Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

17

A STRANGE ship.

And no sign of electricity either—everything was in darkness.

The subdued sound of the passengers’ voices as they moved slowly up the gangplank. The Shilka was evidently not carrying cargo—her waterline was far above the water and the gangplank was at a steep angle.

No sense of commotion, no hysteria. Everyone was quietly alert. Exchanging businesslike whispers. Only now and again did I hear a louder voice:

“Is General M present?”

“Present.”

“Warrant Officer R? We need the warrant officer.”

“Present!”

And again only the murmuring of the passengers. A warm, dark night. The very faintest of drizzles. Along with everyone else, I slowly made my way up to the deck. There wasn’t even anyone checking our passes.

“Let’s see if we can get to the cabins,” said V. “The weather looks like it will turn nasty.”

But it was impossible to get through—there were already too many people.

“I wonder how we’ll manage to get underway?” I ventured. “There’s not a sound from the engines.”

“Maybe they’ll get them working soon. We most certainly can’t stay where we are! Listen! Can you hear the gunfire? That’s Ataman Grigoriev[99]—I’ve heard he’s almost taken the freight station. He and his men will probably be here before morning.”

The steamer was getting more and more densely packed. It was already difficult to move about the deck.

“Wait here,” said V. “I’ll see if I can get through the crowd.”

I went over to the side and looked out at the sea.

The sea, our new road into the unknown, was quiet, dark and calm. There was a smell of wet rope. Lights were glittering out in the bay, where large, serious, and important ships full of important and well-informed persons were exchanging mysterious signals. They were preparing themselves for a long journey, out into open seas, toward peaceful shores.

“We’re done for,” murmured someone beside me. “If they can’t find a tug to pull us out into the roadstead, it’ll be the end of us. Time to say our prayers.”

“Ba-ba-boom!” replied the freight station.

“Look! The whole sky’s lit up.”

“I hear the looting’s already started.”

“Oh my God! Oh my God!”

And then someone began softly singing. A beautiful female voice. I looked down. Perched on a suitcase, one leg swung over the other, was a smartly dressed young lady. She was pensively singing a gypsy romance:

The young woman was singing!

“How can you?” someone asked in astonishment. “At a time like this?”

“I’ve had enough of all this. I might as well sing as do anything else.”

“I can see you haven’t known much suffering yet.”

“I’d say I’ve known my share. Our house in the country was burned down, my brother disappeared without a trace… We only just managed to get away ourselves.”

“So you’re a landowner, are you?”

“Me? I’m still a student.”

Turning her face toward the quiet sea, she went back to her romance:

She was sitting on a suitcase, one leg over the other, and gently swinging her foot. On it was a bright summer shoe. She was in a world of her own.

Beside me someone was chewing on some bread, letting out sounds that might have been sighs or might have been hiccups. And a small pot-bellied gentleman was timidly asking, “Excuse me, are you Madame Teffi? Excuse me, I’m Berkin. I’ve seen you in the city a few times. Perhaps you could advise me. I don’t know whether to stay on board or go back into Odessa.”

And then, in a whisper: “I have a considerable sum of money on me. Can you guarantee that no Bolsheviks have managed to get on board?”

“How would I know? All I can say is—I’m staying on board myself.”

“True, but maybe you’re not risking anything. While I, as I’ve already told you, am risking a great deal… Please excuse my shivering. I’m wearing a jersey—all this shivering, please excuse me, is because I’m afraid… So, you’re advising me to stay on board? Please, I’m begging you, I’ll do whatever you say!”

“But how can I take on such a responsibility?”

“But I’m begging you!”

I looked at him. His entire face was quivering; the corners of his mouth were turned down. Was this man crying?

“I think you should stay on board. It’s safer. Besides, how are you going to get back into Odessa now? It’s dark, the streets are deserted—you’ll be robbed.”

“Oh, you’re so right! I feel better already—you’ve calmed me down.”

V came back.

“The cabins and corridors are all full. The only space I could find was in a bathroom. It’ll be us and two other men. You’re being given the bench, one of the other men gets the bath—and the second will be sharing the floor with me. Our things have already been piled into the hold.”

O, an engineer, came over to us with some news: Not one of the ship’s crew was on board. They had all made off into the city, evidently wishing to yield the ship to the Bolsheviks. The engine had been dismantled and many parts had gone missing. Either this was sabotage—the parts had been taken away or destroyed to prevent our departure—or else the engine was under repair. Several Chinese had been discovered hiding down in the hold. At first they pretended not to know or understand anything at all, but when threatened with a revolver they revealed where some of these engine parts had been hidden. Then there had been a search for engineers and mechanics among the passengers. O and a few others had stepped forward and gotten down to work. They were hoping to reassemble the engine, but this would be difficult and they would have to fashion some of the parts themselves. They needed a particular kind of bearing. If they succeeded with the engine, we were saved; if not, we were in trouble.

Next there was a search for potential ship’s officers. There turned out to be several passengers with naval experience, and Captain Ryabinin was put in command.

Most of the passengers, however, knew nothing about any of this and weren’t even asking any questions. Instead, they were settling in—putting their children to bed and rearranging their luggage so they could sit more comfortably. O went down to the engine room.

I set off to have a look around. Here and there I glimpsed a familiar face: Professor Myakotin, Fyodor Volkenstein, Ksyunin, Titov… Ilyashenko, the deputy minister of justice, later to be murdered by the Bolsheviks.[100]

On the stairs, on the floors of corridors, on top of bundles of rope and around the base of the ship’s funnel, on benches and below benches—wherever I looked, I saw people. Some were sitting, some lying down.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Look!” someone called out joyfully. “Look! We’re moving!”

“We’re off! We’re off!”

Very gently, the shore was spinning away from us; the lights on the ships moored out in the roadstead were also moving.

“We’re underway!”

But there was no sound from the engine, nor was there any smoke from the funnel.

“It’s a tug! We’re being pulled out by a tug!”

“Well, thank God! At least we’ll be a bit further out. The further from this accursed shore the better.”

The tugboat Roma was taking us out into the roadstead.

What next?

There we were, out in the roadstead just like the “grown-up” ships.

Shuttling about between these ships were little rowboats.

One little boat tied up to our Shilka. A grim-looking Odessan climbed the ladder, tracked down some acquaintances, who were placidly chewing on dates, and swore to them that they were certain to perish. His acquaintances spat out their half-eaten dates and gave themselves over to stormy despair, while the man from Odessa, with the air of having performed an onerous duty, strode briskly back to the ladder and climbed down into his little boat.

My new friend “Excuse-me-I’m-Berkin” suddenly jumped up and decided he too needed to go in a rowboat and visit another steamer.

“What do you want to do that for?”

“Well, I can see what it’s like on their ship and I can tell them what it’s like on ours.”

The owners of the little boats were demanding outlandish sums, yet there were quite a number of people who, like Berkin, felt compelled to go see what it was like and tell what it was like.

“Excuse-me-I’m-Berkin” visited two other steamers.

“Well, I had plenty to tell them!”

“Like what?”

“I said we’d been informed by radio that the Bolsheviks are coming from Sebastopol. By sea.”

“What radio? Our radio receiver isn’t working.”

“It’s working just perfectly.”

“But I’ve just been speaking to the junior officer in charge of the radio.”

“And you believe him? You’d be better off believing what I say.”

“And how do you know about our radio?”

The man was a brazen liar.

The rowboats went on shuttling about. People were spending unbelievable sums to go and scare one another. How could they skimp in the service of such a lofty cause?

Berkin went three times.

“That’s my last trip. I can’t allow myself any more. The boat owners are a shameless lot—profiteering out of human misery.”

Toward morning the rumormongers finally quieted down.

Our officers had three concerns: to get the Shilka underway, to obtain coal for the furnace, and to get food for the passengers.

The Chinese men, threatened once more with a revolver, had revealed stores of rice and tinned food. But these would not be enough.

It turned out that there was a cargo boat moored close by, delivering provisions from Sebastopol. We asked it for help. It refused, sternly informing us that the provisions were for Odessa.

“But the city’s in the hands of the Bolsheviks!”

“Makes no difference to us,” came the answer.

At this, the Shilka grew indignant. She opened hostilities, dispatching two lifeboats with machine guns.

They managed to seize some provisions, but the offended steamship complained to the Jean Barthes. The French ship then bellowed menacingly at the Shilka, “Brigands! Bolsheviks! Explain yourselves! This instant, or else…”

With dignity and feeling, the Shilka replied that she had hungry women and children on board, and that the French had always been renowned for their chivalry.

The Jean Barthes calmed down and immediately dispatched a lifeboat carrying chocolate, flour, and condensed milk.

O came up from the engine room and announced that the Shilka was now able to move under her own steam, but only in reverse.

Many of the passengers took fright—to them, “in reverse” meant going back to Odessa.

Myakotin, Titov, and Volkenstein—members of the same political party, I forget which—kept coming up on deck to hold meetings beneath the ship’s funnel. They would whisper animatedly, falling pointedly silent whenever anyone came near them. Ksyunin, meanwhile, stayed down in the hold, starting up a newspaper he intended to publish with the help of his typewriter.