Yashka · Part IV · Chapter 19 (2/2)

Soon one of the arrested officers, who had been caught cursing Bolshevism while drunk, was set free. Before he went some of his companions entrusted him with messages to their relatives. I thought of the Vasilievs, who had so kindly taken me from the hospital to their home in the autumn of 1916, and begged the officer to visit them and tell them of my plight. He promised to do so and carried out his pledge. I sent them a message that I expected to be executed and asked their help.

When Daria Maximovna got the message she was horrified and immediately set out to get permission to see me. But when she called at the Soldiers’ Section for a pass to see Bochkareva, she was taken for a friend of Kornilov’s and would have been badly mauled if not for the fact that her son Stepan, who had belonged to my Company and who had brought about the friendship between his mother and myself, was now one of the Bolshevik chiefs. Daria Maximovna cried out that she was the mother of Stepan Vasiliev, of such and such a department, and he was brought to identify his mother.

This rescued her from a severe punishment. She appealed to her son to intervene in my behalf, but he refused, saying that he could not come to the aid of an avowed friend of Kornilov’s. He, however, obtained a pass to my cell for his mother. Later he responded to her entreaties and did say a few good words for me, telling the proper authorities that I was a simple peasant woman with no understanding of politics.

On the fourth day of my imprisonment I received a quarter of a pound of bread, some tea and two cubes of sugar. The bread was black, consisting partly of straw. I could not even touch it and had to satisfy myself with three cups of tea. Later in the day a sailor came in, and, addressing me as comrade, informed me that one Vasilieva was waiting to see me. I was weak, so weak that I could not move a few feet without assistance. As soon as I got up and made a step, I sank back on the bed in a helpless condition.

“Are you ill?” the sailor asked.

“Yes,” I murmured.

He took me by the arm and led me to a chair in the office. I was bathed in perspiration after the little walk and so dizzy that I could not see anything. When Daria Maximovna saw me she fell on my neck and wept. Turning to the officials, she cried out bitterly:

“How could you ever have such a woman arrested and subjected to torture? A woman who was so kind to the soldiers, and suffered so much for your own brothers!”

She then opened a package, took out some bread and butter, and handed them to me with these words:

“Manka, here is a quarter of a pound of bread. All we got today was three-eighths of a pound. And this is a quarter of a pound of butter, our entire ration.”

I was full of gratitude to this dear woman and her children, who had sacrificed their own portions for me. The bread was good. The difficulty was, according to Daria Maximovna, to get enough for them all. Even their meagre ration was not always obtainable.

I then told her my troubles and the punishment I was expecting, begging her to write to my mother in case of my execution.

I spent two weeks in that abominable cell before I was taken before the tribunal. I was marched along the Tverskaya, Moscow’s chief thoroughfare, and recognized on the way by the crowds. The tribunal was quartered in the Kremlin. For a couple of hours I waited there, at the end of which time I was surprised to see Stepan Vasiliev come in and approach me.

“Marusia, how did you ever get into this?” he asked me, shaking my hand and inviting me to sit down.

I told him the story of my going to Kislovodsk to take the cure.

“But how did you ever get to Zverevo?” he inquired.

“I had a ticket to Kislovodsk. I did not know that Zverevo was such a forbidden place. Once they sold me a ticket, I thought it all right to follow the regular route,” I answered excitedly.

“I spent a couple of hours yesterday examining your case and the documents relating to it, but I could not quite understand how you got to Zverevo,” Stepan said. “Perhaps you really did go to see Kornilov?”

“I do not deny my friendship for Kornilov,” I declared, glad at heart that Stepan had turned up in such a position of authority. “But you know that I am almost illiterate and understand no politics and do not mix with any party. I fought in the trenches for Russia and it is Mother Russia alone that interests me. All Russians are my brothers.”

Stepan answered that he knew of my ignorance of political matters. He then went out to report to the tribunal, and shortly afterwards I was called in. There were six men, all common soldiers, seated at a long table covered with a green cloth, in the middle of a large hall, richly decorated. I was asked to sit down and tell my story, and how I got into Zverevo. The six judges were all young men, not one of them over thirty.

I was about to rise from the chair to tell my story, but was very courteously asked to remain seated. I then told of my wound in the back, of the operation that I still needed for the extraction of a piece of shell, and of my consulting a Petrograd physician who had advised me to go to the Springs at Kislovodsk. I said that I had heard of the fighting between Kornilov and the Bolsheviks, at Novocherkassk, but had no idea what a civil war was like and had never thought of a front in such a struggle. I, therefore, continued my journey to Nikitino, where the Commandant had sent me on to Zverevo. Of course, I failed to mention the fact that the Commandant had sent on to Zverevo, not Bochkareva, but Smirnova, a Sister of Mercy. I concluded with the statement that as soon as I reached Zverevo I realized that I was in a dangerous situation, and had surrendered to the local authorities.

I was informed that it would take a week for my case to be cleared up and a decision reached. Instead of sending me to the Butirka, the prison in which I had spent the last two weeks, I was taken to the military guard house, opposite the Soldiers’ Section. Drunken sailors and Red Guards were usually confined there. The room in which I was put was narrow and long, the windows were large but closely grated. There were about ten prisoners in it.

“Ah, Bochkareva! Look who’s here!”

I was met with these words as soon as I crossed the threshold. They quickly turned into phrases of abuse and ridicule. I was quiet, and sought seclusion and rest in a corner, but in vain. The inmates were Bolsheviks of the lowest sort, degenerates and former criminals. I was the object of their constant ill-treatment, so that torturing me day and night became their diversion. If I tried to sleep, I soon found someone near me. When I ate or drank, the beasts assembled about me, showering insults on me and playing dirty tricks. Weeping had no effect on them. Night after night I was forced to stay awake, sometimes throwing myself upon an intruder with my teeth in an effort to drive him away. I implored the warder to give me a cell to myself.

“Let it be a cold, gloomy hole. Give me no food. But take me away from these drunken brutes!” I would plead.

“We will take you away soon⁠—to shoot you!” the warder would joke in reply, amid the uproarious laughter of my tormentors.

The appointed week elapsed and still there was no decision in my case. The days⁠—long, cruel, agonizing days⁠—passed slowly by. The impossibility of sleeping was above all so torturing that it drove me to a state actually bordering on insanity. Two and a half weeks I lived in that inferno, seventeen days without a single full night’s sleep!

Then one morning the warder, who had delighted daily in telling me stories of what would be done to me, very vivid stories of frightfulness, came in with some papers in his hand.

“Bochkareva!” he called out to me. “You are free.” And he opened the door facing me.

I was so surprised that I thought at first that this was another trick to torture me.

“Free?” I asked. “Why?” I had grown to believe the warder’s tales of what awaited me, and I could not imagine him as the carrier of such tidings.

“Am I free for good?” I asked.

“Yes,” was the answer. “You will go with a guard to the Soldiers’ Section, where you will get the necessary papers.”

I bade farewell, with a sigh of relief, to the chamber of horrors, and went immediately to get the document from the tribunal, which stated that I had been arrested but found innocent of the charge and that, as I was ill, I was to be allowed complete freedom of movement in the country. With this passport in my pocket I was set at liberty.