The White Terror and The Red: A Novel of Revolutionary Russia by Abraham Cahan
CHAPTER XLII.
OMINOUS FOOTSTEPS.
Clara alighted from the train at a station immediately precedingMiroslav. She was met by Olga, the girl with the short hair and sparseteeth who was engaged to the judge, the two reaching the city partly ona peasant's waggon, partly on foot. At sight of the familiar landscapeClara seemed weird to herself. It was her own Miroslav, yet she wasworse than a stranger in it. She felt like a ghost visiting what wasonce his home. On the other hand, the unmistakable evidences of therecent riot contracted her heart with pain and brought back thatReproach.
Olga took her to a "conspiracy house." This was a basement in theoutskirts of the town, whose squatty windows faced the guardhouse ofmilitary stores and commanded a distant view of the river. The onlyother tenants of that courtyard were three sisters, all of them deaf andin a state of semi-idiocy. The basement had been rented soon afterClara's flight. It consisted of three rooms, all very meagrelyfurnished. Lying under the sofa of the middle room was a wooden roller,which had once been intended for a secret printing office. One of thewalls was hung with a disorderly pile of clothes of both sexes--the sheddisguises of passing conspirators.
But very few members were allowed to visit her. Those who were salutedher with admiring looks and generally treated her as a heroine, whichcaressed her vanity most pleasantly. With a temerity born of an acquiredhabit of danger, not unmixed with some bravado, Clara was burning tovisit her parents, her sister and her mother-in-law, and to take a lookat her native neighbourhood. Her friends made an effort to keep herindoors. She would not be restrained, assuring them that she was goingto take good care of herself, but she finally offered to compromise on ameeting with her sister, provided she brought her little girl with her.
"I am crazy to see her," she said, meaning the child.
"See little Ruchele! Why you _are_ crazy, Clara!" Olga declared. "If youdo all Miroslav will know the very next day that 'Aunt Clara' is intown."
"Nonsense. She won't know me. She has not seen me for more than a year.Besides, I'll wear my veil. Oh, I must see her; don't oppose me, Olga,dear."
* * * * *
The meeting took place on a secluded bit of lawn under a sky suffusedwith the lingering gold of a dying sunset. And sure enough, Ruchele wasextremely shy of the lady in black. When Clara caught her in her armspassionately she set up a scream so loud that her mother wrenched herfrom her aunt's embrace for fear of attracting a crowd from aneighboring lane.
* * * * *
A debate between Clara and Elkin was to take place in Orlovsky's housethe next evening. A few hours before the time set for the gatheringClara received an unexpected call from Elkin. This was their firstmeeting since her arrival, and she welcomed him with sincere cordiality.She respected him as her first teacher of socialism. As to his love forher, which could still be read in his eyes, it flattered her now.
"Well," he said, trying to take a light tone, but betraying agitation."There is some news in town. Clara Yavner has been seen about."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that Clara Yavner has been seen about," he repeated withsarcastic articulation. And by way of putting a period to the sentence,he opened his lips into a lozenge-shaped sneer and leaned his headagainst the mass of hung-up clothes under which he sat on an oblongstool.
She was seated on another tabouret, with her back to the low window. Hismanner exasperated her. "But I have been out only once," she retortedcalmly, controlling her anger, "and then I was heavily veiled."
"Well, could not some people have recognised you by your figure andcarriage? I am sure I could. At any rate your cousin, Vigdoroff, was tosee me a little while ago, for the express purpose of conveying thismessage to you, Clara. The gossips of Cucumber Market are whisperingabout your having been seen in town, 'and in addition to truths no endof fibs are being told.' Your mother is quite uneasy about it,and--well, Clara, at the risk of having it set down to a desire on mypart to slip out of the debate, I should suggest that you take nofurther chances and leave Miroslav at once."
"Oh, nonsense. Am I not safe in this basement at least?"
"Yes, I think you are, but if the police should get wind of yourpresence in town, why, they would not leave a stone unturned. They havebeen itching for a chance to tone down their reputation for stupidityever since your disappearance."
She smiled and frowned at once.
"Besides," he went on, leaning back against the clothes and gazing atthe ceiling, "if that debate is your chief mission here I am willing tocapitulate in advance. You know I cannot debate with you, Clara. I amstill in your power. My brain is in a whirl in your presence. It is atthis moment. If that debate took place I should simply not know what Iwas talking about. You would not wish me to make an exhibition of theabject helplessness that comes over me when I see you, would you?"
His words, uttered in monotonous accents, contrasted so sharply with theair of mockery that had attended his former attempts at an avowal; theysounded so forlornly simple, his spirit was so piteously broken that heseemed a changed man. She was touched.
"Don't speak like that," she said kindly. "I'll do as you say. I'llleave Miroslav at once."
"Is there absolutely no hope for me, Clara?"
"I am no longer free, Elkin. I am a married woman," she said, flushingviolently. "Let us change the subject. Tell me something about yourAmericans."
He dropped his eyes, and after a rather long pause he said, blankly:
"Well, pardon me, then. You have my best wishes, Clara. I say it from myheart. I shall be your warmest friend as long as I live. I confess Idreamed of your joining our party, so that I might be near you, andhoped that some day you would become mine."
"The right place for a revolutionist is here, in Russia, Elkin."
"Nobody is going to try to persuade you to leave the movement," he said,levelling a meek, longing look at her. "The Russian people act like wildbeasts toward our poor Jews, Clara; yet they and the Russian revolutionwill ever be dear to our hearts. We appreciate that it is theirblindness which makes such brutes of them. We shall always think ofthose who are in the fight here; we shall adore you; we shall worshipyou, Clara; and perhaps, too, we shall be able to do something forRussian liberty from there. But if you condemn us for joining theemigrants, I wish to say this, that if you had been in Miroslav duringthe riot you would perhaps take a more indulgent view of our step. Somany Jewish revolutionists have sacrificed their lives by 'going to thepeople'--to the Russian people. It's about time some of us at least wentto our own people. They need us, Clara."
"Look here, Elkin," she said with ardent emphasis, striving to deadenthe consciousness of his love-lorn look that was breaking her heart,"you must not think I am so soulless as to take no interest in thevictims of those horrors, for I do. I do. I can assure you I do. I havebeen continually discussing this question in my mind. I have studied it.My heart is bleeding for our poor Jews, but even if it were solely aquestion of saving the Jews, even then one's duty would be to work forthe revolution. How many Russian Jews could you transport to America andPalestine? Surely not all the five million there are. The great majorityof them will stay here and be baited, and the only hope of these is aliberated Russia. All history tells us that the salvation of the Jewslies in liberty and in liberty only. England was the first country togrant them the right to breathe because she was the first country wherethe common people wrested rights for themselves. The French revolutionemancipated the Jews, and so it goes. If there were no parliamentarygovernments in Western Europe, the Jews of Germany, Austria, or Belgiumwould still be treated as they are in Russia. When Russia has somefreedom at least, her Jews, too, will be treated like human beings."
"But we are not like the Palestinians, Clara. We don't propose toestrange ourselves from the revolutionary movement. We shall support itwith American money, and we hope to fit out expeditions to rescueimportant prisoners from Siberia, and to take them across the PacificOcean to
"Dreams!" she said, laughing good-naturedly.
The discussion lasted about an hour longer. He had not the strength toget up, and she had not the heart to cut him short. They listened toeach other's arguments with rapt attention, yet they were both aware ofthe unspoken other discussion--on the pathos of his love--that went onbetween them all the while they talked of the great exodus.
And while she commiserated Elkin and felt flattered by her power overhim, her heart was full of yearning tenderness for her husband, of joyin him and in her honeymoon with him.
When Elkin rose from his seat at last he said:
"By the way, I came near forgetting it--your cousin wants to see you."
"Volodia? Volodia Vigdoroff? I thought he would dread to come near me."
Time being short, the meeting was set for an early hour the very nextmorning. Elkin had made his adieux, but he still lingered. There was anextremely awkward stillness which was broken by the appearance of Olga.Then he left.
Disclosing the location, or, indeed, the existence, of a "conspiracyhouse" to one uninitiated into underground life was impossible.Accordingly, Vladimir was to meet Clara in a scanty pine grove near theNihilists' basement. On his way thither Vladimir was continually lookingover his shoulder, lest he was being followed by spies. He was flurriedand the sight of every policeman he met gave him a moment or two ofabject terror. But the part he had taken in the fight of the DefenceGuard had left him with a sense of his own potential courage; so he wastrying to live up to it by keeping this appointment with his "illegal"cousin, whom he was so thirsting to see. That she was married he did notknow. He was going to persuade her to join his American party. At thisminute, in the high-strung state of his mind, the result of recentexperiences, he felt as though she were not merely his "second sister,"which is Russian for cousin, but a real one. His chief object forseeking this interview, however, had been to celebrate his ownvindication. By her enthusiasm for the revolutionary movement from whichhe stayed away she had formerly made him feel like a coward and anonentity; now, however, that in his judgment the riots plainly meantthe moral bankruptcy of that movement, so far at least as it concernedrevolutionists of Jewish blood, he mentally triumphed over her.
The meeting had been fixed for an early hour. The air in the woods wascold and piquant with the exhalations of young evergreens. The grass,considerably yellowed and strewn with cones, was still beaded with dew,save for a small outlet of the clearing which was being rapidly invadedby the sun.
They met with warm embraces and kisses.
"Clara, my sister! If you only knew what we have gone through!" he said,with the passion of heartfelt tragedy in his subdued voice.
"How is uncle? How is auntie?" she asked with similar emotion.
His kiss and embrace had left an odd sensation in him. He had never hadan occasion to kiss her before; and now that he had not seen her forabout a year the contact of his lips with the firm, though somewhatfaded, cheek of this interesting young woman had revealed to him whatseemed to be an unnatural and illicit fact that she was not a sister tohim, but--a woman.
They seated themselves in a sunny spot.
"Are you really going to America, Volodia?" she inquired with a familiarsmile, carefully hiding her grief.
"I certainly am, and what is more, I want you to come along with us," heanswered, admiring her figure and the expression of her face as he hadnever done before. "Oh, I am quite in earnest about it, Clara. You see,the fist of the rioter has driven it home to me that I am a Jew. I mustgo where my people go. Come, Clara, you have staked your life for theRussians long enough, and how have they repaid you? Come and let us dosomething for our own poor unfortunate Jews."
She listened with the attention of one good-naturedly waiving adiscussion.
"And what has become of that bridge you were building?" she asked.
"And what has become of that gallows, of the martyr's scaffold, whichyou said united Jew and Gentile? Has _that_ done anybody any good? As tothe bridge I was building across the chasm that divides us from theChristians, I admit that it has been wrecked to splinters; wreckedunmercifully by that same fist of the rioter. I dreamed of thebrotherhood of Jew and Gentile and that fist woke me. The only point ofcontact between Jew and Gentile possible to-day is this"--pointing at ascar slightly back of his ear, his badge of active service as a memberof the Defence Committee.
"Why, did you get it in the riot?" she asked with a gesture of horror.
"It's a trifle, of course. Others have been crippled for life, but suchas this bit of a scar is it will stand me in good stead as a reminderthat I am a Jew. The fact is now everlastingly engraven on my flesh.There is no effacing it now. But joking aside, Clara, I love the Russianpeople as much as I ever did. My heart breaks at the thought of leavingRussia. I don't think the Russians themselves are capable of lovingtheir people as I do. But it can't be helped. There is an impassablechasm between us."
He was conscious of being on his mettle, as though the fiascoes he hadsustained in his last year's talks with her were being retrieved. As toher, there was a look of curiosity and subtle condescension in her eyeas she listened. But she was thoroughly friendly and warm-hearted, sofor the moment he saw nothing but encouragement to his flow ofconversation. From time to time he would be seized with mortal fear lestthey should be pounced upon by gendarmes, but he never betrayed it.
At one point, when he had put a question to her and paused, she said,instead of answering it:
"Really, Volodia, I somehow can't get it into my head that you areactually going to America."
"Oh, I am, I am. I am going to that land 'where one's wounded feelingsare sure of shelter.' Come along, Clara. Haven't you taken risks enoughin Russia? Come and serve your own people, your poor, trodden people.Have not the riots been enough to open your eyes, Clara?"
"As if those were the only riots there were," she returned, pensively."All humanity is in the hands of rioters."
"But our homes are being destroyed, Clara," he urged in an impassionedundertone. "Our people are being plundered, maimed, their every feelingis outraged, their daughters are assaulted."
"Is there anything new in that?" she asked, in the same pensive tone."Are not the masses robbed of the fruit of their toil? Are they notmaimed in the workshops or in the army? Are not their daughters reducedto dishonour by their own misery and by the lust of the mighty? Are notthe cities full of human beings without a home? All Russia isriot-ridden. The whole world, for that matter. The riots that you aredwelling upon are only a detail. Do away with _the_ riot and all theothers will disappear of themselves."
A note of animation came into her melancholy voice.
"What you 'Americans' propose to do," she continued, "is to clasp ahandful of victims in your arms and to flee to America with them. Well,I have no fault to find with you, Volodia. I wish you and your partysuccess. But the great, great bulk of victims, Gentiles as well as Jews,remain here, and the rioters--the throne, the bureaucracy, thedrones--remain with them."
She struck him as amazingly beautiful this morning and she seemed tospeak as one inspired. He listened to her with a feeling of reverence.
"But you have done enough, Clara," he said when she finished. "You havefaced dangers enough. Sooner or later you will be taken, and then--" (hethrew up his hands sadly). "You have a perfect right to save your lifeand liberty now."
She shook her head.
"You are a wonderful woman, Clara. By George, you are! Therefore, if youare arrested, it will be a great loss not only to your relatives, but toall the Jews. Haven't the Gentiles robbed us enough?"
"Would you have them rob us of our sacred principles, too?" sheretorted, with a faint smile. "Indeed, the right to die for liberty isthe only right the government cannot take away from the Jew."
"Come to America, Clara."
"Oh, that's utterly impossible, Volodia," she answered, gazing at thecones.
* * * * *
The
One of these imported spies was the fellow who once shadowed Clara inSt. Petersburg--the tall man with the swinging arm and the stiff-lookingneck whom she met on the day when the revolutionist with the Greek namewas arrested.
It was about 8 o'clock in the evening, some ten minutes before traintime, when this spy saw an uneducated Jewish woman in blue spectaclescrossing the square in front of the station. She seemed familiar to him,yet not enough so to attract serious attention.
It was Clara. Her disguise, in addition to the blue spectacles,consisted of a heavy Jewish wig, partly covered by a black kerchief, andan old-fashioned cloak. To spare her the risk of facing the gendarmes ofthe station, her ticket had been bought for her by somebody else, herintention being to slip into her car at the last moment. Having reachedthe place too early, however, she was now trying to kill the interval bysauntering about. This time the spy escaped her notice, but a littlelater, less than a minute before the third bell was sounded and whileshe was scurrying through the third class restaurant, she caught sightof him, as he stood half leaning against the counter drowsily.
Here he had a much better look at her. She certainly was familiar tohim, but he was still unable to locate her, and before he knew his ownmind he let her pass. It was not until the train had pulled out, and itsrear lights were rapidly sinking into the vast gloom of the night, thatit dawned upon him that she looked like the girl he used to spy upon inSt. Petersburg. Blue spectacles as a means of concealing one's identityare quite a commonplace article, so he called himself names for nothaving thought of it in time and hastened to telegraph to the gendarmesat the next station to arrest the young woman, giving a description ofClara's disguise and general appearance.
Some three quarters of an hour later an answer came from the nextstation that the train had been detained for a careful search, but thatno such woman could be found on it.
* * * * *
While that search was in progress Clara, her disguise removed, enteredthe "conspiracy house," where Olga had been waiting for her, in case sheshould have found it inconvenient to board the train.
"There you are!" Olga said, in despair, as she beheld her friend'ssmiling face in the doorway. "What has happened?"
"It's a fizzle, that's all. But it might have been worse than that.There is a St. Petersburg fellow at the station. He knows me."
"Did he see you?" Olga demanded breathlessly.
"I should say he did," Clara replied with another smile. "Well, Ithought it was all up. Gracious! didn't my feet grow weak under me. Butmy star has not gone back on me yet, it seems. I got into one of thecars just as the third bell was heard. I was sure he was close behindme, but, when I turned around, looking for a seat, I saw he was notthere. He must have gone to another car for the moment, or something.Anyhow, I tried to get out again. I thought I had nothing to lose,and--here I am. But look here, Olya[E], are you sure there is nobodyoutside?"
[E] Diminutive of Olga.
"I think I am," Olga answered firmly. "Why?"
"I thought I saw a queer looking individual as I turned into thisstreet. I must have been mistaken. Still, I confess, the presence ofthat fellow in this town is anything but a pleasant surprise to me. Idon't like it at all. I wonder why we have not heard from Masha abouthim."
The reason they had not heard from her was simply this, that theinvasion of the St. Petersburg detectives had had such an overbearingeffect on everybody in the local gendarmerie that her brother had becomeunusually reticent on the affairs of his office even at home.
* * * * *
Two or three hours had passed, when Clara and Olga heard an ominousconfusion of footsteps in the vestibule. The next moment the room wascrowded with men, some in uniforms, others in citizens' clothes. One ofthe St. Petersburg officers rushed to a window where a blue medicinebottle--Clara's "window signal"--stood on the sill, to prevent either ofthe two Nihilist girls from removing it by way of warning to theirfriends.
"You here!" the tall, baronial-looking procureur, Princess Chertogoff'sson-in-law, said to Olga, in amazement. He bowed to her mostchivalrously, but she turned away from him with a contemptuous gesture.
"And may I ask for _your_ name, Miss," a gendarme officer accostedClara.
"I decline to answer," she returned, simply. Her eyes were on a pistolwhich she saw in the hand of one of the gendarmes.
"You live in Miroslav, don't you?"
Instead of answering this question she sprang at the man who held thepistol, seized it from him and began firing at the wall. This was hersubstitute for a removal of the safety signal from the window.
The weapon was instantly knocked out of her hand by a blow with the flatof a gleaming sword, and she was forced into a seat, two men holding hertightly by the arms, while a third was tying a handkerchief around herbleeding hand.
"I merely wanted to alarm the neighbourhood," she said calmly. "But, ofcourse, you people will turn it into a case of armed resistance."
* * * * *
When Orlovsky learned of Clara's and Olga's arrest, one of his firstthoughts was about notifying Pavel, of whose relations toward Clara hehad by this time been informed. It appeared that the only man he knewwho had "underground" connections in the two capitals and was in aposition to communicate with Boulatoff was the former leader of theMiroslav Circle, Elkin. This, however, did not stop Orlovsky. To Elkinhe went and explained the situation to him.
"Elkin, darling, you know you are a soul of a fellow," he implored him."Pavel is either in St. Petersburg or in Moscow, and you are the onlyman who could get at him."
Elkin stood, thinking glumly, at the window for a few minutes, and thensaid:
"Very well, I am going."
He started on the same day, accompanied by a spy. That evening Orlovsky,the judge and several other members of the Miroslav Circle, werearrested at Orlovsky's house, and a few days later news came from Moscowthat Pavel and Elkin had been taken in a cafe, while Makar had falleninto a "trap" at the house of an old friend of Elkin's, who had beenseized several hours before.