Entry 21 - October to December 1917

21

Here is what brought me here:

I could not leave Petrograd on time on account of the house. Nobody
wanted it for 800,000. I waited and waited--day after day, week after
week. Many and many were giving me advice to leave and were warning
me, but I would not listen. When the wire came that poor Maroossia
was killed,--I lost interest in life completely. So I was living in
Petrograd, until the clash for the Assembly. Then,--perhaps my nerves
needed a good shaking up,--I became active again. I went to the Volga
Kama for my money,--the were already closed and gave me 150 rubles,
and allowed me to take another 150 in a week. I went to the Volkov's.
The clerk said that I had no right to withdraw more than 150. I knew
the man from Moscow well, and he recognized me from the time that I
was coming to Bros. Djamgarov Bank. He was really kind, and said that
he could at once arrange that I should receive 80% of my money and
the contents in the safe, out of which 10% should be paid to some
mysterious commissary. "I advise you to take it. The appetites are
growing, and perhaps to-morrow it will be more,--50% or 60%." I wrote
out some kind of understanding, by which I sold my rights on the
10th of October to a certain Kagajitsky. That was all fake, as my
arrangement was made about the 23rd of November, I guess.

My ticket, for which they asked me 12,000 rubles, was obtained through
the cook's sweetheart, and I left Petrograd on the 6th for Moscow on
the usual 12:30, and arrived uneventfully at the depot in Moscow next
morning at about 10:30.

On the stairs of the Nikolaevsky depot I stopped. Where was I going?
In fact I had never thought of it. I had no place, no destination, no
desires--nothing. Perhaps only one desire, to avenge myself and all of
us.

So I hesitated, for in Moscow they had been shooting right and left
for the past week, persecuting the burjoois and officers. I had never
felt so helpless and so unnecessary to myself and to others as on this
snowy morning in Moscow. Besides, all of the way from Petrograd to
Moscow I had had a hideous headache and chills, and I was in a fog of
indifference.

"Good morning, sir," said an astonishingly polite voice behind me, "I
congratulate you upon a safe arrival."

I turned around and saw a man of rather short stature, cleanly shaven,
and politely smiling with the whole width of his mouth.

"Good morning," I said, "I cannot place you, but you seem familiar to
me, I am sure."

"That's due to my former occupation, your Excellency. I am Goroshkin,
the usher from the Ekaterinensky Theatre. So sorry to apprehend of
your sorrow, Sir, in connection with her Excellency's death."

This man, Goroshkin, was a real friend to me, although I hardly
recollected him. We never used to pay much attention to the ushers!

There was no use in trying to go to a hotel with my appearance of
a gentleman and my pockets filled with money; my fever and my
indifference were growing; I had no desire to do anything for myself.
I think that Goroshkin understood me and the state of my mind when
he said, "May I venture to offer Your Excellency my humble house, and
perhaps call a doctor?"

This is as much as I remember of the next fortnight. I had a terrible
attack of typhus,--and when communists were killing the boys from the
military school, bombarding the Hotel National, destroying the Kremlin
and pillaging private homes, I was quietly lying in a little house
somewhere behind Sukharev Tower under the care of a doctor and
Goroshkin's fat sister, whose conspicuous parts of the corsage were
soiled from cooking, and whose face was always red and radiant. My
return to life, and with it my return to the desire for activity and
eating, was commemorated by the appearance at my bed of nobody else
but Marchenko.

One bright morning, when my room seemed to be full of sunshine and
hope,--a man in the uniform of a communist soldier with a red rag on
his coat sleeve, walked into the room bringing in a breath of fresh
and frosty air and a whole arsenal of munitions. I did not recognize
him at first, a little pointed beard and heavy boots had transformed
him into a regular "tovarishch."

"Hello," he said, "glad to know you're alive."

"Yes," I answered, "I am about the only one whom they have not
happened to exterminate, but it is coming"!

Marchenko smiled. "You should not stay here for very long," he said,
"It is getting dangerous and raids are being planned to finish with
the burjoois who are hiding in the outskirts of Moscow."

"Don't think," he went on, "that I am honestly with the communists. My
task is the same and if we failed to do something before,--now we know
we will be successful. Kerensky is out of the life, living evidently
under the friendly protection of Lenine; I think Lenine was the only
man that he did not attempt to double cross."

"Now," he continued, "let us speak of you. I think that you must
understand that the little services that were asked of you some months
ago would have prevented many, many disagreeable events. Behind you,
you can see only sad memories and mourning,--before you, the very dark
existence of a man in hiding. If you will join us, I could guarantee
you a more or less protected life,--of course you will have to care
for your own self, too."

"Please your Excellency," said the voice of Goroshkin behind me,
"don't refuse this time. If your esteemed father could have known the
circumstances, he would have consented, and he was a strict man. I
recollect that His Excellency would not deign to wait a second for his
overcoat."

"Very well, I accept," I said to Marchenko, "but I must say to you
that it is not for the protection you promise me. I do not care much
for my life, but I would like to preserve it. Not to die right now,
but hold it until the moment when I could avenge myself. And that's my
personal aim. As for your plan--it suits me--for it is a measure not
of Russia's good--but a weapon against our present enemy--the Red
Flag. And, I may add that in me you will find a disciplined man."

Goroshkin disappeared and came back with a bottle of Abrau-Durcot,
with which we celebrated my consent.

Indeed I had nothing further to think about. My task was to go to
Tumen in disguise, meet some people there, and through Goroshkin
communicate with Marchenko.

My instructions included....

(a few pages torn out)