Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922.
VII. Passports12. Mohammed Bek Hadjetlache
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The interpreter translates, “I was a friend of Kornilov, he asks me what to do and I tell him.”
A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel … a projectile shape … a bald head hammered …
“Does he fight or do they put him in a cannon and shoot him at the enemy?”
This fly-by-night, this bull-roarer who knows everybody.
“I write forty books, history of Islam, history of Europe, true religion, scientific farming, I am the Roosevelt of the Caucasus, I go to America and ride horses in the moving pictures for $500,000, you get $50,000 …”
“I have 30,000 acres in the Caucasus, I have a stove factory in Petrograd the bolsheviks take from me, I am an old friend of the Czar, I am an old family friend of Clemenceau …”
These hands strangled three fellow workers for the czarist restoration, took their money, sent them in sacks to a river bottom … and scandalized Stockholm with his gang of strangler women.
Mid-sea strangler hands rise before me illustrating a wish, “I ride horses for the moving pictures in America, $500,000, and you get ten per cent …”
This rider of fugitive dawns.…