Red Dusk and the Morrow

He led me into a tiny eating-room, where three men sat round a smoky oil lamp. The window was closely curtained and the room was intolerably stuffy. The table was covered with a filthy cloth on which a few broken lumps of black bread, some fish, and a samovar were placed. All four men were shabbily dressed and very rough in appearance. They spoke Russian well, but conversed in Finnish amongst themselves. One of them said something to the cadaverous man and appeared to be remonstrating with him for telling me of the accident that had happened to their colleague a week before. The cadaverous Finn answered with some heat. “Melnikoff is a chuckle-headed scatterbrain,” persisted the cadaverous man, who appeared to be the leader of the party. “We told him not to be such a fool as to go into Petrograd again. The Redskins are searching for him everywhere and every detail of his appearance is known. But he would go. I suppose he loves to have his neck in a noose. With you, I suppose, it is different. Melnikoff says you are somebody important⁠—but that’s none of our business. But the Redskins don’t like the English. If I were you I wouldn’t go for anything. But it’s your affair, of course.”

We sat down to the loaves and fishes. The samovar was boiling and while we swilled copious supplies of weak tea out of dirty glasses the Finns retailed the latest news from Petrograd. The cost of bread, they said, had risen to about 800 or 1,000 times its former price. People hacked dead horses to pieces in the streets. All the warm clothing had been taken and given to the Red army. The Chrezvychayka (the Extraordinary Commission) was arresting and shooting workmen as well as the educated people. Zinoviev threatened to exterminate all the bourgeoisie if any further attempt were made to molest the Soviet Government. When the Jewish Commissar Uritsky was murdered Zinoviev shot more than 500 at a stroke; nobles, professors, officers, journalists, teachers, men and women, and a list of a further 500 was published who would be shot at the next attempt on a Commissar’s life. I listened patiently, regarding the bulk of these stories as the product of Finnish imagination. “You will be held up frequently to be examined,” the cadaverous man warned me, “and do not carry parcels⁠—they will be taken from you in the street.”

After supper we sat down to discuss the plans of crossing. The cadaverous Finn took a pencil and paper and drew a rough sketch of the frontier.

“We will put you over in a boat at the same place as Melnikoff,” he said. “Here is the river with woods on either bank. Here, about a mile up, is an open meadow on the Russian side. It is now ten o’clock. About three we will go out quietly and follow the road that skirts the river on this side till we get opposite the meadow. That is where you will cross.”

“Why at the open spot?” I queried, surprised. “Shall I not be seen there most easily of all? Why not put me across into the woods?”

“Because the woods are patrolled, and the outposts change their place every night. We cannot follow their movements. Several people have tried to cross into the woods. A few succeeded, but most were either caught or had to fight their way back. But this meadow is a most unlikely place for anyone to cross, so the Redskins don’t watch it. Besides, being open we can see if there is anyone on the other side. We will put you across just here,” he said, indicating a narrow place in the stream at the middle of the meadow. “At these narrows the water runs faster, making a noise, so we are less likely to be heard. When you get over run up the slope slightly to the left. There is a path which leads up to the road. Be careful of this cottage, though,” he added, making a cross on the paper at the extreme northern end of the meadow. “The Red patrol lives in that cottage, but at three o’clock they will probably be asleep.”

There remained only the preparation of “certificates of identification” which should serve as passport in Soviet Russia. Melnikoff had told me I might safely leave this matter to the Finns, who kept themselves well informed of the kind of papers it was best to carry to allay the suspicions of Red guards and Bolshevist police officials. We rose and passed into another of the three tiny rooms which the villa contained. It was a sort of office, with paper, ink, pens, and a typewriter on the table.

“What name do you want to have?” asked the cadaverous man.

“Oh, any,” I replied. “Better, perhaps, let it have a slightly non-Russian smack. My accent⁠—”

“They won’t notice it,” he said, “but if you prefer⁠—”

“Give him an Ukrainian name,” suggested one of the other Finns, “he talks rather like a Little Russian.” Ukrainia, or Little Russia, is the southwest district of European Russia, where a dialect with an admixture of Polish is talked.

The cadaverous man thought for a moment. “ ‘Afirenko, Joseph Ilitch,’ ” he suggested, “that smacks of Ukrainia.”

I agreed. One of the men sat down to the typewriter and carefully choosing a certain sort of paper began to write. The cadaverous man went to a small cupboard, unlocked it, and took out a box full of rubber stamps of various sizes and shapes with black handles.

“Soviet seals,” he said, laughing at my amazement. “We keep ourselves up to date, you see. Some of them were stolen, some we made ourselves, and this one,” he pressed it on a sheet of paper leaving the imprint “Commissar of the Frontier Station Bielo’ostrof,” “we bought from over the river for a bottle of vodka.” Bielo’ostrof was the Russian frontier village just across the stream.

I had had ample experience earlier in the year of the magical effect upon the rudimentary