Fellow Passenger

by Geoffrey Household

  When the ship was lifting to more open water, my attendant turned up with a good solid meal. I do not know how he accounted for it to cooks and stewards. They were probably conditioned not to ask questions. In government circles there must, after all, have been a fairly constant flow of full trays emerging from kitchens into the unknown, and returning empty.

  He was pleased to see that I was a reasonably good sailor—the position of that bunk would have given him a lot of work if I hadn’t been—and after dinner he invited me out into the more convenient space of his cabin. He locked the outer door which was already bolted, and put the key in his pocket.

  He was a Latvian. That accounted for the Scandinavian liveliness which kept breaking through his solemnity. His name was Karlis, and he was a lieutenant of the MVD. Before the war he had been, he told me, a policeman in Riga—a specialist in port control—and always pro-Russian. It had been obvious to him that a little nation of two million would not be allowed indefinitely to cut off a country of two hundred million from one of its chief ports. He said—I don’t know with what truth—that between the wars a majority of Latvians thought as he did. So, after the occupation, police with reliable records had been encouraged to retain their jobs. While he could not pretend to a solid background of communism like me, he swore that he was completely loyal.

  ‘We cannot all be leaders,’ he said. ‘We must be content to do our duty.’

  ‘You know all about me?’ I asked.

  ‘They told me you had worked abroad as a secret agent, and that you were arrested and escaped. That is enough for me.’

  Because he spoke English and had made a number of voyages as ship’s security officer, he had been chosen at the last moment and put on board at Riga with orders to be my escort on the return passage. I was again impressed by my own importance. But it stood to reason. Nobody knew what I might say if I were given no help and brought to trial in England. Nobody could be sure that I was not an outstanding agent with a mass of useful information.

  I brought up the question of exercise again and asked Lieutenant Karlis if he could not pass me off as a passenger. We were now on informal terms and he gave me a better reason than mere orders.

  ‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘There are passengers.’

  They were a mixed bag. Eight English. Two North Americans. An Indian and a West African. All tourists of varying shades of liberal thought. It was Karlis’ job to keep an eye on them as well as me.

  ‘When they return, comrade,’ he asked, ‘will they be under police supervision?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied, for I didn’t want to risk offending his mythology.

  ‘But they only want to know the truth about our country.’

  ‘Don’t romanticize, comrade! They only want to confirm whatever they believe already.’

  ‘You do not approve of tourists?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ I answered sternly. ‘And especially when they think themselves qualified to report on truth. This month’s truth must always be different from last month’s truth.’

  He asked me to say that again. He probably had orders to report on my conversation and was very decently giving me a second chance.

  ‘But it is so,’ I told him. ‘Truth is merely a question of party administration. In capitalist countries what the government says is true and what the opposition says is a lie, or vice versa. The public have no means of knowing which of them is right. Our system is more logical. Since we have only one party, we obtain the same result by the use of the time-factor. This month something is true which next month is a lie.’

  ‘I never thought of that,’ he said. ‘I wish I understood things as you do.’

  When I had passed back through the wardrobe and gone to bed, I was encouraged by this conversation. With my prestige as high as it was, the card to play was muddle. Professionals, of course, would turn me inside out in a couple of minutes. And Chris Emmassin, if I ever had the misfortune to meet him, would make things worse. I knew him. He was loyal to his friends. He would go to the stake for me, and the result of that would be disastrous. We should deservedly work side by side at blasting a canal across the North Pole. Muddle, for what it was worth, had to be played before the ship reached Riga.

  The presence of those eager and liberal-minded passengers seemed to offer hope. I saw how I could start to use them and what some of the results would be, but I must admit I did not attempt to foresee the full developments. It was, of course, un-English to take drastic action when its outcome could not be prophesied, but the political instinct of the Latin has always been to blow up what exists and then profit by the falling fragments.

  Karlis told me that we should disembark at Riga on Thursday morning. During the Sunday and Monday I made it my business to win his entire confidence. I showed myself nervous at the least noise. I was reluctant to come out of my cabin into his and demanded his assurance that there was no risk. My caution seemed to him very natural. I was reacting from the stress and dangers of my escape, and anxious lest something go wrong at the last moment. He no longer put the key in his pocket when he locked the door. What earthly chance was there that I should try to leave our secure and comfortable suite? I was being rescued, wasn’t I?

  His free hours when he liked to let me out and talk to me were in the afternoon and late at night. He was sleepier in the afternoon. At night he did not care whether he slept or not, and would sit up till any hour drinking whatever he could lay his hands on for us. He even made a half-hearted attempt to educate me to tea-drinking.

  What I wanted were five minutes on deck while the passengers were about. I plotted for my minutes by keeping him up most of Monday night, and, next day, by forgetting to eat my lunch until he returned from his own. I pretended to have been fascinated by a turgid—and inaccurate—English commentary on Engels which he had lent me.

  In order not to lose the pleasure of each other’s company we took my lunch through the wardrobe into his state-room, and shared a carafe of vodka. I really laid myself out to entertain him, charming him with true tales of Indians and vanished cities above the jungles of the Rio Napo—or at any rate told to me as true. He produced brandy to help my reminiscences after lunch, and again partook freely. After that he could hardly keep his eyes open.

  ‘You have a nap,’ I suggested, ‘and I’ll clear the tray out of the way in case anyone wants to come in.’

  Before he could get up, I walked through the wardrobe with the debris of my meal and pretended to slide the door of my cabin behind me, clicking the latch with a finger.

  He fell asleep almost at once. I gave him a few minutes’ law, and then passed through his cabin, opened the outer door and closed it silently behind me.

  At the end of the alleyway was a flight of stairs leading to the main deck. I took them swiftly, seeing no one. On the main deck, near my end of the port alleyway, were two cabin stewards. They caught a glimpse of my back as I dived for a wash-room, passed through it and emerged on the starboard side. There I was close to a companion which led to the promenade deck. At the top of it I was stared at by an officer, but he was some yards away and did not feel sure enough that it was his business to question my identity. And then I saw a row of six deck-chairs with four passengers occupying them. That was what I wanted. I flopped down in an empty chair and wished them good afternoon.

  They looked at me with some surprise. I was still wearing the clothes I had taken from my immoral friend in the chapter-house cellar. They had been cleaned while I waited for embarkation, but were pretty disreputable. The half inch of stiff hair on my head gave me the villainous appearance of a Prussian officer or a North American adolescent.

  ‘Been upset by the sea?’ asked one.

  ‘A little,’ I answered. ‘I’ve been through a lot, you see. I am Howard-Wolferstan.’

  A chance to say those devastating four words was the sole object of all my deception of Karlis
. If I could remain free long enough to repeat them to a few more passengers, so much the better.

  They fairly jumped. Their deck-chairs creaked with horror.

  ‘The sp—’ began one, and stopped out of a vague feeling of respect for the flag under which he sailed.

  A North American and his wife appeared from down below and hesitated opposite to us. Their arms were full of political philosophy and glossy magazines. I had obviously taken one of their chairs. I got up and apologized.

  ‘Well, say, it’s Mr—er—’ replied the American, rightly convinced that he knew my face.

  ‘Howard-Wolferstan.’

  As he held out his hand, the name registered. His manners were equal to the shock. It is curious that a people whose language and politics are of British origin should have developed an impervious, artificial courtesy which belongs to the Mediterranean.

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ he said. ‘Very interesting, indeed.’

  His wife’s attractive eyelashes flapped with astonishment. I could hear her mind working. She was frantically reminding herself that I was an inevitable part of what she had come to study and that it was unpardonable to be surprised because French villages had few water-closets, because the English drove on the left of the road, because Howard-Wolferstans had backsides which would fit into deck-chairs.

  She was one of those slim, long-legged, wide-shouldered beauties. With the genius of her female compatriots for making the very best of whatever they have, she was wearing a long travelling cloak and hood, grey lined with scarlet, which gave her the theatrical gallantry of a young Hussar officer inspecting his vedettes. I made a mental note of that cloak.

  ‘You mustn’t believe all you read in the papers,’ I told her.

  She disengaged her eyes with an effort, and then her hand. She gasped that she would be very glad to listen to my viewpoint.

  That made six who knew that Howard-Wolferstan was on board. Fortune presented me with a most useful seventh. He came breezing round the deck, radiating confidence as if the ship were his own constituency. He was that markedly independent labour politician, Elias Thomas Conger, and his face was familiar to me because I so profoundly disliked him. Whenever I—and half the population—get worked up over some act of governmental stupidity or injustice, that professional champion of the oppressed hurls himself unwanted into the fray, and at once transfers all our sympathies to the side of the oppressors.

  I slapped him on the back and called him by his Christian name. When he had hopelessly committed himself—I was ‘old man’ and ‘my dear chap’ to him in less than half a minute—I told him who I was. He turned his back on me and fled without a word. I don’t blame him. One has to live. And he would never earn a thousand a year at any other job.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the captain approaching, so I bowed to the company and ran down to Karlis’ cabin. He was still asleep, unconscious of the disaster which in a mere five minutes had changed his life. I locked the outer door and returned through the wardrobe to my cabin. I was inclined to laugh and drip sweat simultaneously. I don’t think it was hysteria; the two physical reactions were both unavoidable. I lay down, and allowed the situation to develop without me.

  It was seven in the evening before Lieutenant Karlis came bursting in on me. The news had been long in reaching him. It had to cross so many discreet gulfs of silence. The passengers could only talk of their horrifying experience among themselves. The officers and crew knew nothing about me. And the captain, while he had unofficial knowledge of my presence on board, possessed only limited authority over Karlis and probably hesitated to ask questions out of turn. He must have guessed that the stranger whom he glimpsed was Howard-Wolferstan, but if I were on deck it was Karlis’ business, not his.

  ‘You have been out?’ Karlis asked incredulously.

  I said that I had several times told him I felt the need of fresh air and exercise, and added, with a beautiful mixture of innocence and superiority, that I couldn’t see it mattered. I was safe now, wasn’t I?

  ‘You are mad!’ he cried. ‘I must send them a message what you have done. They can only give me one reply.’

  He was touchingly distressed at the thought that he would have to shoot me or drop me overboard.

  I assured him that whatever orders he got my execution would not be among them. I had thought out the moves as far as that.

  ‘You have twelve passengers on board,’ I said, ‘all knowing my face from photographs and all prepared to swear, when they get back to England, that I was on the ship.’

  ‘It does not matter what they say,’ he insisted wildly.

  ‘But you must be very careful to point out the position, comrade. This question will go before the very highest committee, and I think you’ll find they give great importance to what the passengers may say.’

  He looked at me with resignation. He sensed already that this was a duel between myself and the party over his wretched body. The shape of the cabin helped to give me a moral advantage. I lay back on my bunk with a cigarette, while he could only stand at its foot as if he were my valet.

  ‘You will be punished in the end,’ he said gloomily, rather implying that there was little point in avoiding it now.

  ‘If the party so decides,’ I answered. ‘But you, comrade, well I’m sorry, very sorry that I have had to sacrifice you. But I’ll do all I can for you.’

  He broke out sobbing, and cursed either me or his fate in some expressive language which I presume was Latvian. He went out, and in his agitation forgot to shut the door. I shut it for him—but decently, after he had left the outer cabin.

  Half an hour later he shoved my supper tray into my hands and vanished without a word. He looked harassed. He was already at the receiving end of the wireless messages from Riga. I don’t know whether they were yet relaying Moscow’s comments, but what Riga had to say was probably bad enough.

  At midnight he put in his head to assure himself that I was still there.

  ‘Well, was I right?’ I asked.

  ‘You are to be kept alive at all costs.’

  ‘Is that why I have to spread my butter with a spoon?’

  ‘Those are my orders.’

  ‘Quite right, comrade. Don’t forget to remove my razor!’

  He pocketed it with another tom-cat curse in Latvian. There were times when the self-renunciation of the Russian was entirely overcome by healthy Scandinavian irritability.

  ‘I warn you,’ he said, imposing himself in the only way left to a policeman, ‘that there is a sentry outside my door with orders to let no one pass except me.’

  ‘Very proper, Karlis. It is essential that I should not be disturbed.’

  ‘You are enjoying this!’ he accused me.

  ‘Comrade, I must smile or weep.’

  I got him to talk a little, for, after all, the poor fellow had nobody’s shoulder but mine on which to lay his head. The captain washed his hands of the whole business. Riga was sending contradictory messages at the rate of one every half hour. They were even asking Karlis, a police officer of no importance, for suggestions as to how the situation could be remedied; but, just like civil servants anywhere else, were unwilling to commit themselves by explaining exactly what the situation was.

  ‘Comrade, if they do not approve of my showing myself to the passengers,’ I said, ‘there is only one remedy. All the passengers must disappear.’

  ‘But I am not a specialist,’ he protested. ‘I have not been trained for that. And I have not enough ammunition.’

  ‘Chuck ’em overboard in the dark!’

  I was not, of course, serious. It was unthinkable that the naïve eyelashes of the tall American should be lost at the bottom of the Baltic. And nothing would drown Elias Thomas Conger. He would inevitably have floated up the Thames to Westminster. I was merely underlining the effect of my afternoon’s work:
that it was quite impossible to stop the passengers’ mouths without getting rid of them.

  ‘Signal that I offer to help you,’ I suggested.

  ‘Very well.’

  This proposal of mine that all passengers should be liquidated stopped the ship—literally stopped it. On Wednesday morning, with only two hundred miles to go to Riga, the engines were silent, and we rocked gently on the summer sea while my fate was discussed, I like to think, by the entire cabinet. Whatever they did to me, the passengers were still there to swear that the spy, Howard-Wolferstan, had escaped to Russia on a Russian ship. That simply could not be allowed. On the other hand, tempting though the solution must have been, there was no way of ensuring that all passengers met a convincingly natural death.

  We were still motionless on Thursday. The captain, I heard, was unapproachable in his rage. Lieutenant Karlis and I recovered our old intimacy—so far as intimacy was possible with a haggard man living in a nightmare. The passengers and crew were told that the engines had broken down.

  Karlis was receiving no more wireless messages now, but the silence on that silent ship was all the more ominous for that. The storm out of Asia was about to break upon our heads. Even I, the mischievous and unsquashable louse in the pants of the gods, wished that I had ceased from tickling.

  It was my move, however. I had played for it, and I had to make it—though the occasion had arrived much earlier than I expected. The august irresolution was so unending that a little help from me might be decisive. I took his bottles away from Karlis, wrote a message for him and told him to translate it into Russian and send it off. He stared at my draft with eyes that were beyond reading.

  ‘Comrade,’ I explained to him, ‘I am ready to make the supreme sacrifice. The only way out is for the ship to put back and for you to hand me over to the British police.’