His name was D——, and he was shivering from the cold, for it was not time to begin the sale of tea and food, though the girls were sleepily washing the floors, and firing up the samovars. A throng of refugees were standing about, patiently waiting for the hour to arrive when they might get something hot.
My interpreter and I were thoroughly chilled, but no amount of money would induce the slatternly girls to give us even hot water from the samovars—it lacked a half an hour before they would begin to serve anything. I looked at the men, women and children huddled together in corners, some of them shivering so violently that their teeth chattered, and poor, under-nourished and illy-clad children crying from cold. Why the attendants must observe such regular hours, under such conditions, I could not understand, and never will. It may be that it was a demonstration of the “rosy conditions of Soviet Russia,” which an American referred to recently in a speech at Madison Square Garden, New York, at which the beauties of the Bolshevist régime were extolled. But I wish to call attention to the fact that those who did the extolling of the Bolshevist régime were not enjoying that régime in Russia—they were enduring the hardships of the “capitalistic United States.”
The solution of the mystery as to why shivering and hungry people in that station could not buy tea from bubbling samovars till the clock struck a certain hour, probably lies in the fact that the attendants were “free,” and members of a Soviet. When it comes to autocracy, the peasant of Russia can outdo all autocrats. And curiously enough, they are most cruel to their own kind. If a pair of Cossack officers had come into that station, and demanded tea forthwith, I believe they would have had it, regardless of the time. The fact that the samovars were steaming would have been reason enough for serving the tea.
More out of curiosity than necessity, I made every plea to get tea; my train would go on shortly; I would give fifty rubles for three glasses of tea; I was ill; I must have tea then, or go without it all day. None of these arguments got the tea.
So having a supply of dry tea of my own, my interpreter took the cups from our canteens, and putting them over the little fires of the Japanese soldiers alongside the track, brewed our own warming beverage for breakfast, and invited D—— to join us.
Once he had driven the chills from his body, he told me that he had sat up in the station all night, only pretending to nap, because he had a suitcase full of rubles to pay off the men of Major Miller’s force and was afraid it might be stolen. And in order to divert suspicion from the suitcase, he had thrown it carelessly in a nearby corner, as if it did not matter what became of it, though he kept a wary eye upon it.
He said it was likely that the train to take him back to Khabarovsk might not arrive till that night. I immediately asked the commander of the train if I might take D—— with me, and he gladly assented. So when the train moved out, D—— shared a lower shelf with me.
IX
A RED SWEATER AND THE GENERAL
It happened that I wanted to get off at a little station, called Bira. And I understood that the Japanese troop-train would stop there to feed and water, making a sufficient stop for me to visit the company of American soldiers quartered in box-cars on a siding. But we whisked through Bira at an early hour, and we were well down the line toward Khabarovsk, before I learned of the change of plans of the train commander.
But I planned to leave the train the next morning, and double back, visiting our detachments on the way. Besides, I wished to locate a certain English-speaking Russian, who wore a red sweater and made it his business to work or loaf wherever we had soldiers and to mingle with them to strike up acquaintances. This man had worked several years in the United States, and he was busy at his special propaganda among our troops.