Red Dusk and the Morrow · Chapter 2 (5/6)

The conversation turned on the Great War and Zorinsky recounted a number of incidents in his career. He also gave his views of the Russian people and the revolution. “The Russian peasant,” he said, “is a brute. What he wants is a good hiding, and unless I’m much mistaken the Communists are going to give it to him. Otherwise the Communists go under. In my regiment we used to smash a jaw now and again on principle. That’s the only way to make Russian peasants fight. Have you heard about the Red army? Comrade Trotsky, you see, has already abolished his Red officers, and is inviting⁠—inviting, if you please⁠—us, the ‘counterrevolutionary Tsarist officer swine,’ to accept posts in his new army. Would you ever believe it? By God, I’ve half a mind to join! Trotsky will order me to flog the peasants to my heart’s content. Under Trotsky, mark my words, I would make a career in no time.”

The dinner was a sumptuous banquet for the Petrograd of the period. There was nothing that suggested want. Coffee was served in the drawing-room, while Zorinsky kept up an unceasing flow of strange and cynical but entertaining conversation.

I waited till nearly ten for the call from Zorinsky’s friend with regard to Melnikoff, and then, in view of my uncertainty as to whether the Journalist’s house would still be open, I accepted Zorinsky’s invitation to stay overnight. “There is no reason,” he said, “why you should not come in here whenever you like. We dine every day at six and you are welcome.”

Just as I was retiring Zorinsky was called to the telephone and returned explaining that he would only be able to begin the investigation of Melnikoff’s case next day. I was shown to the spare bedroom, where I found everything provided for me. Zorinsky apologized that he could not offer me a hot bath. “That rascal dvornik downstairs,” he said, referring to the yard-keeper whose duty it was to procure wood for the occupants, “allowed an extra stock of fuel that I had my eyes on to be requisitioned for somebody else, but next week I think I shall be able to get a good supply from the theatre. Good night⁠—and don’t dream of No. 2 Gorokhovaya!”

The Extraordinary Commission, spoken of with such abhorrence by Zorinsky, is the most notorious of all Bolshevist institutions. It is an instrument of terror and inquisition designed forcibly to uproot all anti-Bolshevist sentiment throughout Lenin’s dominions. Its full title is the “Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of the Counterrevolution and Speculation,” “speculation” being every form of private commerce⁠—the bugbear of Communism. The Russian title of this institution is “Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya,” popularly spoken of as the “Chrezvychayka,” or still shorter the “Cheka.” The headquarters of the Cheka in Petrograd are situated at No. 2 of the street named “Gorokhovaya,” the seat of the Prefecture of Police during the Tsar’s regime, so that the popular mode of appellation of the Prefecture by its address⁠—“No. 2 Gorokhovaya”⁠—has stuck to the Extraordinary Commission and will go down as a byword in Russian history.

At the head of No. 2 Gorokhovaya there sits a “soviet,” or council, of some half-dozen revolutionary fanatics of the most vehement type. With these lies the final word as to the fate of prisoners. Recommendations are submitted to this soviet by “Investigators” whose duty it is to examine the accused, collect the evidence and report upon it. It is thus in the hands of the “Investigators” that power over prisoners’ lives actually lies, since they are in a position to turn the evidence one way or the other, as they choose.

Investigators vary considerably. There are some who are sincere and upright, though demoniacal visionaries, cold as steel, cruel, unpolluted by thirst for filthy lucre, who see the dawn of proletarian liberty only through mists of non-proletarian blood. Such men (or women) are actuated by malignant longing for revenge for every wrong, real or imaginary, suffered in the past. Believing themselves to be called to perform a sacred task in exterminating the “counterrevolution,” they can upon occasion be civil and courteous, even chivalrous (though that is rare), but never impartial. There are other investigators who are merely corrupt, ready to sacrifice any proletarian interest for a price, regarding their job purely as a means of amassing a fortune by the taking of bribes.

Every responsible official of the Extraordinary Commission must be a member of the Communist Party. The lower staff, however, is composed of hirelings, frequently of foreign origin, and many of them re-engaged agents of the Tsarist police. The latter, who lost their jobs as the result of the revolution which overthrew the Tsarist autocracy, have been re-enlisted as specialists by the Bolsheviks, and find congenial occupation in spying, eavesdropping, and hounding down rebellious or suspected workmen just as they did when the government was the Tsar’s instead of Lenin’s. It is this fact which renders it almost impossible for the Russian workers to organize a revolt against their new taskmasters. It is thus that arose the sobriquet applied to the Red regime of “Tsarism inside out.” The faintest signs of sedition are immediately reported to the Cheka by its secret agents disguised as workers, the ringleaders are then “eliminated” from the factory under pretext of being conscripted elsewhere, and they are frequently never heard of again.

The Extraordinary Commission overshadows all else in Red Russia. No individual is free from its all-perceiving eye. Even Communists stand in awe of it, one of its duties being to unearth black sheep within the Party ranks, and since it never errs on the side of leniency there have been cases of execution of true adherents of the Communist creed under suspicion of being black sheep. On the other hand, the black sheep, being imbued with those very qualities of guile, trickery, and unscrupulous deceit which make the Extraordinary Commission so efficient a machine, generally manage to get off.

One of the most diabolic of the methods copied from Tsarist days and employed by the Extraordinary Commission against non-Bolsheviks is that known in Russia as “provocation.” Provocation consisted formerly in the deliberate fomentation, by agents who were known as “agents provocateurs,” of revolutionary sedition and plots. Such movements would attract to themselves ardent revolutionaries, and when a conspiracy had matured and was about to culminate in some act of terrorism it would be betrayed at the last moment by the agent provocateur, who frequently succeeded in making himself the most trusted member of the revolutionary group. Agents provocateurs were recruited from all classes, but chiefly from the intelligentsia. Imitating Tsarism in this as in most of its essentials, the Bolsheviks employ similar agents to foment counterrevolutionary conspiracies and they reward munificently a provocateur who yields to the insatiable Cheka a plentiful crop of “counterrevolutionary” heads.

As under the Tsar, every invention of exquisite villainy is practised to extract from captives, thus or otherwise seized, the secret of accomplices or sympathizers. Not without reason was Marsh haunted with fears that his wife, nerve-racked and doubtless underfed, if fed at all, might be subjected to treatment that would test her self-control to the extreme. She did not know where he was, but she knew all his friends and acquaintances, an exhaustive list of whom would be insistently demanded. She had already, according to the Policeman, given confused replies, which were bound to complicate her case. The inquisition would become ever more relentless, until at last⁠—

On the day following my visit to Zorinsky I appeared punctually at eleven o’clock at the empty flat with “No. 5” chalked on the back door. It was not far from Zorinsky’s, but I approached it by a circuitous route, constantly looking round to assure myself I was not being followed. The filthy yard was as foul and noisome as ever, vying in stench with the gloomy staircase, and I met no one. Maria, no longer suspicious, opened the door in answer to my three knocks. “Peter Ivanitch is not here yet,” she said, “but he should be in any minute.” So I sat down to read the Soviet newspapers.

Marsh’s three thumps at the back door were not long in making themselves heard. Maria hurried along the passage, I heard the lock creak, the door stiffly tugged open, and then suddenly a little stifled cry from Maria. I rose quickly. Marsh burst, or rather tumbled, into the room with his head and face bound up in a big black shawl. As he laboriously unwound it I had a vision of Maria in the doorway, her fist in her mouth, staring at him speechless and terrified.

It was a strange Marsh that emerged from the folds of the black shawl. The invincible smile struggled to maintain itself, but his eyes were bleared and wandered aimlessly, and he shook with agitation despite his efforts to retain self-control.

“My wife⁠—” he stammered, half coherently, dropping into a chair and fumbling feverishly for his handkerchief. “She was subjected yesterday⁠—seven hours’ cross-examination⁠—uninterruptedly⁠—no food⁠—not even allowed to sit down⁠—until finally she swooned. She has said something⁠—I don’t know what. I am afraid⁠—” He rose and strode up and down, mumbling so that I could scarcely understand, but I caught the word “indiscretion”⁠—and understood all he wished to say.

After a few moments he calmed and sat down again. “The Policeman came home at midnight,” he said, “and told me all about it. I questioned and questioned again and am sure he is not lying. The Bolsheviks believe she was implicated in some conspiracy, so they made her write three autobiographies, and” (he paused) “they⁠—are all different. Now⁠—she is being compelled to explain discrepancies, but she can’t remember anything and her mind seems to be giving. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks are resolved to eradicate, once and for all, all ‘English machinations,’ as they call it, in Russia. They know I’ve shaved and changed my appearance and a special detachment of spies is on the hunt for me, with a big reward offered to the finder.”

He paused and swallowed at a gulp the glassful of tea Maria had placed beside him.

“Look here, old man,” he said, suddenly, laying his hands out flat on the table in front of him, “I am going to ask you to help me out. The ‘Policeman’ says it’s worse for her that I should be here than if I go. So I’m going. Once they know I’ve fled, the Policeman says, they will cease plaguing her, and it may be easier to effect an escape. Tell me, will you take the job over for me?”

“My dear fellow,” I said, “I had already resolved that I would attempt nothing else until we had safely got your wife out of prison. And the day she gets out I will escort her over the frontier myself. I shall have to go to Finland to report, anyway.”

He was going to thank me but I shut him up.

“When will you go?” I asked.

“Tomorrow. There are a number of things to be done. Have you got much money?”

“Enough for myself, but no reserve.”

“I will leave you all I have,” he said, “and today I’ll go and see a business friend of mine who may be able to get some more. He is a Jew, but is absolutely trustworthy.”

“By the way,” I asked, when this matter was decided, “ever heard of a Captain Zorinsky?”

“Zorinsky? Zorinsky? No. Who is he?”

“A fellow who seems to know a lot about you,” I said. “Says he is a friend of Melnikoff’s, though I never heard Melnikoff mention him. Yesterday he was particularly anxious to know your present address.”

“You didn’t tell him?” queried Marsh, nervously.

“What do you take me for?”

“You can tell him day after tomorrow,” he laughed.

Marsh went off to his business friend, saying he would warn him of my possible visit, and stayed there all day. I remained at “No. 5” and wrote up in minute handwriting on tracing paper a preliminary report on the general situation in Petrograd, which I intended to ask Marsh to take with him. To be prepared for all contingencies I gave the little scroll to Maria when it was finished and she hid it at the bottom of a pail of ashes.

Next morning Marsh turned up at “No. 5” dressed in a huge sheepskin coat with a fur collar half engulfing his face. This was the disguise in which he was going to escape across the frontier. As passport he had procured the “certificate of identification” of his coachman, who had come into Petrograd from the expropriated farm to see Maria. With his face purposely dirtied, and decorated with three days’ growth of reddish beard, a driver’s cap that covered his ears, and a big sack on his back to add a peasant touch to his getup, Marsh looked⁠—well, like nothing on earth, to use the colloquial expression! It was a getup that defied description, yet in a crowd of peasants would not attract particular attention.

Confident that he was doing the right thing by quitting, Marsh had completely recovered his former good spirits and joked boisterously as he put a finishing touch here and there to his disguise. I gave him my report and folding it flat into a packet about two inches square he removed one of his top boots and hid it inside the sole of his sock. “The population of hell will be increased by several new arrivals before the Bolsheviks find that,” he said, pulling on his boot again and slipping a heavy revolver inside his trousers.

Poor Maria was terribly distressed at Marsh’s departure. So was the coachman, who could find no terms wherein to express his disgust and indignation at the conduct of the elder of the two stable-boys, who had joined the Bolsheviks, assisted in sacking Marsh’s country house and farm, and was now appointed Commissar in supreme control of the establishment. The coachman exhausted a luxuriant fund of expletives in describing how the stable-boy now sprawled in Marsh’s easy-chairs, spitting on the floor, how all the photographs had been smashed to pieces, and the drawing-room carpets littered with dirt, cigarette-ends, and rubbish. At all of which Marsh roared with laughter, much to the perplexity of the coachman and Maria.

With trembling hands Maria placed a rough meal on the table, while Marsh repeated to me final details of the route he was taking and by which I should follow with his wife. “Fita,” he said, mentioning the name of the Finnish guide on whom he was relying, “lives a mile from Grusino station. When you get out of the train walk in the other direction till everybody has dispersed, then turn back and go by the forest path straight to his cottage. He will tell you what to do.”

At last it was time to start. Marsh and I shook hands and wished each other good-luck, and I went out first, so as not to witness the pathetic parting from his humble friends. I heard him embrace them both, heard Maria’s convulsive sobs⁠—and I hurried down the stone stairway and out into the street. I walked rapidly to the streetcar terminal in the Mihailovsky Square, and wandered round it till Marsh appeared. We made no sign of recognition. He jumped on one of the cars, and I scrambled on to the next.