… An acquaintance of ours from Taganrog has just got home from Moscow … “Compared with Moscow, or even Kharkov, Rostov is an earthly paradise, it is ashamed of its prosperity …”
PROCEEDINGS OF THE STATE DUMA … “On measures to prevent the consumption by the population of meat and meat products from adult cattle, calves, sheep and lambs, pigs and piglets …”
CONCEALMENT OF STOCKS. At the kvass brewery on the Polyustrovskaya Embankment … at the Zhigalov Brothers warehouse 33 barrels …
ODESSA. The Shapiro, Rauchberger, and Spoliansky factories, which are known to have made use of defense materials for private profiteering purposes, are still under investigation. The police have discovered buried documents and ledgers. (Russkie Vedomosti)
NOBEL BROS. AND KEROSENE … Why do they try to deny it? In many towns, to say nothing of the villages, there is no kerosene and prices are exorbitant. Oil profits are such that the company’s shares are priced at six times their face value.
… the present war is a PEOPLE’S WAR and the war loan must become the PEOPLE’S CAUSE …
SOCIETY FOR COMBATING LUXURY AND EXTRAVAGANCE … We appeal to Russian women in the hope that not one of them will take part in this indecent competition—a fancy-dress ball with prizes for extravagance in costumes and jewelry.
NURSES! ANSWER THE CALL!
… Last days of the ARTIFICIAL LIMBS exhibition. Hay making with an artificial left arm … The Cossack with artificial legs. A nose made of soft material … An electromagnetic hand operated by means of a plug.
ROAD CASUALTIES. CARELESS DRIVING … Car No. … knocked down a cabby on the Palace Embankment … On Kamennostrovsky, Car No. … ran over a seven-year-old boy … Car No. … drove into a gas lamppost … Car No. … broke the pole of an electric tram and disappeared …
ATTENTION! No more need for sugar! Save your health and your money! Drink RUSSIAN BERRY AND FRUIT TEA.
LADIES with a liking for fancy underwear and chic matinee coats—hurry up and buy from your traveling salesman.
DIVORCE—quick and cheap. No. … Nevsky Prospect.
Renaissance. Amazing DARK OAK SUITE, foreign leather upholstery.
… maid of all work
MOTORCYCLE WANTED
… by the sacred and sovereign will of God’s Anointed, our fervently adored Emperor, who …
… our evacuation of Constantsa … Grain elevators and oil storage tanks fired.
… The Greek government has accepted all of the French admiral’s conditions …
BULGARIAN ATROCITIES … A nation of fratricidal Cains.
VICTORY MUST BE OURS!
The Times indicates that the main reason why Germany has announced the creation of a kingdom of Poland is its need for Polish troops.
The main obstacles to the activity of parliamentary institutions has come from none other than Stürgkh. The uncompromising reactionary character of his recent activities emerges clearly from press reports. He has antagonized the broadest circles of society. This makes Adler’s motives for shooting him sufficiently clear. (Rech)
London. Public meeting opposes premature peace.
NEW LAW ON PENALTIES FOR SPECULATION. Long awaited by the population … promulgated at long last … for demanding exorbitant prices for foodstuffs … for concealing stocks or suspending trade without valid reasons … 8 to 16 months’ imprisonment.
THE BANKS AND THE GRAIN TRADE … Conference of bankers to discuss their part in provisioning …
The Moscow press is perturbed by rumors that preliminary censorship of Moscow newspapers is to be introduced … everybody understands the need for military censorship, but civilian censorship is another matter. What political secrets does the government need to conceal from its own people? If we have censorship, “oral newspapers” will appear, and it is very doubtful whether they will be to the government’s liking. We journalists belong at present to the “naturalistic” school, but with censorship we shall become “symbolists,” (Utro Russii)
IMPORT OF LUXURY GOODS FORBIDDEN
… Measures to combat consumption of varnishes and polishes by drinkers.
YELLOW LABOR. In many Russian towns Chinese are seen more and more frequently.
WHICH OF US DOES NOT WISH TO HELP OUR BRAVE WARRIORS? MAKE HASTE TO BUY 5½% WAR BONDS. Every 100-ruble bond is three rounds of shrapnel at the enemy.
ODESSA. WOMEN RIOT. In connection with the zemstvo’s inventorying of produce, rumors that “serfdom is coming back” spread through the villages … A crowd of about 100 women …
A GANG OF SWINDLERS. A special panel of the Petrograd Superior Court examined the case of a gang of swindlers operating throughout Russia … The head of the whole concern is Tsereteli, a personage of some note. He obtained something like 100,000 rubles by means of a fraudulent telegram … gave 4,000 rubles to charity and was universally respected as a result … “I have lived and given life to others.”
EXHIBITION OF ARTIFICIAL LIMBS. Feeling of amazement at such hugely ingenious inventiveness … The life of each prosthesis is two to three years, and a new one costs 100 to 150 rubles. The disabled person will quite shortly have to make do with a wooden leg, and special attention ought to be given to this primitive device …
I shut my mind to care and questions,
In my hammock gently sway,
Half-seeing on the sand beneath me
Cigarette ash dead and gray.
Storms there have been, storms there will be.
I hear the garden softly sing
And in the blue and white above me
Like a swallow I take wing.
V. Bryuson
WHAT TO EAT INSTEAD OF MEAT. Instructions on the preparation of tasty, filling, and cheap dishes.
TEETH PURCHASES. Old false teeth and even broken dentures at highest prices. I pay 50 kopecks a tooth … I also purchase scrap gold and silver and various medals.
ALL THINGS IN THIS LIFE CHANGE! Except the unique S.E.R. cigarettes, which were, are, and always will be of unchanging high quality.
RACING today.
YOUNGISH PARISIENNE seeks post as lady’s companion.
LUXURIOUS WHITE BEDROOM SUITE. Paris workmanship.
REFUGE FOR PREGNANT WOMEN, MATERNITY HOME. Confidential midwife.
CULTURED CHILDREN’S NURSE sought.
Wanted: SWISS GOAT.
RETURN OF H.I.M. THE EMPEROR. His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, together with the Heir Apparent, the Grand Duke Aleksei Nikolaevich, arrived at Tsarskoye Selo from the army in the field on 1 November.
FRENCH BREAKTHROUGH AT VERDUN!
… the Russian and Romanian troops have drawn back slightly …
… Russia will be approaching the zenith of its might next year. 99 percent of Russians demand the continuation of the war to final victory. The outcome of the war will be decided next summer.
LATEST INTERVIEW WITH GENERAL BRUSILOV. “We have already won the war,” the valiant Russian general told a British reporter. “It’s just a question of time. The Romanian army’s setbacks have no real significance.”
The Times: “At present we are all for Russia. Let us hope that these warm feelings will not be replaced by indifference.”
The organ of the German Social Democrats declares that the main sufferer from this act was not the murdered man, who left no family. One tragic figure is the “old man on the throne,” Franz Josef, who has already lost in the same circumstances a brother, a son, a wife, and a nephew. But still more tragic is the fate of the assassin’s father, Viktor Adler, and the sympathy of the proletariat must now be addressed to him. It was he who once led the Austrian socialist movement out of its terrorist phase, to plant it on granite foundations of Marxist doctrine—and now anarchy has struck him a dreadful blow. (Rech, 2 November)
THE BAVARIAN PRINCE LEOPOLD NAMED KING OF POLAND.
Male population of Serbia deported by Austrians.
… it must be admitted that Germany, thanks to timely and careful measures of strict regu
lation and economy, has not so far suffered any real shortage of foodstuffs …
Holders of white chits ordered to reregister in Petrograd …
PLENTY OF MEAT IN PETROGRAD …
The Supreme Council of the Union of the Russian People thinks that Russia is under no threat of revolution at the present time: these are all fabrications …
All solar and terrestrial magnetic phenomena have now reached their maximum … The northern lights will frequently be observable in Petrograd during the coming winter.
“I DON’T CARE WHO KILLS GERMANS“—JACK LONDON … Sad news of the writer’s death … And so the words quoted above sound like his last dying wish …
… on the premises of the Petrograd Military Hotel (formerly the Astoria), a tea party: “PETROGRAD—FOR THE DEFENDERS OF THE MOTHERLAND …”
NURSES! ANSWER THE CALL!
CAUCASIAN RESORTS … Great influx of visitors … Meat 30 kopecks per pound, chickens a ruble each …
I PAY FULL PRICE for diamonds, pearls, gold … Fistul, Jeweler.
YOUR PERSONAL FUTURE instantly and infallibly revealed by my magic cards.
CULTURED YOUNG LADY offers massage, general or local …
RUSSIAN COACHMAN, able to drive troika …
[11]
This year Alina had firmly resolved not to visit her husband at the front: she wouldn’t humiliate herself again by seeming to beg for the treat to which she was entitled. If he wanted to, he would come without being asked, as other officers did.
And so that November she faced the prospect of a birthday without her husband. She tried to think up some original way of celebrating it, to make it memorable. Whom should she invite? (Just suppose whoever had given her the bouquet of roses should arrive from out of the blue! How would she feel about that?)
But it cost Alina something of an effort to think about it all: she had little money to spare, and it was doubtful whether she could get up her courage for anything too eccentric. She began to think that the best thing might be simply to visit her mother in Borisoglebsk and see a few of her girlhood friends.
Then suddenly, on Friday, 27 October—a telegram! And he was already in Kiev! And would be in Moscow that Saturday! How marvelous! Darling Georgi! I’ll soon blow the cobwebs away! The last time you were in Moscow was when you were dropped by GHQ—and that was only for three days.
As luck would have it—just two weeks to her birthday. So he wasn’t a completely hopeless case after all.
What a relief! No need to exert herself thinking up something extravagant. No need for ingenuity. Just relax at home, easier that way. Life is always easier if you let it take its own course.
Friday was, as it happened, one of the cleaning woman’s days. The two of them busied themselves cooking and prettifying the apartment—and rehanging the tulle curtains, washing the lace table mats, beating carpets. Georgi had forgotten all about home comforts, so she would lovingly remind him with every little detail, with every little cushion on the couch …
Ever since 1914, when they had made their lucky escape from Vyatka to Moscow, they had lived in a pleasant, recently built house opposite the Commercial Training School on Ostozhenka between the two Ushakov Lanes. There was a clean and handsome staircase, the steps were of marble, there were brown parquet floors on the landings, quaint ear-shaped doorbells (“please tweak”). There were no back stairs, but a chute made it unnecessary to carry rubbish out the front way. There was central heating, and in a difficult autumn, like this one, when firewood was dear, there was no need to worry about fuel, such worries could be left to the priest who had built the house on the grounds of his church (the Church of the Dormition) and still managed it. They had grown so used to it, and so fond of it—their marvelous little three-room apartment on the third floor looking out on Ostozhenka and the churchyard. From the side windows there was a still better view of the street, all the way to HQ Moscow Military District, to which Georgi had been transferred in 1914. (He had remained in contact with many officers, and could still have arranged to be posted back from his regiment, but he turned a deaf ear to friendly hints.)
Alina was busy late into the evening arranging and rearranging her husband’s prized possessions, trying to remember how it was most convenient for him to reach his desk or look around from it. What holds a family together is a home, in which every little thing must be a good one of its kind, in its proper place, just right for its purpose, meant to make life easier. And if anybody knew instinctively the only possible place to put things, and just where to hang photographs on the walls, it was Alina. In his two years of roughing it at the front Georgi had lost contact with the things that make a home, but it would surely come back to him! After the discomforts of army life he would value them all the more.
Looking back, she could see that insensitivity had always been Georgi’s trouble—there was nothing new in it. He had no real gift for love, for responding to anyone else’s (and especially a woman’s) changeable emotions, to the particularities of people’s life stories. It was a pity for him, poor silly fellow: his emotional underendowment harmed him more than anyone. Well, that was what a wife was meant to do: keep watch on her husband’s thoughts and feelings and try to correct his congenital faults. And apathetic as he now was, he would surely liven up and take more interest once he was at home.
As she tidied up, Alina wondered how best to spend the two weeks of his visit. It was a marvelous time of year, the best for music, a concert by Rachmaninoff and Ziloti was advertised for the end of the month, Koussevitzky’s orchestra would be at Nazlobin’s theater from Monday, and tomorrow would see the first of six meetings of the Russian Musical Society, this one devoted to French music, the whole of musical Moscow would be there—but that was one they would have to miss. It was essential for Alina to attend such concerts—to develop her artistry, breathe the musical atmosphere. But how much more vivid the experience would be if she went not with women friends but arm in arm with her soldier husband, an imposing colonel (a general by now but for his own pigheadedness), and strolled about the foyer in the intervals introducing him to one after another of her new Moscow circle.
Not knowing when he would arrive, she had been ready for him all day. At last the sweet little doorbell gurgled, Alina opened the door wide and let those great paws seize her, embrace her, squeeze her (stronger than ever?), and even lift her off her feet, felt that beard rasp her face (I’ll trim it for you, it’s grown too much!).
“You’re safe! You’re safe!” She clung around his neck. Her husband was safe, to confound all his enemies—drat them!
He was wearing a fur hat instead of his forage cap. It suited him very well. His skin was more deeply tanned and rougher than ever. His eyes were as quick as always (he was coming to life already). His uniform was brown, not of the usual gray-green cloth. Quite handsome! But why? Was that a new form of camouflage? Still, it had a certain elegance. What am I wearing today? Have you noticed at all, or are you a block of stone? Which day of ours does it remind you of?
They walked about the room with their arms around each other. She tried to point out some of her bright ideas, but he had no eyes for them yet. Give me another squeeze. That’s right.
She watched to see whether certain objects which their life together had made dear would raise a smile as they used to. Everything was just where it had been—or moved to a better place. She led him around the apartment, searching his face for signs of relief after the hardships of the front, or amazement that when whole countries had been trampled and churned up, here everything was still in place. There was a glimmer of some such feeling, but a faint one. Haven’t you noticed how tidy it all is, stupid?
“Remember what that table mat’s called?”
It was cobweb lace, adorning a circular occasional table made of dark wood.
“The little spider!”
He did remember!
“And that chest of drawers?”
He smiled. “Tubby.”
He re
membered that their gramophone was called Grum. They had given names of their own to many of the familiar and cherished possessions which made life easier. It all helped to make home a magical place.
Alina persisted, using the baby talk they also indulged in.
“Nice little housikins? Whose little hands did it all, then?” She screwed up her eyes and held both hands out to be kissed.
He slipped off his ammunition belts, but it gave him no relief, and he sank onto the sofa as though his own body was too heavy for him.
He heaved a sigh.
“Lord, oh Lord.” She sighed in sympathy. She felt in her own body the iron heaviness in him. “How hard it all is for you!” She pressed against him and ruffled his hair. “It is hard, isn’t it? Very hard.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” He sighed again, heavily, hopelessly.
“What? Things in general?”
“Yes. Things in general.”
“But what in particular?”
He sat motionless, and sighed again. “Hell … we’ll never make up for what we’re losing.”
“You mean all the men killed?”
“Killed, wounded, done for … sickened by it all … Everything … Nothing will ever make up for it … Never.”
“Lord, oh Lord. How tired you are. How terribly tired.” She stroked his head.
“Tired, yes. I’m tired all right, but …”
“You should have come home on leave last year. You’ve tortured yourself all your life. You’re your own worst enemy! You ought to think of yourself sometimes! You need to come up for air!”
She rang the little Chinese bell. Did he remember the bell? Its tuneful tinkle used to call him from his work to meals. This was where he was going to be really pleased! You can’t learn someone else’s tastes in a year, but she knew his of old—that was what being married meant.
In their Petersburg years, they had rented rooms with board, so they could do without servants. In that hole Vyatka, officers’ wives, for lack of anything better to do, did their own cooking. Alina tried her hand at it, and as always when she made a serious effort, the results were excellent. Georgi greatly enjoyed her cuisine, never failed to notice and to praise whatever she made, so that she didn’t mind exerting herself. Housewifery proved to be a world of its own and a complicated one, demanding an ability to learn, taste, and methodical habits, but these were among Alina’s wealth of talents, and were fruitfully applied. During the war many people in Moscow too had started managing without help in the kitchen, some of her Moscow acquaintances among them—which made it all the easier for Alina.
November 1916 Page 19