Читать книгу The Elephant Never Forgets - Ethel Lina White - Страница 4

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THE town looked different when Anna left the hotel, in order to buy her ticket for a soft place in the train. The change was actual and not the effect of lost illusions. During the night, the wind had stripped the trees and the streets were carpeted with layers of leaves.

They covered every surface so thickly that they blotted out inequalities and outlines. Unable to see where the pavement ended, Anna side-stepped off the kerb, caught her heel in a crack, and slipped to her knees in the gutter.

This time, she swore in English.

"Thank goodness, I'll soon be walking on a decent pavement again," she told herself as she scrambled to her feet.

She did not know it, but the moment was epic...When she ran away from school, to earn her living in a shop, her stepfather had refused to interfere.

"No," he said to his wife's hysterical pleading. "I will not send detectives after her as if she were criminal. The little one has intelligence and will come to no harm. Let her stand on her own feet for a while. Presently she will return."

But Anna had never come back...It is true that a subdued schoolgirl of the same name and appearance was soon in residence again at the Hampstead mansion; but she—herself—was still wandering in the rebel territory of her mind.

It was not until she paid tribute to the good offices of the L.C.C. that she took her first step back to the home which was no longer there.

Just then, London seemed so near that she could almost see the buses inside Victoria Station yard and the scarlet electric signs quivering through a dun transparency. These lights stood for safety even if they conjured up no thrill.

Her feelings were mixed as she scuffled through the fallen leaves. Common sense made her realise the futility of regret, which was partly due to season.

She could not recall the summer, when the salt mist veiled the old buildings of the port to the dim beauty of faded tapestry, and the trees in the avenue told stories in husky whispers. Impossible, too, to recapture the fraternity spirit of those endless, unlicensed talks around the stove in Otto's office, when the only convention was always to use the unexpurgated word.

Of all these wild men and girls, there were only three persons with whom she came into more than casual contact. These were Otto, Olga and Conrad Stern.

Now, only Conrad remained.

"I must say 'Good-bye' to him," she thought regretfully. "Pity. Sheer waste of an interesting man."

Yet although he was one of those who counted, she did not want to stay in this strange town, which was all that remained of the dark enchanted city of her dream. The tall thin houses seemed to have shrunk as though they were frost-bitten to their foundations, while their fronts were grey as clinkered ash. Involuntarily she thought of their cellars, as the People's Prosecutor, in her blonde brutality, tramped across her mind.

This was a town where people disappeared. To-day you spoke to a man and arranged to meet him on the morrow. If he did not keep his appointment, you asked no questions. And you might not see him again.

In her eagerness to identify herself with the Komsomol, or communal youth of the country, Anna shared their enthusiasm for an experiment so stupendous, that it stunned—even while it stirred—her imagination. Yet while she agreed that its enemies must be destroyed, she shrank from a method of espionage where the individual was at the mercy of his fellow.

As a rule, she hurried by the prison, where the tidal river, which swept one side, was now in flood. It rushed past the wall in a swift brown wave which appeared almost level with the lowest line of windows.

Drawn by a morbid fascination, she lingered for a minute. The wind had piled up an enormous drift of leaves against an iron door. It imparted an air of desuetude, as though people had gone inside, but had never pushed the portal outwards again.

She walked on quickly before she could think too vividly of the fate of any prisoners inside. Cells weeping with river water. The grey eyes of fish floating in soup. A last appointment to meet a lady—a blonde with a taste for cellars.

When she reached the square, on her way to the post office—it had an air of desertion. There were no market-stalls to dwarf its size to-day. The giant equestrian statue in the middle seemed magnified to a symbol of civic authority. As she passed beneath the pedestal, his rearing horse appeared on the point of crashing down upon her skull.

Her intention was, as usual, first to collect any mail, and then to go to the café. That morning, the woman official did not disappoint her, for she handed her a letter from a pigeon-hole.

She recognised the handwriting on the envelope, and stuffed it into her bag, unopened. Her community spirit did not extend to former school friends—and Gloria James could wait.

When she was inside the double doors of the café, she stood looking for Conrad Stern. The room was overheated by an enormous stove, but, apart from its atmosphere, it was a pleasant refuge from the grey outside world. A brass samovar bubbled cheerfully and each indiarubber plant wore its jacket of coloured, plaited paper. Above all rose the thrum of talk, like the whir of a myriad spinning-tops.

Conrad Stern was seated at a small table—by a window. Closely-shorn, clean-shaven and monocled, his appearance was in strong contrast with most of the shaggy company, although he would have been a striking personality in other circumstances. There was distinction in his tall thin figure and the moulding of his face which always made Anna curious to unveil the mystery of his origin.

When she drew nearer, he rose to meet her.

"I rather hoped you might come here," he said.

"I wanted to meet you too," Anna told him. "I'm going back to England."

"Then—" he hesitated before he added, "then you know about Otto?"

"Yes. I've heard also that Olga has a new fur."

Humiliated by the knowledge that their quarrel was already in circulation, Anna tried to speak lightly.

"I'm not quite blind," she said. "Of course, just at first I thought he was rather splendid. But lately I've realised how cheap he really is. In fact, we had a row."

She remembered the essential adjective and added hastily, "we had a bloody row."

Conrad Stern smiled slightly as he crossed to the buffet to get tea for her. When he returned with the cup of weak, scalding fluid, he asked an abrupt question.

"How are you off for money?"

"I've enough for my journey," she told him.

"Good." His voice held relief. "Passport in order?"

"Yes. The original visa expired, but Otto got it renewed, the other day. Whenever they wanted to see my papers at the hotel, he wangled things for me. A man can always slip his mistress through when he can't take his wife."

Anna laughed as she spoke, for she had been rather flattered by the general assumption of a freedom of which she had never availed herself. It made her feel definitely Russian. Aware, however, of Conrad's silence, she denied the rumour, for the first time.

"Of course, I was never that," she said.

The frost of his face relaxed as he smote the table with his palm.

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he asked. "As long as you were Otto's friend, you were not in my landscape. We've wasted too much time. We might have been—comrades."

Although his smile revealed the lines in his thin face, she was thrilled by its fascination. Some of the vanished glamour of the summer seemed to quiver again in the smoky air. Her mother would have seen the shape of "little things" to come in the unwashed company, but she was conscious only of warm intimacy and understanding.

"And now you know?" she asked.

"Now it is too late. You are going back to England and I am leaving this town at once. I have the prospect of a job elsewhere. I only waited to see you, in case you wanted any help about your journey."

"Why?"

"Because we are compatriots. You come from Hampstead and I was born and bred in Hammersmith. It is true that I have wandered far from the Broadway. But Hammersmith may have my bones."

Anna did not believe him, although she made another effort to break his reserve.

"What exactly are you?"

"When all other alibis fail, one can always call oneself a journalist," he told her, with the flicker of a smile.

She gave up the attempt to pump him.

"How did you guess I would go back to England?" she asked.

"It seemed indicated." He glanced at his wrist-watch and added, "Time I left. And time you went to the station to get your ticket."

Their moment had passed and the air was heavy with parting. Conrad held her hand tightly as he asked her a directly personal question.

"Were you in love with Otto?"

"No," she admitted. "It was only infatuation."

"I thought so. Is there a young man in England?"

"There may be."

"Then marry him at once and raise a family. A boy, a girl, or a baby Austin, according to taste. And forget Russia...Good-bye."

The place seemed very lonely after he had gone, yet Anna got fresh tea, merely as an excuse to linger. She knew that she should not delay in buying her railway ticket. Time was passing, and, at this crisis, time was precious.

The truth was that she lacked the moral courage to go to the office where she had deposited most of her money. In spite of her philosophy she shrank from the ordeal of seeing Otto and Olga together. And—definitely—she did not want to see the new fur.

The clock ticked on, but still she sat and smoked. Presently she drew out Gloria James's letter and read it. It told her that her former schoolfellow was on her way back from a visit to the East, with her husband and her baby.

"It's a business trip," she wrote, "and we'll be stopping off for a day or so at your burg. Wait for us, and we can all travel back to England together."

Anna shuddered at the prospect of staying a moment longer than was necessary in a dreary town which was drained of interest.

"Declined—without thanks," she murmured.

As she crossed over to the buffet to pay her score, she realised that she would be spared the pang of seeing the lovers together, for Olga was in the café, alone. She was a fair Jewess, with plaits of golden hair and a famished intellectual face, which was subtly cheapened by the meretricious fur coat she wore.

When Anna crossed to her table, she put down her glass of vodka and spoke aggressively.

"If you've come to talk of Otto, I won't talk of him to you."

Surprised by her rival's vehemence, Anna spoke with stressed calm.

"I don't want to discuss him. I've merely come to say 'Good-bye.' But why aren't you at the office?"

Olga stared at her while her lips began to quiver.

"Haven't you heard?" she asked incredulously.

"Heard what?"

A gloomy triumph smouldered in Olga's eyes as she surrendered herself to the drama of her announcement.

"The office was raided, last night, by the Ogpu. They took away the papers and all the money in the safe. And they carried my Otto away in the Black Raven."

As she listened, Anna's head began to spin.

"All the money," she repeated blankly.