Knight Without Armour

Among the commissary duties was that of visiting the prison and prison hospital, which were now under the control of the local Soviet. Both were small and crammed with White prisoners, most of whom were sullenly resigned to whatever fate might be in store for them. A few were defiant, exulting in the still-expected breakdown of the Revolution. Almost every day fresh arrivals were brought in by Red guards, and—as it were, to make room for them—others were removed by Baumberg’s orders, taken to the military camp, and shot. Baumberg never explained on what system he selected his victims; perhaps, indeed, he had no system at all. His ferocity was coldly impersonal; when he had done his day’s duty, including perhaps the ordering of half a dozen shootings for the morrow, he would go home to his daughter, who kept house for him, and play noisy capering games with his fatherless grand-children.

The White prisoners included a score or more women, who were lodged separately in a large overcrowded room. This was a thoroughly unsatisfactory arrangement, since the room was badly needed as a supplementary hospital ward for the male prisoners, many of whom were sick and wounded. Baumberg, though he would have scorned any idea of sex-distinction, did not in fact have any of the women shot, and was willing enough to allow the majority of them to be transferred to Omsk, where the prison was larger. This only stipulated exceptions were the two most distinguished captives, whom he wished to keep at Khalinsk, and who, after the departure of the rest, were transferred to separate cells. Both had been captured by A.J.’s men in the affair at Pokroevensk. The Countess Vandaroff was one, and A.J., who had the job of visiting her from time to time, soon recommended her transference to hospital, since she was clearly going out of her mind. The other woman prisoner was the Countess Marie Alexandra Adraxine. She was of a different type; calm, exquisitely dignified, she accepted favours and humiliations alike with slightly mocking nonchalance. When A.J. first visited her, she said: “Ah, Commissar, we have met before, I think? That morning at Pokroevensk—I dare say you remember?”

He said: “I have come to ask if you have any particular complaints—is your food satisfactory, and so on?”

“Oh, fairly so, in the circumstances. My chief wish is that there were fewer bugs in my mattress.”

“I will try to see that you have a fresh one, though of course I cannot promise that it will be perfectly clean.”

“Oh, I’m not fastidious—don’t think that.” She went to the narrow mattress by the wall of the cell and gave it a blow with her clenched fist. After a second or so a slowly spurting-red cascade issued from every rent and seam. “You see?” she said. “It’s the trivial things that really bother one most, isn’t it?”

The second time he paid her cell an official visit she thanked him for having replaced the mattress by a comparatively unverminous one. Then she said: “Have you any idea what is going to happen to me, Commissar?”

He shook his head. “It is altogether a matter for others to decide.”

“You think I shall be shot?”

“No women have been shot as yet.”

“Nevertheless, it is possible?”

“Oh, perfectly.”

“Would you approve?”

“I should not be asked either to approve or to disapprove.”

She seemed amused by his attitude. After that he did not again visit her alone, for he did not care to be asked questions which he could not answer.

As spring advanced it could be foreseen that events in the district were hastening to a further crisis. Along the whole length of the Trans-Siberian the Czecho-Slovak prisoners-of-war, whom the Petrograd government had promised a safe journey to Vladivostok, had seized trains and station depots. This comparatively small body of men, stretched out in tenuous formation for four thousand miles, was practically in possession of Siberia, and there was talk that the Allies, instead of letting them proceed across the Pacific, intended to use them to break the Soviets and re-form the eastern front against Germany. Simultaneously the forces of counter-revolution were again massing for an attack. In April the Reds began to send important political prisoners away from the endangered districts; the ex-Emperor was removed from Tobolsk for an unknown destination. From Khalinsk there would doubtless have been a big exodus but for a dispute between the district commissars of Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg as to who held authority over the town. Baumberg favoured Ekaterinburg; Vronstein preferred Siberian rule. A hot quarrel arose between the two officials, broken only by intermittent shootings that both could agree upon.