Trapped in 'Black Russia' Part 6

"Let him cry!" And he busied himself pulling papers out of his portfolio.

Soon Janchu, seeing that no one paid any attention to him, toddled in and climbed into Marie's lap. He sat there sucking his fingers and looking out at the roomful of strange men.

An army officer entered and spoke to the head of the secret service. He wore a dazzling, gold-braided uniform, and preened himself before us, looking at us curiously over his shoulder. When he had gone, the head told us that we were to have a personal examination in the salon of the _pension_.

A secret-service man escorted each of us, and we walked down the corridor, past the squad of soldiers with their bayonets, and into the salon, where we were delivered into the hands of two women spies. They undressed us, and we waited while our clothes were pa.s.sed out to the secret-service men outside. Panna Lolla tried to twist herself up in the window curtains. Marie and I grew hysterical at her modesty, looking at her big, k.n.o.bby feet and her fiery face, with her top-knot of disheveled red hair. We were given our clothes again, and went back to our apartment.

The rooms were in confusion. All our trunks and bags were emptied, one end of the carpet rolled back, the mattresses torn from the beds. The secret-service men were down on their knees before piles of clothes, going over the seams, emptying the pockets, unfolding handkerchiefs, tapping the heels of shoes; every sc.r.a.p of paper was pa.s.sed over to the chief, who tucked it into his portfolio. I watched him, hating his square, stolid body that filled out his uniform smoothly. His eyes were long and watchful like a cat's, and his fair mustache was turned up at the ends, German fas.h.i.+on; in fact, there was something very German about his thick thighs and shaved head and official importance. As I have learned since, he _is_ a German and the most hated man in Kiev for his pitiless persecution of all political offenders. They say he has sent more people to Siberia than any six of his predecessors. They also say every hand is against him, even to the spies' in his own force.

I trembled to spring at him and claw him and ruffle his composure some way. Instead, I sat quietly, my hands folded, and watched the spies ransacking our clothes. I began to feel a sharp anxiety as to what they would find. It was all so mysterious. What were they looking for? At one moment it was ridiculous, and I felt like laughing at the whole affair; and then the next, the silence in which the search was conducted, the apparent dead-seriousness of the spies' faces, the deliberation with which the chief turned the bits of paper over in his hands and scrutinized them and put them carefully away, struck me with a cold, sharp apprehension. I had the sensation of being on the very edge of a precipice. I felt as though the world were upside down and the most innocent thing could be turned against us. Every card and photograph I tried to catch a glimpse of before it went into the black portfolio. And suddenly I saw the letter about the Jewish detention camp, which I had forgotten all about. I saw the close lines of my writing, and it seemed as though the edge of the precipice crumbled and I went shooting down. A cold sweat broke out over me.

"But why are we arrested?" I heard Marie ask in German.

"Espionage," the chief answered shortly.

"But that is ridiculous. We're American citizens."

No reply.

"Can we leave for Odessa to-night?"

No reply.

Marie stopped her questions.

"What money have you? Come here while I count it," one of the spies said to me. He slipped me one hundred roubles on the sly, before turning the rest over to the chief. I held it openly in my hand, too dazed to know what to do with it, till he whispered to me to hide it. "You may want it, later," he said.

"Frau Pierce will go with us," the chief said, closing his portfolio; and I understood that the _revision_ was finished. "Frau G---- can stay here under room-arrest, with her little boy."

He spoke to no one in particular, but addressed the room at large, his face impa.s.sive, and his voice without an intonation. The spies stood in the midst of the tumbled clothes, watching us silently, ominously.

Janchu now crept up into Marie's lap again. As a matter of course, I went into the other room and changed into my traveling suit.

"May I take my toilet things?" I asked the chief.

"Ja."

"You'd better make a bundle of bedclothes," the spy who had given me the money whispered to me.

I rolled up two blankets and a pillow with his help.

"I'm ready," I said. "May I send a few telegrams?"

"Certainly, certainly." The chief's manner suddenly became extremely courteous.

I wrote one to our Amba.s.sador in Petrograd, one to Mr. Vopicka in Bucharest, one to the State Department in Was.h.i.+ngton, and one to Peter.

I wrote Peter that I was delayed a few days. I was afraid that he might come on and be arrested, too. My hand did not tremble, though it struck me as very queer to see the words traced out on the paper--almost magical. My imagination was racing, and I could see myself already being driven into one of those baggage cars bound for Tomsk.

"Keep your mind away from what is going to happen," I said to myself.

"You will have time enough to think in prison. Things are as they are.

You are going to walk out of this room, just the way you've done a hundred times. Are you different now from what you've always been? Keep your mind on things you know are real."

I tried to move accurately, as though a false move would disturb the balance of things so that I would walk out of the room on my hands like an acrobat.

Suddenly, the chief, who had been talking in a corner with the other man in uniform, wheeled about.

"Frau Pierce may stay here under room-arrest. Good-day."

He clicked his heels together and bowed slightly. His spies cl.u.s.tered about him, and they left the room.

All at once my bones seemed to crumble and my flesh dissolve. I fell into a chair. Marie and I looked at each other. We began to laugh. "We mustn't get hysterical," we said, and kept on laughing.

The room was so dark that we looked like two shadows. Panna Lolla had come after Janchu and taken him into Count S----'s room. We imagined the excited curiosity of the rest of the _pension_.

"I'll wager that woman was a spy, after all."

"But why--why should _we_ have a _revision_?"

"Anyway, they couldn't have found much. We'll be set free in a few days," Marie said.

"They found my letter about the Jews," I replied.

"What letter? Oh, my dear, what did you say?"

"I forget. But everything I saw or heard, I think."

We began to laugh again.

"Will they send our telegrams?"--"Will Peter come on?"--"What shall we do for money?"

The room was pitch-dark except for the electric light from the street.

We heard the creak and rattle of the empty commissariat wagons returning from the barracks. We fell silent, feeling suddenly very tired and lethargic.

"Where is Janchu? It's time for his supper," Marie said, without moving.

I started out of the room to call him, and fell across a dark figure sitting in front of the door. He grunted and pushed me back into the room.

"I want Janchu," I said in perfectly good English, while he closed the door in my face.

"There's a spy outside our door," I whispered to Marie.

Panna Lolla came in with Janchu and turned on the light.

"There's a man outside our door, and two secret-service men at the _pension_ door and two soldiers downstairs," she whispered excitedly in one breath. "No one can leave the _pension_, and they take the name and address of every one who comes here. And that woman _was_ a spy. Antosha saw the chief go into her room and heard them talking together. And she left when they did."

I lay all night, half asleep, half awake, hearing the street noises clearly through the open windows. I cried a little from exhaustion and nerves, and then controlled myself, for my head began to ache, and who knew what would happen the next day? I had to keep strength to meet something that was coming. I had no idea what it was, but the uncertainty of the future only made it more ominous and threatening.

That letter--In the darkness I saw the chief's watchful, narrow eyes, and the horn-rimmed spectacles of the friendly spy, and the stuffed portfolio.

_Later._