Red Dusk and the Morrow · Chapter 2 (1/6)

II

Five Days

One of the first things that caught my eye as I emerged from the station was an old man, standing with his face to the wall of a house, leaning against a protruding gutter-pipe. As I passed him I noticed he was sobbing. I stopped to speak to him.

“What is the matter, little uncle?” I said.

“I am cold and hungry,” he whimpered without looking up and still leaning against the pipe. “For three days I have eaten nothing.” I pushed a twenty-rouble note into his hand. “Here, take this,” I said.

He took the money but looked at me, puzzled. “Thank you,” he mumbled, “but what is the good of money? Where shall I get bread?” So I gave him a piece of mine and passed on.

There was plenty of life and movement in the streets, though only of foot-passengers. The roadway was dirty and strewn with litter. Strung across the street from house to house were the shreds of washed-out red flags, with inscriptions that showed they had been hung out a few weeks earlier to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevist coup d’état. Occasionally one came across small groups of people, evidently of the educated class, ladies and elderly gentlemen in worn-out clothes, shovelling away the early snow and slush under the supervision of a workman, who as taskmaster stood still and did nothing.

Crossing the Liteyny Bridge on my way into the city I stopped, as was my wont, to contemplate the marvellous view of the river Neva. No capital in Europe possesses so beautiful an expanse of water as this city of Peter the Great. Away on the horizon the slender gilded spire of the cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul rose from the gloomy fortress. By force of habit I wondered who was now incarcerated in those dark dungeons. Years ago, before the revolution, I used to stand and look at the “Petropavlovka,” as the fortress is popularly called, thinking of those who pined in its subterranean cells for seeking the liberty of the Russian people.

My first destination was the house of an English gentleman, to whom I shall refer as Mr. Marsh. Marsh was a prominent business man in Petrograd. I did not know him personally, but he had been a friend of Captain Cromie and until recently was known to be at liberty. He lived on the quay of the Fontanka, a long, straggling branch of the Neva flowing through the heart of the city. Melnikoff knew Marsh and had promised to prepare him for my coming. I found the house and, after assuring myself the street was clear and I was not observed, I entered. In the hall I was confronted by an individual, who might or might not have been the house-porter⁠—I could not tell. But I saw at once that this man was not disposed to be friendly. He let me in, closed the door behind me, and promptly placed himself in front of it.

“Whom do you want?” he asked.

“I want Mr. Marsh,” I said. “Can you tell me the number of his flat?” I knew the number perfectly well, but I could see from the man’s manner that the less I knew about Marsh, the better for me.

“Marsh is in prison,” replied the man, “and his flat is sealed up. Do you know him?”

Devil take it, I thought, I suppose I shall be arrested too, to see what I came here for! The idea occurred to me for a moment to flaunt my concocted passport in his face and make myself out to be an agent of the Extraordinary Commission, but as such I should have known of Marsh’s arrest, and I should still have to explain the reason of my visit. It wouldn’t do. I thought rapidly for a plausible pretext.

“No, I don’t know him,” I replied. “I have never seen him in my life. I was sent to give him this little parcel.” I held up the packet containing my trousseau of socks, biscuits, and handkerchiefs. “He left this in a house at Alexandrovsky the other night. I am an office clerk there. I will take it back.”

The man eyed me closely. “You do not know Mr. Marsh?” he said again, slowly.

“I have never seen him in my life,” I repeated, emphatically, edging nearer the door.

“You had better leave the parcel, however,” he said.

“Yes, yes, certainly,” I agreed with alacrity, fearful at the same time lest my relief at this conclusion to the incident should be too noticeable.

I handed him over my parcel. “Good morning,” I said civilly, “I will say that Mr. Marsh is arrested.” The man moved away from the door, still looking hard at me as I passed out into the street.

Agitated by this misfortune, I turned my steps in the direction of the hospital where I hoped to find Melnikoff. The hospital in question was at the extreme end of the Kamenostrovsky Prospect, in the part of the city known as The Islands because it forms the delta of the river Neva. It was a good four-mile walk from Marsh’s house. I tried to get on to a streetcar, but there were very few running and they were so crowded that it was impossible to board them. People hung in bunches all round the steps and even on the buffers. So, tired as I was after the night’s adventure, I footed it.

Melnikoff, it appeared, was a relative of one of the doctors of this hospital, but I did not find him here. The old woman at the lodge said he had been there one night and had not returned since. I began to think something untoward must have occurred, although doubtless he had several other night-shelters besides this one. There was nothing to do but wait for the afternoon and go to the clandestine café to which he had directed me.

I retraced my steps slowly into town. All around was shabbiness. Here and there in the roadway lay a dead horse. The wretched brutes were whipped to get the last spark of life and labour out of them and then lay where they fell, for the ladies who were made to sweep the streets were not strong enough to remove dead horses. Every street, every building, shop, and porch spoke to me of bygone associations, which with a pang I now realized were dead. A few stores remained open, notably for music, books, and flowers, but Soviet licences were required to purchase anything except propagandist literature, which was sold freely at a cheap price, and flowers, which were fabulously dear. Hawkers with trucks disposed of secondhand books, obviously removed from the shelves of private libraries, while a tiny basement store, here and there peeping shamefacedly up from beneath the level of the street, secreted in semi-obscurity an unappetizing display of rotting vegetables or fruits and the remnants of biscuits and canned goods. But everything spoke bitterly of the progressive dearth of things and the increasing stagnation of normal life.

I stopped to read the multifarious public notices and announcements on the walls. Some bore reference to Red army mobilization, others to compulsory labour for the bourgeoisie, but most of them dealt with the distribution of food. I bought some seedy-looking apples, and biscuits that tasted several years old. I also bought all the newspapers and a number of pamphlets by Lenin, Zinoviev, and others. Finding a cab with its horse still on four legs, I hired it and drove to the Finland Station, where upon arrival in the morning I had noticed there was a buffet. The food exhibited on the counter, mostly bits of herring on microscopic pieces of black bread, were still less appetizing than my biscuits, so I just sat down to rest, drank a weak liquid made of tea-substitute, and read the Soviet papers.

There was not much of news, for the ruling Bolshevist1 class had already secured a monopoly of the Press by closing down all journals expressing opinions antagonistic to them, so that all that was printed was propaganda. While the Press of the Western world was full of talk of peace, the Soviet journals were insisting on the creation of a mighty Red army that should set Europe and the globe aflame with world-revolution.

At three o’clock I set out to look for Melnikoff’s café, a clandestine establishment in a private flat on the top floor of a house in one of the streets off the Nevsky Prospect. When I rang the bell the door was opened just a wee bit and I espied a keen and suspicious eye through the chink. Seeing it was immediately about to close again I slid one foot into the aperture and asked quickly for Melnikoff.

“Melnikoff?” said the voice accompanying the eagle eye. “What Melnikoff?”

“N⁠⸺,” I said, giving Melnikoff’s real name. At this point the door was opened a little wider and I was confronted by two ladies, the one (with the eagle eye) elderly and plump, the other young and good-looking.

“What is his first name and patronymic?” asked the younger lady. “Nicolas Nicolaevitch,” I replied. “It is all right,” said the younger lady to the elder. “He said someone might be coming to meet him this afternoon. Come in,” she went on, to me. “Nicolas Nicolaevitch was here for a moment on Saturday and said he would be here yesterday but did not come. I expect him any minute now.”

I passed into a sitting-room fitted with small tables, where the fair young lady, Vera Alexandrovna, served me to my surprise with delicious little cakes which would have graced any Western tea-table. The room was empty when I arrived, but later about a dozen people came in, all of distinctly bourgeois stamp, some prepossessing in appearance, others less so. A few of the young men looked like ex-officers of dubious type. They laughed loudly, talked in raucous voices, and seemed to have plenty of money to spend, for the delicacies were extremely expensive. This café, I learned later, was a meeting-place for conspirators, who were said to have received funds for counterrevolutionary purposes from representatives of the allies.

Vera Alexandrovna came over to the table in the corner where I sat alone. “I must apologize,” she said, placing a cup on the table, “for not giving you chocolate. I ran out of chocolate last week. This is the best I can do for you. It is a mixture of cocoa and coffee⁠—an invention of my own in these hard times.” I tasted it and found it very nice.

Vera Alexandrovna was a charming girl of about twenty summers, and with my uncouth getup and general aspect I felt I was a bad misfit in her company. I was painfully conscious of attracting attention and apologized for my appearance.

“Don’t excuse yourself,” replied Vera Alexandrovna, “we all look shabby nowadays.” (She herself, however, was very trim.) “Nicolas Nicolaevitch told me you were coming and that you were a friend of his⁠—but I shall ask no questions. You may feel yourself quite safe and at home here and nobody will notice you.” (But I saw four of the loud-voiced young officers at the next table looking at me very hard.)

“I scarcely expected to find these comforts in hungry Petrograd,” I said to Vera Alexandrovna. “May I ask how you manage to keep your café going?”

“Oh, it is becoming very difficult indeed,” complained Vera Alexandrovna. “We have two servants whom we send twice a week into the villages to bring back flour and milk, and we buy sugar from the Jews in the Jewish market. But it is getting so hard. We do not know if we shall be able to keep it going much longer. Then, too, we may be discovered. Twice the Reds have been to ask if suspicious people live in this house, but the porter put them off because we give him flour.”

Vera Alexandrovna rose to attend to other guests. I felt extremely ill at ease, for it was clear I was attracting attention and I did not at all like the looks of some of the people present.

“Ah, ma chère Vera Alexandrovna!” exclaimed a fat gentleman in spectacles who had just come in, kissing her hand effusively. “Here we are again! Well, our Redskins haven’t long to last now, I’ll be bound. The latest is that they are going to mobilize. Mobilize, indeed! Just a little push from outside, and pouf! up they’ll go like a bubble bursting!”

At once one of the four young men rose from the next table and approached me. He was tall and thin, with sunken eyes, hair brushed straight up, and a black moustache. There was a curious crooked twitch about his mouth.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “Allow me to introduce myself. Captain Zorinsky. You are waiting for Melnikoff, are you not? I am a friend of his.”

I shook hands with Zorinsky, but gave him no encouragement to talk. Why had Melnikoff not told me I should meet this “friend of his”? Had this Zorinsky merely guessed I was waiting for Melnikoff, or had Vera Alexandrovna told him⁠—Vera Alexandrovna, who assured me no one would notice me?

“Melnikoff did not come here yesterday,” Zorinsky continued, “but if I can do anything for you at any time I shall be glad.”

I bowed and he returned to his table. Since it was already six I resolved I would stay in this café no longer. The atmosphere of the place filled me with indefinable apprehension.

“I am so sorry you have missed Nicolas Nicolaevitch,” said Vera Alexandrovna as I took my leave. “Will you come in tomorrow?” I said I would, fully determined that I would not. “Come back at any time,” said Vera Alexandrovna, with her pleasant smile; “and remember,” she added, reassuringly, in an undertone, “here you are perfectly safe.”

Could anybody be more charming than Vera Alexandrovna? Birth, education, and refinement were manifested in every gesture. But as for her café, I had an ominous presentiment about it, and nothing would have induced me to reenter it.

I resolved to resort to the flat of Ivan Sergeievitch, Melnikoff’s friend who had seen me off at Viborg. The streets were bathed in gloom as I emerged from the café. Lamps burned only at rare intervals. And suppose, I speculated, I find no one at Ivan Sergeievitch’s home? What would offer a night’s shelter⁠—a porch, here or there, a garden, a shed? Perhaps one of the cathedrals, Kazan, for instance, might be open. Ah, look, there was a hoarding round one side of the Kazan Cathedral! I stepped up and peeped inside. Lumber and rubbish. Yes, I decided, that would do splendidly!

Ivan Sergeievitch’s house was in a small street at the end of Kazanskaya, and like Vera Alexandrovna’s his flat was on the top floor. My experience of the morning had made me very cautious, and I was careful to enter the house as though I were making a mistake, the easier to effect an escape if necessary. But the house was as still as death. I met nobody on the stairs, and for a long time there was no reply to my ring. I was just beginning to think seriously of the hoarding round the Kazan Cathedral when I heard footsteps, and a female voice said querulously behind the door, “Who is there?”

“From Ivan Sergeievitch,” I replied, speaking just loud enough to be heard through the door.

There was a pause. “From which Ivan Sergeievitch?” queried the voice.

I lowered my tone. I felt the other person was listening intently. “From your Ivan Sergeievitch, in Viborg,” I said in a low voice at the keyhole.

There was another pause. “But who are you?” came the query.

“Do not be alarmed,” I said in the same tone. “I have a message to you from him.”

The footsteps receded. I could hear voices conferring. Then two locks were undone, and the door was partially opened on a short chain. I saw a middle-aged woman peering at me with fear and suspicion through the chink.

I repeated what I had already said, adding in a whisper that I myself had just come from Finland and would perhaps be going back shortly. The chain was then removed and I passed in.

The woman who opened the door, and who proved to be the housekeeper spoken of by Ivan Sergeievitch, closed it again hastily, locked it securely, and stood before me, a trembling little figure with keen eyes that looked me up and down with uncertainty. A few paces away stood a girl, the nurse of Ivan Sergeievitch’s children, who were in Finland.

“Ivan Sergeievitch is an old friend of mine,” I said, not truthfully, but very anxious to calm the suspicions of my humble hostesses. “I knew him long ago and saw him again quite recently in Finland. He asked me, if I found it possible, to come round and see you.”