‘Masaryk’s letter,’ Valentine said as he finished. ‘Once we get to Kazan we’ll find whoever’s in command of the Legion and show it to them. It’s safe?’
Paul patted his stomach where the money belt used to be, wishing Valentine wouldn’t keep on about the letter. He supposed he’d better get it back from Sofya in case Valentine took it into his head to look at the damned thing. Later, he decided, when it got dark and Valentine was asleep. He could slip back to where Sofya was and retrieve it. But it wouldn’t be dark for a long time yet even though they had been travelling for the best part of ten hours. The train barely made twenty miles an hour and there was still over four hundred to go before they reached Kazan. Not that he supposed they’d get as far as the city itself on the train. The front would be between them and the town and they would have to get off as close as they dared and make their own way across the lines.
He lit a cigarette after finishing what was left of his kasha, leaning towards Valentine so as not to be overheard.
‘Those steamer timetables gave me an idea,’ he said. ‘In Petersburg we took a barge to get to your house in the Nevskaya. Sofya said it was safer than using the streets. Perhaps we could get into Kazan the same way.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, if steamers used to ply up-river to Nizhni-Novgorod, I suppose they must have gone down-river as well, to Kazan?’
‘I was thinking much the same thing myself,’ Valentine said.
‘Oh. You were, were you?’
‘There’s a town called Sviyázhsk about thirty miles before Kazan. The line crosses the Volga just a few versts beyond it, over a new railway bridge they built just before the war.’ He paused and his lips twisted with an ironic smile. ‘They called it the Romanov Bridge although I daresay it’s probably been renamed the Trotsky bridge by now. Before the revolution steamers used to run up and down the river taking passengers who didn’t want to go by train. I was thinking we might be able to find one that will take us into Kazan.’
‘Unless the Bolsheviks have blockaded the river,’ Paul said, wondering just when Valentine had started thinking about a steamer.
‘I don’t see why they should,’ Valentine said, sucking noisily on his tea. ‘After all, they’re on the offensive and anyone coming down river will be behind the Bolshevik lines. It’s the Whites who are under attack.’
‘What about someone trying to reinforce Kazan?’
‘And cross miles of enemy territory to do it?’ Valentine asked.
‘People going over to the Whites, then,’ Paul suggested. ‘To get away from the Bolsheviks.’
‘It was your idea to find a steamer,’ Valentine said, but that is more likely. If we do find one I expect we’ll be fired on, but I suppose you’re used to that.’
Even if he was it was hardly something Paul had gone through by choice. Not that he could see there was much of one now. He’d only been putting forward objections because Valentine had claimed to have had the idea of a steamer first.
The train whistle blew and they climbed back aboard. Most of the passengers appeared to have got off at Murom and, although a few more had boarded, there were seats to spare as he passed back through the carriages to give Sofya the bread he had brought from the restaurant. He found her drinking tea made with water boiled in the samovar at the end of the carriage and sharing a meal with the peasant woman. Small parcels of wrapped cheese and cucumber, cooked potato and beets, lay spread across their laps. The chicken was still sitting on Sofya’s lap, clucking contentedly as it pecked at stray morsels of food.
Sofya looked inquiringly at his unappetising lump of rye bread. ‘Pasha,’ she said, taking it, ‘that was thoughtful.’
He went back to where Valentine was sitting, feeling even more hungry than he had been before.
They crossed the Oká and then the Tyosha River. The train rumbled on at its pedestrian pace, accompanied by a dirt road that paralleled the track. In the late afternoon they ran south-east through a wheat district. There wasn’t much traffic on the dirt road, just the occasional cart and a few peasants on foot walking between villages. The golden fields of wheat stretched away either side of the track, undulating in the breeze and bowed down under the heavy weight of their ears. Mesmerised, Paul stared at it for hours until dusk began to fall. It would be harvest in a week or two and the fields full of toiling peasants, scything down a crop that this year they would regard as their own, to sell as they pleased. What would Bolshevik ideology have to say about that?
As darkness fell the passengers began making themselves comfortable, stretching out across the hard wooden seats or lying in the aisle. Some time after midnight Paul left Valentine snoring quietly, his head resting against the window, and carefully stepping over prone bodies made his way to Sofya’s carriage. The peasant woman had stretched herself out over a pair of vacant seats, her chicken nestled in the crook of her arm. It opened a wary eye as Paul passed. Across the aisle, Sofya had curled into a foetal ball, her head cradled by her bag. He leaned over her and gently shook her shoulder. She woke with a start. He put his finger to his lips and slid into the seat as she moved her legs.
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
‘The letter. I need it back.’
‘Now?’
‘Valentine thinks I still have it.’
‘Then why give it to me?’ she asked irritably.
‘Is it still in the belt?
‘No. I took it out in case I had to get rid of it quickly.’
‘Give it to me then.’
She scowled at him again and twisted round and tried putting her hand down the front of her sarafan. But the neck of the garment was too small and she could only get her hand down as far as her wrist. ‘I can’t reach it. I’ll have to unbutton my dress.’
‘Here?’
She looked at him theatrically and sighed. ‘No, in the lavatory, of course. I’ll take it off and give you the belt back while I’m at it. It’s under my slip now so it wouldn’t show. Do you want some tea first? We can get water from the samovar.’
‘You’ve got tea?’
‘Oksana gave it to me,’ she said, nodding towards the sleeping woman across the aisle. ‘She’s been very kind. She shared her food with me and gave me some tea.’ She rummaged in her bag, took out a tin mug and a little pouch of tea, shaking some of the dusty leaves into the mug. Paul followed her down the aisle to the samovar set on a shelf outside the provodnik’s tiny compartment.
Sofya filled the mug with hot water and stirred it with the grubby spoon that hung from a chain.
‘You first,’ Paul said as she offered him the mug.
Paul waited while Sofya sipped the tea, glancing through the open door at the prone figure of the large female provodnik, dressed in a creased railway uniform and asleep on her bunk. Next to her tiny cabin was the lavatory. The door was closed but he didn’t have to see inside to know what sort of a state it was in. The smell advertised its condition.
Sofya gave him the mug and he finished the tea. She opened the lavatory door and looked inside. The floor was awash.
‘I won’t take my dress off in there,’ she said adamantly, her face wrinkled with a fastidiousness that six months of living in squalor hadn’t managed to eradicate.
‘Then just unbutton it and get the letter out,’ he said.
The provodnik stirred and Paul pushed Sofya through the door. She lifted her feet as she went in, grimacing. ‘Pasha!’
Paul followed her in and closed the door behind them. He tried washing out the mug in the small basin but no water came out the faucet, confirming his suspicions as to what the liquid sloshing across the floor was. Sofya turned her back to him, twisting and turning in her attempt to reach the letter.