Blood Red, Snow White (20 page)

As I talked he regarded me thoughtfully from under dark brows, and his face grew more serious as I spoke. When I finished he seemed lost in thought, but then a smile spread across his face.

“You, Mr. Ransome, are sent from God! May well you look surprised, but it is true. You are no more surprised than me, I assure you. If I had prayed for something like this to happen it could not have been more perfect.”

“What?” I asked. “I don’t…”

“No,” he said. “But then maybe you are not aware of the current situation with Russia. We are at war with Russia, on behalf of the White cause. But we are struggling. We are a small country, with few friends. We cannot continue this war with Russia, it is killing more than just our men. We want to make a peace proposal to the Bolsheviks, and for their part, the Bolsheviks have made promises to respect our independence if we end the war.”

“So why not simply tell them so?”

“How? The wires between here and Moscow are tapped. If I send a man, an Estonian to Moscow, and he is caught … Mr. Ransome, if the Allies, and if the White Armies learned that we want a truce with the Reds, there would be grave consequences. What I need, instead, is an independent man. A neutral figure, someone known by and trusted by the Bolsheviks. In fact I need you, Mr. Ransome.”

Then I understood why Piip had given me so much of his time. I was, as he said, the perfect messenger, heaven-sent.

“I’ll get you across the border, I’ll arrange a transfer to Russian hands for you. Then you can rescue your Evgenia, and I will have my message delivered to Lenin. Do we have a deal?”

I didn’t even think about it.

“Yes,” I said, “we have a deal.”

20

BUT NOTHING IS EVER THAT EASY.

Minister Piip and I might have decided upon a neat little plan that suited us both, but the third party to the equation, Moscow, had not.

At my suggestion, Piip sent a telegram to Litvinov, whose release from Brixton prison had secured Lockhart’s freedom. I hoped my old acquaintance there would be enough to get the Bolsheviks to arrange the journey, but it was not.

Piip received a telegram back from Litvinov almost by return. They refused, point-blank, to let me back into Russia. I don’t know what had happened in my absence, but I was clearly out of favor with Moscow. Maybe Trotsky had finally convinced Lenin that I was a spy after all. Which, to be fair, would only be reasonable.

I, however, had other cares, and I wasn’t going to be deterred by a mere telegram.

In Piip’s office, I told him what to do. I grabbed a sheet of paper and scribbled on it in capitals.

“This is a telegram for Litvinov,” I said. “Wait three days and then send it.”

I handed Piip the paper and he laughed as he read the five words.

RANSOME ALREADY LEFT FOR MOSCOW

“You are a brave man, Mr. Ransome,” he said.

“No. Not brave. Just someone trying to find a home.”

Piip looked at me curiously, but he said nothing.

“So,” I said, “I’m leaving as soon as possible. Can you get me an escort to the front lines?”

He nodded.

“Of course.”

“And papers? Do you have something for me to take?”

“No,” Piip said. “You are my message. I cannot run the risk of anything falling into the wrong hands. You will carry your message up here,” he tapped his head, “which is why only you can do this job. Lenin will believe what you have to tell him.”

*   *   *

I took the night train out of Reval, for Valka. The train was unheated and I froze, getting no sleep at all. Next day I traveled on by narrow-gauge railway to Maliup, where I spent the night with an Estonian captain and his wife. They were hospitable and fed me well, for which I was very grateful.

The following morning, I was taken under escort in a two-horse carriage.

We drove east, but then turned to the south. It seemed that fighting had broken out again, and my escorts thought I would stand more chance further toward the Latvian border, where things were quieter. The snows had come, and the roads were bad. Progress was slow, but after some hours of driving along idyllic forest tracks, the carriage slowed. It crawled on and on at walking pace for another half hour or so, nothing but trees and snow to be seen, and then stopped.

The escort turned to me.

“You walk from here,” he said in English, and shoved the door open.

I got out, my things dumped in the snow at my feet.

“Our soldiers, there,” said the escort, pointing behind me. “Russians are there. Good luck.”

With that the carriage made a hasty turn, and then sped away as fast as it could.

I took stock.

It was still morning, and though hints of mist hung over the snowy landscape, the sun was glinting on the tops of the firs and silver birches that surrounded me. As the sun tilted down, the frost on the snow glittered like a certain case of jewels Trotsky had once shown me. That seemed long ago, as I stood on my own in the forest. I looked back to where the Estonian forces were supposed to be, but could see nothing. Was that a hint of something metal shining? It was only a guess. I turned and looked at the way ahead. There was an open field, that led from the clutch of trees where I was standing, over to where the Reds were supposed to be.

Well
, I thought.
I’m in no man’s land. Now what?

In answer to my own question, I pulled my pipe from one pocket, and some tobacco from the other. I risked the cold for a while, pulling my gloves off and holding them in my teeth while I filled the pipe. Gloves back on, I lit the pipe, and began to puff it into life.

No man’s land. The space between. The space between one side and another, that belongs to neither. That’s where I was. And that’s where I had always been, I realized; I’d skirted my way between the Russians and the Allies, but the path I took had always been mine alone.

I relaxed. I was at home here, in the middle of nowhere, and with that comfort, I decided what to do.

I reached down, picked up my bag in my right hand, my typewriter in the left, and began to walk toward the Russian lines.

No one, I told myself, is going to shoot a man smoking a pipe.

*   *   *

If I could have whistled, too, I would have done, but nevertheless I tried to look as nonchalant as possible. As I walked, the minutes went by, and the pipe got hotter and hotter as I clenched it between my teeth, smoke blowing into my eyes.

Somehow I had convinced myself that even the Red Army would understand that a man laden with bags, smoking and walking in broad daylight straight toward their lines could not possibly be a threat.

At that moment, an unbelievably loud bang shattered the peace of the frosty morning. It had been a while since I had heard gunfire, and my heart began thumping even before I had a chance to think.

Then there was a shout, and with relief I knew that the shot was only a warning.

“Stop!”

There was a flurry of snow ahead, very close to me. I’d nearly walked right on top of them. About twenty feet away a man roughly dressed in a Red army uniform emerged from a snowy thicket. If he had wanted to kill me, I would have been dead.

He aimed his rifle at me. He seemed unsure what to say, but he knew what to do. He lowered the point of the rifle toward me.

I lifted my bags slightly, showing I would love to put my hands in the air if only they weren’t so full. I puffed on the pipe for dear life, showing how incredibly nonchalant I was feeling.

There was a movement to my left and I saw another half dozen soldiers, their rifles pointing in a direction I didn’t find amusing. One of them waved me forward. I looked nervously down at my coat. It was the old coat that had seen me through years in Russia, in Petrograd, and away at the front. But it was an old Tsarist officer’s coat, and though it bore no emblems or other service marks, I wished I had changed it for something else.

One of the soldiers shouted.

“This way!”

Obediently, I walked with a gun at my back further into Red territory, and very soon we reached their front line trench. Here I was hastily bundled into a dugout, still at close quarters to a rifle.

“Spy, sir,” my escort said.

As my eyes grew used to the darkness, I saw a corporal sitting on a trunk, drinking tea. He looked up, a mixture of boredom and puzzlement on his face.

“Spy? Take him away and shoot him.”

“Wait!” I cried, “I’m English!”

“Really?” said the corporal, “and I’m American.”

Things were rapidly going against me.

“I’m telling the truth,” I said, in English, this time, and then in Russian, “and I’m no spy. I’m going to Moscow. To see Lenin.”

The soldier stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“Oh! To see Lenin, is it? Take him away and shoot him.”

“Listen,” I said. “Listen for a minute. My name is Arthur Ransome, and I have an important message from the Estonian government for Lenin. If you speak to Moscow they’ll tell you who I am. It’s vital I see Lenin.”

The corporal started to sit up.

“Vital? Why?”

“I can’t tell you that, but I give you my word.”

“Oh! The Englishman gives his word!” He stared at me, openmouthed. It was a look of belligerence.

“Try to see it this way. If I’m telling the truth, one phone call to Moscow will settle the matter. And if not, you can shoot me. But if you shoot me before you know the truth, you could be in a lot of trouble.”

He pondered this for a while, and eventually the logic seemed to dawn on him.

“And if you are a spy,” he said, “I can shoot you then?”

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. I promise.”

I was trusting a lot to Moscow, but fortune favored me.

“Regrettably,” he said, “we cannot speak to Moscow from here. We will have to take you to battalion headquarters. That will be best. In fact, then they can decide whether to shoot you.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see. Good.”

The corporal, now visibly relieved of the burden of having to make a decision, smiled at me.

“But would you like some tea before we go? It’s very cold this morning. It’s only cherry leaf, but it’s good and it’s hot.”

21

ALMOST THE SAME SCENE
was enacted word for word at battalion headquarters.

Once again, my fate rested with the officer I was speaking to understanding that it might be best to ask questions first and shoot later, rather than the other way around, but at last, to my great relief, he agreed to telegraph Moscow.

“Just as soon,” he said, “as I can find the damn code book.”

He began rummaging around his quarters, looking nothing like an officer of any army, unshaven and badly dressed. When he finally found the leather-bound pocketbook, he held it up triumphantly.

“Aha! Now we will get some answers.”

I could only pray they would be the ones I needed, but my luck held, for Moscow replied within hours that I was indeed a journalist, and should be escorted under guard to Moscow immediately. Of my claims to bring a message to Lenin, there was no word either way, but I had done enough, for the moment, to save my skin.

One soldier was all they sent to escort me to Moscow, but one soldier with a gun was more than enough. Besides, they were taking me where I wanted to go. Next day we made our way across open land until we found a railway line, which we walked down, the path being easier hopping from sleeper to sleeper, than sliding through the snow. Eventually, late in the afternoon, we found a small halt, no more than a hut open on one side to the weather, and a small heap of coal. There was a water tank, but it would have been useless for refilling the engine; the temperatures were subzero and icicles like white spears hung from the tank.

My guard was not very chatty. I tried to speak to him, more than once, but he was having none of it.

“Is a train coming?” I said, and that was the one question he answered, with a single word.

“Da.”

That at least I was glad of, because I knew we would freeze if we stayed out overnight. Then there was no more conversation, and we sat in the halt. I watched my breath steam out in the freezing air, smoked a pipe and wondered if my life would end by a train track in the depths of the Russian forests. It wasn’t something I had planned, but right then it seemed all too possible.

When the train finally came rolling down the track toward us it seemed unreal. In the half-light of dusk, both sound and vision seemed impaired; the train moved slowly toward us like a leviathan from a dream, blowing vast clouds of steam into the air next to us, the wheels slowing and slipping as the brakes brought it to a standstill.

The last silence of the snowy forest lurked behind us, and we clambered aboard. The train jolted into life again, almost unwillingly, but we were away before my soldier and I had even found somewhere to sit.

The train was packed, mostly with soldiers but with ordinary people, too. My guard made some of them move so he could sit opposite me in a compartment. All the while his rifle lay across his chest, as if he expected me to run at any minute. As the journey wore on, however, his mood changed. I think he had finally realized that I wasn’t going to try to escape, and I began to chat to him about Moscow, a place, it turned out, that he had never been. Eventually I told him about Evgenia, and then I knew I had touched something in him, perhaps some story of his own, because he listened hard and nodded furiously from time to time as I spoke.

Sometime later an old woman came along the carriage with flasks of tea, and I bought some, sharing it with my guard. We had had nothing to eat all day, and the tea sloshed around inside us, but it was hot. Night came thick and deep beyond the carriage windows, and the soldier fell asleep, still cradling his gun, but now, as if it were a baby.

Finally I slept, too.

*   *   *

By midmorning, we were approaching Moscow. All the way, my heart had been beating faster and faster, as I grew more and more apprehensive about what I would find, and whether I might be welcomed, or not.

There was no way out, but somehow that made me feel worse. I had to return to the West. I had to, but only with Evgenia.