The red garden

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Presented to the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY

by the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY

1980

THE
RED
GARDEN

NEW BORZOI NOVELS
FALL, 1922

The Quest

P'lo Baroja
The Room

G. B. Stern
One of Ours

IVilla Gather
A Lovely Day

Henry Ceard
Mary Lee

Geoffrey Dennis
Tutors' Lake

IVilinarth Leivis
The Promised Isle

Laurids Bruun
The Return

Walter de la Mare
The Bright Shawl

Joseph Hergesheimer
The Moth Decides

Edivard Alden Jewell
Indian Summer

Emily Grant Hutchings

THE RED GARDEN

TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH OF

HENNING KEHLER

BY FRITHJOF TOKSVIG

54350

ONTARIO

NEW YORK ALFRED • A • KNOPF mcmxxu

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

Published, July, 19ii

Bet up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y.
Paver /urni»A«d by W. F. Etherington <£ Co., New York, N. Y.
Bound ly the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

MY TRAVELING COMPANION

CONTENTS

Kerensky's Summer in Petrograd,

PAcn
9

At the Railway Station of Vitebsk,

15

Russian Court Martial,

25

The Bolshevik in the Province,

as

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

Kerensk'fs Summer in Petrograd

*'TN the beginning was the Word!" Never has the
I 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, but 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

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
comer 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 die 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, both them and me.

They waited apathetically for something to happen,
whidh 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 verj 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 tom-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 buffet 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 to 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 "^^/q "^

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

29

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,
paschaVsta, 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," he

Russian Court Martial 27

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 sfeeping 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

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 woollen 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

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 off'ered 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 imexpectedly
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

t — I

of the peoples' commissars. I had the choice of only
two inns, Rossi j a 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

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 belts. 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 witi. 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

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 the 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

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 military 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

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 — — — '

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 fagade. 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 on^s, 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 Smetarm. 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 then the tea was carried around by a pea-

The Bolshevik in the Province 45

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, indifferent: 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 w(>Qd-gl"pi^se,

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-
tSbnarism — ^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 ^ad 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 peu
. . . 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

come 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 burn. 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

61

52 The Red Garden

» — .

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

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 thei:e 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

I — )

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 Ardatof 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 fire 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 stuiF 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 m^y 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 nunaber 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-
manded 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-
prisonment, a fellow countryman aiid a useful con-

Village Bolshevism 63

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

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

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

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 eflfective 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 Voskresenskajcn, 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 wdde 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 ofl" 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
thirst. 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 the 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 the 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 naive: ^'Gnddige Herr Konsulaf!

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 Russiatis 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

' 4

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 wiay 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

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 they 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 st.l higher and I went and had dinner at the

rassage . . .

^ 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 wmdow 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 righu 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 trafiic was forbidden between nine in the

90 The Red Garden

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 gi

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
il 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?" be 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 the 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 mom*
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! Glaa-
ben Sie mir, sehr verehrter Herr Konsul, ein alter
Advocat irrt sich selten in solchen Sachen, wenn es
auch ein blinder Jude istJ'

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 was 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 tlie 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,
te 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 i^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 driver
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

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 Willen, 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 hop©,
ful smile. The Doctor grasped my meaning as one
does a stick, and like a flash, took charge of the silua-
tion. It was absolutely overwhehning to see the

100 The Red Garden

|u_ __^

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 imcontroUable 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 cdvokat, — 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 of

Cederblom lOl

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. But 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

I I

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

Cederblom 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

' ,

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
put and Dr. Diamond to bed. But it was impossible

Cederblom 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 Tat j ana 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 wjhen 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

Russian gave my view of the state 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 I 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 was 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

'h.

110 The Red Garden

' I

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 the 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
gXeat 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 he 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 HaiiseF' 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

I '■' ' 'I

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 their
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 Nikola jevitch, 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
rubles 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 language did they speak and what kind of
clothes 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 away 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 the 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 the
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

I > — '■ I

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

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
among 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 fitat 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 scowfling 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 I

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 Nikola jevitch 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

r[E 22nd Evacuation Hospital in Simbirsk is a
large red building that 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 coflins. 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 for 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
tliat 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

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 the 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 w^rk; 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 imfair, for in
many places in Siberia invalid certificates had been
cheap.

One afternoon I was visited by an officer from the
hosplital. 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-
leutnant 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

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 eould 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

I ■ i

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

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 easiily 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 OberleiUnant 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

• 1 1

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 buffet 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. "Wliat 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
w?ounds 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 w!as 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
wfith 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 result of her work to
a critical inspection. Presumably she caught a
glimpse of me, for she turned suddenly, and when
she saw that I was engrossed in what was going on
on the platform, she tip-toed to the door and shut
it, though not without first having noted my foreign
appearance. I caught a glimpse of her black eyes
which lit a smile, and I saw that she had bobbed hair
and was about seventeen.

I made myself comfortable in the Commandant's
place, and soon after she came in. Now she was all
powdered and dressed in a short white frock, white
stockings and shoes. I rose, bowed and gave my
name. She wasn't at all curious to know how I hap-
pened to be aboard a Bolshevik armoured train, but
just asked me charmingly how I was. Later she
proposed that we have tea. I was willing, and ac-
companied her to the front room to help cut bread
and bring the samovar to a boil.

When we had brought everything into the compart-
ment and cleared the shelf of typewriter and papers,
the sailor finally made his appearance. He thought
it was fine that I had made myself at home in the
train so quickly, and in spite of my poor Russian had
managed to make myself understood by Dolly Mi-
kailovna, who was a prominent member of the crew,
a sister of mercy, and, if need be, a physician. Also

144 The Red Garden

she was chief economist of the household, but Jn
case of danger and battle she was a soldier
who could handle a machine gun as well as her
revolver.

Several hours afterward, we rolled briskly south-
ward. The sailor confided to me that his train was
bound in the direction of Syzran. The Czechs had
evacuated Pensa, but had, on the other hand, taken
Samara, and perhaps other cities. Communication
between Siberia and Turkestan was broken off. He
couldn't tell r^e whether Simbirsk, wJiere I had my
delegation, had fallen, but he supposed so. The
situation was not of the best.

"What can I do with that kind of people," he said
and gestured toward his command who yelled and
fought playfully in corridors and compartments.
"We haven't any discipline in the army yet," he said.
"In a way, I'm sorry that I left the navy. We lay in
Reval in the old days. Dolly was a cabaret singer
— a great drawing card. All the officers were crazy
about her. Well, that's over now, and it's just as
well. If we only could get this fighting over with.
I'm not particularly fond of dragging around with
this train and a collection of bums who run when they
hear the first shot. And then their filth! They ab-
solutely don't care, either about themselves or other
people."

In the evening our train stopped and remained
standing at a little forest station. It was getting
dark. I lay down in the soft grass next to the track

The Red Garden 145

and watched the half-grown soldiers fighting and
tumbling each other, but without malice and less like
children than feeble-minded. Dolly Mikailovna also
came out to enjoy the evening breeze. She came
with two young rabbits in her skirt, one milk-white
with pink eyes and one black with blue eyes. She
lay down beside me and let go the animals, and they
began to nip the grass right away, hopping around
in their queer funereal manner, with ears laid back.
When the soldiers discovered them, they came run-
ning over and wanted to pick them ug and pet them.
But they soon got tired of that, and, drawing revolvers
out of their back pockets, they aimed at the rabbits
and shouted with a grin if she thought they could hit
the mark. But she got angry, and promised to take
a life for a life. Then they gave up the idea of
killing the rabbits, and instead aimed at us and at
each other, yelling and gesturing wildly, now and
then relieving their feelings by firing a shot in the
air.

When it got quite dark, Dolly Mikailovna ordered
them to drag sticks and brushwood together on the
roadbed. She carried the rabbits in, and came back
with a frying pan, butter and flour. She squatted by
the blaze, whose smoke in the quiet evening made our
eyes smart, while the crackling flames picturesquely
illuminated our little group. In her thin dress,
Dolly's young luxuriance was revealed against the
gleam of the fire in transparent contours. But, de-
spite the discomfort of the smoke and the tiresome

146 The Red Garden

position which forced her to gather her gown over
her stockings, she bravely kept on baking water pan-
cakes as long as anybody would eat them. After
that we lay for yet awhile around the dying fire smok-
ing cigarettes and conversing to the fragile music of a
balaleika.

Late that night we moved off again, and about six
in the morning we came to Sviagorod. I slept in the
sailor's berth with a Russian officer's greatcoat over
me. He had set up a camp cot for himself under the
big map. He was, by the way, not in the compart-
ment for part of the night.

I woke up because the train wasn't moving, but I
couldn't persuade myself to get up. I tried to get
enough sleep by dozing for a while. About nine
o'clock I came out at the station to wash myself at the
kipjatok, and I found most of the soldiers there
splashing water on each other with playful cries.
When I had had my head under the cold stream, I
took warm water back to the train for shaving. My
host was also tidying up. He was going to Sviago-
rod to pay a visit to the higher authorities.

It was nearly noon when we got started, since the
automobile had to be taken off the train. That day
Dolly Mikailovna appeared in the costume of a sister
of mercy, which barely hid other articles of cloth-
ing. But it was certainly terribly hot. She had
thrown a kerchief over her page-like hair. In the
sharp sunlight, her face in spite of its youth was as
fatally wasted as a moon landscape, and the chalk-

The Red Garden 147

white powder couldn't cover up an occasional erup-
tion. But she was as merry as a magpie, her laugh-
ter was deep as a cough and keen as the noise of a
grindstone, and her body was a column of quicksilver
and a living animal under the thin linen. When we
were seated in the car, the sailor at the wheel and
Dolly and I in the back seat, it wouldn't start. A
blue cloud of stinking naphtha welled from the ex-
haust, and the motor exploded like a machine gun.
Another half hour went by before the car began to
move. Then we jumped on again in a hurry, to be
along when it started, and, with a couple of soldiers
clinging to each running board, we flew forward with
every horse power unleashed.

There was nothing very remarkable about Sviago-
rod. It baked in the blaze of the sun with all its
streets flung gapingly empty. Wooden villas stood
with closed green shutters in the midst of neglected
gardens. We rushed by other houses whose doors
and windows were wide open so that we could see
the dusty remains of furniture within. Their bitter
expression of desertion left a brief sadness in the
mind. We came past a white church with blue onion
cupolas, and then across the market-place. It was
Saturday and market-day, but there were only a few
peasant wagons around. But a great many Austro-
Hungarian prisoners of war loitered here, looking at
the produce with eyes whose natural ravenousness
had been tempered by long abstinence. They were
easily recognizable, in spite of their patches and cast-

148 The Red Garden

off Russian rags, by some remnant of a blue-grey uni-
form, usually the cap, which had survived war and
imprisonment and years of vagabondage. Most of
them could be told by their features which could not
be mistaken for those of either Russian or Tartar.

The Soviet of Sviagorod was housed in the city
Duma's building on the market-place. When our
car swung up before the arcade, the guard had been
called to arms, and stood ready with a machine
gun. One never could tell in these times! All of
them were Hungarians, by the way, picked red
guards.

The President of the soviet and the Com-
mandant of the town — he combined the two offices —
was a Red Jew who had some manufactured name
which I have forgotten. His age was uncertain.
There were moments when he looked like quite a
young man whose features had been ruined early,
and others when he resembled an old man to whom
some sort of disease had given a glow of false youth.
His sparse newly cropped hair revealed several bare
spots. His eyes were especially remarkable. They
were without real expression, but at times they flamed
and a reddish light seemed then to radiate from them.
Altogether, he gave the impression of being a man of
superior gifts, but undeniably not quite all there.

He looked startled when he saw me, and it got
worse when he perused my diplomatic papers and
learned my errand. His whole body shook with
poorly controlled rage and gnashing his teeth like

The Red Garden 149

a baited despot, he told me that he didn't recognize
the bourgeois governments of Europe. As far as he
was concerned, they were simply nothing but air.
And as for these prisoners in whom I was interested,
they no longer existed. He was no gaoler for capi-
talism. In free Russia, every one who wants to can
be a free citizen and doesn't have to be fed on the
illusion of bourgeois philanthropy.

With that, he turned his back on me and began to
ogle Dolly Mikailovna. Later, however, I was re-
stored to grace again, since he emphasized that Dolly
Mikailovna' s friends and guests were also his. He
invited me to dinner that day, and also to attend a
great Communist celebration which was to take place
the following Sunday. On that occasion a magnifi-
cent public park, Krasnij Sad, i. e., the Red Garden,
would be turned over to the grateful populace.
With a Satanic smile he remarked that he would con-
sider it an honour to wrest such promising youthful-
ness from capitalistic diplomacy.

"You belong to us already, I can read in your
eye that you are without prejudice. But you have
never felt the truth within you. You haven't been
filled with mighty idea of human brotherhood.
But it, too, shall flower in your young blood." He
regarded me with an odd look, gripped my arm, and
putting his mouth to my ear, he whispered, "I will
confide in you. In me is truth. I am the resur-
rected saviour of the new time. I am . . ." He sud-
denly wiped his brow and came to his senses with a

150 The Red Garden

smile. "It's hot," he said, without transition, and
after that he didn't utter one irrational word.

After dinner, which was without alcohol and not too
rich though well prepared by a Viennese cook, I
sauntered out through the town. The others drove to
the barracks to arrange some details for the big mili-
tary parade for next day. I understood of course
that although it was to serve a festive purpose, it
had a deeper meaning when one remembered that
the Czecho-Slovak danger came a little nearer to
Sviagorod each day. I still felt rather uncomforta-
ble after the scene with th^ Jew, but that soon passed
away when I begun to talk with some bearded old
prisoners of war. They had never seen a delegate
before, and very properly didn't expect miracles
from the one they now saw. The officers were dif-
ferent. They always believed that now they were
going to be sent home at once tQ glory and grandeur.
I inquired about conditions and bought some pack-
ages of Mahorka tobacco for division among the pri-
soners.

They complained mostly about their younger
comrades who had joined the Red Guard and who
were now pestering the life out of them to get them
to do likewise. "Of course," they hinted, "the food
is good, and they give uniform, tea and sugar and
three hundred rubles a month, and if they tried to
send you to the front it's easy enough to beat it. A
week ago a regiment came through here from Tam-
bof . Two hundred men had deserted, and the other

The Red Garden 151

three hundred were only waiting for their chance. —
No, it isn't very dangerous, but, still, you never can
tell — and there's the wife and children at home —
and the property! It's better to stick it out for a
while longer." In this good intention I encouraged
them. They wouldn't say anything bad about the
Russians. Most of them were crazy, of course, and
careless rather than downright evil. Everything was
in the most terrible disorder. Maintenance in the
camp was a thing of the past, and still orders came
that no one was to leave it. There wasn't a rag of
clothes to get, and little to earn for those who
weren't professionals. But the worst thing about the
commissar rule was that they used the prisoners of
war for all the work which the Russians were too
lazy to do. They had to clean stables and barracks
and hospitals, and lately they had been forced to do
all the work connected with the new Communist park
— in the blazing sunshine — getting nothing but dry
bread for it. Fine freedom, wasn't it? These
scoundrels could call themselves Proletarians and
Bolshevists, Communist and Internationalists or what-
ever they pleased, the old Russian laziness and loaf-
ing and thievery was right there just the same.

I left these prisoners both irritated and enlivened
by their honest anger. With these men from Karn-
then and Tyrol and Salzburg, one could talk as if
they were one's own people. My old grandfather,
himself a farmer, would have stood just this way
and sucked his pipe and growled at the oppressors,

152 The Red Garden

if it had been his fate to fall into Russian war im-
prisonment.

In the evening I drove back to the railway station
with the sailor. Dolly Mikailovna didn't come.
She spent the night in town.

Before we left the next morning, Dolly Mikailovna
came back in one of the soviet cars to change her cos-
tume. She was to take part in the parade with a
detachment of the crew from the armoured train.
The sailor and I drove out to lunch with the soviet.

The parade was to start at three o'clock. The
commissars and staff stood on the balcony of the
arcade and saluted the red colours. They were all in
warlike array, with many weapons, map cases and
binoculars, but none outdid the red Jew who in spite
of the heat wore a leaden grey, steel helmet with a
red, seven-pointed star in front. He wore long,
spurred patent-leather boots and also a' shining sabre,
which in Russia is a fantastic and foreign weapon.
His right sleeve was ornamented with the well known
emblem of the shock troops, a white death's head in
silver over two crossed bones on a red background.
The sailor at his side, in his plain blouse and with
black and orange ribbons on his cap, didn't look
like any great military genius.

I had chosen to place myself in the shade of the
arcade, so as not to alienate the prisoners or create
false impressions among the Hungarian Red Guards.
Here was also the band of the Austrian prisoners
which was to play for the parade and later for the

The Red Garden 153

fete. They had not been requested to march with
their instruments in the sun. It was tacitly under-
stood that their art raised them above their plight,
and that the success of the celebration depended
largely on their music and good will.

The parade had in the meanwhile begun. It
didn't tire anybody by being too long. There were
two Polker, or regiments of about two hundred men
each. The men slouched in whatever step pleased
them. Many of them were prisoners of war, notably
Hungarians and Prussians. A military bearing came
over them whether they would or not when they again
got weapons in hand, so that they couldn't possibly
be mistaken for Russian Red Guards, only a few of
whom had been in the war. After the infantry came
a machine gun section, a score and a half men on
small brown horses. A field piece with team rep-
resented the heavier calibres.

Last in line came a troop from the armoured train,
with a red banner on which there was printed in gold
letters. Armoured Train: Karl Marx. Behind the
banner walked Dolly Mikailovna. She looked splen-
did in aviation cap and white sailor silk blouse,
bright red tie, revolver-holster at her belt, khaki-
coloured riding breeches, and long yellow boots
laced to the knees. As she passed the arcade, she
saluted with her sword and a smile.

During the review we had all stood with bared
heads while the band played alternately the Marseil-
laise, and the Honour March of the First Vienna Reg-

154 The Red Garden

iment. Later we all marched off with the band
leading and the local Communist party, men, women
and children, bringing up the rear. The road, white
as powder, seemed to lead right up into the sun.

The garden, however, was not very far from the
centre of the city. Before being nationalized, it had
been the property of a Prince Gagarin, and it still
showed feeble traces of French gardening. But
great arbitrary changes had been made in it to make
it more popular. The whole central part had been
razed to make room for a band stand and open space.
Here a statue had been raised which was to be un-
veiled during the celebration. It stood in the centre
of one of the long sides of the place, still cloaked in
its cover of coarse military linen, against a back-
ground of black cypresses and tujas. A speaker's
stand draped in red stood to the right of it.

As soon as we entered the garden, the procession
broke up. The soldiers stacked their rifles and laid
their hand-grenades in the grass. As guests, we were
shown to some chairs directly in front of the speaker's
stand. At the market-place there had been only a
few spectators; here a part of the civilian popula-
tion seemed to have come, mostly young girls loth
to let their youth wither at home. There are so few
amusements in a small town; there were fewer now,
and there was nothing binding after all, in coming
to watch the latest invention of the Reds.

Now the band played The Beautiful Blue Danube.
Then the Jew stepped up on the stand and laid his

The Red Garden 155

helmet in front of him. He sweated large drops,
but we all did that, and he was very pale. The burn-
ing sun had had no effect on his colour. He began
to speak. He spoke well, but it seemed as if he
weren't really interested in what he was saying him-
self. A rich stream of Bolshevik and general Social-
ist doctrines flowed from his mouth, without exertion
but also without any leading idea. In the right spots
he paused and let the Communists applaud. Dolly
Mikailovna yawned without embarrassment. She
had put her arm through mine. I heard him men-
tion Karl Marx and Engels and thought that now the
unveiling of the statue must follow. But he got past
them and nothing happened. Then he presented the
Red Garden to the town, and hoped that it would be
made to serve the public welfare, the development of
the arts, and the free expansion of love. It was a
symbol of the solicitude of the Soviet Republic for
the weal and woe of the proletarian masses. But it
ought also to become a sanctuary for the people, a
successor to the ignorant church of the pope or priest,
yes, on this very spot there ought to be a Pantheon
for the heroes of international fraternity. Here, in
the course of time, would rise columns and statues
to men like Plato and Babeuf, Blanqui and Deles-
cluze, Lenin and Liebknecht. With the assistance of
an Austrian sculptor, formerly a prisoner but now a
free soviet citizen, he had begun the work, and
caused the first memorial to be raised. He had long
wavered in the choice of the historic personality to

156 The Red Garden

whom the first honour should be shown. He had
thought of Lucifer and of Cain. They were both
wronged; they were both rebels, revolutionaries of
super-magnitude. But the former was a theologi-
cal figure whose supernatural character did not fit
in with Marxian views. His light had been quenched
in the collapse of that society whose fear and hatred
he symbolized. And the latter was a mythological
personage whose historic existence was very doubt-
ful. His attention had therefore turned to a figure
unmistakably of this earth, a historic man who like-
wise had been the victim of the religious views of
predatory society. . . . And, that being the case,
should any one be considered before the man who for
two thousand years innocently had been chained to
the pillory of a capitalist interpretation of history,
the great Proletar-Prometheus, the Red forerunner
of world revolution, the bourgeois redeemer Christ's
twelfth apostle — Judas Iscariot!

The speaker had gradually worked himself into
an ecstasy. The audience hardly understood what
he was saying, but they felt uncomfortable under his
burning gaze. Some shouted, but a number of Rus-
sians piously crossed themselves. The Jew was si-
lent, but he did not appear anxious about the effect of
his words. His features seemed rather to express a
painful uncertainty. He began again, haltingly,
speaking of the hour of restitution and the apostle
of the oppressed, the dictatorship of the proletariat,
brotherhood, the intemationale . . . but he got no-

The Red Garden 157

where. His face was convulsed as if under the lash
of a harrowing thought. With both hands he
clutched the speaker's stand, and his fingers and nails
bored through the red cloth. Then his countenance
cleared, he leaned forward and spoke mysteriously:
"I bring you the message," he said, and laid his hand
on his breast, "I bear the sin of all time. In me is
the truth. Don't you know me? I am the saviour
of our time. I am he," he whispered. There was
no doubt possible. The man was mad. He thought
he was Judas.

At that moment the whir of an aeroplane, coming
over the garden, slammed through the heated air.
He listened an instant and drew his hand across his
forehead. "Long live the world revolution," he
shouted with a sudden inspiration, and left the
speaker's stand, perfectly self-controlled, bowed
for Dolly Mikailovna and asked her to unveil the
statue.

Dolly Mikailovna rose, and the Jew placed a cord
in her hand. Tugging at it a couple of times, she
made the cover fall off a figure, rusty red in colour,
and as yet only in plaster. It was a superhuman
size, naked, and the face, which resembled the Com-
missar's, was turned threateningly toward heaven,
while the hands with a passionate movement sought
to remove a piece of real hempen rope around the
neck.

When the apostle was seen the band pom-
pously struck into the Internationale, and we rose and

158 The Red Garden

bared our heads, overwhelmed by the power of the
music. At the other end of the garden, three shots
in quick succession were iired from the field piece.
They were not blanks. The shells went over our
heads with a devilish whistle and rush that made me
tremble, and God knows where they ended. I heard
the Red Jew say something to Dolly Mikailovna,
after which he embraced her and kissed her on the
mouth.

Before I had any idea what was coming she had
turned toward me and I felt her body, soft as elas-
tic, in my embrace, and the odour of her rank powder
in my nostrils while her moist blood-red lips closed
over mine as a lukewarm sea. For a moment the
heat seemed to burst into flames. Since my look
didn't express the proper comprehension, Dolly
Mikailovna laughed at me and, turning to the man
next to her, gave him the kiss, which then went from
mouth to mouth. I felt weak in the knees and sick.
I nearly had a sunstroke in this open place with the
sun on my head. I' almost staggered over behind the
apostle in the dark of the cypresses.

When the coolness of night came on, the dancing
began. A few lanterns gleamed in the trees, but
they soon went out. Only the dancing floor was il-
luminated, an arclight threw its moon whiteness on
the expressive figure of the statue. People were
scattered in the dark garden. It was a gorgeous sum-
mer night. The waltz beats of the kettle-drums
sounded like a bit of noise somewhere on the earth,

The Red Garden 159

but from space came the great tone of silence. Far
above our heads, in the blue firmament of night, the
lights of heaven quivered in a gentle dance, the eter-
nal Internationale of the stars.

Russian Bourgeoisie

Mais oil sont les neiges d'antan?

Villon

ONE evening in the spring of 1917, I dined in
the home of a Russian princess in Petrograd.
At the time that was an experience which was
worth while accepting. The table was set with white
damask, with roses, and Sevres ware, crowned and
monogrammed. The tapers in the heavy silver can-
delabra lit a golden glow in the massive tableware.
Four costly glasses stood at each convert and Chateau
la Rose and Louis Roederer and sweet Crimean wine
were poured by Tartar lackeys with heads shaved as
naked as eggs. Officially there was prohibition in
the land and the common people had only home-made
alcohol and furniture polish to drink. The fish was
a sturgeon that reached half the length of the table
and the ice was modelled in the form of a Troika
whose team bore real small silver bells that tinkled
as the cook in snow white garb and high cap carried
it around.

After the dinner the small company gathered in a
rococo salon papered and upholstered in light red
where all that was soft was silk and the rest carved
and inlaid wood, bronze, marble and malachite.
The place was full of bric-a-brac in glass cabinets

160

Russian Bourgeoisie 161

and on the walls hung French etchings where the
ladies bared their breasts, and wherever there was
room stood replicas in bronze of both antique and
modem works of art. Aphrodite and the Discobolus,
Apollo and Laocoon, Voltaire and Napoleon, "Cour-
age," "The Dance," "The Swimmer," and "Two
Beings," costly souvenirs from the finest fancy shops
of the capitals of Europe and an entire art museum
en minature.

Among the guests was a physician. Dr. Taube, a
Baltic citizen by birth but now residing in one of the
cities on the Volga where I understood he combined a
university post (he was a pharmaceutist) with the
possession of a drug store and various industrial
enterprises. We had a lively conversation. He
gave me many enlightening details of the presumable
causes of the recent revolution and the abdication of
the Tsar and spoke with enthusiasm of the continua-
tion of the war and with confidence of the will and
ability of the Entente and America to help Russia.
To be sure the internal conditions were not of the
best, that he admitted openly, but it was not too much
to hope that the emerging Kerensky, who undoubt-
edly was a genius at leadership, before long would
have demonstrated his right to go down in history as
the Napoleon of the Russian Revolution! A bridge
game broke off this conversation which was very in-
teresting to me, a newcomer, but I saw to it that at
the breaking up of the party 1 accompanied him.
Quite as a matter of course we went together to the

162 The Red Garden

t Ill)

nearby embassy palace where he remained for sev-
eral hours at a cigar and a bottle of wine before he
went home to his hotel on the Moika.

I had another fleeting talk with Dr. Taube in Petro-
grad, then he went away, presumably back to his city
on the Volga. Events that individually were as im-
portant and fateful as dates in a history textbook
followed one upon the other and I doubt if I thought
of Dr. Taube at all until I unexpectedly saw him a
year later. It was in the month of June, 1918, and
in the office of the German Commission in Kazan
about the time the Tsar family was murdered in
Ekaterinburg.

The Commission which was in Kazan for the spe-
cial purpose of attending to the repatriation of pris-
oners of war, was lodged in the home of the German
evangelical pastor. The pastor himself had moved
up to the top floor with his four grown daughters.
In the pastor's study where formerly, at an evening
glass of tea, my eyes had rested on lithographs of
Gethsemane and Calvary, on Magdalenes and Marys
with tears on their cheeks as large as dove's eggs and
on Jesus driving the money changers from out the
temple of the Lord, the walls now glared with statis-
tical charts and super size Gott strafe England! cari-
catures.

Herr Oberleutnant S. besides being an officer was
also a Doctor of Laws. He was a real Teuton, blond,
sharp-featured as a head of Goethe, stem as a bust of
thq Iron Chancellor, and with the expression of slight

Russian Bourgeoisie 163

stupidity fit and proper for a lieutenant. One fore-
noon I had business with him, I came upon Dr.
Taube sitting in the anteroom. The meeting was cor-
dial. Dr. Taube at once asked me if I would help
him with the Oberleutnant: the Bolsheviki had na-
tionalized his drug store and he requested now as a
buyer in peace time of German medicine en gros, the
intervention of the German embassy with the Central
Soviet in Moscow. I had to cry quits, it, was beyond
my resources. I heard later that the Oberleutnant
was far from gracious, but thanks to the commercial-
minded reserve lieutenant who formerly had been a
travelling salesman in Russia and who on the na-
tion's and his own behalf was preparing the way for
future trade, a telegram regarding Dr. Taube's drug
business was after all sent off to "Botschafter" Count
Mirbach in Moscow. It must just about have had
time to reach his writing table before he met his
death at the revolvers of the Social-Revolutionaries.
I was of course invited to visit Dr. Taube. He
lived in a fine old comer house where the drug store
took up the whole ground floor while the living quar-
ters were on the second story. I went up a white-
enameled stairway with red carpets and green palms.
A maid in a white cap answered the door and two
big greyhounds rose to their feet and looked hospi-
tably at me after having sniffed at my clothes. Dr.
Taube's workroom was full of antique furniture.
Glass cases with costly medicinal — or was it pharma-
ceutical? — apparatus met the eye. The walls were

164 The Red Garden

decorated with Chinese swords in carved ivory scab-
bards, Circassian sabres inlaid with silver, and pis-
tols from Turkestan with massive silver balls at the
butt ends. There were also binoculars and high
quality English hunting guns, and, taken all in all,
everything that a cultivated amateur could find pleas-
ure in owning and a rich man without hesitation could
procure for himself.

Dr. Taube set out Havana cigars (he still had sev-
eral boxes) and a percolator of coffee was brought
in. While the grounds were settling we sipped at a
genuine cognac. Dr. Taube told me that "la prin-
cesse," our hostess of the dinner the year before, had
fled to Finland. She had had a large estate in the
Tambof not far from a factory owned by Dr. Taube
or rather by his wife. He had not long ago had oc-
casion to substantiate the rumour that all the build-
ings on the estate, even to the schools, had been burnt.
Immeasurable damage and loss had occurred. The
park had been wrecked, the fish basins of Ural mar-
ble were splintered to slivers, the peasants had not
left one stone on another of a wonderful little palace
done in the style of the Trianon which the princess
had built for her thirty-six pet monkeys and which
had been an unique example of ingenious accommo-
dation and a source of endless amusement for the
guests of the estate. The monkeys they had killed
with flails and forks and those caught alive they had
hanged and burned with frightful tortures. In the
opinion of Dr. Taube, the most incomprehensible

Russian Bourgeoisie 165

thing about the whole affair was that this senseless
frenzy on the part of the peasants had been turned
against a lady who as a property owner had done
an endless amount of good not only for her own peas-
ants but also among all the peasants throughout the
surrounding country. In the good old days she had
been simply worshipped in that region.

As to his own future, Dr. Taube was of course
much worried. Temporarily he could do nothing at
all. If he hadn't had several hundred thousand ru-
bles in ready money laid away he couldn't have
existed. His bank account was closed. The facto-
ries were deserted and the drug business was nation-
alized. He had not set foot in his store for four
months. It was being managed by his former chief
apothecary, a Jew who had been with him for twenty-
two years. "For you can't get clever pharmacists in
Russia who are not Jews. He'll never be poor,"
added Dr. Taube. "The stock is worth a million
rubles, peace-time exchange, and he and the ap-
pointed commissar are briskly selling it under-
hand."

Dr. Taube no longer had much use for the Entente.
And Kerensky he called "the Revolution's great co-
quette." It was now necessary for Russia to steer a
German course. This was also the opinion of the
cadet leader, Miliukof, who sat in Kiev with the Ger-
man Hetman, Skoropadski. He wished that the
Germans as soon as possible would also bring order
out of chaos in Great Russia. Wilhelm II and his

166 The Red Garden

I ' 'I

soldiers would be welcomed as liberators. After all
was said and done, there was a real Kaiser! And
thei Germans, what energy, what organization! They
were surely invincible. And Russian culture and
Russian citizenry had to seek help from that quarter
unless they were to go to pieces under Bolshevism's
corrupt and lawless Jew dictatorship.

Dr. Taube was an Anti-Semite. Otherwise he
would not have been Russian Bourgeois. The Jews
were responsible for all the evil that was happening
in Russia and the whole world, for this was only the
beginning. Back of everything, the war and the rev-
olution, there was beyond all manner of doubt a
great international Jewish pact and gigantic financial
conspiracy for the advancement of the world revolu-
tion, that would at last put all power into the hands
of the Jews. If I would keep it a deep secret he
would tell me something: on the second floor he had
living a representative for the American Y. M. C. A.
This man did not have a thing to do with Christianity.
He was in with the Bolsheviki (and for that reason it
was a good thing to have him in the house) and he
was one of the agents of international Jewdom! — In
this Dr. Taube was mistaken. The man was but an
ordinary member of the American commercial spy
system.

Later we drank tea together with the Doctor's wife.
Mrs. Taube was, in spite of having surely passed
forty-five, still a handsome woman, particularly when
she smiled. She was clad in rustling silk, in her

Russian Bourgeoisie 167

ears hung a pair of rarely beautiful pearls and on
her beautiful hands, which one longed to say were
as white as alabaster, she had an expensive collec-
tion of clear brilliants and brilliants that sparkled
with a rosy gleam in their platinum. Together
with a black-clad German companion she occupied a
salon distinguished among other furnishings by two
Bliithner grand pianos.

Mrs. Taube was apparently unmoved by the serious
situation. I believe that it hadn't dawned on her at
all as yet. She expected to wake up some morning
and then everything would be as in the good old
days when she still could walk and drive on the
streets of Kazan and the fat policeman would salute
her from afar as if she were the commandant of the
garrison himself. Now there was only the most
frightful rabble on the streets. She told almost flap-
per-like yet winningly of her tribulations and the
constant refrain was; "how terrible, how interesting,
and how amusing!" While she babbled, Dr. Taube
sat and looked preoccupied, — small, bald and pep-
per-and-salt and with a melancholy pearl stick pin
in his tie.

I also made the acquaintance of young Taube,
twenty-two years, their only child. He bore a strik-
ing resemblance to his mother. He was a tall, hand-
some and slightly stout young man with an indolent
personality. It was easy to see that his mother loved
him boundlessly. When he was in the room she be-
came uncontrollably maternal and at once was no

168 The Red Garden

longer young. She still coddled the son with jam
and cakes as well as with pocket money. Her only
fear was that something should happen to him. He
had not been in the war, no doubt he had been ex-
empted because of his medical studies. But even if
there were comparative peace and quiet at present,
the red day of civil war rose each minute more
threatening on the horizon. They were already fight-
ing in the nearest governments. In Jaroslav there
had been revolt and White Terror and Red Terror.
To keep her son out of all these bloody upheavals
was Mrs. Taube's only and sole thought.

A few weeks later the counter-revolution reached
Kazan as suddenly as the first bolt of lightning from
a black sky. Monday, August 5th, the Czechs took
the city by surprise and in the course of a few hours
large parts of it were in their hands. An enormous
amount of booty was captured, both materials of war
and 600 million rubles of Russian and Rumanian
money. A White revolutionary organization was
hastily formed and crowds of volunteers. White
Guards and former officers, suddenly filled Kazan
with their unchanged careless youth and arrogance.
They were from the very outset smartly decked out
once more with epaulets and medals and if possible
with white adjutant insignias. They were also to be
seen at the cafes, with heavy revolver holsters and
patent leather boots, joyous from victory, rattling
their sabres and not always wholly sober. In the
streets one group after another of captured Bolshe-

Russian Bourgeoisie 169

viki passed by, of greyish pallor and walking dully
between guards who in their hands bore threatening
rifles and grenades. They were brought up to the
old Kremlin where they were permitted to dig them-
selves a common grave before they, generally at
dawn, were shot. Of all the sights that send cold
chills of fear and trembling along a man's spine,
none is more chilling than that of our neighbour on
the way to his place of execution. In the hotel cel-
lars still other Bolsheviki lurked, hiding their weap-
ons and tearing their red flags into Red Cross arm-
bands. The guests who fled down there when the
Red aeroplanes came and bombed the city, turned
timorously back from the deathly pale people who,
by the gleam of a few candles, rooted in the corners
and stowed large and heavy Belgian pistols and am-
munition away, while they drove off"' fear by tippling.
Before the gates of the Kremlin lay for four days
the body of a Lett, who just as the famous actor bore
the name of Kean, but probably had spelled it dif-
ferently. The women shouldered each other to lift
the cloth from his face. His boots had been pulled
off" and the naked feet grew day by day more yellow
until they at last began to be blue. A note had been
put on the corpse upon which there stood laconically:
Kommandant goroda: i. e., the City Commandant!
The rain had made the ink run. I had known him
well and while not exactly a model official, he had
been an obliging and courageous fellow who had
done* no more harm in his position than he had found

170 The Red Garden

strictly necessary. Every afternoon he had driven
around the city in a smartly drawn carriage, lean-
ing comfortably hack in a corner with one leg over
the other and a short briar pipe between his teeth.
He was never without it and in Russia it contributed
to giving him a foreign and therefore cultivated air.

After the first days of street fighting and excite-
ment and shooting on the river and from the air,
came the turn of the clerical processions. At the
head was the famous Virgin of Kazan and they had
dragged the holy banners and the golden ikons out of
all the churches and wandered with choir boys and
censors. Metropolitan and priests in golden cloaks
and violet caps around in all the streets but not in
the Tartar quarter, followed by immense crowds of
people with white brassards on their arms. Then
came the funerals of the Czecho-Slovaks who had
fallen, officers and White Guards. Sad funeral
marches on wind instruments, many many open cof-
fins whose lids were carried before the wagons by
undertakers in white blouses, and again priests, mili-
tary and people in dense crowds. And incessantly
the dull firing from afar. The Czechs and the volun-
teers were fighting with the Bolsheviki for the posses-
sion of the Romanoff Bridge a little west of the city.
But they did not cross.

What I myself experienced the following three or
four months would take too long to relate and has
no place here. The Bolsheviki reconquered Kazan.
At that time I was already in Siberia. And to Si-

Russian Bourgeoisie 171

beria fled also Dr. Taube with his family. Whether
they sensed the danger in time or felt themselves in-
secure in any case in Kazan because of their little
aff'air with the German Commission, I know not.
The fact remained, they went to Samara and when
the Volga front had to be abandoned they flowed with
the stream of refugees to the Siberian cities. In the
early part of 1919 they popped up in Tomsk where
I was vice consul.

I met Dr. Taube on the street and this time was
not surprised. Nothing was strange any more and
the world was no longer as large as it had been. Dr.
Taube told me that they had left their home as it had
been when I was there, and only provided with the
necessary clothes and a sum of cash money. The
companion had remained behind. She had dia-
monds from Mrs. Taube's diadems and collars sewed
away in her black gown.

I was going to pay them a visit but changed my
mind. They lived, I knew, in extremely straight-
ened circumstances with one of the city's druggists.
I was afraid that the severe change from the sur-
roundings in which Mrs. Taube had last received me,
would be painful for her. However I was mistaken.
The truth generally is that the very rich who have
known and owned all of life's visible pleasures, find
it much easier to go without things than those who
haven't had the daily necessaries, and if what I've
heard isn't true, then it ought to be: that here in the
city during the war a woman died of grief because

172 The Red Garden

she couldn't get coffee! Mrs. Taube bore her pov-
erty and the Siberian cold good naturedly. She was
rarely seen on the streets, but one day I met her.
She wore a sable fur coat and had a woollen shawl
around her head like a peasant woman. The smile
in her eyes still contained the same charming silli-
ness and she was of the opinion that it would not be
long before they again were back in Kazan.

But nevertheless Dr. Taube had his troubles with
her. That I gathered from his conversation when I
met him in street or cafe. She was afraid that her
son would be mobilized and when that fear came over
her she became quite hysterical. At last Dr. Taube
by much energy and influential acquaintances suc-
ceeded in postponing the catastrophe and had their
son placed in a sinecure position in the Red Cross ad-
ministration. But how long would that last? He
himself had been mobilized and could expect to be
sent to the front as a military physician. The Kol-
chak Government sent out one decree after another
which promised the most severe measures, summary
court-martial, against those officers and doctors who
occupied secure and superflous positions back of the
front. And the front suffered frightfully from lack
of doctors. The hospital trains came all the way to
Tomsk, many days' ride, jammed full of wounded,
nearly all young peasant boys, ridiculously young
because those in power had not dared to mobilize
the older men who once had helped to tear the
shoulder straps off their officers and disarm them.

Russian Bourgeoisie 173

And before they reached their destination, the se-
verely wounded had been changed into stinking bun-
dles of filth and gangrene, vermin and pus, often-
times swarming with maggots. My splendid friend,
Dr. Belan, an Austrian regimental surgeon who di-
rected one of the Russian military hospitals and who
cut away with saw and knife of what there came,
often assured me quite overcome that only Russians
could live in the state of putrefaction in which he re-
ceived them on the operating table. So bad was it
that in some cases their bandages were of news-
papers! "And the place is overrun with Sisters
enough, too," he added, "and disreputable every
one!"

I often saw young Taube on the street but he ap-
parently didn't care very much about knowing me.
He was in uniform of course, though without marks
of rank or revolver. On his arm was the Red Cross
brassard. He was often — on foot or in sleigh — in
the company of a not quite young but wonderfully
beautiful nurse whose velvet black eyes glinted dan-
gerously under the coquettishly demure nun's head-
dress. One day about 2 o'clock when we were al-
ready in the first part of June, Dr. Belan came unex-
pectedly to me. He brought me the terrible news
that young Taube had been shot by a Russian during
a brawl. The unfortunate man had received a bul-
let in the thigh, one in the stomach and one in the
face. The other had wounded himself in the shoul-
der. They had both been brought into Belan's hos-

174 The Red Garden

pital but on the operating table Taube had breathed
his last. Dr. Belan, who knew the Taubes, was as
depressed by the occurrence as it is possible to be
when one has a wife and two children in far-ofF
Vienna and has spent five years of war imprisonment
in Siberia. He paced back and forth across the of-
fice floor. Suddenly he gritted his teeth loudly and
hissed: "The scoundrels! The hellish scoundrels!
They know how to mobilize the innocent, ignorant
cattle from the villages. They take them from their
mothers before they have barely left the breast, drive
them to the front before they can use a rifle and let
them fight for those who sent them and for the holy
reinstatment of Tsarism and dissolute priest dicta-
torship and for the bank account, the knout, vodka
and corruption. The scoundrels know how to do all
that and dare to do it. Then they sit back of the
front with bottles and cards and an arm around the
waist of a girl and this is something they have to do
even if they are to die for it, and so rather die for a
common wench than for the poor fellows who for
their sake are rotting from wounds and typhus a
thousand miles from their mother's village. They
are not worth the death of a louse and here a whole
land and a continent and a half is wading in blood be-
cause a handful of charlatans on each side dare to
misuse their power. And they go unpunished. If
God cannot and he evidently can't, would that Satan
himself would perceive that this is not even wicked-
ness but only pure raw stupidity and let plague strike

Russian Bourgeoisie 175

all who in this land force people who are no wiser
than cattle and no more full of hate to bear weap-
ons against one another!" Dr. Belan had become
pale and at the close quite hoarse. He was other-
wise a quiet man who talked very little and then in
short choppy sentences. He sat down and for a long
time remained quite still and then left me with a
nod of farewell.

There were only a few people at the funeral.
Mrs. Taube stood close by the coffin. Her husband
supported her. Her cheeks were completely swollen
but she wept no more. She would never be young
again! The doctor had become smaller, it seemed to
me, and quite white at the temples. But there was
on the other hand a peace in his face that I had not
seen there the last time I talked with him. Per-
haps his grief after all could not outweigh that
burden of which he had been relieved in so frightful
a manner.

After the burial I spoke to them. Dr. Taube was
preoccupied and neither could I find anything to say
to him. To Mrs. Taube I bowed and as is the cus-
tom in Russia kissed her white hand that even now
with its very few rings was more beautiful than any
hand I have geen.

A short time after I left Tomsk.

Alexander and Ivan

IN Tomsk I had a prisoner of war as coachman.
According to his papers he was a Rumanian,
Sandor Barkas by name, and hailing from some
hamlet in Hungary. He was thrown in when I
bought a carriage, a sleigh and a black trotter from
a Dano-Russian in whose service he had always been
known as Alexander, and Alexander he continued to
be with me.

Alexander was faithful and good and a simpleton
who just grasped the fact that it was not to his ad-
vantage to appear less obtuse than he really was.
Beyond taking care of the horse, hitching, unhitch-
ing, and driving, he understood nothing, nor did
that perturb him. Once when he had been sent off
with a telegram he was arrested before he had
pierced the mysteries of sending it, because of his
passive but lengthy scrutiny of life about the tele-
graph station. I had the greatest trouble getting him
released. Since' then he was allowed to stay at home
when he wasn't driving. Even there he might have
been useful, he might have scrubbed the floor, tended
the samovar or things like that, but this was women's
work which was far below his dignity. He didn't re-
fuse flatly, but it was something he wasn't accus-
tomed to do, he assured me in one of the few Russian

phrases he had learned because of their indispensa-

176

Alexander and Ivan 177

bility and usefulness during his four years of war
imprisonment. To all remonstrances he only smiled
and shook his head, not at all defiantly, but engag-
ingly and indolently. It wasn't possible to pronounce
the Russian language clearly enough or well enough
for his ears. He spoke Rumanian if I wished any-
thing besides "hitch" and "unhitch," "to the left"
or "to the right." Roughness towards him only
brought black looks of anger or tears that filled his
brown eyes, making them shine like red mahogany,
and he let it be understood that rather than endure
being treated in an undignified manner he would let
himself be separated from the horse and sent back
to camp. But I didn't want to part with Alexander.
For how was I to find among the six thousand prison-
ers of war in the camp one who would be better
and not many times worse than he? And although
the horse was a handsome animal to look at, wasn't
it full of hidden faults which only Alexander knew
and could take into consideration?

When I think of Alexander I usually see him sit-
ting on his favourite stool in the kitchen with an
empty dish before him. With a correct appraise-
ment of what sort of master I was, he had long ago
ceased to rise when my path lay through the kitchen,
which it often did to spare him the trouble of the
main entrance with its double doors and four bolts.
From his place he caressed with a glance, though com-
pletely phlegmatically, the Russian girls who, in
skirts amply tucked up and always good-naturedly,

178 The Red Garden

scrubbed, washed, cooked and split wood around
him, and who besides that, as a pure matter of course,
looked after his well-being, handed him full dishes,
took away empty ones, swept under him and fished
coal out of the oven for his pipe.

All night from nine to nine, and if the chance of-
fered itself also a couple of hours in the afternoon,
Alexander spent back of the oven on his pallet where
he shared sleeping quarters with Drusjok, the dog,
and Koschka, the cat. The back of that oven,
when fully occupied, was an awe-inspiring zoological
locality. Its tufts of hay and nondescript rags
Alexander, deaf to every admonition, always left in
the same picturesque disorder in which they had been
when he last crawled into them.

Despite the golden days which Alexander might
have been said to have with me, both from the stand-
point of war imprisonment and the general condi-
tion of Russian servants, he was neither grateful nor
satisfied. This is, after all, as I have only too often
discovered, the wages of goodness and naivete. A
Barin who is not brutal and, to a certain degree,
callous, disappoints those expectations one has a
right to have about him. Furthermore Alexander
had hardly been in the camp at all during his im-
prisonment, but had worked for private individuals
outside it, so that undoubtedly the idea of an exist-
ence behind the barbed wire, freed from all annoy-
ances and duties and entirely wedded to sweet inac-
tivity, appealed strongly to his imagination. But

Alexander and Ivan 179

there were always the risks of being set to shoveling
snow, or burying dead, yes even of being sent to work
in the coal mines or of being dealt out to one of the
many horse transports that ran up and down the Line,
from Tjellabinsk to Irkutsk and back again. They
were left to shift for themselves for long weeks and
exposed to a devilish cold when thej cars were empty,
a cold that froze the fingers and toes off the unfor-
tunate prisoners. If it hadn't been for this, then
the dream of the real idyllic loafer's life had surely
coaxed Alexander into the camp long ago.

It would, however, have been an over-estimate of
Alexander's faculties to believe that it was the fear
of the dangers of camp life which alone held him
back. But Alexander had a friend, a prisoner and a
Rumanian himself, even from the same village, and
without the advice and consent of this considerably
older associate it did not occur to Alexander to at-
tempt anything. Ivan — for that was the name of
Alexander's friend in his Russian existence — was Al-
exander's one fixed point in the quicksands of war im-
prisoment, the only palpaple thing, therefore the
strongest tie which bound him to life in the past and
to the village at the foot of the Carpathians, and the
only person with whom he could really converse.
To Ivan, Alexander was a child from home, needing
his advice and care, both in daily life where all
kinds of accidents and mistakes lay in wait for a de-
fenceless prisoner of war, but more particularly when
that day in the fullness of time should come when

180 The Red Garden

they were to go back. For who could ever think
that Alexander would have either initiative or under-
standing enough to find his way home alone! And,
finally, Ivan had in Alexander a companionable refuge
which he would not willingly relinquish. Therefore
he watched over him and advised him against going
to the prison camp, at any rate as long as he, Ivan,
had not been put there.

Ivan and Alexander had had the marvellous luck
of being captured only eight days after the outbreak
of the war when as Hungarian Hussars they rode pa-
trol across the Russian border. Even at that time
Ivan had shown talents which had quite won the heart
and admiration of the dull-witted Alexander. Dur-
ing their imprisonment they had become separated,
but by a miracle they had met each other again in
Tomsk.

As foolishly stupid as Alexander was, so happily
endowed was Ivan. He always came out on top. No
prison, no fence could hold him. Not that he ever
fled ; anything so simple as that would really not have
been worthy of admiration. He obtained his release
by his personality. If he were caught now and then
and put in camp, he didn't get downhearted, but
smiled unweariedly at the Russians with his snow-
white teeth as if he never had been any happier.
Even the sternest of prison guards couldn't resist the
temptation to talk with him, and his frank manner
and entertaining qualities also won entry for him in
higher places. In the course of several days he was

Alexander and Ivan 181

always free again and had hold of the better end of
some fat job.

From his appearance one would not easily have
deemed Ivan the possessor of any ability whatsoever,
and especially not the ability to respond charmingly.
He didn't at all resemble the handsome, slightly stout
Alexander who, for the sake of the women if for
nothing else, kept himself looking tidy in my cast-
off clothes. Ivan was hideous, a tramp without as
within. You could have put anything at all on him,
and he would still have looked what he was, a dirty
Balkanese of doubtful Romanic extraction but with a
Hunnish; squash nose, a gleam of violated Jewdom in
his eyes and a thick stream of real Gipsy blood vaga-
bonding under his yellow skin.

Ivan's secret, the definition of his lucky star during
his Russian imprisonment, was not to be found in
anything external, but could only be discovered on
closer acquaintance. Ivan was a drunkard. This
much one could see at once from his sodden buffoon
face, reddish purple even to his ears under the jet-
black shaggy hair. But what one couldn't see was
the almost magical relationship that existed between
him and alcohol. Where Ivan was, there was also
liquor. As a willow wand is said to point to water,
so Ivan pointed to pure alcohol. What more pre-
cious endowment could there be for self-preservation
in war-ravaged Russia where the springs of alcohol
were either plugged or only ran expensively and spar-
ingly. Though a wretched prisoner of war, Ivan

182 The Red Garden

' — I

could move from place to place free as a bird, every-
where sure to create and meet sympathy, conquering
all, whether they were Red or White, officers, commis-
sars, city dwellers or peasants, priests or heathen, by
his spiritual good nature and the Dionysian gracious-
ness which streamed from him and surrounded his
person with an aura of more than rank odour, fa-
tally attractive to even the weakest Russian sprout of
the vice of drunkenness.

One would think that Ivan's passion for drink
would have been contagious to a character as weak
and as poorly endowed as Alexander's. But such
was not the case, perhaps because Ivan's exterior
served as a horrible example, and perhaps because
Ivan's tactics with Alexander were the very opposite
of those he used with the Russians. One might sup-
pose that he considered it his mission, while attend-
ing to his own requirements, to fill the Russians full
of the greatest possible quantity of liquor and in this
way repay his early capture by an offensive which
often caused the Russians larger losses than whole
Austrian battalions. But he watched keenly that the
fiend of drunkenness didn't enter into Alexander,
and gave him not a single drop of the strong fluids
which Alexander was far too simple to secure for
himself.

Ivan's path of life in Russia had, as may be imag-
ined, led through the most variegated professions and
the most fantastic occupations, which, however, were
always entwined with the real red thread of his

Alexander and Ivan 183

existence. For instance, just to mention something
which I could corroborate on the spot, he had come to
the city with steamer via Tobolsk from Omsk in the
service of the representative of a Caucasian wine
company that had a branch in Tomsk. With him he
stayed until the wares were sold and the store closed.
Then he had secured a place as prisoner of all work
in the local branch of the Russian Red Cross whose
most important, and as far as I could see, only prob-
lem for a long time was to apportion and grant re-
quisitions for wines and spirits on the former public
stores to foreign consuls, officials and officers in the
service of the Kolchak government and favoured pri-
vate individuals with certificates of weak health.
When this opportunity failed, because the command-
ant/ of the garrison took over this lucrative duty, Ivan
got a place as kitchen man in the Officers' Club. But
from washing glasses and dishes, he quickly ad-
vanced to being the right hand man of the host by
procuring spirits and vodka from secret private sup-
plies, and he was soon the glad favourite of the
guests. With his wit, his festive face, and the bandy
walk of his thin drunkard's Hussar legs, he had only
to show himself to make loud laughter resound at
the crowded much bespattered card tables. This job
Ivan lost when scandals and the need for barracks
caused the Officers' Club to be suddenly forbidden
and disbanded.

One evening after the catastrophe, as he sat with
Alexander in the kitchen by the oven, on top of which

184 The Red Garden

he had spent the last nights after politely secured
permission, I took the opportunity to talk with
him.

After he had thanked me warmly for the kindness
he had enjoyed in the house, and had praised Alexan-
der both as a friend and as absolutely irreplaceable
in everything pertaining to horses, had, altogether,
given the seated and indifferent Alexander an elo-
quent course in politeness and good policy, he told
me that he had secured a place as hired man for a
pope or priest and as zwanik — bell ringer — at one of
the larger churches of the city. In all likelihood he
would only have to avail himself of my hospitality
this one night more.

However, Ivan's optimism showed itself to be un-
warranted in this instance. During the execution of
his new duties he was overtaken by his fate. Pre-
sumably he had had more important things to do for
the pope, and had not taken the necessary precaution
of acquainting himself with the technicalities of the
art of bell-ringing. Moreover, he was unused to
working so high in the air, and poorly suited for it.
That must have been why he came to spoil Easter
Monday for a large congregation. The bells sud-
denly ceased to sound, and the faithful wakened from
their stupor and began to wonder what could have
happened. When the matter was investigated, Ivan
was found lying in the belfry. By a false swing one
of the bells had struck him in the head. On the
popes humane initiative, the stricken man was

Alexander and Ivan 185

brought to the Consulate. When Alexander saw
them carrying Ivan, he grew chalky white and began
to tremble and shake. I had the horse hitched up,
and we galloped away for the Austrian hospital sur-
geon at the camp, but when he had examined Ivan's
wound he merely shook his head and wondered that
such a fellow could have permitted himself to be-
come so amply alcoholized, when the Russians could
not even see their way to procure enough alcohol
for the hospital dispensary. Ivan had only a very
little hole in his head, but, without regaining con-
sciousness, his clear and merry spirit in the course of
several hours trickled out of it into the enigmatical
nothingness of space.

Some days after the burial, Alexander asked if he
might go to the bath. This permission he got and
also the extra couple of rubles which it would cost.
He never came back. The next morning his place
in the kitchen was empty, and the dog and the cat
who huddled shivering in each comer of the bed sent
great melancholy glances toward the door. The
rags had disappeared and Alexander's little green
wooden chest, his nicked stump of mirror, his comb
and pipe and the three postcards that had been nailed
up on the wall, all representing Alexander in his Hus-
sar uniform, were gone too. It was quickly discov-
ered that he had reported to the camp. After the
usual eight days of solitary arrest, allotted to pris-
oners who couldn't or wouldn't account for where
they had been and with what permission, he had

186 The Red Garden

> — .^ — I

moved into the several square yards of regulation
wooden berth which was due him in the barracks.
Although Alexander was far from having conducted
himself as he should, I respected his decision which
only sorrow and perplexity at Ivan's death had made
him take. Neither did I consider it possible in the
long run to defend him against his own fatuousness
without Ivan's influence.

Here my record of Ivan and Alexander would have
ceased, had I not three or four months after these
events found it necessary to go to Kalscheigin, a good
day's journey away from Tomsk. A Bolshevik
scouting party had attacked the coal mines there by
surprise, and for a period of twenty-four hours had
taken possession of them. They had given short
shrift to the higher officials together with those Cos-
sacks and Czechs of the guarding party whom they
succeeded in capturing, but unfortunately they didn't
get the worst extortionists and torturers in the mine
management, who, as usual, escaped the just punish-
ment of their inhuman brutality and robbery of the
labouring prisoners of war. Only a very few of the
prisoners had joined the band and gone off with
them. The majority had turned a deaf ear to all
the agitation and had declared through their spokes-
man that although the sympathy of the prisoners was
certainly on the side of the Bolsheviki, the cost of
joining them had been learned through all too terri-
ble experience. Wherefore they only wished to be
left in peace, and otherwise to be allowed to go home

Alexander and Ivan 187

again now that the war, by the grace of God, was
over in Europe. This answer the Bolsheviki ac-
cepted, though reluctantly, and then retired to the
open country and to the Taiga, the wild Siberian,
primeval forest where White reprisals did not dare to
follow them.

No sooner were they gone than the White relief
body made its appearance, struck down among the
prisoners, swung the nagaika, held inquisitions and
summary courts, and, although it was well known that
those who had helped to murder the officials had fled
with the Bolsheviki, yet for the sake of an example
four or five men, thought to have Bolshevik sym-
pathies, were condemned to death and shot on the
spot after having dug their own graves.

It was the rumour of these events which called me to
Kalscheigin in the company of a French officer whom
I desired to convince of the ill treatment and under-
nourishment to which the prisoners of war were con-
stantly subjected in these notorious mines. We had
finished our visit to the mine manager and the com-
missariat manager, two mealy-mouthed scoundrels
whom it would have been a cold-blooded pleasure to
place before a row of rifle barrels. Under the guid-
ance of the Cossack Commandant we had come to
the damp, earthy hovels where the prisoners had
their quarters, when, at the very entrance, a ragged
figure, shy and round-shouldered, wormed himself
out of our path. I was quite moved at recognizing
Alexander. Of his red cheeks and clear skin, there

188 The Red Garden

' I

was nothing left. His eyes glowed with a feverish
expression in the middle of his pale, stubbled face.
I confess it was with a curious terror I recognized in
the terrible rags hanging on his once well nourished
body, garments which had formerly clothed me.
For this reason only, tears were near my eyes, al-
though I also felt a real sorrow that poor Alexander
had ended in this horrible prison hell. But all I
could do was to surprise the Frenchman and the Cos-
sack by shaking Alexander's hand, and talking to
him as to a little child. He knew me, but I could
see that I was almost an entire stranger to him. He
tried to smile and to show that he had good courage,
but it wasn't much of a success. Then he asked if
the horse was along, and when he was answered in
the negative, he became dull to all questions and
seemed to feel relieved when I left him.

All I could do for Alexander was to ask the Cos-
sack to put him to some work where he would be
around horses. I asked it as a personal favour.
But such an extraordinary wish for the sake of a
prisoner of war has not much likelihood of being
understood or carried out by a Russian Cossack, and
perhaps least of all when he has with really flatter-
ing and affable ease assured you — tschestno slovo —
on his word of honour, that he is at your service.

But even if he did keep his promise, Alexander is
not sure to have been saved. He was, after all, one
of those who, left to his own devices, was doomed to
remain out there.

The Flight Through Siberia

WHAT record will history ever have of the
crash of the counter revolution in Siberia, of
the flight from west to east along the Sibe-
rian railway. The press was not there. It sat in
Fiume and read the false Caesarian proclamations of
the aesthetic Dictator or peeped platonically from the
Finnish border into the erstwhile holy but now dark
red Russia. Those who witnessed it and who now
from Siberia turn back to the world will not particu-
larly feel like writing; they will have all the mental
conditions for forgetting quickly, for there is noth-
ing that is so quickly wiped out as the experience of
the great absolute fear. The historians of the fu-
ture will find few documents to peruse. The sup-
ply of paper intended for the archives becomes
minute when a government, an army and a civilian
population cling to the thin, insecure thread of the
Trans-Siberian Railway in thirty degrees of cold,
Reaumur. Those who died in Siberia, died in si-
lence therefore in more than one sense. The snow
fell, and the white waste took into its great merciful
oblivion all that during the flight fell and remained
lying.

When it began I too was out there on the Trans-
Siberian line and despaired of getting home. As
usual, as long as I had not yet decided to go, I was

189

190 The Red Garden

> I

ruled by the bright optimism of mankind, the in-
stinct of self-preservation in the face of all danger,
without which there would not now be a living per-
son in Russia — in Siberia. But when the decision
had once been taken, when I dared to begin to count
the days, I was at once overcome with nervousness.
Perhaps the right moment had already passed? Per-
haps all would collapse around me today, tomorrow
and I grew weak-kneed when I thought of the prospect
of remaining for years more in this Russian Hell. If
I had wished for adventures this desire was now dead
in me, and if there had been moments when life or
death had been matters of indifference to me, there
was now within me an awakened perception of how
aimless it would be to let myself be butchered in a
struggle which, strictly speaking, did not concern me
at all. My anxiety was exaggerated: I got out in
time. The great collapse, as I had rightly calcu-
lated, did not come until several months afterwards.
But I was four weeks in getting through to Kharbin
and during that time was not out of my clothes. I
slept on the bare boards of a dirty box car in com-
pany with two Russian popes and several officers' fam-
ilies from Tomsk. When I came to Kharbin and
in the palatial home of Consul Jacobsen (East Asi-
atic Company) sat down to a table set with white dam-
ask, silver and sparkling wine glasses, while Chinese
servants carried around the exquisite French cooking,
I pinched my arm and thought of my box car down
at the railway station where the remains of a Manchu-

The Flight Through Siberia 191

rian hen, roasted with entrails and all, still lay, and
of the fact that I had not had a bath in four weeks.

The coming of the collapse itself I didn't see and
yet, in those days I was in doubt, I had, without the
use of special visionary faculties, deep presentiments
of what was to occur and which it was my earnest
effort not to have to see: the retreat of the Whites
along the Siberian railway.

But I also saw more than mere vision, because the
defeat of the Kolchak Government was not only in
every man's expectation (although he put the con-
ception of flight away as being hard to realize), it
lay also in conditions and actual circumstances which
met the eye. It lay on the tracks in unending rows
of cars without locomotives and beside the tracks in
overstrained and foundered trains and in burned sta-
tion buildings. Those were days when we almost
incessantly passed the skeletons of locomotives and
cars that the Bolshevistic guerilla bands had suc-
ceeded in derailing or blowing up despite the guard-
ing of the railway by the Czecho-Slovaks and other
Entente troops. Since the big Bolshevik battles in
1918 all the small bridges had been rebuilt, but the
mighty steel bridges over the large rivers were still
in a sad condition after the blowing up; some of them
gaped in the empty air with torn arches while first
a trial locomotive and then the train itself crept over
a makeshift pole bridge alongside. As the great
army in 1812 were forced to retreat over its old bat-
tle fields so the White Army had to retire on a rail-

192 The Red Garden

way line that along its whole length gave the impres-
sion that a fleeing host had just vanished where the
tracks met on the horizon. As far as misfortune is
concerned, this Siberian retreat need hardly pale in
comparison with Napoleon's.

The Kolchak Government was still in Omsk but
it was hard pressed by the Bolsheviki. It was a ques-
tion only of weeks when the Whites would have to
abandon the capital of West Siberia after having in
the course of the last six months lost the eastern and
third part of European Russia. From Omsk in sum-
mer there are three ways out, to the rear and to the
sides; one to the north along the river Irtisch to To-
bolsk and Tomsk: that way the Bolsheviki fled in the
spring of 1918 when they were surprised by the
Czecho-Slovaks but it was cut off* for the Whites by
the fall of Tomsk. To the south the river flows to
Semipalatinsk but that way ends blindly in Mongolia.
The third, middle and easterly way is the Trans-
Siberian Railway through Irkutsk to the east. This
line of retreat was practically speaking the only one
that off"ered itself to the Whites and even so only for
a restricted portion of them. By the fall of Omsk
the closest populated and the richest part of west
Siberia was cut off" from the east. Therefore it was
an assured fact that to the railway would stream in
motley confusion not only the remains of the de-
feated army and goverment, but also the plain civil-
ian population and the officers of the garrisons in the
back country in so far as they were able to get

The Flight Through Siberia 193

through, the officials and their families, the foreign
consuls and missions who had not already saved them-
selves, and all the thousands who for the last half
year had been constantly fleeing from their homes in
Russia and for whom the signal now sounded again.
The miserable trains that even in those times when
there was no danger near got slowly under way be-
cause of lack of coal and missing or mislaid re-
serve parts, would be stormed by frantic masses of
humanity. Omsk is being "evacuated!" The word
has no meaning for us, may we never live to see the
day that Copenhagen shall be evacuated to Ring-
sted. For the last two years Russia has been in con-
stant evacuation. I was in Moscow when the Bol-
sheviki in fear of the Germans evacuated Russia's
gold to Kazan, and in Kazan when it was unloaded.
I was in Omsk when the Whites brought in the same
gold, captured in Kazan and under Cossack guard
from the railway station to the bank. And on the
journey out parts of the treasure passed me on the
way to Irkutsk.

The railway from Omsk to Irkutsk goes through
the following points of importance: Novo-Nicko-
laevsk. Taiga (where the local branch from Tomsk
meets the main line), Marinsk, Krasnojarsk and
Nisjne Udinsk. In normal times the distance can be
covered in three days and nights. I was three days
in travelling approximately 2000 kilometers and I
spent four days in a railway station waiting for a
train. Those who suffer from waiting room impa-

194 The Red Garden

, III

tience have material for reflection. I have at times
sat back to back with a Russian soldier for twenty-
four stiff* hours by the clock and waited for a train
which would come no one knew when and if it came
no one knew whether it would start again for a while.
But four days is my record.

Along the section Omsk-Novo-Nikolaevsk over
eighty trains had been run together in a clump out-
side of the last named city and did not turn a wheel.
The mail trains were two days in covering thirty kilo-
meters. Endless rows of coaches, most of them with-
out locomotives were piled up. For the few engines
that were to be found coal was lacking, or it was im-
possible to get them over to a water tank. On the
other side of Novo-Nikolaevsk there were fewer trains
but always a half score at the larger stations. And
in Nisjne Udinsk and just outside of Irkutsk they
were again piled up until they at last formed an in-
terminable park. There was no one that enter-
tained the slighest hope that they ever would run
again. It was doing! a great deal to keep tracks
open for the most unpostponable trains. As we
never stopped less than twelve hours at a station I
had occasion enough to see what was contained in all
these trains. It was veritable migration on wheels.
Yes, migration, this text book fact, about which there
is so little in the history books, takes place now every
day between Petrograd and Vladivostok and can be
studied here in the field without special need of Mon-
umenta Germanica and other source works. The set-

The Flight Through Siberia 195

ting is slightly different from the Middle Ages, but
the reality is the same. History is the history of
of man and mankind is always mankind.

Most of the groups by far were composed of re-
fugees from the abandoned districts west of the Ural
mountains: Perm, Jekaterinburg, Krasno-Ufimsk,
Ufa, Orenburg. But refugees from west Siberia
(Tjellabinsk, Kurgan, Tjumen) had also gotten
through. How many of them there were, taken all
together, will be cleared up some time when statis-
tics of those who fled before the Huns also is pro-
duced. But it will be a six ciphered number. They
all live on the Siberian Railway if they have not by
some miracle found an asylum in the already over-
crowded cities. The trains they live in are beyond
power of description. The Siberian rolling stock is
very primitive. Coaches divided into classes are a
rarity. They have been burned or are the dwelling
places of the staffs of the foreign troops. Even the
mail trains often ran with only one third class coach
and the rest of the cars the so-called "Tjepluskas" —
"Heated cars," built during the war and only differ-
ent from our cattle cars of the poorest type in that
they can be heated by the passengers themselves if the
stove has not been stolen, as it nearly always has.
They are otherwise quite good cars when there aren't
too many people in them; I have travelled some ten
thousand kilometers in these box cars. — But in refu-
gee trains I have not travelled; their like has hardly
been seen before. They were composed of cars that

196 The Red Garden

elsewhere would have been sold for old iron long ago.
It was easy to see why the evacuating military and
the administrations had let them stand as unservice-
able. Many were splintered from collisions they
had sustained, others bore marks of the Bolshevik
war of the year before in the form of scars from
bomb explosions. The common man had jammed to-
gether what remained after the official evacuation and
at last he had even managed to get a rusty locomo-
tive to run. Since the flight began, that is for from
two to six months these trains ran and stood on the
Line. By thousands, people lived in them, generally
families with lodgers. In vain one asked himself
what had caused these swarms to leave house and
home. The upper class or even the plain well-to-do
citizens were not represented. They had fled also,
of course, but lived parasite-like in military hospital
trains. They did not sit in refugee cars. Here one
saw first of all those who were forced to flee: officials
and their families. Then teachers and office people.
But numerous labourers and peasants were also
along. Often the Tjepluska was quite comfortably
arranged, the conjugal bed was made up with large
featherbeds, there were pictures on the sooty walls
and of course the samovar was boiling on the table.
In the cars I have seen all sorts of articles for cheer
and usefulness in the home: pianos, graphophones,
canary birds, chamber pots, carpets. Grandpa in an
American rocking chair, families on benches around
the table and eating from real tableware. I have

The Flight Through Siberia 197

also seen cars with nothing in but people who lay on
the filthy floor and scratched themselves for vermin.
There were cars where peasant families lived to-
gether with their cows and calves and hens, unless
they had been so ambitious as to fence off a transport
flat-car with branches and hook it to the train. Old
broken wagons, lean horses, melancholy cows and
indifferent hogs rode along through the thousands of
districts and stood through the nights and stared at
the strange stars. Perhaps they bore hidden away
down in their unfathomable imbecility a question that
those who dragged them along never asked themselves
— What for — ^why? Of course it was also fear that
drove even the poorest on their way. They followed
the stream. They were under the planless sugges-
tion of flight. And they risked so little by fleeing.
Poorer than they already were they could hardly be-
come, no matter where they went. Perhaps things
would be better there where they happened to stop.
The Russian lets himself be moved about so easily
and the fatigue of travelling all too easily becomes
that permanent siesta, imconcem for the morrow,
about which no one knows anyway. His tempera-
ment is attracted by the nomadic. The Russian pea-
sant has always been the world's most and furthest
travelled. The appetite for migration dwells deep
in his prairie nature.

All the station buildings on the Line were pasted
over with notes of every size bearing laconic bits of
information from and to relatives and friends, who

198 The Red Garden

had become separated from each other and were try-
ing to get together again.

"To Nikola j Alexandrovitch Baukin. We were
here four days. We have gone further on to Ma-
rinsk. Baukins."

"Anna! Come to Taiga. I live at the house of
Fjodor Petrovitch. Peter died the 27th. Your
mother Sofie Sergievna."

Long novels have become old-fashioned and the
short story wins the approval of the time. But life
itself rises above literary modes and writes intermin-
able novels in an extremely curt style.

In between the fleeing groups other trains stood and
waited for further orders. I saw English, Italian,
Czech, Polish, Rumanian and Jugo-Slav troop trains,
well nourished soldiers in ornamental uniforms, dan-
dified officers with ribbons and crosses and with
heavy revolvers hanging at their sides. There were
enough soldiers to capture Moscow, if they would
fight. But officers and men thought only of getting
out while there was time. "We're through fighting.
We're not going to let ourselves be killed for the sake
of the Russian swine." Most of them sympathized
highly with the Bolsheviki, if they would only stay
away until they themselves were in safety. There
were trains full of unfortunate German and Hunga-
rian prisoners of war for whom the journey again
led eastward away from the home that was still in
their thoughts, the idyll they had left five years ago
and which since then had been greatly beautified in

The Flight Through Siberia 199

their longings. The majority were old men who sat
silently in the cars and sucked on the faithful briar
pipe that had known home, the campaign and im-
prisonment, or at least had been made by their own
hands in the loving image of remembrance. There
were dying men among them but they died without
outcries. And on every face was the clammy white-
ness that tells of an unutterable want and of consum-
ing tuberculosis. What had they not suffered, these
people! The soul of pain was in their eyes and in
suffering they had become patient, silent, humble.
Give them hope and they growl at once. Give them
freedom and they begin to hate. Give them weap-
ons and they want to see others suffer. Brutality
rises in them as an evil fluid. How often have I not
experienced that. These prisoners were to be seen
in all these stages along the Line.

And there were trains with cartridges and artillery,
trains with flying machines that were never to fly,
trains of gypsies whom the good God must have evac-
uated for no one else had given them a thought.
But God loves children' and that the majority in these
trains were. There were long train loads of Polish
Jews who had been fleeing for five years. Ahasuerus
beat it by way of the Siberian Railway — tomor-
row he fled back again possessed by a new fear. His
young daughters sat in the midst of all the wretched-
ness and in flaming flirtations showed off their aqui-
line beauty with officers of all nationalities. There
were hospital trains that stank of death and carbolic

200 The Red Garden

acid. The wounded were months on the way and
they who reached the operating table alive were rot-
ten as corpses brought up from the grave. They who
were not dying within the trains, bumped up and
down on the running boards outside and were never
at rest. There were Japanese trains neat and clean,
and full of barrels. Back of the placards with the
crimson-beamed sun, the red-collared, yellow men
squatted on their haunches and ate rice — they re-
sembled monkeys despite the burnished copper ware.
There were trains and more trains with seventeen-
year-old recruits on their way to mobilization. No
one thought of them any more, they sat long days and
spat sunflower-seeds on the track and waited the ar-
rival of an officer or more probably of food. They
were still in their peasant clothes and little by little
no doubt they ran home to their villages, if they
weren't too many hundred miles away. There were
trainloads of recruits in Canadian uniforms and with
short English rifles; they fought good-naturedly
among themselves, played cards and talked confiden-
tially of how one went about being taken prisoner.
Good Lord, the oldest of them were not over twenty!
And how many thousands of them were not shot as
deserters. There were trains with American ploughs
with matches and paper; Red Cross trains with Amer-
icans aboard; here nothing was lacking and if there
was medicine in the first car there was sure to be
goods for speculation in the ten following. There
were real military trains that slid smoothly through

The Flight Through Siberia 201

with the aid of all kinds of distinguished papers that
only cost the issuers a little work on the typewriter
but gave big money in return; for ladies' silk stock-
ings and French perfume made in Japan were rare
wares in Siberia, and yet they are, as all knew who
were along, one of the necessities of the war. And
mail and express trains were running and seldom ar-
rived the appointed day and when they did come they
were overflowing even into the toilet rooms of the
first class coaches with people who all travelled on
lawful business and who could show fine travelling
permits and had paid for their tickets and so forth.
And there were always noticeably many Jews with
much baggage who travelled westward and notice-
ably many officers who travelled eastward.

Next in long rows were trains that were loaded
only with evacuated institutions: a county court from
Bugulma, Perm's consistory, an insurance company
from Ufa, tables and chairs, records and typewriters,
safes and wastepaper baskets are at rest out in the
middle of the Siberian plain. Where will they be
put up again and will the ants after all ever turn
back to the overturned hive? They will surely.
"Go to the ant and be wise," said Solomon. And he
meant, no doubt, in regard to mankind.

Of all that one can see on the Siberian Railway
Line there is after all nothing so disquieting as the
echelons of captured Bolsheviki. When prisoners
have been taken and the real Communists and those
who by chance are included have been shot, there is

202 The Red Garden

always a whole mob which even the captors are re-
luctant to shoot. It is unjust that man shouldn't have
been endowed with a completely murderous nature.
It is indeed a positive pleasure for him to kill, he
enjoys seeing his activities rewarded by indisputable
results, but emotion demands its right and sets cer-
tain bounds. Therefore a certain number of the left-
over Bolsheviki were generally put in the army and
sent to the front where at first opportunity they went
over to the enemy which was quite contrary to the
good intentions with which they had been sent. The
rest were brought to some camp or other where be-
hind the barbed wire fence they vied with one another
in dying of the many different kinds of typhus for
which medical science has names but which it is not
worth while to be able to distinguish when one never
sees a doctor anyway. When the evacuating took
place all this wretchedness was also packed together,
forty men in each Tjepluska and the train was gener-
ally made up of about 1200 prisoners. On the move
the cars were sealed, there was only the light which
leaked through the cracks. When they stopped the
door was opened up on the one side and this side
the guard patrolled. Food was given twice every
twenty-four hours, rye bread and boiling water.
Those who died were gotten out of the way. The
survivors buried them themselves. Provisions for
the natural functions of the prisoners were also made.
Once a day they were brought out in flocks of three
hundred on an open field. The guards with their

The Flight Through Siberia 203

shiny, bayonetted, and loaded rifles camped around
them and the 300 gave from them what they had un-
der the unashamed countenance of God. I watched
this sight only once in company with an English of-
ficer, long and thin as is his type, all clothes, leather,
buttons and straight lines. He said nothing and
neither did I speak. Even now so long afterward it
seems to me that it was not on earth that I experienced
it. It was in Hell — it was the damned who sat as
shades and bore testimony before their living fellow-
men.

I have often from my railway car talked with these
prisoners when an echelon by chance lay on a side
track. The majority were dull, others had insanity
shining out of their eyes. They seemed about to
have fits of rage and to set their teeth in each other's
throats. There were also intelligent people and peo-
ple who only had become thoughtful and silent. I
still remember a number of good and not unrefined
people who were able to talk plainly and straight-
forwardly of their misfortunes. And there were also
all kinds of people good and bad, the scum of the
jails, mere boys, and people who resembled aged
men. But with many it was the old story, they had
been arrested on suspicion and had been brought
along because they had served the Bolsheviki as
clerks, drivers, etc., their case was to be looked into
and so they were put in camps with the others and
now they had been here eight weeks or so and rode
from city to city and were received nowhere for lack

204 The Red Garden

of room or fear of contagion. Most of all they
feared the coming of winter. "The nights are al-
ready cold and we have no covering." Which was
the truth, for it was only the richest who had both
trousers and shirt. Many were naked and boots I
have not seen on a single Bolshevik in these trans-
ports.

Where now are all the people I saw then? Now
that the cold weather has come, now that the sun rises
blood-red through the frost fog in the morning, now
that the bare flesh freezes fast on the iron parts of the
coaches. Does a jar, a tingling movement go
through the many rows of cars? Has that which
was awaited so long in anxiety and trembling, but
also in hope, come at last? Has the return of the
Whites by the Siberian Railway Line begun?

I

out Oi^it

DK

265

K4163

Kehler, Henning
The red garden