“We cannot even permit you to return to your hotel without an escort. You must never go from one street to another unaccompanied. One moment, please.” The colonel disappeared, returning in a moment with a Cossack soldier, who at the command of the colonel took his place on the box next to our driver, his unslung rifle resting loosely across his lap.
Once more the carriage started, and once more the colonel stopped us.
“Where is your revolver?” he asked.
“It is here, sir,” I replied, “in my belt.”
“In your belt? But of what use is it there? In your hand, if you please, sir.”
I laughed outright at this. I had seen officers going through the streets with their revolvers in their hands, but I had always looked upon this as an affectation or the result of an absurd timidity. In Vladikavkaz when I was about to drive out with the chief of police, I had been asked to put my revolver in my outside overcoat pocket, in order to have it ready for immediate use, but I had at no time dreamed of carrying my revolver in my hand. However, since the colonel commanded, rather than suggested it, I drew my Browning from its holster, only adding that it seemed unnecessary with a Cossack on the box and only eight o’clock in the evening.
“Pardon me,” answered the colonel in excellent French. “No precaution is unnecessary just now. Your revolver in your hand, please—your ungloved hand.”
And so we drove to the hotel.
Once a man slunk back into the shadow of a building as we approached; he might have been a Kurd tramp, I could not see clearly. At every corner stood soldiers, and several times we passed a mounted patrol. Not another sign. Not a store open. Not a human voice, nor footstep. Deserted streets, as of a city of the dead. Literally a city of “dreadful night.” For here was Alikhanoff, “Bloody Alikhanoff,” who was pushing forward the repression and all Kutais knew that Alikhanoff’s peace was obtained through a policy of pacification which, if resisted, meant extermination.
When we were once more in the hotel, Ivan, forgetting that his friend had sworn in that very room a few hours before that “even the walls have ears,” burst forth into a perfect frenzy at what he called the “bad things” Alikhanoff had told me.