Читать книгу The Elephant Never Forgets - Ethel Lina White - Страница 9

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AS she watched, Anna was struck by a general movement of redistribution. Before the People's Prosecutor could reach the nearest table, it was vacated, while a wide circle was cleared around it, although the space was crowded to capacity. Those who were near the door slipped out of the café unobtrusively; but after the first stunned pause, the majority of patrons went on smoking, drinking and playing chess.

In spite of this demonstration of unconcern, voices were pitched lower and eyes kept shifting uneasily in the direction of the executioner. She seemed to accept her isolation as homage to her position. As though conscious of the gulf between herself and the company, she swallowed the spirits which the buffet attendant carried deferentially to her table, without a glance around the room.

Anna noticed that she had lost that blaze of brutality and brilliancy which imparted to her face some of the beauty of the damned. Dull-eyed and leaden-lipped—she stretched out her heavy legs and stared fixedly at the table. At that moment she looked as void of human feeling as the metal rider in the square.

Suddenly Anna realised her in her official capacity of automatic-killer. With a rush of horror she imagined the procedure. Drink to steady her nerve, but not to blur her eye, before tramping down to the cellar—to dispose of her clients, systematically and by batches. No other thought there but her aim and her numbers. Afterwards—staggering up to the daylight and drinking again—only, this time, she would not count her glasses.

Anna started as the People's Prosecutor drained her glass, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and then got up with a scrape of nailed soles on the floor. As she buttoned up her sheepskin coat she looked around her for the first time, slowly and deliberately.

In spite of her own immunity, Anna felt relieved when she was passed over in the official tally, as though non-existent. After the People's Prosecutor had swaggered out of the café, she forced herself to discuss her with philosophic detachment.

"It's curious, Olga, to reflect that the only difference between her and some decent peasant-woman, is a defective gland or surplus secretion, or perhaps an infinitesimal pressure on the brain. But she's not so horrible as I thought, because she's impersonal...Only—it makes one realise the hopelessness of explaining a—a mistake to that."

For a moment she felt overwhelmed by the conception of a system so vast that the individual could only receive official recognition when added to nine hundred and ninety-nine other units. She had a vision of insignificant human beings being squeezed inside a huge metal fist—akin to a factory-feed—which shook red spatters over a frozen white waste.

Olga distracted her attention by speaking in tones of tragic triumph.

"She looked at me. I am marked."

"She looked at every one," Anna told her. "Don't be morbid. Arrests are not her business. She's only the instrument...But where has she been? I saw her for the first time the morning after the raid, and I haven't seen her since."

"She comes and goes. On business."

"Then why worry? If they had anything against you, you'd have been arrested with Otto."

"No, that is not their way. We can wait their convenience. Depend on it, we are all down in the list. But the prison is full. When they are ready to deal with us, we are here. If we tried to get away, we should be stopped at the frontier."

"I wish you wouldn't include me," said Anna. "I'm an outsider."

"But you lent Otto money for his work."

"No one can prove it." Anna was too annoyed by the persistence to prove its absurdity. "There's another small fact you seem to forget," she went on. "I'm a British subject."

To her surprise Olga burst into derisive laughter.

"You British!" she cried. "Tell lies if you must try to save your skin, but not stupid lies, which no one will believe. I do not say that you are Russian. But whatever you are, you are certainly not English."

"I certainly am," declared Anna.

"But I have heard you speak English with Stern. You think before you speak, as one may do with a foreign language."

"I'm deliberate, because I don't like people who babble inanities."

"But you don't look like an English girl."

"You mean I'm not a stressed type. I'm dark instead of being fair, and I haven't a rosy pudding-face. Don't be absurd, Olga. You know that most nationalities are getting standardised by the screen."

As she spoke, Anna saw herself through Olga's spectacles, with her dark unwaved hair and moulded face, which had grown paler recently through worry.

"They all expect me to look like a Wimbledon tennis-player," she thought.

For a moment her heart sank as she considered the muddle which could result from pigheaded local authority. It was like the metal rider in the square—deaf and blind. If any stupid mistake were made about her nationality, it would not listen to her explanation. Of course, later, it might be forced to acknowledge a technical error; but when enlightenment occurred it was probable that she might not be in a position to be personally interested.

Suddenly her gloomy fears were banished, as though a ray of light had cleft her brain.

"My passport," she thought. "What a fool I am."

She felt she wanted to shout with joy as she sprang from her seat.

"Olga," she said, "thank you. You've just reminded me of something important. Good-bye. If I don't see you again, good luck."

"Good-bye, Comrade." Olga's voice was indifferent. "If you still cling to life you must leave this town at once. To-morrow may be too late."

Her prophecy had lost any power to depress Anna, as she rushed from the café and dashed across the square. She was so positive that she had guessed the explanation of the delayed money that she felt the draft was as good as in her possession. At the same time, she blamed herself bitterly for a lapse of memory which might have entailed unpleasant consequences.

It was this. She had forgotten her father's name.

In the circumstances the mistake was natural. She had been called "Anna Stephanovitch" from her early childhood, since it was locally assumed that her stepfather was her real parent. On two occasions—when she had gone to school, and later, to Oxford—he had pointed out to her the need of a revised choice; but she had refused to make any change.

Her decision was part loyalty and affection for him, and part preference for what—in her youthful judgment—was a superior name.

Except for rare occasions when she had to sign legal documents, she had never written her rightful title of "Brown." Every letter she had received since her visit to Russia had been addressed to "Anna Stephanovitch" as a matter of course. But there was one person to whom she would never be anything but "Ann Brown," and that person was her father's brother—Colonel Brown.

In her haste to reach the post office, she kept slipping on the leaves which were frozen in layers to the cobbles, so that she was out of breath from exertion when she ran up the steps. The official at the wicket frowned in recognition.

"I have already told you," she said, "there is nothing—"

"Nothing for Anna Stephanovitch," finished Anna. "But is there anything for Ann Brown?"

The official looked at her suspiciously.

"That is not your business," she said severely. "I do not understand why you should know about it."

"Then it's true that there is money here for Ann Brown, sent from London?"

"Yes," admitted the woman. "It has been here since yesterday, waiting to be claimed."

Anna's face was radiant as she realised that this morning Ann Brown was a winner.

"Pay it to me, please," she said, "I am Ann Brown."

The woman smiled incredulously.

"That is a useless fraud," she told Ann. "Every one knows that you are Anna Stephanovitch."

"Then it's fortunate I can prove my words."

Anna opened her bag and produced her passport with the sensation of one playing the ace of trumps.

The official studied it with a puzzled frown. While the particulars stated that Ann Brown was of British parentage, and the descriptive details corresponded with Anna's personal appearance, the photograph did not help her claim. Besides being libellous, it had been taken when she wore her hair cut in a fringe, which caught the light and made her appear fairer than she actually was.

Presently the official arrived at a decision.

"This is Ann Brown's passport," she said. "I do not know how you got it. For you are Anna Stephanovitch. I cannot pay you Ann Brown's money."