"Passports—passports, who's got the passports?" It's like a game—or la recherche de l'absolu. And it isn't as though you could hop into a cab and make the round of visits on the General Staff, Civil Governor, and the rest, all in one day, or even all in a week. Nothing so efficient and simple as that. What is an official without an anteroom? As well imagine a soldier without a uniform. And the importance of the official is instantly seen by the crowd waiting on him. Soldiers and Jews and patient, unobtrusive women in black wait at police headquarters; generals and ladies of quality crowd the anteroom of the General Staff. For days the faces vary only slightly when you enter and take your accustomed place. Patient, dull faces that light with momentary expectation on the opening of a door, and relapse into depression and tragic immobility when the aide walks through the anteroom without admitting any one to the inner office.
I gained admittance to the Military Governor the other day. He is the successor of that over-cautious governor who moved all his household goods during the German advance, and was then relieved of office. His palace, set back from the street behind a tall iron fence, is guarded by soldiers with bayonets, and secret-service men. I laughed, recognizing my old friends the spies.
Upstairs, the Governor was just saying good-bye to Bobrinsky, former Governor of Galicia, and we stood to one side as they came out of an inner office, bowing and making compliments to each other. Gold braid and decorations! These days the military have their innings, to be sure! I wonder how many stupid years of barrack-life go to make up one of these men? Or perhaps so much gold braid is paid for in other ways.
The Governor was an old man, carefully preserved. His uniform was padded, but his legs, thin and insecure, gave him away, and his standing collar, though it came up to his ears, failed to hide his scrawny neck where the flesh was caving in. He wore his gray beard trimmed to a point, and inside his beaklike nose was a quantity of grayish-yellow hair which made a very disagreeable impression on me. All the time I was speaking he examined his nails. When he raised his eyes finally, to reply, I noticed how lifeless and indifferent they were, and glazed by age. I could see the bones of his face move under the skin as he talked, especially two little round bones, like balls, close to his ears.
"I have nothing to do with the case. It has been referred to the General Staff, I believe. You will have to wait for the course of events."
He turned his back, went over to the window, and began to play with a curtain-tassel. An aide bowed me to the door.
Outside, the anteroom was crowded with supplicants. It was his reception hour. The murmur of whispered conversations stopped when we appeared. Every one rose, pressing forward to reach the aide. Some held out soiled bits of paper; others talked in loud, explanatory voices, as though hoping by sheer noise to pierce the crust of official attention. But the aide took no more notice than if they had been crowding sheep. He pushed through them and escorted me to the head of the staircase. Down I went, boiling with rage.
Dearest Mother and Dad:—
I am just back from the General Staff, where the mysterious rotation of the official wheel landed me unexpectedly into the very sanctum sanctorum of the Chief of the Staff, and to see him I had to wait only five hours with Mr. Douglas in the anteroom! Mr. Douglas has just left me to go to his club, exhausted, ready to devour pounds of Moscow sausages, so he said.
The anteroom of the General Staff was as Russian as Russian can be. I suppose I shall never forget the dingy room, with its brown painted walls and the benches and chairs ranged along the four sides of the room, and the orderlies bringing in glasses of tea, and the waiting people who were not ashamed to be unhappy. In the beginning Mr. Douglas and I tried to talk, but after an hour or so we relapsed into silence. I looked up at the large oil paintings of deceased generals which hung about the room. At first, they all looked fat and stupid and alike in the huge, ornate gilt frames. But after much study they began to take on differences—slight differences which it seemed that the painters had caught in spite of themselves, but which made human beings of even generals.