So the ghost of Engineer Zemlyanikov had returned again to the salons, and briefly threatened to undermine the fame of Rasputin. It was not too difficult to establish certain facts: Zemlyanikov had used his frequent trips abroad for thoroughly disloyal purposes; on his last return from Berlin, under the silk shirts and expensive suits in his black leather suitcases, the border police had discovered some fifty Brownings of German make. But what Marya Gregorovna couldn’t have known-and for its revelation, some twenty years had to elapse until the discovery of the Okhrana archives stolen by Ambassador Malakov)-elicited a much greater shock: Zemlyanikov was the organizer of and a participant in the famous "expropriation" of the mail car, when several million rubles came into the hands of the revolutionaries; in addition to the confiscated Brownings, he had on three separate occasions transported explosives and arms to Russia; as the editor of Eastern Dawn, which was printed on cigarette paper in a secret printing shop, he personally transported rubber stencils in his black suitcase; the spectacular assassinations of the last five or six years were his doing (they were different from all other assassinations: the bombs assembled in Zemlyamkov's secret workshop reduced their victims to a heap of bloody flesh); as a consequence of his arrogant behavior (doubtless simulated), the workers assigned to him hated him; by his own admission he dreamed of creating a bomb the size of a walnut but with tremendous destructive force (an ideal, they say, to which he came dangerously close ); the police believed him dead after the assassination of Governor von Launitz (three witnesses confirmed that the head displayed in an alcohol-filed jar was Zemlyanikov's; the appearance of the demonic Azef was needed to ascertain that the head in the alcohol, already somewhat shrunken, was not identical to the “Assyrian skull" of Zemlyanikov); he had escaped twice from prison and once from a labor camp (the first time by smashing through the wall of the prison cell; the second time by escaping during bathing rime, dressed as the prison supervisor whom he left naked); after his last arrest, he crossed the border in a Jewish one-horse cart, disguised as a traveling merchant, by way of the famous Vilkomirsky smugglers' road; he lived with a false passport under the name М. V. Zemlyanikov, but his real name was Boris Davidovich Malamud, alias B. D. Novsky,
After an obvious gap in our sources (with which we don't want to burden the reader, so he can retain a pleasant but false satisfaction in believing that this is a story like any other, which, fortunately for the author, is usually equated with the power of his imagination), we find him in an insane asylum in Malinovsk, among severely disturbed and dangerous lunatics, from which, disguised as a high school student, he escaped on a bicycle to Batum, Undoubtedly be faked his madness, its certification by two eminent doctors notwithstanding; even the police were aware of this, retaining the two doctors as sympathizers of the Revolution. His later whereabouts are more or less known: one early September morning in 1913, just before dawn, Novsky boarded a ship and, hidden among tons of eggs, headed for Paris via Constantinople. There, during the day we find him in the Russian library on the Avenue des Gobelins and in the Musée Guimet, where be studied the philosophy of history and religion; and in the evening, in La Rotonde in Montparnasse with a glass of beer, wearing "the most elegant hat to be found in all Paris.” (Bruce Lockhart's allusion to Novsky s hat is not, however, without its political Implications: it is common knowledge that Novsky was a functionary of the powerful union of Jewish hatmakers in France.) After the declaration of war, he disappeared from Montparnasse. The police found him in the vineyards near Montpellier during the harvest season, with a basket of ripe grapes in his arms: this time, putting handcuffs on his wrists was not difficult. Whether Novsky escaped from France or was expelled is not known. We do know that he soon appeared in Berlin as one of the collaborators on the Social Democratic papers Neue Zeitung and Leipziger Volkzeitung under the pseudonyms B. N. Dolsky, Parabellum, Victor Tverdohlebov, Proletarsky, and N. L. Davidovich, and that, among other things, he wrote a famous review of Max Schippel's The History of the Production of Sugar. “He was,” writes the Austrian Socialist Oscar Blum, “a strange mixture of amorality, cynicism, and spontaneous enthusiasm for ideas, books, music, and human beings. He looked, I’d say, like a cross between a professor and a bandit. But his intellectual brio was unquestionable. That virtuoso of Bolshevik journalism knew how to conduct conversations which were as full of explosives as his editorials." (The word "explosives” leads us to the bold conclusion that Oscar Blum might have been acquainted with the secret life of Novsky. Unless it is only a matter of inadvertent metaphor.) In Berlin at the outbreak of war, when the workers who rallied to the flag resembled ghosts, and cabarets full of thick cigar smoke resounded with female shrieks, and all that cannon fodder tried to drown its fears and despair in beer and schnapps, Novsky, Blum adds, was the only one who didn't lose his head in this European madhouse, the only one with a clear perspective.
On a bright autumn day, while lunching at the salon of the famous Davos Sanatorium in Basel, where he was undergoing treatment for his nerves and his slightly tubercular lungs, Novsky was visited by one of the members of the International named Levin. Dr. Grünwald approached them; he was Swiss, a disciple and friend of Jung, an authority in his field. According to Levin's testimony, the conversation was about the weather (the sunny October), about music (a recent concert given by a woman patient), about death (her musical soul had expired the night before). Between the meat and quince compote, served them by a waiter wearing a uniform and white gloves. Dr. Grünwald, losing the thread of the conversation, said in his nasal voice (only to fill an awkward silence): "There's some kind of revolution in St, Petersburg" (A pause.) The spoon in Levin's hand stopped in mid-air; Novsky started, and reached for his cigar. Dr. Grünwald felt a certain uneasiness. Trying to infuse his voice with absolute indifference, Novsky attempted to calm his trembling hands. "Excuse me. Where did you hear that?" As if apologizing, Dr. Grünwald said that he had seen the news that morning posted in the windows of the telegraph bureau in town. Without waiting for coffee, deathly pale, Novsky and Levin quickly left the salon and went into town by taxi. "I heard as if dazed,” writes Levin, "the murmur coming from the salon, accompanied by the din of silver utensils like the tinkling of bells, and saw as through a fog the world we had left behind, and which was irretrievably sinking Into the past, as into murky water".
Some documents lead us to conclude that Novsky, swept away by a wave of nationalism and bitterness, received the news of the truce, in spite of everything, as a blow. Levin speaks of a nervous crisis, and Meisnerova passes over this period with the haste of an accomplice. It seems, however, that without great resistance Novsky dropped his Mauser and, as a sign of remorse, burned the plans of his assault bombs and his 70-meter flame throwers, and joined the ranks of the Internationalists. Soon we find him, tireless and ubiquitous, among the supporters of the Brest-Litovsk peace, distributing antiwar propaganda leaflets, and, as a fiery agitator among the soldiers, standing on boxes of artillery shells, erect as a statue. In this quick and, so to speak, painless transformation of Novsky, a certain woman appears to have played a major role. In the chronicles of the Revolution, her name is recorded: Zinaida Mihailovna Maysner. A certain Leo Mikulin, who had the misfortune of falling in love with her, has portrayed her with words that could easily have been engraved on marble: “Nature gave her everything: intelligence, talent, beauty."