“Next morning the city was startled by a sensational announcement posted on the walls. ‘By order of the Russian Command,’ it ran, ‘the incompetent government has been deposed, and the supreme power in North Russia is henceforth vested exclusively in the hands of the military commander of the occupying forces.’
“There was a hell of a hubbub, I can tell you! For who was to untangle the knot? The allied military had connived at the kidnapping by Russian plotters of a Russian government established by order of the Allies! The diplomats and the military were already at loggerheads and now they were like fighting-cocks! Finally, after two days’ wrangling, and when all the factories went on strike, it was decided that the whole proceeding had been most unseemly and undemocratic. ‘Diplomacy’ triumphed, a cruiser was despatched to pick up the wretched ministers shivering on the remote White Sea island, and brought them back (scarcely a triumphal procession!) to Archangel, where they were restored to the tarnished dignity of their ministerial pedestals, and went on trying to pretend to be a government.”
The Journalist gaped open-mouthed as I told him this story. “And what is happening there now?” he asked after a pause. “I am rather afraid to think of what is happening now,” I replied.
“And you mean,” he said, slowly, “the Allies are not—?”
“I do not know—they may come, and they may not.” I realized I was rudely tearing down a radiant castle the poor Journalist had built in the air.
“By why—Michael Mihailovitch—are you—?”
“Why am I here?” I said, completing his unfinished question. “Simply because I wanted to be.”
Dmitri Konstantinovitch gasped. “You—wanted to be here?”
“Yes,” I replied, smiling involuntarily at his incredulity. “I wanted to be here and took the first chance that offered itself to come.” If I had told him that after mature consideration I had elected to spend eternity in Gehenna rather than in the felicity of celestial domains I should not have astonished the incredulous Journalist more.
“By the way,” I said rather cruelly, as a possibility occurred to me, “don’t go and blurt that Archangel story everywhere, or you’ll have to explain how you heard it.”
But he did not heed me. I had utterly demolished his castle of hope. I felt very sorry as I watched him. “Maybe they will learn,” I added, wishing to say something kind, “and not repeat mistakes elsewhere.”
Learn? As I looked into the Journalist’s tear-dimmed eyes, how heartily I wished they would!
While the journalist’s home until my arrival was only on the downward grade toward pigstydom, that of the Policeman had already long since arrived at the thirty-third degree. His rooms were in an abominable condition, and quite unnecessarily so. The sanitary arrangements in many houses were in a sad state of dilapidation, but people took urgent measures to maintain what cleanliness they could. Not so the Policeman, who lived in conditions too loathsome for words and took no steps to check the progressive accumulation of dust, dirt, and filth.
He kept a Chinese servant, who appeared to be permanently on strike, and whom he would alternately caressingly wheedle and tempestuously upbraid, so far as I could see with equal ineffect. In the nether regions of the house he occupied there lived, or frequently gathered, a bevy of Chinamen who loafed about the hall or peeped through gratings up the cellar stairways. There was also a mysterious lady, whom I never saw, but whom I would hear occasionally as I mounted the stairs, shrieking in an hysterical caterwaul, and apparently menacing the little Policeman with physical assault. Sometimes he would snarl back, and one such scène d’amour was terminated by a violent crash of crockery. But the affable female, whom I somehow figured as big and muscular with wild, floating hair, a sort of Medusa, had always vanished by the time I reached the top of the stairs, and the loud door-slam that coincided with her disappearance was followed by deathlike silence. The little Policeman, whose bearing was always apologetic, would accost me as though nothing were amiss, while the insubordinate Chinese servant, if he condescended to open the front door, would stand at the foot of the staircase with an enigmatical sneering grin spread over his evil features. It was altogether an uncanny abode.
Marsh had prepared the way, and the Policeman received me with profuse demonstrations of regard. I was fortunately not obliged to accept his proffered hospitality often, but when I did, it was touching to note how he would put himself out in the effort to make me as comfortable as the revolting circumstances would permit. Despite his despicable character, his cringing deceitfulness, and mealymouthed flattery, he still possessed human feelings, showed at times a genuine desire to please not merely for the sake of gain, and was sincerely and passionately fond of his children, who lived in another house.
He was excessively vain and boastful. In the course of his career he had accumulated a collection of signed photographs of notables, and loved to demonstrate them, reiterating for the fiftieth time how Count Witte said this, Stolypin said that, and So-and-so said something else. I used to humour him, listening gravely, and he interpreted my endurance as ability to venerate the great ones of the earth, and an appreciation of his illustrious connections, and was mightily pleased. He was full of grandiose schemes for the downthrow of the Red regime, and the least sign of so much as patience with his suggestions excited his enthusiasm and inspired his genius for self-praise and loquacity.
“Your predecessors, if you will allow me to say so,” he launched forth on the occasion of my first visit, “were pitifully incompetent. Even Mr. Marsh, delightful man though he was, hardly knew his business. Now you, Michael Ivanitch, I can see, are a man of understanding—a man of quite different stamp. I presented a scheme to Marsh, for instance,” and he bent over confidentially, “for
