Red Stefan

by Patricia Wentworth

  He heard Elizabeth’s laugh for the first time, very soft and faint. He immediately wanted to pick her up and kiss her. And it would be so easy. No, not easy—impossible.

  “Do you never boast?” she said, and the laughter was still in her voice.

  “Oh, nearly always. A Russian peasant is a very boastful fellow, and I’m a Russian peasant about half my time. If I don’t blow my own trumpet, people won’t believe I’ve got one.”

  Elizabeth said, “I see—” She spoke quite gravely, but he thought she was still smiling. He hoped so, because he had an idea that she had forgotten how to smile. If he could make her laugh, she might think him as boastful as she pleased. He plunged back into his story.

  “Well, after that they sent me to Russia. I was to be one of Katinka’s twenty odd children, and I was to go to her father, old Yuri, who’s driving us now. It was my own idea. Katinka used to talk about her father, but she hadn’t seen him since she married, and I knew he wouldn’t have the slightest idea how many children she had. I don’t think she knew herself—she just went on having them. So, when I turned up in Yuri’s village and said I was his grandson Stefan, neither he nor anyone else had the least doubt about me. I wasn’t eighteen, and I looked younger, though I was so big, because my skin was very fair in those days. I used to have to keep it well smudged with dirt till it darkened a bit.”

  “What did you do?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Not very much at first. I had to come and go, and get to know the ropes. Then they wanted to know about the Tsar and his family. You know all the rumours there were. Well, they wanted someone to go to the place and find out what had happened—whether they were really dead or not. And after that there were other things—getting people across the frontier, and, of course, making regular reports as to what was going on. I had to serve my two years in the Red Army and I was over here for four years straight on end, and then I was back in England for a bit. I’ve been backwards and forwards ever since. My riskiest job was working in a poison-gas factory at Trotsk.” He laughed. “I was glad to get out of that with a whole skin, I can tell you!” After a pause he said, “I expect this will be my last job.”

  Elizabeth felt a thrill of superstitious fear. She said, “Why?” a little breathlessly. She could just see him now, black against the greyish white of the snow. The line of the horizon showed beyond his shoulder. It bounded an endless desolate flatness on which their cart must look like the merest speck. The sky overhead showed the approach of dawn. A yellowish tinge began to invade the grey. The horse’s hoofs rang on the frozen snow.

  “Why?” said Stephen. “Oh, just because … I don’t want to go on being a Russian peasant for the rest of my life. I’ve saved a bit, and when old Carey died a year or two ago he left me a couple of thousand pounds and one of his farms. It was very decent of him, and I hope I haven’t said anything about him that I oughtn’t to. We just didn’t talk the same language—that’s all. I went into partnership with a cousin, Tom Carey, an awfully good fellow, and we’ve started breeding horses. Did I tell you I was pretty good with horses?”

  “No, you didn’t,” said Elizabeth.

  “Well, I am. It’s part of my job really. You see I could go all up and down the country as a horse-doctor. I’d got to be something that would account for my being away a good bit. I took on cows and pigs as a side-line, and it was all very useful. I got quite well known. I might have been taken on as an agronom if I’d wanted the job—they go round lecturing to the peasants, you know. But that wouldn’t have suited me. You can’t just disappear if you’re in a government job—and sometimes it suits me to disappear.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought you’d want to be too well known.”

  He laughed, leaned close to her, and said in a loud stage whisper.

  “Ssh! Not a word! I’m not always Red Stefan.” Then, drawing back again, in a different voice, “Now it’s your turn.”

  He was at once aware of a withdrawal. The silence between them seemed rigid for a moment. Then she said,

  “I told you. There’s nothing more.”

  Stephen’s thoughts plunged and reared at that. Nothing more—when he wanted to know every single thing that she had ever thought or done. Well, some day she would tell him. He reined in those racing thoughts, and became aware that she was asking him a question.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To Yuri’s village—for the moment. Afterwards—I don’t know—it depends. I’m not quite sure how things are there just now. You see—” he leaned confidentially nearer—“I’ve been away all the summer. I only got back a week ago, and then I had to dig Yuri out and get him to come up to the town. He didn’t want to a bit—he was afraid of a heavy fall of snow. But I had to have a good excuse to be there, so I got him to put a cartload of market stuff together and chance it. Of course he sold it pretty well. They tried to stop the peasants selling their own stuff, you know, but they had to let them do it in the end. There are too many of them. They can’t shoot ’em all, and if they did, the rest of Russia would starve. So Yuri gets his price for butter and vegetables and eggs. As a matter of fact I had to be in Tronsk to meet the man who is going to take over my job. He didn’t come, so they’ll probably have to find someone else—”

  “You mean—”

  He nodded.

  “I expect they got him. I was pretty sure of that by the second day, but I just felt I’d got to hang on. When I saw you on the bridge, of course I knew why. It was lucky you weren’t a day later, because Yuri wouldn’t have waited another twenty-four hours for anyone on earth. I expect he’s right about the snow, but we shall get in before it comes.”

  She could see him quite plainly now. The road ran south and a little west, and the sullen dawn came up behind them, painting the sky just above the horizon with livid streaks. Everywhere else the clouds were of an even, impenetrable greyness. As they looked back along the way by which they had come, there was nothing to be seen but a vast plain thinly veiled in snow. When Elizabeth leaned sideways to the edge of the cart and looked past old Yuri’s humped shoulders, there were, however, signs of broken ground and a sprinkling of trees with their branches stark against the snow. As they came up with the first of the trees, she heard a loud cawing sound and looked about her for a sign of crow or raven. The sound came again, much farther off. And then, to her extreme surprise, a cuckoo called from a thicket on their right. She turned to Stephen and found him regarding her gravely.

  “Did you know there were cuckoos in Russia?” he said, and before she could answer, the call came again, behind them. It hung on the frosty air, came more faintly, and died away.

  Yuri looked over his shoulder, said something in a rapid mutter and, turning back, jerked at the reins.

  “What did he say?” said Elizabeth. “Was it about the cuckoo? Did he hear it? I thought you said he couldn’t hear anything.”

  Stephen nodded.

  “He can hear one thing, but it’s not the cuckoo. He was only saying something about the snow. He says he smells wind, and perhaps that’ll carry it away. Do you know what the one thing is that he can hear? He lived up farther north when he was a boy, and he was chased by wolves. He was in a two-horse sleigh with two men, and when the wolves were gaining on them they chucked Yuri out. He was only a peasant child, you see. I tell you, some of those Russian nobles fairly asked for the Revolution. Yuri’s father was a serf. They treated ’em like dogs, and after they were emancipated they cheated ’em right and left. It’s only about twenty-five years since a peasant could be flogged by his master. If he died of the flogging, no one worried—there were lots of peasants.”

  “What happened to Yuri? How did he escape?”

  “He shinned up a tree just in time, and the wolves followed the sleigh. He nearly died of the cold and the fright, and to this day he can hear a wolf’s cry when he can’t hear anything else. Look—you watch him!”

  She looked round at Yuri’s back. He wore a sheepskin coat and cap, very dir
ty, the cap pulled well down over his ears and the coat high about his neck. He drove in a hunched attitude and might almost have been asleep. As she looked at him, there came, as if from a long way off, a faint sound. Elizabeth found herself listening for it to come again, and when it came, a little louder, she felt as if a drop of ice-cold water had trickled down her spine. She had never heard a wolf’s cry before, but with each repetition she found it more terrifying.

  She turned quickly to Stephen and saw him looking away to the right with a set face. The sound was nearer now and louder. It was like a dog baying, and yet not like. It was sharper, higher, and it had the savage melancholy of hunger in it. Her heart began to thump against her side and a cold sweat of terror broke out on all her limbs. Suddenly the cry rang out so near that the horses shied violently and old Yuri, pulling on the reins with one hand, swung round in his seat and shook the other fist at Stephen whilst he poured out a flood of angry abuse.

  Stephen broke into laughter. The cart swayed from one side of the track to the other, and whilst Yuri was taking both hands to the reins again, Stephen became suddenly aware of the fear in Elizabeth’s eyes. In an instant he had both her hands in his.

  “Were you frightened? What a brute beast I am! I wouldn’t frighten you for the world—you do know that, don’t you?”

  Elizabeth felt utterly bewildered. The wolf’s cry had ceased. Stephen was holding her hands and looking into her eyes. His were so blue and so near that she could not meet them. A giddiness came over her and her eyelids fell. In an instant he was holding her hands to his face, not kissing them, but pressing his forehead down upon them, whilst he held them in a grasp from which she had no power to withdraw. She felt as if her senses were leaving her, but his quick penitent words came through the faintness.

  “Don’t be frightened—you mustn’t be frightened! I’d cut off my right hand before I’d frighten you. It was only a joke.” Then he was looking at her again, and her eyes were open. “Please forgive me. I wouldn’t let anything hurt you for the world. I never thought I’d take you in. I thought you guessed when I did the birds. Why, a cuckoo couldn’t live here at all—it’s only a summer visitor in England.”

  She said in a soft, confused voice, “The birds?”

  “Didn’t you really guess? That’s a tremendously big feather in my cap.”

  She said the same words again. It was as if she couldn’t move her mind to anything fresh.

  “The birds?”

  Stephen’s heart cried out in him: “You’re like a princess in a fairy tale—an enchanted princess who can’t speak. Frozen—that’s what you are—frozen with fear. And I helped to frighten you!”

  Out loud he said, in the voice he would have used to comfort a child,

  “Yes, the birds, and the wolf, and everything. It was me all the time. You won’t be frightened any more, will you? Please, please don’t be frightened.”

  “It was you?”

  “Yes. I do it quite well—don’t I? It wants an awful lot of practice. I started when I was only a kid. I can do a lot of birds and animals.”

  “But it sounded right over there.”

  He nodded.

  “That’s what takes such a lot of practice, getting it to sound from the right distance and direction—and you mustn’t let a muscle of your face move, or it gives you away. You were looking at me when I was doing the wolf. It was pretty good to take you in when you were so close.”

  She drew her hands away from him. This time he let them go.

  “It was stupid of me to be frightened, but—when I looked at you—you looked—as if we were in danger.”

  He laughed.

  “All strong and silent! That was because I wasn’t letting a muscle of my face move. Please forgive me for frightening you. You will—won’t you?”

  Elizabeth leaned back into the angle of the cart.

  “It was stupid of me. I’ve always been frightened about wolves. Someone told me a story when I was a child—” A faint shudder ran over her. “If it had been anything else … I haven’t really got anything much to live for—”

  He could hardly catch the words. They came more and more slowly, as if she were tired out or half asleep. He frowned and stared out over the snow. So she hadn’t anything much to live for.… That was one of the things that had got to be changed. When people stop taking an interest in being alive, it doesn’t take much to kill them. You saw that happening in Russia every day. The older people, the ones who weren’t wanted because they didn’t fit into the new Communist state—they just died, and nobody cared. He dared Elizabeth to die and slip away from him. She’d got to be disenchanted, waked up, made alive again. She needn’t think he was going to let her go. He had got her, and he was going to keep her.

  He began to think very seriously about the immediate future. They were going to the village. Well, when they got there, what next? Yes, that was the question—what next? He would like to give Elizabeth time to rest and get strong. The question was, could he afford to give her this time? Was it going to be safe? Well, that depended on two things. First, would Petroff take the trouble to try and trace her? He couldn’t answer that, because Elizabeth hadn’t told him enough about her relations with Petroff. He glanced at her and saw that she was asleep, her lashes very fine and dark against the whiteness of her cheeks. He leaned over and tucked the straw closely round her. The question about Petroff must wait.

  The other question would have to wait too. It was a nuisance Yuri being so deaf. He would have to wait till they reached the village before he could find out whether Irina was there. If she was …

  His frown deepened as he thought about Irina.

  CHAPTER V

  The village stood bare of trees upon flat, open ground. There was a straggle of houses on either side of the one long street. There was a church with a dome like an onion. There was a big house, or hall, painted pink. The little houses were painted too, or washed with colour—green, pink, blue, and yellow, under eaves of bristling thatch. The small square windows stared blankly at the snow.

  Elizabeth got down out of the cart and looked about her. She felt dazed and very cold. Stephen took her by the arm and led her into the hut before which they had stopped. An old woman who was tending the stove called over her shoulder in a high cracked voice with a nasal tone in it,

  “Shut the door, whoever you are! What’s the good of feeding the stove if the good heat is to be wasted?” Then, as she turned round and caught sight of Stephen, she gave a shrill cry, stretched out her arms, and ran to embrace him.

  Stephen kissed her heartily, called her little grandmother, and with an arm still round her pulled her about to face Elizabeth.

  “See what I’ve brought you! For ten years you’ve been telling me that I ought to be married.”

  The old woman stared at Elizabeth. She was a very ugly old woman, incredibly lined and wrinkled, but her eyes were bright and black. They gave her rather the look of an aged squirrel as she darted sharp suspicious glances at the stranger Stefan had brought home. All very well to tell him he should marry, but was this the strong strapping wench who was to save her old legs? Not she! A poor half dead looking creature to her way of thinking. A parcel of fools—that’s what men were, and Stefan as big a fool as any of them for all he thought himself so clever. She stuck her old chin in the air and said,

  “A wife, eh? Where did you get her from?”

  “Picked her up in a snowdrift,” said Stephen with a laugh. Then, as the old woman made an angry sound, “Well, she looks like it, doesn’t she?”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Varvara.”

  Elizabeth started slightly. She was Stephen’s wife, and her name was Varvara, and he had picked her up in a snowdrift.… What an odd dream to be having. But the hut was warm. Nothing else mattered very much. Her body felt light and strange, as if it might quite easily rise up and float away like a bubble rising in water. The hut was dark. Stephen and the old woman seemed a long way off. And the
n the darkness was full of coloured lights, out of the midst of which the Commissar Petroff’s face appeared, looking angrily at her. She threw out her hands to ward him off, and knew no more.

  Afterwards she could not remember very much about the next few days. She knew that she was ill, and that Stephen and the old woman were tending her. Sometimes she thought that she was dying, and once she heard the old woman say that it would be a kindness to let her die, and that for her part she didn’t believe in flying in the face of Providence.

  It was then that Stephen knelt beside her and took both her hands in his. He said in English, “Elizabeth—do you hear me?” and much against her will her eyelids opened and she looked at him. She couldn’t see at all clearly. She wanted to shut her eyes and slip back into the shadows again, but Stephen wouldn’t let her. She had to feel the strong clasp of his hands and to listen to what he was saying.

  “Elizabeth—you’re not going to die. Did you think I would let you? If you did, you were making a very big mistake. You are going to get well. Now drink this up and go to sleep.”

  She drank what he gave her, and slept.

  When she woke again she was stronger. She lay with her eyes closed and heard the old woman talking to Stephen.