Sources
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88

 
TAZARA ... a journey by rail through world-history © KJS / 2009

A Lenin-monument at a Russian railway station -44

CHAPTER 9  



„Not true — it hasn’t been only one rail-coach, it was a complete special train, and there was nothing sealed!”

What is this boy going to tell us? And how did he climb on the train?

„Well, I sneaked in — as I did then, at the railway-maintenance-point in Rastatt, Germany, during Easter holiday, in 1917.”

And you are … ?

„My name is: Emil Belzner ...

29 As grammar-school boys, we were sick and tired of Cesar and of history-lessons. Therefore, we cheerfully accepted to help during extended holidays along the station’s platforms, assisting within the Red Cross-rooms, in the waiting hall, which had been turned into a holding-facility for wounded soldiers, or even at the rail work itself.
All young teachers on probation, also the younger professors, had been called up. We were taught by old men who had returned, with patriotic delight, from retirement to the lecturing desk, or by some who were unfit for military service …
The field of honour had seen already many of those killed in action who, as top-form boys, were drafted for voluntary service. No one would fail exams once he had signed to serve after his matriculation … to meet his fate in action …”


Well, young man, you obviously survived in order to leave a footnote for posterity, a book about „love, power and revolution“, in which you succeeded — as we read in a review of the „Baseler National-Zeitung” — to combine „report and conjuration, phantasm and reflection” in a puzzling way. And in its prologue, you wrote yourself …

29 „To come across the universal soul, being perhaps an ideal of so many mechanical god-images, which leave the universe insecure and keep our fate dependent on coincidences, may look daring and ridiculous. However, it can happen to you, even as an ignorant passer-by in time.
You may come across the universal soul at heroic or at cosy places, on the battlefield or in front of that famous drinking hole, the historic Gasthof BLACK BEAR of Germany’s university-town Jena. I met it, unprepared, in a battered saloon-railway-car …”


„Yes, that’s what I wrote about that spring-time of 1917 — or, as it is written in the tradition of those century-old peasant-rules: April, April, is following its own will ...

29 I was detached as a volunteer to the railway-maintenance-point in Rastatt where I already had served during holidays at coalbunkers and at water-cranes, feeding steam-locomotives. But I was also well versed in using the long-handled hammer on the bearings of axletrees; the sound would give away whether they had heated up. I was familiar with coupling of these accordion-like connections between coaches exactly at the centre of their turntables. In addition, of course, I was used to jump artfully on and off slowly moving trains. Most importantly: we were in possession of a four-cornered key for all coaches and compartments, of a rail man’s cap and of an overall for a brakes man or a points man. There were nothing like barriers or shuttings for us. At night, we were provided with storm lanterns, which once used oil but during these war-days would shine rather meagrely as so-called Hindenburg-Lights (using carbide — the point man).
We had forgotten the class-inspection-book and the drill at the Grand Duke’s Gymnasium, now we were again busy at the Grand Duke’s railway, no matter what was coming for us. And it came.
Around midday, so was the rumour, a train would arrive from Switzerland — via Konstanz, Singen, Offenburg — a train with convicts escaped from Siberia, on their way back to Russia. Even the onward-route was whispered to us: Frankfurt, Berlin, Saßnitz-Ferry, Trelleborg, Stockholm, Petrograd. The Russian Tsar was overthrown, Kerensky, a common revolutionary, had taken power. That is what the newspapers wrote. Special editions reported Kerensky wanted to continue with the war. What all this had to do with the ex-prisoners from Siberia was unknown.
The train was delayed. A lazarett-train was given priority. The special train of some Crown Prince had already been positioned on the rails to Ötigheim. The special train from Switzerland was now parked on the same rail, and many officers from the Prince’s train jumped around in protest, but to no avail. Every army-transport had priority, and this Swiss combination had priority beyond all other priorities by highest order, signed by Ludendorff, by the army’s railway-commander, by the Empire’s Chancellor and by the Kaiser himself. Well, they surely would know what all this was about, wouldn’t they? A train with Russian convicts parked behind a train of a German Court’s Highness — how odd.

The train, coming from Switzerland, had developed a fault; it lost water from the kitchen-coach and from the heating system. Not good for connoisseurs of tea. In addition, one axletree had overheated. Specialists did repair from outside and had moved off.
That was our, that means my hour, my moment to grab an occasion. I handed over my empty grease-box to a trade-scholar from Karlsruhe who did voluntary service too, took my hammer and walked over to the Siberian prisoners. I had to see them. Escaped Siberian convicts, that was something monstrous for a sixteen-years-old, stimulating the phantasy like Negros, Indians or Australian aborigines.
The curtains were drawn at a carriage from which I heard voices, laughter, noise, commands, that was my impression. I used the long wooden handle of my hammer to knock against a window in the carriage’s centre. Immediately, the curtain parted. The far-away face of a demon appeared, not without kindness, not without sorrow. A powerful, strange conk hovered over me, looked down, first vexed then inpatient, a short smile, then he drew the curtain again. All of it very energetic, the anger and the smile as well.
Clouds of fog around me. A scene from a silent movie, spoilt by rain … but our railway-movie did not remain silent … Offhand, I jumped on the step of the carriage with the closed curtains which — by the way — was not sealed, only locked. I opened the door with my four-cornered key and closed from inside. At that moment, someone from behind and strong like a bear had me in the grip. He was the cook from the attached carriage who had seen me advancing. He took my hammer, shouted an Alemanic curse, locked the door with a similar key, took from his vest a pair of pliers and some lead and sealed the door from inside …“


And now, you are going to tell us, how this „powerful and strange conk” turned out to be the bald head of a known historic leader of a gang of Siberian ex-convicts, isn’t it … brooding over revolutionary strategies at the final destination of this mysterious train?
Well, we are browsing through your memoirs and establish with certain amusement: the old Emil Belzner had been, as the young Emil Belzner, much more fascinated by a complete different person travelling on this train. In April 1917, Lenin was accompanied by his mistress, the beautiful Inès Armand, and — already on page 12 — you received from her an apple and a kiss … and, on page 17, she will allow the puberty-ridden boy a much deeper glimpse … but, please, continue with your own words.


29 „She was really like a Muse, an unmarried Muse on whose bosom one is lying, in whose lap one is dreaming, who will have carried you and who has cared for you, and who suddenly says: Now jump, little one! And, without an opportunity to hold yourself, with no grip available, your are suddenly in the middle of life, much more advanced than years will tell. I had been not even 16 in that April. Still, I could say to have jumped onto this train as a frolicsome kid and to have, by travelling on this train, advanced myself by a whole century. There are tremendous speeds happening in the twinkling of an eye. If I would have seen her bare bosom, at this moment of inspiration I may have overlooked the whole state of the world and the whole creation-process of mankind — not only how it was done, but also: what it will do …“

What do we hear? Revolutionary ecstasy?

29 „Immense has been the desire aroused by her, I did not know immediately to whom she did belong to. For a grammar-school boy she was a real Muse, earthly and heavenly at the same time, daughter of Zeus and of the earth, full of memories of what has been and of what will be. Because what will be is a memory of wishes, we had. I did know much more than I know today. And, when she bent forward and I saw a snowy-bluish hint of two hemispheres, I was so excited that I could have torn everything from her body, not caring what was going around us. The train’s rattling sounded like incantations. Don’t you see where it is? She asked. — Yes, I see it, deep to the centre! — Ai! — I never heard such a fabulous animal-sound again. Then keep it! she said. — What are you doing there? the Duma-housekeeper asked. — I lost a small comb from my hair, my dear, and Emiljewitsch here did find it for me. And, she brushed my side when she took her seat again. Then, she tied her blouse, lenient with herself.”

The Duma-housekeeper! Duma, that was the Council of Peoples‘ Representatives during the revolutionary change in Russia. You, Emil Belzner, let us know only indirectly, that this plain but politically smart woman on the train has been the Krupskaja, the married wife to Lenin …

29 „He bent down to the older woman who worked on the Duma-housekeeper-book. I believe, Switzerland has been our final and efficient lesson, he said, the last revolutionary whistle — these profiteering none-warmongers, these chosen ones selected by the capital! She wiped his brilliantly formed baldness with a small cloth, with a cloth of tenderness, not with the hand. And he had a look at her housekeeper-book and said: The more provocateurs the better; the more of them abscond the more we will be secure: We can achieve it only with those few whose word and deed is one. These few are, for us, the victorious majority. Don’t glue to words, don’t glue to deeds, power is a mobile truth. Good that you have controlled even those who remained back, those who will come later. Yes, I read Malinowski, Roman Malinowski. With him, I am not sure. Malinowski could have been a scoundrel, an informer of the Tsar’s Third Department. An Ochrana-insertion into our party. Once his homesickness will drive him back, once he will be shot, a piece of me will be shot because I trusted him. He is a brilliant chess-player. He did beat me twice at a stone-table, during an afternoon, in Maxim Gorki’s garden on Capri. However, if he has to vanish, he has to once we shall be able to hold court.
To hold court, said a man who worked himself closer through bends and rattling impacts of the rails, a man with thick and heavy reading-glasses and side-whiskers led around his chin, a man who looked like those so-called extentialists which we saw around half a century later. A man who was Radek-Sobelsohn and who pulled a wrinkled edition of the ‚Petit Parisien‘ from his pocket: As soon as we are able to hold court, we shall have to trim our row. How it is with Trotsky, I don’t know. He seems to be still in America. That is a case for later; we have to agree on a probation period. He is knowledgeable in weapons and army-organisation. Perhaps, he will be indispensable, an Ikarus, who will drive the car of our revolution close to the sun and on a path around the globe — then he will break off and crash. I am of his tribe, and I have a presentiment of this tragedy.” …



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