Red Dusk and the Morrow · Chapter 2 (3/6)

“Luck,” he replied. “I guessed you might possibly be in Sergeievitch’s flat, and so you are. But listen, I can’t stay here long. I’m being looked for, too. You can meet me safely at three this afternoon at the 15th communal eating-house in the Nevsky. You don’t need a ticket to enter. I’ll tell you everything then. Don’t stay more than two nights in one place.”

“All right,” I said, “three o’clock at the 15th eating-house.”

“And don’t go to Vera’s any more,” he added as he hurried away. “Something is wrong there. Goodbye.”

“Get dressed,” said Marsh when Melnikoff had gone, “and I’ll take you straight along to a place you can go to regularly. But rely mainly on Melnikoff, he’s the cleverest card I ever saw.”

Stepanovna, beaming with pleasure and pride at having two Englishmen in her flat, and nervous at the same time on account of the circumstances, brought in tea, and I told Marsh of my mission to Russia. Though he had not been connected with intelligence organizations, he knew people who had, and mentioned the names of a number of persons whose aid might be re-enlisted. One or two occupied high positions in the Ministry of War and the Admiralty.

But there was a more pressing task on hand than intelligence. The Bolsheviks suspected Marsh, together with other Englishmen, of complicity, in assisting allied citizens who were refused passports to escape from the country secretly. Numerous arrests among foreigners were being made and Marsh had had a hairbreadth escape. But his wife had been seized in his stead as hostage, and this calamity filled him with concern.

Mrs. Marsh was imprisoned at the notorious No. 2 Gorokhovaya Street, the address of the Extraordinary Commission, and Marsh was awaiting the report of a man who had connections with the Commission as to the possibilities of effecting her escape. “This man,” explained Marsh, “was, I believe, an official of the Okhrana (the Tsar’s personal secret police) before the revolution, and is doing some sort of clerical work in a Soviet institution now. The Bolsheviks are re-engaging Tsarist police agents for the Extraordinary Commission, so he has close connections there and knows most of what goes on. He is a liar and it is difficult to believe what he says, but” (Marsh paused and rubbed his forefinger and thumb together to indicate that finance entered into the transaction), “if you outbid the Bolsheviks, this fellow can do things. Understand?”

Marsh put me up to the latest position of everything in Petrograd. He also said he would be able to find me lodging for a few nights until I had some settled mode of living. He had wide acquaintanceship in the city and many of his friends lived in a quiet, unobtrusive manner, working for a living in Soviet offices.

“Better be moving along now,” he said when we had finished tea. “I’ll go ahead because we mustn’t walk together. Follow me in about five minutes, and you’ll find me standing by the hoarding round the Kazan Cathedral.”

“The hoarding round the Kazan Cathedral? So you know that hoarding, too?” I asked, recalling my intention of hiding in that very place.

“I certainly do,” he exclaimed. “Spent the first night there after my escape. Now I’ll be off. When you see me shoot off from the hoarding follow me as far behind as you can. So long.”

“By the way,” I said, as he went out, “that hoarding⁠—it doesn’t happen to be a regular shelter for⁠—for homeless and destitute Englishmen or others, does it?”

“Not that I know of,” he laughed. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I only wondered.”

I let Marsh out and heard his steps reechoing down the stone staircase.

“I shall not be back tonight, Stepanovna,” I said, preparing to follow him. “I can’t tell you how grateful⁠—”

“Oh, but, Ivan Pavlovitch,” exclaimed the good woman, “you can come here any time you like. If anything happens,” she added in a lower tone, “we’ll say you belong to us. No one need know.”

“Well, well,” I said, “but not tonight. Goodbye, goodbye.” While Stepanovna and Varia let me out I had a vision of Dmitri standing at the kitchen door, stolidly munching a crust of black bread.

Outside the hoarding of the Kazan Cathedral I espied the huge figure of Marsh sitting on a stone. When he saw me over the way he rose and slouched along with his collar turned up, diving into side streets and avoiding the main thoroughfares. I followed at a distance. Eventually we came out on to the Siennaya market, crossed it, and plunged into the maze of streets to the south. Marsh disappeared under an arch and, following his steps, I found myself in a dark, filthy, reeking yard with a backstair entrance on either hand. Marsh stood at the stairway on the left. “Flat No. 5 on the second floor,” he said. “We can go up together.”

The stairway was narrow and littered with rubbish. At a door with “5” chalked on it Marsh banged loudly three times with his fist, and it was opened by a woman dressed plainly in black, who greeted Marsh with exclamations of welcome and relief.

“Aha, Maria,” he shouted boisterously, “here we are, you see⁠—not got me yet. And won’t get me, unless I’ve got a pumpkin on my shoulders instead of a head!”

Maria was his housekeeper. She looked questioningly at me, obviously doubtful whether I ought to be admitted. Marsh roared with laughter. “All right, Maria,” he cried, “let him in. He’s only my comrade⁠—comrades in distress, and ha! ha! ha! ‘comrades’ in looks, eh, Maria?”

Maria smiled curiously. “Certainly ‘comrades’ in looks,” she said, slowly.

“By the way,” asked Marsh, as we passed into an inner room, “what name are you using?”

“Afirenko,” I said. “But that’s official. Tell Maria I’m called ‘Ivan Ilitch.’ ”

Maria set the samovar and produced some black bread and butter.

“This flat,” said Marsh, with his mouth full, “belonged to a business colleague of mine. The Reds seized him by mistake for someone else. The silly fool nearly (here Marsh used a very unparliamentary expression) with funk when he got arrested. Sat in chokey three days and was told he was to be shot, when luckily for him the right man was collared. Then they let him out and I shipped him over the frontier. They’ll forget all about him. In the daytime this is one of the safest places in town.”

The flat was almost devoid of furniture. A bare table stood in one room and a desk in another. An old couch and a few chairs made up the outfit. The windows were so dirty that they were quite opaque and admitted very little light from the narrow street. Although it was nearly midday an oil lamp burned on the table of the room we sat in. Electric light was becoming rarer and rarer and only burned for a few hours every evening.

Marsh sat and talked of his adventures and the work he had been doing for the allied colonies. His country farm had been seized and pillaged, his city business was ruined, he had long been under suspicion, and yet he refused to leave. But the arrest of his wife bore constantly on his mind. From time to time his boisterous flow of talk would suddenly cease. He would pass his hand over his brow, a faraway, troubled look coming into his eyes.

“If only it were an ordinary prison,” he would say, “if only they were human beings. But these⁠—! By the way, will you come with me to see the Policeman? I am going to meet him in half-an-hour.” The “Policeman” was the nickname by which we referred to the Tsarist official of whom Marsh had spoken in the morning. I reflected for a moment. Perhaps the Policeman might be useful to me later. I consented.

Telling Maria to look out for us both about that time next morning, we left the flat by the back entrance, as we had entered it. Again Marsh walked ahead, and I followed his slouching figure at a distance as he wound in and out of side streets. The dwelling we were going to, he told me, was that of an ex-journalist, who was now engaged as a scribe in the Department of Public Works, and it was at the Journalist’s that he had arranged to meet the Policeman.

The Journalist lived all alone in a flat in the Liteyny Prospect. I watched Marsh disappear into the entrance and waited a moment to convince myself he was not being tracked. From the opposite sidewalk I saw him look back through the glass door, signalling that all was well within, so giving him time to mount the stairs I followed.

He rang the bell at a door covered with oilcloth and felt. After a moment’s silence there was a shuffling of slippers, an inner door opened, and a voice said, “Who’s there?”

“He expects me to say who’s here, the silly fool,” growled Marsh under his breath, adding just loud enough to be heard through the door, “I.”

“Who? ‘I’?” persisted the voice.

“I, Peter Sergeievitch” (aloud), “blithering idiot” (undertone), said Marsh.

There was much undoing of bars and bolts, and finally, the door opening slightly on the chain, a pair of nervous, twinkling eyes peered through the chink.

“Ah!” said the nervous face, breaking into a smile, “Ivan Petrovitch!” The door closed again and the chain was removed. Then it reopened and we passed in.

“Why the devil couldn’t you open at once?” grumbled Marsh. “You knew I was coming. ‘Who’s there?’ indeed! Do you want me to bawl ‘Marsh’ at the top of my voice outside your door?” At this the nervous man looked terrified. “Well, then, why don’t you open? ‘Ivan Petrovitch’ or ‘Peter Sergeievitch’⁠—can’t anyone be Ivan Petrovitch? Isn’t that just why I am ‘Ivan Petrovitch’?”

“Yes, yes,” answered the nervous man, “but nowadays one never knows who may be at the door.”

“Well, then, open and look, or next time I will shout ‘Marsh.’ ” The nervous man looked more terrified than ever. “Well, well,” laughed Marsh, “I am only joking. This is my friend⁠—er⁠—”

“Michael Mihailovitch,” I put in.

“Very glad to see you, Michael Mihailovitch,” said the nervous man, looking anything but glad.

The Journalist was a man of thirty-five years of age, though his thin and pale features, dishevelled hair, and ragged beard gave him the appearance of being nearly fifty. He was attired in an old greenish overcoat with the collar turned up, and dragged his feet about in a pair of worn-out carpet slippers. The flat was on the shady side of the street, the sun never peered into its gloomy precincts, it was dark and musty, and icy cold.

“Well, how go things, Dmitri Konstantinovitch?” asked Marsh.

“Poorly, poorly, Ivan Petrovitch,” said the Journalist, coughing. “This is the third day I have not been to work. You will excuse my proceeding with business; I’m having lunch. Come into the kitchen, it is the least cold of all rooms.”

The Journalist, preparing his noonday meal, was engaged in boiling a few potatoes over a stick fire in a tiny portable stove. “Two days’ rations,” he remarked, ironically, holding up a salt herring. “How do they expect us to live, indeed? And half-a-pound of bread into the bargain. That’s how they feed the bourgeois in return for sweating for them. And if you don’t sweat for them, then you get nothing. ‘He who toileth not, neither let him eat,’ as they say. But it’s only ‘toil’ if it is to their advantage. If you toil to your own advantage, then it is called ‘speculation,’ and you get shot. Ugh! A pretty state our Russia has come to, indeed! Do we not rightly say we are a herd of sheep?”

Continuing in this strain the Journalist scraped his smelly herring and began eating it with his potatoes ravenously and yet gingerly, knowing that the quicker he finished the scanty repast the sooner he would realize there was nothing more. Picking the skeleton clean, he sucked the tail and dug his fork into the head for the last scraps of meat.

“Plus 1,000 roubles a month,” he went on. “Here I eat two days’ rations at a single meal, and what can I buy with 1,000 roubles? A few pounds of potatoes, a pound or two of bread and butter? Then there’s nothing left for fuel, when wood that used to cost five roubles a sazhen now costs five hundred!”

From his overcoat pocket Marsh produced half-a-pound of bread. “Here, Dmitri Konstantinovitch,” he said, thrusting it toward him, “your health!”

The Journalist’s face became transfigured. Its haggard look vanished. He glanced up, his mouth fixed in a half-laugh of delight and incredulity, his sunken eyes sparkling with childlike pleasure and gratitude.

“For me?” he exclaimed, scarcely believing his eyes. “But what about yourself? Surely you do not get sufficient, especially since⁠—”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Marsh, with his good-natured smile. “You know Maria? She is a wonder! She gets everything. From my farm she managed to save several sacks of potatoes and quite a lot of bread, and hide it all here in town. But listen, Dmitri Konstantinovitch, I’m expecting a visitor here soon, the same man as the day before yesterday. I will take him into the other room, so that he need not see you.”

The Journalist, I could see, was overcome with fear at being obliged to receive Marsh’s unwelcome visitor, but he said nothing. He wrapped the bread carefully up in paper and put it away in a cupboard. A moment later there were three sharp rings at the bell. Marsh hurried to the door, admitted his visitor, and led him into the Journalist’s study.

“You may as well come in, too,” he said to me, looking into the kitchen.

“Michael Ivanitch,” I whispered, pointing at myself, as we passed in. Marsh introduced me. “My friend, Michael Ivanitch Schmit,” he said.

My first impulse when I saw the individual Marsh nicknamed “the Policeman” was to laugh, for anyone less like a policeman than the little man who rose and bowed I have seldom seen. I will not describe him too precisely, but he was short, red-faced, and insignificant-looking. In spite of this, however, his manner showed that he had a very high opinion of his own importance. He shook hands and reseated himself with comical dignity.

“Go on, Alexei Fomitch,” said Marsh. “I want my friend to know how matters stand. He may be able to help.”

“Madame Marsh, as I was saying,” proceeded the Policeman, “is incarcerated in chamber No. 4 with thirty-eight other women of various station, including titled personages, servant girls, and prostitutes. The chamber is not a large one and I fear the conditions are far from pleasant. My informants tell me she is cross-examined several hours every day with the object of eliciting the hiding-place of Monsieur Marsh, which they believe she knows. Unfortunately her case is complicated by the confused replies she has given, for after several hours’ interrogation it often becomes difficult to retain clarity of mind. Confused or incoherent replies, even though accidental, lead to further and still more exacting interpellation.”

Marsh followed every word with a concern that was not lost upon the Policeman. “But can we not get round the interrogators?” he asked, “they all have their price, damn it.”

“Yes, that is often so,” continued the Policeman in a tone of feigned consolation. “The investigator can frequently be induced to turn the evidence in favour of the accused. But in this case it is unfortunately useless to offer the usual bribe, for even if Madame Marsh’s innocence is proven to the hilt, she will still be detained as a hostage until the discovery of Monsieur Marsh.”

Marsh’s face twitched. “I feared so,” he said in a dull voice. “What are the chances of flight?”

“I was coming to that,” said the Policeman, suavely. “I am already making inquiries on the subject. But it will take some days to arrange. The assistance of more than one person will have to be enlisted. And I fear⁠—I hesitate,” he added in unctuous tones of regret, “I hesitate to refer to such a matter⁠—but I am afraid this method may be a little more⁠—er⁠—costly. Pardon me for⁠—”

“Money?” cried Marsh. “Damn it all, man, don’t you realize it is my wife? How much do you want?”