‘Because you don’t know who else might be in the house.’
‘Exactly. If it’s still being run as a hospital, there’ll be Reds in charge. The saving grace – as far as my own sanity is concerned – has been those words in the message, with Maroussia. They – the Kamentsevs – lived above the stables, in their own flat. Other servants were in the house, in the attic rooms, but they were on their own. So, it’s possible that…’ He paused: and let it go… ‘Any case, Irina and Nadia both worked in the Petrograd hospital after it came under Bolshevik administration. As I was telling you.’ The Count glanced at him: and away again, taking a deep breath… Then: ‘How Ivan and Maroussia have managed to survive is another mystery. All the loyal servants I’ve known about have been murdered with their masters and mistresses. All one can tell oneself is it’s our good luck, as well as theirs… Hey, we’re coming to Selitrenoe.’
The train was slowing: other passengers were also aware of it. The two women nearest to them were packing away their bits and pieces, and there was a general stirring. The girl’s eyes opened: blinking for a few seconds as if wondering where she was, then recognizing Bob, touching her hair and returning his smile, tucking her feet under her so the looming women wouldn’t trample on her. The train shrieked: they’d passed a signal-box and now, more slowly, a siding with another train waiting in it.
He asked the Count, ‘How far’s Sasykolsk from here?’
‘About – seventy-five versts, I suppose.’
Forty miles. An hour, roughly. The train shuddered to a stop. Rush of released steam, passengers stumbling out, and the heat immediately oppressive now there was no through-draught. But there were fewer people boarding than leaving, the rush was quickly over and the compartment was much less crowded, the platform already clearing.
Imagining returning south by this line, with five women. If they had papers: as presumably they must have, to have got down here in the first place. Irina and Nadia had had their papers in St Petersburg, anyway… Mentally correcting himself, then: he still thought of that great old city as St Petersburg, the name he’d known it by when he’d lived there, but it was Petrograd now, had been since the Tsar had renamed it in 1914, wanting to assert its Russianness.
Something was happening outside, on the platform. He’d seen the girl’s expression change as she’d leant forward, and more or less simultaneously the Count’s elbow jolted him in the ribs.
An elderly man – thin, grey-headed, grey-faced, in an overcoat with what looked like an astrakhan collar on it. Overcoat, in this heat… Two men facing him: bully-boys in red brassards. He had his arms spread – as if inviting them to search him, but more likely only a gesture, protestation… One of the men was shaking some paper or papers in the old man’s face and shouting at him: open mouth, scarlet face, veins bulging in his thick neck – fury, barely restrained violence, and in the face of it the old man talking fast – arguing, pleading… Doors were slamming as the train prepared to leave. The other security guard had drawn a pistol – revolver – a big, heavy-looking thing, probably a Nagant. He was aiming it at the old man’s head. Shocked wide eyes fixed on it, mouth open, hands halfway up and open too – helpless, hopeless, drawing attention to that helplessness, imploring mercy… The gun was out of sight then – the train had jerked forward, passengers without seats staggering, grabbing for handholds, and the broad back of the nearer of those two men hiding their victim from view for three or four seconds. Then he was in sight again – as the one with the pistol clubbed him with it, a vicious, smashing blow in the face, impact not audible of course but one imagined it, flinched at it, facial bones cracking as skin and flesh split open and blood flowed, the old man tottering backwards but caught by a fist closing on the front of his coat – or on his throat…
‘Christ!’
The Count murmured, ‘Shush…’ The girl in the red dress had her eyes shut and her lips moving – barely perceptibly but obviously in prayer. A woman who’d moved up this way when those other two had disembarked – face like a turnip, legs like a piano’s, the rest a tub of lard – burst out loudly, ‘You’d reckon they’d have accounted for the bastards by this time, wouldn’t you. Still one or two in the long grass, eh?’
* * *
The Grand Duchesses, he thought, would surely have no papers. Unless some had been obtained for them. But in any case, how recognizable might they be, to the general populace? He was imagining that scene – with young girls in the old man’s place.
And if that was the public performance, what might it be like when they had him – or her, or them – to themselves, in private?
An urge to talk, then. Shake it out of mind…
‘Anton.’
The Count’s head turned – sleepily… Since the train had left Selitrenoe neither of them had spoken, and opposite them the girl had continued hiding behind her closed eyes. Fingers moving now and then: she probably hadn’t been aware of it… ‘Listen – Irina and Nadia did have papers, you said. Your mother must have had, too, to have got to them and then all the way to—’
‘Probably.’
‘Well – would they be valid now?’ Moving his head – pointing back towards Selitrenoe. ‘To pass that kind of—’
‘Better not discuss it now.’
‘I was only thinking…’
‘I know what you were thinking.’
The girl’s eyes were open, watching them. He could guess at the kind of thoughts that might have been jumbling through her head, too. When she’d been stopped at Seitovka, for instance, how it could have been.
And my God, wasn’t I damn lucky…
Thanks entirely to the Count’s bravado – or rather, to the nerve supporting that bravado. But again, picturing a return journey, the pair of them with one middle-aged woman and four young ones: even with forged papers, the plain fact of who they were, for God’s sake… Glancing round – needing distraction, an escape to some other kind of thinking – he met the eyes of the woman who’d made the comment about bastards in the long grass. They could have been glass eyes in a rubber face: you could imagine that if you poked your fingers into them they wouldn’t flinch. The face, before he could look away again, split into a grin: ‘Going far, comrade?’
Comrade…
‘No. Not far.’ He tilted his head back, shut his eyes.
8
They got to Sasykolsk at about one-thirty, and lunched on black bread and goat cheese in a traktir near the station.
Facing the prospect of another long walk, now – in stiff old boots that didn’t fit too well, and after an entire night spent walking…
Saying goodbye to the girl in the red dress, when the train had been pulling in and he’d been at the door ready for a quick exit, he’d told her – just to be friendly – ‘Might look you up in Tsarytsin, one of these days.’
‘Oh – that would be – very nice.’ Under the brim of her hat her smile was warm, suggestive more of complicity than – well, streets ahead of the message he’d reacted to in that first exchange of glances at Seitovka. He liked her, now – and admired her, was seeing her again as she’d been a couple of hours earlier, facing that bully on the platform – utterly alone, at the bastard’s mercy, and everyone else – himself included – standing back.
He’d leant down, whispered, ‘I’ll ask where do I find that smashing girl who wears a very becoming red dress and a hat this wide…’
‘Robat – you’re jamming up the works!’
‘Goodbye…’
Her smile lingered in his memory – like an overlay, as it were, to the picture he had of Leonide – which emphasized that sort of dimpling at the corners of her mouth just as a smile was dawning…
But there’d have been a grin on his father’s face, too. A derisive one. He thought, All right, all right… Accepting the unspoken comment – which would have been pithy and right to the point, if the old man had been here to make it – and switching his thoughts, via Leonide, to how things might be in Baku by this time.
Three days and nights in those prevailing circumstances being a long time. It didn’t seem possible that the Turks could be held off for ever, with so few reliable troops to defend the place against them.
Anyway, he’d warned her – and that slug Muromsky…
‘Robat!’ The Count – hurrying back from paying the old babushka at her table in the entrance. The food had been brought to them by a skinny, white-faced boy who’d seemed not quite all there, but he’d disappeared now, wasn’t here at all. The Count told him excitedly, ‘If we’re quick we may get a lift. Come on!’
Pushing his chair back… ‘Lift?’
‘In a lorry. It brought a load to put on the train, last consignment of this season’s catch.’ He called a spasibo to the old woman as they hurried past her and out into the blaze of sunshine. ‘Fellow that went out a minute ago is the driver. Somewhere along here, she said he’d be. Better run…’
The truck had been parked in shade under a big old beech just around the corner; its driver had started up, was grinding the old lorry out on to the dirt road when they came running, waving him down. He braked, stuck his head out. A bald, scrawny man, shoulder-muscles bulging the sleeves of a sweat-patched shirt.
‘I’ll take you if you want, comrades. But if you’re fish-buyers, you’re out of luck.’
‘We’re not buying anything.’ The Count heaved himself up into the cab, slid over as far as he could to make room for Bob. ‘Thanks, comrade, thanks a lot. Saves us a slog of – what, seven, eight versts?’
‘Ten and a half.’ He got going again, as Bob pulled the rattly door shut. Shifting gear, at the corner… ‘What is your business there?’
‘None. Old aunt of mine works there – or did. We’re on our way north, thought I’d stop off and say hello.’ He glanced at Bob and winked. ‘Probably thinks I’m dead. Give the old bag a shock, eh?’
Turning off, on to a dirt road leading west towards the river. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Vetrova. Lizaveta Vetrova.’
‘Never heard of her. And if there was anyone of that name working there, I would have.’
‘How long have you been on the job?’
‘Couple of years. I’ve this slight – er – handicap. As you’ll have noticed.’ He jerked his bald head northwards. ‘I was in the army, see. Got involved with a grenade, it didn’t want to leave me.’ He had no left hand: with the Count between them Bob hadn’t seen it until now, but he was doing everything right-handed except for when he needed to change gear or use the handbrake, at which times he’d hold the wheel steady with the bound-up stump. ‘I was lucky, at that… Civvy jobs don’t grow on trees round here – not for cripples, anyway. This one’s only a few weeks’ work twice a year, anyway.’
‘What d’you do the rest of the time?’
‘Part-time work. At Tsarytsin, where I live. I’ve a few openings… But I do assure you, comrade, there’s no Lizaveta Vetrova working at the station.’
‘But she was. Maybe I’ll find someone who’d know where she’s gone. Must’ve been – well, just about the first month of the war I last heard from her. She was here then, all right.’
A quick glance: sardonic…
‘Been a few changes since, you know.’
‘She’s not the sort would be affected. Ordinary old bag earning a crust, that’s all.’
The driver muttered a curse: avoiding a mule-cart… ‘You might be lucky. There’s still a few women cleaning up, some of ’em have been working here since – well, God knows how long.’ Glancing round at them, the wrist-stump taking the wheel’s vibrations, right palm caressing his bald head… ‘Only thing is, you’ll have to walk back, see. Once I get this old heap of junk back to its stable, there it stays.’
‘Until the next season?’
‘That’s it exactly, comrade.’
The Count explained to Bob that there were two distinct fishing periods for the Beluga sturgeon. The first in the spring – that was the best one, when the fish come up-river to spawn – ‘eggs pouring out of their ears…’
‘Gills, if anything.’
‘Well – some damn orifice. They’re full of eggs then, anyway. That season’s March to early May – after the ice has melted, river’s full of water and the fish are full of caviar. Then there’s the summer season, July into August – the one that’s just finished. They catch ’em on their way back to the sea.’ He glanced at the driver’s profile. ‘Anyway – no chance of a lift back to Sasykolsk, eh?’
‘None. The old bus hibernates now, you might say. Has to, there’d be no fuel for it. We get petrol just for the season, see?’
Conversation petered out, revived occasionally in short bursts, Bob leaving it all to the Count – hearing some of it, but mostly locked into his own thoughts, in particular the imperative of finding a way out of here. The further one got in, the more urgent that need became: and the mental effort still getting nowhere…
Then they were at the fishing station: a colony of fishermen’s huts and other buildings, a handful of men down by the water. Most of the fishermen had left, the driver said – leaving most of those forty-odd shacks empty, although a few would still be tenanted for a day or two. They already had a lot of boats high and dry, bottom-up. Planks drying out, Bob thought – and in a few months’ time if they were still there they’d be frozen, snow-covered; maybe that would expand the dried-out, shrunken timbers. Otherwise you’d have to immerse them, leave them in the shallows sunk to their gunwales, soaking, so they’d get to be watertight again.
But there’d be quite a few boats still in the water, the driver had confirmed. They weren’t visible from here because with the river as low as it was now the high banks shut off one’s view of them.
He’d driven his lorry straight into a barn, parking it beside a smaller vehicle. Switching off, he patted the steering-wheel and muttered ‘See you in March, you old she-goat.’
Bob asked him – on the ground, when he seemed to be just walking out of the barn with them – ‘If you’re leaving it all winter wouldn’t you drain the radiator?’
‘That comrade’ll see to it.’ A gesture towards the other vehicle – it was a van. ‘Before the freeze-up, anyway. I’ve a notion he runs a little contraband, mind you, on the quiet.’ A wink… ‘Well. What the eye don’t see… All got to live, eh?’
The Count had gone out into the sunshine ahead of them, was standing gazing at the river and across it to the green of its western bank. The driver strolled out to join him.
‘Down there, comrade. That iron roof you see there – that’s where you’ll find ’em. Ask in there, one of ’em might have known your aunt, way back.’
‘Yes. Thanks…’ Glancing at him. ‘And many thanks for the lift… How do you get yourself to Tsarytsin?’
‘Train. How else… Oh, there’s another driver works here, he’ll buzz me out to the station, I dare say.’ A nod towards the huts. ‘Not today, though. No rush, I haven’t been paid yet anyway. We’ll be having a bit of a cook-up tonight, a few of us – and I’ve got a bottle…’ His eyebrows lifted: ‘How about you – you and your pal care to join us, comrade?’
‘Thanks, but we won’t hang around. Depending on what anyone can tell me about the old girl, of course…’ He turned, as Bob joined them. ‘Robat – I was thinking – if we draw a blank here, we might persuade one of those boatmen to take us over to Enotayevsk. My aunt used to spend a lot of time there, I know. And having come this far…’
‘They’ll row you across, all right.’ The driver added, ‘Don’t let ’em know it was me that told you, but some of ’em live there, they’d be going over in any case. What I mean is, it shouldn’t cost you a fortune – right?’
‘You’ve been very helpful, comrade.’
‘Oh, for nothing. Honoured to have met you. Good luck, comrades!’
He shook hands with them both and walked off towards the huts. Bob and the Count started towards the river and the iron-roofed building. Bob murmuring, ‘He’ll be giving his friends
the Askhabad yarn before he’s halfway into that bottle.’
‘I dare say. No great harm in it, though.’
‘Oh, none at all.’ Referring to the fact that at one stage the Count had given the driver an outline of their fictional adventures. He hadn’t had to, exactly, but he’d probably been wise, Bob thought. Better to divulge a little than to remain obstinately silent, inviting not only suspicion but probably hostility as well… He changed the subject: ‘Nick – nobody’s going to know anything about anyone called Lizaveta Vetrova, obviously, but you’ll still go through the motions?’
‘Camouflage, that’s all. So there’s no talk about unexplained characters sniffing round… Been darned lucky so far, don’t want to spoil it – huh?’
‘I’d say it’s less a matter of good luck than you having done this sort of thing before.’
‘It helps, certainly. But we’ve still been lucky, Robert Aleksand’ich.’ Blinking into the heat-haze above the river. ‘Almost too lucky.’
Thinking about Riibachnaya Dacha again, Bob guessed. As he had too, particularly in one respect. Nick’s mention of the two girls having worked in a Bolshevik-run hospital: as if that set some precedent, made it conceivable that they might be getting away with the same thing here. Whereas it seemed to him utterly inconceivable, for a girl who’d lived in the place off and on throughout her life to have a hope in hell of getting away without being recognized by someone at some time: former servant, gardener, fisherman, villager – someone… And with papers that were in her own name, for God’s sake!
Well. The papers Nick had said she’d used in Petrograd, anyway. Might have had new ones forged since then. For all three of them, possibly, before they’d set out on their journey south.
It was the Count’s business, anyway. And as likely as not he’d only been whistling in the dark when he’d said that. Beating his private demons back… But as for the chance of being recognized, what about him? Even though he must have changed a lot in the years since he’d spent idle summers here, might there not be a family resemblance that some sharp-eyed old former retainer might spot?
Bloody Sunset Page 14
