From President to Prison/Chapter 34

by Ferdinand Ossendowski and Lewis Stanton Palen

CHAPTER XXXIV

 

THE FETTERS CUT

 

AGAIN I went to Professor Zaleski. Human nature is very strange. When I lived with Professor Zaleski before, I was always invited by him to luncheon and dinner and accepted his invitations without scruple, as I knew that I was able to extend the same courtesies to my old friend and patron. But after my return from Kieff, with very little hope of improving my situation and almost destitute,—as those seven roubles were not sufficient capital to insure me against the morrow,—I became very touchy and felt that I was then a burden for Zaleski, an intruder into his quiet home; that I was exploiting him and that to accept his hospitality under these circumstances was shameless and unwarrantable.

Consequently I changed my whole mode of living. I never have been what one would call rich, yet I have always possessed enough to permit me to lead the life of a cultured man, as I have worked since I was twelve years old and, therefore, both know how to work and am inured to it. But, after the blot of this prison term on my existence, I found the tools of life knocked from my hands and myself left weak, without the ability to help by my own conscientious effort. It was the revenge of the Tsar's Government and the pusillanimity of those who could have helped me by giving me work but who were afraid of the police that killed the hope in me.

I had seven roubles and must watch every kopeck, and I wanted to accept nothing from Zaleski. I quitted the house in the morning while the Professor was still asleep and left a card with the servant, telling him that I should not be back for luncheon or dinner. I tramped from one factory to another, then from one office to another, but nowhere was there any work for me. I did not write to my mother, as I did not wish to give her pain or thoughts that would rob her of her peace. I dined in a far from premier rang restaurant, where my meal cost me fifteen kopecks (seven and a half cents). When I returned home in the evening, I always put on a bold face and appeared as care-free and cheerful as I could before the Professor.

One evening I happened to have come in before he had arrived, but in a very few minutes he burst into the hall and began calling me. I ran to him and was struck by the picture of the waving white locks and the over-excited eyes of my usually calm old patron.

"Read, read!" he almost shouted, as he handed me the evening paper.

He pointed out to me an item in the column of city accidents, which he had underscored with red. There was the news that my former employer, the owner of the asphalt factory, while driving through the Nevsky Prospect, had been seized with a fit of apoplexy and had died immediately afterwards.

"You're a sorcerer!" exclaimed Zaleski, as I finished reading. "You foretold death for him, and he seemed in a great hurry to verify your prophecy."

But this did not alter at all my material state, and I found myself wandering through the town the following morning quite as usual and dreaming about a dinner for fifteen kopecks. An incident occurred on this particular day which dealt a new blow to my suffering and ever increasingly hopeless soul. I happened upon two acquaintances in the street who pretended not to have recognized me. However, when I went up to them, one of them warned me:

"Don't stop and speak with us! Such a persecution has been organized by the police for those who have any intercourse with political prisoners or the anti-Government leaders that to be caught talking with you or to acknowledge acquaintance with you can bring us into serious trouble. We are very sorry, but you realize that we must think of ourselves and of our families." And with this they hurried away without looking behind.

Then it is a fact! I am as one tainted or as a leper. Men are afraid of me. And, allied by such thoughts as these, despair took a still stronger hold on my soul. I saw only misery before me. Who would give me work under such systematized persecution by the police? It seemed as though an unscalable wall had been set across my path of life.

That evening, while I was scanning the newspapers in the study of Professor Zaleski, I saw an advertisement to the effect that a certain Mr. Rass was starting a newspaper and desired some additional assistants on his staff. The idea at once struck me of going and offering the services of my pen. Without losing any time, I got up and went at once.

In the editorial rooms I was met by a stout, witty, very self-possessed, good-fellow sort of an individual.

"Oh, I have heard about you!" he gave me in welcome. Feeling rather confident that he greeted everyone in the same way, I did not stop to discuss his knowledge of my career, which was rather oppressing me by its insistent intrusion into my affairs, but turned at once to take up matters of business.

"Write me something gay and satirical, as I, who can always spot my man, perceive that you are a very humorous character," came from the editor between the puffs of his cigar.

"Very well, and when am I to bring it to you?"

"To-morrow afternoon at two. I shall pay you on Monday, as the first number of my newspaper, called Dawn, will appear on all the news stands on Sunday. Oh, I shall make quite a change in the journalism of to-day, quite a change, I assure you; for I have a very unusual staff, quite exceptional in fact."

Until late in the night I wrote a gay, satirical feuilleton. Through it I laughed at everything; consequently I laughed at my hunger, my despair, my disenchantment; about the pusillanimity and the baseness in men; about fortunate and unfortunate ones; about life and even about death. Only a man who was really hungry could have written in such a careless and flippant manner.

The editor was enchanted—but I had two days to wait for my pay and only forty kopecks left as working capital to finance my operations of life for the interim.

Finally Monday came and I hurried to the editorial rooms of Dawn little behind its diurnal namesake. The door was open, and the janitor was sweeping papers out of the rooms, from which all the furniture had disappeared.

"Where is Mr. Rass?" I queried, feeling my legs giving way underneath me.

"He went away without paying us a kopeck," the man answered with a curse.

I wandered out into the street and began inquiring among the news-dealers about this weekly Dawn, which was to have made such a change in the journalistic literature of the capital. Nobody seemed to have heard anything about it, and only later I learned that Rass had received a license to publish a weekly, had collected money for advertisements and had disappeared, leaving behind him a heap of manuscripts among which was one entitled "Gay Thoughts Upon Sad Matters."

This event was the last straw. For two days I ate nothing, spent all the time in the parks, thinking about nothing, dreaming about nothing; and, if I was conscious of a thought, I would hear myself repeating:

"Now I understand you! Now I understand!"

It was clear that my thoughts swung continuously back to the prison and were picturing those whom life, in merciless disregard, had pushed to the final fall, when their thoughts and wishes were dominated by hunger, hate and revenge.

At the close of these involuntary fast days I went back to the Professor's house late in the evening after he was asleep. On the third day I rose as usual and went to the park, where I sat on a bench and looked straight ahead of me without purpose or feeling. Carts, carriages and motors rolled by; crowds of people streamed along in front of me; laughter, gay conversation, church bells and the warble of birds mingled with thousands of others to make up the world of meaningless sounds. I understood clearly that all this was not for me, that I must look upon it as out of another world. The shadow of Drujenin passed before my eyes and, in spite of myself, I envied him for having broken the chain that bound him to the galling ball of life.

Near me on the bench was a young man, light-hearted and laughing, and with him a girl with happy, sparkling eyes. I again had the distinct impression of being in another world, strange to all those who surrounded me. I felt that they certainly did not see me, that I was, as it were, an imperceptible shadow.

"You will endure everything, my son," suddenly floated in to me, as though across the thin ether from that other world in which I had once known a mother.

Involuntarily I smiled and said aloud:

"Mother, do you see, I cannot endure, I cannot!"

"What did you say?" asked the young man, looking at me with astonishment.

With difficulty I got up and wandered off, without any aim and without conscious thought. I had no idea where I was going or how long I had been walking away from the answer to that question, and only a puff of unusually cold air brought me to myself again.

I looked around and found myself on a bridge crossing the Neva. I stopped and leaned over the railing. Already the sun had dropped below the horizon, which one never sees in the big towns, and darkness began to crawl out from all the alleyways and the river ends of passages and drains. I felt a disagreeable gnawing of hunger in my stomach and a terrible void in my breast. I felt as though I had no heart or lungs in my chest, only the void left by the consuming ravages of despair.

And then through the railings I saw the river, deep and swift, flowing in mad, angry swirls of protest at being confined by granite walls and split by piers of stone, speeding down to gain the freedom of the sea. Lashing the bridge pillars with loud and foaming splashes, madly it beat against the stones and retreated in whirlpools of foam and a chaos of baffled movement.

Under its influence decision sprang up within me, dictating the last violent act that should relieve me of all pain and suffering, of my hopeless strife against the dominating power that built these bridges and forged chains around subject peoples as unbreakable as these foundations of stone, that always faced and baffled the futile efforts of the stream.

I had raised one foot to the rail to bend back and jump into the water. In my mind was the thought that the swirling current would catch me and carry me underneath the bridge and down the hundred yards to a group of anchored barges, loaded with logs and planks, where I would be quickly sucked down beneath the hulls and into the network of anchors and chains and be freed from all my physical and mental strife.

Another moment and I should have been in the water, but just at that instant I was held by a piercing cry that came from directly behind me. I shuddered and looked around, to see a man, poorly clad and desperate with despair, climb abruptly over the bridge rail and jump into the water. Without even stopping to look for him, I ran across to the down-stream side of the bridge, where there was some life-saving apparatus, and began throwing into the stream some big cork balls and a life ring that hung beside them.

Once I had these overboard, I looked down and saw the man floating along, helplessly and frantically waving his arms, whenever he came to the surface, and shouting the frightened appeals of a despairing drowning man. In a second he caught sight of the life ring just a few yards below him and struggled, with awkward, unskilled movements, to try to keep himself afloat until he could reach it. At the same time a lifeboat of the river police shot out from down below, in response to the cries of the guard on the bridge, and shortly pulled him out, pale, trembling and dumb with fright.

When the boat came ashore, I went down and looked into the eyes of the rescued man. He seemed then very close to me, as we had stood together in the face of death and he had essayed the contest first. I was astonished, as I read in his eyes such a wish for life and such a joy that I had the impression I even heard his triumphal cry on his return to men, to the movement of the world and to the struggle for existence.

I felt no more hunger or despair. I had no idea yet as to what I was to do or what was to become of me; but I seemed sure that God would not allow me to perish, as He had not permitted this second unfortunate being to end his life in a moment of despondency and gloom.

I left the bridge and went back in the direction of the park. There in front of me was an electric sign, intermittently flashing the words "Coillou's Cigarette Tubes." Hardly conscious of what I was doing, I read the address of the factory and went all the way across to the other end of the town to search it out. The factory office was already closed, but I succeeded in convincing the gateman that I must see the manager at once to talk with him about an urgent matter. In a few minutes I was standing in the administration office before a red-haired, pale and sallow man, sitting behind a big desk.

"What do you want?"

"Am I speaking to the manager?"

"Yes," he answered, surveying me attentively.

"I beg your pardon for coming to you out of office hours, but I am forced to do it, as I want work."

"We have no vacancy," he grunted. "And, besides, why did you come to us? Are you a specialist in this sort of manufacturing?"

"I don't know why, but something dictated to me that I come here," I answered and then told him about my former life and my present straits.

"Unfortunately we have no work for a chemist," he finally said as a regretful ultimatum.

"I beg your pardon for having disturbed you," I half whispered and rose to go out, when the manager stopped me with the words:

"Please wait a moment. I shall return at once."

Almost immediately he did come back with a second gentleman, who turned out to be the owner of the factory.

"My chief wants to make a proposal to you for a piece of work to be undertaken at your own risk. Do you understand?"

"What is it?" I asked with something between enthusiasm and despair.

"A firm, which is competing with ours, makes cigarette tubes with a cotton insert that absorbs the nicotine. How they prepare this cotton is their secret. If you could develop something similar, we should at once pay you five hundred roubles and should give you one thousand roubles annually for a period of ten years. What do you think? But I repeat once more that all the laboratory expenses are for your account, whether you succeed or not."

After finishing his sentence, the manager looked at me with questioning eyes and wondered evidently whether I had any experience to go on. I realized at once what cotton was needed for absorbing the poisonous alkaloid of nicotine and already saw myself completing the experiment and earning food.

"I have every reason to believe the work will be successful," was my verbal answer; whereas my actions hardly supported my declaration, as I suddenly felt an irresistible dizziness coming over me and fell, almost fainting, into the chair behind me.

"What's the matter? What ails you?" asked the frightened manufacturers, as they chafed my hands and gave me water.

"I felt faint."

"Are you ill?" the manager asked.

"I am hungry," was the unwilling answer which my pride permitted my sincerity to release.

These two manufacturers were generous and noble men, whose names I cannot refrain from giving, as I feel that I owe to them so much more than they ever realized from my ordinary expressions of gratitude during the days we worked together. One was Mr. Francis Coillou, the other Mr. M. A. Shapliguin.

For three days they fed me and cared for me, all in a most delicate manner, as I would not accept money from them. I had gone right to work in Professor Zaleski's laboratory on my experiments. My theoretical assumptions proved correct in practice, as I developed a cotton that absorbed twenty-five per cent, of nicotine. I asked Professor Zaleski to check my results and give me a certificate of his findings. As his examination of my compound verified my own claims, I was that same day armed with his regular professional statement and, after having given my cotton a nice pink hue, I took it at once along to the factory.

When the Municipal Chemical Laboratory tested my samples, they reported that it absorbed thirty per cent, of the nicotine, which was ten per cent, more than the amount retained by the cotton of the rival firm. On the following day I was already a rich man, for the firm immediately paid me the five hundred rouble bonus and another five hundred as a half of the first year's royalty, which not only made me sure about the morrow but of many to-morrows and gave me the necessary opportunity to look around and seek for a stable and satisfactory means of livelihood.

Out of those indescribably trying and soul-searching days, when the whole weight of the Tsar's machine seemed bent upon crushing the life out of me, two glaringly significant and incongruous facts burned themselves into my memory and my soul. The first was that, try as all the previously proud strength of my mind and body could, I had not been able "to endure" and to respond to that voice of my mother which floated in to me, as I sat in hunger and despair on the park bench. The second was that Chance should have taken the credit of accomplishing that which all my physical, mental and spiritual effort could not effect, and that two men, of whose existence I did not previously even know, and a handful of pink cotton should have proved themselves able to change the whole course of my life.

It seemed as though some Power, not within myself and greater far, were seeking to give me a final lesson of sympathy and understanding for the other atoms of Human Dust to whom Chance had not come with a ball of pink cotton and who were not one whit weaker than I had proved myself to be.

Often afterwards, when working in the laboratory or at my desk, I thought that the most thrilling and trying experiences of life were already behind me.

I did not dream then that I should one day come face to face with beasts, men and gods, who were to embody all the extreme and incredible passions and powers of the mundane universe; that I should again have to wander through the marshes and meshes of Oriental lands and strange events. I had no thought that it would be ordained that I should be immersed and swept on in the wildest maelstrom of modern madness and perverted psychic impulses; and that, from right out of the centre of millions of perishing men, I should be filched from the struggling mass by a whirling eddy of Chance and be thrown up on the shore such as I am, sound in mind and body, not afraid to fight and possessed of the strong conviction that

 

Life is the beautiful gift of Almighty God.