She went on thinking about him until a sound on the stair broke in upon her thoughts. She sat up and listened. She had not expected Stephen back so soon. And then, all alone as she was, she blushed, because she did not really know how long she had been dreaming about him.
She got up and went to the window. If this was Stephen, he should not find her watching the door for him. Instead she lifted the curtain and looked at the frosted pane. The river was there beyond, all frozen now. She could not see it, but she knew that it was there. This, then, must be one of those tall dark houses at which she had stared from the bridge. It was so curious to think of herself as she was then, shelterless and without hope, and to come back to this new self, sheltered, and with new hope springing.
She turned from the window at what she took to be his step. Or was it only the stair creaking? Old stairs did creak, and this house must be very old. She let fall the curtain, crossed the floor, and opened the door a little way. There was no light anywhere. The open space was a handsbreadth of darkness.
She stood there listening, with one hand on the door and one on the jamb, and it seemed to her as if the darkness were coming into the room.
It was a darkness full of sounds—an unquiet darkness—a whispering, shuffling darkness. There was no word spoken, no sound of which she could say, a foot moved, or one man jostled another. Yet, standing there with the wide black crack between her right hand and her left, Elizabeth knew that there were men upon the stair. Three, four, five, six … How could she tell whether there were four or six of them? More than three, and not more than six. What did it matter how many there were? She would be as surely trapped by two as by a dozen. And there were more than two. The sounds were not all the same sounds. The whispers were different whispers.
Elizabeth’s left hand, which held the door, began very slowly to push it to. The handsbreath of darkness became a finger’s breadth, and then was altogether gone. The door was shut. Her hands groped below the handle, found the key, and turned it in the lock. Then she went back from the door as far as the table and leaned upon it. The lamp which stood there made a warm glow against her shoulder and her neck.
Elizabeth leaned upon her hands and bit into her lip, Presently she put up her right hand and wiped away a drop of sweat which was running down her cheek. She had locked the door—an old frail door, with an old frail lock. How long would it keep anyone out? No, not anyone—any six.
An old German nursery rhyme came humming through her frightened thoughts:
Ach du lieber Augustin, Augustin, Augustin.
Ach du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.
Rock ist weg,
Stock ist weg,
Mädel ist weg,
Alles ist weg—
Ach du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.”
Everything’s gone—everything’s gone—everything’s gone.…
“Ach du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.”
And then:
“Rock ist weg,
Stock ist weg,
Mädel ist weg—”
What would Stephen say when he came back and found her gone?
Everything gone—everything gone—everything gone.…
“Ach du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.”
The rhythm came with the beating of her heart, and louder, louder, louder. She could neither think nor move. Breathless, she could only wait for the door to be broken in.
And then, as she stared at it, she saw the handle move. The latch rattled, the handle moved again.
All at once Elizabeth became able to think and speak. The tune stopped beating out its jingle of words amongst her disorganized thoughts. It was as if a very loud noise had suddenly stopped.
The handle of the door was shaken. She said in a quiet voice,
“Who is there?”
And Stephen said,
“Open the door—it’s me.”
A warm weakness flowed over Elizabeth. She had forced herself to such a pitch of self-control, and the danger it was to meet had dissolved unmet. It was as if she had nerved herself for some terrible fall, only to find that the imagined precipice was an illusion. She was so shaken with relief and happiness that for a moment she could not move. Then she ran to the door and turned the key.
The door was pushed open so roughly that she was flung backwards, and at once the room was full of people—Stephen, Irina, Petroff, and half a dozen young men pushing eagerly past one another till the last of them was in and the door slammed to.
Elizabeth stood where the thrust of the door had sent her, and looked on this unbelievable scene. She saw Irina who hated her, Petroff from whom she had fled, and a Stephen whom she did not know. A Stephen whose arm was linked with Petroff’s as he shouted noisily,
“There, Comrade! There she is! And it’s for you to say who she is. She’s my wife Varvara all right, but if she’s your Elizabeth what’s-her-name, you’re welcome to her, and I’ll call it a good riddance.”
There was a murmur of talk among the Young Communists. Petroff shook off Stephen’s hand and came forward, those shallow Tartar eyes of his fixed maliciously upon Elizabeth. As he advanced, she went back step by step until the wall stopped her, her eyes glassy, her hands palm outwards as if to fend him off. When she reached the wall, she braced herself against it. Her hands fell to her sides. She waited for what would come next.
Petroff came to within about a yard of her and said,
“You’ve been in a great hurry to change your name, haven’t you?”
Stephen looked over his head and laughed.
“I was right then. Didn’t I say so? It would be a good joke against me if I hadn’t found it out for myself. She is really your Elizabeth Radin?”
Elizabeth held up her head and looked at Petroff. She could not look at Stephen.
She heard Petroff say, “Yes, she is Elizabeth Radin,” and at once the room was full of loud buzzing voices. Irina talked, the Young Communists talked, Stephen shouted, and Petroff, coming quite near, said in a tone which somehow pierced the noise,
“What a fool you were to run away!”
The word echoed bitterly in the lost and arid place where Elizabeth’s consciousness struggled with the approach of darkness. A fool … a fool who had climbed up a little way out of the pit, only to slide back again—and deeper. No, she had not climbed, she had been drawn up, and the hand that had drawn her up had thrust her down again—Stephen’s hand. She shuddered from the thought that she had clung to it. It fell now on her shoulder with a heavy grip.
Stephen, still laughing, shook her a little.
“Well, what’s to be done with her, Comrade? Here she is!”
At his touch Elizabeth screamed. It was the faintest of sounds, no more in reality than a sharply drawn breath of agony, but it rang in her own ears as a scream. It drowned Stephen’s voice and Stephen’s words. It was the last thing she heard, because in that moment the darkness fell.
CHAPTER XVI
Elizabeth opened her eyes because a bright light was shining on them. She shut them again quickly because the light hurt her. It continued to shine through her closed lids. After a moment she put up her hand to shield her eyes, and with that movement consciousness flowed back and she was aware of her body again. She was lying down … on a bed … her hands and feet were cold … the light was shining on her eyes.…
A shiver ran over her. She raised herself on her elbow and once more opened her eyes. She was lying on a narrow bed in a square white-washed room. There were more beds like the one she was lying on—three or four more. An unshaded electric light hung from the ceiling.
Elizabeth frowned, raised herself a little more, and looked about her. There were three other beds. On the edge of one of them a young woman sat looking at her. She had a foolish flat face, rather light eyes, and hands with stubby fingers and bitten nails. There was a finger at her mouth most of the time. She looked over her shoulder and said,
“She’s awake, Marfa.”
Elizabeth sat up
and saw a little old woman peering at her.
“Where am I?”
She felt sick at the sound of her own voice, because it brought back to her those other voices—Irina’s—Petroff’s—Stephen’s. She said the words again, because she had stammered over them the first time.
“Where am I?”
The old woman went on peering. The young one said,
“Prison.”
Elizabeth repeated the word as if saying it to herself:
“Prison—”
She sat on the edge of the bed and put her feet to the floor. She felt giddy when she moved. When her head was clear again she became conscious of some relief. If this was a prison, it was at least a clean and decent place. It was, she discovered, a woman’s ward in the ordinary civil prison, and for this she felt thankful. The lot of the political prisoner was generally cast in fouler places. Stories she had heard of horrible over-crowding, filth and vermin came back to her as she looked at the neat beds, the whitewash, and the well scrubbed floor.
Her two companions were serving sentences, one for selling illicit vodka—all intoxicants being a government monopoly—and the other for murder. It was the young woman, Anna, who was the murderess. She had got tired of looking after some aged relative and had strangled her. She spoke of it without a trace of compunction. For the rest she seemed a stupid, amiable person who could talk by the hour about nothing. The old woman never spoke at all. Her grey hair fell over her eyes in an unkempt tangle, and through the elf-locks she watched Elizabeth’s every move with the suspicious air of an animal.
“He was a big man, that one who carried you in,” said Anna presently—“a fine man, though I don’t like red hair myself. They say you can never trust a red-haired person.”
Elizabeth winced. Stephen had carried her in. She had trusted him with all her heart. She winced now at the thought that he had touched her. Her sheepskin coat and cap were laid at the foot of the bed. Was it Stephen who had put them on her before he carried her through the cold streets? Or was it Petroff, who would not want her to die until she had given him the formula?
“He carried you as easily as if you were a baby,” said Anna—“and took off your coat and cap and laid you down on the bed. There was a dark man with him—a Commissar. I have seen him before. His name is Petroff. He took hold of your wrist and felt it, and said, ‘Is she all right?’ And the big man took hold of your other wrist. There they were, one on either side of you, like two dogs with a bone. Then the big man said, ‘So you don’t want her to die, Comrade?’ And that Petroff said, ‘Not just yet.’ ‘Oh, you needn’t be afraid—she won’t die,’ says the big man, and with that he laughs and lets go of your wrist. Is he your lover?”
“I have no lover,” said Elizabeth.
Anna bit a thumb-nail which was already down to the quick.
“Well, I wouldn’t have a red-haired one—you can’t trust them.”
Elizabeth sat and stared at the wall, and thought how she had trusted Stephen. She had given him her trust and her friendship. She had been ready to give him her love—if he had wanted it. She wondered whether it would hurt more to think that he had not wanted it at all, or that he had wanted it lightly for the pleasure of a passing moment. As the thought shaped itself, she knew the answer. She could bear the thought of his indifference. She knew very well that he had not been indifferent. The pain of her wound was the pain of knowing that he had wanted her, and, wanting her, had held her cheaply—a mere pawn, to be sacrificed without compunction the moment the game or his safety demanded the surrender of a piece. She would do him the justice to suppose that it was the game to which she had been sacrificed. She would try and believe that. Her wound would ache a little less bitterly if she could imagine some motive not altogether ignoble.
Then, sharply and suddenly, she remembered that she had given him the formula.
CHAPTER XVII
There followed a night of moments lengthening slowly into hours. The moments were so long that time had no measure left by which to mete the hours. Yet in the end a slow, cold daylight broke upon the ward. The walls changed imperceptibly from black, through all the shades of grey, to a clear, staring white.
There was water to wash in. Elizabeth washed. There was her bed to make. She made it. Then she sat down again and stared at the wall, whilst Anna told her long stories about her relations, her friends, her acquaintances, and their friends, relations, and acquaintances.
Elizabeth did not listen, but every now and then a sentence reached her mind:
“So then he took a knife and stabbed him.…
“It was a neighbour’s child and it ran away into the forest.…
“After that Nadashda had three more husbands, but she wasn’t happy with any of them.…”
It did not matter to Anna that Elizabeth was not listening. She talked on with great enjoyment.
It was about four in the afternoon that the summons came.
Elizabeth had lost count of time. There had been two meals. She had eaten, but she could not have said what it was that she had eaten. Anna had talked incessantly. And then the door was unlocked and a wardress told her to put on her coat and cap.
“Are they going to shoot you?” said Anna, with an interested stare. “You’re a bourzhui, aren’t you, and a counter-revolutionary? It’s a pity to put on a good coat to be shot in. Blood never really comes out.”
In the corridor there were three men in police uniform. They closed round her, one going in front and two behind, and so down a flight of steps and out into the street. She wondered if they were going to shoot her without a trial, or whether some travesty of justice would come first and the shooting afterwards. She had given Stephen the formula; there was therefore no further reason for keeping her alive. She had heard of so many summary executions that she did not doubt she was going to her death.
She felt a curious indifference. It was growing dark. The wind blew out of the north. Now and again a tiny stinging point of snow touched her face. Her feet were cold and so heavy that she could hardly lift them. She wondered whether they had far to go, and whether they would shoot her in the open or drive her down some cellar stair. She felt a sick horror at the thought of the cellar.
She had not been noticing the way they took. When they stopped before a door, her heart turned over. Now it would come—now, in the next few moments.
The door opened. One of the men went in, and she followed him. There were two steps down, which she took instinctively, because in the old house where Petroff had his flat there were two steps down as you come in. Her feet had grown accustomed to them. She drove her nails into the palms of her hands. This time she must not faint. It was just the waiting that was dreadful. She would probably not feel the shot.
And then all at once she was walking, not downstairs, but up, and she knew why she had found the steps familiar. This was the house in which she had lived for a year. Even in the heavy dusk she would have recognized it if her thoughts had not taken her so near death as to make all other impressions meaningless. The fear of death slipped away and another fear took its place. Her foot stumbled and she was thrown against the man on her right. He took hold of her roughly and pushed her on. They continued to mount the stairs.
In the middle room of the flat above Petroff was drinking scalding tea well laced with vodka. A large samovar steamed pleasantly upon a side-table. Petroff sat in his writing-chair, his tumbler of tea all mixed up with a froth of papers. On the opposite side of the table Stephen bestrode a wooden chair. He had a smoking glass in his hand. He drank from it and set it down.
“Of course it’s all the same to me what you do with her, and whether I go or stay.”
“You’ve said that before,” said Petroff.
“Of course I’ve said it before—and I shall go on saying it. You can’t say a true thing too often, can you? Hi, Comrade, how many of these little glasses does it take to make you drunk—fifty or a hundred?”
Petroff shrugged his shoulders.
“Well then, but have you thought of this, Comrade? She’s a cunning one—as cunning as they make them, I should say. Suppose she only pretends to tell you what you want to know. Have you thought of that? She might do it, if she thought it would save her skin. And that, Comrade, is where I come in. You bring her in here, and you tell her, ‘There’s your husband who heard you talk in your sleep, and if you alter so much as a single word he’ll know it, and then it’ll be no good pleading and asking for mercy, because you won’t get any.’”
Petroff frowned at his steaming drink.
“That is not badly thought of,” he said.
“I have these ideas,” said Stephen. “Sometimes they come to me when I’m drunk, and sometimes when I’m sober. Just now I’m not as drunk as I’d like to be. That’s the worst of having a head like mine—it costs such a lot to get drunk. This vodka isn’t as good as the stuff I had in Magnitogorsk.”
“Oh, be quiet!” said Petroff, and with that there came a thumping on the door. Stephen swung round and watched it open. The man who had knocked came into the room, and behind him two others with Elizabeth between them. One of them held her by the arm. There were blue marks like bruises under her eyes, and her face was quite white. The eyes themselves had a frozen look of fear. All her movements were slow and stiff.
“Leave her and wait downstairs!” said Petroff sharply.
Red Stefan Page 12
