Trapped in 'Black Russia' Part 11

The Princess was middle-aged and wanted to appear youthful; so she dyed her hair blue-black which was harsh for her pointed face, and wore costly, too elaborate clothes from Paris. But her body showed delicately round under the laces and chiffons, and she was quick and light in her gestures like a bird. Her husband, who had been twice her age, had died, leaving her large estates and much money. Now she moved about Russia with a maid and a wee little dog and numberless trunks, frivolously seeking her pleasure. Her eyes were black and glittering, and her mouth red and thin and flexible. She had caressing, spoiled ways with every one from the American whom she called "Meester" to her chow dog, and all she asked from any one was amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I like Americans," she said with shameless flattery. "So much I like them. The women--_and_ the men. I shall go to New York after the war, and you will show me your famous cabarets, and--what do you call it?"

She appealed to "Meester."

"Broadway--good old Broadway," he replied indulgently.

"Ah, yes. B-r-r-oadway. And I will dance all night. I dance magnificently. Is it not so, Meester? Yes, I will go to New York and become just like an American."

After dinner we went to a wrestling-match, and "Meester" took the Princess, radiant and vivacious and paying all the bills, back to the Continental.

Since July war has come nearer Kiev. The hospitals are full of maimed and wounded soldiers who fought to defend Russia. They made a bulwark of their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It was as though one single giant breast, hundreds of versts broad, thrust itself between the Germans and home.

And it is winter now. The days are short with an icy, gray mist from the Dnieper, and flurries of snow. There is a shortage of coal, and we sit s.h.i.+vering in our apartment. We drag the covers off the beds and wrap ourselves up in them while we read books from the circulating library or play three-handed bridge. The wind rattles the windows and streaks the panes with snow and rain. But however dirty they get, they must remain unwashed till spring; for they are sealed for the winter with putty, and you can open only one small pane at the top. The apartment is darker than ever. Not once does the sun s.h.i.+ne into our rooms. We see the sunlight in the street, but the dark shadow of the building lengthens minute by minute, stretching itself across the street and reaching up over the convent wall like the smothering black hand of a giant, till only the tips of the cypresses and poplars in the gardens are red in the late sunlight.

At tea-time we go to "Francois's" or to some other little sweet-shop, in order to get warm. There, we drink gla.s.s after gla.s.s of weak tea and eat little Polish cakes, and look over the English and French periodicals.

It is dark when we go out into the street again, and the air is frosty.

The officers wear short gray coats, braided and lined with fur, and fur caps. The women are m.u.f.fled in seal and sable, which make the skin look clear and white and their eyes brilliant. Even the peasants wear sheepskin coats, bell-shaped and richly embroidered. Marie has winter clothes, but the warmest thing I possess is my traveling suit I wore here in June, which has been getting thinner and thinner ever since. My feet, in low summer pumps, are swollen and burning with chilblains. I must get some high shoes when our next money comes. You see, that is the trouble. We are promised our pa.s.sports from day to day, and, expecting to go at any time, we try to get along with what money we have, and wait to buy clothes till we get back to Bucharest. But our pa.s.sports are not given us and our money gets low. We are waiting for money now, and, of course, a cold snap has set in just when we can't possibly buy anything.

Peter's summer suit hangs on him in folds. The heaviest iron couldn't crease it into even temporary shape. When we went to the cinematograph last night he wore Marie's black fur coat to keep from freezing.

"Look at that man," we heard a woman say in the street. "He's wearing a woman's coat!"

Yes, we go from cafe to cinematograph and try and keep warm.

I've never liked moving pictures before. Here they are presented differently than in America. Some of the plays I've seen have the navete and simplicity of a confession. Others interpret abnormal, psychopathic characters whose feelings and thoughts are expressed by the actors with a fine and vivid realism. There is the exultation of life, and the despair, the aggression and apathy, the frivolity and the revolt. The action is taken slowly. There are no stars. You look at the screen as though you were looking at life itself. And the films don't always have happy endings, because life isn't always kind. It often seems senseless and cruel and crushes men's spirits. I wish we could have these films in America instead of the jig-saw puzzles I've seen.

_October._

There is a gypsy who sells fruit at the corner of Inst.i.tutska Oulitza, a woman so enormous that she resembles a towering mountain, and her customers look, beside her, like tiny Russian toys. Every one looks at her curiously, and I have seen several gentlemen in fur pelisses, with gold-headed canes, stop and speak to her. In the morning she wheels up her cart by the curbing and polishes the pears and apples with the end of her shawl till they s.h.i.+ne. Then she piles them up in red and yellow pyramids and waits for customers, her hands on her hips. Everything about her is crude and flaming and inextinguishable like life itself.

Her scarlet skirt lights up the whole street. It floats about her, and when she bends over to serve a customer, you can see the edges of green and yellow and pink and brown petticoats underneath as her overskirt tilts up. The lines of her body are brutal and compact. Her dark, mulberry-colored shawl is stretched tightly across her full bosom. Her eyebrows meet over her nose in a heavy, broad line like a smudge of charcoal, and her nose is spongy, and her lips swollen and red from taking snuff. She holds her black and silver snuff-box in her hand or hides it away in a pocket in her voluminous skirt when she serves some one. Her fingers are covered with rings and she wears yellow hoops in her ears. I am repulsed as well as attracted. She is like a bold, upright stroke of life, and then I see her crafty eyes and notice how, in spite of her size, when she moves it is with the softness and flexibility of a huge cat.

Peter went to Petrograd to-day and he will stay there till he gets our pa.s.sports. He would have gone a month ago, but first came the panic from the German advance, and then the railways were used only for military purposes. Now, Marie and I are alone, waiting for a telegram from him.

V

_October._

To-day, the chief of the secret service came and told us all political prisoners were to be sent on to Siberia. He told us to make a small bundle of necessary things and be ready to leave at any time. With Peter in Petrograd! I asked him where we were going and he shrugged his shoulders. I went to Mr. Douglas, who has wired Peter. Also, he is going to see the chief and try and keep in touch with us. We won't leave till the last moment. But already many of the hospitals have been moved, and certain prisoners. I suppose I must destroy these letters to you. But I will wait till the last moment. I want so much for you to get them and know what has happened, because I shan't see you, to tell you with my voice, for over a year still. I have written so fully for that reason.

_A few days later._

We are still here, and there is more hope in the situation. There is a persistent report in the papers, and it is repeated in the streets and houses, that the Germans have been stopped by Riga and Dvinsk. Large bodies of troops are moved through Kiev, day and night, for the front.

Regular train service is suspended by this movement of troops.

Huge vans pa.s.s through the city, carrying aeroplanes to the aviation field outside the barracks. Once we saw a wrecked one being sent to be repaired. A troop of small boys followed it, looking curiously at the broad, broken wings and the tangle of steel framework.

Guns are arriving, too. We see them being carted through the streets.

And early this morning we heard cannon. Our first thought was of the Germans, and we lay in bed, stiff with fright. Later, we heard they were the new cannon being tried out before being sent to the front. They say that fresh ammunition has been received from j.a.pan and America. All trains are held up to let these trainloads of guns and cannon and ammunition go tearing over the rails to the front to save Russia. And just in time. I see the open cars packed and covered and guarded by soldiers. I lie in bed and hear the whistle and shriek of the trains in the night, and I imagine row upon row of long iron-throated cannon staring up at the stars.

The Czar has arrived in Kiev for a conference at Headquarters. He came during the night, and no one knows when he will leave. There was no demonstration, and the police break up any groups of more than three persons in the streets.

A dozen or so j.a.panese officers pa.s.sed through Kiev, too. They were bound for the front, escorting their guns and ammunition. How curious they looked beside the big, nave Russians. They were like porcelain figurines with impenetrable, yellow faces, mask-like, and tiny hands and feet. What a finished product they appear, and yet they go to the front and observe the latest methods of warfare and multiply their merchant marine while the rest of the world is spending itself.

_October._

I went to a military hospital to-day. It was up on a hill, a huge place, formerly a school, I think, with a broad piazza where the convalescents walked in their gray bathrobes. Inside were rows and rows of cots, and on every cot a wounded man. It appeared that a fresh batch had arrived from the front, and the doctors were just finis.h.i.+ng with them. There was a foul smell of blood and sweat and anaesthetics, and the light came dismally through the dirty window-panes, showing dimly the rows and rows of pale, weary faces on the thin pillows. Sometimes the gray blankets came up to the chin, and the man looked dead already, he was so dreadfully still, with his closed eyes and waxlike face. Another moaned continuously, moving his head from side to side--"Oh, oh--Oh, oh." His eyes were open, and hard and bright with fever. Several had their heads wound with strips of bandages. You would hardly have known they were human. Two or three were blind, with the bandage only round their eyes, and it was strange to see the expression their hands took on--workmen's hands with stubby fingers, now white and helpless-looking, and picking at the cover aimlessly.

A nurse told me how an officer who had been blinded and was about to be discharged and sent home, had committed suicide the other day. In some way one of his men, who had been wounded in the arm, had been able to smuggle in a revolver to him. The officer killed himself in the middle of the night.

"I don't suppose he knew whether it was day or night, and took a chance that no one was looking," I said.

"I think he knew it was night," she replied. "He could tell by the others' breathing. I was night nurse. He was dead before I reached him.

The soldier gave himself up of his own accord. He will be court-martialed, of course, though every one knows he did the best thing. He said to us, 'He was my captain. He ordered me to get the revolver, and I only obeyed orders. I would do it again.' We had a hard time the rest of the night to quiet the men."

In a small room to one side were six men gone mad. They were quite harmless and lay quietly in bed. Besides having their reason smashed to bits by the horrors at the front, they were badly wounded. I was ashamed to stand there looking at them. What was I? Suddenly, one of them, a young boy surely not more than twenty-one or twenty-two, caught sight of us, and he fixed his eyes upon us in a curious, concentrated way as if to a.s.sure himself we were real. And then, all at once, abject terror leapt into his eyes. His mouth opened and the cords of his neck stood out. He threw both arms before his face as if to ward off somebody or something. He began to scream out quick, unintelligible words in a high-pitched, staccato voice. I looked fearfully at the others to see if his terror would be communicated to them. But they were apparently oblivious of each other, wrapped up in their separate lives and experiences. One middle-aged man, with a rough, reddish beard, was smiling mildly and smoothing the sheet as though it had been somebody's hair. We left the room, leaving the nurse to calm the screaming man. I thought of the terrors and fears and memories in that room: the s.n.a.t.c.hes of memories pieced together that made up the actual lives, now, of those broken men in there.

"Are they--do they suffer?" I asked the doctor.

"No. They don't seem to realize that they are wounded and suffer the way normal people would with their wounds. The only thing is, they all have moments of terror, when it's all we can do to quiet them. They think the wall of the room is the enemy moving down on them. I guess they went through h.e.l.l all right, there at the front!"

"Will they get better?"

"We can't tell. We have a specialist studying just such cases. These men seem pretty well smashed, to me."

In one corner lay a young man propped up with pillows. A nurse was holding his hand. His eyes were looking at her so trustfully. He hardly seemed to be breathing and his face was bloodless--even his lips were dead white. And as I looked, he gave a little sigh, and his eyes closed and his body sagged among the pillows. The nurse bent over him and then straightened herself. Quickly she arranged a screen round the bed. When she walked away, I could see she was crying uncontrollably.

"Is he--?"

"Yes. He's dead," the doctor replied. "He's been dying for a week. He was terribly wounded in the stomach, and there was nothing we could do for him. It was a repulsive case to care for, but Sister Mary had full charge of it. She sat with him for hours at a time. In the beginning, to encourage him, she bought a pair of boots he was to wear when he got well. For days, now, he's been out of his head and fancied she was his mother."

And life presses as close to death as that--while I was looking at him, he had died. I just managed to reach the door before I fainted.

_October._

The Governor of Kiev has been removed. He was too cautious. It was a bad example!

VI