David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

Berglund exchanged a few words in Finnish with the carter and the man led them into the house.

It was dark and musty with a hard-packed earthen floor and rustic furniture. In a corner a candle flickered before an icon. The carter walked around Paul, looking him up and down, the reek of his rank clothes filling Paul’s nostrils. The old man said something to Berglund and drew up a chair.

‘He says you look too clean,’ Berglund informed Paul, pushing him into the chair. ‘And too well barbered.’

The carter produced a pair of shears and the three stood over Paul deciding who was going to have the honour. Jalonen finally grinned at him, took the shears and began hacking at his hair. When he had finished the carter smiled toothlessly at Paul and handed him a piece of cracked mirror to admire Jalonen’s handiwork. Paul decided he looked as though he’d been pulled through a threshing machine and tried to flatten his butchered hair. The carter nodded and fetched a jar from a sideboard. It held a greasy unguent that smelled as if it had passed most of its life on a goose. The carter nodded to him and mimed smearing the grease on his hair. Paul put a little on his fingers and applied it, then gave the carter back his jar. A set of rags were produced and Berglund instructed him to put them on. Pinker’s boots looked too new and were taken outside and rubbed in the dirt. Finally dressed, Paul’s transformation into malodorous peasant was complete and, looking at his reflection in the cracked mirror, he wondered what his cousin, Mikhail, would make of him. He had always treated Paul as an inferior; now he could treat him like a peasant, too.

‘He has arranged for you to be taken across the river,’ Berglund said. ‘He knows the area well. He used to take his produce into Petersburg to sell before the border was closed. It will not be a problem crossing, he says, as the guards are lazy and never walk far out of the station to patrol the river. It will be easy.’

Paul glanced doubtingly at Berglund. On the train, the Finn had said the border guards were vigilant. If it was that easy why had they bothered to close the bridge?

‘On the other side you can catch a train at Byelo-Óstrov station to Petersburg. He says they still run carrying produce from peasants on their side of the border.’

The carter said something to Berglund and the Finn turned to Paul.

‘He will need money, of course. For himself and for the man who will take you over the river.’

Paul sighed and reached for the trousers he had just taken off, counting out the last of his Finnish marks into Berglund’s hand. The Finn gave them to the carter then reached into his jacket and pulled out some dog-eared papers.

‘These you will use once you are over the border. The others you have are for this side of the border and only if you are stopped. Do you understand? Get rid of them once you are across so they will not be found on you.’

Paul said he understood and took the Russian papers.

‘They belonged to a Russian we caught in the war. He was a Red, maybe even a Bolshevik?’ Berglund shrugged. ‘Boris Vladimirovich Alenkov. He was in a prison camp but is now dead.’

Paul examined the papers. Alenkov was preferable to Filbert, he supposed, although he’d never cared much for the name Boris. Still, from what Turner had told him of conditions in the prison camps where Alenkov had been held, Paul didn’t doubt that he now smelled right for this part as well.

Having finished urinating, the carter clambered back onto the wagon and whipped up the reins. The pony, who until then had been enjoying the fresh grass by the side of the track, lifted its head, issued a melancholy sigh and plodded on.

Coming out of the trees where the gravelled track wound down to the railway line, a haphazard scattering of wooden shacks had been erected along the banks of the river. By the railway bridge on the Finnish side of the border Paul saw a fairly new wooden building and, on the Russian side, another tall, three-storeyed one under a roof with wide eaves. Curiously — or perhaps not, given their antagonistic ideologies — the bridge on the Finnish side was painted white to the halfway point, and then red thereafter. He could see half a dozen soldiers loafing by the bridge, their rifles slung carelessly as they smoked and chatted among themselves. Wood smoke hung over the houses and near the water the air was buzzing with mosquitoes and midges.

The carter slowed the pony again before he reached the bridge and turned off the track onto a rutted road between a line of hovels. Near the end he stopped the cart, plucked at Paul’s sleeve with a dirty hand and beckoned him to follow. They walked through the gate to where a young man with a heavy moustache and several days’ worth of beard on his face stood in the doorway, watching their approach.

The two men greeted each other and went into a huddle, throwing the occasional glance back at Paul. The carter fished in his trousers and pulled out a few crumpled banknotes that promptly disappeared inside the young man’s shirt.

‘Now you go, go,’ the old man said to Paul. He spat into the grass by the gate, climbed back onto his wagon and urged his pony on. He didn’t look back.

‘Russian?’ the young man asked, squinting at Paul.

‘Yes.’

‘Come then. Let us be quick.’

He turned back into the doorway, picked up a fishing rod and a pail, then pulled the door of the house to. He passed Paul the pail and carrying the rod led the way down the road, past the last house and onto a narrow track that dropped towards the river. Trees pushed close to the water’s edge and they had to duck where the track cut its way to the muddy bank. The weather in the isthmus was cooler than in Vyborg. It was still August but a rawness in the air chilled him and he now knew why Berglund had provided him with the noxious fur jacket. The colder weather didn’t seem to affect the midges, though. They swarmed around Paul’s head as soon as he reached the river edge, attracted he suspected by the grease on his hair.

‘Here,’ the man said. He parted the branches and slid down the bank to where a punt was tied at the water’s edge.

They clambered in. The man untied the rope and with a final look up and down stream began to pole them to the other side.

The river was little wider here than at the bridge and within a minute they had reached the opposite bank. The man reached up, grabbed an overhanging branch to steady the punt and told Paul to get out.

‘Go up the bank and through the trees until you reach an abandoned house. There is a track. Turn right and you will come to a road that leads back to the village.’

‘Thank you,’ Paul said.

He scrambled up the bank and turned. The man held the punt steady with the pole and looked up at Paul.

‘Watch out for the patrols,’ he warned. ‘They are always looking for spies.’

He raised a hand and pushed the punt away from the bank, drifting off with the sluggish flow of the river.

The trees were mostly birch and spruce, interspersed by a few larch and alder. Paul had been good at identifying trees as a boy and had enjoyed the botany rambles at school. He had had a game where he would drop back from the rest of the group until he couldn’t see anyone. Then he would pretended he was alone in the woods, just him and the wilderness, a wilderness where there might be wolves and bear and savage Indians.

No Indians here, he told himself stepping over the trunk of a fallen tree. He wasn’t so sure about wolves and bear, though. Russian bears and Bolshevik wolves, perhaps.

But he didn’t have time for nature rambles. He needed to get on. It was mid-afternoon already and although not far he still wanted to reach Petersburg — Petrograd — before evening. Wandering in an unfamiliar city full of revolutionary soldiers in twilight did not appeal to him. And Petrograd was an unfamiliar city. He had not seen it since he was a child. Back then he had almost always travelled by carriage or sled — on occasion by cheap droshky if he was with one of the servants. He had never paid much attention to where they were going and while the banks of the Neva, some of the shops on Nevsky Prospékt and the bigger landmarks might still be familiar to him, the rest of the city would be a mystery.