Strange Are the Ways

by Strange Are the Ways (retail) (epub)

  ‘I’ve seen worse, Anna Victorovna,’ he assured her, cheerfully, when at last she joined him on deck, pale and none too happy, as they approached the Swedish coast. ‘I’ve seen worse. Take a good breath of this air. That will do the trick.’

  The shoreline had appeared, frozen and decked in snow. The clouds were clearing. A low sun slanted light from the horizon. Anna stared. ‘I had forgotten,’ she said, quietly.

  He smiled, understanding. Turned, his back to the rail, his coat collar pulled up about his face. He, like Anna, was wearing a fur hat and heavy gloves. He looked down at her, his eyes interested. ‘You’re not afraid?’ he asked.

  She smiled, wryly. ‘Three hours ago I was terrified. But now? No. What can Petrograd throw at me that the North Sea didn’t?’

  He did not smile. ‘Things have changed since our conversation around your dining table. Very much for the worse.’

  ‘I know they have. All the more reason for me to go.’ The news that had been coming out of Russia in the past months had been all bad. The Russian army, ill-led, ill-supplied, ill- trained, was just a step from complete demoralization. There were reports of officers refusing to lead their men into battle for fear of being shot in the back. In Petrograd it had, in October, taken four Cossack regiments to restore order after a bout of factory strikes in which soldiers took the side of the strikers and fired on police. One hundred and fifty soldiers had been executed. All winter the strikes and demonstrations had continued, as temperatures had dropped to minus forty degrees, as bread and fuel had disappeared almost entirely from the shops and the markets, and as the price of food had risen from between forty to sixty per cent. Inflation had risen to seven hundred per cent. Starvation prowled the streets of the city and the fields and lanes of the countryside alike. Widespread famine and brutal losses at the Front were combining to produce the sullen growlings of a storm. ‘All the more reason,’ Anna repeated.

  ‘The last reports from the city were very confused.’ He leaned easily upon the rail, watching her. Nauseously Anna averted her eyes from the shifting, angrily swelling sea. ‘The Tsar has postponed the next session of the Duma, I heard that just before I left London. There have been demonstrations. Violent demonstrations. Petrograd has been described as a powder keg awaiting the match.’

  Anna conquered her stomach and lifted her head. ‘That’s why I’m here, Grigor,’ she said. ‘My family are in Petrograd. Where else should I be?’

  * * *

  It was a long journey from Stockholm, around the frozen gulf to Haparanda and the Finnish-Swedish frontier. Yet not for a moment did Anna tire. The view, after the late, northern sunrise, from the window of the train kept her spellbound. The soft green countryside of Sussex had receded in her memory, distant as a recollected dream. These were the landscapes, the snow-scapes, of her childhood. When they arrived at Haparanda, just after noon, the sun, risen a couple of hours before, still hung low on the southern horizon, sliding sideways across the sky and casting rainbow beams between low islands of snow-cloud. The frontier crossing was just fifteen miles from the Arctic Circle; the air was cold and clear.

  The formalities at the customs post seemed to take for ever; civil as the Swedish officers were, Anna was impatient. ‘What on earth is going on? Why can’t we cross the river?’

  ‘Smugglers,’ Grigor said. ‘There’s a fortune to be made if you’re ready to take the risk.’

  Anna tapped a sharp fingernail upon the table at which they sat. ‘Well, surely, they can see that we aren’t smugglers?’

  He smiled at her indignation. ‘If it were that easy, they’d be out of a job,’ he said.

  They drove at last across the river towards Torneo. On an island that marked the frontier, in the middle of the river, they were stopped again. Here was the outpost of the Russian Empire; represented in this instance by a few roughly-built wooden houses, a sprawling warehouse and barracks, and an enclosure with high paling fencing that looked like a miniature prison camp. They were treated with courtesy by an officer eager to practise his English upon Anna, required to fill out an elaborate and so far as Anna could see entirely unnecessary questionnaire, and then were kept waiting for an hour whilst the thing was processed. Anna took one look at the packed and squalid little restaurant and declined a glass of tea. But at last they were allowed to join their hired sledge to drive through the cold, crisp air on across the river towards the low hilly coastline of Finland. Long lines of freight sledges moved steadily across the snow-covered ice. Amongst the roofs of Torneo Anna glimpsed the gilded domes of a Russian church, set bright against the darkly-wooded slopes. At the station their luggage was checked yet again; and at last, only three hours behind schedule – a positive triumph of organization – they were on the move again, the long train pulling into the early winter dusk, heading down the length of Finland towards the Russian frontier and the city that Anna still thought of as St Petersburg.

  * * *

  The trip was exhausting. If the packed train stopped once it stopped a hundred times, snorting and wheezing. Uncomfortably Anna dozed, and woke, dozed and woke again in the cramped compartment. There were no sleepers available. Suddenly the stress of the past few days caught up with her; she seemed to have been travelling for ever. And towards what? The sharp teeth of fear nibbled in the darkness. Her snatched sleep was disturbed by turbulent dreams.

  They breakfasted in the darkness of a northern dawn, grateful for tea and rough bread rolls. And slowly they rolled south. They passed through Kuopio still in darkness.

  ‘I have a cousin who I think must live somewhere around here,’ Anna said. And found herself remembering; Katya, vivid and laughing – the lessons with Monsieur Drapin, the poor pompous little man so disconcerted by Katya’s mischief – the light-hearted days, the walks, arm in arm, along the banks of the Fontanka. Where in God’s name had it all gone? What madness had overtaken the world that had vanquished youth and put in its place death and destruction?

  ‘Sorry?’ Grigor leaned across the narrow aisle towards her.

  She turned her head, not letting him see the sudden brightness of her eyes. ‘I said I have a cousin who married a Finn. She lived somewhere around here, I believe. I was just wondering where she is now.’ Safe, surely? Of all of them Katya must certainly be safe. She was always the lucky one.

  Wearily Anna leaned her head against the cold glass, peered through the frosted window into the lightening sky and wondered if Katya ever thought of those days in St Petersburg, and of her quiet cousin, who had caused her so much mirth.

  * * *

  Katya was not in Kuopio; she was in Helsinki. And at that moment the last person on her mind was her cousin Anna, comfortably settled in England with her rich and elderly husband. Katya was pulling the small sledge that contained, amongst other things, her three-month-old son very carefully indeed along the snowy sidewalk, towards a house that stood by the market place on the quayside. The baby was wrapped like an Eskimo and settled deep into furs, against the bitter cold.

  There were Russian soldiers everywhere, standing around braziers at street corners and crossroads, stamping their feet, their breath clouding the air about them, talking no doubt, at least whilst their officers were not listening, of the strange and violent events taking place in their homeland, rumours of which, ever growing, reached this near-neighbour of Petrograd very quickly. Small platoons marched the dirty, impacted snow of the arrow-straight streets, guns slung upon their shoulders, greatcoats buttoned against the cold. There was little traffic. Those Finnish civilians who braved the streets walked as hurriedly as conditions would allow, heads down, intent above all upon not attracting attention. With the news of the Lockstedt Battalion inevitably reaching Russian ears, repression had descended upon Finland with a vengeance during this gloomy winter. House-searches and arrests were an everyday occurrence. Men and women were imprisoned, exiled, or worse on the merest suspicion of sympathy with the independence movement. The route to Sweden had become harder and harder to wor
k. Many people had given up hope; the prospects for freedom seemed dimmer than they had ever been. But still a nucleus of fighters worked doggedly on. The battalion was training. Sooner or later they would come back to fight for Finland. They had to believe that; for if they did not then men and women had suffered and died for nothing, and Finland was entangled for ever in the Russian chains.

  Activity had certainly not stopped, despite the increased difficulties and dangers. Quite apart from the small but determined groups of men and women who had been working from the beginning to raise money, to recruit men and to supply armaments, already small groups of trained men had slipped back from Germany into Finland to help organize resistance, but the odds against them were enormous; to some eyes, overwhelming. To make matters worse the unrest that was sweeping Russia like a storm had to a certain extent, perhaps inevitably, seeped across the border. The situation was confused and very dangerous. Katya, pulling her precious burden behind her, kept her head down and her face averted as she passed a group of soldiers gathered about a brazier on the quay. She was nearly there. The task was almost done. Just a few more minutes and they would both be safe –

  ‘What’s this then?’

  She froze, her heart in her throat. A huge man, rifle swinging casually from his shoulder, had detached himself from the group and was coming towards her. ‘Where are you going, my pretty, on this cold morning? What brings you out with such a little one in weather such as this?’

  He spoke Russian, with the accent of the Ukraine. She replied in the same language, as crisply as she could. Already she had learned that in such circumstances her nationality was her best protection. ‘To the house of my sister-in-law. The one over there, on the corner. She’s unwell. I have soup for her, and bread.’

  ‘Very charitable, I’m sure.’ He bent to peer into her face in the half-light. As she had expected, the sound of her voice had disconcerted him. ‘You’re no God-forsaken Finn, I know?’

  ‘No. I’m not. I’m as Russian as you are. Now, if you don’t mind –’ she pulled at the sledge, which swung a little, snagged upon a ridge of ice ‘– I don’t want my little boy kept out in the cold for longer than is necessary.’

  ‘’Course not.’ The big man bent to set the sledge to rights, grinned into the tiny, sleeping face that was nestled in furs. ‘There’s a sight that takes me back! I remember mine when they were this age. Nine I’ve got. Nine strong sons to work for me in my old age!’ He grinned broadly, showing the rotten teeth of a man who sucked his tea through sugar lumps. ‘Good thing about them when they’re so little – they can’t answer you back!’ He laughed heartily.

  Katya smiled, thinly, in acknowledgement, pulled again on the rope. Again the sledge stuck, tilting a little, weighted as it was with the stolen armaments that Katya was delivering to the partisans who awaited her in Elisabet’s house.

  ‘Here.’ The soldier bent as if to lift the narrow vehicle bodily over the obstruction, grunted as Katya, with a small cry, fell against him, knocking him off balance.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry – I slipped.’ She wrestled with the rope. The sledge slid free, hissing against the packed grey ice. Katya grabbed the wooden side to steady it, reached in to tuck the baby tight and safe into the furs.

  The soldier laughed again. ‘Here. I’ll take him. It isn’t far. Give me something to do. Hanging round street corners with my arse freezing off – if you’ll pardon the phrase – isn’t my idea of soldiering, I can tell you.’ He reached for the rope.

  Katya held on to it. Fear was so close she could feel it, brushing her like the wings of the bats that swooped the summer night of Pikku Kulda. ‘I – no, please – I can manage – I couldn’t possibly put you to the trouble –’

  ‘It’s no trouble.’ Genially he wrenched the rope from her hand, set off with the sledge towing heavily behind him, calling to his companions as he went. There was nothing Katya could do but follow. Nothing she could do but pray. Small Jaakko mewed in his furs like a kitten. God help us, Katya thought, God help us both if Kaarlo is watching from the window, with his finger upon a trigger.

  Those few short yards were the longest she had ever had to cover. Outside the house she took the rope with nerveless fingers, thanked him politely.

  ‘You want the sledge lifted up the steps?’

  She was beyond panic now. Lucidly she smiled, shook her head. ‘No, thank you. It can as easily stay there.’ She bent to the sledge, carefully extricated the baby. Stood with the child in her arms as the soldier executed a sloppy half-salute, turned away and stomped through the snow back to his companions.

  She heard the door open behind her. Sensed Elisabet’s light steps approaching. Katya stood quite still, clutching the child, frozen to the spot.

  ‘Well, well.’ Elisabet’s voice verged on amusement. ‘Nothing like arriving in style. I had to stop Kaarlo from blowing his head off.’

  Katya swallowed. ‘Don’t.’

  Cheerfully Elisabet reached for the baby. ‘Come, Jaakko, my darling, come to Aunt Lissi.’ She turned towards the house. ‘Kaarlo can fetch the sledge.’

  ‘No!’ Katya was galvanized. She ran up the steps quickly, catching her sister-in-law at the top. ‘Wait for a little. We’ll have to let it stay for the moment at least. I said I was going to leave it there. If he noticed, he might become suspicious.’ The release from tension was telling. Her voice was edged with laughter that was not far from hysteria. ‘He – he wanted –’ she choked back a small splutter of laughter ‘– he wanted to carry it in for me!’

  ‘You should have let him,’ Elisabet said. ‘It would have saved us a job.’

  In the room upstairs several familiar faces were waiting, one of them Kaarlo’s.

  ‘That was a fine trick,’ he growled.

  Katya cast a repressive glance but did not bother to respond. Jaakko, divested of his bulky outside garments, was cooing and smiling in his most beguiling way at his Aunt Lissi. Katya resisted the impulse to snatch him back, to hold him tightly to her, to prove to herself that he was whole and unharmed.

  ‘How many?’ A tall man who was standing by the stove walked to the window, peered down onto the quay below, and the gathered soldiers.

  ‘Four rifles, three pistols, and some ammunition,’ Katya said, shortly. ‘There’ll be more ammunition in a week or so. You’ve heard about the mutiny?’

  Kaarlo scowled. The tall man nodded. ‘Yes. A bad business by all accounts.’

  ‘If the bloody Hun had left Bayer in charge –’ Kaarlo began.

  The tall man cut him off. ‘We all know that, Kaarlo. But they didn’t, and that’s an end.’

  Elisabet had for once allowed her attention to wander from her small nephew. ‘What exactly happened?’

  The tall man shrugged, a little tiredly. ‘The battalion was sent to the Front a couple of months ago, as you know.’

  ‘Bloody cheek.’ A small dark man who until now had been silent lifted his head, eyes glowing angrily. ‘The battalion was raised to fight for Finland, not to do Germany’s dirty work.’

  Katya sniffed. ‘Is that coffee I smell?’

  Elisabet smiled, derisively. ‘We’ll make a Finn of you yet, my girl. Russians are supposed to drink tea, didn’t you know that?’

  The wrangling behind them went on. Katya had heard it many times before.

  ‘– the men need more than training – they need real experience under fire. It’s perfectly logical that they should have been sent to the Front. For God’s sake, how long do you think the Germans would put up with a battalion of that strength taking up time, barrack space, money and effort, and eating their heads off to boot, in the vague hope that one day they might be useful in nipping the flanks of the Russians? The bloody German army isn’t a charitable institution you know! We always knew this could happen –’

  ‘I still think –’

  ‘A Finn was killed,’ a girl Katya did not know said. ‘Killed by a German officer. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘It seems so, ye
s.’

  The anger in the room was tangible.

  ‘Listen. All of you.’ The tall man spread his hands placatingly. ‘There are rights and wrongs on both sides –’

  ‘There speaks a Finn,’ someone muttered, mocking but not unaffectionate.

  ‘The men are impatient. They don’t want to be fighting Russians in Poland, they want to be fighting them here, in Finland.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’

  ‘They’re a very long way from home and conditions are hard. But –’ he held up a finger, preventing further comment ‘– whether they like it or not – whether we like it or not – they’re a Jaeger battalion under German command, until they come back home to Finland. That was the agreement. And German officers don’t take kindly to a fighting battalion that thinks it can hold a meeting and elect a committee every time anyone gives an order. They refused an order. That’s mutiny. A man was shot. It’s over and done and there’s an end to it.’

  There was a moment’s silence, then a voice asked, ‘And the troubles in Petrograd? What’s to come of that? Is it good for us or bad? There were more riots last night. I heard that more army units have defected to the people – it sounds like chaos over there.’

  ‘Who knows?’ Erik turned again to the window, stood looking down at the still, snow-bound quayside. ‘The first thing any sensible revolutionary government would do is to make peace with the Germans.’

  No-one needed to be told what that would mean for them, for their battalion, still held fast in Germany, or in the long run for their country. The conversation that ensued was low-voiced and troubled.

  ‘Difficult times,’ Elisabet said, her voice flat and quiet, handing Katya a steaming cup of coffee. ‘Drink it slowly. It’s the last.’