“No, you remind me more and more of your father. Just as intractable. So, then, let’s go on to the main thing. But since it’s a rather complex matter, arm yourselves with patience. I beg you to listen and not to interrupt.
“Big changes are being prepared at the top. No, no, I have it from the most reliable sources, you can trust me. They have in mind a switch to more democratic tracks, concessions to general legality, and that in the very near future.
“But precisely as a result of that, the punitive institutions liable to abolition will become all the more ferocious towards the end and will hasten to settle their local accounts. You are next in line to be annihilated, Yuri Andreevich. Your name is on the list. I’m not joking when I say it, I saw it myself, believe me. Think about saving yourself, otherwise it will be too late.
“But this is all a preface so far. I go on to the essence of the matter.
“In Primorye, on the Pacific Ocean, a gathering of political forces that have remained loyal to the deposed Provisional Government and the disbanded Constituent Assembly is taking place. Members of the Duma, social figures, the most prominent of the former zemstvo activists, businessmen, industrialists are coming together. The generals of the volunteer armies are concentrating what remains of their forces there.
“The Soviet government turns a blind eye to the emergence of the Far Eastern republic. The existence of such a formation on its outskirts is advantageous to it as a buffer between Red Siberia and the outside world. The government of the republic will be mixed. Moscow has negotiated more than half the seats for Communists, so that with their aid, at the right time, they can carry out a coup and take the republic in hand. The scheme is perfectly transparent, and the only thing is to be able to take advantage of the remaining time.1
“Before the revolution I used to conduct the affairs of the Arkharov brothers, the Merkulovs, and other trading and banking houses in Vladivostok. I’m known there. An unofficial emissary of the forming government brought me, half secretly, half with official Soviet connivance, an invitation to enter the Far Eastern government as minister of justice. I accepted and am on my way there. All this, as I’ve just said, is happening with the knowledge and silent consent of Soviet power, though not so openly, and there should be no noise about it.
“I can take you and Larissa Fyodorovna with me. From there you can easily make your way to your family by sea. Of course, you already know about their deportation. A story that made noise, the whole of Moscow is talking about it. I promised Larissa Fyodorovna to ward off the blow hanging over Pavel Pavlovich. As a member of an independent and recognized government, I’ll seek out Strelnikov in eastern Siberia and assist in his transfer to our autonomous region. If he doesn’t manage to flee, I’ll suggest that he be exchanged for some person detained by the allies who is of value for the central power in Moscow.”
Larissa Fyodorovna had difficulty following the content of the conversation, the meaning of which often escaped her. But at Komarovsky’s last words, concerning the safety of the doctor and Strelnikov, she came out of her state of pensive nonparticipation, pricked up her ears, and, blushing slightly, put in:
“You understand, Yurochka, how important these plans are for you and Pasha?”
“You’re too trusting, my dear friend. One can hardly take things promised for things performed. I’m not saying that Viktor Ippolitovich is consciously pulling our leg. But it’s all still in the air! And now, Viktor Ippolitovich, a few words from me. I thank you for your attention to my fate, but can you possibly think I’ll let you arrange it? As for your taking care of Strelnikov, Lara has to think it over.”
“What are you driving at? Either we go with him, as he suggests, or we don’t. You know perfectly well that I won’t go without you.”
Komarovsky sipped frequently from the diluted alcohol Yuri Andreevich had brought from the dispensary and set on the table, munched the potatoes, and gradually became tipsy.
2
It was already late. Relieved now and then of its snuff, the wick of the lamp flared up with a crackle, brightly lighting the room. Then everything sank into darkness again. The hosts wanted to sleep and had to talk things over alone. But Komarovsky would not leave. His presence was wearying, like the oppressive sight of the heavy oak sideboard and the dispiriting, icy December darkness outside the window.
He looked not at them, but somewhere over their heads, fixing his drunken, rounded eyes on that distant point, and with a sleepy, thick tongue ground away at something endlessly boring, all about one and the same thing. His hobbyhorse was now the Far East. He chewed his cud about it, developing before Lara and the doctor his reflections on the political significance of Mongolia.
Yuri Andreevich and Larissa Fyodorovna had not caught the point at which the conversation had landed on this Mongolia. The fact that they had missed how he skipped over to it increased the tiresomeness of the alien, extraneous subject.
Komarovsky was saying:
“Siberia—truly a New America, as they call it—conceals in itself the richest possibilities. It is the cradle of the great Russian future, the pledge of our democratization, prosperity, political health. Still more fraught with alluring possibilities is the future of Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, our great Far Eastern neighbor. What do you know about it? You’re not ashamed to yawn and blink with inattention, and yet it has a surface of over a million square miles, unexplored minerals, a country in a state of prehistoric virginity, which the greedy hands of China, Japan, and America are reaching for, to the detriment of our Russian interests, recognized by all our rivals under any division of spheres of interest in this remote corner of the globe.
“China takes advantage of the feudal and theocratic backwardness of Mongolia, influencing its lamas and
This verbose reasoning on an intrusive subject that had no relation to them exasperated Larissa Fyodorovna. Driven to the point of exhaustion by the boredom of the prolonged visit, she resolutely held out her hand to Komarovsky in farewell and, without beating around the bush, said with unconcealed hostility:
“It’s late. Time for you to go. I want to sleep.”
“I hope you won’t be so inhospitable as to put me out at such an hour. I’m not sure I’ll find my way at night in a strange, unlit town.”
“You should have thought of that earlier and not gone on sitting. Nobody was keeping you.”
