Red Dusk and the Morrow · Chapter 9 (2/2)

He followed me cautiously at some paces distance and we sat down on a bench amongst the bushes. In this little garden former emperors and empresses had promenaded when occupying the Winter Palace. In the olden days before the revolution I often used to wonder what was hidden behind the massive walls and railings with imperial monograms that surrounded it. But it was only a plain little enclosure with winding paths, bushes, and a small fountain.

“My God!” exclaimed Ivan Sergeievitch, in astonishment, when I had convinced him of my identity. “Is it possible? No one would recognize you! It is you I have been looking for.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Do you not know that Zorinsky is in Finland?”

Zorinsky again! Though it was only a week, it seemed ages since I had last crossed the frontier, and the Zorinsky episode already belonged to the distant past⁠—when I was somebody and something else. I was surprised how little interest the mention of his name excited in me. I was already entirely engrossed in a new political situation that had arisen.

“Is he?” I replied. “I went to Finland myself recently, partly to see you about that very fellow. I saw your wife. But nobody seems to know anything about him, and I have ceased to care.”

“You have no notion what a close shave you have had, Pavel Pavlovitch. I will tell you what I know. When I heard from my wife that Varia was arrested and that you were in touch with Zorinsky, I returned to Finland and, although I am condemned by the Bolsheviks to be shot, set out at once for Petrograd. You see, Zorinsky⁠—”

And Ivan Sergeievitch unfolded to me a tale that was strange indeed. I have forgotten some details of it, but it was roughly as follows:

Zorinsky, under another name, had been an officer in the old army. He distinguished himself for reckless bravery at the front and drunkenness in the rear. During the war he had had some financial losses, became implicated in attempted embezzlement, and later was caught cheating at cards. He was invited to resign from his regiment, but was reinstated after an interval in view of his military services. He again distinguished himself in battle, but was finally excluded from the regiment shortly before the revolution, this time on the ground of misconduct. During 1917 he was known to have failed in some grandiose deals of a speculative and doubtful character. He then disappeared for a time, but in the summer of 1918 was found living in Petrograd under various names, ostensibly hiding from the Bolsheviks. Although his business deals were usually unsuccessful, he appeared always to be in affluent circumstances. It was this fact, and a certain strangeness of manner, that led Ivan Sergeievitch to regard him with strong suspicion. He had him watched, and established beyond all doubt that he was endeavouring to gain admission to various counterrevolutionary organizations on behalf of the Bolsheviks.

Shortly afterward, Ivan Sergeievitch was arrested under circumstances that showed that only Zorinsky could have betrayed him. But he escaped on the very night that he was to be shot by breaking from his guards and throwing himself over the parapet of the Neva into the river. In Finland, whither he fled, he met and formed a close friendship with Melnikoff, who, after the Yaroslavl affair and his own escape, had assisted in the establishment of a system of communication with Petrograd, occasionally revisiting the city himself.

“Of course I told Melnikoff of Zorinsky,” said Ivan Sergeievitch, “though I could not know that Zorinsky would track him. But he got the better of us both.”

“Then why,” I asked, “did Melnikoff associate with him?”

“He never saw him, so far as I know.”

“What!” I exclaimed. “But Zorinsky said he knew him well and always called him ‘an old friend’!”

“Zorinsky may have seen Melnikoff, but he never spoke to him, that I know of. Melnikoff was a friend of a certain Vera Alexandrovna X., who kept a secret café⁠—you knew it? Ah, if I had known Melnikoff had told you of it I should have warned you. From other people who escaped from Petrograd I learned that Zorinsky frequented the café too. He was merely lying in wait for Melnikoff.”

“You mean he deliberately betrayed him?”

“It is evident. Put two and two together. Melnikoff was a known and much-feared counterrevolutionary. Zorinsky was in the service of the Extraordinary Commission and was well paid, no doubt. He also betrayed Vera Alexandrovna and her café, probably receiving so much per head. I heard of that from other people.”

“Then why did he not betray me too?” I asked, incredulously.

“You gave him money, I suppose?”

I told Ivan Sergeievitch the whole story; how I had met Zorinsky, his offer to release Melnikoff, the sixty thousand roubles and other payments “for odd expenses” amounting to about a hundred thousand in all. I also told him of the valuable and accurate information Zorinsky had provided me with.

“That is just what he would do,” said Ivan Sergeievitch. “He worked for both sides. A hundred thousand, I suppose, is all he thought he could get out of you, so now he has gone to Finland. Something must have happened to you here, for he wanted to prevent your returning to Russia and pose as your saviour. Is it not true that something has happened?”

I told him of the discovery of the Journalist’s flat and “No. 5,” but, unless I had been tracked unnoticed, there was no especial reason to believe Zorinsky could have discovered either of these. The betrayal of the name “Krylenko” was of course easily traceable to him, but whence had he known the addresses?

And then I remembered that I had never telephoned to Zorinsky from anywhere except from “No. 5” and the Journalist’s, for those were the only places where I could speak without being overheard. I suggested the coincidence to Ivan Sergeievitch.

“Aha!” he cried, obviously regarding the evidence as conclusive. “Of course he inquired for your telephone numbers directly you had spoken! But he would not betray you as long as you continued to pay him. Besides, he doubtless hoped eventually to unearth a big organization. As for your betrayal, any time would do, and the reward was always certain. It might be another hundred thousand for your haunts. And then, you see, in Finland he would warn you against returning and get some more out of you for this further great service. He was furious to find you had just left.”

From the Windows of the Winter Palace prying eyes were looking down into the garden. Two figures sitting so long on a cold day in the bushes would begin to rouse suspicion. We rose and walked out on to the quay.

Seating ourselves on one of the stone benches set in the parapet of the river, Ivan Sergeievitch told me many things that were of the greatest value. An entirely new set of associations grew out of this conversation. He also said that Varia had just been released from prison and that he was going to take her with him across the frontier that night. He had been unable to find Stepanovna, but supposed she was staying with friends. I agreed if ever I heard of her to let him know.

“Will Zorinsky come back to Russia, do you think?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” was the reply; and he added, again staring at my transformed physiognomy and laughing, “But you certainly have no cause to fear his recognizing you now!”

Such was the strange story of Zorinsky as I learnt it from Ivan Sergeievitch. I never heard it corroborated except by the Doctor, who didn’t know Zorinsky, but I had no reason to doubt it. It certainly tallied with my own experiences. And he was only one of several. As Ivan Sergeievitch observed: “There are not a few Zorinskys, I fear, and they are the ruin and shame of our class.”

Twice, later, I was reminded acutely of this singular personage, who, as it transpired, did return to Russia. The first time was when I learned through acquaintances of Ivan Sergeievitch that Zorinsky believed me to be back in Petrograd, and had related to somebody in tones of admiration that he himself had seen me driving down the Nevsky Prospect in a carriage and pair in the company of one of the chief Bolshevist Commissars!

The second time was months later, when I espied him standing in a doorway, smartly dressed in a blue “French” and knee-breeches, about to mount a motorcycle. I was on the point of descending from a streetcar when our eyes met. I stopped and pushed my way back into the crowd of passengers. Being in the uniform of a Red soldier I feared his recognition of me not by my exterior, but by another peculiar circumstance. Under the influence of sudden emotion a sort of telepathic communication sometimes takes place without the medium of words and even regardless of distance. It has several times happened to me. Rightly or wrongly I suspected it now. I pushed my way through the car to the front platform and, looking back over the heads of the passengers, imagined (maybe it was mere imagination) I saw Zorinsky’s eyes also peering over the passengers’ heads toward me.

I did not wait to make sure. The incident occurred in the Zagorodny Prospect. Passing the Tsarskoeselsky station I jumped off the car while it was still in motion, stooped beneath its side till it passed, and boarded another going in the opposite direction. At the station I jumped off, entered the building and sat amongst the massed herds of peasants and “speculators” till dusk.

Eventually I heard that Zorinsky had been shot by the Bolsheviks. If so, it was an ironic and fitting close to his career. Perhaps they discovered him again serving two or more masters. But the news impressed me but little, for I had ceased to care whether Zorinsky was shot or not.