David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

Paul had grown accustomed to the few scant hours of darkness in northern latitudes in summer; used to going to bed in full daylight and waking up again in the same hours later. It was still early. He lay for a few minutes, listening to the steady breathing of his companions then jumped down from the bunk, raised the blind and looked out on a bright landscape of trees and water. In the lower bunk, Jalonen the younger Finn, stirred and squinted up at him. Paul nodded ‘good morning’ to him, put his boots on and walked down the corridor to the lavatory, bracing himself against the motion of the train.

Pulling into Vyborg, Paul saw little beyond the water that surrounded the town except for a castle on a hill. They were to change at Jernvägs Station and, while Jalonen made enquiries concerning trains for the border, Paul looked out for the ubiquitous Hun. They were standing in knots on the station concourse and by the exit, but seemed indifferent to the people milling around them. It was a safe billet for them, he supposed, a long way from the front with little to concern them now the civil war was over except for a few fugitive Reds. With the Bolsheviks worried about their own survival, Russia posed no threat to Finland and yet Paul would have thought there must be some anxiety in the German High Command over the Allied landings in Murmansk. It was a curious situation, with the Hun having signed a truce with the Bolsheviks while actively supporting the White Finns against them, who, in turn, now looked to the Allies — the Germans’ main enemy — to clear out their foe, the Bolsheviks. He couldn’t see that his presence would materially affect any of this, or, despite the fact the Cheka had tried to stop him, why anyone could ever think it would. Still that was Brass for you, he supposed, stumbling from one blunder to the next as far as he could ever see. And the chances were it was more to do with what Cumming had said — that Paul was there to maintain a presence with the Czech Legion to counter-balance the French influence, rather than any hope he might make a difference. Just another case of how often one disliked one’s allies more than one disliked the enemy.

Jalonen returned and, after a brief huddled conversation with Berglund, Paul was relieved of more money for tickets.

‘The border is closed as we thought,’ Berglund said. ‘It is only twenty kilometres from Petersburg and before the war the tsar wished to make the whole area as far as Terijoki a province of his capital.’ He gave Paul a wintry smile. ‘Now things remain as before. We should perhaps thank the Bolsheviks for that at least.’

‘How close can we get?’ Paul asked.

‘The train will operate to the border on Finnish side for military purposes only. There are three stops after Terijoki before the border that used to serve the summer houses of the Russians from Petersburg. We will go as far as the station at Ollila. It is not far from there to the Rajajoki River.’

‘Are there still Russians there?’

Berglund’s long nose wrinkled. ‘The Bolsheviks occupied Terijoki in January. They murdered many people but we regained the town. There are no Russians there now.’

‘And the summer houses?’ Paul asked, thinking of the holidays he had spent there.

‘Perhaps we Finns will spend our summers there now.’

‘What about Germans. Do they have troops at the border?

‘It is a Finnish border,’ Berglund said, as if the idea of Germans manning it was an affront. ‘We do not need Germans. We are very vigilant. There are many spies trying to cross.’

Paul raised an eyebrow but the irony of Berglund’s own remark seemed lost on the Finn.

‘What about trains on the other side?’

‘We cannot say if the trains still run. But there will be Bolsheviks at Byelo-Óstrov, of course. It is only a station, however. The village is a few kilometres to the north of the line and the peasants there can tell you if there are trains. We know they still operate from the munitions plant on the reservoir at Sestroryetzk into Petersburg. Not, I think, at Dyunt or Kurort to the north. But this will be difficult for you to reach.’

Jalonen returned with the tickets and they boarded the train. They had taken a first-class compartment again. Paul expected no less of Berglund since they were all travelling on Paul’s money. Once sitting down, Berglund produced a map of St Petersburg for Paul to study. Further down the train a detachment of Finnish soldiers boarded. They were in third-class. Their officer, travelling second-class, was to take over the border post at the bridge on the Rajajoki, Jalonen had learned in conversation with him.

‘The officer is not happy about the posting,’ Jalonen told Paul through Berglund. ‘He says the people there are not civilised.’

‘They are Ingrian,’ explained Berglund. ‘Some are Finns, some of Swedish stock, but many speak what we call ‘kopec Russian’. They use to rely on trade with Petersburg and are not happy with the border being closed. As I told you, there is much smuggling there and the situation is not clear.’

Paul saw how confused it was when he looked at the map again.

There was, as Turner had told him, a coastal railway line that ran on the Gulf side of the Sestror Lake — near the reservoir, he presumed — from Sestroryetzk to Petersburg. Between that line and the main Vyborg-Petersburg line there seemed nothing but water and swamp. And little else beyond the line either, to the shores of the huge Lake Lagoda. Bleak indeed.

On the other side of the compartment window, south of Vyborg and into the Karelian Isthmus, the land opened up to wooded hills and scattered homesteads. They passed small farms with timber houses and barns, cows and pigs. Approaching Terijoki he noticed that some of the buildings showed signs of damage. Walls had been pocked-marked from gunfire and the summer villas they passed had windows and doors boarded up. Paul looked for anything that might look familiar but there was nothing about the town he remembered from his childhood holidays in Tchórnaya Ryetchka. They stopped at Terijoki station for a few minutes then the locomotive steamed further east. The country grew sparser with lakes and forest of birch and spruce. Here and there a few houses clustered by the railroad track and he caught the occasional glimpse of a peasant tending his plot. This, he supposed, was the new Republic of North Ingria. Yet an air of desertion seemed almost palpable beyond the window and it made him wonder what it was they had been fighting over. Then he thought a visitor to the western front might ask the same thing; a land of mud and blasted earth and shattered trees…

The train stopped at Ollila, nine kilometres beyond Terijoki. They got off. There were still a few kilometres to go to the river and the troops remained aboard, their glum officer glimpsed at the window waving a dispirited hand at Jalonen as they pulled out.

A handful of other travellers had disembarked, disbursing as soon as they arrived and leaving Paul and the two Finns standing on the platform next to their luggage. The air was cool and yet midges swarmed around their heads. Berglund swatted at them ineffectually before picking up his bag and leading them out of the station gate and down a dusty road.

A few hundred yards from the station they came upon a cluster of houses, tumble-down wooden shacks with tarpaper roofs. In a plot next to one Paul saw an old man digging potatoes. Dressed in the usual peasant garb with baggy trousers and smock, he stopped digging and watched them approach, leaning on his spade. Then he seemed to nod to himself, left the tool and met them at his gate. He eyed Paul with some curiosity.

‘This is the man who will take you to the border,’ Berglund told Paul. ‘He is a carter and you will pose as his assistant if you are stopped.’