by James Hilton
By August the exiles were in Irkutsk. The city was in chaos; its population had been increased threefold; it was the neck of the channel through which Siberia was emptying herself of the accumulated suffering of generations. From all directions poured in an unceasing flood of returning exiles and refugees—not only from Yakutsk and the Arctic, but from Chita and the Manchurian border, from the Baikal mines and the mountain-prisons of the Yablonoi. In addition, there were German, Austrian, and Hungarian war- prisoners, drifting slowly westward as the watch upon them dissolved under the distant rays of Petrograd revolution; and nomad traders from the Gobi, scraping profit out of the pains and desires of so many strangers; and Buriat farmers, rich after years of war-profiteering; and Cossack officers, still secretly loyal to the old régime: Irkutsk was a magnet drawing together the whole assortment, and drawing also influenza and dysentery, scurvy and typhus, so that the hospitals were choked with sick, and bodies were thrown, uncoffined and by scores, into huge open graves dug by patient Chinese.
On a warm August afternoon A.J. wandered about the Irkutsk railway depot, threading his way amongst the refugees and listening for a few odd moments to various political speeches that were being made by soldiers. He was dressed in a nondescript, vaguely military uniform which he had acquired at Yakutsk as soon as the cold weather had begun to recede; he might have been taken for a Russian soldier, though not, at a second glance, for a very ordinary one. His fine teeth, spare figure, and close-cropped hair and beard, would all have marked him from a majority. His features, lined and rugged, were not without a look of gentleness and pity; but as he wandered about the station and freight- yards he seemed really to have no more than the shadow of any quality; all was obscured by a look of uncomprehendingness that did not quite amount to bewilderment.
The seven Cossacks who had been with him for so many weeks were also on the platform, very dejected because they had been ordered east, while he, of course, must take the first train in the other direction, He joined them for a final meal of tea and black bread before their train arrived. “You must go to Petrograd,” one of them told him earnestly. “All the exiles are going there to work for the new government; Kerensky will find you a job—perhaps he will make you an inspector of taxes.”
“No, no,” interrupted another. “Our brother is surely fitted to be something better than an inspector of taxes. He has books—he must be a great scholar; I should think Kerensky might make him a postmaster, for a postmaster, after all, has to know how to read and write.”
They argued thus until the train arrived, and A.J. stayed with them, smiling at their remarks occasionally, but saying very little. There was a great rush for seats on the train, and when at last the seven soldiers had all crowded into a coach they leaned out of the open window and kissed him—their captain, their legend, the man whom they would remember and wonder at until the end of their lives. And he, when their train had gone, strolled away still half smiling.
He lay at night, like thousands of others, in any sheltered corner he could find, with a little bundle of all his possessions for a pillow. After three more days a train came in from the east; it was grotesquely full already, but he managed to find a place in a cattle-truck.
The train was very long, and between the first coach next to the engine and the last cattle-truck at the rear the whole world lay in mad microcosm. For the first coach was a dining-car, smooth-running and luxurious; you could look through the windows and see military officers, spattered with gold braid, picking their teeth after fried chicken and champagne, while attendants in evening-dress hovered about them obsequiously. Next came the first-class coach in which these magnates lived when they were not eating and drinking; and next the second-class coaches, containing those who were not fortunate enough to be high military officers; they were not allowed to use the dining-car, but the attendants would sometimes, at an extortionate price, supply them with food and drink. After that carne the third-class coaches, crammed with soldiers of the Revolution, who bought or commandeered food at wayside stations; and last, comprising two-thirds of the whole train, were the cattle-trucks, packed from floor to roof with refugees and peasants and returning exiles—folk who had spent their last paper rouble on a railway ticket, or else had smuggled themselves on board with no ticket at all, and who had nothing to eat except the food they could bargain for, or the ghastly tit-bits they could rake out of rubbish-bins behind the station refreshment-rooms.
A.J. spent hours in his corner of the truck, watching through the slats the constant procession of miles. He was half oblivious of those about him, of babies who screamed and were sick, of women who moaned with hunger, of men who chattered or quarrelled or were noisily companionable. In a similar way he half noticed the changes that had taken place since he had last moved over the scene—the extraordinary evidences of a new Siberia that had sprung up ribbon-like along the thin line of the railway, the new factories and freight-yards, the trams in the streets of Omsk, the steel bridges that had replaced wooden ones.
The journey was tiring, but worse for others than for himself, for his body, like his mind, seemed only capable of half-sensations. For years he had been unaware of this, but now, in a world of men and women, he perceived and was puzzled by it; he found himself doing things in a curious dream-like way, as if part of him were asleep and were obeying the other part automatically. Even when he talked, he heard his own voice as if it were another person speaking; and when he felt tiredness, or hunger, or a physical ache, the sensation came to him slowly, incompletely, almost at secondhand.
A fellow-exile tried to converse with him, but received little encouragement. The man was an ex-university professor named Tribourov—fat, pompous, and tremendously eager to reach Petrograd because he knew many people in the government and felt sure of a good appointment. He was also extremely annoyed that he had not been able to find a place for himself and his wife in the second-or first-class coaches. “Really, the government ought to arrange things better,” he complained continually.
Madame Tribourov, a thin and rather delicate-looking woman, who had shared the professor’s exile for five years, was suffering acutely from illness and hunger; she could not eat any of the rough food that was the only kind obtainable at wayside stations, and every day she grew weaker and nearer to collapse. Tribourov himself, dreaming bureaucratic dreams, paid little attention to her beyond an occasional word of perfunctory encouragement; she would be all right, he kept saying, as soon as they reached the end of the journey.
One morning the train stopped to load fuel in the midst of forest country, far from any station or settlement, and some of the men, glad of the chance to stretch their legs, climbed out of the trucks and walked about. A.J. and Tribourov were together, and Tribourov, as usual, talked about himself and his future importance and the iniquity of his having to travel in a cattle- truck. His complaining increased when they had strolled along the track as far as the dining-car and could sec its occupants talking, laughing, and guzzling over an excellent lunch. Seen through the window from the track-level, the dining-car presented a vista of large, munching jaws, glittering epaulettes, and the necks of wine-bottles. One man was gnawing the leg of a fowl, another was lifting champagne to his lips, another was puffing at a cigar in full- stomached contentment. At the far end of the car was the little kitchen- compartment where the food was cooked and stored; the window was open and on the shelves could be seen rows of bottles as well as canned foods, cheeses, and boxes of biscuits. “All that stuff comes from Japan and America,” Tribourov explained. “They load it on board at Vladivostok and it lasts all the way to Moscow and back. Excellently organised, but the scandal is—” And he resumed his usual complaint and continued until the engine-whistle warned them to hasten back to their truck.
That night, when it was almost pitch-dark and his fellow-travellers were mostly asleep or half-asleep, A.J. climbed out on to the footboard and began to feel his way cautiously along the length of the train. His hands and mind we
re functioning automatically; half of him was asking—’What on earth are you doing?’—and the other half was answering—’I am going to the dining-car to steal some food for Madame Tribourov.’ He did not know why he was doing so; he cared nothing at all for Madame Tribourov; it was no feeling of chivalry, or of compassion, or of indignation. It was rather a chance idea that had entered his half- mind—just an idea that loomed unwontedly large in a void where there were no other ideas.
The train was travelling at a moderate speed—not more than twenty miles an hour; the night was cloudy and the fringe of swamps to the side of the track was only to be dimly perceived. Little could be done by eye as he made his way from truck to truck; his hands groped for the slats and his feet for the buffers between one truck and the next. It was not particularly dangerous progress, provided one kept one’s nerve, and A.J. kept his easily enough; or rather, in another sense, he had no nerves at all—he was simply unaware of fear, terror, joy, triumph, and all other excitations. His hands and feet did what was required of them, while his brain looked on with mild incredulity.
Soon he reached the second-class coaches, in which candles were glimmering in bottle-necks; and he could see the occupants asleep—wealthy traders, bound on this business or that—well-dressed women, wives or mistresses of high officials—a few military officers of lower rank. He passed them all and then swung himself over the buffer-boards to the first-class coach, which rolled along less noisily on well-greased bogies. Here the compartments were well upholstered, lit by electricity, and provided with window-blinds. Many of the latter were not drawn, however, and A.J. could see officers of high rank, partially undressed, lying on the cushions with their mouths gaping in obvious snores. The coach was not crowded; no compartment held more than two occupants, and some only one. An especially luxurious coupé with a large red star pasted on the windows contained a small table and a comfortable couch on which a man sprawled in sleep. A military tunic hung on a hook above his head, and in the far corner of the coupé there was a compact lavatory-basin and water- tank. Such details fastened themselves with curious intensity on A.J.’s mind as he made that slow hand-over-hand journey from window to window. At last he passed on, over the last set of buffers, to the object of his pilgrimage—the dining-car. It was a long, heavy vehicle belonging to the international company, and at three in the morning it was, naturally, deserted, with only a glimmer of light showing from the further end where the attendants slept in their bunks. A.J. continued his way along, but this final stage was more difficult because of the increasing volley of sparks from the engine-chimney. When he reached the tiny kitchen compartment he was quite prepared for a climb through the window, with all the risks it involved of waking the attendants; but fate, at that last moment, was unexpectedly kind. The window was still open, and rolls of white bread, tins of American pork and beans, and wine-bottles lay so accessibly that he could reach them merely by putting in a hand. He did so as quickly as he could, filling his pockets, and then beginning the backward crawl by the same route. It had taken him, he reckoned, twenty minutes to reach the dining-car from the truck at the far end of the train, but he could not hope to accomplish the return journey so quickly, for his hands were a little numbed and his swollen pockets impeded movement.
He reached the first-class coach and swung himself on to it, but the effort, employing a different set of muscles, made him wince; and when he reached the footboard in safety he paused to regain strength. Suddenly he realised that he was standing opposite the window of the coupé and that the occupant of the couch was sitting up and staring at him. He began to move on hurriedly, but before he could reach the next compartment the door of the coupé was flung open and strong hands seized his wrists. It was impossible to struggle; the slightest attempt to do so would have meant his falling backwards to the track, and his arms, too, were aching after those successive swings from coach to coach. At first he thought the man was trying to push him off the train, but soon he realised that the intention was to drag him inside the coupé. As he could not free himself and as to be dragged inside was better than to be flung off, he yielded and the next minute found himself sprawling on the couch with the door closed and the man above him flourishing a revolver. He was a tall man with a trim beard and moustache and an exceedingly good set of teeth; just now he was snarling with them and punctuating his words with waves of the revolver. “So!” he cried venomously. “You try to assassinate me, eh? You creep along by the windows and shoot while I am asleep, perhaps, eh? Your friends in Omsk have heard of my promotion and they send you to execute revenge, no doubt? But instead, it is I who turn the tables, my friend! Now let me relieve you of your weapons.” He felt in A.J.’s bulging pockets and pulled out, not the revolver he had expected, but a bottle of wine. “So!” he snarled, flinging it aside. “A little celebration after the deed, eh? How disappointed your friends will be! And especially when they hear you have been shot, also. For, mistake not, my friend, I will have you shot at the next station. Assassin! Do you hear that?” He rapidly went through A.J.’s other pockets, pulling out, to his increasing surprise, nothing but long rolls of white bread, pieces of cheese, and tins of food.
All this time A.J. had not spoken a word, but now he judged it expedient to confess nothing less than the simple truth. “You see I am not armed,” he began. “I am not an assassin, and I had no intention of making any attack on you. I have no friends at Omsk, and I did not even know you were travelling on this train. I am an exile, returning to Russia, and all I wanted was food. I took these things from the dining-car and was on my way back with them to the truck in which I have been travelling from Irkutsk.”
The other seemed scarcely mollified by this explanation. He obviously believed it, but the revelation that he had been made to suffer such shock and inconvenience by a mere petty pilferer angered him, if anything, more than the idea of being assassinated. “A thief, indeed?” he cried harshly. “You are only a thief, do you say? And you were only crawling along in the middle of the night to steal food from the dining-car? Do you know that the food is all required for high officers of the government? You do, no doubt; but that did not deter you. Very well, you will find that the penalty for thieving is just the same. We behave with fine impartiality, you will find—thief or assassin, it does not matter—all face the firing squad.”
“Some of the refugees in the trucks are starving,” said A.J. slowly.
“Are they, indeed? Then let them starve. Why do they all want to come crowding on the trains at a time like this? Let them starve—the scum—the country could well manage with a few millions less of them. And as for these things—after your dirty hands have touched them they are clearly no use at all.” And with childish rage he began to pick them up and throw them out of the window—first the bottle of wine, then the rolls, then the cheese, and lastly the tins.
Something jerked forward in A.J.’s mind at that moment. As the other stooped to pick up the last tin, he suddenly hurled himself at the sneering face and flashing teeth, while his right hand caught hold of the revolver by the barrel and twisted it back. A.J. was still in a dream, but it was a different dream, a rising, billowing nightmare. He saw and heard the revolver slip to the floor, and then he felt both his hands move to the red, mottled neck in front of him; he saw the eyes bulge in terror and the snarl of the teeth transfix into something glittering and rigid.
A moment later he stood by the side of the couch looking down upon its curious occupant. There was no life now in the staring eyes and in the twisted limbs.
All at once it occurred to him: he had killed the fellow. He had not intended to—or had he? Yet no—there was hardly such a thing as intention in him. It had just happened; the sight of the food disappearing through the window had set up some unwonted electrical contact between mind and body.
He tried to think what to do next, and his mind worked with icy clearness, as in a vacuum. The dead man had clearly been a person of importance, and that meant certain death for his
slayer. Assuming, of course, that the latter were discovered. But need he be? Was there a chance of escape? No one had seen him so far; the blinds of the windows next to the corridor were drawn and the corridor-door was fastened on the inside. He must, of course, hasten back to the cattle-truck and feign sleep; his absence might or might not have been particularly noticed, but perhaps he would be safe if he could return unobtrusively. At the next station, he knew, there would be a huge commotion, with probably the most minute examinations and cross-questionings of everybody in the train.
He was just about to open the door of the coupe and begin a swift return journey along the footboards, when he heard a tap at the corridor-door. “Tarkarovsk in fifteen minutes’ time, sir,” came the voice of the train-attendant. After a pause the message was repeated, and then A.J. managed to stammer out “All right.” He heard the attendant move away and tap at other doors along the corridor with the same message—“Tarkarovsk in fifteen minutes’ time, sir.”
And that, unfortunately, settled it. He could not return to the truck; it had taken him twenty minutes to make the forward journey, and it was impossible to think of doubling his rate on the way back. Besides, the train attendant’s warning would waken the passengers in the compartments; they would be sitting up and yawning, and would certainly see him if he passed their windows. The only alternative seemed to be a risky jump off the train and an escape across country, though his position would be desperate enough even then. Tarkarovsk was dangerously near; the body would be discovered quite soon; within an hour the surrounding country would be swarming with armed searchers. Nor, among those open, desolate swamps, could a fugitive hope to elude pursuers for long.
Then suddenly his mind alighted on a third possibility—fantastic, almost incredible, yet not, in such circumstances, to be rejected too scornfully. After all, one way, and perhaps the best way, in which a culprit might avoid discovery was by contriving that his crime should not be discovered either. A.J. looked at the dead man, then at the tunic hanging above him; and all at once his mind began arranging the future with astonishing precision. Yet there was no astonishment in the way he accepted every detail of an amazing scheme. He was cool, almost slow, in his movements. First he stripped the body of the dead man. Next he undressed himself and put on the dead man’s clothes. After that he dressed the body in his own discarded garments. Then opening the door of the coupé, he hurled the clothed body as far away from the track as he could. With luck it might sink into a swamp and never be discovered at all, but even without luck, it was hardly likely to attract much attention in such circumstances as he would arrange. Refugees and peasants often fell out of trains; several bodies had been noticed on the way from Irkutsk, but no one had thought of stopping to identify or examine them.