Читать книгу Behind the Curtain - Philip Gibbs - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Rescue came to Russia just in time to save many millions of starving people in the towns and villages of the Volga region. Four millions of them died, but twenty million were saved by food sent in from England and America. Not only food was sent but supplies of medicine and clothing. At first only the children were fed and Vladimir remembered going with his mother to the first soup-kitchens which were opened in Kazan. It was like a fairy-tale when crowds of hungry children sat down at long wooden tables, and waited for a feast beyond all dreams, in their ragged furs and broken boots—they had not been stripped naked like those in the homes and clinics. They sat silently with big eyes smelling delectable odours from the kitchen. There was no laughter among them. They were little old men and women who had suffered much in life and to whom death was a familiar sight. Then soup was brought to them and rolls of bread and rice pudding, too much for weak little stomachs so that they could not eat it all.

Lucy was there helping to serve these little ones and Sir Timothy came up to her and spoke a few words.

“This is a grand sight! I feel that I have helped in one good deed. These little lives are worth saving.”

“I would like to go down on my knees to you,” said Lucy.

“No, no!” answered Sir Timothy, that delicate-looking man with silver threads in his hair. “I’m only a messenger boy of the gods.... These poor little ones! They make my heart bleed but I thank God we’ve come in time.”

He had been to some of those villages on the Volga. He had seen Russian families waiting for death in their little houses, too weak to move, without any food at all. Above the stoves the children had lain in a kind of coma very near to death.

He said one thing to Lucy in a low voice which Vladimir, standing close to his mother, overheard, having quick ears.

“We shan’t get any thanks for this from the Soviet officials. They seem to resent our rescue work. They think we have come for political motives.”

Vladimir saw his mother glance quickly over her shoulder.

“Please don’t talk of such things,” she said. “It’s very dangerous for me—even here.”

She looked nervously across one of the tables where two men in black leather jackets stood watching the scene. They were, she knew, two men of the Secret Police keeping their eyes and ears open. One of them was looking at Lucy when she was talking to Sir Timothy. It was not good for Russians to talk to foreigners.

The policy of feeding the children only did not work. It was illogical to feed the children if their parents were allowed to die. Presently the Americans and English distributed food to millions of starving peasants in the Volga villages. It was an astonishing chapter of history which Vladimir read afterwards when he was grown up. The Americans fed eleven million Russians for a year with New York as their base. They had only sixty officers to organize this immense network of supplies forming local committees of Russian women, harnessing Russian peasants to sledges, because all the horses were dead and eaten, patching up railway engines to get the food down from Petrograd. The British co-operated with their war stocks, the Red Cross and the “Save the Children Fund” and the Pope reawakened the spirit of Christian charity in a world which had seemed hard and selfish after a terrible war, and everywhere funds were raised for the relief of the Russian famine. A spectre stood in the way and frightened many people who tightened their purse-strings. It was the spectre of Bolshevism with its terror against the bourgeois, its purges and executions, its fanatical faith in the doctrines of Karl Marx and Lenin—that little squint-eyed man in the Kremlin who had declared war against the Capitalistic system—against God and the Christian religion.

One night he heard a conversation between his father and mother which excited him a good deal. He was supposed to be asleep, but he awakened when his father came in late, taking off his belt and then his snow-boots.

“Lucy,” he said, “my darling wife, I have great news for you.”

She laughed in a queer way.

“Have you been made a General?” she asked. “That would please David who is already very proud of his Lieutenant-Colonel.”

“Lucy,” said her husband. “I have been ordered to Moscow.”

Lucy was silent for a moment.

“Is that great news?” she asked coldly.

“I have an appointment on the Staff,” he told her. “I shall work in the War Office. We shall live in the Kremlin.”

Lucy laughed in a rather shrill way.

“I don’t see any fun in that. It’s only going from one horror to another.”

“Moscow is a great city,” said Michael. “There are pleasant people there. It’s better than Kazan.”

“The pleasant people have all been killed,” cried Lucy. “Only the horrible people are alive.”

“The opera is still magnificent,” said Michael. “The theatres are open. They’re even going to open the markets and a few shops, though you mustn’t tell anybody. Lenin is proclaiming a new economic policy. Life is not going to be so rigid. But that is a secret until it’s published!”

“I shan’t go to Moscow,” said Lucy in a stubborn voice.

Michael Petrovich Rogov stared at his English wife.

“You won’t go?” he asked incredulously. “What do you mean, Little Mother? We must all go in a few days.”

“No!” she said. “I shan’t go. I’m going somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else?”

“If God will have mercy on us,” she answered. “Or if I have any luck.”

“Lucy!” said Michael Rogov sharply. “What do you mean? You alarm me. You’re saying strange things.”

Lucy rose from the chair where she had been sitting with some needlework. She crossed the room, as Vladimir could see from his place on the stove. She seemed to fall against his father and caught hold of his tunic and raised her face to his.

“Michael!” she cried. “I want to get out of Russia. I want to get out with you and Vladimir and little Olga. I can’t bear it any longer—all this misery, all this fear—I live with fear. Fear sits on my pillow. We’re surrounded by horror. Russia is another name for hell. I want to escape.”

“We can’t escape,” answered Michael. “There’s no way out of Russia. Besides, the misery is passing. We’re getting towards better days. The famine on the Volga was accidental. Lenin’s new economic policy will produce good results. Life will be easier, and in Moscow you will be among distinguished people. I shall be working with my old chief and comrade Trotsky. There are great brains in the Kremlin. They will be kind to you. I will take you to the Opera and the Arts Theatre very often. Vladimir will go to the State School. Olga may learn dancing perhaps. We shall have a fine time. In any case what are you dreaming about? We can’t leave Russia. I am a Russian officer. No one is allowed to leave Russia, and I don’t want to leave it. I’m Russian. I believe in the future of Russia, I’m heart and soul with the Red Army.”

Lucy still held on to his tunic and her forehead drooped upon his chest.

“Michael,” she said. “Have pity on me.”

He put his arms about her and held her close.

“My dearest dear! My sweet wife! I know how you suffer because of your exile. I know all the agony you have had during the Civil War. I know how English you are, little English wife! But I know also how brave you are and how loyal.”

She raised her head again and laughed in a tragic way.

“I’m not brave. I’m afraid of everything. We’re not at the end of the Terror. Frightful things are going to happen, Michael. I feel it in my bones. I want to escape before they happen. I want to escape! I want to escape!”

Three times she spoke those words in a kind of whisper.

“Escape where?” he asked in a bewildered voice.

“To England,” she told him.

“England?”

He spoke the word as though that country might be in another world, in the world beyond life.

“Yes, to England,” she answered. “To my England where one can breathe freely, where the children would be brought up decently in a little home with a garden and nice people next door. They could feed the ducks on Clapham Common. We could have muffins for tea. There would be a Christmas tree at Christmas. We could go shopping and choose what we want. I would take them to the pantomime and the Zoo and the National Gallery. The English bobbies would smile at the children and I shouldn’t be afraid of them. It would be paradise!”

Michael Rogov was silent for a few moments. Then he answered her.

“Yes, it would be paradise for you, my dearest. I see that. But you are in Russia. People don’t get out of Russia. If I tried to cross the frontier I should be shot as a traitor, and I should deserve to be shot. I’m an officer of the Red Army. I don’t desert, and you’re my wife and the mother of my children. You don’t desert. You still remain brave and loyal.”

“You’re wrong!” cried Lucy with a kind of anger and despair.

“I can’t go on being loyal. And now there’s a chance of escape. If you won’t come with me I shall go with the children. It’s my last chance. If I don’t go now I shall never see England again.”

“What chance have you?” asked Michael. “What chance are you talking about?”

She did not answer for what seemed like a long time. Then she spoke in a low voice so that Vladimir could hardly hear her.

“There are these English people in Kazan with the Food Relief. Sir Timothy and his friends. They could arrange for me to go back with them—me and the children, they could say that I belonged to them. I’ve been working for them. Sir Timothy is very kind. He would arrange all the necessary papers.”

“Have you spoken to him yet?” asked Michael boldly.

“Not yet. He’s coming to see me tomorrow. I shall ask him.”

“That’s useless,” said Michael. “Darling, put this idea out of your head. It’s very dangerous. The Cheka—”

“Drat the Cheka!” answered Lucy.

Vladimir on his high perch above the stove heard his mother utter those words. It gave him a tremendous thrill of horror and delight. It was as though a little mouse had said drat the cat when a fierce mouse-eating cat was just around the corner.

“Hush!” said his father nervously. “You know you’re talking nonsense, my Lucy. Everybody in Russia is watched. You can’t move a step without it being known. They know every time your English or American friends come here to call on you. It’s all entered in the book—the exact time, the length of the conversation. I’m already nervous about it.”

“That’s your beautiful Russia!” exclaimed Lucy. “That’s the system of which you approve! That’s the liberty of the proletariat gained by your Red Army through rivers of blood.”

Vladimir’s father was silent for a few moments. Then he answered quietly:

“It’s not long after the Revolution. These safeguards are necessary. There are many enemies of the Soviet State in Russia. In a few years this discipline will be relaxed.”

“Never!” cried Lucy. “All dictatorships are frightened of the people. They surround themselves with secret police. They suppress all criticism. Your victory of the proletariat is a victory which puts us all in chains.”

“Is Vladimir asleep?” asked Michael Rogov suddenly.

“An hour ago,” answered Lucy. “He sleeps like a top.”

She looked up over the stove and saw that her son’s eyes were fast closed. He had just closed them hearing his father’s question. He had enjoyed this conversation. It was terribly exciting. His mother was saying frightful things. She would be shot if he repeated anything of this. He would be saving her life if he kept his mouth shut. It gave him a sense of being grown up. He had his mother’s life in his hands and of course would never tell.

“Lucy, my darling,” said his father, “I beg of you to give up this idea of trying to get back to England. I implore you to put it out of your mind. It might lead to imprisonment or death for all of us.”

“I can’t put it out of my mind,” answered Lucy. “It burns in my mind. Ever since I’ve thought of it I’ve been on fire with a new hope. To see England again! To be beyond the frontiers of this prison-house, this morgue, this country of filth and misery and hunger and disease. I’d risk anything.”

“Your husband’s life?” asked Michael. “Your children? Vladimir and little Olga?”

It was a nuisance, thought Vladimir afterwards, that he fell asleep at this moment. It was shutting his eyes again that did it. He simply couldn’t keep awake to hear his mother’s answer.