to death when they found him and brought him back to less squalid surroundings. They brought a doctor, who provided them with medicine and some carbolic acid to clean and sterilize his skin. The doctor warned them that Vadim was approaching the crisis in his fever. During that night, Vadim’s mother knew that the crisis must have arrived as his temperature dropped rapidly. She poured what she thought was the medicine down his throat, but in her flustered state she had picked up the carbolic acid. It began to burn his insides. Somebody found some milk once they realized what had happened and that soothed the delirious boy a little. And they then gave him the right medicine. Kachalov maintained his self-control with irony. ‘You know, this has the air of a rather vulgar melodrama,’ he announced. ‘A mother, who has been waiting desperately for her son, poisons him on the very first night of his return. This just isn’t possible in real life.’ They nursed Vadim back to health, but even after all his experiences, the boy did not want to let go of his pistol.
As the Red armies advanced in February 1920, the Kachalov group had only one route of escape left. It lay south across the Caucasus. They moved first to Ekaterinodar, but that, they realized, would also be attacked before long. Fortunately, the director of the State Theatre in Tiflis, capital of the now independent Georgian Republic, had studied with the Moscow Art Theatre and was delighted to provide an official invitation.
To get to Tiflis they had to return to Novorossiisk in a goods train. They hoped to find a boat there to take them down the Black Sea coast to Georgia. Vadim Shverubovich, now fully recovered, described Aunt Olya in a coal wagon, sitting erect on a suitcase, reading a book in a gilt morocco binding, oblivious to the dirt, the bitter wind and the sound of gunfire in the distance. Novorossiisk was already filling rapidly with refugees and no ship’s captain was keen to take a company of actors with their costumes and props, however much they pleaded. Finally, the master of an Italian steamer took them on as deck passengers and they escaped the growing horrors of the port.
In the course of the next two weeks, abandoned weapons and the corpses of White officers and civilians, killed in their thousands by typhus, cold and starvation, marked the route to Novorossiisk. Survival depended upon getting on one of the French or British ships in the harbour before the Reds surrounded the town and bombarded the port. Some 50,000 troops were evacuated by the end of March 1920, but a further 60,000 military personnel and countless civilians were left behind once the Red forces arrived and brought up artillery. Allied warships fired salvoes of covering fire as the last ships hauled in their gangplanks. Thousands of screaming people on the quayside, including mothers with babies, begged the ships’ crews to save them. Cossacks shot their horses down by the harbour as if this would somehow oblige the foreign ships to take them away. Scores committed suicide, either throwing themselves into the icy water or blowing their brains out.
The arrival of the Kachalov group in Georgia, and the welcome accorded them in the delightful city of Tiflis, made their recent experiences seem like a bad dream. It was spring and the Georgians were generous with their excellent food and wines. Aunt Olya was suffering badly from arthritis, especially in her hands. This had not been helped by months of living off horsemeat and no vegetables. The contrast with Bolshevik Russia made Georgia seem a paradise, but she was again afflicted by an acute homesickness for the Art Theatre in Moscow and a longing to revisit her husband’s grave in the Novodeviche cemetery. Tiflis had many Russian refugees, and their performances at the State Theatre were eagerly attended. But the Kachalov group knew that they could not stay, nor could they return northwards through the Caucasus. Terrible
As the Red armies advanced in February 1920, the Kachalov group had only one route of escape left. It lay south across the Caucasus. They moved first to Ekaterinodar, but that, they realized, would also be attacked before long. Fortunately, the director of the State Theatre in Tiflis, capital of the now independent Georgian Republic, had studied with the Moscow Art Theatre and was delighted to provide an official invitation.
To get to Tiflis they had to return to Novorossiisk in a goods train. They hoped to find a boat there to take them down the Black Sea coast to Georgia. Vadim Shverubovich, now fully recovered, described Aunt Olya in a coal wagon, sitting erect on a suitcase, reading a book in a gilt morocco binding, oblivious to the dirt, the bitter wind and the sound of gunfire in the distance. Novorossiisk was already filling rapidly with refugees and no ship’s captain was keen to take a company of actors with their costumes and props, however much they pleaded. Finally, the master of an Italian steamer took them on as deck passengers and they escaped the growing horrors of the port.
In the course of the next two weeks, abandoned weapons and the corpses of White officers and civilians, killed in their thousands by typhus, cold and starvation, marked the route to Novorossiisk. Survival depended upon getting on one of the French or British ships in the harbour before the Reds surrounded the town and bombarded the port. Some 50,000 troops were evacuated by the end of March 1920, but a further 60,000 military personnel and countless civilians were left behind once the Red forces arrived and brought up artillery. Allied warships fired salvoes of covering fire as the last ships hauled in their gangplanks. Thousands of screaming people on the quayside, including mothers with babies, begged the ships’ crews to save them. Cossacks shot their horses down by the harbour as if this would somehow oblige the foreign ships to take them away. Scores committed suicide, either throwing themselves into the icy water or blowing their brains out.
The arrival of the Kachalov group in Georgia, and the welcome accorded them in the delightful city of Tiflis, made their recent experiences seem like a bad dream. It was spring and the Georgians were generous with their excellent food and wines. Aunt Olya was suffering badly from arthritis, especially in her hands. This had not been helped by months of living off horsemeat and no vegetables. The contrast with Bolshevik Russia made Georgia seem a paradise, but she was again afflicted by an acute homesickness for the Art Theatre in Moscow and a longing to revisit her husband’s grave in the Novodeviche cemetery. Tiflis had many Russian refugees, and their performances at the State Theatre were eagerly attended. But the Kachalov group knew that they could not stay, nor could they return northwards through the Caucasus. Terrible
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