“What about clothing?” I said. “I don’t look much like a postal official.”
“There is something more important than that. What about military service?”
From my pocket I produced a new pamphlet on the soviet system. Opening a pocket of the uncut leaves at a certain page, I drew forth my blank exemption certificate and exhibited it to the Doctor.
“What are you, a magician?” he asked admiringly. “Or is this another gift from your friend Z.?”
“The certificates were born twins,” I said. “Zorinsky was accoucheur to the first, I to the second.”
In an hour I had filled in the blank exemption form with all particulars relating to Alexander Vasilievitch Markovitch. Tracing the signatures carefully, and inserting a recent date, I managed to produce a document indistinguishable as regards authenticity from the original, and thus was possessed of two sets of documents, one in the name of Krylenko for the benefit of Zorinsky, the other in that of Markovitch for presentation in the streets and possible registration.
Considering once more the question of uniform I recalled that at my own rooms where I had lived for years I had left a variety of clothing when last in Petrograd six or eight months previously. The question was: How could I gain admittance to my rooms, disguised as I was and with an assumed name? Furthermore, a telephone call having elicited no response, I had no idea whether the housekeeper whom I had left was still there, nor whether the apartment had been raided, locked up, or occupied by workmen. All these things I was curious to know, quite apart from obtaining clothing.
I enlisted the services of Varia as scout. Varia was the first person to whom I confided my English name, and doing it with due solemnity, and with severe cautionings that not even Stepanovna should be told, I could see that the girl was impressed with my confidence in her. Armed with a brief note to my housekeeper purporting to be written by a fictitious friend of mine, and warned to turn back unless everything were precisely as I described, Varia set out on a voyage of discovery.
She returned to impart the information that the front door of the house being locked she had entered by the yard, had encountered nobody on the backstairs, and that in answer to persistent ringing a woman, whom I recognized by the description as my housekeeper, had opened the kitchen door on a short chain, and, peering suspiciously through the chink, had at first vehemently denied any acquaintance with any English people at all. On perusing the note from my nonexistent friend, however, she admitted that an Englishman of my name had formerly lived there, but she had the strictest injunctions from him to admit nobody to the flat.
Pursuing my instructions, Varia informed the housekeeper that my friend, Mr. Markovitch, had just arrived from Moscow. He was busy today, she said, and had sent her round to inquire after my affairs, but would call himself at an early opportunity.
The one article of clothing which I frequently changed and of which I had a diverse stock was headgear. It is surprising how headdress can impart character (or the lack of it) to one’s appearance. Donning my most bourgeois fur cap, polishing my leather breeches and brushing my jacket, I proceeded on the following day to my former home, entering by the yard as Varia had done and ringing at the back door. The house appeared deserted, for I saw no one in the yard, nor heard any sounds of life. When, in reply to persistent ringing, the door was opened on the chain, I saw my housekeeper peering through the chink just as Varia had described. My first impulse was to laugh, it seemed so ridiculous to be standing on one’s own backstairs, pretending to be someone else, and begging admittance to one’s own rooms by the back door.
I hadn’t time to laugh, however. The moment my housekeeper saw the apparition on the stairway she closed the door again promptly and rebolted it, and it was only after a great deal of additional knocking and ringing that at last the door was once again timidly opened just a tiny bit.
Greeting the woman courteously, I announced myself as Mr. Markovitch, close personal friend and school companion of the Englishman who formerly had occupied these rooms. My friend, I said, was now in England and regretted the impossibility of returning to Russia under present conditions. I had recently received a letter from him, I declared, brought somehow across the frontier, in which, sending his greetings to Martha Timofeievna (the housekeeper), he had requested me at the earliest opportunity to visit his home and report on its condition. To reduce Martha Timofeievna’s suspicions, I assured her that before the war I had been a frequent visitor to this flat, and gave numerous data which left no doubt whatsoever in her mind that I was at least well acquainted with the arrangement of the rooms, and with the furniture and pictures that had formerly been in them. I added, of course, that on the last occasion when I had seen my friend, he had spoken of his new housekeeper in terms of the highest praise, and assured me again in his letter that I should find her good-mannered, hospitable, and obliging.
The upshot was that, though Martha Timofeievna was at first categorical in her refusal to admit anyone to the flat, she ultimately agreed to do so if I could show her the actual letter written by “Monsieur Dukes,” requesting permission for his friend to be admitted.
I told her I would bring it to her that very afternoon, and, highly satisfied with the result of the interview, I retired at once to the nearest convenient place, which happened to be the Journalist’s,
