The journey from Yalta through the woody hills to Kertch was not noteworthy; once you’ve seen a corner of the Crimea you’ve seen it all, and it’s not really Russia. From Kertch, where a singularly surly and uncommunicative French-speaking civilian took me in charge (with a couple of dragoons to remind me what I was), we went by sloop across the Azov Sea to Taganrog, a dirty little port, and joined the party of an imperial courier whose journey lay the same way as ours. Ah-ha, thinks I, we’ll travel in style, which shows how mistaken one can be.
We travelled in two telegues, which are just boxes on wheels, with a plank at the front for the driver, and straw or cushions for the passengers. The courier was evidently in no hurry, for we crawled along at an abominably slow pace, although telegues can travel at a tremendous clip when they want to, with a bell clanging in front, and everyone scattering out of their way. It always puzzled me, when I later saw the shocking condition of Russian roads, with their ruts and pot-holes, how the highways over which the telegues travelled were always smooth and level. The secret was this: telegues were used only by couriers and officials of importance, and before they came to a stretch of road, every peasant in the area was turned out to sand and level it.
So as we lumbered along, the courier in state in the first telegue, and Flashy with his escort in the second, there were always peasants standing by the roadside, men and women, in their belted smocks and ragged puttees, silent, unmoving, staring as we rolled by. This dull brooding watchfulness got on my nerves, especially at the post stations, where they used to assemble in silent groups to stare at us – they were so different from the Crim Tartars I had seen, who are lively, tall, well-made men, even if their women are seedy. The steppe Russians were much smaller, and ape-like by comparison.
Of course, what I didn’t realize then was that these people were slaves – real bound, European white slaves, which isn’t easy to understand until you see it. This wasn’t always so; it seems that Boris Godunov – whom most of you will know as a big fellow who takes about an hour and a half to die noisily in an opera – imposed serfdom on the Russian peasants, which meant that they became the property of the nobles and land-owners, who could buy and sell them, hire them out, starve them, lash them, imprison them, take their goods, beasts and womenfolk whenever they chose – in fact, do anything short of maiming them permanently or killing them. They did those things, too, of course, for I saw them, but it was officially unlawful.
The serfs were just like the nigger slaves in the States – worse off, if anything, for they didn’t seem to realize they were slaves. They looked on themselves as being attached to the soil (“we belong to the master, but the land is ours”, was a saying among them) and traditionally they had bits of land to work for their own benefit – three days on their patch each week, three on the master’s, was supposed to be the rule, but wherever I went it seemed to be six on the master’s and one for themselves, if they were lucky.
It may not seem possible to you that in Europe just forty years ago white folk could be used like this, that they could be flogged with rods and whips up to ten times a day, or knouted (which is something infinitely worse), or banished to Siberia for years at their landlord’s whim; all he had to do was pay the cost of their transportation. They could be made to wear spiked collars, the women could be kept in harems, the men could be drafted off to the army so that the owners could steal their wives without embarrassment, their children could be sold off – and in return for this they were meant to be grateful to their lords, and literally crawl in front of them, calling them “father”, touching their heads on the ground, and kissing their boots. I’ve watched them do it – just like political candidates at home. I’ve seen a lot of human sorrow and misery in my time, but the lot of the Russian serf was the most appalling I’ve ever struck.
Of course, it’s all changed now; they freed the serfs in ’61, just a few years after I was there, and now, I’m told, they are worse off than ever. Russia depended on slavery, you see, and when they freed them they upset the balance, and there was tremendous starvation and the economy went to blazes – well, in the old days the landlords had at least kept the serfs alive, for their own benefit, but after emancipation, why should they? And it was all nonsense, anyway; the Russians will always be slaves – so will most of the rest of mankind, of course, but it tends to be more obvious among the Ruskis.
For one thing, they look so damned slavish. I remember the first time I really noticed serfs, the first day’s drive out of Taganrog. It was at a little village post-station, where some official was thrashing a peasant – don’t know why – and this dull clown was just standing and letting himself be caned by a fellow half his size, hardly even wincing under the blows. There was a little crowd of serfs looking on, ugly, dirty-looking rascals in hairy blue smocks and rough trousers, with their women and a few ragged brats – and they were just watching, like cowed, stupid brutes. And when the little official finally broke his cane, and kicked the peasant and screamed at him to be off, the fellow just lumbered away, with the others trailing after him. It was as though they had no feeling whatever.
Oh, it was a cheery place, all right, this great empire of Russia as I first saw it in the autumn of ’54 – a great ill-worked wilderness ruled by a small landed aristocracy with their feet on the necks of a huge human-animal population, with Cossack devils keeping order when required. It was a brutal, backward place, for the rulers were ever fearful of the serfs, and held back everything educational or progressive – even the railway was discouraged, in case it should prove to be revolutionary – and with discontent everywhere, especially among those serfs who had managed to better themselves a little, and murmurings of revolt, the iron hand of government was pressing ever harder. The “white terror”, as they called the secret police, were everywhere; the whole population was on their books, and everyone had to have his “billet”, his “ticket to live” – without it you were nobody, you did not exist. Even the nobility feared the police, and it was from a landlord that I heard the Russian saying about being in jail – “Only there shall we sleep sound, for only there are we safe.”21
The land we travelled through was a fit place for such people – indeed, you have to see it to understand why they are what they are. I’ve seen big countries before – the American plains on the old wagon-trails west of St Louis, with the whispering grasses waving away and away to the very edge of the world, or the Saskatchewan prairies in grasshopper time, dun and empty under the biggest sky on earth. But Russia is bigger: there is no sky, only empty space overhead, and no horizon, only a distant haze, and endless miles of sun-scorched rank grass and emptiness. The few miserable hamlets, each with its rickety church, only seemed to emphasize the loneliness of that huge plain, imprisoning by its very emptiness – there are no hills for a man to climb into or to catch his imagination, nowhere to go: no wonder it binds its people to it.
It appalled me, as we rolled along, with nothing to do but strain your eyes for the next village, soaked by the rain or sweating in the sun, or sometimes huddling against the first wintry gusts that swept the steppes – they seemed to have all weathers together, and all bad. For amusement, of course, you could try to determine which stink was more offensive – the garlic chewed by the driver or the grease of his axles – or watch the shuttlecocks of the wind-witch plant being blown to and fro. I’ve known dreary, depressing journeys, but that was the limit; I’d sooner walk through Wales.
The truth is, I was beginning to find Russia a frightening place, with its brooding, brutish people and countryside to match; one began to lose the sense of space and time. The only reliefs were provided by our halts at the way-stations – poor, flea-ridden places with atrocious accommodation and worse food. You’d been able to get decent beef in the Crimea for a penny a pound, but here it was stchee and borsch, which are cabbage soups, horse-meat porridge, and sweet flour tarts, which were the only palatable things available. That, and their tea, kept me alive; the tea is good, provided
you can get “caravan tea”, which is Chinese, and the best. The wine they may put back in the moujiksa for me.
So my spirits continued to droop, but what shook them worst was an incident on the last morning of our journey when we had halted at a large village only thirty versts [twenty miles] from Starotorsk, the estate to which I was being sent. It wasn’t so different, really, from the peasant-thrashing I’d already seen, yet it, and the man involved, branded on my mind the knowledge of what a fearful, barbarous, sickeningly cruel land this Russia was.
The village lay on what seemed to be an important cross-roads; there was a river, I remember, and a military camp, and uniforms coming and going from the municipal building where my civilian took me to report my arrival – everything has to be reported to someone or other in Russia, in this case the local registrar, a surly, bull-necked brute in a grey tunic, who pawed over the papers, eyeing me nastily the while.
These Russian civil servants are a bad lot – pompous, stupid and rude at the best. They come in various grades, each with a military title – so that General or Colonel So-and-so turns out to be someone who neglects the parish sanitation or keeps inaccurate records of livestock. The brutes even wear medals, and are immensely puffed-up, and unless you bribe them lavishly they will cause you all the trouble they can.
I was waiting patiently, being eyed curiously by the officials and officers with whom the municipal hall was packed, and the registrar picked his teeth, scowling, and then launched into a great tirade in Russian – I gather it was addressed against all Englishmen in general and me in particular. He made it clear to my escort, and everyone else, that he considered it a gross waste of board and lodging that I should be housed at all – he’d have had me in the salt-mines for a stinking foreigner who had defiled the holy soil of Mother Russia – and so forth, until he got quite worked up, banging his desk and shouting and glaring, so that the noise and talk in the room died away as everyone stopped to listen.
It was just jack-in-office unpleasantness, and I had no choice but to ignore it. But someone else didn’t. One of the officers who had been standing to one side, chatting, suddenly strolled forward in front of the registrar’s table, paused to drop his cigarette and set a foot on it, and then without warning lashed the registrar full across the face with his riding crop. The fellow shrieked and fell back in his chair, flinging up his hands to ward another blow; the officer said something in a soft, icy voice, and the trembling hands came down, revealing the livid whip-mark on the coarse bearded face.
There wasn’t a sound in the room, except for the registrar’s whimpering, as the officer leisurely raised his crop again, and with the utmost deliberation slashed him across the face a second time, laying the bearded cheek open, while the creature screamed but didn’t dare move or protect himself. A third slash sent man and chair over, the officer looked at his whip as though it had been in the gutter, dropped it on the floor, and then turned to me.
“This offal,” says he, and to my amazement he spoke in English, “requires correction. With your permission, I shall reinforce the lesson.” He looked at the blubbering, bleeding registrar crawling out of the wreck of his chair, and rapped out a string of words in that level, chilly whisper; the stricken man changed course and came wriggling across to my feet, babbling and snuffling at my ankles in a most disgusting fashion, while the officer lit another cigarette and looked on.
“He will lick your boots,” says he, “and I have told him that if he bleeds on them, I shall have him knouted. You wish to kick him in the face?”
As you know, I’m something in the bullying line myself, and given a moment I dare say I’d have accepted; it isn’t every day you have the opportunity. But I was too amazed – aye, and alarmed, too, at the cold, deliberate brutality I’d seen, and the registrar seized the opportunity to scramble away, followed by a shattering kick from my protector.
“Scum – but rather wiser scum,” says he. “He will not insult a gentleman again. A cigarette, colonel?” And he held out a gold case of those paper abominations I’d tried at Sevastopol, but hadn’t liked. I let him light one for me; it tasted like dung soaked in treacle.
“Captain Count Nicholas Pavlovitch Ignatieff,”22 says he, in that cold, soft voice, “at your service.” And as our eyes met through the cigarette smoke I thought, hollo, this is another of those momentous encounters. You didn’t have to look at this chap twice to remember him forever. It was the eyes, as it so often is – I thought in that moment of Bismarck, and Charity Spring, and Akbar Khan; it had been the eyes with them, too. But this fellow’s were different from anything yet: one was blue, but the other had a divided iris, half-blue, half-brown, and the oddly fascinating effect of this was that you didn’t know where to look, but kept shifting from one to the other.
For the rest, he had gingerish, curling hair and a square, masterful face that was no way impaired by a badly-broken nose. He looked tough, and immensely self-assured; it was in his glance, in the abrupt way he moved, in the slant of the long cigarette between his fingers, in the rakish tilt of his peaked cap, in the immaculate white tunic of the Imperial Guards. He was the kind who knew exactly what was what, where everything was, and precisely who was who – especially himself. He was probably a devil with women, admired by his superiors, hated by his rivals, and abjectly feared by his subordinates. One word summed him up: bastard.
“I caught your name, in that beast’s outburst,” says he. He was studying me calmly, as a doctor regards a specimen. “You are the officer of Balaclava, I think. Going to Starotorsk, to be lodged with Colonel Count Pencherjevsky. He already has another English officer – under his care.” I tried to meet his eye and not keep glancing at the registrar, who had hauled himself up at a nearby table, and was shakily trying to staunch his gashed face: no one moved a finger to help him. For some reason, I found my cigarette trembling between my fingers; it was foolish, with this outwardly elegant, precise, not unfriendly young gentleman doing no more than make civil conversation. But I’d just seen him at work, and knew the kind of soulless, animal cruelty behind the suave mask. I know my villains, and this Captain Count Ignatieff was a bad one; you could feel the savage strength of the man like an electric wave.
“I will not detain you, colonel,” says he, in that same cold murmur, and there was all the immeasurable arrogance of the Russian nobleman in the way he didn’t look or beckon for my civilian escort, but simply turned his head the merest fraction, and the fellow came scurrying out of the silent crowd.
“We may meet at Starotorsk,” says Ignatieff, and with the slightest bow to me he turned away, and my escort was hustling me respectfully out to the telegue, as though he couldn’t get away fast enough. I was all for it; the less time you spend near folk like that, the better.
It left me shaken, that little encounter. Some people are just terrible, in the true sense of the word – I knew now, I thought, how Tsar Ivan had earned that nickname: it implies something far beyond the lip-licking cruelty of your ordinary torturer. Satan, if there is one, is probably a Russian; no one else could have the necessary soulless brutality; it is just part of life to them.
I asked my civilian who Ignatieff was, and got an unwilling mumble in reply. Russians don’t like to talk about their superiors at any time; it isn’t safe, and I gathered that Ignatieff was so important, and so high-born – mere captain though he was – that you just didn’t mention him at all. So I consoled myself that I’d probably seen the last of him (ha!) and took stock of the scenery instead. After a few miles the bare steppe was giving way to large, well-cultivated fields, with beasts and peasants labouring away, the road improved, and presently, on an eminence ahead of us there was a great, rambling timbered mansion with double wings, and extensive outbuildings, all walled and gated, and the thin smoke of a village just visible beyond. We bowled up a fine gravel drive between well-kept lawns with willow trees on their borders, past the arched entrance of a large courtyard, and on to a broad carriage sweep before the house, wh
ere a pretty white fountain played.
Well, thinks I, cheering up a bit, this will do. Civilization in the midst of barbarism, and very fine, too. Pleasant grounds, genteel accommodation, salubrious outlook, company’s own water no doubt, to suit overworked military man in need of rest and recreation. Flashy, my son, this will answer admirably until they sign the peace. The only note out of harmony was the Cossack guard lounging near the front steps, to remind me that I was a prisoner after all.
A steward emerged, bowing, and my civilian explained that he would conduct me to my apartment, and thereafter I would doubtless meet Count Pencherjevsky. I was led into a cool, light-panelled hall, and if anything was needed to restore my flagging spirits it was the fine furs on the well-polished floor, the comfortable leather furniture, the flowers on the table, the cosy air of civilian peace, and the delightful little blonde who had just descended the stairs. She was so unexpected, I must have goggled at her like poor Willy in the presence of his St John’s Wood whore.
And she was worth a long stare. About middle height, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, plump-bosomed, tiny in the waist, with a saucy little upturned nose, pink, dimpled cheeks and a cloud of silvery-blonde hair, she was fit to make your mouth water – especially if you hadn’t had a woman in two months, and had just finished a long, dusty journey through southern Russia, gaping at misshapen peasants. I stripped, seized, and mounted her in a twinkling of my mind’s eye, as she tripped past, I bowing my most military bow, and she disregarding me beyond a quick, startled glance from slanting grey eyes. May it be a long war, thinks I, watching her bouncing out of sight, and then my attention was taken by the major-domo, muttering the eternal “Pajalsta, excellence,” and leading me up the broad, creaky staircase, along a turning passage, and finally halting at a broad door. He knocked, and an English voice called:
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