VII

It was the day after General Gaida’s unsuccessful rising. “They’ve gone out for a walk with those three American naval officers,” Fanny Ivanovna told me when I called. “Just the two of us, as usual,” she added somewhat bitterly. Kniaz, seated in the corner, audibly confirmed her statement, as it were, by sucking sweets. There was an acute scent of eau de cologne in the room.

“How charming!” I exclaimed, bending forward to examine a tiny little jumper that she was knitting.

“Oh, that’s for my godchild.”

“Who?”

“Oh, the little girl I christened. Madame Olenin’s little daughter. She’s just three weeks old today. A dear little thing.”

“Another niece for Uncle Kostia, what! They do turn them out in that family. Zina has more cousins than any girl alive!”

“Well,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “the little thing can’t help being her cousin. And Madame Olenin is really very nice. What does it matter after all if she’s her aunt? I respect her all the same, and she did so want me to be the godmother, and the little girl is called Fanny after me.”

The canary hopping to and fro punctuated the swift movement of her accustomed fingers.

“My dear Andrei Andreiech,” she burst out in answer to my question as to when Nikolai Vasilievich would be back, “there was a time when I knew all about his movements. But that time is over. I feel more and more as we live longer that my hold on him is weakening. And I feel with every day it’s getting weaker and weaker, and he is slipping away from me, and I am powerless to stop him. And soon I shall cease to bother altogether. He can stay there all night if he pleases.”

“I’ve seen Zina lately. She looks quite grown up.”

“Oh, what a headache I have!” She dipped her folded handkerchief into a bowl of eau de cologne and pressed it to her forehead. “If I hadn’t Nina to console me⁠—Oh, you have no idea what a tender, loving heart our Nina has.”

“Nina tender?”

“You don’t know her. Do you remember that day you arrived here, and I was so anxious to know where she had been? Well, she wouldn’t tell me then because⁠ ⁠… she thought it might upset her plan. Afterwards she told me. She had been to see her mother.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, it seems her mother wants to make it up with me⁠—wants, in fact, that we should start a business together. Hats.”

“And won’t you?”

She thought for a time. “I don’t think I could,” she said at last, “after what she’s said about me.”

There was a pause of silence, which the canary, though, did nothing to observe. “But if I do, it will be solely for Nina’s sake. Poor child, she so wants to make our peace.”

“But doesn’t Sonia, as the eldest sister, ever take the lead?”

“Sonia?” She laughed. “Why, look at Sonia. We have a nickname for her⁠—‘Miss Moon.’ It suits her admirably. And Sonia is deceitful. Yesterday she lied to me. She said that they had been to see their mother, but as a matter of fact Nina told me afterwards that they had gone to a dance on the American cruiser with Mr. Ward and White and Holdcroft.”

“What, again!”

“Yes, I am very much against it,” she confided. “I was furious. I said to Nina: ‘Andrei Andreiech and your father had nearly lost their lives looking for you everywhere during the firing.’ But all she said was, ‘There was no need to.’ ”

“They had been on the American Flagship⁠ ⁠… on the American Flagship.⁠ ⁠…” My mind could not digest the news. Yesterday when the firing had begun, Nikolai Vasilievich rushed in, panic-stricken, and said that the three sisters had been lost in the upheaval. I had been sitting in the little office with Sir Hugo, who was writing to a Czech Colonel of his acquaintance to apologize for misspelling the Colonel’s name in a recent letter. This done, Sir Hugo looked through some old minutes of past meetings to see if there was any matter which had not been quite thoroughly thrashed out. He thought he was about to find such a matter, when a rifle report echoed sharply through the air, and was immediately followed by a multitude of others. We rose and looked out of the window. The projected coup had broken out.

There was a continuous rattle of machine-gun fire. The station building and the square before it were being attacked by Gaida’s men and defended by British-trained cadets from Russian Island School. A fearless cadet in British khaki lay on the bridge that traversed the rails, fully exposed to view, and rattled off his machine-gun; then he lay still. Several bodies were already lying on the square, some dead, others wriggling with pain.

Most of the remaining family had been removed to an empty barracks near the station before fighting had become desperate. But it was not till we had launched into the streets that we asked ourselves how we proposed to set about our task. On we walked, looking in at stray houses, inquiring at private flats; but I think at heart we realized that our action was more by way of satisfying our consciences, for we had not a ghost of an idea where to look for them. Returning, we perceived the two mothers lamenting bitterly the death of the same children (which they had been quick to take for granted)⁠—but still not on speaking terms with each other. A window had been knocked out by a stray shell.

Firing subsided and then resumed and grew in intensity, as darkness descended upon the town. A drizzling November snow now fell upon the wrangling troops. The station changed hands more than once. Some wounded men had been picked up and dragged into a hospital rigged up in the barracks, and were heard moaning and groaning the long night through, while the city shook under fire of field-guns.

The morning unveiled a gruesome picture. The snow that had fallen in the night, and was still falling, now covered the ground and its dead bodies some inches deep. The square, the streets, the yards, the rails, and sundry ditches betrayed them lying in horrid postures, dead or dying. Those that were not dead, when discovered were finished with the bayonet by the “loyal” troops, amid unspeakable yells. Then they lay still and stiff in horrible attitudes. Men and women would stoop over them, gaze and wonder. Perhaps there is nothing that brings home so clearly the conviction of the temporary nature of human things as the sight of a dead body. What a moment since had been a human being with a life and purpose of his own was now an object, like a stone or a stick.⁠ ⁠…

“I shall not forget that night,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “nor what I saw this morning. The faces of the prisoners, some almost green from fright, as they stood with their hands up in the cold grey light of the morning, and the babyish face of that Cossack subaltern⁠—a veritable mother’s darling⁠—as he detailed them into two parties. And then that other boy of about the subaltern’s own age, awfully good looking, who had been hiding in the chimney all night and was forgotten and only remembered as the prisoners had been marched off to the station to be killed. Then came that terrible rattle of machine-guns from within. He was hurried up to the boyish subaltern who motioned in an offhand manner in the direction of the station; and then a soldier ran across with him⁠—the soldier in front, the boy following⁠—hastening to be in time for the firing-party. But the firing had just that moment come to an end. The boy fumbled in his pocket and gave some folded paper to the soldier; then vanished into the station. And some moments afterwards there came those three solitary shots.”

“When I entered the station,” I said, “I saw piles of dead bodies lying on the steps on which rich red blood trickled down all the way; and on top of all that handsome boy, with the back of his scalp blown off. They were shot at by machine-guns as they were being driven down the stone staircase in the station, and their boots had been removed and appropriated by their executioners. One man three hours afterwards was still breathing heavily. He lay on the steps, bleeding, and covered by other bleeding bodies. Another man in the pile was but slightly hit. He lay alone in the pile of dead, with a curious mob and sightseeing soldiery walking about him, shamming death. After three hours he rose and walked away, but was caught and shot.”

“Horrible!” she said. “It’s shameful! The Whites kill the Reds, the Reds kill the Whites⁠ ⁠… and nobody is any the farther. If people would only realize that killing is the first thing they shouldn’t do.”

“The proposition would appear self-evident. But it seems as if the one idea of the Kolchakites is bloodshed to suppress bloodshed; and that this also happens to be the idea of the Bolsheviks; and that the Kolchakites are shocked at it.”

“Why can’t human beings settle things by conference?”

“They must be human beings for that, Fanny Ivanovna.”

“Sir Hugo surely⁠—”

“Sir Hugo’s chief preoccupation at a conference is to commit another allied gentleman into saying ‘Yes’ on any given point, and then by a series of masterful, elaborate and elusive thrusts of speech to commit him into saying ‘No’; and then to point out the contradiction. It is what Sir Hugo calls ‘displaying the good old fighting spirit.’ His attention is essentially devoted to the careful recording of documents that find their way into our office accidentally, documents which in themselves he regards as inessential and unimportant. And the Admiral hates Sir Hugo’s love of detail and exactitude which seems bent on proving to him very clearly and precisely the uncertainty and vagueness of his own position.”

She sighed.

“It is a consolation,” said she, “to think that there are other useless people in the world besides ourselves.⁠ ⁠…”

The snow still fell in heaps as I walked home, and it grew markedly colder, and one felt the onset of winter; while prisoners, it was said, were being killed in prison⁠—noiselessly⁠—out of consideration for the Allies in the city.