Russian.
Russell half-expected an argument - the taxis were usually reluctant to take foreign journalists beyond the invisible boundaries of the government district - but the driver made no objection. As they sped up an eerily empty Gorky Street, Goldstein chattered happily about returning to the States, and a new grandchild born earlier that year.
The trip to Khodynka only took twenty minutes, and Russell was astonished by what greeted them: the buildings of the small airfield, along with all available poles and stretches of fencing, were hung or emblazoned with swastikas. Either the Nazi flag had figured in the last five year-plan or every seam-stress in Moscow had been up all night stitching the damn things together.
'He's arriving tomorrow,' Goldstein said.
Russell didn't reply. He was dumbstruck by the sea of swastikas. Playing for time was one thing - communists the world over had come to accept the Bolsheviks' insistence that some degree of realpolitik was necessary to the survival of the workers' state. But this went way beyond any judicious trimming of sails. This felt more like self- abasement, more like gratuitous over-compensation. Like Judas turning up at the crucifixion and insisting on having his picture taken. Ribbentrop's ego would probably explode.
'This is where Nicholas II's coronation was held in 1884,' Goldstein observed. 'They didn't make enough souvenir mugs, and fourteen hundred people were trampled to death in the stampede.'
'Wonderful,' Russell muttered. 'Just wonderful.'
The journey back to Warsaw was slower than the journey out. The train clanked to halt after halt, occasionally at a barely-lit platform, most times in the middle of a seemingly endless plain. When dawn broke they were still on the Soviet side of the border, and the only breakfast came courtesy of a few enterprising peasant women, who approached the train at one of its interminable stops with scraps of bread and a few raw carrots. It was almost ten in the morning when their train rolled out of the Soviet Union through the gap in the barbed wire, and almost noon before their Polish train left the border station. It was faster than its Russian equivalent, but not by much, and the sun was low on the western horizon by the time it reached Warsaw.
Russell made sure that trains were still running into Germany, checked into a cheap hotel opposite the station, and took a taxi to the Europejski. Finding no fellow-journalists, he moved on to the Bristol, where several foreign correspondents were lined up at the bar. There had been no official announcement of a pact, he was told, but Ribbentrop had arrived in Moscow that morning, and everyone knew that an agreement was about to be signed.
There was one Pole in the party, an English-speaking journalist with one of the local dailies. He had obviously been drinking for a while, which both explained his belligerent attitude and facilitated its expression. 'The sooner the better,' he said, thumping his palm on the polished bar. 'While we still have allies,' he added pointedly, marching an accusative gaze down the row of English faces.
Out on the street Russell saw other Polish faces brimming with a similar bravado, the facial equivalent of the cavalry he had seen in Pidsulski Square. But there were also eyes dulled by resignation, or seemingly stunned that the moment had finally arrived. The Poles he spoke to in English had only one question - would England and France live up to their obligations? Yes, Russell told them, though part of him hoped the answer was no. If sacrificing Poland would keep his son out of a European war, he'd do it in a heartbeat. The trouble was, it wouldn't.
His hotel was quieter than expected, his bed more comfortable, but he still slept badly, hovering most of the night between waking and dreaming, fragments of his own war flickering harmlessly out of reach, like a silent movie through a curtain of gauze. He woke with the smell of the trenches in his nostrils and the old familiar feeling that this was the day he would die.
As he walked up Nowy OEwiat towards Pidsulski Square he scanned the faces of passers-by, and thought he saw something approaching relief. The Pact had been announced, he guessed, both in Moscow and here on the radio. The die was cast.
The Foreign Office Press Department spokesman confirmed as much. He added little of a specific nature, but resolutely refused to accept that Polish intransigence was in any way to blame for the country's new vulnerability. Germany and Russia had always been Poland's enemies, he insisted, and always would be. Poland would fight them both if she had to, hopefully in the company of her Western allies.
Back on the square, Russell felt a sudden overwhelming need to be home, and had to dissuade himself from taking an immediate cab to hotel and station. There was a train mid-afternoon, he told himself - time to write and wire off his piece. There was no need to hurry.
He wrote his impressions of Warsaw on the brink, and walked down to the Post Office. There was no wire traffic out through Germany, but the elderly clerk was aggressively confident of the route via Copenhagen. He and his fellow Poles were not surrounded, he seemed to be saying. The rest of the world was still within reach.
Russell checked out of his hotel, bought his ticket and lunched in the station restaurant. The concourse seemed unusually busy, with lots of children chasing each other around piles of luggage, but there was no hint of panic, despite the headlines announcing the Pact in the lunchtime editions. There was a photograph of Ribbentrop arriving at Khodynka, beaming for the Soviet cameras.
Russell's train failed to leave on time, raising fears that it might be cancelled, but the French wagons-lits eventually jerked into motion. He wondered how many more trips they would be taking across Europe, and where they would be stranded when the frontiers slammed shut.
Jewish Ballast
After Russell's train had stood for more than ten minutes in Berlin's Alexanderplatz Station, a voice over the loudspeakers announced that it would proceed no further. Those passengers travelling to a stop in western Berlin were invited to take the next train from the neighbouring Stadtbahn platform, and Russell seized the opportunity to call Effi from a public telephone.
'I knew it was you,' she said.
'I'll see you in about half an hour.'
'Wonderful.'
He replaced the receiver, surprised at the enormity of his relief. Someone in his subconscious had been more worried than he cared to admit.
He climbed up to the Stadtbahn platform, and stood watching for the lights of a westbound train. It was almost eleven, but the air was still warm and humid, with no hint of a breeze. The sky through the canopy opening was black and starless.
The train was almost empty, and Russell picked up an abandoned evening newspaper from one of the seats. 'German Farmhouses in Flames' the head-line screamed, above the all-too-familiar litany of grievances real, imagined and invented. He looked at the names of the villages and wondered whether their inhabitants knew of their new-found status as victims of the 'Polish archmadness'.
'It looks serious this time,' a man sitting opposite said, with a nod in the direction of the newspaper.
'Yes,' Russell agreed.
'But at least the Fuhrer is back in Berlin,' the man added hopefully.
Whoopee, Russell thought to himself.
The streets between Zoo Station and Effi's flat were empty, her porch mercifully devoid of loitering SD agents. She met him at the door with the sort of sweet, soft embrace that made going away worthwhile, and pulled him into the living room. 'Thank God you're back,' she said.
'Well...'
'Because it has to be tomorrow.'
Russell sunk into the sofa. 'What does?'
'Eyebrows, of course. There's going to be a war, isn't there?'
'Well...'
'So this could be our last chance. Things will change once the war begins.'
'True. But he may not come tomorrow.'
'He did last Friday.'
'What have...'
'I went to see. I didn't do anything. I got your message from Solly Bern-stein, but I just had to see. Don't
