Next day I told him I had decided not to go to Finland because I was thinking of going to Moscow.
“Madame Marsh has not been moved fromNo. 2 Goróhovaya,” declared the little Policeman as I sat opposite him in his fetid den. “Her case is in abeyance, and will doubtless remain so for some time. Since they learned of Marsh’s flight they have left her alone. They may perhaps forget all about her. Now, I think, is the time to act.”
“What will they do to her if her case comes on again?”
“It is too early yet to conjecture.”
It was shortly before Christmas that the Policeman began to grow nervous and excited, and I could see that his emotion was real. His plan for Mrs. Marsh’s escape was developing, occupying his whole mind and causing him no small concern. Every day I brought him some little present, such as cigarettes, sugar, or butter, procured from Maria, so that he should have fewer household cares to worry over. At last I became almost as wrought up as he was himself, while Maria, whom I kept informed, was in a constant state of tremor resulting from her fever of anxiety.
December 18th dawned bleak and raw. The wind tore in angry gushes round the corners of the houses, snatching up the sandy snow, and flinging it viciously in the half-hidden faces of hurrying, harassed pedestrians.Toward noon the storm abated, and Maria and I set out together for a neighbouring market-place. We were going to buy a woman’s cloak, for that night I was to take Mrs. Marsh across the frontier.
The corner of the Kuznetchny Pereulok and the Vladimirovsky Prospect has been a busy place for “speculators” ever since private trading was prohibited. Even on this bitter winter day there were the usual lines of wretched people standing patiently, disposing of personal belongings or of food got by foraging in the country. Many of them were women of the educated class, selling off their last possessions in the effort to scrape together sufficient to buy meagre provisions for themselves or their families. Either they were unable to find occupation or were here in the intervals of work. Old clothing, odds and ends of every description, crockery, toys, nick-nacks, clocks, books, pictures, paper, pots, pans, pails, pipes, post-cards—the entire paraphernalia of antiquarian and second-hand dealers’ shops—could here be found turned out on to the pavements.
Maria and I passed the people selling sugar by the lump, their little stock of four or five lumps exposed on outstretched palms. We also passed the herrings, and the “bread patties” of greenish colour. Passers-by would pick up a patty, smell it, and if they did not like it, would put it back and try the next. Maria was making for the old clothing, and as we pushed through the crowd we kept eyes and ears open for warning of a possible raid, for from time to time bands of guards would make a sudden dash at the “speculators,” arrest a few unlucky ones, and disperse the rest.
Maria soon found what she wanted—a warm cloak which had evidently seen better days. The tired eyesof the tall, refined lady from whom we bought it opened wide as I immediately paid the first price she asked.
“Je vous remercie, Madame,” I said, and as Maria donned the cloak and we moved away the look of scorn on the lady’s face passed into one of astonishment.
“Don’t fail to have tea ready at five, Maria,” I said as we returned.
“Am I likely to fail, Ivan Ilitch?”
We sat and waited. The minutes were hours, the hours days. At three I said: “I am going now, Maria.” Biting her fingers, Maria stood trembling as I left her and set out to walk across the town.
The dingy interior of the headquarters of the Extraordinary Commission, with its bare stairs and passages, is an eerie place at all times of the year, but never is its sombre, sorrow-laden gloom so intense as on a December afternoon when dusk is sinking into darkness. While Maria and I, unable to conceal our agitation, made our preparations, there sat in one of the inner chambers atNo. 2 Goróhovayaa group of women, from thirty to forty in number. Their faces were undistinguishable in the growing darkness as they sat in groups on the wooden planks which took the place of bedsteads. The room was over-heated and nauseatingly stuffy, but the patient figures paid no heed, nor appeared to care whether it be hot or cold, dark or light. A few chatted in undertones, but most of them sat motionless and silent, waiting, waiting, endlessly waiting.
The terror-hour had not yet come—it came only at seven each evening. The terror-hour was more terrible in the men’s chambers, where the toll was greater, but it visited the women, too. Then, everyvictim knew that if the heavy door was opened and his name called, he passed out into eternity. For executions were carried out in the evening and the bodies removed at night.
At seven o’clock, all talk, all action ceased. Faces set, white and still, fixed on the heavy folding-door. When it creaked every figure became a statue, a death-statue, stone-livid, breathless, dead in life. A moment of ghastly, intolerable suspense, a silence that could be felt, and in the silence—a name. And when the name was spoken, every figure—but one—would imperceptibly relapse. Here and there a lip would twitch, here and there a smile would flicker. But no one would break the dead silence. One of their number was doomed.
The figure that bore the spoken name would rise, and move, move slowly with a wooden, unnatural gait, tottering along the narrow aisle between the plank couches. Some would look up and some would look down; some, fascinated, would watch the dead figure pass; and some would pray, or mutter, “To-morrow, maybe, I.” Or there would be a frantic shriek, a brutal struggle, and worse than Death would fill the chamber, till where two were, one only would be left, heaving convulsively, insane, clutching the rough woodwork with bleeding nails.
But the silence was the silence of supreme compassion, the eyes that followed or the eyes that fell were alike those of brothers or sisters, for in death’s hour vanish all differences and there reigns the only true Communism—the Communism of Sympathy. Not there, in the Kremlin, nor there in the lying soviets—but here in the terrible house of inquisition, in the Communist dungeons, is true Communism at last established!
But on this December afternoon the terror-hour was not yet. There were still three hours’ respite, and the figures spoke low in groups or sat silently waiting, waiting, endlessly waiting.
Then suddenly a name was called. “Lydia Marsh!”
The hinges creaked, the guard appeared in the doorway, and the name was spoken loud and clearly. “It is not the terror-hour yet,” thought every woman, glancing at the twilight through the high, dirt-stained windows.
A figure rose from a distant couch. “What can it be?” “Another interrogation?” “An unusual hour!” Low voices sounded from the group. “They’ve left me alone three days,” said the rising figure, wearily. “I suppose now it begins all over again. Well,à bientôt.”
The figure disappeared in the doorway, and the women went on waiting—waiting for seven o’clock.
“Follow me,” said the guard. He moved along the corridor and turned down a side-passage. They passed others in the corridor, but no one heeded. The guard stopped. Looking up, the woman saw she was outside the women’s lavatory. She waited. The guard pointed with his bayonet.
“In here?” queried the figure in surprise. The guard was silent. The woman pushed the door open and entered.
Lying in the corner were a dark green shawl and a shabby hat, with two slips of paper attached. One of them was a pass in an unknown name, stating that the holder had entered the building at four o’clock and must leave before seven. The other had scrawled on it the words: “Walk straight into St. Izaac’s Cathedral.”
Mechanically she destroyed the second slip, adjustedthe shabby hat, and wrapping the shawl well round her neck and face passed out into the passage. She elbowed others in the corridor, but no one heeded her. At the foot of the main staircase she was asked for her pass. She showed it and was motioned on. At the main entrance she was again asked for her pass. She showed it and was passed out into the street. She looked up and down. The street was empty, and crossing the road hurriedly she disappeared round the corner.
Like dancing constellations the candles flickered and flared in front of the ikons at the foot of the huge pillars of the vast cathedral. Halfway up the columns vanished in gloom. I had already burned two candles, and though I was concealed in the niche of a pillar, I knelt and stood alternately, partly from impatience, partly that my piety should be patent to any chance observer. But my eyes were fixed on the little wooden side-entrance. How interminable the minutes seemed.
A quarter to five! Then the green shawl appeared. It looked almost black in the dim darkness. It slipped through the doorway quickly, stood still a moment, and moved irresolutely forward. I walked up to the shrouded figure.
“Mrs. Marsh?” I said quietly in English.
“Yes.”
“I am the person you are to meet. I hope you will soon see your husband.”
“Where is he?” she asked, anxiously.
“In Finland. You go there with me to-night.”
We left the cathedral and crossing the square took a cab and drove to the place called Five Corners. Here we walked a little and finding another cab drove near to “No. 5,” again walking the last hundred yards. I banged at the door three times.
How shall I describe the meeting with Maria! I left them weeping together and went into another room. Neither will I attempt to describe the parting, when an hour later Mrs. Marsh stood ready for her journey, clad in the cloak we had purchased in the morning, and with a black shawl in place of the green one.
“There is no time to lose,” I said. “We must be at the station at seven, and it is a long drive.”
The adieus were over at last, and Maria stood weeping at the door as we made our way down the dark stone stairs.
“I will call you Varvara,” I cautioned my companion. “You call me Vania, and if by chance we are stopped, I am taking you to hospital.”
We drove slowly to the distant straggling Okhta station, where lately I had watched the huge figure of Marsh clamber on to the roof and disappear through the window. The little Policeman was on the platform, sincerely overjoyed at this happy ending to his design. I forgot his ways, his dirtiness, his messy quarters, and thanked him heartily, and as I thrust the packet of money Marsh had left for him into his hand, I felt that at this moment, at least, that was not what was uppermost in his thoughts.
“Come on, Varvara!” I shouted in Russian, rudely tugging Mrs. Marsh by the sleeve and dragging her along the platform. “We shan’t get places if you stand gaping like that! Come on, stupid!” I hauled her toward the train, and seeing an extra box-car being hitched on in front, rushed in its direction.
“Gently, gently, Vania!” cried my companion in genuine distress as I lifted her bodily and landed her on the dirty floor.
“Ne zievai!” I cried. “Sadyis! Na, beri mieshotchek!Don’t yawn! Get in! Here, take the bag!” and while I clambered up, I handed her the packet of sandwiches made by Maria for the journey. “If anything happens,” I whispered in English when we were safely ensconced, “we are ’speculators’—looking for milk; that’s what nearly everybody here is doing.”
The compact, seething mass of beings struggling to squirm into the car resembled a swarm of hiving bees, and in a few moments the place was packed like a sardine-box. In vain late arrivals endeavoured, headforemost, to burrow a path inward. In vain some dozens of individuals pleaded to the inmates to squeeze “just a little tighter” and make room “for just one more.” Somehow the doors were slid to, and we sat in the pitch darkness and waited.
Though the car must have held nearly a hundred people, once we were shut in conversation ceased completely; scarcely any one spoke, and if they did it was in undertones. Until the train started, the silence, but for audible breathing, was uncanny. Only a boy, sitting next to my companion, coughed during the whole journey—coughed rackingly and incessantly, nearly driving me mad. After a while a candle was produced, and round the flickering light at one end of the car some Finns began singing folk-songs. A few people tumbled out at wayside stations, and four hours later, when we arrived at Grusino, the car was only three-quarters full.
Railway Travelling in Soviet Russia
Railway Travelling in Soviet Russia
It was nearly midnight. A mass of humanity surged from the train and dispersed rapidly into the woods in all directions. I took my companion, as Marsh had directed, along a secluded path in the wrong direction. A few minutes later we turned, and crossingthe rails a little above the platform, took the forest track that led to Fita’s house.
Fita was a Finn, the son of a peasant who had been shot by the Bolsheviks for “speculation.” While Fita was always rewarded for his services as guide, his father’s death was a potent incentive to him to do whatever lay in his power to help those who were fleeing from his parent’s murderers. Eventually he was discovered in this occupation, and suffered the same fate as his father, being shot “for conspiring against the proletarian dictatorship.” He was only sixteen years of age, very simple and shy, but courageous and enterprising.
We had an hour to wait at Fita’s cottage, and while Mrs. Marsh lay down to rest I took the boy aside to speak about the journey and question him as to four other people, obviously fugitives like ourselves, whom we found in his house.
“Which route are we going by,” I asked, “north or west?”
“North,” he answered. “It is much longer, but when the weather is good it is not difficult walking and is the safest.”
“You have the best sledge for me?”
“Yes, and the best horse.”
“These other people, who are they?”
“I don’t know. The man is an officer. He came inquiring in these parts three days ago and the peasants directed him to me. I promised to help him.”
Besides the Russian officer, clad in rough working clothes, there was a lady who spoke French, and two pretty girls of about fifteen and seventeen years of age. The girls were dressed ratherà la turcque, in brown woollen jerkins and trousers of the same material.They showed no trace of nervousness, and both looked as though they were thoroughly enjoying a jolly adventure. They spoke to the officer in Russian and to the lady in French, and I took it that she was a governess and he an escort.
We drove out from Fita’s cottage at one o’clock. The land through which the Russian frontier passes west of Lake Ladoga is forest and morass, with few habitations. In winter the morass freezes and is covered with deep snow. The next stage of our journey ended at a remote hut five miles from the frontier on the Russian side, the occupant of which, likewise a Finnish peasant, was to conduct us on foot through the woods to the first Finnish village, ten miles beyond. The night was a glorious one. The day’s storm had completely abated. Huge white clouds floated slowly across the full moon, and the air was still. The fifteen-mile sleigh-drive from Fita’s cottage to the peasant’s hut, over hill and dale, by bye-ways and occasionally straight across the marshes when outposts had to be avoided, was one of the most beautiful I have ever experienced—even in Russia.
In a large open clearing of the forest stood three or four rude huts, with tumbledown outhouses, black, silent, and, like a picture to a fairy tale, throwing blue shadows on the dazzling snow. The driver knocked at one of the doors. After much waiting it was opened, and we were admitted by an old peasant and his wife, obviously torn from their slumbers.
We were joined a quarter of an hour later by the other party, exchanging, however, no civilities or signs of recognition. When the peasant had dressed we set out.
Deserting the track almost immediately, we launchedinto the deep snow across the open ground, making directly for the forest. Progress was retarded by the soft snowdrifts into which our feet sank as high as the knees, and for the sake of the ladies we had to make frequent halts. Winding in and out of the forest, avoiding tracks and skirting open spaces, it seemed an interminable time before we arrived anywhere near the actual frontier line.
Mrs. Marsh and the French lady patched up a chatting acquaintance, and during one of our halts, while the girls were lying outstretched on the snow, I asked her if the French lady had told her who our companions were. But the French lady, it appeared, would not say, until we had actually crossed the frontier.
I was astonished at the manner in which Mrs. Marsh stood the strain of our night adventure. She had been in prison nearly a month, living on the scanty and atrocious prison food, subjected to long, nerve-racking and searching cross-examinations, yet she bore up better than any of the other females in our party, and after rest-halts was always the first to be ready to restart. There were ditches to cross and narrow, rickety bridges to be traversed. Once our guide, laden with parcels, suddenly vanished, sinking completely into an invisible dyke which had filled with drifted snow. He scrambled up the other side all wet from the water into which he had plunged through the thin ice. The snow was so soft that we could find no foothold from which to jump, and it looked as if there were no means of crossing except as our poor guide had done, until the idea occurred to me that if I sprawled on my stomach the snowdrift might not collapse under my weight. So, planting my feet as deeply as I could, I threw myself across, digging withmy hands into the other side till I got a grip, and thus forming a bridge. Mrs. Marsh walked tentatively across my back, the drift still held, the others followed. I wriggled over on my stomach, and we all got over dry.
At last we arrived at a dyke about eight or ten feet broad, filled with water and only partially frozen over. A square white-and-black post on its bank showed that we were at the frontier. “The outposts are a mile away on either hand,” whispered our peasant-guide. “We must get across as quickly as possible.”
The dyke lay across a clearing in the forest. We walked along it, looking wistfully at the other bank ten feet away, and searching for the bridge our guide said should be somewhere here. All at once a black figure emerged from the trees a hundred yards behind us. We stood stock-still, expecting others to appear, and ready, if attacked, to jump into the dyke and reach the other bank at all costs. Our guide was the most terrified of the party, but the black figure turned out to be only a peasant acquaintance of his from another village, who told us there was a bridge at the other end of the clearing.
The “bridge” we found to be a rickety plank, ice-covered and slippery, that threatened to give way as each one of us stepped on to it. One by one we crossed it, expecting it every moment to collapse, till at last we stood in a little group on the farther side.
“This is Finland,” observed our guide, laconically, “that is the last you will see ofSovdepia.” He used an ironical popular term for Soviet Russia constructed from the first syllables of the words Soviets of Deputies.
The moment they set foot on Finnish soil the two girls crossed themselves devoutly and fell on theirknees. Then we moved up to a fallen tree-trunk some distance away and sat down to eat sandwiches.
“It’s all right for you,” the peasant went on, suddenly beginning to talk. “You’re out of it, but I’ve got to go back.” He had scarcely said a word the whole time, but once out of Russia, even though “Sovdepia” was but a few yards distant, he felt he could say what he liked. And he did. But most of the party paid but little attention to his complaints against the hated “Kommuna.” That was now all behind.
It was easy work from thence onward. There was another long walk through deep snow, but we could lie down as often as we pleased without fear of discovery by Red patrols. We should only have to report to the nearest Finnish authorities and ask for an escort until we were identified. We all talked freely now—no longer in nervous whispers—and everyone had some joke to tell that made everybody else laugh. At one of our halts Mrs. Marsh whispered in my ear, “They are the daughters of the Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovitch, the Tsar’s uncle, who was imprisoned the other day.”
The girls were his daughters by a morganatic marriage. I thought little of them at the time, except that they were both very pretty and very tastefully dressed in their sporting costumes. But I was reminded of them a few weeks later when I was back in Petrograd. Without trial, their father was shot one night in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, and his body, together with other near relatives of the murdered Tsar, was thrown into a common and unmarked grave.
The incident did not impress me as it did some, for in the revolutionary tornado those of high estate passlike chaff before the wind. I could not but feel more for the hundreds less known and less fortunate who were unable to flee and escape the cruel scythe of revolution. Still, I was glad the young girls I had travelled with were no longer in the place calledSovdepia. How, I wondered, would they learn of the grim tragedy of the gloomy fortress? Who would tell them? To whom would fall the bitter lot to say: “Your father was shot for bearing the name he bore—shot, not in fair fight, but like a dog, by a gang of Letts and Chinese hirelings, and his body lies none knows where”? And I was glad it was not I.
“Why, yes, Maria!” I exclaimed, “the way Mrs. Marsh bore up was just wonderful to see! Twelve miles in deep snow, heavy marching through thickets and scrub, over ditches and dykes, stumps and pitfalls, with never a word of complaint, as though it were a picnic! You’d never have dreamt she was just out of prison.”
“Yes, of course,” said Maria, proudly, “that would be just like her. And where is she now, Ivan Ilitch?”
“On the way to England, I guess.”
I was back again in Red Petrograd after a brief stay in Finland. That little country was supposed to be the headquarters of the Russian counter-revolution, which meant that everyone who had a plan to overthrow the Bolsheviks (and there were almost as many plans as there were patriots) conspired with as much noise as possible to push it through to the detriment of everybody else’s. So tongues wagged fast and viciously, and any old cock-and-bull story about anybody else was readily believed, circulated, and shouted abroad. You got it published if you could, and if you couldn’t (the papers, after all, had to draw the line somewhere), then you printed it yourself in the form of a libellous pamphlet. I felt a good deal safer in Petrograd, where I was thrown entirely on my own resources, than in Helsingfors,where the appearance of a stranger in a café or restaurant in almost anybody’s company was sufficient to set the puppets of a rival faction in commotion, like an ant-nest when a stone is dropped on it.
So I hid, stayed at a room in a private house, bought my own food or frequented insignificant restaurants, and was glad when I was given some money for expenses and could return to my friends Maria, Stepanovna, the Journalist, and others in Petrograd.
“How did you get back here, Ivan Ilitch?”
“Same old way, Maria. Black night. Frozen river. Deep snow. Everything around—bushes, trees, meadows—still and grey-blue in the starlight. Finnish patrols kept guard as before—lent me a white sheet, too, to wrap myself up in. Sort of cloak of invisibility, like in the fairy tales. So while the Finns watched through the bushes, I shuffled across the river, looking like Cæsar’s ghost.”
Maria was fascinated. “And did nobody see you?”
“Nobody, Maria. To make a good story I should have knocked at the door of the Red patrol and announced myself as the spirit of His Late Imperial Majesty, returned to wreak vengeance, shouldn’t I? But I didn’t. Instead of that I threw away the sheet and took a ticket to Petrograd. Very prosaic, wasn’t it? I’ll have some more tea, please.”
I found a new atmosphere developing in the city which is proudly entitled the “Metropolis of the World Revolution.” Simultaneously with the increasing shortage of food and fuel and the growing embitterment of the masses, new tendencies were observable on the part of the ruling Communist Party. Roughly, these tendencies might be classed as political or administrative, social, and militarist.
Politically, the Communist Party was being driven in view of popular discontent to tighten its control by every means on all branches of administrative activity in the country. Thus the people’s co-operative societies and trade unions were gradually being deprived of their liberties and independence, and the “boss” system under Communist bosses was being introduced. At the same time elections had to be strictly “controlled,” that is, manipulated in such a way that only Communists got elected.
As an off-set to this, it was evident the Communists were beginning to realize that political “soundness” (that is, public confession of the Communist creed) was a bad substitute for administrative ability. The premium on ignorance was being replaced by a premium on intelligence and training, and bourgeois “specialists” of every calling, subject to rigid Communist control, were being encouraged to resume their avocations or accept posts with remunerative pay under the Soviet Government. Only two conditions were required, namely, that the individual renounce all claim to former property and all participation in politics. These overtures were made particularly to members of the liberal professions, doctors, nurses, matrons, teachers, actors, and artists, but also to industrial and commercial experts, and even landlords who were trained agriculturists. Thus was established a compromise with the bourgeoisie.
No people in the world are so capable of heroic and self-sacrificing labour for purely altruistic motives as a certain type of Russian. I remember in the summer of 1918, when the persecution of the intelligentsia was at its height, drawing attention in an official report to the remarkable fact of the large number of educated Russians who had heroicallystuck to their posts and were struggling in the face of adversity to save at least something from the general wreck. Such individuals might be found at times even within the ranks of “the party,” but they cared little for the silly politics of Bolshevism and nothing whatever for the world revolution. Credit is due to the Communists at least to this extent, that they realized ultimately the value of such service to humanity, and, when they discovered it, encouraged it, especially if the credit for it accrued to themselves. The work done by heroic individuals of this type served largely to counterbalance the psychological effect of ever-increasing political and industrial slavery, and it has therefore been denounced as “treacherous” by some counter-revolutionaryémigrés, and especially by those in whose eyes the alleviation of the bitter lot of the Russian people was a minor detail compared with the restoration of themselves to power.
The third growing tendency, the militarist, was the most interesting, and, incidentally, to me the most embarrassing. The stimulus to build a mighty Red army for world-revolutionary purposes was accentuated by the pressing need of mobilizing forces to beat off the counter-revolutionary, or “White,” armies gathering on the outskirts of Russia, particularly in the south and east. The call for volunteers was a complete failure from the start, except in so far as people joined the Red army with the object of getting bigger rations until being sent to the front, and then deserting at the first opportunity. So mobilization orders increased in frequency and stringency and until I got some settled occupation I had to invent expedients to keep my passport papers up to date.
My friends, the Finnish patrols, had furnished me with a renewed document better worded than thelast and with a later date, so I left the old one in Finland and now keep it as a treasured relic. As a precautionary measure I changed my name to Joseph Krylenko. But the time was coming when even those employees of the Extraordinary Commission who were not indispensable might be subject to mobilization. The Tsarist police agents, of course, and Chinese and other foreign hirelings, who eavesdropped and spied in the factories and public places, were indispensable, but the staff of clerical employees, one of whom I purported to be, might be cut down. So I had somehow to get a document showing I was exempt from military service.
It was Zorinsky who helped me out. I called him up the day after my return, eager to have news of Melnikoff. He asked me to come round to dinner and I deliberated with myself whether, having told him I expected to go to Moscow, I should let him know I had been to Finland. I decided to avoid the subject and say nothing at all.
Zorinsky greeted me warmly. So did his wife. As we seated ourselves at the dinner-table I noticed there was still no lack of good food, though Elena Ivanovna, of course, complained.
“Your health, Pavel Ivanitch,” exclaimed Zorinsky as usual; “glad to see you back. How are things over there?”
“Over where?” I queried.
“Why, in Finland, of course.”
So he knew already! It was a good thing for me that I had devoted a deal of thought to the enigmatical personality of my companion. I could not make him out. Personally, I disliked him intensely, yet he had already been of considerable service and in any case I needed his assistance to effect Melnikoff’srelease. On one occasion he had mentioned, in passing, that he knew Melnikoff’s friend Ivan Sergeievitch, so it had been my intention to question the latter on the subject while in Finland, but he was away and I had seen no one else to ask. The upshot of my deliberations was that I resolved to cultivate Zorinsky’s acquaintance for my own ends, but until I knew him better never to betray any true feelings of surprise, fear, or satisfaction.
Disconcerted, therefore, as I was by his knowledge of my movements, I managed to divert my undeniable confusion into an expression of disgust.
“Rotten,” I replied with a good deal of emphasis, and, incidentally, of truth. “Absolutely rotten. If people here think Finland is going to do anything against the Bolsheviks they are mistaken. I never in my life saw such a mess-up of factions and feuds.”
“But is there plenty to eat there?” put in Elena Ivanovna, this being the sole subject that interested her.
“Oh, yes, there is plenty to eat,” and to her delight and envy I detailed a comprehensive list of delicacies unobtainable in Russia, even by the theatrical world.
“It is a pity you did not let me put you across the bridge at Bielo’ostrof,” observed Zorinsky, referring to his offer to assist me in getting across the frontier.
“Oh, it was all right,” I said. “I had to leave at a moment’s notice. It was a long and difficult walk, but not unpleasant.”
“I could have put you across quite simply,” he said, “—both of you.”
“Who, ‘both of us’?”
“Why, you and Mrs. Marsh, of course.”
Phew! So he knew that, too!
“You seem to know a lot of things,” I remarked, as casually as I could.
“It is my hobby,” he replied, with his crooked, cynical smile. “You are to be congratulated, I must say, on Mrs. Marsh’s escape. It was, I believe, very neatly executed. You didn’t do it yourself, I suppose?”
“No,” I said, “and, to tell the truth, I have no idea how it was done.” I was prepared to swear by all the gods that I knew nothing of the affair.
“Nor have they any idea atNo. 2 Goróhovaya,” he said. “At least, so I am told.” He appeared not to attach importance to the matter. “By the way,” he continued a moment later, “I want to warn you against a fellow I have heard Marsh was in touch with. Alexei—Alexei—what’s his name?—Alexei Fomitch something-or-other—I’ve forgotten the surname.”
The Policeman!
“Ever met him?”
“Never heard of him,” I said, indifferently.
“Look out if you do,” said Zorinsky, “he is a German spy.”
“Any idea where he lives?” I inquired, in the same tone.
“No; he is registered under a pseudonym, of course. But he doesn’t interest me. I chanced to hear of him the other day and thought I would caution you.”
Was it mere coincidence that Zorinsky mentioned the Policeman? I resolved to venture a query.
“Any connection between Mrs. Marsh and this—er—German spy?” I asked, casually.
“Not that I know of.” For a moment a transitory flash appeared in his eyes. “You really think Mrs. Marsh was ignorant of how she escaped?” he added.
“I am positive. She hadn’t the faintest notion.”
Zorinsky was thoughtful. We changed the subject, but after a while he approached it again.
“It is impertinent of me to ask questions,” he said, courteously, “but I cannot help being abstractly interested in your chivalrous rescue of Mrs. Marsh. I scarcely expect you to answer, but I should, indeed, be interested to know how you learned she was free.”
“Why, very simply,” I replied. “I met her quite by chance at a friend’s house and offered to escort her across the frontier.”
Zorinsky collapsed and the subject was not mentioned again. Though it was clear he had somehow established a connection in his mind between the Policeman’s name and that of Mrs. Marsh, my relief was intense to find him now on the wrong tack and apparently indifferent to the subject.
As on the occasion of my first visit to this interesting personage, I became so engrossed in subjects he introduced that I completely forgot Melnikoff, although the latter had been uppermost in my thoughts since I successfully landed Mrs. Marsh in Finland. Nor did the subject recur to mind until Zorinsky himself broached it.
“Well, I have lots of news for you,” he said as we moved into the drawing-room for coffee. “In the first place, Vera Alexandrovna’s café is rounded up and she’s under lock and key.”
He imparted this information in an indifferent tone.
“Are you not sorry for Vera Alexandrovna?” I said.
“Sorry? Why should one be? She was a nice girl, but foolish to keep a place like that, with all those stupid old fogeys babbling aloud like chatterboxes. It was bound to be found out.”
I recalled that this was exactly what I had thought about the place myself.
“What inducedyouto frequent it?” I asked.
“Oh, just for company,” he replied. “Sometimes one found someone to talk to. Lucky I was not there. The Bolsheviks got quite a haul, I am told, something like twenty people. I just happened to miss, and should have walked right into the trap next day had I not chanced to find out just in time.”
My misgivings, then, regarding Vera’s secret café had been correct, and I was thankful I had fought shy of the place after my one visit. But I felt very sorry for poor Vera Alexandrovna. I was still thinking of her when Zorinsky thrust a big blue sheet of oil paper into my hands.
“What do you think of that?” he asked.
The paper was a pen-sketch of the Finnish Gulf, but for some time I could make neither head nor tail of the geometrical designs which covered it. Only when I read in the corner the wordsFortress of Cronstadt, Distribution of Mines, did I realize what the map really was.
“Plan of the minefields around Cronstadt and in the Finnish Gulf,” explained Zorinsky. The mines lay in inner and outer fields and the course was shown which a vessel would have to take to pass through safely. The plan proved subsequently to be quite correct.
“How did you get hold of it?” I asked, interested and amused.
“Does it matter?” he said. “There is generally a way to do these things. That is the original. If you would like to make a copy of it, you must do so to-night. It must be returned to its locked drawer in the Admiralty not later than half-past nine to-morrow morning.”
A few days later I secured through my regular Admiralty connections, whom I met at the Journalist’s,confirmation of this distribution of mines. They could not procure me the map, but they gave a list of the latitudes and longitudes, which tallied precisely with those shown on Zorinsky’s plan.
While I was still examining the scheme of minefields my companion produced two further papers and asked me to glance at them. I found them to be official certificates of exemption from military service on the ground of heart trouble, filled up with details, date of examination (two days previously), signatures of the officiating doctor, who was known to me by name, the doctor’s assistant, and the proxy of the controlling commissar. One was filled out in the name of Zorinsky. The other was complete—except for the name of the holder! A close examination and comparison of the signatures convinced me they were genuine. This was exactly the certificate I so much needed to avoid mobilization and I began to think Zorinsky a genius—an evil genius, perhaps, but still a genius!
“One for each of us,” he observed, laconically. “The doctor is a good friend of mine. I needed one for myself, so I thought I might as well get one for you, too. At the end of the day the doctor told the commissar’s assistant he had promised to examine two individuals delayed by business half an hour later. There was no need for the official to wait, he said; if he did not mind putting his signature to the empty paper, he assured him it would be all right. He knew exactly what was the trouble with the two fellows; they were genuine cases, but their names had slipped his memory. Of course, the commissar’s assistant might wait if he chose, but he assured him it was unnecessary. So the commissar’s assistant signed the papers and departed. Shortly after, the doctor’s assistant did the same. The doctor waited three-quartersof an hour for his two cases. They did not arrive, and here are the exemption certificates. Will you fill in your name at once?”
What?My name!I suddenly recollected that I had never told Zorinsky what surname I was living under, nor shown him my papers, nor initiated him into any kind of personal confidence whatsoever. Nor had my reticence been accidental. At every house I frequented I was known by a different Christian name and patronymic (the Russian mode of address), and I felt intensely reluctant to disclose my assumed surname or show the passport in my possession.
The situation was one of great delicacy, however. Could I decently refuse to inscribe my name in Zorinsky’s presence after the various favours he had shown me and the assistance he was lending me—especially by procuring me the very exemption certificate I so badly needed? Clearly it would be an offence. On the other hand, I could not invent another name and thus lose the document, since it would always have to be shown together with a regular passport. To gain time for reflection I picked up the certificate to examine it again.
The longer I thought the clearer I realized that, genuine though the certificate undoubtedly was, the plot had been laid deliberately to make me disclose the name under which I was living! Had it been the Journalist, or even the Policeman, I should not have hesitated, certainly not have winced as I did now. But it was Zorinsky, the clever, cynical, and mysterious Zorinsky, for whom I suddenly conceived, as I cast a sidelong glance at him, a most intense and overpowering repugnance.
Zorinsky caught my sidelong glance. He was lolling in a rocking-chair, with a bland expression on his misformedface as he swung forward and backward, intent on his nails. He looked up, and as our eyes met for the merest instant I saw he had not failed to note my hesitation.
I dropped into the desk-chair and seized a pen.
“Certainly,” I said, “I will inscribe my name at once. This is, indeed, a godsend.”
Zorinsky rose and stood at my side. “You must imitate the writing,” he said. “I am sorry I am not a draftsman to assist you.”
I substituted a pencil for the pen and began to draw my name in outline, copying letters from the handwriting on the certificate. I rapidly detected the essentials of the handwriting, and Zorinsky applauded admiringly as I traced the words—Joseph Krylenko. When they were done I finished them off in ink and laid down the pen, very satisfied.
“Occupation?” queried my companion, as quietly as if he were asking the hour.
Occupation!A revolver-shot at my ear could not have startled me more than this simple but completely unexpected query! The two blank lines I took to be left for the name only, but, looking closer, I saw that the second was, indeed, intended for the holder’s business or occupation. The wordzaniatia(occupation) was not printed in full, but abbreviated—zan., while these three letters were concealed by the scrawling handwriting of the line below, denoting the age “thirty,” written out in full.
I managed somehow not to jump out of my seat. “Is it essential?” I asked. “I have no occupation.”
“Then you must invent one,” he replied. “You must have some sort of passport with you. What do you show the guards in the street? Copy whatever you have from that.”
Cornered! I had put my foot in it nicely. Zorinsky was inquisitive for some reason or other to learn how I was living and under what name, and had succeeded effectually in discovering part at least of what he wanted to know. There was nothing for it. I reluctantly drew my passport of the Extraordinary Commission from my pocket in order that I might copy the exact wording.
“May I see?” asked my companion, picking up the paper. I scrutinized his face as he slowly perused it. An amused smile flickered round his crooked mouth, one end of which jutted up into his cheek. “A very nice passport indeed,” he said, finally, looking with peculiar care at the signatures. “It will be a long time before you land in the cells ofNo. 2 Goróhovayaif you continue like this.”
He turned the paper over. Fortunately the regulation had not yet been published rendering all “documents of identification” invalid unless stamped by one’s house committee, showing the full address. So there was nothing on the back.
“You are a pupil of Melnikoff, that is clear,” he said, laying the paper down on the desk. “By the way, I have something to tell you about Melnikoff. But finish your writing first.”
I soon inscribed my occupation of clerk in an office of the Extraordinary Commission, adding also “six” to the age to conform with my other papers. As I traced the letters I tried to sum up the situation. Melnikoff, I hoped, would now soon be free, but misgivings began to arise regarding my own position, which I had a disquieting suspicion had in some way become jeopardized as a result of the disclosures I had had to make that evening to Zorinsky.
When I had finished I folded the exemptioncertificate and put it with my passport in my pocket.
“Well, what is the news of Melnikoff?” I said.
Zorinsky was engrossed inPravda, the official Press organ of the Communist Party. “I beg your pardon? Oh, yes—Melnikoff. I have no doubt he will be released, but the investigator wants the whole 60,000 roubles first.”
“That is strange,” I observed, surprised. “You told me he would only want the second halfafterMelnikoff’s release.”
“True. But I suppose now he fears he won’t have time to get it, since he also will have to quit.”
“And meanwhile what guarantee have I—have we—that the investigator will fulfil his pledge?”
Zorinsky looked indifferently over the top of his newspaper.
“Guarantee? None,” he replied, in his usual laconic manner.
“Then why the devil should I throw away another 30,000 roubles on the off-chance——?”
“You needn’t if you don’t want to,” he put in, in the same tone.
“Are you not interested in the subject?” I said, secretly indignant at his manner.
“Of course I am. But what is the use of getting on one’s hind-legs about it? The investigator wants his money in advance. Without it, he will certainly risk nothing. With it, he may, and there’s an end of it. If I were you I would pay up, if you want Melnikoff let out. What is the good of losing your first 30,000 for nothing? You won’t get that back, anyway.”
I thought for a moment. It seemed to me highly improbable that a rascal investigator, having gothis money, would deliberately elect to put his neck in a noose to save someone he didn’t care two pins about. Was there no other means of effecting the escape? I thought of the Policeman. But with inquiries being made along one line, inquiries along a second would doubtless be detected by the first, with all sorts of undesirable complications and discoveries. An idea occurred to me.
“Can we not threaten the life of the investigator if he plays false?” I suggested.
Zorinsky considered. “You mean hire someone to shoot him? That would cost a lot of money and we should be in the hands of our hired assassin as much as we are now in those of our investigator, while if he were shot we should lose the last chance of saving Melnikoff. Besides, the day after we threaten the investigator’s life he will decamp with the first thirty thousand in his pocket. Pay up, Pavel Ivanitch, pay up and take the chance—that’s my advice.”
Zorinsky picked up his paper and went on reading.
What should I do? Faint though the chance seemed, I resolved to take it, as it was the only one. I told Zorinsky I would bring him the money on the morrow.
“All right,” he said, adding thoughtfully, as he laid aside the newspaper. “By the way, I think you were perhaps right about threatening the investigator’s life. Yes. It is not a bad idea. He need not know we know we are really powerless. We will tell him he is being tracked and cannot escape us. I will see what can be done about it. You are right, after all, Pavel Ivanitch.”
Satisfied at having made this suggestion, I setabout to copy the map of the minefields and then retired for the night.
Not to sleep, however. For hours I paced up and down the soft carpet, recalling every word of the evening’s conversation, and trying to invent a means of making myself again independent of Zorinsky.
Would Melnikoff be released? The prospects seemed suddenly to have diminished. Meanwhile, Zorinsky knew my name, and might, for all I knew, out of sheer curiosity, be designing to discover my haunts and acquaintances. I recalled poignantly how I had been cornered that evening and forced to show him my passport.
With this train of thought I took my newly procured exemption certificate from my pocket and examined it again. Yes, it certainly was a treasure. “Incurable heart trouble”—that meant permanent exemption. With this and my passport, I considered, I might with comparative safety even register myself and take regular rooms somewhere on the outskirts of the town. However, I resolved I would not do that as long as I could conveniently live in the centre of the city, moving about from house to house.
The only thing I did not like about my new “document” was its patent newness. I have never yet seen anybody keep tidy “documents” in Russia, the normal condition of a passport being the verge of dissolution. There was no need to reduce my certificate to that state at once, since it was only two days old, but I decided that I would at least fold and crumple it as much as my passport, which was only five days old. I took the paper and, folding it tightly in four, pressed the creases firmly between finger and thumb. Then, laying it on the table, I squeezed the folds under my thumb-nail, drawing the paper backward andforward. Finally, the creases looking no longer new, I began to ruffle the edges.