The Violin

by Lindsay Pritchard

  Henry reached his lodgings that evening and turned over the events of the day. Florence, the Florence he had known and loved, was long gone although he had no sadness about that since the spark that had fired between them all those years ago had been extinguished. It was a desperate sadness that he could not acknowledge young Harry but it would simply not do to cause upset to all those involved.

  As for his other love. Myrtle, ah Myrtle. The sadness was overwhelming.

  The sun went down over the sea. Henry poured several whiskies for himself as he sat in the chair in his uniform. He thought about time passing, relationships shattered, future uncertainties. The shadows on the wall grew longer. He retrieved his battered suitcase from a wardrobe.

  He pulled out his service revolver.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  In Russia, the serfs may have been emancipated by Tsar Alexander in the nineteenth century, but it had done little to improve their lot and life was still harsh. Existence in isolated villages across the barren steppes was miserable, brutish and simply a matter of keeping warm, scratching for a little food and, often, simply surviving. Those who had moved to towns and cities because of a lack of farmland, or in an effort to better the lot of themselves and their family, found they were exploited, working long hours for subsistence wages. The ruling class, enjoying wealth, glamour and security were blind to the first stirrings of revolution.

  The proletarian bear had been baited, beaten and starved once too often and was breaking free of its chains. Whilst the landed nobility, the factory owners and the clergy upheld the autocracy in their own narrow interests, something was stirring in millions of peasant souls. The perturbations below the surface needed only the emergence of demagogues to articulate their demands.

  In 1905, a rising by peasants and defenceless workers had been brutally suppressed. In order to forestall further insurrection, the Tsar had allowed a limited consultation body to foster an illusion of democracy. An uneasy stalemate ensued. However, the Russian involvement in the Great War proved a turning point. There were repeated military reverses, acute food shortages and intense suffering in the civilian population.

  Around the time that General Yurkevitch was entertaining Captain Emil Hermann in his elegant country dacha, rioting spread in Moscow. The simmering lull in peasant tempers began to move to boiling point. The reaction of the establishment was to seek to put down the insurrection by force and to dissolve the toothless parliament. When it came to firing on their fellow citizens, however, in many cases the soldiery refused to follow orders to kill people in the streets.

  This spelt the end of the Tsar and Nicholas abdicated. For a while an uneasy peace prevailed. However, the German government of Captain Hermann, sensing an opportunity, allowed the exiled Lenin to cross Germany hoping that the Bolsheviks would undermine Russia’s involvement in the war. On his return, Lenin began the demand to ‘End the war!’ and ‘All land to the peasants’, ‘Give the factories to the workers!’ This chimed exactly with the mood of the proletariat.

  By November 1917, the Bolsheviks were in power, abolishing private property and giving church land to village councils.

  The old order was overthrown. Worker control was introduced in factories, the banks were nationalised for the use of the people and a Supreme Council was formed to run the economy. Negotiations with the other warring central powers resulted in a humiliating withdrawal of Russia from the Great War.

  Yet the old order refused to go quietly and Russia descended into civil war. The White Russians defended the ancient regime – the aristocrats, the Church, the former landowners. This was the natural home of General Yurkevitch. At first, whilst hearing of the revolution, the hostilities centred on the main cities: Moscow, St Petersburg, Kiev. However, even in the wastes of Siberia, the demands of the new order began to trickle through. With the end of Russia’s participation in the war, prison camps were thrown open and the inmates began the long, weary trek back to the West and home.

  Emil was conflicted. He much respected General Yurkevitch and had fallen deeply in love with his daughter Elena, a union on which the General smiled. But it was increasingly clear that life in aspic in the dacha was untenable. Information percolated through that the General’s property in Moscow had been confiscated and he and his family were left on the shrinking ice floe in the country, where their servants remained loyal. But as news of the Bolshevik advances and atrocities increased, getting ever nearer, it was clear that escape was the only feasible option. The General summoned his family into the elegant drawing room. Emil, now formally betrothed to Elena, was part of the conference.

  “My dears, it appears that the world has changed forever. The old certainties on which we felt we could rely have gone. Only Vladivostock remains, I understand, as a bastion for the Whites. I fear it may only be a matter of time before that falls also. We must find a place and a way of life that allows us to live out our remaining years as peacefully and securely as we can.

  “As for you, Captain Hermann, you should feel no blame if you were to make your way home. As a prisoner of a war that has now ended, you will be assured of a safe passage. You need not be tainted by your links with us. I will be able to give you a little money to ease your way home.”

  Emil demurred.

  “Sir, I am grateful for your generosity and benevolence towards me. Naturally, I fervently wish to return to my native land, but my life has changed irrevocably and would be no life without Elena,” he took her hand. “You have done me the honour of granting her hand in marriage to me when life was settled. Now that circumstances are perilous, that does not change my love for her. Indeed, I wish to protect her and make her life as safe and comfortable for her as is feasible in these troubled times. I would not be much of a man and a soldier if I left behind the woman I love.”

  General Yurkevitch and his wife grasped hands.

  “We have spoken of this. It will go better for you if you are not encumbered by me and all that I represent to the Reds. We have a little money and also some family jewellery that you may need to pay your passage or to help you wherever you may find yourselves. Some of these would have passed to Elena in any event. You must go and seek your passage away from this benighted country and towards a safe and happy future. Although I shall always hope, I do know in my heart that we may never meet again. We are growing old and the likes of us are also being slaughtered in order to extirpate what is seen to be bad. So, we are all going into the unknown. But desperate times need desperate solutions and if this is the way that promises the best hope for you then that is the way we must take.”

  “Thank you, sir, we will make immediate arrangements. And I know that Elena and Eugenia have spoken and they do not wish to part, so with your permission we will all travel together.”

  The General agreed.

  *

  And so it was in the spring of 1918, Emil Hermann set off into the unknown but aware that the way would be arduous, probably perilous, and long. He kept his German officer uniform as evidence of his bona fides in the event of untoward White hostility. He also had a bag that contained some roubles as ready cash, some gold and a few necklaces, rings and bracelets from the Yurkevitch family heirloom. They also took with them their violins. Deputed to accompany them was a Yurkevitch retainer called Maksim, a veritable giant of a man standing nearly seven feet tall. He was a man of few words and had a kindly and gentle disposition as many large people have. He would be an intimidating and reassuring presence for a journey into the vastness of a country in turmoil.

  They formed a motley group: a German officer in a shabby uniform, one tall, plain girl; one short, pretty girl; some few belongings in sacks; some musical instruments. The whole caravan was complemented by a lugubrious giant in a hessian tunic with wild, unkempt hair and large shovel-like hands.

  Slowly they travelled east on horse and cart, stopping at small settlements and villages for shelter and food,
which was not always easy to obtain. Life had always been hard but was now yet more desolate with the suspicion and bloodshed that followed the revolution. They were viewed, at first acquaintance, with suspicion and mistrust. However, they would offer to play music and in that landscape and time, a troupe of troubadours brought a brief moment of music and light, some nostalgic reminiscences of the past, and perhaps a hopeful foretaste of happier times to come. The power of music transcended the troubled soul.

  In return for shedding a little sunlight over darkness, the local people would share what food and drink they could spare and give them shelter for the night before they moved on. The humanity and kindness of poor peasant strangers in villages contrasted diametrically with the blood-letting hatred and suspicion that beset many towns and cities in the Russia of those tragic times.

  In their straitened circumstances, the difficulties only seemed to enhance Emil’s love for Elena. He admired her resilience in adapting from a life of ease and plenty to a rigorous and uncomfortable journey into the unknown. For her part, Elena loved the fortitude and absolute dependability of Emil and, although missing her parents and her old life, she would gladly have followed him anywhere.

  Eventually they reached Vladivostock, sold the horse and cart and boarded the Great Eastern Chinese Railway, which cut a scar across the country east towards Manchuria and the city of Harbin. The city on the Songhua river, and now with some 300,000 inhabitants, had flourished and grown with the coming of the railroad. It was a melting pot of Han Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Poles and many other nationalities who had pitched up when muscle and skills were needed to build the city. Around 100,000 White Russian émigrés had established a community there, the baroque and Byzantine facades of Zhongyang Street housed Russian restaurants. Emil and the group found basic lodgings locally and drank Kvass with smoked sausage and dalieba bread.

  By now they had been travelling for more than a year and 1920 was a very hard winter. Further travel looked perilous and the small ensemble made a comfortable enough living by playing music in restaurants and bars, developing a repertoire that included some light classical pieces along with Russian folk songs. They learnt local pieces from Armenia, Lithuania and Georgia, too, and expatriates would clap and stamp to the music, or clutch a drink nostalgically when a theme from the old country was played. Sometimes bar owners would tell them to collect their earnings the following day, intending to send them on their way unrewarded. Emil, however, soon discovered that if he were accompanied by his seven-foot bear that the money would be quickly forthcoming.

  In the meantime, Elena’s sister, Eugenia, had attracted the attentions of a consort. Pyotr was a dapper businessman émigré who supplied labour and artisans to building contracts, making a turn on his agency. He was a full head shorter than the gangling Eugenia and they cut a strange partnership. But he was honest and hard-working and there was something about the tall, square Eugenia that drew him to her and she, realising that her opportunities for security would be few, gratefully encouraged his attentions. She confided in Elena.

  “In my mind, I always hoped for a tall and dashing cavalryman. But, I confess, I know I am plain and that men do not seek me out. But Pyotr is a good man and, although you would not call it love, perhaps in time we shall make a happy household and that is all that I should wish for and expect.”

  Soon they solemnised their relationship and found rooms together in a decent part of town, Eugenia throwing in her lot with Pyotr and happily reconciled to live, grow old and die in Harbin.

  A shocking incident then reduced their number further. Returning to their quarters after a concert in a local hall, Emil, Elena and Maksim disturbed two Chinese thieves in the act of ransacking and looting their quarters. Seeing what was happening, Maksim pushed the other two behind him and, bellowing like a wounded bear, made towards the villains who had found the small cache of valuables that had been hidden.

  Knocking over one thief with a mighty hand, Maksim grabbed the bag containing the gold and jewellery. However, from his blindside, the other Chinese thief whom he had felled, pulled a knife and stabbed Maksim through the ribs in his side. Still clutching the bag, he swung round and struck the robber with a sledgehammer blow. The two assailants, realising they were in serious peril from this huge rampaging bear, ran out of the building empty-handed. Maksim handed the bag to Emil. He then grasped his side, looking down uncomprehendingly at the blood on his hands. Slowly, like a toppling tree, he fell onto a chair then onto his back on the floor. The blow from the knife had been lethal. Emil loosened his collar as Elena brought water.

  “Stay with us, Maksim, I will fetch a doctor.”

  But Maksim shook his head and closed his eyes, murmuring in Russian that they should not trouble themselves, he just wanted to sleep. After a few moments, he expired and the great chest deflated for a final time with a noise like a ship sinking into the ocean.

  Emil arranged a decent funeral for the old family retainer who had served selflessly, eventually making the ultimate sacrifice.

  *

  With Eugenie settled and Maksim dead, Emil, by the spring of 1921, suggested that they move on. He had been away from home for almost five years. It would have been seductive simply to drop anchor at Harbin, but after the attempted robbery and the murder, Harbin now seemed a cold and inhospitable place and some calling urged him back to the land of his birth.

  Emil had heard that in Qingdao on the coast, there were shipping lines back to Europe. So, boarding the eastbound Jiaoji train, once again they set off on their odyssey with their few possessions, of course keeping their violins close, being one of the few links back to their old lives.

  Qingdao was another fast-growing city, with the added attraction to Emil that it had formerly been a German province having been seized from the Chinese. He knew that he would find a way out and onwards. The two of them established a modest series of concerts. Cashing in their gold and jewels, although for a peppercorn price at a pawnbrokers, and adding in the concert takings, they could afford two tickets on a Japanese steamer to Hamburg.

  Finally, at last, after war, capture, hunger and many cold miles, Captain Emil Hermann and his Russian wife, Elena, found themselves steaming towards their new life together.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  How does a good child go bad? There was nothing in Harry Farquharson’s genetics that would have given any pointers. With his mother, conventional as could be, in a settled marriage to the stolid Greygoose and the tranquil timelessness of Dover College as a shield between him and a world at war, there seemed little reason in his blood or in his environment for Harry to slew off course.

  His mother noticed the deviation early.

  “Harry, did you take two sixpences from my purse?”

  “No Mother, certainly not!” He gave her a look of hurt unimpeachability that brooked no further enquiry. But then the money appeared in a drawer in his room.

  But as well as serial, though low-level, dishonesty, the boy was given to inventing tall tales as well in order to elicit shock and admiration from adults and other boys.

  “Mr Dean, the art master says that my work reminds him of an early Reynolds.”

  “Apparently I am to be entered for the Oxford entrance examinations next year. At fourteen I will be the youngest ever from Dover College.”

  “Of course, I mastered all of the caprices by Vivaldi at age ten.”

  At first, Harry’s confabulations were amusing from a small boy. But despite growing older and being increasingly chided for his extravagant claims, nothing seemed to prevent his pathological lying. He would be disciplined by the schoolmasters, writing lines and being beaten to correct the errors of his ways, but nothing acted as a deterrent.

  Finally, at fifteen, Harry was caught blatantly cheating in a school exam. Arraigned before his mother and the Head of House, and faced with the incontrovertible evidence of his dishonesty, Harry main
tained his innocence without a blink of an eye.

  A discussion between his mother and grandfather turned over several options.

  “Maybe a spell as a young sea cadet?”

  “Perhaps not suited to the academic world. An apprenticeship?”

  “We could continue to try and beat it out of him?”

  In truth, there was something in the boy’s nature that had made him incorrigible. Harry himself pre-empted any further pointless punishments or banishment to a spell in correctional employment by packing a case and leaving Dover College. A tall, broad, physically mature boy already with the first makings of a moustache and with a deepening voice, he simply announced his departure to his mother and Mr Greygoose.

  “I have had enough of life here. I am bored with the endless studying and I mean to go up to London to see about life.”

  “But what shall you do? Where shall you live?” asked his mother in despair.

  “Oh, I will find somewhere to live soon enough. I can keep my wits about me. I can look after myself, so don’t you worry about that. I shall do very well, thank you very much.”

  So, taking a small valise and his violin, which he fancied might be of some monetary advantage at some point, he made his way up to London. He quickly found digs in a widow’s house near Elephant and Castle. She was renting out rooms to make ends meet following the premature death of her husband. Harry promised, but never delivered, any rent and moved out in a moonlight flit one night.

  Finding further accommodation, he lived for a while on the proceeds of petty crime. He stole goods, pickpocketed from vulnerable individuals and then stole cheque books, endorsed them with a forged signature and cashed them at unsuspecting banks. Amateurish, he was soon apprehended in Russell Square one day, despite putting up a completely fictional, albeit plausible defence.