Fyodor Dmitrievich’s eyebrows shot up still higher. He opened his notebook and seized his pencil, but was too polite to make notes. His eyebrows shot up—but he was not completely lost for words.
“Yes, but, Georgi Mikhalich, that’s Romania. Never mind about Romania, we don’t have to live there. But here at home everything is stolen and for sale, that’s the frightening thing. There’s thieving at every station. At one time one pood of sugar to a freight car would be lost en route, now it’s thirty. When we were retreating last year and cattle were being evacuated, the head drovers were whooping it up in cafés on public money, and getting away with it. Crooked speculators bred like flies, they would lose hundreds of thousands at cards in a single evening—where did they get the money from? I’ve heard it said food and supply depots were set on fire during the retreat to cover up the quartermasters’ thieving.”
“They set fire to them because they have to. Nobody wants to see fatback or sugar or canned goods go like that, of course. But what are we supposed to do? Leave them for the Germans?”
Hmm, well … But Fyodor Dmitrich knew of something worse still.
“The ruthless profiteering in the rear, that’s the most terrible thing of all right now. If you’ve got something you can’t sell openly because you’re ashamed to name the price, you put it in storage and hang on to it—till the price is even higher. Inflation isn’t the word for it—it’s daylight robbery. Why this mad rush to make a fortune out of a national disaster? It’s a psychological epidemic, this shameless rapacity. Seems to me it’s the enemy within who’s ruining us. Hordes of speculators have sprung from nowhere. They grab anything that looks like it might disappear and talk up the price. Say some dirty little third-rate merchant is supplying the army with rubbishy felt boots or mildewed flour. These characters grab all they can, then donate part of their profits to field clinics. They steal the boots off a cripple’s feet with one hand and light a candle in church with the other. You wouldn’t get away with it in Germany, that’s for sure, that’s a strict society, they’ve got courts-martial to deal with that sort of thing. I’ve heard that some general here wanted to hang a banker, a merchant, and a stationmaster on a flatcar, couple it to an express train, and take them around on exhibit.”
Fyodor Dmitrich stared intently at his companion. His gaze was keen and searching.
There’s nothing comic about him. Why did I think there was?
He went on, with something like horror in his voice. “Jewelers, furriers, and ladies’ dressmakers are making fabulous sums—so somebody has money to burn, some people aren’t taking the war too tragically. Just look at Petersburg by night—it’s wallowing in luxury. Then there are all those pompous organizations—Northern-Help-the-Poor—Northern-God-Help-the-Poor, or Northern-Help-Yourself, some call it. They make a pile out of the refugees, hundreds of thousands pour in unaccounted for. Yes, that’s the most frightening thing: the way everybody is feathering his own nest. The whole country seems to have lost its conscience. How do you explain that? How do you explain the shameless profiteering?”
Vorotyntsev felt a chill down his spine. This is indeed frightening! Worse than “the government is useless.” Surely this general corruption is something new? This is the real calamity, this is what we have to struggle out of!
“And there’s no firm hand in the country,” Fyodor Dmitrich complained. “The villains go unpunished, and there’s no strong effort to uphold the law. We need a lot of honest and experienced people in every locality. But they seem to have been wiped off the map. Where are they all? That’s what everybody is asking: where are the people we need?”
Yes. Yes, indeed! Firm and honest government is what we need! A firm government, and above all not an inactive one. Oh, how sorely we need it—if we are to save the country.
“It’s more noticeable from one month to the next, this year from summer to autumn, say. That’s the general feeling now—talk to anybody, go wherever you like, everybody considers himself cheated, shortchanged, robbed. Some blame the peasants, some the towns, some the banks, some the refugees, some the workers, some the police, some the Duma, some our homegrown Germans, but absolutely everybody blames the government. Nobody would give you a bent kopeck for the government. And the idea has somehow gotten around that something bad and unavoidable is on the way—maybe the assassination of members of the government, maybe some sort of conspiracy …”
“Conspiracy?”
“There’s a sort of despondent feeling of instability, of distrust. In fact, some people would love to see a few murders! And they use the foulest language about ministers and—I’m sorry to say—about the most august personages. Then there’s that Rasputin: no ordinary peasant, people say, would put up with such obscene goings-on in his own house as the Emperor does. It’s a disgrace. Things got off to a bad start at the beginning of the war and they’ve been going wrong ever since. Life used to seem so stable—you thought it would go on just the same for centuries. But something gives—and it all goes from bad to worse. Sometimes you see a melon lying in the garden. Its rind is unbroken, it looks firm, but pick it up and it falls to pieces, it can’t stand the pressure of your hands.”
Surely things can’t be that bad! Surely not! People tend to exaggerate the dark side. The Duma and the newspapers always take that particular line—denigrating all things Russian. And this fellow too seems to have collected everything bad that others could tell him.
“Anyway, it’s no worse than last year, during the retreat.”
“Yes, but when we were afraid the Germans would invade, when we almost surrendered Minsk, the country was united, and the home front was sound. Now the army has weapons, and nobody expects the enemy to reach Petrograd and Moscow. But nobody thinks of getting to Berlin either, as they did in ‘14. The country is no longer united, either by enthusiasm or by fear. And the internal situation has become critical.”
A persuasive fellow: and he doesn’t really belabor his point, just trots out one example after another, obviously knows what he’s talking about. No good trying to argue with him. Where’s he been to get so smart? Says he traveled with a hospital train—but how much would he see there? Now he’s talking about the Donetsk coalfield. There’s nowhere he hasn’t been.
“They all pour into the pits, to get a deferment and save their necks. Some of them have never worked there before, some don’t even need a wage. They’re all quite open about it—just hanging on till the war ends, hoping peace will come soon.” He sighed in sympathy with them. “Yes, Georgi Mikhalich, a peace made of straw is better than an iron battle.”
Well said! That’s a good proverb. A true one.
But the spirit of contradiction rose up in him—he had to defend the army in the field. It isn’t like that with us yet, thank God. It’s cleaner, morale is healthier. Danger makes men equals, the proximity of death cleanses them. In the rear, farther away from danger, people weaken, rottenness and corruption are rife.
“Yes,” Vorotyntsev said. “The peasants behave honorably and let themselves be netted by the army. But how many townspeople have evaded military service? The worst and quite legitimate deserters are in the Unions of Zemstvos and Towns. You don’t happen to be one of them, do you?”
“Oh no,” his fellow passenger said with a good-natured smile.
“They’ve invented for themselves epaulets with fantastic monograms to disguise the fact that they’re fit to serve.”
“They ought to be called up,” his companion agreed, “and there’s no reason why they should be paid such dizzy salaries. Some of them get two salaries, in fact, from their previous place of employment and from the Union.”
There’s no knowing what they might have got onto, but the conductor was walking down the corridor happily announcing Klin. “Hey, conductor, have you locked my door?” somebody called out from the other end of the corridor.
“You have to pull a bit harder, it’s an international door,” the conductor called back cheerfully.
/> Fyodor Dmitrich reached for his notebook and wrote that down. Wrote more than had been said. Making a note of something else, no doubt.
Get out and stretch our legs? They put their overcoats on.
At the carriage door Fyodor Dmitrich did not fail to question the conductor, and was told, “We only get thirty rubles, and we sometimes have to pay for repairs out of our own pocket. A pipe bursts, say, and you call in the maintenance man—and have to hand over your pet ten-ruble note.”
Conductors still get by somehow, no doubt.
Fyodor Dmitrich made another note.
They went out into the damp and the cold. It was pleasant at first to cool down after sitting so long in the warm compartment.
A cripple limped along the platform, then came another. Begging from the better-off passengers.
Not so long ago they had been brave soldiers. And before that had lived ordinary peaceful lives, little knowing what fate had in store. Now they had withdrawn into crippledom, like men forgotten at the bottom of a well.
Ten times as many soldiers hung around on the platform and in the station yard—reservists, with slack belts, crumpled greatcoats, and epaulets awry, but at least they came to attention and saluted. They weren’t patrolling the station, weren’t on duty at all, they moved around in small bunches or singly. Out for a stroll perhaps? Train watching?
“You see them at every station, in every marketplace,” Fyodor Dmitrich informed him. “They search hen coops, looking for eggs. They’re idle and insolent.”
Ought to look for the commandant, but haven’t got time.
A black cloud hung low overhead and it began to rain again.
Back to the carriage.
They were no longer mere strangers. Some sort of fellow feeling had been established. So much so that Fyodor Dmitrich coyly suggested “a little glass of wine from the Don.”
“Come on—it’s prohibited. Where’d you get it?”
“They’ve been drinking moonshine all through the war down on the Don. The ban on wine up to twelve percent alcohol was lifted a few days back. It can be exported legally from wine-growing areas, to sell here or even ship abroad. This is some from home I’m taking for my Petersburg friends. Give them a sip of sunshine.”
He put one foot on the stepladder, reached up to the luggage recess, and, using both hands, gently drew toward him a demijohn in a straw casing. There were big square gaps in the casing and the golden-dark liquid glowed alluringly through them.
Fyodor Dmitrich produced glasses, smiled at the wine too as he poured it in little splashes, smiling at it approvingly, and said in a slow voice, “At home in the village you don’t always want it even for free, it’s worth no more than water there. But in wartime, or in jail … You remember it then, oh, how you remember it …”
“You mean you’ve been in jail as well?”
“Just for a bit. Three months in the Kresty. I’m a Vyborger.”
Vyborger? And I’d just decided this nomad who’s been everywhere must come from the Don. But no, he’s from Vyborg. Or maybe he’s served in the Vyborg Regiment, the 85th?
Memory made all the connections, Usdau, the trenches, the bombardment, Arseni Blagodarev, the yellow toy lion—but somehow it didn’t fit. He was obviously no soldier. Perhaps he meant Vyborg was his hometown?
“Vyborger?”
Fyodor Dmitrich was eyeing him keenly, quizzically, expecting some sort of sharp retort. He didn’t get it.
“I signed the Vyborg appeal,” he said with a modest, almost apologetic smile.
“Ah, I see! Yes, of course …” (Somewhat at a loss.)
Vyborg appeal? I seem to remember something of the sort. Appeal from whom and to whom? And why Vyborg? There was no end of those appeals. Is he a revolutionary or something? Doesn’t look it. I’ve spent two hours with this ordinary, average-looking person, and heard nothing but riddles.
The train started moving, smoothly, without a jolt, gliding along, so that the glasses, full to the brim, didn’t spill a drop.
Fyodor Dmitrich, a little hurt, was soon smiling again.
“A good driver. It’s difficult, you know, getting a grip on a long train like that. There are no young engine drivers on passenger trains, especially on the Nikolai line.”
“Why is that?”
“Takes a long time to work your way up. You start as a greaser, then you’re a fireman, then a driver’s mate, then you drive shunting engines, then freight trains. And after that there are different classes of passenger trains. Your health!”
“Likewise.”
They sipped. Fyodor Dmitrich smacked his lips.
“An experienced driver who knows his sector well can perform miracles. At Yelets there’s a ten-minute stop, no time at all for the passengers to eat at the station. But at one time a waiter would dash over to the locomotive and hand the driver a silver tray holding a shot glass of vodka and an open sandwich with caviar. ‘Please accept this, Vasili Timofeich. Abdul Makhmudovich’ (the refreshment rooms are all leased to Kazan Tartars) ‘says don’t be in too much of a hurry to leave.’ ‘Tell Abdul Makhmudovich it’s all right.’ Then he says to his mate, ‘Go see the duty foreman, tell him the bearings need lubricating.’ The train stands for twenty-five minutes … and three full dinners are served to the driver’s cab too. Before they get to Gryazi, they’ve made up for lost time. Vasili Timofeich knows all the upgrades and inclines.”
Vorotyntsev’s glass was topped up before he could empty it.
All at once he felt sorry for the man. Seems somehow a loser, doomed to fail, yet not at all embittered. For all his omniscience and his facile judgments—he somehow lacks confidence. And he’s quite incapable of keeping himself to himself, shutting himself off, holding his tongue. An independent person—yet somehow dependent on everybody and everything.
The train went on its way unhurriedly, the wheels beating out a steady, reassuring rhythm, persuading him, commanding him to look more closely at this passing acquaintance—if he was still no more than that.
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember your Vyborg appeal. What was it about? And when?”
Fyodor Dmitrich looked aggrieved again. Sourish.
“When the First Duma was dissolved we all met at Vyborg and debated what to do … Then signed the appeal.”
“Forgive me … but who are ‘we’?”
“The members of the State Duma. Or some of them.”
“So you are … what? A member of the Duma?” (Is he joking?)
“Ex-member. Of the First Duma.” He smiled apologetically, readily admitting that he did not look the part.
Ah, the First. A long time ago.
“But you aren’t now?”
Fyodor Dmitrich’s embarrassment for the colonel made his good nature more obvious than ever.
“Well, you see … since then … we were deprived of political rights.”
“So you’re a politician?” There was a hint of mockery in Vorotyntsev’s long stare.
“Not at all—anything but. It was just an accident.”
“Forgive me—what is your surname?”
“Kovynev.”
“No, I’ve never heard of you.” That was awkward, wouldn’t like to upset him, but still—haven’t heard of him. “Where’s your constituency?”
“On the Don. Ust-Medveditskaya electoral district.”
“And what’s your party?”
“How shall I put it? … I was a so-called Trudovik. And I was accused of helping to found the National Socialist Party. The charge was dropped, or I’d have gotten a year. In those days of freedom and high hopes, no political meeting could do without me. Afterward the ataman of the Don Cossacks banished me from the Don.”
“So you were a Cossack?”
“And still am.”
“Come on—what sort of Cossack are you now?”
“Well, I go home for the hay making and the harvest and to look after the orchard. My sisters aren’t married and can’t manage alone.” He smiled to him
self. “Cossacks! Do you know what it means to be a Cossack? Suppose they’re all harvesting wheat on a July day. Suddenly Cossack couriers with red flags on their lances gallop through the villages and across the fields. That means war—report to the colors. That same day, before nightfall, by five o’clock everybody must be outside the local government office in uniform, and with all their equipment, on a horse fit for army service. So they abandon the harvest in mid-swath, abandon wife and children, and a few hours later there are four hundred fully equipped fighting men outside the local government office.”
He radiated pride. Was he too ready to mount and ride?
“So where do you normally live now?”
“Petersburg.”
“And what do you do—teach?”
Fyodor Dmitrich looked abashed, and his eyes shifted from the table to the wine and from there to his notebook.
“Not nowadays … nowadays I’m sort of … you might say an essayist … I write for the papers.”
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