David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

All things considered, that was where he would have preferred to be as well.

He had lost sight of Valentine. Paul wasn’t even sure in which carriage he was. Shortly after they had left Kazan Station Valentine had squeezed his way to the other end of their carriage waving his Party card looking for a seat. Paul had tried following him using Slepynin’s card but seemed to lack the requisite air of authority and got stuck behind people while Valentine disappeared into the next carriage.

Throwing one’s weight around had been easy enough in the trenches with men accustomed to doing what an officer told them. Yet it was quite another in the teeth of a civilian rabble who probably didn’t think much of the Bolsheviks in the first place. Out of uniform Paul didn’t seem to possess the conviction that others would do what he told them to do and, of course, they always recognised the fact. So he had stayed where he was, putting up with the discomfort and the evil-looking muzhik for the few miles it took to reach Veshnyakí where the peasant and many of the other passengers got off the train.

When it started again he went looking for Valentine. He passed through two crowded carriages without luck and had just entered a third when he was stopped in his tracks. Two seats down, sitting pushed against the window by a round little woman in a headscarf, he saw Sofya gazing out at the passing countryside. A chicken was nestled contentedly in her lap and she was idly stroking the animal’s feathers with her fingers.

Perhaps she sensed he was there for she looked up, saw him and suddenly smiled. She had barely smiled at him at all since he had found her and, touched, he walked along the aisle towards her and leaned across the stocky peasant woman and said, somewhat redundantly:

‘You’re here!’

The chicken in her lap squawked and fluttered its wings. Sofya ran a soothing finger over its bobbing head.

‘Where was I to go?’ she asked. Then, lowering her voice, ‘Anyway, I’ve still got your… you know… the belt?’

‘I told you to keep it.’

Her thin shoulders rose in a shrug. ‘And what will you do for money? Besides, I have no idea where Mikhail went. And there’s nothing in Rostov for me since they burned our estate.’

The peasant woman turned to her, listening.

‘I thought of going back to Petersburg,’ Sofya said, unconcerned at being overheard.

‘It’s not safe,’ Paul told her, thinking they ought to be more careful what they said.

‘What was I supposed to do then? You said you were going to Kazan so I thought I’d better come with you. Would you rather I didn’t?’

‘Of course not. But how did you know what train we were on?’

‘I saw Valentine buying tickets at the Kazan Station. I told the man at the window I wanted a ticket for the same train.’

Paul glanced at the rotund peasant and found she was looking up at him. Her eyes seemed to hold nothing beyond the odd muzhik impenetrability he remembered as a child. It was a strange amalgam of animal cunning and vacuous innocence, an admixture that, like oil and water, one might suppose could not coexist. But it was always there nonetheless.

‘It would be better,’ he said to Sofya, making a point of avoiding using Valentine’s name, ‘If you didn’t mention to our friend that I told you we were going to Kazan.’

‘Why not?’

‘And… and I want you to be careful of him, Sofya.’

‘Careful? You mean because of what he did to Slep-’

‘No,’ Paul said quickly before she used the Chekist’s name. ‘Just be careful, that’s all.’

‘Are you suggesting he’d try…’

‘Of course not,’ he said, laughing as if the notion was ridiculous. ‘You’ve still got the letter, I suppose?’

‘Of course. Do you want it back?’

The peasant was turning from Sofya to Paul and back as they spoke and Paul glanced meaningfully at her and frowned at Sofya.

‘Later,’ he said, looking along the carriage. ‘I have to find him. Will you stay here until I come back?’

The peasant’s eyes stayed on him as he straightened up and she smiled and patted Sofya’s arm protectively. Paul walked down the aisle, opened the doors between carriages and passed into the next. It was jammed with troops, squashed into the seats and standing in the aisle. He went back into Sofya’s carriage, glancing at her as he passed. She was gazing out the window again, still fondling the chicken and with the peasant’s hand on her arm.

He retraced his steps to where he had been stuck against the malodorous muzhik , then continued into the carriage beyond. The train was crammed with the press of passengers. The air was filled with the sharp tang of body odour and tobacco smoke and, mixed with it, the reek of animal dung. He finally saw Valentine at the far end of the carriage, conspicuous by having an empty seat beside him as if he carried a contagion. The Party card, Paul thought, a plague of its own. Paul dropped into the seat.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Squashed into a corner with that peasant you had the altercation with when we got on,’ Paul said. ‘He got out at Veshnyakí, thank God. You were lucky to find a seat.’

‘Nothing to do with luck. As soon as they see a Party card they assume I’m Cheka.’ He let his gaze wander round the carriage. ‘Although I doubt the Cheka bother with niceties like showing identification. It’s a sign of how jumpy everyone is getting. I was talking with another Party man who said after Lenin was shot the Moscow Cheka rounded up all their opponents. He said quite a few have been liquidated already.’

‘Liquidated? You mean executed?’

‘Haven’t you heard the expression before? I’m surprised. It’s always been a favourite euphemism here for disposing of a problem.’

‘You forget how old I was when I left.’

‘Wasn’t your mother political? Didn’t she ever talk about liquidating people?’

‘Hardly,’ Paul said. But his mother was the last person Paul wanted to discuss with Valentine. He leaned closer, keeping his voice down. ‘Do you think they’ve shot Lockhart?’

Valentine shook his head. ‘Unlikely. For one thing the Bolsheviks have Litvinov and Chicherin in London. They’ll want them back if things turn sour.’

Paul wondered how much sourer things could turn. They’d thrown Lockhart and his aide in prison, shot Cromie at the embassy, and denounced the Allied landings at Archangel and Murmansk as an invasion. It was hardly a matter to debate in a crowded railway carriage, though. He asked Valentine where the other Communist Party member was.

‘He got off. Actually,’ Valentine said, ‘he disagreed with the repression. That suggests there might be some dissension in the ranks.’

‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’ Then added matter-of-factly, ‘Sofya’s on the train,’ as if such a commonplace observation might go unnoticed in the general run of the conversation.

But Valentine noticed. His forehead creased but he said nothing. Paul found himself explaining:

‘There was no point in her going south… She doesn’t know where her brother is and apparently the family estate’s been confiscated. The peasants burned the house and taken the land.’

‘That’s happening everywhere,’ Valentine said, looking out of the window as though he expected the train to pass a country house on fire at any moment. ‘It’ll get worse, too. They even looted Tolstoy’s estate, apparently.’

‘Yasnaya Polana?’ Paul said in amazement.

‘Is that what it’s called? They say his wife and daughter were lucky to escape with their lives. It’s just as well he’s dead, I suppose. A mob of illiterate peasants is no respecter of literary reputation.’