CHAPTER IX
THE DAYS OF MOSCOW—II
The next day was our Christmas Eve—a Sunday. I had stayed the night, as I said, in the west of the disturbed district, and in the early morning some revolutionists came into the house, and reported large numbers of killed—rooms crowded with people all blown to pieces by the shells, walls bespattered with blood, and other horrors, which one always hears in war, and which are sometimes true. They also said they had just taken part in an assault upon a body of unmounted dragoons, who were cautiously approaching a barricade when the revolutionists opened fire upon them with revolvers from the houses on both sides, and killed ten. The men themselves were worn with sleepless excitement. They remained muffled up in their overcoats, and kept one hand fingering at the revolvers in their pockets.
Soon after daylight, the church bells began to ring for Divine service, and the big guns sounded again from the Tverskaya. Finding that sentries were still driving back every one who approached that part of the town, I went round by the University and reached the great Theatre Square in front of the Hotel Métropole. The battery of eight guns, which had been hidden inside the hotel, was now fully displayed across the square, apparently in readiness to bombard the Opera House. But, in fact, the guns were placed there only for reinforcement and to keep up a panic among the crowd, who came out now and then and watched them with interest from the opposite side, and then rushed away in sudden terror. Crossing the square in front of the battery, I was going up the street at the side of the hotel when I found a party of dustmen and police loading a cart with some bodies that lay upon the street. The things hardly looked human, they were so small and still and shapeless. Their faces were burnt away; their clothes black, and so charred that they crumbled into cinders like burnt paper as the body was heaved into the cart.
I then saw that in the side of the hotel a vast black space had been blown out, like the entrance to a smoky cavern. It was the site of a gun-shop, which I had often examined with some curiosity and wonder; for a gunmaker’s is a dangerous trade in revolution. From a man who lived exactly opposite, I heard the story afterwards. Late on the Saturday evening a party of revolutionists went boldly across the street, and broke into the shop with hammers and axes. Other people appeared, and a small crowd had gathered, when a detachment of soldiers came round from the hotel and fired into the middle of them. They ran; but the soldiers went back, and the crowd gathered again. This happened twice, and then the soldiers, being evidently terrified themselves, left the place alone. The revolutionists appear to have departed with their plunder, but a number of people remained searching about for what they could get, lighting matches and using long rolls of paper as candles. Just at midnight there was an immense explosion, and all that was left of the shop, together with the people in it, was blown into the street. The eye-witness described the ground as littered with dead, many of them in flames. Those were the charred bodies I saw being removed; the others, who were killed and wounded by the soldiers, had already gone. But it seemed to me probable that the explosion was purposely caused by the revolutionaries, either to create terror, or to destroy the powder they could not use. What arms were actually obtained I cannot say. Many sporting guns had been in the window, but I had never seen any rifles or revolvers, though I had looked carefully, with this probability in view.
My own little hotel was close by, and after calling there, I went on to the nearest point of the circular Boulevard, only a hundred yards beyond. Here there was a clear view over the valley by the Ermitage and up the opposite hill to the Pushkin statue. A good many people had taken cover behind the trees, and were watching and listening, but the terror had much increased and there remained none of the sporting spirit of the day before. Death was too near and obvious now. Almost every instant a bullet came whizzing over the valley and was heard cutting through the trees or falling with a tiny hiss in the snow. At the corner of my street, close to a white monastery with a great classic tower, they had opened a back yard as a refuge for the wounded, though it did not fly the red cross, I think because it was privately managed by the revolutionists for their own people. The line of wounded who were hurried into it, dazed and groaning, was almost continuous, and all were received, whether revolutionists or not. Under an open shed inside I found a pitiful row of the dead lying on the stones, some terribly shattered by shell-fire, some killed by the rifle, so merciful when it strikes the brain or heart. We had helped in a man who was streaming blood from a shot in the neck, and we had hardly laid him down when a poor red-bearded peasant, all shaggy and caked from the fields, was dragged inside, his face dull white except at a great hole by his nose. But he was already dead and was put beside the others. Between the stones of that yard for the first time I saw men’s blood trickling as in a gutter.
Hitherto many of the wounded and dying had been galloped up to the ambulance yards in sledges, but now I saw a driver who was hailed for a wounded girl turn sharp round and dash out of sight.
Another sledge was seized, but this driver also lashed his horse and tried to get away. He was dragged out of the sledge, and his arms were bound with his own whip, while two men, supporting the girl between them, brought her up the hill to the yard. Soon afterwards the sledges disappeared altogether, and for some days none could be had. It was said the drivers were afraid of having them taken for barricades; more probably they were only afraid of being shot, and in any case it was not profitable to carry the wounded. I believe the Government also forbade them running lest they should help revolutionists to escape.
Leaving the yard, I went down the hill and along the Petrovka, where the guns had battered two or three houses to pieces because a revolver had been fired from the windows. I had hoped to get into the Tverskaya by a little lane at the back of the Opera House, but the pickets were still keeping up a random fire down all those cross streets, and many passers-by were struck. One soldier deliberately aimed at an oldish man who was going along the Petrovka like myself. The man fell into a pile of snow by the edge of the road and kept on struggling to rise. But each time, when he had nearly got up, he lurched heavily forward again and fell on his face like a drunken man. The soldier who had hit him came up with another soldier and looked at his wound. Then they shouted to an ambulance cart that was passing the end of the street, and lifting the man carefully on to it, they sent him off to the Hotel Métropole, at the back of which, I think, the Zemstvo were establishing their main ambulance depôt for soldiers and civilians alike. It is not often that a man who has done his utmost to kill another can so speedily do his utmost to keep him alive.
Unable to reach the guns from that side, I then determined to get in front of them and try to discover again what the revolutionists really intended. So I turned back and after some difficulty reached the main street of the Dmitrovka (Bolchaya Dmitrovka) which runs closely parallel to the Tverskaya. There I found a woman stooping over a body which lay on the curb-stone. It was a boy of about fifteen, dressed in the school uniform of a little blue cap and long grey overcoat. He had come out to see a battle—a real battle with men shooting bullets and slashing with swords. His little boots were close together, pointing upwards; his white-gloved hands thrown out upon the snow like a cross; and through his mouth was the dark red hole where the bullet had struck him. The woman had seen him fall and had come from her house. Two or three others now gathered round, and she brought out a red and white table-cloth in which we wrapt him. So we carried him to an ambulance room in a lane beside an ancient red-brick church close by. But he was dead before we reached the door.
When I came to the Boulevard again, I was close to the Pushkin statue, so often mentioned because hitherto it had been the advance position of the guns. But now they had been taken forward further along the Tverskaya, and the square was empty but for a few sentries. The sharpshooters had also been removed from the Strestnoi bell-tower, but the Russian common people will long remember the impiety which placed them there, and a fine satiric cartoon represents them as they fired upon the crowd below, with the inscription, “God with us!” The Mala Dmitrovka, where the clerk had fallen in front of me the day before, was absolutely empty now, and I passed right along it without any interruption except for the wire entanglements. It brought me out, as I had hoped, upon the Sadovaya, or Garden Boulevard, which forms the outer circle round Moscow, as I described before, and reaching the point of intersection I saw at once that I had come to the very centre of the revolutionist position.