The Hohenzollerns in America<br />With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and Other Impossibilities, Stephen Leacock [crime books to read txt] 📗

"I know," I said; "your four sons are in the German Navy. It is enough. Can you take me to the Leader?"

"I can and will," said the official. "He is sitting now in the Free Palace of all the German People, once usurped by the Hohenzollern Tyrant. The doors are guarded by machine guns. But I can take you direct from here through a back way. Come."

We passed out from the station, across a street and through a maze of little stairways, and passages into the heart of the great building that had been the offices of the Imperial Government.

"Enter this room. Do not knock," said my guide. "Good bye."

In another moment I found myself face to face with the chief comrade of the Bolsheviks.

He gave a sudden start as he looked at me, but instantly collected himself.

He was sitting with his big boots up on the mahogany desk, a cigar at an edgeways angle in his mouth. His hair under his sheepskin cap was shaggy, and his beard stubbly and unshaven. His dress was slovenly and there was a big knife in his belt. A revolver lay on the desk beside him. I had never seen a Bolshevik before but I knew at sight that he must be one.

"You say you were here in Berlin once before?" he questioned, and he added before I had time to answer: "When you speak don't call me 'Excellency' or 'Sereneness' or anything of that sort; just call me 'brother' or 'comrade.' This is the era of freedom. You're as good as I am, or nearly."

"Thank you," I said.

"Don't be so damn polite," he snarled. "No good comrade ever says 'thank you.' So you were here in Berlin before?"

"Yes," I answered, "I was here writing up Germany from Within in the middle of the war."

"The war, the war!" he murmured, in a sort of wail or whine. "Take notice, comrade, that I weep when I speak of it. If you write anything about me be sure to say that I cried when the war was mentioned. We Germans have been so misjudged. When I think of the devastation of France and Belgium I weep."

He drew a greasy, red handkerchief from his pocket and began to sob. "To think of the loss of all those English merchant ships!"

"Oh, you needn't worry," I said, "it's all going to be paid for."

"Oh I hope so, I do hope so," said the Bolshevik chief. "What a regret it is to us Germans to think that unfortunately we are not able to help pay for it; but you English—you are so generous—how much we have admired your noble hearts—so kind, so generous to the vanquished..."

His voice had subsided into a sort of whine.

But at this moment there was a loud knocking at the door. The Bolshevik hastily wiped the tears from his face and put away his handkerchief.

"How do I look?" he asked anxiously. "Not humane, I hope? Not soft?"

"Oh, no," I said, "quite tough."

"That's good," he answered. "That's good. But am I tough ENOUGH?"

He hastily shoved his hands through his hair.

"Quick," he said, "hand me that piece of chewing tobacco. Now then. Come in!"

The door swung open.

A man in a costume much like the leader's swaggered into the room. He had a bundle of papers in his hands, and seemed to be some sort of military secretary.

"Ha! comrade!" he said, with easy familiarity. "Here are the death warrants!"

"Death warrants!" said the Bolshevik. "Of the leaders of the late Revolution? Excellent! And a good bundle of them! One moment while I sign them."

He began rapidly signing the warrants, one after the other.

"Comrade," said the secretary in a surly tone, "you are not chewing tobacco!"

"Yes I am, yes I am," said the leader, "or, at least, I was just going to."

He bit a huge piece out of his plug, with what seemed to me an evident distaste, and began to chew furiously.

"It is well," said the other. "Remember comrade, that you are watched. It was reported last night to the Executive Committee of the Circle of the Brothers that you chewed no tobacco all day yesterday. Be warned, comrade. This is a free and independent republic. We will stand for no aristocratic nonsense. But whom have you here?" he added, breaking off in his speech, as if he noticed me for the first time. "What dog is this?"

"Hush," said the leader, "he is a representative of the foreign press, a newspaper reporter."

"Your pardon," said the secretary. "I took you by your dress for a prince. A representative of the great and enlightened press of the Allies, I presume. How deeply we admire in Germany the press of England! Let me kiss you."

"Oh, don't trouble," I said, "it's not worth while."

"Say, at least, when you write to your paper, that I offered to kiss you, will you not?"

Meantime, the leader had finished signing the papers. The secretary took them and swung on his heels with something between a military bow and a drunken swagger. "Remember, comrade," he said in a threatening tone as he passed out, "you are watched."

The Bolshevik leader looked after him with something of a shudder.

"Excuse me a moment," he said, "while I go and get rid of this tobacco."

He got up from his chair and walked away towards the door of an inner room. As he did so, there struck me something strangely familiar in his gait and figure. Conceal it as he might, there was still the stiff wooden movement of a Prussian general beneath his assumed swagger. The poise of his head still seemed to suggest the pointed helmet of the Prussian. I could without effort imagine a military cloak about his shoulders instead of his Bolshevik sheepskin.

Then, all in a moment, as he re-entered the room, I recalled exactly who he was.

"My friend," I said, reaching out my hand, "pardon me for not knowing you at once. I recognize you now..."

"Hush," said the Bolshevik. "Don't speak! I never saw you in my life."

"Nonsense," I said, "I knew you years ago in Canada when you were disguised as a waiter. And you it was who conducted me through Germany two years ago when I made my war visit. You are no more a Bolshevik than I am. You are General Count Boob von Boobenstein."

The general sank down in his chair, his face pale beneath its plaster of rouge.

"Hush!" he said. "If they learn it, it is death."