Red Dusk and the Morrow · Chapter 3 (3/4)

“It can be fixed up all right⁠—with a little care,” he went on. “Five or six thousand roubles to the station commissar and he’ll shut his eyes, another thousand or so to the bridge sentry and he’ll look the other way, and over you go. Evening is the best time, when it’s dark.”

I remembered I had heard speak of this method in Finland. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. It was the simplest thing in the world, but it wasn’t sure. Commissars were erratic and not unfearful of burning their fingers. Furthermore, the Finns sometimes turned people back. Besides, Mrs. Marsh would be with me⁠—I hoped⁠—and of that Zorinsky must know nothing.

“That is a splendid notion,” I exclaimed. “I had never thought of that. I’ll let you know before I start.”

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 from No. 2 Gorokhovaya,” 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 marketplace. 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, knickknacks, clocks, books, pictures, paper, pots, pans, pails, pipes, postcards⁠—the entire paraphernalia of antiquarian and secondhand 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. Passersby 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 eyes of 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 at No. 2 Gorokhovaya a 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 overheated 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, every victim 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, “Tomorrow, 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. Isaac’s Cathedral.”

Mechanically she destroyed the second slip, adjusted the 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 icons 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 tonight.”

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 boxcar 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 anyone 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.

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 crossing the 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 rather à 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.