I was informed that it would take a week for my case to be cleared up and a decision reached. Instead of sending me to the Butirka, the prison in which I had spent the last two weeks, I was taken to the military guard house, opposite the Soldiers’ Section. Drunken sailors and Red Guards were usually confined there. The room in which I was put was narrow and long, the windows were large but closely grated. There were about ten prisoners in it.
“Ah, Bochkareva! Look who’s here!”
I was met with these words as soon as I crossed the threshold. They quickly turned into phrases of abuse and ridicule. I was quiet, and sought seclusion and rest in a corner, but in vain. The inmates were Bolsheviks of the lowest sort, degenerates and former criminals. I was the object of their constant ill-treatment, so that torturing me day and night became their diversion. If I tried to sleep, I soon found someone near me. When I ate or drank, the beasts assembled about me, showering insults on me and playing dirty tricks. Weeping had no effect on them. Night after night I was forced to stay awake, sometimes throwing myself upon an intruder with my teeth in an effort to drive him away. I implored the warder to give me a cell to myself.
“Let it be a cold, gloomy hole. Give me no food. But take me away from these drunken brutes!” I would plead.
“We will take you away soon—to shoot you!” the warder would joke in reply, amid the uproarious laughter of my tormentors.
The appointed week elapsed and still there was no decision in my case. The days—long, cruel, agonizing days—passed slowly by. The impossibility of sleeping was above all so torturing that it drove me to a state actually bordering on insanity. Two and a half weeks I lived in that inferno, seventeen days without a single full night’s sleep!
Then one morning the warder, who had delighted daily in telling me stories of what would be done to me, very vivid stories of frightfulness, came in with some papers in his hand.
“Bochkareva!” he called out to me. “You are free.” And he opened the door facing me.
I was so surprised that I thought at first that this was another trick to torture me.
“Free?” I asked. “Why?” I had grown to believe the warder’s tales of what awaited me, and I could not imagine him as the carrier of such tidings.
“Am I free for good?” I asked.
“Yes,” was the answer. “You will go with a guard to the Soldiers’ Section, where you will get the necessary papers.”
I bade farewell, with a sigh of relief, to the chamber of horrors, and went immediately to get the document from the tribunal, which stated that I had been arrested but found innocent of the charge and that, as I was ill, I was to be allowed complete freedom of movement in the country. With this passport in my pocket I was set at liberty.
XX
I Set Out on a Mission
The Vasilievs were the only people I could go to in Moscow. They lived on the outskirts of the city. I made an attempt to walk to their house, but was too weak to proceed more than two blocks. There was a cabman near at hand, but he wanted twenty-five roubles to take me to my friends. I tried to bargain, offering fifteen, but he would not hear of it. As I had no money, I finally hired the cab in the hope that Daria Maximovna would pay for it. The alternative was to remain where I was.
Madame Vasilieva received me as if I were her own daughter. She was overwhelmed with joy at my release. I was too weak and worn out to appreciate fully my miraculous deliverance from torture and death. I was given some light food, and Daria Maximovna began to prepare a bath for me. I had not changed my undergarments for several weeks, and my body was blacker than it ever had been during my life in the trenches. My skin was in a terrible condition from vermin. The bath was a greater relief at the moment than my release itself. And the long hours of sleep following it were even more welcome. I doubt if sleep ever tasted sweeter to anyone.
It was impossible to remain long as a guest in Moscow in those early days of March, 1918. Stepan lived away from his home, as he and his parents held widely divergent views in regard to the political situation. The family consisted of Daria Maximovna, her husband and the younger son. The daughter, Tonetchka, was married and lived elsewhere. The three Vasilievs received daily a pound and one-eighth of bread! The weekly meat ration was a pound and a half. I, therefore, promptly realized what a burden I was bound to be. But I could not make up my mind where to go and what to do. The Vasilievs offered to buy me a ticket home, but the document I had from the Soldiers’ Section was in itself a ticket.
I recalled that some of my wounded girls had been sent to Moscow, to be quartered in the Home for Invalids, and I thought of looking them up. I took a walk to the city. When I approached the block in which the Home was situated, I noticed a crowd in the street, largely composed of soldiers, holding meetings of indignation. When I reached the Home I saw a number of wounded soldiers, some of them
