The village; Russian impressions

Front matter

pU S S IAN I M PRE S S I O N:S

UeRNEST POOLE

New York

CHAPTER I I **y^ H, Tarasov, hurry up I "

V^ In my hotel room in Petrograd, Tarasov was doing his packing. I had already finished mine. It was a stifling afternoon in August, 19 17, and we were trying to get off for a trip to a little village deep in the heart of the country. But I had small hope of catching the train. My companion was a man about forty, huge of limb and nearly bald. His face was flushed and perspiring. A vast disorderly heap of belongings lay all around him on the floor, and he was mauling things about with a kind of desperate patience. To my imprecations he said not a word. I heard him panting softly.

In Petrograd and Moscow and in smaller cities, Juvenale Ivanovitch Tarasov had for many weeks been my interpreter and friend. I had tried three other interpreters, two of them Bolsheviki and the third one a Cadet. Each had looked at Russia through his political party eyes. The value of Tarasov to me was that he belonged to no party at all.

He belonged to Russia. He was a mixer. His view of his country had been formed through a career in which he had been a farmer, a chemical engineer, a high explosives expert and a maker of violins, a banker's clerk, a street traction man, a business promoter, a dreamer, an anthropologist for two years, a traveler, a great reader and an eager translator of all kinds of foreign books. Years before in Russia, when I had first known him there, he had been translating Booker T. Washington's " Up From Slavery." Then he had tackled another book and had come to me with a puzzled air, for he could not " get the eediom." It was " Mr. Dooley."

Tarasov was a fellow that one does not soon forget. I had kept in touch with him ; and now on my second trip to Russia I searched until I found him at last, working in a Moscow bank. I telegraphed and he came at once. He arrived in Petrograd on the third night of the July Insurrection, when the Bolshevik Red Guards and the troops who supported Kerensky were fighting busily in the streets. Several hundred had been killed. You could still hear shots occasionally. I had been out and returned to my room about ten. o'clock. Tarasov was waiting for me there. At my entrance he sprang up and gave me a long Russian embrace, with tears of real joy in his eyes. Then I drew back and surveyed him.

"What has happened to you?" I asked. He was haggard and pale. Plainly the revolution, I thought, had played the devil with my friend. As I looked at him, there came to our ears the rattle of shots from the Square of the Winter Palace close by. But Tarasov was thinking of other things.

" When she left me last week," he replied, " for fifty-two hours I lay on the floor like a man who is dead."

Then he told me in detail of this last love affair of his. What a beauty! What dark regular features, and a form that would have driven the old Greek sculptors to despair. In short, a goddess ! He grasped my arm and walked me about in Petrograd until two o'clock in the morning. At times I would pitilessly interrupt and would make him converse for me with the groups of Kerensky soldiers and Red Guards who, upon street corners and out on the great bridges that spanned the misty Neva under the light of a yellow half moon, were still engaged in a little affair called " the Russian Revolution." But then my companion would return to the great topic on his mind. How he had labored .with that girl, to educate her, give her a soul. They had lived together for two years ; he had begged her to marry him, time and again. But she would not. And now — gone ! He described his comatose condition after her departure. He intended to write it all down for the benefit of psychiatrists. On and on and on we walked. In short, a goddess 1 Well, she was gone. And what did he care for the girl, after all? There had been many others and there would be more I

Meanwhile what a time we would have I He would show me all Russia — the whole revolution 1

"You'll leave the bank?"

" Of course I Why not? What is a bank? " he joyously asked.

So our travels began. Six weeks passed ; and now we were about to start on the very best of our journeys. For well as Tarasov knew the towns, he knew the villages better still. He himself was a small landowner, and to-day we were off to his estate, about five hours from Petrograd. In the morning he had left me to go to his mother's apartment here, to get some things we would need in the country.

" In an hour I shall return to you, my dear," he had assured me.

That was about six hours ago, for on the street he had met a friend and they had had one of those long Russian talks, wandering here and there over the town. In their wanderings, he had remembered to do as I had asked him — he had inquired about the trains. He had found there were three ; and Tarasov was planning to catch the last, which left town at seven that night and arrived at a lonely junction somewhere off in the forest a bit after 3 A. M. At that hour, if we could find a rig, we would drive some thirty versts (twenty miles) to his estate. This was his program, I looked at him grimly.

" Tarasov," I said, " we have lost the first train because while you wandered off into the future of Russia with that bosom friend of yours, I was sitting sweating here ! We will now catch the second train 1 Come on now — get busy ! Pack ! "

He grew very gloomy then, for this meant haste, which he despised. He looked at me in a puzzled way, as though he were trying to understand this weird Yankee love of speed. What earthly difference did it make whether we ended our journey in the dusk or in the dawn? But he patiently bent to his packing, while I quickly finished mine.

I was in a fever to get off. I was tired, my nerves on edge. I had had enough of the cities, with their endless arguing, their shouting crowds and street parades, packed meeting halls and stifling rooms, words and theories, heated quarrels over plans as dry as dust. I had felt about me the germs of something wonderful here; something deep, stupendous, real — warm as the very blood of life. But I had felt it being chilled and ossified by dogma. I had seen the revolution breaking into factions, with strikes and open rioting, machine guns spraying bullets up and down the dirty streets. And then what had happened? Just more talk! I was tired of their politics. I wanted to get beneath all that, down into the mass of the people themselves, to find again what had been lost^ — the great heart of the real revolution. And where were the Russian people? Nine tenths of them were peasants in lonely little villages. I wanted to sink into their life.

Since the war began, I had lived in New York, with trips to London and Berlin, and out along the western front. I was sick of the cities, one and all, with their shrill hates and jealousies, their war scandals and intrigues. Again and again there had come to me a feeling of the presence all around me, far and near, of the millions of villages in the world where the silent mass of the plain people dwell. I had done my traveling mostly by night ; and often from a crowded train where travelers on every hand were arguing about the war, I had looked out on some little hamlet buried in a forest or nestling on a mountain-side ; and seeing a light still burning in a dwelling here and there, I had longed to go into those huts and ask,

" What has the war done to you ? How do you feel about all this?"

My eyes ached from the red glare of the Present. I wanted to live for awhile in a place where life ran deep, and was quiet enough so that one could feel the Present not by itself but as a gap, or a bridge, between the Past and Future.

Also, I wanted a little real food. The restaurants of Petrograd had held more noise than nourishment. I had grown lean, and I looked forward to this country journey of ours as to a camping trip back at home. But could I get Tarasov into the spirit of my plan? I could not. When I gave him my purse and asked him to go and stock up with what groceries we might need, his only answer was a smile.

" All that we require," he said, " we shall find at my estate."

" But you told me you had rented your place." " It is true," he replied. " An old Finn is there with two Finnish servants."

" Better send them a wire that we are coming." Tarasov looked at me puzzled: " Why? "

" Because there may not be room enough 1 " "There will be sufficient," he replied. " But will they want us? "

" Probably."

" Suppose they have visitors of their own? " " But they may not have any visitors." I gave up in despair. It was hopeless to try to arouse in this man the least interest in my comfort. For he was no more practical than was the big nation to which he belonged — no more practical than its warfare, with the great Brusilov drives far down into Hungary, and the chaotic vast retreats; no more practical than its revolution, seething with dreams when it should have been acting. Juvenale Ivanovitch Tarasov was an impractical man.

On that hot day in Petrograd, as he knelt perspiring on the floor, his eyes fairly bulged with his efforts, but nothing seemed to happen at all. He had lugged along from his mother's flat four heavy blankets and one sheet and two enormous pillows. There were also shirts and collars, a revolver and a suit of clothes, a hair brush and a cake of soap, two towels and a big pair of boots, a safety razor, many books, a tooth brush and a mowing scythe.

He had taken the blade of the scythe from the handle and bound the two parts together with twine ^- but even so it was hard to fit it in with the rest of his toilet set. All these things again and again he had feverishly pyramided on the blankets spread over the floor, and had tried to draw up the corners into one gigantic bag. So far, so good. But the moment he tried to hoist the bag, his things began to dribble out.

Impatiently I came to his aid. I am not much of a packer myself, but with the help of some good stout twine we soon made up a parcel about the size of a small stack of hay. I had rung for a porter, but none came ; for the hotel porters had gone to attend a political meeting that afternoon. So we hurried downstairs with my suitcase, my sleeping bag and Tarasov's enormous immigrant bundle. We dumped them into a cab and were off.

Of that clattering drive down the Nevsky, I have only a vague memory now. I had seen it all so often — the same broad dusty thoroughfare with the crowded trolley cars, the countless little open cabs and peasants' carts and rumbling trucks, the troops of mounted Cossacks, the endless throngs of people on foot, Russians, Tartars, Gypsies, Georgians; the crowds in front of bulletin boards, the speeches on street corners.

Tarasov leaned back and mopped his brow, and then lit a cigarette. Our horse was galloping at the time and the cab was swaying to and fro, but

Tarasov knew how to get a light in any place or weather. When we had slept in the same room, the tiny glow of his small weed would be the last light in the darkness ; and, as he slept very heavily, in the morning as a rule I would entice him back to life by placing a cigarette in his mouth and lighting it. He would awake with a smile. He smiled now as he puffed, and surveyed with contempt a crowd gathered around a street-speaker.

" How they talk and talk and do nothing," he said.

He himself had concocted a plan to save the entire revolution. He had promised to show it to me in detail as soon as we reached his village. He started to speak of it now — as he always did on every occasion.

" I was explaining my plan in full to the friend I met to-day," he said. " I found him very sympathetique."

" I'll bet you did," I muttered grimly. I was thinking of our train. But Juvenale Ivanovitch had his mind on higher things.

" If these confounded Idiots would only remember," he began, " that nine-tenths of the Russians live in villages — and that until the question of land — "

" Stop the cab ! " I suddenly cried. " You've forgotten those kodak films."

With a startled " Ah," Tarasov jumped out and followed me Into a kodak shop. On the day before, they had had no films, but the shop-man had sworn he would have them to-day. He smiled at me now and lo THE VILLAGE

began to explain how on account of the Great Revolution — • which was going to such extremes that as for himself he was forced to believe that the only salvation for Russia —

" Come on, Tarasov! Can't you see he has no fibns?"

" Yes, but I want to get his views."

" Oh, damn his views 1 "

Juvenale Ivanovitch followed me peevishly back to the cab.

" That's a fault of you Americans, and a devilish big one, too," he declared, as we galloped down the street. "Speed, speed — you must have speed! And that fault in you may spoil the whole world I For if in impatience you give us up, Germany will step into your shoes and force herself on us as our friend. And that will make the world a hell 1 And all because you are' crazy for speed and will not take time to understand. Here is a man belonging to the petit bourgeoisie — and he offers to explain his views. But you for the mere sake of catching one damn train instead of another — "

" Here we are," I interrupted. We had arrived at the station twenty-five minutes ahead of time ; but at first it seemed, as I had feared, that even so we had come too late — for at the ticket window was a line of a hundred or more, and by sad experience I knew that now at any moment the ticket seller might make up his mind that the train was packed to burst-

THE VILLAGE n

ing. Then he would slam his window down and we should all have a three-hour wait.

" I am afraid we have come too late," said Juvenale Ivanovitch. Feverishly I grasped his arm.

" Tarasov," I ordered, " go to that chap near the head of the line and ask him to buy our tickets with his." I do not propose such things as a rule, but three hours more in Petrograd would have driven me half insane. Tarasov chuckled.

" Graft," he said, " American graft." He was proud of his Yankee " eedioms."

We got the tickets just before the little window was slammed down, and shouldering our luggage we hurried through the gate to our train.

The train was certainly crowded. It fairly bulged with people and things, especially bags and babies. The narrow platforms overflowed. But using his huge bundle like an impending load of hay, Tarasov forced a breach for us, and we clambered up on board just as the train began to move. Two fat Httle Chinamen were there. Tarasov lifted them firmly while I shoved our bags beneath. The Chinamen were placed on top, both of them smiling at the joke, and presently they fell asleep. The small platfoffm was crowded to an ominous degree, with people clinging on the steps; but between the two cars was a swaying sheet of steel about a foot in width. On this we stepped and balanced ourselves by a grip upon the railing.

Creaking and groaning, the train made its way through yards that were crowded with freight cars which no one as yet had found time to unload. Locomotives stood about, with bell shaped smoke, stacks like the ones we used to have in America. Most of these Russian engines still burned little logs instead of coal, and now the sweet pungent smoke of wood came back to us on the hot wind. As we reached the suburbs our speed increased, until we were rocking and screeching along at nearly thirty miles an hour.

But this did not in the least prevent Juvenale Ivanovitch, as he balanced on our sheet of steel, from conversing hungrily with his fellow travelers. These Russians are surely a sociable lot. Soon we were having a regular meeting out on those two narrow platforms, with jokes and laughter, scowls, discussions and tense earnest arguments. Only the two little Chinamen slept serenely, undisturbed. We were on the Trans-Siberian route, and their placid faces seemed to say, " Wake us up when we get to China." No doubt they felt that their country's time for all this sort of talk was still far off. But was it? I asked. I was not sure.

The Russians meanwhile were telling each other how the train service all over the country was now rapidly breaking down. Nobody seemed dismayed at the prospect. With keen animation they discussed how it would be to live without trains ; and a large genial merchant claimed that it would be

" an excellent thing for us all." Then we passed a forest where the underbrush was burning, filling the air with so much smoke that it was difficult to breathe. But did that stop us? Not at all. It merely led to a most absorbing talk on the forest problem. The peasants were jealous, somebody said, of having any trees cut down ; for they felt that the forests were soon to be theirs. So the supply of wood was low, and there would be undoubtedly a famine of fuel in the cities during the long cold winter ahead. After that, they talked of the war. This, too, was going badly. Only one young ensign, plainly a born optimist, had anything good to say of the army. But when he described the improvement of morale on his sector of the front, a lean cadaverous captain squelched him with the gloomy remark that now not only the army but the entire nation, too, was riding for a heavy fall. After that, a student girl asked me what we thought of them over in America. And from the many questions thrown at me from every side, I got the same impression I had so often had before, of the eagerness in Russia to learn about American life. There are some Russians who despise us, more who smilingly criticize, but the great mass of these people simply want to be our friends.

More and more travelers left the train. Tarasov and his " sympathetiques " adjourned to seats inside the car, and I was left on the platform alone with the two Chinamen. The heat of the day was over; the rush of air was cooler now. The stations were smaller and farther apart. Some were mere log cabins with stretches of forest on either hand. The dusk deepened. I breathed hungrily the fresh piney air that came out of the woods. Sitting on a step of the car, I watched the shadowy trees whirl by, and the occasional clearings, with lights shining out of windows in lonely little huts of logs. It was good to be in the country.

When we reached our destination, instantly there was a rush of people to get on our train. There seemed to be hundreds, for this was a junction. How they shouted, clutched and shoved! But we managed to jerk our bags from under the two Chinamen, and with our belongings made our way into the station restaurant, a large dirty crowded room with a counter running along one side. At the two long tables, the clatter and talk made a deafening noise. All kinds of travelers were here — officers, soldiers, sailors, civilians, rough simple peasants and city folk, agitators from Petrograd, sober merchants from small towns, rich and poor and young and old, swarms of children, babies crying. Here were whole families moving; here were all sorts and conditions of people, jarred loose from their moorings in the storm, meeting in this eddy and seizing the chance to talk it all over. The Great Revolution 1

We drank our tea and hungrily devoured boiled potatoes, greasy meat balls and big fresh cucumbers. While we ate, Tarasov questioned the waiter, who discussed in a cheerful way how everything in this neighborhood was rapidly going from bad to worse. The price for a conveyance to take us to my friend's estate had risen to twenty-five roubles — about three times the former amount. Moreover, the waiter doubted if there was a hack or a cart to be hired at this time of night. I looked reprqachfuUy at my friend, who finished his supper and hurried out. He returned and reported no success.

" Never mind," he said, " I have with a little money persuaded a soldier fellow — and he will help us carry our bags to a steamboat on the river. It is about two miles from here. We shall pass the night on board, and early to-morrow the boat will take us immediately to my estate. My place is on the river bank. We shall leap from the steamer as it goes by."

With a young husk of a soldier tramping ahead with most, of our luggage, we started up along the track. We passed first through the train yard amid a perfect bedlam of hoots and piercing shrieks from engines. Headlights glared from every side. Then we came out on the long dark road, and the noise died down behind us. It was a bleak flat country, with little woods and fields and marshes. Above us, on the high embankment, bare-footed country people passed — mere silent shadows. Out of the darkness just ahead, an old peasant emerged abruptly, leading a bony little horse. With a whispered imprecation, our soldier lad threw down his burden. The night air was warm and humid here, and we stood resting for a while. More silent figures flitted by. A frog was croaking in the marsh. With a sigh, the soldier heaved his load up onto his back; and on we trudged. At last we came to the river. Overhead, the great long railroad bridge was dark except for some little red lights ; but underneath it was brilliantly lighted by the glare of search-Hghts — ^ there were two at either end. I could see armed guards down there — and above on the track, by the little red lights, the small dark shadow of a soldier pacing slowly to and fro. Our road turned to the left on the high river bank, then pitched abruptly down the slope and brought us to the landing. Here lay a small river steamer. She was absolutely dark; but from somewhere within her, we heard a murmur of voices. We struck matches, climbed the gangplank and came into a long low stuffy cabin. We searched till we found a candle there, and with this we explored a bit. We could still hear the rough murmur of voices, and my indefatigable friend scented a " meeting " of some kind. Near the stern we found a steel ladder, and descending we came down into a stifling little place where a group of boatmen — four of them big bearded creatures, and three hardly more than boys — were intent on a game of cards, each one with his pile of paper money in front of him. They glanced up at our intrusion, then went hungrily on with the game. One of the youngsters gave a low laugh and swept in a few more roubles. At this a huge chap with a short black beard glared suddenly up ; his eye caught mine, and he stared at me in gloomy reproach, as though blaming me for his losses. Tarasov found no " meeting " here. In answer to his questions, they told us curtly that the boat would start at six in the morning, and that we could sleep where we liked.

We climbed up again to the cabin. Along either side ran a narrow seat of dirty red velvet. Loud snoring could be heard at one end. Tarasov began to prepare for the night, but I did not like this stuffiness, so I took my sleeping bag and went out on the upper deck. Here the air was cool and fresh. The night was still. Above me, little wreaths of smoke floated out of the steamer's funnel. I lay down on the deck and for some time looked drowsily up at the distant stars. Now and then a dog barked in the distance, and I could hear the tinkle of cow-bells from across the river. Presently a row-boat passed, and I heard a low voice talking. Then from down the river there came to my ears a tenor voice singing a plaintive melody, in a rhythm which made me feel that the singer was rowing — his head thrown back.

Just a short way down the river loomed the great heavy span of the bridge. Every few minutes a train came by. With the shriek of its engine echoing with a weird effect against the limestone quarries cut into the high river banks, the train would thunder across the bridge, leaving behind a long white tail of wood smoke rising slowly into the dark vault of the sky. Nearly all the trains from Petrograd, that were bound for the Trans-Siberian journey, passed this way. I thought of the crowds in those hot cars, arguing, arguing, arguing; and I thanked God I was out of it all — the fever and the endless talk, the mere froth and surface storm. Now and then I could hear the splash of a fish. It was good to be in the country.

I thought of the numberless spots like this, upon which these same silent stars were throwing their mysterious light — dark rivers running still and deep, rock-bound coasts along the sea, forests, mountains, valleys, plains; and of the countless villages all over this war-ridden world. Into each the war had come, and had worked such changes through the years that life would never again be the same. I thought of a village dear to me in the mountains of New Hampshire. I had been there three months before. War had just begun to affect it then. Five of its boys had been drafted, and their parents were buying maps of Europe and the danger zones. Now every day and every night their thoughts and fancies would be led out over the seas to villages with foreign names, some horribly torn and blackened by war, others with the buildings standing but with the souls of the -dwellers changed. These villages all over the world, would they come to know each other any better after the war? Only in such understanding lay any hope of a lasting peace.

I fell asleep, and a few hours later I was awakened by voices. They seemed to come from far below. I felt daylight and a fresh damp mist upon my face, but I did not open my eyes. Dog tired from the night before, I lay half dozing, drifting there, high up in the mist and the light of the dawn. Higher and higher, lighter, lighter — now I was soaring in the clouds, now bathed in the radiance of the sun. But the earth below me was as dark and dim as a dream. It was like a great ghostly encampment made up of numberless villages. The one in New Hampshire was close by, nestling on its mountain-side. Farther down was a village in France with tall poplars in long rows. There were some Russian hamlets, too. These were all I could make out; the others were mere shadowy blurs. Off they scattered over the earth. Why so dark? Suddenly I opened my eyes, for with a sharp twinge I remembered the war.

The boat was enveloped in cool white mist, through which I could see the clear blue of the dawn. Now the voices were close beside me. Travelers coming on the boat. I remembered that the last train from the city was due to arrive at about this time. These people had doubtless come on the train which Tarasov would have taken. All my haste had been for this. I smiled grimly at myself. Nevertheless, I argued, this was a heap sight better than sitting up all night in a car. The travelers as they came on board did not seem in the least surprised to find a man in a sleeping bag. They took me quite as a matter of course, a part of the Great Revolution, perhaps. And I was very grateful for that. What decent chaps these Russians were 1 They had gone to another part of the deck and left me to finish my night's sleep.