CHAPTER XX
I SET OUT ON A MISSION
The Vasilievs were the only people I could go to in Moscow. They lived on the outskirts of the city. I made an attempt to walk to their house, but was too weak to proceed more than two blocks. There was a cabman near at hand, but he wanted twenty-five roubles to take me to my friends. I tried to bargain, offering fifteen, but he would not hear of it. As I had no money, I finally hired the cab in the hope that Daria Maximovna would pay for it. The alternative was to remain where I was.
Madame Vasilieva received me as if I were her own daughter. She was overwhelmed with joy at my release. I was too weak and worn out to appreciate fully my miraculous deliverance from torture and death. I was given some light food, and Daria Maximovna began to prepare a bath for me. I had not changed my undergarments for several weeks, and my body was blacker than it ever had been during my life in the trenches. My skin was in a terrible condition from vermin. The bath was a greater relief at the moment than my release itself. And the long hours of sleep following it were even more welcome. I doubt if sleep ever tasted sweeter to any one.
It was impossible to remain long as a guest in Moscow in those early days of March, 1918. Stepan lived away from his home, as he and his parents held widely divergent views in regard to the political situation. The family consisted of Daria Maximovna, her husband and the younger son. The daughter, Tonetchka, was married and lived elsewhere. The three Vasilievs received daily a pound and one-eighth of bread! The weekly meat ration was a pound and a half. I, therefore, promptly realized what a burden I was bound to be. But I could not make up my mind where to go and what to do. The Vasilievs offered to buy me a ticket home, but the document I had from the Soldiers’ Section was in itself a ticket.
I recalled that some of my wounded girls had been sent to Moscow, to be quartered in the Home for Invalids, and I thought of looking them up. I took a walk to the city. When I approached the block in which the Home was situated, I noticed a crowd in the street, largely composed of soldiers, holding meetings of indignation. When I reached the Home I saw a number of wounded soldiers, some of them without legs or arms, dispersed about the front grounds.
On inquiry I learned that the Bolshevist authorities had turned the hundreds of crippled inmates of the Home into the street. Many of them, including my girls, had already disappeared, some no doubt being forced to beg, others being cared for by charitable people and societies. But still a goodly number remained, crying, cursing Lenin and Trotzky, and asking passers-by for food and shelter. It was a pathetic sight. The cruelty of the order made one’s blood boil. It was evidently an act of wanton brutality. The excuse that the Government needed the building was certainly no justification for it.
There were about two hundred soldiers in the crowd, and I stopped to listen to their conversation. All of them had been attracted to the place by the complaints of the ejected invalids. Their talk came as a revelation to me. They were in a mutinous spirit, stirred up against the régime of Lenin and Trotzky. For several hours I lingered round the various groups, sometimes taking part in the discussions.
“See what you have brought about by your own acts. You have shamefully beaten and killed your officers. You have forgotten God and destroyed the Church. Now, this is the result of your deeds.” In some such manner I would address the men, and they would answer somewhat as follows:
“We believed that by overthrowing our officers and the wealthy class, we should have plenty of bread and land. But now the factories are demolished and there is no work. We are terrorized by the Red Guards, who are recruited mostly from drunkards and criminals. If there are any honest soldiers among them, it is because hunger and poverty force them to enlist in order to escape starvation. If we demand justice and fair play, we are shot down by the Red executioners. And all the while the Germans are advancing into Russia, and nobody is sent to fight them, our real enemies.”
At these words I crossed myself, thanking the Almighty for the deep change He had wrought in the minds of the people.