Soldier, Sail North (1987)

by Pattinson, James

  But it was not only prisoners who worked on the ship; there were free men as well. And there were women too, toiling side by side with the men and doing the same hard, manual work.

  Miller went ashore alone. He could not bear to have anyone with him when he made his first contact with the soil of Russia—that blessed soil from which had sprung Lenin and Stalin and all the other leaders of the Revolution. For Miller this was a great moment, a moment of fulfilment, of realization; the moment he had waited for so long.

  When the sentry at the entrance to the dock stopped him for his pass Miller felt that he would have liked to embrace the man. But he restrained his feelings and handed over his pass and his Army pay-book. The sentry examined them with great care and handed them back. Then he said, “Seegret, comrade? Please, seegret?”

  Miller gave him a cigarette; the sentry took it with a word of thanks, and Miller passed on out of the dock. But in Miller’s heart again was a tiny voice of unease; for surely in this mother state of Communism there should have been no need for a soldier of the people’s Army to beg a cigarette from the foreigner stepping ashore in his country?

  But other blows were to fall upon the ramparts of Miller’s faith; and immediately he was to discover that that black market of which the sailor on the Golden Ray had spoken did in fact exist. For he had not walked twenty yards away from the dock before he was surrounded by a crowd of urchins, all shouting in shrill, treble voices and all thrusting towards him wads of rouble notes—fives, tens, fifties, and hundreds.

  “Here, comrade! Here, rouble! Rouble, see! Seegret, choclit! Rouble; rouble!”

  Miller was bewildered and unhappy. It was unbelievable that Russian children, young and tender children, should be the agents of black marketeers; that they should besiege foreigners coming off capitalist ships and importune them thus for the sale of cigarettes and chocolate. Yet he had to believe the evidence of his own eyes, however painful that evidence might be, and however degrading it might seem to the land of his heart’s desire.

  The children flocked about him, fur hats pulled down over their ears, their quilted clothing greasy and ragged, their noses dirty, and in their hands hundreds and hundreds of roubles which they were eager to exchange for a few cigarettes or a handful of chocolate.

  “Rouble, comrade! Rouble for seegret, choclit!”

  “No,” said Miller. “No cigarettes; no chocolate!”

  Not at any price would he sell such articles to these children of Russia; it would have seemed a betrayal of his faith. He walked on faster, trying to shake the children off.

  “No cigarettes; no chocolate! None, none, none!”

  The hardiest spirits—those least easily dissuaded—followed him for a long way, pleading, urging; but eventually even they trailed off, dropping disconsolately behind and stuffing their dirty roubles into still dirtier pockets.

  Miller walked on alone into the town of Murmansk.

  What he had expected to find he would himself have had difficulty in describing. Streets paved with gold? They were paved with iron-hard snow. Brave new architecture? There were log cabins and square, concrete buildings, already cracked, peeling, crumbling away, having about them a down-at-heel and out-at-elbows appearance. Shop-windows full of the products of Communist industry? Half the shops were boarded up with rough planks; in some were a few shoddy articles. Happy, smiling people? Here was no laughter upon the air; here were faces etched with all the signs of misery.

  Miller did not know what it was he had expected; yet he knew that it was not this. He told himself over and over again that this was the land he had always wanted to see, ever since the party had claimed him; that this was Russia. But, looking round him, he saw only that it was bleak and cold and dilapidated—and he did not know what to do.

  Suddenly there seemed to be no aim nor object in his being ashore; for he knew no one and no one knew him. He felt lonely and depressed. But he walked on, and, passing a shop, he almost ran into an old woman. She had a shawl draped over her head and shoulders, and Miller, looking into her face, thought that he had never seen one so incredibly wrinkled. The old woman gazed at Miller, but there was no emotion in her gaze, only an infinite resignation, and with a muttered word she moved to one side and passed by him, clutching beneath her shawl half a loaf of black bread.

  Miller had never seen the old woman before, and he would never see her again. He did not know whence she came nor whither she was going; he did not know where she had been born, how she lived, nor where she would die; he did not know whether she had sons or daughters, husband or friends; he knew only that her face was wrinkled, that it had about it the colour of earth, as though it were changing slowly but perceptibly back to dust, that there was a shawl over her head, and that she carried in her hand a piece of coarse bread. For a brief moment he had seen the old woman; for a brief moment she had walked across the path of his life and was gone out of it for ever; yet in that moment, had he known it, he might have beheld gazing up at him from her dull eyes the true, undying soul of that Russia he had come to find.

  On one street corner Miller saw a sailor of the Russian North Fleet, reeling drunk, being sick in the road. Miller walked on.

  Sometimes a motor-lorry would grind past, scarcely making an impression on the hard-packed snow. Now and then a pony sleigh would slip by, and once Miller saw a girl on skis. Then he passed a group of Army women, dressed in sheepskin coats, leather jack-boots, and fur hats with the red star set in the front. They took no notice of Miller, and he felt somehow like an outcast.

  Here and there about the streets were loud-speakers hung on posts; sometimes music came from them, sometimes speech; but Miller saw no one stopping to listen. In one place he saw a large war-map posted up on a board; but it showed only the Russian front, and there was no indication that fighting was going on anywhere else, nor that Russia possessed any allies.

  Miller felt miserable; there seemed to be nothing to do and nothing to see. Moreover, he was cold. Then he saw Warby and Ben Cowdrey about to enter a building.

  “Hi!” he shouted. “Hi, there!”

  The other two stopped and looked back. “Oh, it’s you,” Cowdrey said. “Where are you off to?”

  “Just looking round,” said Miller. “What’s this place?”

  “The International Club,” said Cowdrey. “They’re giving a film show to-night. Why don’t you come?”

  “Pictures!” said Miller in disgust. “No, thanks! Not for me! None of that tripe!”

  He turned and walked away, the other two watching him.

  “There’s something queer about that blighter,” Cowdrey said; “something damned queer. Well, let’s go in and see what the Russkis have got for us.”

  Miller walked on. He had no idea where he was going, but he walked on, leaving the big concrete buildings behind, following the road out to where the log houses thinned. He walked over a level crossing, and suddenly saw the river on his left hand, and ships. And still he walked on over the rough, icy road; and still his heart was heavy because this was not what he had hoped to find.

  It was quite dark when he turned back, and a breeze had sprung up, drifting in from the frozen wastes of tundra, bringing the frigid touch of the terrible northern winter. Miller slapped his gloved hands as he walked and stamped his feet hard on the crusted road. He began to wish he was back on board, for the cold slid down upon him and his lips were numb.

  It was a night of many stars shining with a peculiar added brightness, as though the snow and the wind had polished them into a greater luminosity. There was the Great Bear keeping watch over its own land; there was the Little Bear with the Pole Star in its tail; there were Cassiopeia and Perseus, Camelopardalis and Draco. And other stars without number stood in the vast distances of the night; distances so great that in comparison the Earth was but a dust-mote upon the face of the sun. What, then, of Miller walking upon the Earth? How infinitesimally small a portion of the universe was he! Yet to himself the rest was as nothing. He was
the centre, the hub around which all revolved. Worlds and planets, stars and constellations, galaxies and nebulae—all these meant less to Miller than the one grain of doubt nagging at his little mind.

  He recrossed the railway and climbed up the slope towards the town. The houses came darkly out of the gloom, and he went on, slipping now and then on the icy ground and steadying himself with outflung arms. Amid the silence of the night and the silence of the dark houses from which no light shone he felt like a lost child, terribly alone. And with this sense of loneliness came a touch of fear; he was fearful of the night, the darkness, and the cold. The sighing wind, that was like the hand of Death feeling beneath his coat and clutching at his face, frightened him also. And he knew that he had lost his way.

  After a time he feared that he had gone too far and was coming out on the other side of the town; so he turned and went back, wandering amid the houses and not finding the road down to the dock where the Golden Ray lay moored. He was off the main streets, and there were only low log houses around him. Then suddenly a wedge of light shone upon the snow in front of him, and he saw that a door had opened. From within the house he heard a gust of laughter and the strum of a guitar; then the door closed again, and Miller could discern the dark outline of a man standing against the wall of the cabin. He thought of asking the stranger to direct him on his way, but the utter impossibility of making himself understood to a Russian made him hesitate; and as he hesitated he heard the man begin to whistle softly.

  Miller felt envious of the stranger, because he would soon be going back into warmth and light and companionship, while he, Miller, must still grope along, trying to find a lost path. Then the man turned, fumbling at his buttons; and as he turned he saw Miller.

  “Hullo!” he said. “Who are you?”

  At the sound of English words Miller’s self-confidence came flooding back, and he answered with much of his usual perkiness.

  “If it comes to that, who are you?”

  “Oh, you’re English, then,” said the man. “Are you coming inside?”

  “Inside?” Miller repeated. “What’s inside?”

  “Come and see; it’s open house, and a good time will be had by all—that’s if you’ve got any roubles. Have you?”

  “Yes,” said Miller, “I’ve got some.”

  “All right, then. Come in if you’re coming. It’s perishin’ out here.”

  He opened the door, and Miller, blinking in the sudden glow of light, followed him inside. He found himself then in a large, plain room, in which were a number of men and women gathered round a glowing, pot-bellied stove. On one side of the room was a table on which stood a samovar, several glasses, and two or three bottles of vodka. The guitar was being played by a tall, black-haired man with the badge of the Merchant Navy in his lapel, and the other men also appeared to be seamen.

  The air was thick with tobacco-smoke and fumes from the stove; it was a hot, choking atmosphere that caught at Miller’s throat and made his eyes water. His face too, after being exposed to the cold wind, felt stiff; and when he opened his mouth the skin stretched taut across his teeth like a band of perished rubber.

  The man who had invited him in—a square, thick man, wearing a blue serge suit and blue roll-neck pullover—slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Come on, mate,” he said; “come and get warm.”

  It was then that Miller saw the fat woman. She was seated on the far side of the stove, almost in shadow, and she seemed to flow over the chair on which she sat like a great hill of flesh. Her hair was black, coarse as the mane of a horse, and cut in a straight fringe; it fell on either side of her enormous, heavy face like the frame enclosing a hideous caricature of womanhood. Her eyes were like small currants thrust in the folds of an immense suet dumpling; her teeth were an old, rotten fence, gapped and decaying; on her upper lip was a palpable moustache. She breathed in quick, gasping breaths, and as she breathed her massive bosom rose and fell, like the waves that rise and fall against the side of a ship.

  “Mother Carey,” said Miller’s guide. “You’ll have to pay her. This is her house.”

  “How much?” asked Miller.

  “Don’t give her more than a hundred roubles. That’s plenty. She’ll take all you like to give her; but a hundred roubles is enough.”

  The man with the guitar was playing Jealousy. Now and then he missed a note; now and then he played a wrong one; he slurred the rhythm, and his head drooped as though he were half asleep. But he lifted his head to wink through the haze of smoke. None of the others gave more than a glance at Miller as he walked across the room to where Mother Carey sat, overwhelming her chair with abundant flesh.

  Standing in front of her, he could see the dirt that seemed to be flowing down from her hair like a creeping tide, and he could see the moisture glistening on her skin. She was like a female Buddha at whose throne he had come to worship, and she stared at him with her little, shining eyes without speaking for so long that he fidgeted beneath the impact of her gaze. Then she nodded slowly and held out her hand, palm uppermost.

  Miller took two fifty-rouble notes from his pocket—it was half the Russian money he possessed—and placed them on the old woman’s hand. She accepted them without thanks and thrust them away in some recess of her clothing. Then she called to one of the girls, “Anya! Anya!” adding some words which Miller could not understand.

  The girl thus addressed was short and plump. She had a broad face, a wide, flat nose, and rough skin. Her hair was plaited and pinned in two coils, one on either side of her head. She took Miller’s arm and led him to an old sofa covered with plush cloth that had once been red, but now was almost black with dirt. At one end of the sofa a sailor sat with his feet thrust out before him, his head lolling forward, his eyes closed. His snoring could be heard above the chatter and the music of the guitar.

  Anya signed to Miller to take off his coat and cap; and he did so, hanging them on the back of the sofa. Then she went to the table, poured out a glass of vodka, and brought it to him, sitting down beside him on the sofa.

  Miller drank some of the pale liquid, and a stream of warmth seemed to flow to the extremities of his body. He drank again, and the room closed in on him, warm, pleasant, exciting. Anya was leaning against him, and Miller found himself wedged between her and the arm of the sofa.

  “Please—seegret,” she said.

  As he put down his glass of vodka and felt for the packet Miller could not help thinking how strange it was that every one should ask him for cigarettes. Cigarette, comrade! Cigarette, cigarette! Always it was cigarettes! He handed the packet to Anya, and she took one. As he lit it for her she smiled lazily at him through the haze of smoke, then, taking the cigarette from her mouth, leaned suddenly forward and kissed him on the lips.

  In Miller was the sense of being trapped. He felt at the same time attracted and repelled. Something inside him was urging him to stand up, to leave the house and go away—somewhere—anywhere. In that way he might retain some shreds of his illusions, some tattered remnants of his faith. But there was no strength in his limbs; it was as though his bones were softening, melting down into powerless jelly. And the girl pressed upon him, warm and sensual, drawing him into the net of her sheer animal attraction.

  He drained his glass of vodka, and Anya refilled it. He drank again, and the noises of the room seemed to come to him from an infinite distance, like the sound of waves falling on a far-off shore. A woman had the guitar now and was fingering out a sad, slow tune, singing in a husky voice, almost like a man’s. Heat flowed out of the stove, and Mother Carey sat motionless and watchful on her chair.

  Miller lit a cigarette for himself, and drew smoke down into his lungs, letting it drift out again through nose and mouth, letting it drift up towards the blackened ceiling of the room. He was hot now, beginning to sweat under his heavy clothing. With slow, fumbling fingers he began to undo the buttons of his khaki battle-blouse. Anya noticed the tape by which his identity-discs were slung from
his neck, and she pulled up the brown stamped discs from inside his vest. Holding them in her hand, she looked at them, frowning in puzzlement. Then she traced the inscription with her finger—Miller’s Army number, his name and initials, and, underneath, his religion, C.E. It could with as much reason have been R.C., or Pres., or Meth.—with as much reason or as little, for religion meant nothing to him. Nevertheless for Army purposes his religion was Church of England; whether he believed or whether he did not made no difference to the authorities.

  Anya put the discs back inside his vest, tickling him playfully as she did so. Again Miller felt that strange mixture of attraction and repulsion; he saw the girl’s bony, Asiatic features close to his own; he saw that she had little pock-marks under the eyes and that one of her front teeth had been broken off, leaving a jagged stump. And above all the other scents in the room—the tobacco-smoke, the vodka, the fumes from the stove—he could smell the warm, animal odour of her body.

  He began to feel drowsy. It was the effect of the heat and the vodka. He wanted to close his eyes and drift away into unconsciousness, into the world of sleep and dreams. But Anya was standing beckoning him to get up and follow. So he followed her—across the room and through a doorway covered by a heavy curtain—having no will to resist, no will of his own at all.

  When Miller left the brothel the sky was full of light; but it was all man-made: searchlights wavered to and fro; glowing tracers and flaming onions, dark red against the night, climbed towards the stars; while parachute flares drifted slowly down towards the bombers’ target. Overhead Miller could hear the steady, rhythmic drone of aeroplane engines, and occasionally splinters of anti-aircraft shells would fall with a slight hiss into the snow beside him.