Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

18

THE TUG towed us over to a coal freighter. Then came an announcement addressed to everyone on board—“to everyone, I repeat everyone, without exception: You must load the coal onto the Shilka yourselves. There are no workers on the freighter and we have no crew. If you want this ship to move, you must all get to work.”

“Everyone? Surely not everyone!”

“Yes,” came the reply. “Everyone.”

This was followed by a most curious scene.

Wanting to show that they knew all this was a joke, elegant young men in smart suits smiled nervously. Any moment now, of course, it would become obvious that elegantly dressed young men cannot be forced to hump coal. That would be simply too absurd! Ridiculous!

“All right—everyone line up on deck!” called out a commanding voice. “Every man present, except the old and infirm.”

The elegant young men were dumbstruck. They looked around in confusion. This joke was going on too long.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” someone shouted at one of them. “Didn’t you hear the order? Get up on deck.”

Up on deck, perhaps, their elegance would be more apparent. It would be obvious that they were the wrong men for the job.

The deck quickly began to fill with rows of passengers.

“You are about to be given a basket. Place this basket on your back.”

The elegant young men smiled and shrugged their shoulders, as if playing along with some absurd joke that, in due course, they could enjoy telling people about.

But then an argument broke out on the gangway.

“Excuse me,” someone was shouting, “but on what grounds are you refusing? You’re a strong, healthy man.”

“Will you please stop this! Leave me alone!”

Out onto the deck came a thickset gentleman of about forty, his eyes flickering with rage.

“Will you please stop this at once?”

“Only when you tell me on what grounds you are refusing to carry out your share of the work now required from each man on board!”

“On what grounds?” bellowed the thickset gentleman. “I’m refusing on the grounds that I’m a landowner and a nobleman. I have never worked, I never shall work and you won’t see me working today. Get that into your heads once and for all!”

A ripple of indignation passed through the crowd.

“Excuse me, but if we refuse to work, this boat will never get out to sea!”

“My husband’s a landowner too,” came a squeaky voice.

“We’ll fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks!”

“What’s that got to do with me?” the gentleman cried out indignantly. “Hire someone! Do whatever is necessary! We’ve been living in a capitalist society and I fully intend to adhere to capitalist principles. If you prefer all this socialist nonsense and labor for everyone, then what are you doing on this ship? Go ashore and join your Bolshevik comrades. Understand?”

This caused confusion and division.

“Well, up to a point…”

“But on the other hand, we can hardly just wait here for the Bolsheviks…”

“And if we’ve all got to work, why shouldn’t he?”

“Lynch him!” snorted an old lady who had just appeared on the deck.

“Come on now,” said a good-natured merchant from Nizhny Novgorod. “Please, sir, try and see reason.”

“Jump to it!” came the voice of authority. “No dawdling!”

We could see the white cap of a naval officer.

“Make your way down to the coal carrier. With your baskets.”

One of the elegant young men ran up to the officer and began whispering in his ear, glancing now and again at the gentleman with the principles.

The officer shook his head and calmly replied, “To hell with him!”

Loading began.

Moving up and down the gangways were long processions of blackened, soot-covered porters. The remaining passengers all emerged from the hold, and from cabins and corridors, to watch this unprecedented spectacle: models of male elegance, in patent leather shoes and silk socks, supporting heavy baskets of coal with their yellow-gloved hands.

Very soon the young men were spitting and swearing, entering into their new role.

“Come on, lads! No dawdling!”

“Heave-ho!” answered the nearest “lad”—the balding, pot-bellied, stick-legged “Excuse-Me-I’m-Berkin.”

“What are you all staring at?” shouted another “lad,” an actor and public reciter as long and thin as a fishing rod. “They ought to set you lot to work too. That’ll teach you to stare!”

“Yes, they know how to stare all right,” said the merchant from Nizhny Novgorod. “But when it comes to real work…”

“Yes,” replied a snub-nosed student. “They don’t want to work. But they won’t be hanging about like that when it’s time for dinner… Parasites!”

Someone began to sing one of the silly little songs of the time:

Someone else interrupted with:

Which was followed by:

Singing along and swearing with gusto, the young men were now working as though their lives depended on it.

“Ah!” I thought, “Yevreinov’s ‘Theater for Itself’! They play at being coalmen—and once they know the role, they get carried away. You can even see which character types they’ve chosen.”[103]

Coming up the gangway was pot-bellied “Excuse-Me-I’m-Berkin.” Moving jerkily and tripping over himself, his round body precariously balanced on its stick legs, he was like an ungainly spider. But the look on his face was that of a Volga rebel—the look of Stenka Razin himself:[104]

and so on…

He was carrying a heavy basket which, without the inspiration afforded by his role, he would never have been able to lift at all.

Next came some kind of intellectual, with a long forelock.

Trudging gloomily along, a bitter and obstinate smile on his lips, he must have been imagining himself as a barge hauler—pulling on his rope while he nurtured in his breast the flame of the people’s wrath: I may be pulling on this rope now…

Behind him was some kind of scarecrow in white gaiters and a Tyrolean hat with a feather. He was staggering along, wiping away the black streaks on his cheeks with a fine suede glove and repeating, with a peasant accent: “Well, my dear brethren, seems we’ll be pulling on these ’ere straps till the end of our days!”

O emerged from the engine room. He was wearing a worker’s smock and was covered in soot.

“I think I’ve fixed it. I think I’ve fixed it. Now we’ve got a chance.”

He said something about a winch, and about some bearings, then slipped back into the engine room.

And then we heard a terrible groan, a howl, a grinding shriek, as if hundreds of goats and thousands of piglets had escaped from a torture chamber where they were being skinned alive. This had come from our funnel, now belching out black smoke. The funnel was breathing and bellowing; it was alive. The steamer shuddered. There was a squeal from the tiller chain—and the boat quietly began to turn.

“But we’re going backwards!”

“We’re moving! Without the tug!”

“Open se-e-e-a!”

Fyodor Volkenstein was standing beside me, watching a large steamer as it headed out. It was moving swiftly and freely.

“That’s the Caucasus,” he whispered, “on its way to Constantinople. It’s gone now…. It’s gone….”

After watching the ship for a long time, he said, “My little boy is on that ship. Will I ever see him again? Maybe only in twenty years’ time—and he won’t recognize me. Or maybe never.”[107]

Now we too were in the open sea. The steamer was shuddering gently, its propeller knocking away, its tiller chain grumbling. Waves were slapping firmly against the starboard side.

Gradually everything was falling into place. Up on the bridge appeared Captain Ryabinin. Short and slim, he looked like a boy cadet. Then the first mate appeared, followed by a few midshipmen and ship’s boys. O was in the engine room, along with some mechanics and technical students. The other officers were in the boiler room.

The passengers felt touched by the collective work being carried out by these volunteers. They were especially moved by the self-sacrificing conduct of the officers in the boiler room.

“They’ve burned holes in their clothes. They’ll have nothing to wear when we get back on shore.”

A committee was established—to collect money and clothes for those in need.

“We could declare a ‘Power to the Poor’ week,” someone suggested.

But this was rejected out of hand—the phrase had unpleasant associations.

“Why don’t we simply requisition linen and clothing?” someone else suggested. “We can organize flying squads.”

This met with horror and indignation: “What do you mean? That’s downright insulting! Whatever they need, we’ll gladly donate it…”

“All right, then we’re all agreed. We’ll each donate two hundred roubles, two changes of linen, and one suit to the officers now working in the boiler room.”

“Magnificent! Wonderful!”

“But… Excuse me,” said an all-too-familiar voice.

It was Excuse-Me-I’m-Berkin.

“Excuse me,” the voice went on, “but we really mustn’t be too hasty about these donations—the clothes might get spoiled down there in the boiler room, heaven forbid. We shall distribute them on our arrival in Novorossiisk—this will be significantly more convenient for all parties. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes!”

“Yes!” said the other passengers. “You’re right.” And off they all went, a look of relief on their faces.

Subsequently the sum of money to be donated by the grateful passengers kept dwindling. By the time we got to Sebastopol, people were talking about donating only linen and suits.

And by the time we reached Novorossiisk, even this had been forgotten.