‘Why not?’
‘And… and I want you to be careful of him, Sofya.’
‘Careful? You mean because of what he did to Slep-’
‘No,’ Paul said quickly before she used the Chekist’s name. ‘Just be careful, that’s all.’
‘Are you suggesting he’d try…’
‘Of course not,’ he said, laughing as if the notion was ridiculous. ‘You’ve still got the letter, I suppose?’
‘Of course. Do you want it back?’
The peasant was turning from Sofya to Paul and back as they spoke and Paul glanced meaningfully at her and frowned at Sofya.
‘Later,’ he said, looking along the carriage. ‘I have to find him. Will you stay here until I come back?’
The peasant’s eyes stayed on him as he straightened up and she smiled and patted Sofya’s arm protectively. Paul walked down the aisle, opened the doors between carriages and passed into the next. It was jammed with troops, squashed into the seats and standing in the aisle. He went back into Sofya’s carriage, glancing at her as he passed. She was gazing out the window again, still fondling the chicken and with the peasant’s hand on her arm.
He retraced his steps to where he had been stuck against the malodorous muzhik, then continued into the carriage beyond. The train was crammed with the press of passengers. The air was filled with the sharp tang of body odour and tobacco smoke and, mixed with it, the reek of animal dung. He finally saw Valentine at the far end of the carriage, conspicuous by having an empty seat beside him as if he carried a contagion. The Party card, Paul thought, a plague of its own. Paul dropped into the seat.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Squashed into a corner with that peasant you had the altercation with when we got on,’ Paul said. ‘He got out at Veshnyakí, thank God. You were lucky to find a seat.’
‘Nothing to do with luck. As soon as they see a Party card they assume I’m Cheka.’ He let his gaze wander round the carriage. ‘Although I doubt the Cheka bother with niceties like showing identification. It’s a sign of how jumpy everyone is getting. I was talking with another Party man who said after Lenin was shot the Moscow Cheka rounded up all their opponents. He said quite a few have been liquidated already.’
‘Liquidated? You mean executed?’
‘Haven’t you heard the expression before? I’m surprised. It’s always been a favourite euphemism here for disposing of a problem.’
‘You forget how old I was when I left.’
‘Wasn’t your mother political? Didn’t she ever talk about liquidating people?’
‘Hardly,’ Paul said. But his mother was the last person Paul wanted to discuss with Valentine. He leaned closer, keeping his voice down. ‘Do you think they’ve shot Lockhart?’
Valentine shook his head. ‘Unlikely. For one thing the Bolsheviks have Litvinov and Chicherin in London. They’ll want them back if things turn sour.’
Paul wondered how much sourer things could turn. They’d thrown Lockhart and his aide in prison, shot Cromie at the embassy, and denounced the Allied landings at Archangel and Murmansk as an invasion. It was hardly a matter to debate in a crowded railway carriage, though. He asked Valentine where the other Communist Party member was.
‘He got off. Actually,’ Valentine said, ‘he disagreed with the repression. That suggests there might be some dissension in the ranks.’
‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’ Then added matter-of-factly, ‘Sofya’s on the train,’ as if such a commonplace observation might go unnoticed in the general run of the conversation.
But Valentine noticed. His forehead creased but he said nothing. Paul found himself explaining:
‘There was no point in her going south… She doesn’t know where her brother is and apparently the family estate’s been confiscated. The peasants burned the house and taken the land.’
‘That’s happening everywhere,’ Valentine said, looking out of the window as though he expected the train to pass a country house on fire at any moment. ‘It’ll get worse, too. They even looted Tolstoy’s estate, apparently.’
‘Yasnaya Polana?’ Paul said in amazement.
‘Is that what it’s called? They say his wife and daughter were lucky to escape with their lives. It’s just as well he’s dead, I suppose. A mob of illiterate peasants is no respecter of literary reputation.’
Paul was shocked. Saintly Tolstoy, the peasants’ friend? If his estate wasn’t safe, whose was? He wondered how many others there were like the Rostovs who hadn’t fled when they had the chance. It was beginning to look as if it was too late now, at least if one wanted to get out with anything of value; perhaps even one’s life. It made him wonder why any had stayed. Was it arrogance? The hubris of a wealthy elite unable to comprehend that the life they enjoyed had gone, and their status with it?
He didn’t suppose the Rostovs were much different in that regard. Being only three generations from a peasant on the make, though, one might have supposed that the avarice that had lifted them out of serfdom might have given them some inkling as to just what those peasants they had left behind might do given the chance. But perhaps their memories weren’t that long. Money and power were corrosive agents and theirs had eaten away all those distasteful truths about their origin. That was probably why they had disliked him and his mother so much; being in the Rostovs’ eyes social inferiors, his mother may have excited what few memories of where the family had come from that remained.
‘It’s all fair game now,’ Valentine said, ‘if there’s land to appropriate. Lenin isn’t going to find the peasants as easy to manipulate as he did the workers, though.’
‘You sound as if you think he’ll live.’
‘How did she know which train we were on?’ Valentine suddenly asked.
‘What, Sofya? She followed us from the station.’
‘I never saw her.’
‘Perhaps you weren’t looking,’ said Paul, glad for once to be able to point up some deficiency in Valentine’s expertise.
‘Where is she now?’
‘A couple of carriages back, sitting with a peasant and a chicken. Do you want me to fetch her?’
‘Not if she’s got a seat,’ Valentine said, sounding uncharacteristically considerate. ‘It’s a long journey.’
The train turned east after Lyubertzi, passing through Gzhel and Kurovskaya. They made a lengthy stop at Tcherusti and, getting hungry, Paul got off only to find the restaurant was closed. He regretted not having eaten more in the traktir while he had the opportunity. It was another 150 versts to Murom and would take hours.
The morning crawled by in discomfort then slowed into an interminable afternoon. When they finally reached Murom they found the railway restaurant open but with little to offer. The soldiers on their way to the Kazan front spilled off the train and immediately filled the restaurant and Paul deliberately kept out of their way. He killed time by reading the faded posters on the waiting-room wall. They promoted the attractions of Murom’s old town, extolling the beauty of the River Oká and its harbour. A timetable advertised steamer trips up the Volga to Nizhni-Novgorod, for the tourists who once visited the area, he supposed. Not these days. There were no bourgeoisie left to take idle trips through the Russian countryside. When the soldiers came out of the restaurant and began milling around the platform like aimless sheep, he followed Valentine inside and made do with what they had left, bowls of kasha and bread.
Sofya did not get off and Paul put a piece of bread in his pocket to give to her later. He didn’t suppose she had eaten any more than he had since the previous day and certainly wouldn’t have gone into a traktir by herself.