Yashka · Part IV · Chapter 17 (2/2)

There were always delegates from local committees going somewhere, and they talked to the soldiers, answering questions and explaining things. They could not very well explain away the German treachery, but they held out the promise of a revolution in Germany almost any day. The men listened but were not greatly impressed by the assurances of the agitators. One felt that they were still groping in the dark, although the light was dawning on their minds. The awakening could not be long postponed.

I had a safe and comfortable journey to Petrograd. Nobody molested me, nobody threatened my life. I arrived at the capital on the 18th of January. The station was not as strongly guarded as two months before. Red Guards were not in such evidence in the streets, which appeared more normal. I went to one of my former patronesses and learned of the terror in which the capital lived.

The following day I called on General X, who greeted me cordially. Kiev, he told me, had just been captured by the Germans. They were threatening Petrograd, and the opposition of the Red Guards would not prevent or even postpone its capture by one day if the Germans were bent upon taking the city.

Red Terror was rampant in Petrograd. The river was full of corpses of officers who had been slain and lynched. Those who were alive were leading a wretched existence, fearing to show themselves in public because of the temper of the mob, and therefore on the verge of death from starvation. Even more harrowing was the situation of the country. It was falling into the hands of the enemy so rapidly that immediate action of some sort was imperative.

A secret meeting of officers and sympathizers had been held at which it was decided to get in touch with General Kornilov, who was reported as operating in the Don region. There were so many conflicting reports concerning Kornilov that it had been suggested that a courier should be sent to him to find out definitely his plans and his resources. After an exhaustive discussion General X suggested that I, as a woman, was the only person who could possibly get through the Bolshevik lines and reach Kornilov. Would I go?

“I would not join the officers here or Kornilov in the South for the purpose of waging war against my own people,” I replied. “I can’t do it because every Russian is dear to my heart, whether he be a Bolshevik, a Menshevik, or a Red Guard. But I will undertake to go to Kornilov, in order to satisfy your, as well as my own, desire for information.”

It was agreed that I should dress as a Sister of Mercy. A costume was obtained for me, and I put it on over my uniform. My soldier’s cap I tucked away in a pocket and donned the ordinary headgear of a Sister of Mercy, which left visible only my eyes, nose, mouth and cheeks, and made me look like a matron of about forty-five.

A passport was furnished to me, bearing the name of Alexandra Leontievna Smirnova, which was to be my name on the journey. As I wore army boots there was no danger of my trousers showing under the skirt. I took with me a letter from Princess Tatuyeva, in which she invited me to visit her in her home in the Caucasus. A ticket from Petrograd to Kislovodsk, a Caucasian health resort within several hundred miles of the place where Kornilov was stationed, was given me, to be used only in an emergency. It was agreed that in case of danger I should discard my garb of a Sister of Mercy, and disclose my identity, supported by the evidence of the emergency ticket to Kislovodsk and the letter from Princess Tatuieva, declare that I was on my way to take a cure at that place. In addition, I was, of course, provided with money for expenses.

It was very amusing to lose one’s identity and appear as a complete stranger. I was no longer Maria Bochkareva, but Alexandra Smirnova. And as I glanced at myself in the mirror it seemed even to my own eyes that I had been reincarnated from a soldier into a Sister of Mercy.

When I started from Petrograd my destination was Nikitino, a station which one would ordinarily pass on the way to Kislovodsk. Nobody recognized me on the train. Sometimes a soldier asked:

“Where are you going, little sister?”

“Home, to Kislovodsk,” was my usual answer.

The next question would be about the service I had seen at the front, and the sectors at which I worked. I would reply with facts from my actual experience as a soldier. There was nothing strange about a Sister of Mercy returning home, and as I preferred silence and solitude to conversation, I reached Nikitino, at the end of several days, without any trouble.

From Nikitino all trains were by order of the authorities switched off to other lines and sent to their destination by roundabout routes. The road running directly south from Nikitino was used for military purposes exclusively by the Bolshevik forces engaged in fighting Kornilov. Twenty miles farther on, at Zverevo, the so-called front began. Private passengers were therefore not allowed to go to Zverevo.

It was evident that vast preparations were being made for a campaign against General Kornilov. There were many ammunition trains and large numbers of men concentrated there waiting transportation. There was apparently no lack of money, and there was iron discipline, reminding one of the early days of the war. There was order everywhere.

The first problem confronting me was how to get to Zverevo. I went to the Commandant of the station, complained that I was penniless, that I could not wait indefinitely for the end of the fighting to return home to Kislovodsk, and urgently begged him to advise me what to do. I made such an appeal to him that he finally said:

“A munition train is just about to leave for Zverevo. Come, get into it and go to Zverevo. Perhaps they will pass you through the lines at the front. There is a second-class carriage attached to the train.”

He led me to the carriage, in which were only the five soldiers who were in charge of the train. He introduced me to the chief of them as a stranded Sister of Mercy and asked for their indulgence. I thanked the obliging Commandant profusely and from the bottom of my heart.

The train moved out of the station, but although satisfied with the first stage of my enterprise, I was by no means cheerful as to my prospects in Zverevo, the Bolshevik war zone. The head of the party sat down opposite me. He was a dirty, ugly muzhik. I did not encourage him to engage me in conversation, but he was evidently wholly insensible to my feelings in the matter.

After the preliminary questions, he expressed his surprise that I should have chosen such an inopportune moment to go to Kislovodsk.

“But my mother is ill there,” I lied, “perhaps she is dying now. It broke her heart when I went to the front.”

“Ah, that’s different,” he declared, moving over to my side. “They will pass you in that case.”

From an expression of sympathy he had no hesitation in proceeding to an attempt at flirtation. He moved closer to me and even touched my arm. It was a delicate situation. I could not well afford to provoke his antagonism, so I warded off his advances with a smile and a coquettish glance. He treated me to a good meal, during which the conversation turned to general conditions. He was, of course, a rabid Bolshevik and a savage opponent of Kornilov and all officers. My part in the conversation was confined to brief expressions of acquiescence, till suddenly he asked:

“Have you heard of the Women’s Battalion of Death?”

My heart thumped violently.

“What Battalion did you say?” I asked with an air of ignorance.

“Why, Bochkareva’s Battalion!” he replied in a loud voice.

“Bochkareva’s?” I asked reminiscently. “Oh, yes, Bochkareva; yes, I have heard about her.”

“The ⸻! She is a Kornilovka!” he exclaimed. “She is for the old regime.”

“How do you know?” I asked. “I thought she was nonpartisan.”

“We know them all, the counter-revolutionists! She is one of them,” my companion declared emphatically.

“Well, but the Battalion of Death no longer exists, and Bochkareva has apparently vanished,” I suggested.

“Yes, we know how they vanish. Many of them have vanished like that. Kornilov had vanished, too. Then they all pop up again somewhere or other and cause trouble,” he declared.

“Now, what would you do to her if she were to pop up here?” I ventured to inquire.

“Kill her. She would never get away alive, you may stake an oath on that,” he assured me. “We have the photographs of all the leading counterrevolutionaries, so that they can’t conceal their identity if they are caught.”

The conversation then took a more profitable turn for me. I learned all about the plans of the Bolshevik force against Kornilov. The arrival of the train at Zverevo put an end to my association with my travelling companion. I thanked him warmly for all his kindness to me.

“You know, Sister,” he unexpectedly declared before parting, “I like you. Will you marry me?”

I was not prepared for this. It rather took me aback. He was such a dirty, repulsive-looking creature, and the proposal was so ludicrous that it was with difficulty that I controlled my desire to laugh. The situation was not one for merriment.

“Yes, with pleasure,” I responded to his offer, with as much graciousness as I could command, “but after I have seen my mother.”

He gave me his address and asked me to write to him, which I promised to do. Perhaps he is still waiting for a letter from me.

I left him at the train and went toward the station. There were Red Guards, sailors, soldiers, even Cossacks, who had joined the Bolsheviks, on the platform and inside the station. But there were no private citizens in sight. I sat down in a corner and waited. I was taken for a nurse attached to the Bolshevik army, and was not molested. One, two, three hours passed and still I could find no opportunity to proceed to my destination. A civilian, who somehow found his way into the station, was placed under arrest before my eyes without any preliminaries. I, therefore, preferred to sit quietly in my corner rather than move about.

Finally a pleasant looking young soldier became interested in me. He walked up and asked:

“Why are you waiting here, Sister?”

“I am waiting for a comrade,” I answered.

“What is his name?” he inquired, interested.

“Oh, that is a secret,” I replied in a teasing manner.

He sat down near me, and asked me if I had worked at the front. I said that unfortunately I had been detailed only to hospitals in the rear.

“Why was that man arrested?” I ventured to ask.

“Because he had no papers from the Soviet,” was the reply. “He will be shot immediately.”

“Do you execute everybody who has no papers?” I asked.

“Everybody, without distinction.”

“Even women?” I inquired.

“Yes, even women,” was the reply. “This is a war zone.”

“Holy Mother!” I exclaimed in horror. “How terrible! You really slay them all? Without even a trial?”

“There is little time for trials here. Once fallen here, there is no escape. Our firing squads make an end of all suspected persons on the spot,” he informed me kindly. “Come, would you like to see the execution-grounds? They are quite near here.”

I followed him reluctantly. A few hundred feet away from the station we stopped. I could go no further. The field in front of us was covered with scores of mangled, naked corpses. It made my flesh creep.

“There are about two hundred of them here, mostly officers who had joined or sought to join Kornilov,” he explained.

I could not help shivering. The dreadful scene nearly shattered my nerves and it was all I could do not to collapse.

“Ah, you women, women,” my escort nodded sympathetically. “You are all weak. You don’t know what war is. Still,” he admitted, “there are some who can compare with men. Take Bochkareva, for instance, she would not shudder at sights like this.”

“Who is she, this Bochkareva?” I was curious.

“Haven’t you heard of her?” he asked in surprise. “Why, she was a soldier of the old regime and organized the Women’s Battalion of Death. She is for Kornilov and the bourgeoisie. They gave her an officer’s rank and bought her over to their side, although she is of peasant blood.”

It was all very interesting, this theory of my corruption. I had heard it before, but not stated in such definite terms. At the same time I was haunted by the picture of those mangled bodies, and the thought rankled in my mind of the treacherous Bolsheviks who had opposed capital punishment in the war against Germany but introduced it in the most brutal fashion in the war against their own brothers.

I then told my friend of the trouble in which I found myself, that I was penniless, that I had to get home to Kislovodsk and that I did not know how to get through the front. He explained to me that the so-called front was not a continuous line but a series of posts, maintained on this side by the Bolsheviks and on the opposite side by Kornilov.

“Sometimes,” he added, “the peasants of the neighbouring villages are allowed by both sides to pass through to Novocherkassk, Kornilov’s headquarters. If you follow that road,” and he pointed to it, “you will come to a village about three miles from here. One of the peasants may be willing to convey you across.”

I thanked him for the valuable information, and we parted friends. The walk to the village was uneventful. On the outskirts of it I saw an old muzhik working outside of his hut. There was a stable and horses attached to it.

“Good day, grandfather!” I greeted the old man.

“Good day, little sister,” he answered.

“Would you drive me to the city?” I asked.

“Great God! How is it possible? The Bolsheviks are fighting in front of the city, and they don’t let anybody pass,” he said.

“But people do go sometimes, don’t they?”

“Yes, sometimes they do.”

“Well, I will give you fifty roubles for driving me to the city,” I offered.

The muzhik scratched his neck, reconsidering the matter.

“But aren’t you a political?” he inquired cautiously.

“No,” I assured him, “I am not.”

He went into the cabin to talk it over with his baba. It was a tempting offer and her consent was apparently quickly obtained, for he soon returned and said:

“All right, we will go. Come into the house. We will have tea and something to eat.”

The invitation was welcome indeed, as I had grown hungry during my long wait at the station and the walk to the village. When we had finished our tea and lunch and the peasant harnessed his horse, I asked for a large apron, which I put on over my clothes. I then asked for the baba’s winter shawl and wrapped it over my head and shoulders, almost completely covering my face, so that I no longer looked like a Sister of Mercy, but one of the local peasant-women.

Praying to God to grant me a safe journey, I seated myself in the cart. The horse started off along the road.

The Bolshevik front was still ahead of me. But I was making progress.⁠ ⁠…