Red Stefan (20 page)

Everyone began to talk about boots—how hard they were to get, and how soon they wore out.

In the middle of this the door opened again and there stood on the threshold a short, thickset young man with cropped hair. He was dressed like a peasant, but he wore spectacles with thick lenses, through which he looked with an air of some authority.

“The new schoolmaster,” said Stasia in a low voice. She sat dumb whilst Ilya welcomed him loudly.

“Come in, come in! We're all friends here. You must meet my friend Nikolai. He's staying with us for the night, he and his sister.” He turned to Stephen. “This is Anton Glinka who is waking us all up. It is he who has made Peter want to go into a factory. I won't say anything about what he has made me want to do, because of Stasia there.” He winked at the young man as he spoke.

Everyone laughed except Stasia, whose colour rose. She pressed her lips together and looked down at her sleeping baby.

Anton Glinka sat down beside Ilya. His eyes, behind the thick lenses, were turned here and there. He had a curious way of looking at people as if his eyes made a pounce and then remained fixed. Elizabeth felt an extreme dislike of being looked at in this way. When he spoke, she disliked his voice. He had, it appeared, been to Orli and back. He must have been in one of the sledges which they had met. He had an abrupt manner and a harsh, dogmatic way of speaking. There was a woman teacher who had had to carry on the work of the school in his absence. He spoke of her with a lofty indulgence, supposing that she would have done her best. He had gone to Orli on important Party business.

Here he squared his shoulders and looked for Stephen to make some comment which would show that he had been impressed. Stephen immediately responded with an admiring glance.

Anton Glinka went on talking.

“Whilst I was there a broadcast message came through—a special broadcast. It is what I have always said—every village should have its wireless installation—every village in the Union of Soviet Republics. Orli has one. But why haven't we got one? We ought to have one. If I had not gone into Orli to-day, we should have missed this message.”

“You don't tell us what it is,” cried Ilya.

“That's a good joke!” said Stasia's father, laughing heartily.

The faint beginning of a shudder touched Elizabeth. From her place between Stasia and the old woman she looked round the circle. An oil lamp hung on the wall. It cast heavy shadows. Elizabeth sat with her back to it, but the schoolmaster faced the light, which was reflected from his glasses. As he turned this way and that, the reflection shifted. Sometimes when he moved quickly it looked as if his eyes were on fire. He had straight black brows above those fiery eyes. His lips were thick and shapeless.

Elizabeth felt the shudder touch her again. Why couldn't she look at Stephen, or at Ilya, or at the jolly old man, or at the lad Peter?

All this went like a flash. When Anton began to speak she knew why she had had to look at him.

“A joke?” he said, and stared the old man down. “They don't broadcast jokes. And it won't be a joke for the ones that are wanted, or for anyone who has helped them to get away—not that they have any chance of getting away, with a description of them wirelessed to every station.”

“Still you don't tell us about the message,” Ilya complained.

Elizabeth became aware that she was trembling. She could keep her face from showing anything, and she could force her arms and shoulders into rigidity by locking her hands together, but her knees shook, and as she sat on the rough bench her knee touched Stasia's knee. If she drew away from Stasia, she would be touching the old woman. If someone must feel the tremor which shook her, let it be Stasia, quiet and kind, and not her bitter-faced mother.

“Oh, the message?” Anton Glinka's voice rasped like a saw. “There are two
bourzhuis
who are wanted by the police—counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the state, both of them. A man called Red Stefan, and a woman called Elizabeth Radin. I have their descriptions written down, and so have a thousand other people. What fools people are to think they can escape! It's not very likely that they would come here, but you can never tell. Forewarned is forearmed. As Lenin says, the unknown enemy is the dangerous enemy.”

“Now he is going to give us a lecture on Lenin,” said the old man, nudging his son.

No one returned his wink, because they were all watching the schoolmaster. He unfolded a piece of paper and bent it over to catch the light. Then he read in his rasping voice:

“The man:—Over six foot in height and very powerfully built. Red hair and beard. Bright blue eyes. Bronzed complexion. Age about thirty. The woman:—Five feet five. Slight build. Black hair. Grey eyes. Good teeth. Small hands and feet. Small triangular scar on the back of the left hand. Age about twenty-four.”

Elizabeth's hands were clasped upon her lap. They were pressing down upon her knees in an effort to stop that betraying tremor. She did not need to look down at her hands, but she did look down at them with a sick involuntary glance. The left hand was uppermost, and the scar showed faintly through the brown stain that Stephen had used. It would be Petroff who had remembered the scar. His mother had struck at her with her scissors, and he had seen the wound heal and leave that little three-cornered mark. She shifted her grip and covered it.

No sooner had she done so than her fear increased. She ought not to have moved her hands. It was the last thing she ought to have done. If the schoolmaster were watching her he might think … She looked up and saw his eyes fixed upon her. Behind the thick lenses they had a cold, unwavering stare like the eyes of a fish seen through the plate-glass of an aquarium.

For a moment Elizabeth felt as if she were going to faint. Then Stephen broke in with a hearty laugh.

“They won't get far, those two. A man who's got red hair ought to be careful about getting into trouble. He's a marked man, and with a description like this out against him anyone who sees him half a mile away can't help smelling a rat. Oh no—he won't get far, you'll see.”

He began to tell a story about a man who had stolen a horse.

“Down in the Ukraine it was, about five years ago last summer. There were three horses he might have taken, and what does the fool do but take the one with the white star on its forehead. Well then, as soon as the description was out, there was everyone looking for that white star, whereas if he'd stuck to a plain brown or black, he might have got away with it—you never can tell.”

“You came from Orli?” said the schoolmaster abruptly. He addressed Elizabeth, but it was Stephen who answered.

“Yes, this morning.”

“And before that?”

“From Moscow.” Again it was Stephen who spoke.

The schoolmaster turned and looked at him.

“Does your sister never speak?”

“Oh, sometimes—sometimes,” said Stephen, laughing.

Stasia's father threw back his head and laughed too.

“That's a good joke! Don't you call that a good joke, Ilya? She's a woman, isn't she? And he asks if she can talk! I call that as good a joke as I've heard. Can she talk indeed! It's easily seen you're not married, schoolmaster.”

Anton Glinka took no notice. He asked Elizabeth directly,

“Is your husband alive?”

Without looking up, Elizabeth said, “No.”

“And when he was alive you lived in Moscow?”

Elizabeth said, “Yes.”

“What was he, this husband of yours?”

Now he and everyone must see how she was trembling. What a poor weak fool she was to shake at a word and betray Stephen. It didn't matter about herself, but it mattered about Stephen. She was betraying Stephen. She sat there dumb, and heard Stephen answer for her.

“Ah!—you'd better ask me about that. Her husband? Poor Anna! Look how she shakes at the very sound of his name. You shouldn't torment her with your questions, because she's silly in her head and strangers frighten her.” He dropped his voice to a confidential tone. “Do you know who she was married to? You'll never guess. Why, to a Chinese—one of those Chinese executioners. Li Fan Tung was his name. A great big hulk of a man and as yellow as corn. No wonder she shivers and shakes when anyone asks her about him. Yellow as corn and eyes like slits, and one of those big curved knives at his belt, and a revolver on the top of that. He'd come home to his dinner and tell her about the people he'd shot—thirty and forty in a day—all counter-revolutionaries, and a good riddance of course, but it put Anna off her food. A woman hasn't the stomach for that sort of thing. I can tell you he gave one the creeps. And why she married him nobody knows. But she was always a bit weak in the head—I suppose she couldn't say No.”

The whole circle stared, fascinated, at the widow of a Chinese executioner. Only Stasia leaned sideways and put her baby down on Elizabeth's lap.

“Would you like to hold him?” she said.

The baby was soft and warm, and very deeply asleep. Elizabeth put an arm about it, and felt safer. She could even begin to be angry with Stephen for saying she had been married to a Chinaman.

“And he is dead?” said the schoolmaster.

“A month ago,” said Stephen. “Someone shot him in the back on a dark night, so I had to go and fetch Anna away. We are going to the Collective Farm at Rasni. That's the life—isn't it Ilya? All working together, with the State behind you. What's the good of straining and sweating to wring a living out of a paltry acre or two? On a Collective Farm you can plough a hundred acres with a tractor and not feel tired at the end of it. The food's good too, and you get first chance with boots and clothes. It's only what's left over that comes to the villages.” He went on talking about the Collective Farm at Rasni.

The schoolmaster listened, frowning. Presently he went back to the piece of paper from which he had read the broadcast message. When Stephen stopped, he turned it again to catch the light.

“Six foot in height and very powerfully built—”

CHAPTER XXI

Late in the evening when the guests had all gone and the children were asleep, Elizabeth had a word with Stephen. He had been out with Ilya to see to the beasts, and she came across to the door and leaned against it, not speaking at first but looking at him, her eyes bright and angry. On the platform of the stove Stasia was feeding her baby, her shoulder turned to the room and her head bent. Just so might Mary have watched her child. To all intents and purposes they were alone.

“What is it?” said Stephen.

Elizabeth leaned on the door.

“That man—suspected us.”

Stephen nodded.

“It doesn't matter. We'll be gone before dawn. By the time he finds out that we're not at Rasni we'll be over the frontier.”

“Shall we?”

Their voices came and went with the least breath of sound. If Stasia had listened, she would have heard nothing. But Stasia was not listening. She was letting her love flow out to her baby. She had no thought for anyone in all the world beside.

“Shall we?” said Elizabeth.

“Of course we shall. I told you that before.”

They were so close together that with the least movement she could have touched him, or he her. Neither of them made that movement. A bright anger sprang up in Elizabeth like a bright, brittle flame. She said a little breathlessly,

“Why did you tell that horrible story?”

“What horrible story?”

“Why did you say I had been married to a Chinaman?”

The expression in his eyes changed. There was a fleeting touch of amusement which melted into concern.

“Did you mind?”

“Of course I minded! It was horrible!”

The amusement was there again.

“Well, I'm sorry—but you were giving yourself away. I suppose you know you were shaking.”

The flame of anger died. She had so nearly betrayed them both.

“I tried not to.”

“Well, I had to say something to account for it. I'm sorry you minded the Chinese executioner. I thought I invented him rather well. You see, the important thing just then was to produce something that would take the wind out of the schoolmaster's sails. A Chinese executioner was a whole heap more exciting than a broadcast about a couple of
bourzhuis
. People in a village aren't really much worked up over
bourzhuis
, but they like stories of what goes on in Moscow, and the more blood and thunder the better.”

Quite suddenly Elizabeth's eyes laughed up at him. They at least were not disfigured. When she laughed, they were very starry.

“I'm so tired of being weak in the head,” she said.

Stephen's eyes smiled back at hers, but behind the smile he was serious.

“You ought to throw yourself into your part.”

“Into being weak in the head?”

He nodded.

“You'd find it much easier. You ought to think of yourself as Anna—rather a poor thing and weak in the head. You want to let it soak into you, so that you're not in danger of giving yourself away like you did just now.”

“I was afraid,” said Elizabeth with wide blank eyes on his. The laughter had gone out of them and they were not starry any more.

Stephen patted her shoulder.

“There—that's just what I mean. If you were my widowed sister Anna, there wasn't anything to make you afraid. You were afraid because in your own thoughts you were letting yourself be Elizabeth Radin. That's fatal if you want to carry off a disguise—it makes the wrong atmosphere.”

A quick little devil commandeered Elizabeth's tongue.

“Am I to remember that you are my brother—all the time?”

Stephen refused to be drawn. He said,

“If you did, you wouldn't worry about little things like having warts on your face or a Chinese husband. They'd be part of your disguise, and they'd help you to feel safe and not get into a panic.”