Entry 19

19


Only five months ago--I had a wife, income, good food.... Only five
months ago--I had a country.

The mean and envious beast that lived in our midst,--as it lives in
every other country,-- unseen, but felt, and always ready to crush the
acquirements of existing civilization, the mob came out from the
underground world; criminal hands let the mob on the streets. Weak
and shaky fingers unlocked the trap; a magnificent gesture of an
ignorant Don Quixote invited the spies, the thieves, the murderers "to
make the New Russia."

I see foreign faces around me; I hear foreign accents in every line of
each new edict; I listen to the strange names of our new governors.

The Mob is in power; and the friendly faces of our Allies became dry
and cold....

Looking backward--I try to find out whether there was a mistake of my
own, or my own crime, for which some unknown and heartless Judge is
now so severely punishing me?

* * * * *

Here I am, a graduate of the two best institutions in Russia and
Germany, a man with five generations behind me,--all thoroughbred,
all civilized, all gentlemen. Here I am in disguise--as apparently
thousands and thousands of other Russians are, just as bearded as
they, just as dirty, just as hungry, just as alone in the world.

My name is now Alexei Petrovich Syvorotka, formerly non-commissioned
officer, 7th of Hussars, born in the province of Kursk. I dress in
an old military overcoat, have a badly broken shoulder blade (second
degree injury at Stanislau), and as my documents say--have been
evacuated to Tumen, where I am supposed to receive my soldier's
ration. Syvorotka! Would you talk to a man with such a name?

This Syvorotka, a humble creature--a shadow of yesterday--has only one
thing of which he cannot be robbed, his only consolation: the sorrow
which he wears deep under his uniform jealously concealed from the
rest of the world.