In the red cages of the wagons half-starved cossacks from all the cossack districts crowded beside their half-starved horses. The trains stood for hours at the stations waiting for dispatch, and the men poured out of the wagons and streamed into the waiting rooms, or gathered on the permanent ways, eating everything left by previous trains, stealing from the inhabitants, and pillaging the food warehouses.
Held up on the railways, the commanders hesitated to take to the road, and remained in their wagons.
Together with the other regiments composing the First Don Cossack Division, the regiment in which Eugene Listnitsky had formerly served was flung against Petrograd along the Revel–Narva railway line. Two companies of the regiment arrived at Narva at five in the afternoon of September 10th. The commander learnt that it would be impossible to travel further that night, as the permanent way beyond Narva had been destroyed. A gang of platelayers had been dispatched to the spot, and if they could restore the line in time the train would be sent on early in the morning. Willy-nilly, the commander had to accept this. He clambered cursing into his wagon, communicated the news to the other officers, and sat down to drink tea.
The night was overcast. A harsh, piercing wind was blowing from the Gulf of Finland. On the permanent way and in the wagons the cossacks gathered to talk. At the end of the train a young cossack voice struck up a song, complaining in the darkness to no one knew whom.
A man emerged from beyond the grey bulk of the warehouse. He stopped and listened to the song, looked up and down the track gleaming with yellow patches of light, and strode confidently towards the wagons. His steps echoed hollowly on the sleepers, but were muffled when he walked down the sandy path between the lines. He passed round the end wagon, and the cossack standing at its door stopped singing and shouted to him:
‘Who’s that?’
‘And who do you want?’ the man answered reluctantly, without stopping.
‘What are you wandering about at night for? We’ll give you tramps a good hiding!’
The man walked along until he came to the middle wagons of the train, and thrusting his head through a wagon door asked:
‘What company are you?’
‘Prisoners!’ someone laughed in the darkness.
‘No, I’m asking seriously.’
‘We’re the second.’
‘And where’s the fourth troop?’
‘The sixth wagon from the front.’
Three cossacks, one squatting and the others standing, were smoking at the door of the sixth wagon. They stared silently at the man coming up to them.
‘Good luck, cossacks!’ he said.
‘Praise be!’ one of them replied, gazing into the newcomer’s face.
‘Is Nikita Dugin alive? Is he here?’
‘Here I am,’ the man squatting answered and rose to his feet, treading out his cigarette with his heel. ‘But I don’t know you. Who are you?’ he poked his bearded face forward in the attempt to examine the stranger in greatcoat and soiled soldier’s cap. Suddenly seizing his beard in his fist, he cried in astonishment: ‘Ilia! Bunchuk! Where the devil have you sprung from, old lad?’
Gripping Bunchuk’s hairy hand in his own and bending over him, he said more quietly:
‘These are our boys, you needn’t be afraid. How did you get here? Tell me, the devil curse you!’
Bunchuk shook hands with the other cossacks, and replied in a broken, iron-hollow voice:
‘I’ve come from Petrograd, and I’ve been looking for you. There’s work on hand. We must have a talk. I’m glad to see you alive and well, brother. Let’s go into the wagon.’
They clambered inside. Dugin prodded someone with his foot, and whispered:
‘Get up, my boy! A useful guest has arrived. Hurry up! Get a move on!’
The cossack stirred and rose. A couple of great hands, smelling of tobacco and horses’ sweat, carefully felt Bunchuk’s face in the darkness, and their owner asked:
‘Bunchuk?’
‘That’s right. And is it you, Chikamasov?’
‘Yes. Glad to see you, friend. Shall I run and fetch the boys of the third troop along?’
‘That’s a good idea.’
The third troop arrived almost to a man, only two remaining with the horses. The cossacks went up to Bunchuk and thrust their hands into his, bent over him, and examined his face by the light of the lantern. In all their greetings was a single tone of warm, comradely welcome.
They made him sit down facing the lantern, and crowded around him, those closest squatting on their heels, the others standing in a dense circle. Dugin coughed:
‘We received your letter the other day, Ilia, but all the same we wanted to see you and have your advice what to do. They’re sending us to Petrograd.’
‘It’s like this, Ilia,’ a cossack standing near the door said. An ear-ring was hanging from his lobe, and it was the same man whom Listnitsky had once affronted by forbidding him to boil water on the sheet-iron. ‘All sorts of agitators come along to us and try to get us not to go to Petrograd, telling us we ought not to fight among ourselves, and all that sort of thing. We listen to them, but we don’t trust them too much. They’re not our folk. They may be leading us up the garden path for all we know. If we refuse to go to Petrograd Kornilov will send his Native divisions against us, and that will lead to bloodshed too. But you’re a cossack like us, and we have more trust in you, and we’re very thankful that you wrote to us and sent us newspapers … we were getting short of paper for cigarettes …’
‘What are you telling those lies for, you blockhead?’ another interrupted angrily. ‘You can’t read, and so you think of that. But we aren’t all like you. As if we only used the newspapers for cigarettes! We read them from front to back, Ilia.’
Bunchuk smiled as he gazed at the cossacks. He found it difficult to talk sitting down; so he stood up, turned his back to the lantern and spoke slowly and assuredly:
‘There’s nothing for you to do in Petrograd. There aren’t any risings there. Do you know what they are sending you there for? In order to overthrow the Provisional Government. And who is leading you? The Tsarist general Kornilov. What does he want to kick Kerensky out for? In order to sit in his place. Listen, cossacks! They want to throw the wooden yoke off your necks, but they’ll put a steel one in its place! Of two evils you must choose the lesser. Isn’t that so? Think it over for yourselves: under the Tsar they put their fists in your face and used you to fight the war. Under Kerensky they’re still wanting you to fight, but they don’t use their fists on you any longer. It’s only a little better under Kerensky, but still it is better. But it will be much better after Kerensky, when the power gets into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Let them get the government and there’d be peace at once. I’m not on Kerensky’s side, the devil take him; they’re all tarred with the same brush!’ He smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow with his hand, and continued: ‘But I call on you not to shed the blood of the workers and for the present to defend the Provisional Government. Why defend it? Because if Kornilov gets in its place Russia will begin to wade knee-deep in the workers’ blood, and it will be more difficult to tear the power from him and hand it over to the toiling people.’
‘Wait a bit, Ilia’; a little cossack, as thickset as Bunchuk himself, emerged from the back rows. The man coughed and rubbed his hands, long and like the rain-washed roots of an ancient oak. Gazing at Bunchuk with smiling eyes as green as young leaves, he asked him: ‘You said something just now about yokes. But when the Bolsheviks get the power what yokes will they put on us?’
‘What, are you going to put yokes on yourselves?’
‘What do you mean, “put them on ourselves”?’
‘Well, under the Bolsheviks who will be the government? You will, if they elect you, or Dugin, or this old boy here. It will be an elected government, a soviet. Understand?’
‘But who will be at the top?’
‘Why, whoever is elected. If they choose you, you will be at the top.?
??
‘Surely? You’re not lying, Ilia?’
The cossacks laughed, and all began to speak at once. Even the guard posted at the door left his place for a moment in order to join in.
‘But what do they want to do with the land?’
‘They won’t take it from us?’
‘Will they stop the war? Or will they at once want us to fight for them?’
‘Tell us the truth. We’re all in the dark here.’
Bunchuk turned this way and that, studying the cossacks attentively and waiting until they were quiet. His first feeling of uncertainty as to the success of his enterprise had gone, and realizing the mood of the cossacks, he knew of a surety that whatever happened the troop train would be halted at Narva. When the previous day he had suggested himself to the Petrograd Regional Party Committee for agitation work among the cossack detachments he had been quite confident of success, but on arrival at Narva he had been stricken with doubts. He knew that the cossacks must be talked to in their own language, and he was afraid that he might not be able to do that; for since leaving the front he had mingled only with workers, and had once more thoroughly assimilated their habits and turns of speech.
When he first began to speak to the cossacks he caught the stumbling uncertainty in his own voice, and tormentedly racked his brains for words which would convince and shatter. But only empty phrases had come like soap-bubbles from his lips, whilst the emasculated, elusive thoughts were entangled in his mind. He stood sweating heavily, breathing heavily, thinking: ‘I’ve been entrusted with this big job, and I’m ruining it myself. Another man would have spoken a thousand times better. Oh hell, what an idiot I am!’
The cossack who asked about the yokes knocked him out of his stupid impotence, and the talk that followed his reply gave him an opportunity to pull himself together. He felt an unusual flow of strength and a rich choice of clear, pointed, cutting words coming to him. He grew enthusiastic, and concealing his agitation under a semblance of calm, dealt weightily and sharply with the questions, guiding the conversation like a rider who has mastered an unbroken horse.
‘Tell us, why is the Constitutional Assembly a bad thing?’ the fire of questions continued. ‘Your Lenin – the Germans sent him here, didn’t they?’ ‘Bunchuk, did you come of your own free will, or were you sent?’ ‘And aren’t the Mensheviks also of the people?’ ‘We have our own Military Council and people’s government. What do we want soviets for?’
He dealt with the questions one after another. The little meeting broke up after midnight, having decided to call both companies to a general meeting in the morning. Bunchuk spent the night in the wagon, and Chikamasov proposed that he should share his blankets. As the cossack crossed himself and lay down, he warned Bunchuk:
‘You can lie and sleep without fear, Ilia … But we’re eaten up with lice. If you lie with us, you mustn’t get fed up. The lice are so thick and fat, every one is as big as an egg …’ He was silent for a moment, then quietly asked: ‘Bunchuk, what race is Lenin from? I mean, where was he born and grew up?’
‘Lenin? He’s a Russian.’
‘Ho?’
‘It’s true; he’s Russian.’
‘No, brother, you’re wrong there! It’s clear you don’t know much about him,’ Chikamasov said with a touch of superiority in his voice. ‘Do you know where he’s from? He’s of our blood. He’s come from the Don cossacks, and was born in Salskov province, Vielikokniazoe district … understand? They say he was in the army as an artillery-man. And his face fits: he’s like the lower cossacks – strong cheekbones and the same eyes.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The cossacks have talked it over among themselves, and I’ve heard so.’
‘No, Chikamasov. He’s Russian, and was born in Simbirsk province.’
‘I don’t believe you. And it’s very simple why. There’s Pugachov; was he a cossack? And Stenka Razin? And Timofievitch Yermak? That’s it! There’s not a man who has ever raised the poor people against the Tsar who wasn’t a cossack. And you say he was from a Siberian province! I’m ashamed to hear such words, Ilia …’
Bunchuk asked with a smile:
‘So they say he’s a cossack?’
‘Yes, and he is a cossack, only he won’t say so at present. As soon as I see his face I shall know.’ Chikamasov lit a cigarette, and breathed the pungent scent of the uncured tobacco into Bunchuk’s face. He coughed thoughtfully: ‘It’s a miracle I’m telling, and we came to blows over it. You see, if Vladimir Ilitch is one of us cossacks, and an artillery-man, where did he get all his knowledge from? Well, they say that he was taken prisoner by the Germans at the beginning of the war, and learnt it all there, but when he began to get their workers to revolt they got frightened. “Clear out you big-head!” the Germans said to him. “Clear out to your own people, by Christ, you’re giving us so much trouble we shall never be able to stop it.” And so they sent him to Russia, because they were afraid he would get their workers to rise. Oho! He’s a molar, brother!’ Chikamasov said the last words vauntingly and laughed happily in the darkness. ‘You haven’t ever seen him, have you? No? Pity! They say he has an enormous head.’ He coughed and sent a grey scroll of smoke out of his nostrils. ‘He’s never let any Tsar talk him down! No, Ilia, don’t try to argue with me. Ilitch is a cossack. What do you want to doubt it for? Such men never came out of Siberia province.’
Bunchuk remained silent, a smile on his face. He was long in getting to sleep; the lice swarmed over him, spreading a fiery, tormenting itch beneath his shirt. Chikamasov sighed and snored at his side, and a restless horse drove away sleep. He turned over and over, and angrily realizing that he was wide awake, began to think of the morrow’s meeting. Involuntarily he recalled an episode during an attack in 1915, and as if rejoicing to find itself on an unknown track, his memory insistently began to conjure up fragments of reminiscence: the faces and hideous postures of dead Russian and German soldiers; the colourless, uncertain aspects of landscapes; the echoes of gun cannonades; the well-known sputter of machine-guns and the rattle of the belts; a brave melody, beautiful almost to pain; the faint outline of the mouth of a woman he had once loved; and then again scraps of the war; the graves of his brothers lying over a hill …
He sat up and said aloud, or maybe only thought: ‘Until I die I shall carry these memories, and not I alone but all who come through. Our whole life has been mutilated, cursed! Damn them …! Damn them! Not even with death will their guilt be wiped out …’
He grated his teeth and groaned, almost choking with the poisonous hatred that filled him. He sat rubbing his hairy chest, feeling that his hatred was boiling in his breast, preventing him from breathing, and paining him under the heart.
He did not drop off to sleep until morning was at hand. And at dawn, yellow and more morose than usual he went to the railwaymen’s committee, persuaded them not to send the cossack troop train out of Narva, then searched for the garrison committee in order to ensure their assistance.
He returned to the train at eight o’clock, rejoicing sadly at the probable success of his mission, at the sun pouring across the rusty roof of the warehouse, and the musical, singing timbre of a woman’s voice. A brief but luxuriant rain had fallen late in the night. The sandy earth of the permanent ways was wet and furrowed with the traces of little streams; it smelt of dampness and still retained the pitted holes of the raindrops on its surface, as though it had had smallpox.
As he passed round the wagons an officer in a greatcoat and muddy leg-boots came towards him. Bunchuk recognized captain Kalmikov, and slowed his steps. As he came up Kalmikov halted, and his slanting black eyes gleamed coldly:
‘Cornet Bunchuk? Are you still at liberty? Excuse me, I can’t offer you my hand …’
‘You spoke too quickly; I had no intention of offering you mine,’ Bunchuk replied banteringly.
‘What are you doing here? Saving your skin? Or … you haven’t come from Petrograd? You’re not from friend Kerensk
y?’
‘Is this a cross-examination?’
‘It is merely justifiable curiosity as to the fate of a deserter who was once a colleague.’
Bunchuk shrugged his shoulders:
‘I can reassure you. I have not come from Kerensky,’ he smiled.
‘But you are facing great danger here. And you are touchingly alone. But all the same, who and what are you? No epaulettes, and wearing a soldier’s greatcoat.’ Kalmikov contemptuously and commiseratingly examined Bunchuk’s figure. ‘A political bagman? Have I guessed aright?’ Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel and strode away.
Bunchuk found Dugin waiting for him in the wagon.
‘Where have you been?’ the cossack shouted. ‘The meeting’s already begun.’
‘Already begun?’
‘Yes. Our company commander Kalmikov has been away in Petrograd, and returned this morning and called a meeting of the cossacks. He’s just gone along to talk to them.’
He went with Dugin to the place where the meeting was being held. Beyond the warehouse was a dense grey-green ring of cossack tunics and greatcoats. In the middle, surrounded by officers, Kalmikov was mounted on a barrel, and shouting sharply and emphatically:
‘… carry on to a victorious conclusion. They trust us, and we will justify that trust. The agents of the Bolsheviks and Kerensky are preventing the movement of our troops along the railway. We have received instructions from the commander-in-chief that in the event of its being impossible to travel by the railway we are to take to horse and march to Petrograd. We advance today. Get ready to detrain.’
Roughly working his way through the crowd with his elbows, Bunchuk burst into the middle of the ring, and without approaching the group of officers, shouted stentorously:
‘Comrade cossacks! I have been sent to you by the Petrograd workers and soldiers. Your officers are leading you on to war with your brothers, to the defeat of the revolution. If you want to attack the people, if you want to restore the monarchy and to continue the war until you are all turned into corpses and cripples, carry on! But the Petrograd workers and soldiers hope that you will not be Cains. They send you a flaming brotherly greeting and want to see you not as enemies, but as allies …’