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.

20

My baggage--the handbag--was found.

Those peculiar things can happen only in the present Russia. She is like a good make of automobile after a wreck. Everything seems to be crushed and broken--machinery, wheels, glass, body.... Still some parts are strong enough to keep moving. So miraculously there moved a part, which brought my handbag here from Moscow,--the very first ray of sun in my existence for a long time.

I came to the depot this morning--I had been coming every day since Schmelin gave me the baggage check--and saw a few men unloading a baggage coach. I approached them.

"Hello," I said to a tartar whose abominable face was covered with pock marks, (nowadays one must always address the most hostile looking person in a crowd, never the most sympathetic, for one should not show any weakness to the mob), "any work"?

"Hello,--yourself," the tartar answered grouchily and without looking at me, "there is. Don't let them skin you. Ask fifty rubles, understand?"

"Is that so?" I said, spitting through my front teeth onto a sidewalk covered with gleaming white snow, "not me, damn them! Whose baggage?"

They did not answer--in their language it meant 'don't know, don't care, and go to hell!'

On the coach I saw "_Moscow Special_" written with white stone and I decided to take one more chance and ask for my handbag, presenting my luggage check.

"It came at last," said the man in charge of the luggage depot, "thank God I won't see your _muzzle_ any more. What's in it?"

"Since when has it been your business, your burjooi honor?" I said, "You did not pay me for buying my belongings, so better keep your trap shut!"

I took the dear old bag--it was Maroosia's before, and came home.

What did Mlle. Goroshkin put in the bag in Moscow? I opened the rusty lock--and found my silver toilet kit, razors, "La Question du Maroc," on which the shaving soap had made a big yellow spot, Laferme cigarettes, some linen (the thing I need the most), night slippers, manicuring box, and poor Maroossia's fan,--she wired me to take it to Gurzoof in the last telegram I ever got from her.

The fan was fragrant with her perfume on it; so I shed a few tears. On the inside of the bag was written "All well, write often," and on the bottom of the bag--was this book of my notes. I had decided to sell the silver kit and the fan and get some money as I was very short of it. Both the fan and the silver outfit looked so inharmonious in my little room with a small window on a triste court with a yard full of blindingly white snow.

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_)