The White Terror and The Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia

by Abraham Cahan

  CHAPTER XV.

  A WARNING.

  It was one o'clock when the assemblage broke up. They scattered overvarious sections of the town, Pavel going to his home in the Palace,while Clara, accompanied by Elkin and Orlovsky, set off in the directionof Paradise Town. But whatever the character of the district one wasbound for, in their hearts there was the same feeling that they belongedto a higher life than did those who slept behind the closed shuttersthey were passing. This feeling made them think of their group as aworld within a world. Their Circle was a magic one. Somewhere in St.Petersburg, Moscow, Kieff, Odessa, Siberia, men and women were beingslowly tortured, dying on the gallows; a group of brave people still atlarge--the mysterious Executive Committee--was doing things thatthrilled the empire; and they, members of the Miroslav Circle, were thekin of those heroes. As they dispersed through the sleeping town eachunconsciously remembered the organisation as so many superior beingsdotting a population of human prose.

  "He must be quite close to the Centre," Orlovsky said.

  The other two made no answer. It struck Clara as sacrilege to talk ofBoulatoff, whose fervent face was vivid before her at this minute.Particularly unbearable was the allusion to the prince to her because itwas Orlovsky who made it. The stout government clerk was one of the menin love with her, while she often disliked him to abhorrence. She felt asincere friendship for him, yet sometimes when he spoke she would betempted to shut her ears and to gnash her teeth as people do when theyhear a window pane scratched. This was one of her causeless hatreds withwhich she was perpetually struggling.

  Orlovsky construed their irresponsiveness as a rebuke for his speakingof the revolutionary "centre" in the street; so he started to tell themabout his mother. With Clara by his side his tongue would not rest. Notso Elkin, who nursed his love in morose silence. When they heard thewhistle of a distant policeman and the answer of a watchman's rattle byway of showing that he had not fallen asleep on his post, Orlovskyraised his voice.

  "She is getting more pious every day," he said, as though defying theinvisible policeman to find anything seditious in his words.

  Clara's mind was on Boulatoff. The strange avowal of the man whom shehad never seen before save through the window of a princely carriagetingled through her veins in a medley of new-born exaltations. Boulatoffdid seem to be close to the Executive Committee, and the sentiments ofthat wonderful body, voiced by this high-born young man, the nephew ofthe governor of Miroslav, had lit stirring images in her consciousness.Pavel stood out amid the other revolutionists of her acquaintance evenas the whole Miroslav Circle did in the midst of the rest of her nativetown.

  The interchange of signals between policeman and watchman which now andthen sounded through the stillness of the night reminded her of theunknown man the gendarmes had arrested, of the hard glint of chains, ofgallows. She wondered whether Elkin or Boulatoff knew anything aboutthat man. She saw herself rapidly marching toward something at onceterrible and divine. She was not the only one who followed thiscourse--that was the great point. The kindest and best people inMiroslav, the best and the wisest in the land, and among them childrenof governors, of noblemen, were consecrated to that same something whichwas both terrible and luring. Her heart went out to her comrades knownand unknown, and as she beheld a sleepy watchman curled up in the recessof his gateway, she exclaimed without words: "I'm going to die foryou--for you and all the other poor and oppressed people in the world."

  Here and there they passed an illuminated window or an open street door,through which they saw Jewish artisans at work. They saw the bent formsof Jewish tailors, they heard the hammer sounds of Jewish carpenters,tinsmiths, blacksmiths, silversmiths; yet all these made no impressionupon her. There were about 50,000 Jews in Miroslav and as many asthree-fourths of them were pinched, half-starved mechanics, workingfourteen hours a day, and once or twice a week all night, to live on ryebread and oatmeal soup; yet they made no appeal to her sympathies, whilethe Gentiles who were huddled up in front of the gates she was passingdid. The great Russian writers whose stories and songs had laid thefoundation to her love of the masses dealt in Gentiles, not in Jews.Nekrasoff bewailed the misery of the Russian moujik, not of the commonpeople of her own race. Turgeneff's sketches breathe forth the poetry ofsuffering in a Great-Russian village, not the tragedy and spiritualbeauty of life among the toiling men and women of her own blood. She hadnever been in Great Russia, in fact; she had never seen those moujiksin the flesh. Those she had seen were the Little-Russian peasants, whocame to Miroslav from the neighbouring villages. Her peasants,therefore, were so many literary images, each with the glamour whichradiates from the pages of an adored author. This was the kind of"people" she had in mind when she thought of the _Will of the People_.The Jewish realities of which her own home was a part had nothing to dowith this imaginary world of hers.

  * * * * *

  Clara's home was on a small square which was partly used as a cart-standand in one corner of which, a short distance from Cucumber Market,squatted a policeman's hut. This was the district of a certain class ofartisans and small tradesmen; of harness-makers, trunk-makers,wheelwrights; of dealers in tar, salt, herring, leaf tobacco, pipes,accordions, cheap finery. The air was pungent with a thousand strongodours. The peasants who brought their produce to market were heresupplied with necessaries and trinkets. The name of the big market-placeextended to the entire locality, and Paradise Town was just beyond theconfines of that locality.

  The square for which Clara was bound was called Little Market. A gate inthe centre of one of its four sides, flanked by goose-yards on one sideand by a row of feed-shops and harness-shops on the other, led into adeep and narrow court, known as Boyko's. At this moment the gate wasclosed, its wicket, held ajar by a chain, showing black amid the greygloom of the square.

  As Clara and her two escorts came in sight of the spot they saw a mansitting on a low wooden bench near the gate.

  "Somebody is waiting for me," she said gravely. She thanked them andbade them good-bye and they went their several ways.

  The man on the bench rose and went to meet her. As he walked toward herhe leaned heavily on his stout, knotty cane--a pose which she knew to bethe result of embarrassment. He was a tall, athletic fellow in a longspring overcoat, a broad-brimmed felt hat sloping backward on his head.He bore striking resemblance to Clara; the same picturesque flatness inthe middle part of the face, the same expression. Only his hair wasdark, and his eyes and mouth were milder than hers. They looked likebrother and sister and, indeed, had been brought up almost as such, butthey were only cousins. His name was Vladimir Vigdoroff. His family wasthe better-to-do and the worldlier of the two. When he was a boy of fourand he envied certain other two boys because each of them had a littlesister, and he had not, he had made one of his cousin. It was his fatherwho subsequently paid for Clara's education.

  "You here?" Clara said quietly.

  He nodded, to say yes, with playful chivalry. They reached the bench insilence, and then he said in a decisive, business-like voice which sheknew to be studied:

  "I expected to have a talk with you, Clara. That's why I waited so long.But it's too late. Can I see you to-morrow?"

  "Certainly. Will you drop in in the afternoon?"

  He had evidently expected to be detained. He lingered in silence, andshe had not the heart to say good-bye. From a neighbouring lane came thebuzz-buzz of a candlestick-maker's lathe. They were both agitated. Shehad been looking forward to this explanation for some time. They divinedeach other perfectly. As they now stood awkwardly without being ableeither to speak or to part, their minds were in reality saying a gooddeal to each other.

  Until recently she had made her home in her uncle's house more than shehad in her father's. Her piano stood there, her uncle's gift, for whichthere was no room in the basement occupied by her parents. She had kepther books there, received her girl friends and often slept there. Butsince her initiation into the secret society she had gradually remove
dher headquarters to her parents' house, and her visits at Vladimir'shome had become few and far between. Clara had once offered him anunderground leaflet, whereupon he had nearly fainted with fright atsight of it. He had burned the paper in terror and indignation, andthen, speaking partly like an older brother and partly like the masterof the house which she was compromising, he had commanded her neveragain to go near people who handled literature of that sort. Accustomedto look up to him as her intellectual guide and authority, as the mostbrilliant man within her horizon, she had listened to his attack uponNihilism and Nihilists with meek reserve, but the new influences she hadfallen under had proven far stronger than his power over her. To relievehim from the hazards of her presence in the house she had little bylittle removed her books and practically discontinued her visits. In theevent of her getting into trouble with the gendarmes her own family wastoo old-fashioned and uneducated, in a modern sense, to be suspected ofcomplicity. As to Vladimir, he missed her keenly, as did everybody elsein the house, but her estrangement had a special sting to it, too, oneunconnected with their mutual attachment as cousins who had grown uptogether. Clara's consideration for his safety, implying as it did thathe was too timid and too jealous for his personal security to work forthe revolution, an inferior being uninitiated into the world of pluckand self-sacrifice to which she, until recently his pupil, belonged,galled him inordinately.

  At last he lost control over himself.

  "You are playing with fire, Clara," he said, lingering by the bench.

  "I suppose that's what you want to speak to me about," she answered withcalm earnestness, "but this is hardly the place for a discussion of thissort, Volodia."[B]

  [B] Affectionate diminutive of Vladimir.

  "If you want me to go home you had better say so in so many words. Thehigh-minded interests you are cultivating are scarcely compatible withshyness or lack of frankness, Clara."

  "Don't be foolish, Volodia. You know you will make fun of yourself forhaving spoken like that."

  "I didn't mean to say anything harsh, Clara. But this thing is scarcelyever out of my mind. It's a terrible fate you have chosen."

  "How do you know I have?" she asked in a meditative tone that impliedassent.

  "How do I know? Can't we have a frank, honest talk for once, Clara? Letus go somewhere."

  "We can talk here. To be on the safe side of it, let us talk inYiddish."

  He made a grimace of repugnance, and seating himself on the bench hewent on in nervous Russian.

  "You have fallen into company that will do you no good, Clara. If youare arrested it will break the heart of two families. Is there no soulleft in you?"

  "What put it into your mind that I should be arrested?" she returned,lugubriously. "And is that all one ought to be concerned about? AllRussia is in prison."

  "I expected something of that sort. Alluring phrases have made you deafand blind. It is my duty to try to save you before it is too late."

  He had come for friendly remonstrance, for an open-hearted explanation,but that mood had been shattered the moment he saw her approaching withtwo of her new friends. He persisted in using the didactic tone he hadbeen in the habit of taking with her, and he could not help feeling howridiculously out of place it had become. He chafed under a sense of hislost authority, and the impotent superiority of his own manner impelledhim to bitterness.

  "Is that what you have come for--to rescue me from empty phrases and badcompany?"

  "Yes, to rescue you from the intoxication of bombast and dangerouscompany, whether you are in a sarcastic mood or not."

  "And how are you going to do it, pray?" she asked with rathergood-natured gaiety.

  "Laugh away. Laugh away. Since you took up with those scamps----"

  "Scamps! I can't let you speak like that, Volodia. I don't know what youmean by 'taking' up with them, but if by 'scamps' you mean people whoare sacrificing themselves----"

  "You misunderstand me----"

  "If by scamps you mean people who will be tortured or hanged foropposing the tyranny that is crushing us all rather than feather theirown nests, then it is useless for us to continue this talk."

  "Be calm, Clara. You don't wish to misjudge me, do you? Of course, Ineedn't tell you that what you say about sacrificing oneself and allthat sort of business is no news to me. Some other time, when you arenot excited, I may have something to say about these things----"

  "That everlasting 'something to say!' People are being throttled,butchered and you--you have 'something to say.' We are speaking in twodifferent languages, Volodia."

  "Maybe we are. And I must say you have picked up that new language ofyours rather quickly. I am not going to enter into a lengthy discussionwith you to-night. All I will say now is this: You know that four Jewishrevolutionists have been hanged within the last few months--in Odessa,Nicolayeff, Kieff and St. Petersburg. If you think that does the Jewishpeople any good I am very sorry."

  "What else would you have Jews do? Roll on feather-beds and collectusury? Would that do 'the Jewish people' good?"

  "You talk like an anti-Semite, Clara."

  "There is no accounting for tastes. You may call it anti-Semitism. Youmay be ashamed of four men who die bravely in a terrible struggleagainst despotism."

  He cast an uneasy look in the direction of the police booth, but hiscourage failed him to urge her to lower her voice.

  "As for me," she went on, "I certainly am proud of them. I hold theirnames sacred, yes, sacred, sacred, sacred, do you understand? And if youintend to continue calling such people scamps then there is nothing leftfor us to say to each other. And, by the way, since when have _you_ beena champion of 'the Jewish people'--you who have taught me to keep awayfrom everything Jewish; you who are shocked by the very sound ofYiddish, by the very sight of a wig or a pair of side-locks; you who arecontinually boasting of the Gentiles you are chumming with; you whowould give all the Jews in the world for one handshake of a Christian?"

  "Well, I am prepared to take abuse, too, to-night. As to my hatred ofYiddish and side-locks, that does no harm to anybody. If all Jewsdropped their antediluvian ways and became assimilated with the Russianpopulation half of the unfortunate Jewish question would be solved."

  "Oh, this kind of talk is really enough to drive one mad. The wholecountry is choking for breath, and here you are worrying over the Jewishquestion. But then--since when have _you_ been interested in the Jewsand their 'question?'"

  "Whether I have or not, I never helped to aggravate it as those 'heroes'of yours do. If there are some few rights which the Jew still enjoys,they, too, will be taken away from him on account of that new-fangledheroism which has turned your head."

  "Nobody has any 'rights.' Everybody is trampled upon, everybody. That'swhat those 'scamps' are struggling to do away with."

  "Everybody has to die for that matter, yet who cares to die an unnaturaldeath? If the Jews were oppressed like all others and no more, it wouldbe another matter, but they are not. Theirs is an unnatural oppression."

  "Well, that's what those 'scamps' are struggling for: to do away withevery sort of oppression. Would you have the Jews keep out of thatstruggle? Would you have them take care of their own precious skins, andlater on, when life becomes possible in Russia, to come in for a shareof the fruit of a terrible fight that they carefully stayed away from?"

  "Those are dreams, Clara. Dreams and phrases, phrases and dreams. That'sall you have learned of your new friends. Do you deny the existence of aJewish question?"

  She scrutinised his face in the grey half-tones of the gathering dawnand said calmly:

  "Look here, Volodia, you know you are seizing at this 'Jewish question'as a drowning man does at a straw. You know you have no more interest init than I have."

  "I am certainly not delighted to see it exist, if that's what you mean."

  "May I be frank with you, Volodia? All the Jews of the world might ceaseto exist, for all you care."

  "It isn't true. All I want is that they should become
Russians, culturedRussians."

  "Well, as for me there is only one question--the question of plaincommon justice and plain elementary liberty. When this has been achievedthere won't be any such thing as a Jewish, Polish or Hottentot question.Yes, those 'scamps' are the only real friends the Jews have."

  "But one cannot live on the golden mist of that glorious future ofyours, Clara. It takes a saint to do that. Every-day mortals cannot helpthinking of equal rights before the law in the sordid present."

  "Think away! Much good will it do the Jews. The only kind of equalrights possible to-day is for Jew and Gentile to die on the same gallowsfor liberty. That's the 'scamps'' view of it." At this the word struckher in conjunction with the images of Boulatoff, Olga, the judge, andthe other members of the Circle, whereupon she burst out, with a stifledsob in her voice: "How dare you abuse those people?"

  Not only had she broken loose from his tutelage, but he had foundhimself on the defensive. They had changed roles. The pugnacious tone ofconviction, almost of inspiration, with which she parried his jibesnonplussed him. Usually a bright talker, he was now colourless andfloundering. And the more he tried to work himself back to his old-timemastery the more helplessly at a disadvantage he appeared.

  "I don't recognise you, Clara," he said. "They have mesmerised you,those phrase-makers."

  She leaped to her feet. "I don't intend to hear any more of this abuse,"she said. "And the idea of you finding fault with phrase-makers! you ofall men, you to whom a well-turned phrase is dearer than all else in theworld! If they make phrases they are willing to suffer for them atleast."

  "Oh well, they have made a perfect savage of you," he retorted under hisbreath. "Good night."

  She was left with a sharp twinge of compunction, but she had barelydived under the wicket chain when her thoughts reverted to Boulatoff andwhat he had said to her.