Before leaving Velikie Luki I wandered with my guard down a street of the town and came upon a Soviet bookstore. Inside were thousands of books and pamphlets, in what seemed to me all the languages of the world. The store was full of men and women buying these books and pamphlets. I learned that this store and many others like it had been opened almost two years before, and that knowledge of history and social conditions throughout the world was thus being brought to millions of Russians formerly held in darkness.
Later in the afternoon of that day the Commissar informed me that I was free to go on to Smolensk and that if I passed muster there I could go anywhere I desired in Russia. I was given another guard, a big fellow who had spent ten years in England and returned to Russia when the Czar was overthrown. He so much resembled the Irish labor leader, Jim Larkin, that I called him “Larkin” throughout the course of our journey together.
He had an exclamation which he used frequently when I was too pertinacious to suit him.
“God love a duck, what do you want now?” he would roar with a despairing gesture, and the tone of his voice also was despairing. It may be that he was justified in his complaint, for there was much that I wanted to know and to see.
On the last day of our journey towards Moscow he turned to me and said, “I haven’t prayed for ten years or more,—not since I was down and out in Glasgow, Scotland, and wandered into a Salvation Army headquarters. Then I did go down on my knees and pray for help, but I decided since that praying wasn’t my job. But God love a duck, when I get you safely into Moscow I’m going down on my knees again and thank God that this job is over and ask Him to save me from any more Americans of your kind.”
But there was, after all, some excuse for my troubling him so often and so much. “Larkin” slept on every possible—and impossible—occasion, and the sound of his snores, with which I can think of nothing worthy of comparison, kept me awake, so that in self-defence I used to rouse him every time we reached a station to ask questions about where we were and why we had stopped there and what the people were doing and why they were doing it. When I had him sufficiently awake to begin to smoke I could snatch a bit of sleep for myself, for he invariably sat up until he had smoked eight or ten cigarettes, after which his snoring began again and my rest ended.
“Larkin’s” real name was August Grafman, which sounded Teutonic. He was a Russian Jew, however, and a good fellow. I hope to see him again sometime, and I commend him to any other Americans who want to see for themselves what is going on in Russia at the present time. He spoke English readily and perfectly, and from him I obtained much information I might otherwise have missed. There was the time when we waited for a train at a small station in the course of our journey towards Smolensk. All at once a commotion arose on the other side of the station. Hurrying around, we saw a man running, pursued by three or four Red soldiers. Two officers coming toward the station drew their sabres and held them before the man, who stopped and his pursuers captured him. They brought him back to the station and I observed that he was a Jew. I wondered if his crime was that of his race, remembering stories of pogroms. The Jew was brought into the station and seated on a bench. Immediately the soldiers surrounded him, and one of them stood up in front of him and made a long speech. At its conclusion he sat down, and another rose and made an address. Finally a third vociferously questioned the man. At last the Jew arose, the soldiers made way for him, and he left the station. “Larkin” who had been too much interested in the proceedings to talk to me, now satisfied my curiosity.
The Jew had been caught in the act of picking the pockets of a soldier. Furthermore it was his third offence. The first man who spoke had tried to impress the Jew with the enormity of the crime of robbing a man who was on his way to defend his country. He had said, “Don’t you realize that a man going out to fight carries nothing with him except what he actually needs, whether it be money or anything else, and that it is worse to rob a soldier on this account than an ordinary civilian, with a home, and all his treasures about him?” The second man had talked of the defence of the country; the soldiers were going to fight so that when the fighting ended there would be enough for every one and no need for stealing. The third had tried to obtain a promise that the man would not again steal from soldiers. He had been successful, and, “now the Jew is free,” said Larkin.
“But it was his third offense,” I said. “I should think they would punish him severely.”
“Larkin” gave me a pitying glance. “You don’t understand the Russians,” he said simply. “They are kind and in their own new born freedom they want every one to be free.”