Red Stefan (18 page)

He spoke in a low matter-of-fact tone, but it came to her that he was angry too. For some obscure reason this made her feel a great deal better.

“You played on her being fond of you,” she said.

“I had to get her to go away, didn't I? I've told you already that I've never made love to Irina in my life. If I've played a trick on her, she has only herself to thank. She's asked for it. When you fainted she laughed. Do you think I care what she feels or doesn't feel after that?” He caught her arm and tucked it under his. “For heaven's sake be practical! You can't quarrel with me now, because there isn't time. Wait till we're over the frontier.”

He felt her quickened breathing. The frontier … Would they ever reach it? It seemed, like the line of the horizon, a distant goal which with every step receded instead of drawing near. No man ever reached the horizon, just as no man ever touched the rainbow's end. To Elizabeth the frontier seemed as unattainable. This time she did not draw her arm away. Instead: she said, very low,

“Shall we get there?” and at once was being scolded.

“Not if you talk like that—not if you even think like that. You'll never make a success of anything if you let yourself think about failing. Now I know that I'm going to get you over the frontier. I knew it the very first moment I saw you on the bridge. I could have picked you up and carried you over the frontier then and there. I've never had the slightest doubt about getting you away. I wish you'd clamp on to that instead of letting yourself get angry and afraid, and things like that. I'd rather you were angry than afraid.”

Elizabeth was not angry any more, neither was she afraid. She was only tired.

They turned into the station approach.

“Now,” said Stephen, “this is all going to be quite easy. Petroff wouldn't know you if he met you face to face.” He dived into his pocket and brought out a hunk of black bread. “I want you to keep munching away at this till the train starts. Make it last if you can. I want you to keep a good wad of it in your cheek, then if anyone speaks to you, you can just mumble through it as if you'd got your mouth full. It's one of the best ways of disguising one's voice. I don't want to be seen with you on the platform, but I'll get the tickets. Don't appear to be hiding or anything like that. Keep near anyone else who is waiting and do as they do. Now you stay here till you see me come out on the platform, and then just trickle through unobtrusively.”

The next hour seemed to Elizabeth the longest hour of her life. There was a shelter into which the half dozen people who were waiting for the train had crowded. Four of them were members of a peasant family consisting of an old grandmother, her son and daughter-in-law, and a girl of about sixteen. They sat on the bench surrounded by bundles. Why they were travelling and where they were going Elizabeth never discovered. The girl of sixteen was the only cheerful one of the party. She spoke to Elizabeth, asking her when she thought the train would come. At the mumbled reply she giggled and began to roll her eyes at a young man who sat at the end of the bench. He wore a collar and tie, and might have been a clerk. After a little while he changed his place and sat next to the girl.

The other passenger was an old man who looked like a Jew. He leaned forward upon a staff which he held between his hands. With his long hair and his long beard, and his long broken nails, he might have been Job, bereaved of friends as well as children. His eyes were sunk with trouble, he shook with cold and age, but in the curved nose and in the lines of cheek and jaw there lingered faint memories of that pride of race which the Jew never quite forgets.

The peasant family continued to talk about the train. It should have come four hours ago—no, two hours—no, six. It would be at least another three hours late. It might not come at all. If there had been much snow upon the line, perhaps it would not come. If it did not come till the morning, the old grandmother would be dead. She said so herself, and who should know if she didn't.

Presently Stephen came into the shelter. He stood near Elizabeth for a moment, and when he moved away, her ticket was lying in her lap.

The peasant girl nudged the young man she had been flirting with.

“That's what I call a proper man—don't you? Look at his shoulders! He could break you with one hand. What a pity he limps. Perhaps he has been a soldier. Shall I ask him? Soldiers are always ready to talk.”

Elizabeth watched Stephen as he walked away. He dropped one shoulder a little and halted on his left foot. A stranger who saw him would remember a man with a limp. He talked for a while to one of the G.P.U. police and then walked on again.

The father of the peasant family rummaged in a bundle and produced a tin teapot. A meagre pinch of tea was put into it, and he went off to fill it with boiling water at the station samovar. He came back, and after a moment the G.P.U. policeman appeared in the shelter. He looked up and down the huddled occupants of the bench and fixed his attention upon the young man with whom the peasant girl was flirting. A few years before a collar and a tie were enough to damn any man. They marked the hated
bourzhui
, and caused all true Marxian comrades to see red. Now they were permitted even to the elect. Nevertheless the G.P.U. man frowned as he watched the girl and the young man taking alternative sips of tea from the same pannikin. Presently he broke in upon them.

“What's your name? Where are you going to? What's your work?”

The young man stood up and answered politely. In Soviet Russia no one offends the G.P.U. if they can help it. He offered information with both hands—his name, Vassili Ilinoff, his destination the new Collective Farm at Orli, where he was to act as storekeeper.

After a little of this the policeman was satisfied. His eye wandered over the others.

The peasant girl had pouted for a moment. Now she thrust her pannikin of hot tea at Elizabeth with a good-natured “Here—have a drink. You look cold. We shall all freeze if the train doesn't come soon.” The tea was merely flavoured water, but it was scalding hot. Elizabeth took a grateful sip, and then wondered whether the stuff upon her lips would run. She was too cold to care. She went on sipping. The policeman had turned his attention to the Jew. The girl leaned towards Elizabeth, giggling and chattering, with a teasing eye for the young clerk, who was now crowded out.

“What do you think of that young man—the one that was talking to me? He has a sauce, I can tell you. I shan't talk to him any more.” Here she raised her voice and looked provokingly over her shoulder. “He looks like a
bourzhui
—don't you think so? But that's a good job he's got. I'm going on to a Collective Farm myself in the spring.” She giggled and looked over her shoulder again. “I shan't choose the one he's on, that's one thing certain.” Here she looked round and gave a muffled shriek as she discovered that Stephen had elbowed the young man away and was pushing into the place between her and Elizabeth.

“Don't tell me I frighten you,” he said. “Why do you waste your time with boys and old women? You don't look at all that sort of girl to me, I can tell you. Why, a girl like you could have any man she chose. But you know that already, don't you?” He turned to Elizabeth and snatched away the pannikin. “Look what she's left you—not too much. Get it filled up, and I'll help you to empty it.” He went on teasing her and paying her compliments.

The G.P.U. man after asking the Jew a question or two had faded away.

Elizabeth wondered how long it would be before someone found Petroff.

The train came at last. Everyone got up and began to count bundles and to run to and fro in a distracted manner. The peasant family lost the old grandmother and rushed aimlessly up and down the platform looking for her. People poured out of the train, some because they had reached their destination, some because they thought that they had reached it, some to fill teapots at the ever boiling samovar.

It was Elizabeth who found the peasant grandmother esconced in the corner seat of a carriage in the middle of the train. When the owner of the seat returned, there was a very loud and competent exchange of personal remarks. The rest of the family, attracted by the noise, surged into the compartment. The shelf-like sleeping berths above the seats were already full. So were the seats themselves.

Elizabeth crouched down on the floor beside the peasant girl. The grandmother, erect in her stolen corner, screamed out abuse in a shrill quavering voice, whilst the old man whose place she had taken continued his attempt to shout her down, vociferating that he had only left the carriage to fill his teapot.

Stephen had disappeared. A child on one of the upper shelves began to cry. The engine shrieked. The door of the compartment was wrenched open and banged again. Elizabeth looked up and saw Stephen's shoulders blocking the window.

With a jerk the train began to move.

CHAPTER XIX

It was a horrible journey. The air in the carriage was at the same time icy cold and intolerably stuffy. The peasant girl, who sat next to Elizabeth, talked all the time, sometimes to her, sometimes to her father, mother and grandmother, sometimes to Stephen at the other end of the compartment. She had the high nasal voice of the Russian woman. When for a moment she ceased to talk, it was to giggle or to nudge Elizabeth.

“Are you a gipsy?” she said. “You look like one. Can you tell fortunes? I wish you would tell me mine. What did you really think of that young man who was talking to me? Do you think it would be pleasant to be married to a storekeeper on a Collective Farm? Do you like the name of Vassili? I can't bear it. And shall I tell you why? I have a cousin called Vassili, and he made love to me till I had to run away. I would never marry a man called Vassili—not if he went down on his knees to ask me.”

Here she looked round to see whether the young storekeeper was listening. When she discovered that he was not even in the carriage, she pouted and flounced.

“No, I wouldn't have had him for worlds. I don't like those little men really. A gipsy told me I should marry a big black man and have seven children, but that is all nonsense. I shall not have a child at all unless I want to. Have you any children?” She giggled and screamed across the compartment at Stephen. “Did you hear what I said—about the gipsy—did you? You weren't meant to. You shouldn't have listened.”

Stephen edged his way towards them. It was difficult to move without treading on someone, because not only the seats but the whole of the floor-space was crowded. He arrived, however, and achieved a place upon the floor by dint of letting himself down and shoving.

The peasant girl giggled all the time.

“Did you think we wanted you over here? That's where you made a big mistake. You weren't meant to hear what we were saying. And if the gipsy did say I should marry a big black man, you needn't think it's going to be you. There are more big black men than you, aren't there?”

Stephen bent his head.

“Tell me what the gipsy said.”

“In front of all these people? I'd be ashamed.”

“Oh no, you wouldn't.”

“Oh yes, I should.”

The voices were going through Elizabeth's head. She was in a terribly cramped position, and the grinding and clanking of the train seemed to shake her very bones. Presently Stephen pushed between her and the girl. Somehow he had made a little more room and she could stretch out her feet. Somehow too she found that she could lean into the angle between his shoulder and the seat. He put a hand behind him, felt for her, patted her, and pushed up a thick fold of his sheepskin coat to serve as a cushion.

The girl went on talking. Sometimes he answered her. Their voices became low and confidential. The old man who had lost the corner seat had resigned himself. He squatted on the floor, his head nodding on his breast. In the place which she had annexed the peasant grandmother slept with her mouth open, snoring rhythmically on a high-pitched note rather like that of an oboe with a slightly cracked reed. The girl's father and mother slept. The child who had been crying whimpered now and again.

Elizabeth leaned back against Stephen's shoulder and felt herself slipping into a thick drowsy mist.

She began to dream that she was alone in the midst of a vast snowy wilderness, just one black speck on an endless dazzling waste. It was terrible to be that black speck and yet to be alive. She tried to walk through the snow, but her feet had frozen fast. Then there came the whirring and clanging of great wings. They made a wind. It drove the snow in stinging clouds. The wings hovered over her with an intolerable humming noise, and she saw that they were the wings of an enormous aeroplane. Petroff leaned down out of it and caught her by the hair. She was carried up, and up, and up, and she knew that presently he would let go of her and she would fall into the unimaginable depths of the snow.

She gave a sobbing cry and woke up. The noise that she had heard was only the clanging and thudding of the train. Her feet were numb with cold. She was leaning against Stephen's back. She straightened herself up and moved her feet. The candle which burned under a glass shade in the ceiling showed that all the passengers were asleep—all except Stephen. As soon as she moved, he put his hand behind him as he had done before and patted her arm.

The peasant girl had at last stopped talking. She had gone to sleep with her head on Stephen's shoulder. A little shiver of disgust ran over Elizabeth. She drew away and leaned against the seat. The train chugged on.

She fell asleep again, but not as deeply as before. It was like lying in a shallow stream. Sometimes the water drowned sense, and sight, and hearing, and sometimes it ebbed away. At these times light filtered through her eyelids. She was aware that the train had slowed, had stopped, was going on again. Sounds came to her. Then the water flowed again, and she went down into it and lost everything. Bits of broken dreams came and went. Once she was back at school, doing a sum on the blackboard. When she looked at it, it was Nicolas Radin's formula, and she heard Nicolas say, “You promised.” Once she was in a dark cellar, shut in alone, with the house fallen into ruins overhead. Then in the darkness Stephen touched her hand, and the fear was gone. She had been most horribly afraid, but at the touch of Stephen's hand the fear was gone.