by Teffi
“Let’s see if we can get to the cabins,” said V. “The weather looks like it will turn nasty.”
But it was impossible to get through—there were already too many people.
“I wonder how we’ll manage to get underway?” I ventured. “There’s not a sound from the engines.”
“Maybe they’ll get them working soon. We most certainly can’t stay where we are! Listen! Can you hear the gunfire? That’s Ataman Grigoriev[99]—I’ve heard he’s almost taken the freight station. He and his men will probably be here before morning.”
The steamer was getting more and more densely packed. It was already difficult to move about the deck.
“Wait here,” said V. “I’ll see if I can get through the crowd.”
I went over to the side and looked out at the sea.
The sea, our new road into the unknown, was quiet, dark and calm. There was a smell of wet rope. Lights were glittering out in the bay, where large, serious, and important ships full of important and well-informed persons were exchanging mysterious signals. They were preparing themselves for a long journey, out into open seas, toward peaceful shores.
“We’re done for,” murmured someone beside me. “If they can’t find a tug to pull us out into the roadstead, it’ll be the end of us. Time to say our prayers.”
“Ba-ba-boom!” replied the freight station.
“Look! The whole sky’s lit up.”
“I hear the looting’s already started.”
“Oh my God! Oh my God!”
And then someone began softly singing. A beautiful female voice. I looked down. Perched on a suitcase, one leg swung over the other, was a smartly dressed young lady. She was pensively singing a gypsy romance:
Where’er the scent of spring may lead me,
One dream still holds my heart in sway . . .
The young woman was singing!
“How can you?” someone asked in astonishment. “At a time like this?”
“I’ve had enough of all this. I might as well sing as do anything else.”
“I can see you haven’t known much suffering yet.”
“I’d say I’ve known my share. Our house in the country was burned down, my brother disappeared without a trace . . . We only just managed to get away ourselves.”
“So you’re a landowner, are you?”
“Me? I’m still a student.”
Turning her face toward the quiet sea, she went back to her romance:
Where’er the scent of spring may lead me,
One dream still holds my heart in sway . . .
She was sitting on a suitcase, one leg over the other, and gently swinging her foot. On it was a bright summer shoe. She was in a world of her own.
Beside me someone was chewing on some bread, letting out sounds that might have been sighs or might have been hiccups. And a small pot-bellied gentleman was timidly asking, “Excuse me, are you Madame Teffi? Excuse me, I’m Berkin. I’ve seen you in the city a few times. Perhaps you could advise me. I don’t know whether to stay on board or go back into Odessa.”
And then, in a whisper: “I have a considerable sum of money on me. Can you guarantee that no Bolsheviks have managed to get on board?”
“How would I know? All I can say is—I’m staying on board myself.”
“True, but maybe you’re not risking anything. While I, as I’ve already told you, am risking a great deal . . . Please excuse my shivering. I’m wearing a jersey—all this shivering, please excuse me, is because I’m afraid . . . So, you’re advising me to stay on board? Please, I’m begging you, I’ll do whatever you say!”
“But how can I take on such a responsibility?”
“But I’m begging you!”
I looked at him. His entire face was quivering; the corners of his mouth were turned down. Was this man crying?
“I think you should stay on board. It’s safer. Besides, how are you going to get back into Odessa now? It’s dark, the streets are deserted—you’ll be robbed.”
“Oh, you’re so right! I feel better already—you’ve calmed me down.”
V came back.
“The cabins and corridors are all full. The only space I could find was in a bathroom. It’ll be us and two other men. You’re being given the bench, one of the other men gets the bath—and the second will be sharing the floor with me. Our things have already been piled into the hold.”
O, an engineer, came over to us with some news: Not one of the ship’s crew was on board. They had all made off into the city, evidently wishing to yield the ship to the Bolsheviks. The engine had been dismantled and many parts had gone missing. Either this was sabotage—the parts had been taken away or destroyed to prevent our departure—or else the engine was under repair. Several Chinese had been discovered hiding down in the hold. At first they pretended not to know or understand anything at all, but when threatened with a revolver they revealed where some of these engine parts had been hidden. Then there had been a search for engineers and mechanics among the passengers. O and a few others had stepped forward and gotten down to work. They were hoping to reassemble the engine, but this would be difficult and they would have to fashion some of the parts themselves. They needed a particular kind of bearing. If they succeeded with the engine, we were saved; if not, we were in trouble.
Next there was a search for potential ship’s officers. There turned out to be several passengers with naval experience, and Captain Ryabinin was put in command.
Most of the passengers, however, knew nothing about any of this and weren’t even asking any questions. Instead, they were settling in—putting their children to bed and rearranging their luggage so they could sit more comfortably. O went down to the engine room.
I set off to have a look around. Here and there I glimpsed a familiar face: Professor Myakotin, Fyodor Volkenstein, Ksyunin, Titov . . . Ilyashenko, the deputy minister of justice, later to be murdered by the Bolsheviks.[100]
On the stairs, on the floors of corridors, on top of bundles of rope and around the base of the ship’s funnel, on benches and below benches—wherever I looked, I saw people. Some were sitting, some lying down.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Look!” someone called out joyfully. “Look! We’re moving!”
“We’re off! We’re off!”
Very gently, the shore was spinning away from us; the lights on the ships moored out in the roadstead were also moving.
“We’re underway!”
But there was no sound from the engine, nor was there any smoke from the funnel.
“It’s a tug! We’re being pulled out by a tug!”
“Well, thank God! At least we’ll be a bit further out. The further from this accursed shore the better.”
The tugboat Roma was taking us out into the roadstead.
What next?
There we were, out in the roadstead just like the “grown-up” ships.
Shuttling about between these ships were little rowboats.
One little boat tied up to our Shilka. A grim-looking Odessan climbed the ladder, tracked down some acquaintances, who were placidly chewing on dates, and swore to them that they were certain to perish. His acquaintances spat out their half-eaten dates and gave themselves over to stormy despair, while the man from Odessa, with the air of having performed an onerous duty, strode briskly back to the ladder and climbed down into his little boat.
My new friend “Excuse-me-I’m-Berkin” suddenly jumped up and decided he too needed to go in a rowboat and visit another steamer.
“What do you want to do that for?”
“Well, I can see what it’s like on their ship and I can tell them what it’s like on ours.”
The owners of the little boats were demanding outlandish sums, yet there were quite a number of people who, like Berkin, felt compelled to go see what it was like and tell what it was like.
“Excuse-me-I’m-Berkin” visited two other steamers.
“Well, I had plenty to tell them!”
“Like what?
”
“I said we’d been informed by radio that the Bolsheviks are coming from Sebastopol. By sea.”
“What radio? Our radio receiver isn’t working.”
“It’s working just perfectly.”
“But I’ve just been speaking to the junior officer in charge of the radio.”
“And you believe him? You’d be better off believing what I say.”
“And how do you know about our radio?”
The man was a brazen liar.
The rowboats went on shuttling about. People were spending unbelievable sums to go and scare one another. How could they skimp in the service of such a lofty cause?
Berkin went three times.
“That’s my last trip. I can’t allow myself any more. The boat owners are a shameless lot—profiteering out of human misery.”
Toward morning the rumormongers finally quieted down.
Our officers had three concerns: to get the Shilka underway, to obtain coal for the furnace, and to get food for the passengers.
The Chinese men, threatened once more with a revolver, had revealed stores of rice and tinned food. But these would not be enough.
It turned out that there was a cargo boat moored close by, delivering provisions from Sebastopol. We asked it for help. It refused, sternly informing us that the provisions were for Odessa.
“But the city’s in the hands of the Bolsheviks!”
“Makes no difference to us,” came the answer.
At this, the Shilka grew indignant. She opened hostilities, dispatching two lifeboats with machine guns.
They managed to seize some provisions, but the offended steamship complained to the Jean Barthes. The French ship then bellowed menacingly at the Shilka, “Brigands! Bolsheviks! Explain yourselves! This instant, or else . . .”
With dignity and feeling, the Shilka replied that she had hungry women and children on board, and that the French had always been renowned for their chivalry.
The Jean Barthes calmed down and immediately dispatched a lifeboat carrying chocolate, flour, and condensed milk.
O came up from the engine room and announced that the Shilka was now able to move under her own steam, but only in reverse.
Many of the passengers took fright—to them, “in reverse” meant going back to Odessa.
Myakotin, Titov, and Volkenstein—members of the same political party, I forget which—kept coming up on deck to hold meetings beneath the ship’s funnel. They would whisper animatedly, falling pointedly silent whenever anyone came near them. Ksyunin, meanwhile, stayed down in the hold, starting up a newspaper he intended to publish with the help of his typewriter.
18
THE TUG towed us over to a coal freighter. Then came an announcement addressed to everyone on board—“to everyone, I repeat everyone, without exception: You must load the coal onto the Shilka yourselves. There are no workers on the freighter and we have no crew. If you want this ship to move, you must all get to work.”
“Everyone? Surely not everyone!”
“Yes,” came the reply. “Everyone.”
This was followed by a most curious scene.
Wanting to show that they knew all this was a joke, elegant young men in smart suits smiled nervously. Any moment now, of course, it would become obvious that elegantly dressed young men cannot be forced to hump coal. That would be simply too absurd! Ridiculous!
“All right—everyone line up on deck!” called out a commanding voice. “Every man present, except the old and infirm.”
The elegant young men were dumbstruck. They looked around in confusion. This joke was going on too long.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” someone shouted at one of them. “Didn’t you hear the order? Get up on deck.”
Up on deck, perhaps, their elegance would be more apparent. It would be obvious that they were the wrong men for the job.
The deck quickly began to fill with rows of passengers.
“You are about to be given a basket. Place this basket on your back.”
The elegant young men smiled and shrugged their shoulders, as if playing along with some absurd joke that, in due course, they could enjoy telling people about.
But then an argument broke out on the gangway.
“Excuse me,” someone was shouting, “but on what grounds are you refusing? You’re a strong, healthy man.”
“Will you please stop this! Leave me alone!”
Out onto the deck came a thickset gentleman of about forty, his eyes flickering with rage.
“Will you please stop this at once?”
“Only when you tell me on what grounds you are refusing to carry out your share of the work now required from each man on board!”
“On what grounds?” bellowed the thickset gentleman. “I’m refusing on the grounds that I’m a landowner and a nobleman. I have never worked, I never shall work and you won’t see me working today. Get that into your heads once and for all!”
A ripple of indignation passed through the crowd.
“Excuse me, but if we refuse to work, this boat will never get out to sea!”
“My husband’s a landowner too,” came a squeaky voice.
“We’ll fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks!”
“What’s that got to do with me?” the gentleman cried out indignantly. “Hire someone! Do whatever is necessary! We’ve been living in a capitalist society and I fully intend to adhere to capitalist principles. If you prefer all this socialist nonsense and labor for everyone, then what are you doing on this ship? Go ashore and join your Bolshevik comrades. Understand?”
This caused confusion and division.
“Well, up to a point . . .”
“But on the other hand, we can hardly just wait here for the Bolsheviks . . .”
“And if we’ve all got to work, why shouldn’t he?”
“Lynch him!” snorted an old lady who had just appeared on the deck.
“Come on now,” said a good-natured merchant from Nizhny Novgorod. “Please, sir, try and see reason.”
“Jump to it!” came the voice of authority. “No dawdling!”
We could see the white cap of a naval officer.
“Make your way down to the coal carrier. With your baskets.”
One of the elegant young men ran up to the officer and began whispering in his ear, glancing now and again at the gentleman with the principles.
The officer shook his head and calmly replied, “To hell with him!”
Loading began.
Moving up and down the gangways were long processions of blackened, soot-covered porters. The remaining passengers all emerged from the hold, and from cabins and corridors, to watch this unprecedented spectacle: models of male elegance, in patent leather shoes and silk socks, supporting heavy baskets of coal with their yellow-gloved hands.
Very soon the young men were spitting and swearing, entering into their new role.
“Come on, lads! No dawdling!”
“Heave-ho!” answered the nearest “lad”—the balding, pot-bellied, stick-legged “Excuse-Me-I’m-Berkin.”
“What are you all staring at?” shouted another “lad,” an actor and public reciter as long and thin as a fishing rod. “They ought to set you lot to work too. That’ll teach you to stare!”
“Yes, they know how to stare all right,” said the merchant from Nizhny Novgorod. “But when it comes to real work . . .”
“Yes,” replied a snub-nosed student. “They don’t want to work. But they won’t be hanging about like that when it’s time for dinner . . . Parasites!”
Someone began to sing one of the silly little songs of the time:
Boiled or roasted,
grilled or fried,
even a chicken
wants to stay alive.
Someone else interrupted with:
Gorge on pineapple!
Chomp on grouse!
Your days are numbered,
bourgeois louse![101]
Which was followed by:
Sweet little apple,
stay where you belong.
Don’t let the Cheka
silence your song![102]
Singing along and swearing with gusto, the young men were now working as though their lives depended on it.
“Ah!” I thought, “Yevreinov’s ‘Theater for Itself’! They play at being coalmen—and once they know the role, they get carried away. You can even see which character types they’ve chosen.”[103]
Coming up the gangway was pot-bellied “Excuse-Me-I’m-Berkin.” Moving jerkily and tripping over himself, his round body precariously balanced on its stick legs, he was like an ungainly spider. But the look on his face was that of a Volga rebel—the look of Stenka Razin himself:[104]
Swing free, my strong arm—
strong wing of the storm!
Fly swift, my bright scythe—
swift as bee to the hive![105]
and so on . . .
He was carrying a heavy basket which, without the inspiration afforded by his role, he would never have been able to lift at all.
Next came some kind of intellectual, with a long forelock.
Trudging gloomily along, a bitter and obstinate smile on his lips, he must have been imagining himself as a barge hauler—pulling on his rope while he nurtured in his breast the flame of the people’s wrath: I may be pulling on this rope now . . .
But the day will soon dawn
When our people awake![106]
Behind him was some kind of scarecrow in white gaiters and a Tyrolean hat with a feather. He was staggering along, wiping away the black streaks on his cheeks with a fine suede glove and repeating, with a peasant accent: “Well, my dear brethren, seems we’ll be pulling on these ’ere straps till the end of our days!”
O emerged from the engine room. He was wearing a worker’s smock and was covered in soot.
“I think I’ve fixed it. I think I’ve fixed it. Now we’ve got a chance.”
He said something about a winch, and about some bearings, then slipped back into the engine room.
And then we heard a terrible groan, a howl, a grinding shriek, as if hundreds of goats and thousands of piglets had escaped from a torture chamber where they were being skinned alive. This had come from our funnel, now belching out black smoke. The funnel was breathing and bellowing; it was alive. The steamer shuddered. There was a squeal from the tiller chain—and the boat quietly began to turn.