The Red Staircase

by Gwendoline Butler

  ‘May be nothing at all. Sometimes they’re just finding work for themselves, looking important,’ grumbled an old man sitting opposite.

  ‘Something, nothing,’ nodded the fat woman. ‘We shall never know. Swine, I call them.’

  ‘Now, now,’ said the old man. ‘I suppose we’d be angry if they let us get blown up, or if they let criminals rob us or murder us without them doing anything about it. Not that I like them, mind. Any little experience I have had of them has not made me think them charming fellows.’

  ‘My brother’s a policeman,’ said a woman opposite, who was nursing her baby. ‘He’s not a bad fellow. A man must live.’

  The journey was uneventful, if exhausting. My fellow passengers took a mild interest in me, but were easily satisfied to be told I was changing position from being a governess in one household in St Petersburg to another in Moscow. The baby, a girl, was restless and took up most of her mother’s attention. We all of us slept as much as we could. Every so often we were offered glasses of hot tea from a little old lady who had a great samovar at the end of our coach. There is a little old lady like this on all Russian trains, but this was my first meeting with one. I knew so little of public transport in Russia that I had to be on the alert not to show my ignorance. The hot tea was welcome. I had no food with me, but the fat lady in the corner had plenty and she gave me a roll with meat in it.

  ‘It’s the best quality beef, my dear, you may be sure of it, for my husband’s a butcher.’

  Inside the train it was very hot, but I was conscious all the time that we were trundling across the snowbound countryside of Russia. I had never felt so lonely and alien as I felt then. What was I doing, travelling through the night with my message? I wanted to be at home, even back in Scotland, with familiar things around me again. I was lost, a stranger here in Russia.

  A hot glass of tea at this, my low point, was a welcome restorer. ‘Ah, you look better now,’ said the butchers wife. ‘Poorly, you looked. I dare say we all do. No, for these journeys, I always say I start on them a young woman and end an old woman. Well, it’s not so far now, and you’ll need all your wits about you in Moscow. Those Muscovites!’ And she shrugged. ‘Rob you as soon as look at you. You be careful, my dear.’

  There was winter daylight of a sort when eventually I arrived at Moscow, pushing my way through the crowds that filled the railway station. Nervously, I saw that there were a number of policemen on duty. A pair stood talking by the big arch of the exit, scanning the crowd with bored, cynical eyes. But they took no notice of me as, feeling self-conscious, I pushed past. As luck would have it, I dropped Peter’s map with my instructions on it almost at the feet of one policeman, but he did no more than pick it up and hand it over politely with scarcely a look. I felt better after that, and breathed more freely.

  ‘You can make your way on foot to the address I’ve given you,’ Peter had said as he drew the map. Dry, hard snow was falling as I made my way out into the street. I knew I must turn to my right and then look for the right road.

  I hadn’t walked more than a few yards before I could tell that Moscow was a very different city from St Petersburg. The air smelt different; drier, colder, full of spice and wood-smoke. The street I was walking in was narrow and twisting compared with the broad, straight roads of St Petersburg. On either side the buildings were low, dark-stoned and irregular in shape. The skyline was not a bit like that of St Petersburg. I had the sense of being in an ancient city whose life seemed closer to the middle ages than to the twentieth century. This was the Russia of the Boyars and the ‘Old Believers’ – the supporters of the archaic Russia and the unreformed church that Peter the Great had tried to sweep away, but which remained there for ever underneath.

  I was getting weary. As I trudged through the streets, deeply rutted with dirty snow, I put my bag down at intervals to rest.

  I felt afraid as I turned the corner into a narrow street and looked up at the house which was my destination. ‘It lies between a tailor’s shop and a baker’s,’ Peter had said. ‘So you will know it.’ And there it was, number thirty-one, Little Arbat Street. A dim light shone behind the fanlight of the front door. I could see a bell-pull. I tugged at it. Distantly, far away in the house, I heard the bell sound.

  Then there was silence. For a long time, I waited.

  I rang again. The bell spoke again. Then I heard the sound of soft, slow footsteps behind the door. Slowly, it opened.

  ‘I was coming,’ said a quiet complaining voice. ‘No need to keep ringing.’

  I was looking at a very small man; he was not a dwarf, just tiny. His head, however, was disproportionately large, as a child’s is, but the sharpness of his eyes showed him to be an adult.

  ‘I was told to call here,’ I said nervously.

  ‘Come in, come in. I’ve been expecting you.’

  He was carrying a lamp and he walked before me, showing me the way along a dark narrow corridor, and up a staircase covered in slippery linoleum. The house smelt damp and stale.

  ‘You were expecting me?’ I queried. I suppose I was surprised not to be questioned and checked up on.

  ‘I was expecting someone,’ said the little man. ‘I knew it would be a young woman. It usually is.’

  ‘Oh.’ Somehow this was a dispiriting thing to hear as I trudged up the stairs. But it was stupid of me to think I was unique. ‘I am …’ I began.

  ‘Don’t tell me. Do not give me your name. I do not wish to know it. Nor will I give you mine.’

  ‘But I was told it,’ I said hesitantly. ‘It was written down for me.’ I looked at Peter’s instructions.

  ‘No matter. It’s not what I’m called. You need not use it. Call me Doctor.’

  ‘Are you a doctor?’

  ‘No.’

  He had led me to a small room, where he placed the lamp on the table.

  ‘Well, give me what you’ve brought.’

  I put my bag on the table, opened it and began to fumble round for the envelope Peter had given me. Soon I should have achieved my mission and could leave. I wouldn’t stay a minute in this house, which depressed me. ‘You will be taken care of,’ Peter had said. But I didn’t want to be taken care of here.

  ‘Hurry up. You know you have to get on. This is not the end of your journey.’

  I had the letter in my hand, but I just stood there staring at him. ‘No, I didn’t know. I can’t go on. I don’t know where to go.’

  ‘I’ll tell you, of course. When I’ve had a look at what you bring me.’ He took the letter from my limp grasp. ‘Here, sit down.’ He pushed a chair towards me.

  Silently I sat down, my legs trembling. As he tore open the letter in the light of the lamp, I saw a sheaf of bank notes. So I had brought money as well as a message. What was the important information I had carried? I studied his face as he read. The large features were expressionless.

  ‘Good,’ he said as he finished reading. ‘Now I know what this is all about. That is, I know as much as is good for me, which is not much. Well, I’ll tell you where to go next. That is really what is demanded of you. I’ll write down the address. You can take a tram. Ask for Mr Jakob when you get there.’

  ‘No. It’s no good. I can’t go.’ I felt sick. ‘I don’t know how I should manage.’

  He looked at me for a moment, then put on a pair of large, round spectacles and looked at me again. ‘Were you followed here? Did anyone see you come?’

  ‘No one, as far as I know.’

  ‘I believe you. Who would notice you?’

  ‘No one,’ I repeated wretchedly.

  ‘A foreigner, too. German?’

  ‘No.’ I left it there. The less said about me the better.

  ‘Just your accent, you know. No offence meant.’ He was fussing round the room. ‘Very well, I will come with you and show you the way. You look harmless enough.’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’ I stood up, strength returning to me, and a new confidence that I would fulfil my mission.

 
‘Come on, then.’ He turned out the lamp and, taking my hand, led me downstairs in the dark.

  At the front door he turned as he opened it and looked into my face, illuminated by a gas jet from a street lamp.

  ‘You will know me again,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ I drew back a little. Close to, his face was pockmarked and yellow. His breath smelt.

  ‘Forget me. That’s my advice. And a warning, too.’

  ‘You needn’t tell me.’

  He shook his head as he motioned me to go through the door and closed it behind us. ‘So young,’ he said. ‘So young. A mere girl. And already you are a conspirator.’

  We emerged from Little Arbat Street and walked back to where the trams stopped in the main street. Each one as it clanged past seemed crowded.

  ‘Don’t sit with me,’ he said. ‘Better safe than sorry. Just watch me. When I take my handkerchief out, prepare to get out. Here, take this.’ He gave me a couple of coins. ‘This is your fare. Then you need not speak.’

  We stood there waiting in the cold. He let several trams go past before he deemed one safe. They were all as crowded as each other, and when we got on there was no question of sitting down, and I wondered why he had bothered to mention it as likely. We were squeezed up against each other, but I kept my eyes on his handkerchief, and when he signalled I followed him off the tram and down the street, walking a pace or two behind. I towered above him; the effect must have been ludicrous. The idea grew on me, swelling irrepressibly inside me, so that I had to bite back my giggles. I began to stagger with the effort.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said, swinging round.

  ‘Nothing.’ Exhaustion and a sense of being torn totally from my own life had brought me to the edge of hysteria.

  ‘Good. For we have arrived.’ He nodded towards a small house, next door to a greengrocer’s shop. To my great relief, I saw that the house appeared clean and respectable. A woman’s face peeped at us from behind a curtain. He rapped on the door, which she opened almost at once. She was grey-haired and plump, with a starched white apron crackling over a dark woollen dress. Little fat folds of flesh almost masked her eyes so that their expression was hard to read. But she admitted us silently, with a nod.

  Inside the house the Doctor handed over to me the envelope I had brought with me from St Petersburg; I could see the money was still there. He muttered a few sentences which I could not hear, except that I made out one word, ‘Jakob’, said more than once. She shrugged and protested. But his only answer was to make his way to the front door, open it, and disappear.

  The woman and I looked at each other. ‘So you want to see Mr Jakob?’ she asked.

  ‘I have been told so,’ I said carefully. ‘All I know is that I was told to go to the house in Little Arbat Street. The rest has followed from that.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t here. You’ll have to stay the night.’ She put her hand on my arm with a tight grip.

  ‘But I’ve delivered my message,’ I said, trying to draw away. ‘I can go now.’

  ‘It is not what you have delivered, but what you must take with you that matters,’ she said. ‘Follow me and I will show you your room. Are you hungry? Would you like to eat?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘All I want is to do what I was asked to do, and leave.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said stolidly. ‘Here,’ she opened a door. ‘In here you may sleep.’

  She lit a lamp on a table by the bed, drew the curtains and left me. I was alone in a low-ceilinged room in which, except for the table with the lamp, was nothing but a bed and a washstand.

  I took off my outer clothes, washed my hands and face, and lay down. Within minutes I was asleep.

  I was awakened by the sound of a voice from below. I could hear a man talking. I lay there listening to the low, bass sound of his voice. At intervals there would be silence while, presumably, another quieter voice spoke. Then the voice started again. The conversation went on for some time.

  I had the sensation of having slept for hours. I had no way of telling the time, for when I consulted my watch it had stopped.

  Then I heard footsteps on the stairs. In a hurry I got off the bed and went to the door. But the feet passed me by and 382 went on and up. I felt the lock on my door, but there was no key. With profound unease I went back to bed and lay down again. I could have dragged the wash-stand across the door, but the idea struck me as ludicrous. After all, I was a conspirator myself. Why should these people here harm me? I was one of them now.

  As I lay there, I had for one brief moment a flash of something like recoil from Peter for having introduced me into this world. And yet I had gone willingly, even eagerly, on this errand. How perverse my own nature must be that in performing it I should feel betrayed and dirtied.

  In the morning, I was roused by the woman – I never learnt her name – bringing me a tray of breakfast. The meal was beautifully laid out on a crisp white cloth, with coffee, eggs and fruit. The way she served it confirmed the thought I had already had, that she had once been in good service. So if the man last night was ‘the Doctor’, I would call her ‘the Servant’.

  ‘Eat your breakfast,’ she ordered. ‘Then I will bring you a jug of hot water so you can wash before your journey.’

  ‘Oh, I can go then?’ I said with relief.

  ‘Yes. Mr Jakob is ready for you.’

  Ready for me, I thought as I ate quickly. Why ‘ready’?

  I soon saw when I got downstairs. A pallid-looking man of about thirty was standing there, looking at his watch. He was wearing a shabby overcoat and a cloth cap. At his feet was a small case. ‘Good morning,’ he said politely. ‘My name is Jakob. So you’re ready. We can set off.’

  ‘Are you coming with me?’ I said, with some surprise.

  ‘Oh yes. We travel together. Everything is arranged according to instructions.’

  The woman came bustling into the room with a long woollen muffler in her hands. ‘Now wear this, my dear young man. You must look after yourself. Too much is asked of you. Remember how close you came to dying.’

  He ignored her, not even touching the scarf. ‘We must make a start,’ he said to me.

  Bluntly, I asked: ‘Did I bring instructions or did I bring payment?’

  He gave a shrug and a cool smile. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Hardly anything,’ I answered. ‘I am only guessing that I brought a message asking for you and for you to do something. But it seems logical.’ I saw by the look of anger on his face that my guess had struck home. ‘And the money was to pay you.’

  ‘I am never paid,’ he said at once. ‘The money was for the cause.’

  ‘Then you are bringing something that cost money.’ And I looked at his case. He made no movement towards it; a lesser man might have done, I suppose, but I saw his muscles tense. ‘Your own expert knowledge perhaps?’

  ‘You should know better than to talk like that,’ he said coldly. ‘We can go together as far as the railway station. After that we had better separate.’

  From then on there was silence between us until we were approaching the forecourt of the railway station.

  ‘From the way you speak you are English by birth?’ he said.

  ‘Scottish,’ I answered.

  At once his face lit up. ‘Ah, a countrywoman of Robert Burns. Now I understand why you are one of us. You know what it is to be oppressed.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. The idea was new to me.

  ‘Of course, it is so,’ he said with force. ‘But you are wise to be discreet. No doubt your government has agents here, all governments do.’ He took my hand and gave it a vigorous shake. ‘I am only sorry now that we cannot travel together.’

  The journey back from Moscow was tedious and long. I had plenty of time to think, as the wheels of the train rattled interminably beneath me. And though I closed my eyes and tried to rest, thoughts kept drifting in and out of my mind. I had done what Peter had asked of me. And I hadn’t enjoyed it. With a
terrible clarity I knew that to be a conspirator, to act secretly and deviously, twisted my true nature. I couldn’t do it, and Peter would have to be told.

  But I had kept my part of our bargain.

  At last I slept, and awoke only as we arrived at St Petersburg. To my surprise, Peter met me at the station. He was pacing up and down the platform, and he had taken my arm before I had quite grasped that he was there at all.

  ‘How did you know I would come on this train?’

  ‘I have met every possible train from Moscow since you left.’ He sounded anxious. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Weary, but I did what you wanted.’

  Even in the excitement of our meeting I noticed that he had drawn me into an alcove where we could not be seen.

  ‘But is this meeting safe?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t it all supposed to be so secret?’

  ‘I have been very careful,’ he said, ‘and I have my car tucked away in a most discreet spot. Presently we can walk there, and I’ll drive you home.’

  When we were in the car and had drawn well away from the station, he said: ‘Now take off that terrible old garment and make yourself reasonable again.’

  ‘What about Dolly?’ I said as I divested myself and tried to settle my hair. ‘Any questions?’

  ‘Luckily Ariadne has kept her so much on the go that she hasn’t had time for any,’ he said coolly.

  ‘The servants must know I’ve been away, though,’ I thought, ‘especially that German man-servant of mine.’ But I did not say so aloud.

  It wasn’t until we were alone and in our own suite of rooms, and I had changed all my clothes, that I began to feel myself again. Peter sat reading and waiting for me to be ready.

  ‘Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?’

  ‘No. I want to say something to you.’

  He looked up. ‘Oh, what?’

  ‘I want you to give up your work with people like this man Jakob that I went to meet,’ I said bluntly and suddenly. ‘It’s a terrible world they live in. I hate and fear it. I felt the blackness and coldness and wickedness so strongly that I could not breathe in that house where I stayed. It was a revelation to me.’