to be accurately informed as to the attitude of every section of the community, the degree of support enjoyed by the Bolshevist Government, the development and modification of its policy, what possibility there may be for an alteration of regime or for a counterrevolution, and what part Germany is playing. As to the means whereby you gain access to the country, under what cover you will live there, and how you will send out reports, we shall leave it to you, being best informed as to conditions, to make suggestions.”
He expounded his views on Russia, asking for my corroboration or correction, and also mentioned the names of a few English people I might come into contact with. “I will see if—er—the Chief is ready,” he said finally, rising; “I will be back in a moment.”
The apartment appeared to be an office but there were no papers on the desk. I rose and stared at the books on the bookshelves. My attention was arrested by an edition of Thackeray’s works in a decorative binding of what looked like green morocco. I used at one time to dabble in bookbinding and am always interested in an artistically bound book. I took down Henry Esmond from the shelf. To my bewilderment the cover did not open, until, passing my finger accidentally along what I thought was the edge of the pages, the front suddenly flew open of itself, disclosing a box! In my astonishment I almost dropped the volume and a sheet of paper slipped out on to the floor. I picked it up hastily and glanced at it. It was headed “Kriegsministerium, Berlin,” had the German Imperial arms imprinted on it, and was covered with minute handwriting in German. I had barely slipped it back into the box and replaced the volume on the shelf when the colonel returned.
“A—the—er—Chief is not in,” he said, “but you may see him tomorrow. You are interested in books?” he added, seeing me looking at the shelves. “I collect them. That is an interesting old volume on Cardinal Richelieu, if you care to look at it. I picked it up in Charing Cross Road for a shilling.” The volume mentioned was immediately above Henry Esmond. I took it down warily, expecting something uncommon to occur, but it was only a musty old volume in French with torn leaves and soiled pages. I pretended to be interested. “There is not much else there worth looking at, I think,” said the colonel, casually. “Well, goodbye. Come in tomorrow.”
I wondered mightily who “the Chief” of this establishment could be and what he would be like. The young lady smiled enigmatically as she showed me to the elevator. I returned again next day after thinking overnight how I should get back to Russia—and deciding on nothing. My mind seemed to be a complete blank on the subject in hand and I was entirely absorbed in the mysteries of the roof-labyrinth.
Again I was shown into the colonel’s sitting-room. My eyes fell instinctively on the bookshelf. The colonel was in a genial mood. “I see you like my collection,” he said. “That, by the way, is a fine edition of Thackeray.” My heart leaped! “It is the most luxurious binding I have ever yet found. Would you not like to look at it?”
I looked at the colonel very hard, but his face was a mask. My immediate conclusion was that he wished to initiate me into the secrets of the department. I rose quickly and took down Henry Esmond, which was in exactly the same place as it had been the day before. To my utter confusion it opened quite naturally and I found in my hands nothing more than an édition de luxe printed on India paper and profusely illustrated! I stared bewildered at the shelf. There was no other Henry Esmond. Immediately over the vacant space stood the life of Cardinal Richelieu as it had stood yesterday. I replaced the volume, and trying not to look disconcerted turned to the colonel. His expression was quite impassive, even bored. “It is a beautiful edition,” he repeated, as if wearily. “Now if you are ready we will go and see—er—the Chief.”
Feeling very foolish I stuttered assent and followed. As we proceeded through the maze of stairways and unexpected passages which seemed to me like a miniature House of Usher, I caught glimpses of treetops, of the Embankment Gardens, the Thames, the Tower Bridge, and Westminster. From the suddenness with which the angle of view changed I concluded that in reality we were simply gyrating in one very limited space, and when suddenly we entered a spacious study—the sanctum of “—er—the Chief”—I had an irresistible sentiment that we had moved only a few yards and that this study was immediately above the colonel’s office.
It was a low, dark chamber at the extreme top of the building. The colonel knocked, entered, and stood at attention. Nervous and confused I followed, painfully conscious that at that moment I could not have expressed a sane opinion on any subject under the sun. From the threshold the room seemed bathed in semi-obscurity. The writing desk was so placed with the window behind it that on entering everything appeared only in silhouette. It was some seconds before I could clearly distinguish things. A row of half-a-dozen extending telephones stood at the left of a big desk littered with papers. On a side table were numerous maps and drawings, with models of aeroplanes, submarines, and mechanical devices, while a row of bottles of various colours and a distilling outfit with a rack of test tubes bore witness to chemical experiments and operations. These evidences of scientific investigation only served to intensify an already overpowering atmosphere of strangeness and mystery.
But it was not these things that engaged my attention as I stood nervously waiting. It was not the bottles or the machinery that attracted my gaze. My eyes fixed themselves on the figure at the writing table. In the capacious swing desk-chair, his shoulders hunched, with his head supported on one hand, busily writing, there sat in his shirtsleeves—
Alas, no! Pardon me, reader, I was forgetting! There are still things I may not divulge. There are things that must still remain shrouded in secrecy. And one of them is—who was the figure in the swing desk-chair in the darkened room at the top of the roof-labyrinth near Trafalgar Square on this August day in 1918? I may not describe him, nor mention even one of his twenty-odd names. Suffice it to say that, awe-inspired as I was at this first encounter, I soon learned to regard “the Chief” with feelings of the deepest personal regard and admiration. He was a British officer and an English gentleman of the finest stamp, absolutely fearless and gifted with limitless resources of subtle ingenuity, and I count it one of the greatest privileges of my life to have been brought within the circle of his acquaintanceship.
In silhouette I saw myself motioned to a chair. The Chief wrote for a moment and then suddenly turned with the unexpected remark, “So I understand you want to go back to Soviet Russia, do you?” as if it had been my own suggestion. The conversation was brief and precise. The words Archangel, Stockholm, Riga, Helsingfors recurred frequently, and the names were mentioned of English people in those places and in Petrograd. It was finally decided that I alone should determine how and by what route I should regain access to Russia and how I should despatch reports.
“Don’t go and get killed,” said the Chief in conclusion, smiling. “You will put him through the ciphers,” he added to the colonel, “and take him to the laboratory to learn the inks and all that.”
We left the Chief and arrived by a single flight of steps at the door of the colonel’s room. The colonel laughed. “You will find your way about in course of time,” he said. “Let us go to the laboratory at once. …”
And here I draw a veil over the roof-labyrinth. Three weeks later I set out for Russia, into the unknown.
I resolved to make my first attempt at entry from the north, and travelled up to Archangel on a troopship of American soldiers, most of whom hailed from Detroit. But I found the difficulties at Archangel to be much greater than I had anticipated. It was 600 miles to Petrograd and most of this distance would have to be done on foot through unknown moorland and forest. The roads were closely watched, and before my plans were ready autumn storms broke and made the moors and marshes impassable. But at Archangel, realizing that to return to Russia as an Englishman was impossible, I let my beard grow and assumed an appearance entirely Russian.
Failing in Archangel I travelled down to Helsingfors to try my luck from the direction of Finland. Helsingfors, the capital of Finland, is a busy little city bristling with life and intrigue. At the time of which I am writing it was a sort of dumping-ground for every variety of conceivable and inconceivable rumour, slander, and scandal, repudiated elsewhere but swallowed by the gullible scandalmongers, especially German and ancien regime Russian, who found in this city a haven of rest. Helsingfors was one of the unhealthiest spots in Europe. Whenever mischance brought me there I lay low, avoided society, and made it a rule to tell everybody the direct contrary of my real intentions, even in trivial matters.
In Helsingfors I was introduced at the British Consulate to an agent of the American Secret Service who had recently escaped from Russia. This gentleman gave me a letter to a Russian officer in Viborg, by name Melnikoff. The little town of Viborg, being the nearest place of importance to the Russian frontier, was a hornets’ nest of Russian refugees, counterrevolutionary conspirators, German agents, and Bolshevist spies, worse if anything than Helsingfors. Disguised now as a middle-class commercial traveller I journeyed on to Viborg, took a room at the hotel I had been told Melnikoff stayed at, looked him up, and presented my note of introduction. I found him to be a Russian naval officer of the finest stamp and intuitively conceived an immediate liking for him. His real name, I discovered, was not Melnikoff, but in those parts many people had a variety of names to suit different occasions. My meeting with him was providential, for it appeared that he had worked with Captain Cromie, late British Naval Attaché at Petrograd. In September, 1918, Captain Cromie was murdered by the Bolsheviks at the British Embassy and it was the threads of his shattered organization that I hoped to pick up upon arrival in Petrograd. Melnikoff was slim, dark, with stubbly hair, blue eyes, short and muscular. He was deeply religious and was imbued with an intense hatred of the Bolsheviks—not without reason, since both his father and his mother had been brutally shot by them, and he himself had only escaped by a miracle. “The searchers came at night,” he related the story to me. “I had some papers referring to the insurrection at Yaroslavl which my mother kept for me. They demanded access to my mother’s room. My father barred the way, saying she was dressing. A sailor tried to push past, and my father angrily struck him aside. Suddenly a shot rang out and my father fell dead on the threshold of my mother’s bedroom. I was in the kitchen when the Reds came and through the door I fired and killed two of them. A volley of shots was directed at me. I was wounded in the hand and only just escaped by the back stairway. Two weeks later my mother was executed on account of the discovery of my papers.”
Melnikoff had but one sole object left in life—to avenge his parents’ blood. This was all he lived for. As far as Russia was concerned he was frankly a monarchist, so I avoided talking politics with him. But we were friends from the moment we met, and I had the peculiar feeling that somewhere, long, long ago, we had met before, although I knew this was not so.
Melnikoff was overjoyed to learn of my desire to return to Soviet Russia. He undertook not only to make the arrangements with the Finnish frontier patrols for me to be put across the frontier at night secretly, but also to precede me to Petrograd and make arrangements there for me to find shelter. Great hostility still existed between Finland and Soviet Russia. Skirmishes frequently occurred, and the frontier was guarded jealously by both sides. Melnikoff gave me two addresses in Petrograd where I might find him, one at a hospital where he had formerly lived, and the other of a small café which still existed in a private flat unknown to the Bolshevist authorities.
Perhaps it was a pardonable sin in Melnikoff that he was a toper. We spent three days together in Viborg making plans for Petrograd while he drank up all my whisky except a small medicine bottle full which I hid away. When he had satisfied himself that my stock was really exhausted he announced himself ready to start. It was a Friday and we arranged that I should follow two days later, on Sunday night, the 24th of November. Melnikoff wrote out a password on a slip of paper. “Give that to the Finnish patrols,” he said, “at the third house, the wooden one with the white porch, on the left of the frontier bridge.”
At six o’clock he went into his room, returning in a few minutes so transformed that I hardly recognized him. He wore a sort of seaman’s cap that came right down over his eyes. He had dirtied his face, and this, added to the three-days-old hirsute stubble on his chin, gave him a truly demoniacal appearance. He wore a shabby coat and trousers of a dark colour, and a muffler was tied closely round his neck. He looked a perfect apache as he stowed away a big Colt revolver inside his trousers.
“Goodbye,” he said, simply, extending his hand; then stopped and added, “let us observe the good old Russian custom and sit down for a minute together.” According to a beautiful custom that used to be observed in Russia in the olden days, friends sit down at the moment of parting and maintain a moment’s complete silence while each wishes the others a safe journey and prosperity. Melnikoff and I sat down opposite each other. With what fervour I wished him success on the dangerous journey he was undertaking for me! Suppose he were shot in crossing the frontier? Neither I nor anyone would know! He would just vanish—one more good man gone to swell the toll of victims of the revolution. And I? Well, I might follow! ’Twas a question of luck, and ’twas all in the game!
We rose. “Goodbye,” said Melnikoff again. He turned, crossed himself, and passed out of the room. On the threshold he looked back. “Sunday evening,” he added, “without fail.” I had a curious feeling I ought to say something, I knew not what, but no words came. I followed him quickly down the stairs. He did not look round again. At the street door he glanced rapidly in every direction, pulled his cap still further over his eyes, and passed away into the darkness—to an adventure that was to cost him his life. I only saw him once more after that, for a brief moment in Petrograd, under dramatic circumstances—but that comes later in my story.
I slept little that night. My thoughts were all of Melnikoff, somewhere or other at dead of night risking his life, outwitting the Red outposts. He would laugh away danger, I was sure, if caught in a tight corner. His laugh would be a devilish one—the sort to allay all Bolshevist suspicions! Then, in the last resort, was there not always his Colt? I thought of his past, of his mother and father, of the story he had related to me. How his fingers would itch to handle that Colt!
I rose early next day but there was not much for me to do. Being Saturday the Jewish booths in the usually busy little marketplace were shut and only the Finnish ones were open. Most articles of the costume which I had decided on were already procured, but I made one or two slight additions on this day and on Sunday morning when the Jewish booths opened. My outfit consisted of a Russian shirt, black leather breeches, black knee boots, a shabby tunic, and an old leather cap with a fur brim and a little tassel on top, of the style worn by the Finns in the district north of Petrograd. With my shaggy black beard, which by now was quite profuse, and long unkempt hair dangling over my ears I looked a sight indeed, and in England or America should doubtless have been regarded as a thoroughly undesirable alien!
On Sunday an officer friend of Melnikoff’s came to see me and make sure I was ready. I knew him by the Christian name and patronymic of Ivan Sergeievitch. He was a pleasant fellow, kind and considerate. Like many other refugees from Russia he had no financial resources and was trying to make a living for himself, his wife, and his children by smuggling Finnish money and butter into Petrograd, where both were sold at a high premium. Thus he was on good terms with the Finnish patrols who also practised this trade and whose friendship he cultivated.
“Have you any passport yet, Pavel Pavlovitch?” Ivan Sergeievitch asked me.
“No,” I replied, “Melnikoff said the patrols would furnish me with one.”
“Yes, that is best,” he said; “they have the Bolshevist stamps. But we also collect the passports of all refugees from Petrograd, for they often come in handy. And if anything happens remember you are a ‘speculator.’ ”
All were stigmatized by the Bolsheviks as speculators who indulged in the private sale or purchase of foodstuffs or clothing. They suffered severely, but it was better to be a speculator than what I was.
The Author, Disguised
When darkness fell Ivan Sergeievitch accompanied me to the station and part of the way in the train, though we sat separately so that it should not be seen that I was travelling with one who was known to be a Russian officer.
“And remember, Pavel Pavlovitch,” said Ivan Sergeievitch, “go to my flat whenever you are in need. There is an old housekeeper there who will admit you if you say I sent you. But do not let the house porter see you—he is a Bolshevik—and be careful the house committee do not know, for they will ask who is visiting the house.”
I was grateful for this offer, which turned out to be very valuable.
We boarded the train at Viborg and sat at opposite ends of the compartment, pretending not to know each other. When Ivan Sergeievitch got out at his destination he cast one glance at me but we made no sign of recognition. I sat huddled up gloomily in my corner, obsessed with the inevitable feeling that everybody was watching me. The very walls and seat seemed possessed of eyes! That man over there, did he not look at me—twice? And that woman, spying constantly (I thought) out of the corner of her eye! They would let me get as far as the frontier, then they would send word over to the Reds that I was coming! I shivered and was ready to curse myself for my fool adventure. But there was no turning back! Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit, wrote Virgil. (I used to write that on my Latin books at school—I hated Latin.) “Perhaps some day it will amuse you to remember even these things”—cold comfort, though, in a scrape and with your neck in a noose. Yet these escapades are amusing—afterwards.
At last the train stopped at Rajajoki, the last station on the Finnish side of the frontier. It was a pitch-dark night with no moon. Half-a-mile remained to the frontier, and I made my way along the rails in the direction of Russia and down to the wooden bridge over the little frontier river Sestra. I looked curiously across at the gloomy buildings and the dull, twinkling lights on the other bank. That was my Promised Land over there, but it was flowing not with milk and honey but with blood. The Finnish sentry stood at his post at the bar of the frontier bridge, and twenty paces away, on the other side, was the Red sentry. I left the bridge on my right and turned to look for the house of the Finnish patrols to whom I had been directed.
Finding the little wooden Villa with the white porch I knocked timidly. The door opened, and I handed in the slip of paper on which Melnikoff had written the password. The Finn who opened the door examined the paper by the light of a greasy oil lamp, then held the lamp to my face, peered closely at me, and finally signalled to me to enter.
“Come in,” he said. “We were expecting you. How are you feeling?” I did not tell him how I was really feeling, but replied cheerily that I was feeling splendid.
“That’s right,” he said. “You are lucky in having a dark night for it. A week ago one of our fellows was shot as we put him over the river. His body fell into the water and we have not yet fished it out.”
This, I suppose, was the Finnish way of cheering me up. “Has anyone been over since?” I queried, affecting a tone of indifference. “Only Melnikoff.” “Safely?” The Finn shrugged his shoulders. “We put him across all right—a dalshe ne zanyu … what happened to him after that I don’t know.”
The Finn was a lean, cadaverous-looking fellow. He led me into a tiny eating-room, where three men sat round a smoky oil lamp. The window was closely curtained and the room was intolerably stuffy. The table was covered with a filthy cloth on which a few broken lumps of black bread, some fish, and a samovar were placed. All four men were shabbily dressed and very rough in appearance. They spoke Russian well, but conversed in Finnish amongst themselves. One of them said something to the cadaverous man and appeared to be remonstrating with him for telling me of the accident that had happened to their colleague a week before. The cadaverous Finn answered with some heat. “Melnikoff is a chuckle-headed scatterbrain,” persisted the cadaverous man, who appeared to be the leader of the party. “We told him not to be such a fool as to go into Petrograd again. The Redskins are searching for him everywhere and every detail of his appearance is known. But he would go. I suppose he loves to have his neck in a noose. With you, I suppose, it is different. Melnikoff says you are somebody important—but that’s none of our business. But the Redskins don’t like the English. If I were you I wouldn’t go for anything. But it’s your affair, of course.”
We sat down to the loaves and fishes. The samovar was boiling and while we swilled copious supplies of weak tea out of dirty glasses the Finns retailed the latest news from Petrograd. The cost of bread, they said, had risen to about 800 or 1,000 times its former price. People hacked dead horses to pieces in the streets. All the warm clothing had been taken and given to the Red army. The Chrezvychayka (the Extraordinary Commission) was arresting and shooting workmen as well as the educated people. Zinoviev threatened to exterminate all the bourgeoisie if any further attempt were made to molest the Soviet Government. When the Jewish Commissar Uritsky was murdered Zinoviev shot more than 500 at a stroke; nobles, professors, officers, journalists, teachers, men and women, and a list of a further 500 was published who would be shot at the next attempt on a Commissar’s life. I listened patiently, regarding the bulk of these stories as the product of Finnish imagination. “You will be held up frequently to be examined,” the cadaverous man warned me, “and do not carry parcels—they will be taken from you in the street.”
After supper we sat down to discuss the plans of crossing. The cadaverous Finn took a pencil and paper and drew a rough sketch of the frontier.
“We will put you over in a boat at the same place as Melnikoff,” he said. “Here is the river with woods on either bank. Here, about a mile up, is an open meadow on the Russian side. It is now ten o’clock. About three we will go out quietly and follow the road that skirts the river on this side till we get opposite the meadow. That is where you will cross.”
“Why at the open spot?” I queried, surprised. “Shall I not be seen there most easily of all? Why not put me across into the woods?”
“Because the woods are patrolled, and the outposts change their place every night. We cannot follow their movements. Several people have tried to cross into the woods. A few succeeded, but most were either caught or had to fight their way back. But this meadow is a most unlikely place for anyone to cross, so the Redskins don’t watch it. Besides, being open we can see if there is anyone on the other side. We will put you across just here,” he said, indicating a narrow place in the stream at the middle of the meadow. “At these narrows the water runs faster, making a noise, so we are less likely to be heard. When you get over run up the slope slightly to the left. There is a path which leads up to the road. Be careful of this cottage, though,” he added, making a cross on the paper at the extreme northern end of the meadow. “The Red patrol lives in that cottage, but at three o’clock they will probably be asleep.”
There remained only the preparation of “certificates of identification” which should serve as passport in Soviet Russia. Melnikoff had told me I might safely leave this matter to the Finns, who kept themselves well informed of the kind of papers it was best to carry to allay the suspicions of Red guards and Bolshevist police officials. We rose and passed into another of the three tiny rooms which the villa contained. It was a sort of office, with paper, ink, pens, and a typewriter on the table.
“What name do you want to have?” asked the cadaverous man.
“Oh, any,” I replied. “Better, perhaps, let it have a slightly non-Russian smack. My accent—”
“They won’t notice it,” he said, “but if you prefer—”
“Give him an Ukrainian name,” suggested one of the other Finns, “he talks rather like a Little Russian.” Ukrainia, or Little Russia, is the southwest district of European Russia, where a dialect with an admixture of Polish is talked.
The cadaverous man thought for a moment. “ ‘Afirenko, Joseph Ilitch,’ ” he suggested, “that smacks of Ukrainia.”
I agreed. One of the men sat down to the typewriter and carefully choosing a certain sort of paper began to write. The cadaverous man went to a small cupboard, unlocked it, and took out a box full of rubber stamps of various sizes and shapes with black handles.
“Soviet seals,” he said, laughing at my amazement. “We keep ourselves up to date, you see. Some of them were stolen, some we made ourselves, and this one,” he pressed it on a sheet of paper leaving the imprint “Commissar of the Frontier Station Bielo’ostrof,” “we bought from over the river for a bottle of vodka.” Bielo’ostrof was the Russian frontier village just across the stream.
I had had ample experience earlier in the year of the magical effect upon the rudimentary intelligence of Bolshevist authorities of official “documents” with prominent seals or stamps. Multitudinous stamped papers of any description were a great asset in travelling, but a big coloured seal was a talisman that levelled all obstacles. The wording and even language of the document were of secondary importance. A friend of mine once travelled from Petrograd to Moscow with no other passport than a receipted English tailor’s bill. This “certificate of identification” had a big printed heading with the name of the tailor, some English postage stamps attached, and a flourishing signature in red ink. He flaunted the document in the face of the officials, assuring them it was a diplomatic passport issued by the British Embassy! This, however, was in the early days of Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks gradually removed illiterates from service and in the course of time restrictions became very severe. But seals were as essential as ever.
A Forged Certificate of Identification
When the Finn had finished writing he pulled the paper out of the typewriter and handed it to me for perusal. In the top left-hand corner it had this heading:
Extraordinary Commissar of the Central Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Red Armymen’s Deputies.
Then followed the text:
This is to certify that Joseph Afirenko is in the service of the Extraordinary Commissar of the Central Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Red Armymen’s Deputies in the capacity of office clerk, as the accompanying signatures and seal attest.
“In the service of the Extraordinary Commission?” I gasped, taken aback by the amazing audacity of the thing.
“Why not?” said the cadaverous man coolly, “what could be safer?”
What, indeed? What could be safer than to purport to be in the service of the institution whose duty it was to hound down all, old or young, rich or poor, educated or illiterate—who ventured to oppose and sought to expose the pseudo-proletarian Bolshevist administration? Nothing, of course, could be safer! S volkami zhitj, po voltchi vitj, as the Russians say. “If you must live amongst wolves, then howl, too, as the wolves do!”
“Now for the signatures and seal,” said the Finn. “Tihonov and Friedmann used to sign these papers, though it don’t matter much, it’s only the seal that counts.” From some Soviet papers on the table he selected one with two signatures from which to copy. Choosing a suitable pen he scrawled beneath the text of my passport in an almost illegible slanting hand, “Tihonov.” This was the signature of a proxy of the Extraordinary Commissar. The paper must also be signed by a secretary, or his proxy. “Sign for your own secretary,” said the Finn, laughing and pushing the paper to me. “Write upright this time, like this. Here is the original. ‘Friedmann’ is the name.” Glancing at the original I made an irregular scrawl, resembling in some way the signature of the Bolshevist official.
“Have you a photograph?” asked the cadaverous man. I gave him a photograph I had had taken at Viborg. Cutting it down small he stuck it at the side of the paper. Then, taking a round rubber seal, he made two imprints over the photograph. The seal was a red one, with the same inscription inside the periphery as was at the head of the paper. The inner space of the seal consisted of the five-pointed Bolshevist star with a mallet and a plough in the centre.
“That is your certificate of service,” said the Finn; “we will give you a second one of personal identification.” Another paper was quickly printed off with the words, “The holder of this is the Soviet employee, Joseph Ilitch Afirenko, aged thirty-six years.” This paper was unnecessary in itself, but two “documents” were always better than one.
It was now after midnight and the leader of the Finnish patrol ordered us to lie down for a short rest. He threw himself on a couch in the eating-room. There were only two beds for the remaining four of us and I lay down on one of them with one of the Finns. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. I thought of all sorts of things—of Russia in the past, of the life of adventure I had elected to lead for the present, of the morrow, of friends still in Petrograd who must not know of my return—if I got there. I was nervous, but the dejection that had overcome me in the train was gone. I saw the essential humour of my situation. The whole adventure was really one big exclamation mark! Forsan et haec olim. …
The two hours of repose seemed interminable. I was afraid of three o’clock and yet I wanted it to come quicker, to get it over. At last a shuffling noise approached from the neighbouring room and the cadaverous Finn prodded each of us with the butt of his rifle. “Wake up,” he whispered, “we’ll leave in a quarter of an hour. No noise. The people in the next cottage mustn’t hear us.”
We were ready in a few minutes. My entire baggage was a small parcel that went into my pocket, containing a pair of socks, one or two handkerchiefs, and some dry biscuits. In another pocket I had the medicine bottle of whisky I had hidden from Melnikoff and some bread, while I hid my money inside my shirt. One of the four Finns remained behind. The other three were to accompany me to the river. It was a raw and frosty November night, and pitch dark. Nature was still as death. We issued silently from the house, the cadaverous man leading. One of the men followed up behind, and all carried their rifles ready for use.
We walked stealthily along the road the Finn had pointed out to me on paper overnight, bending low where no trees sheltered us from the Russian bank. A few yards below on the right I heard the murmur of the river stream. We soon arrived at a ramshackle villa standing on the river surrounded by trees and thickets. Here we stood stock-still for a moment to listen for any unexpected sounds. The silence was absolute. But for the noise of the water there was not a sound.
We descended to the water under cover of the tumbledown villa and the bushes. The stream was about twenty paces wide at this point. Along both banks there was an edging of ice. I looked across at the opposite side. It was open meadow, but the trees loomed darkly a hundred paces away on either hand in the background. On the left I could just see the cottage of the Red patrol against which the Finns had warned me.
The cadaverous man took up his station at a slight break in the thickets. A moment later he returned and announced that all was well. “Remember,” he enjoined me once more in an undertone, “run slightly to the left, but—keep an eye on that cottage.” He made a sign to the other two and from the bushes they dragged out a boat. Working noiselessly they attached a long rope to the stern and laid a pole in it. Then they slid it down the bank into the water.
“Get into the boat,” whispered the leader, “and push yourself across with the pole. And good luck!”
I shook hands with my companions, pulled at my little bottle of whisky, and got into the boat. I started pushing, but with the rope trailing behind it was no easy task to punt the little bark straight across the running stream. I was sure I should be heard, and had amidstream the sort of feeling I should imagine a man has as he walks his last walk to the gallows. At length I was at the farther side, but it was impossible to hold the boat steady while I landed. In jumping ashore I crashed through the thin layer of ice. I scrambled out and up the bank. And the boat was hastily pulled back to Finland behind me.
“Run hard!” I heard a low call from over the water.
Damn it, the noise of my splash had reached the Red patrol! I was already running hard when I saw a light emerge from the cottage on the left. I forgot the injunctions as to direction and simply bolted away from that lantern. Halfway across the sloping meadow I dropped and lay still. The light moved rapidly along the river bank. There was shouting, and then suddenly shots, but there was no reply from the Finnish side. Then the light began to move slowly back towards the cottage of the Red patrol, and finally all was silent again.
I lay motionless for some time, then rose and proceeded cautiously. Having missed the right direction I found I had to negotiate another small stream that ran obliquely down the slope of the meadow. Being already wet I did not suffer by wading through it. Then I reached some garden fences over which I climbed and found myself in the road.
Convincing myself that the road was deserted, I crossed it and came out on to the moors where I found a half-built house. Here I sat down to await the dawn—blessing the man who invented whisky, for I was very cold. It began to snow, and half-frozen I got up to walk about and study the locality as well as I could in the dark. At the crossroads near the station I discovered some soldiers sitting round a bivouac fire, so I retreated quickly to my half-built house and waited till it was light. Then I approached the station with other passengers. At the gate a soldier was examining passports. I was not a little nervous when showing mine for the first time, but the examination was a very cursory one. The soldier seemed only to be assuring himself the paper had a proper seal. He passed me through and I went to the ticket office and demanded a ticket.
“One first class to Petrograd,” I said, boldly.
“There is no first class by this train, only second and third.”
“No first? Then give me a second.” I had asked the Finns what class I ought to travel, expecting them to say, third. But they replied, “First, of course,” for it would be strange to see an employee of the Extraordinary Commission travelling other than first class. Third class was for workers and peasants.
The journey to Petrograd was about twenty-five miles, and stopping at every station the train took nearly two hours. As we approached the city the coaches filled up until people were standing in the aisles and on the platforms. There was a crush on the Finland Station at which we arrived. The examination of papers was again merely cursory. I pushed out with the throng, and looking around me on the dirty, rubbish-strewn station I felt a curious mixture of relief and apprehension. A flood of strange thoughts and recollections rushed through my mind. I saw my whole life in a new and hitherto undreamt-of perspective. Days of wandering Europe, student days in Russia, life amongst the Russian peasantry, and three years of apparently aimless war work all at once assumed symmetrical proportions and appeared like the sides of a prism leading to a common apex at which I stood. Yes, my life, I suddenly realized, had had an aim—it was to stand here on the threshold of the city that was my home, homeless, helpless, and friendless, one of the common crowd. That was it—one of the common crowd! I wanted not the theories of theorists, nor the doctrines of doctrinaires, but to see what the greatest social experiment the world has ever witnessed did for the common crowd. And, strangely buoyant, I stepped lightly out of the station into the familiar streets.