Red Stefan (19 page)

She could have stayed in that dream, but it broke in a red glow. She was standing with Stephen before an immense jewelled ikon, and a priest was marrying them. Stephen was Red Stefan again. Everything in the dream was red—his hair, his beard, his blouse. They were in a church, but it was on fire, and the fire roared so loud that she could neither hear the priest's words nor their responses. Then Stephen put out his hand to give her the ring, and a ray of blood-red light struck down between them like a sword.

She woke up with her heart beating hard and her lips dry. The train was slowing down. She moved her cramped limbs and wondered where they were and how long she had been asleep. The train had stopped before; she was vaguely aware of that. Once, twice, three times—she did not know how often, but she thought they must have been travelling for hours. She was so stiff.…

Stephen was moving beside her. He had shifted the peasant girl, who sprawled fast asleep with her head against the skirts of a woman on the seat. He got to his knees and touched Elizabeth warningly. As she leaned towards him, he put his lips to her ear and said,

“We get out here.”

Then he was on his feet, pulling her up. Without his hand she would not have been able to pick her way among the sleepers. From the middle of the carriage he swung her up and set her down again by the door. The train was still moving slowly. As he opened the door, there was a long piercing blast from the engine, followed by the hiss of escaping steam. Stephen took Elizabeth under the arms and dropped her down upon the snowy track. Next moment he had shut the door and followed her. The train moved slowly on. A few hundred yards away the lights of a wayside station broke the dark.

“You're not hurt, are you?” He was helping her up.

“No.”

“I don't think anyone saw us go. They were all sleeping like pigs. Lord—what a fug there was in there! Are you gassed?”

“I had horrible dreams,” said Elizabeth.

“I don't wonder. The air will do you good. Now we've just got to climb this bank and keep along behind it. Thank goodness the snow hasn't drifted. We haven't got far to go.”

“Where are we going?”

She did not really mind. She hated and despised herself for it, but she didn't really mind where she went as long as she was with Stephen. The knowledge of this came to her in a burning flash as she asked her question. It was her pride that burned. It flared with a short, fierce flame as Stephen said cheerfully.

“Oh, just to a house in the village. It's only a step. I've got out this way before when I didn't particularly want to be seen. The train always slows down just outside the station. By the way, my name's Nikolai here. I think you'd better be my widowed sister Anna. It doesn't matter much, because the people in the house we're going to can be trusted. You're not the first refugee I've run across the frontier.”

That short, fierce flame died down. She was only another refugee to him. He would get her over the frontier because that was his business, and then he would go on his way and forget that she had ever existed. What a bitter, weary fool she was.

She spoke quickly to break the picture in her mind.

“Are we near the frontier?”

“As near as I dare take you. But there's no chance of getting over it anywhere near the line of rail. We shall go on by sledge to-morrow.”

They had come to the outskirts of the village. The snow on the ground seemed to give out a light of its own. Strange to have that ghostly light to guide them, with the sky so black above. The houses of the village were like bee-hives thatched with snow. Elizabeth had the feeling that she had walked out of the world into an etching.

Stephen stopped at the third house and knocked, not upon the door, but upon one of the little windows that flanked it. Rap—rap—double rap—double rap—rap—double rap—rap. He waited a moment and then repeated this. In the short silence that followed, the whistle of the engine came to them and the chug-chug-chug of the departing train. As the sound died away, the house door was opened a chink and a grumbling voice said,

“Who's there?”

“Nikolai,” said Stephen, and at once the opening widened and let them through.

The door was shut behind them and barred again. A flicker of light appeared, and the smoke of an oil lamp went up in a reek of soot.

An old man with a puckered face made a scolding sound as he adjusted the wick.

“Marya has no sense with lamps. When she trims them they always smoke. When I trim a lamp it does not smoke. Women are no good at these things.” He raised his voice a little. “No woman can trim a lamp properly.”

By the smoky light Elizabeth saw a movement on the platform about the stove. A woman's voice said,

“What's that?”

“The lamp's smoking again,” said the old man.

A middle-aged woman sat up and pushed back her hair.

“Is that Nikolai? Because if it is, you're a fool to show that light. What a time of night to come here!”

She got down off the stove, and came towards them, showing a broad good-humoured face above square shoulders and a short, sturdy frame. At the sight of Elizabeth she clicked with her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

“Lord have mercy—who's this?”

“You can call her my widowed sister Anna,” said Stephen. “And you can give her something to eat and drink, and then you can let us sleep. Wait a minute and I'll just make sure that the light doesn't show from outside.”

He stepped out into the snow and was back again in a moment.

“It's all right.”

“Of course it's all right!” said the old man grumbling. “Should I have lighted it if it wasn't all right?”

After a meal of hot cabbage soup, black bread, and cheese produced by Stephen the lamp was put out again and they slept.

Elizabeth did not dream any more. She felt safe and warm, and her sleep was deep.

CHAPTER XX

It was still dark when Stephen woke up.

“I'm afraid we've got to start off again. I want to get away before there's anyone about.”

“How are we going?”

“I keep a sledge and a horse here. I've been up and down this way for years as Nikolai. I used to go round all these villages persuading people to go on to the Collective Farms. Did you see me speak to the G.P.U. policeman at Tronsk? He comes from these parts, and would swear I was a red-hot Communist and a most useful comrade. It's a bit of a strain leading a double life, but if you do happen to want to disappear, it's useful to have another skin to slip into. There's a pretty good Collective Farm not ten miles away that I helped to organize.”

“Are we going there?” said Elizabeth.

He shook his head and whispered in her ear,

“We're going to the frontier, and the sooner we get there the better.”

They drove out of the village in a dusk that was just beginning to break. Snow had fallen during the night—“And that means that no one will know where we left the train last night.”

As the dawn came, Elizabeth saw a landscape broken by clumps of trees which here and there thickened into woods. There was an even grey sky overhead. The wind had dropped, but it was cold enough. She sat wrapped in sheepskins and wondered how often Stephen had driven this way before, and with whom. She had settled it with herself that she was just one of the refugees whom he smuggled across the frontier. He did it because it was his trade. If they were women, he looked after them kindly, warmed them when they were cold, fed them when they were hungry, and rescued them when they were in danger. When he thought she was frightened he had patted her arm or her shoulder. She wondered whether he had done that to all the others. Probably. It was just his way of reassuring the silly frightened creature whom he happened to be looking after. She had found it rather an endearing way, but it ceased to be endearing when it ceased to be Stephen's way of comforting
her
.

She said after a long silence, “How many people have you taken over the frontier?”

He looked round at her with a laugh.

“I don't know. A good few.”

“Men, or women?”

“Both—but more women than men.”

“Young, or old?”

“Oh, mostly youngish. It's a bit too rough for the older ones. I did take an old lady over once, but I swore I never would again. She didn't really want to leave Russia at all, and every time we stopped she wanted me to turn round and take her back again.”

Elizabeth let that pass. She was not interested in the old lady.

“Are they all your widowed sisters?” she asked.

Stephen laughed again.

“The old princess was my grandmother. She didn't like it a bit.”

“He won't talk about the young ones,” said Elizabeth to herself. She became horribly conscious of her disguise. She ought to have been able to laugh it away and be herself in spite of grizzled elf-locks, a plastered cheek, and warts on her face, but she couldn't. It was a dreadful thing to lose one's sense of humour. Quite suddenly she felt as if she couldn't bear those warts any more. She turned on Stephen with a sparkle in her eye.

“Did all the others have to be disguised?”

“More or less.”

“Am I more—or less?”

“Oh, more. I made a particularly good job of you.”

“Then they didn't all have warts on their faces?”

“No—it wasn't necessary.” He stared at her. “What's the matter?”

“I hate them!” said Elizabeth vehemently. “Can't I take them off? No one knows me here.”

“No, you can't take them off. They change you a lot. You'll have to stick to them till we are over the frontier. Why do you mind?”

“Because they change me.”

“Well, there's no one to see you,” said Stephen kindly. “I shouldn't worry if I were you.”

“Oh, I'm not worrying,” said Elizabeth.

Her voice had an odd choked sound, because she was angry and yet she wanted to laugh. Her sense of humour couldn't be quite dead yet, or she wouldn't have wanted to laugh. Of course it didn't matter to Stephen what she looked like, or how many warts she had on her face. Why should it? In point of fact it did not matter to Stephen at all. It did not matter to him what Elizabeth looked like. It would not even have mattered to him if the warts had been real warts instead of little coloured lumps of plasticine. His own picture of her was much too firmly fixed in his mind for any outward appearance to affect it. She stood in an inner shrine before which there burned a steady, changeless flame. He had no idea of why she should be troubled. Of course make-up wasn't particularly comfortable. You couldn't wash your face for one thing. He decided that this was what was bothering her.

“You'll be able to have a bath when we get to Warsaw,” he said.

Elizabeth drew back into the sheepskins and shook with painful laughter. At Warsaw she would be able to have a bath. She would probably have to say good-bye to Stephen in Warsaw. He would have finished his job, and there would be nothing to keep them together. He could wash his hands of her, and she could wash her face.

She was silent for the rest of the way.

They passed no one at all during the first two hours, but after that they met one or two sledges. At midday they reached a village and there stopped. They were to spend the afternoon and night there and then go on again.

The house into which Stephen took her was a fairly clean one. He was greeted with noisy affection by a little girl and boy who appeared to be twins, and more soberly by their mother, a grave-faced woman with a baby in her arms. Her husband came in presently. He seemed very pleased to see Stephen. He was, it appeared, the person he most wanted to see. He had all but made up his mind to go on to the Collective Farm. What did Nikolai think about it? What was the use of staying on here?—“I ask you, what is the use? If we have a good year, the government takes so much that so far as we are concerned it might just as well be a bad year. And if it's a bad year, what is there for us to do except starve? And if anyone puts a little bit away, he's a food-hoarder and there's no mercy for him.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Now wouldn't it be better on the Collective Farm? You don't starve there. The children would have enough to eat. I say we had better go, but Stasia says no. What do you say?”

“You'd be better off on the Farm,” said Stephen.

Stasia's eyes dwelt on him for a moment. She shook her head and looked down at her baby.

“There!” said the aggravated husband. “Look at her! That's what she does all the time—just shakes her head and won't say why. If I've told her once, I've told her a thousand times how much better off we should be on the Farm.”

Stasia shook her head again.

“It's no use, Ilya,” said Stephen with a laugh. “When a woman has got her mind made up there's an end of it.”

The two men went on talking. Stasia rocked her baby. Presently the children ran off to school.

As the afternoon wore on, three or four people dropped in—Stasia's father and mother, and her young brother Peter, a lad of eighteen. The father was a jolly man with a free tongue, the mother a dried wisp of a woman.

The boy Peter plied Stephen with questions about life in the towns. What was it like in Moscow? Could one get a job there? He was sick of village life and would like to go into a factory. Wasn't it a fact that the proletarian in the town was much better off than the peasant? It was the old grievance, with a personal edge to it.

“Why should I plough, and sow, and reap to fatten someone in a factory? I'd rather work in the factory myself and have someone ploughing and sowing and reaping for me.”

His father clapped him on the back in mock anger.

“So your mother and I are to work that you may grow fat away in Moscow? That's a good joke! But I tell you what you shall do—you shall go into a boot factory and make boots for all the village. We'll manage to do without you if you'll do that.”