Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/303

Rh adventures during the six days’ fighting. “Driving along, or waiting for a fare on the corner,” he said, “all of a sudden pooff! a cannon ball exploding here, pooff! a cannon ball there, ratt-ratt! a machine-gun… I gallop, the devils shooting all around. I get to a nice quiet street and stop, doze a little, pooff! another cannon ball, ratt-ratt… Devils! Devils! Devils! Brrr!”

In the centre of the town the snow-piled streets were quiet with the stillness of convalescence. Only a few arc-lights were burning, only a few pedestrians hurried along the side-walks. An icy wind blew from the great plain, cutting to the bone. At the first hotel we entered an office illuminated by two candles.

“Yes, we have some very comfortable rooms, but all the windows are shot out. If the gospodin does not mind a little fresh air…”

Down the Tverskaya the shop-windows were broken, and there were shell-holes and torn-up paving stones in the street. Hotel after hotel, all full, or the proprietors still so frightened that all they could say was, “No, no, there is no room! There is no room!” On the main streets, where the great banking-houses and mercantile houses lay, the Bolshevik artillery had been indiscriminately effective. As one Soviet official told me, “Whenever we didn’t know just where the yunkers and White Guards were, we bombarded their pocketbooks…”

At the big Hotel National they finally took us in; for we were foreigners, and the Military Revolutionary Committee had promised to protect the dwellings of foreigners… On the top floor the manager showed us where shrapnel had shattered several windows. “The animals!” said he, shaking his fist at imaginary Bolsheviki. “But wait! Their time will come; in just a few days now their ridiculous Government will fall, and then we shall make them suffer!”