I remained in the corridor for the next hour or two, smoking and thinking. I had been lucky. None of the Bolsheviks had questioned me. All assumed I must be on important business because I had arrived in an official car. Dawn came, miserable and cunning. The train’s pace did not slacken. We were at least half-way to Odessa. The woman emerged from the compartment. She was stiff. She stretched her legs and arms like a dancer. Her pistol was on her hip. I realised, with a hint of amusement, that both skirt and black blouse were of heavy silk. She had not had a deprived childhood. She was used to the best. She nodded to me and asked for a cigarette which I willingly gave her. I had several hundred with me. They were likely to prove invaluable. We smoked. She rubbed at her neck. She seemed paler. I wondered if she were Jewish. There was something about her mouth. She yawned, looking out onto the grey snow. The sky was heavy and melancholy. There was yellow-grey mist hanging between it and the land. I have never really seen anything like it since. It seemed to depress her. I had a stupid impulse to put my arm around her shoulders (though she was almost as tall as me). I motioned. She looked into my face. She seemed startled. She said rapidly: ‘You’re tired. You should rest.’
‘Aha,’ I said. This was significant, even to me.
‘You must have a great deal on your mind. Too much thinking is exhausting, eh?’
‘Oh, indeed, Marusia Kirillovna.’
She hesitated. ‘I’m disturbing you?’
‘Not at all.’ I put my hand out to her without touching her. ‘I’m bored.’
This relieved her. ‘I can’t stand being still. It’s what makes a revolutionary, I suppose. Impatience.’
As one whose main virtue is patience, I could say nothing. Perhaps her generalisation was correct and that was why I was not a revolutionary. I have no patience with fools; but you will not find me complaining after five minutes if a bus does not come along.
She continued. ‘One desires to create Utopia overnight. It’s hard to understand, isn’t it, why people resist? They haven’t the imagination, I suppose. Or the vision. We have to supply that. It’s our function. We all have a role.’
I nodded. The train slowed, then gained speed. It drummed down a gradient, turning in a long curve, and everything was grey, including the locomotive, part of which I could now see. Our skins were grey. The windows were grey. The smoke from our grey cigarettes blended together to form a single grey cloud near the ceiling.
‘But what is duty, I wonder?’ asked Marusia Kirillovna.
There came a noise from outside the train. I looked up at the embankment. I saw men in heavy coats squatting behind machine-guns. Others were mounted. They fired at us with carbines.
The glass shattered. I fell to the floor, bearing Marusia Kirillovna with me. The train began to shriek and shudder. Cold air filled the squealing corridor. The train jolted as if mortally wounded, skidding down the gradient for a few more yards. It twitched and became lifeless, save for the sound of steam escaping, like the last breaths of a corpse.
Marusia Kirillovna’s blood stained my shirt and jacket. It warmed my hands. Her face was all blood. The only thing I could recognise was one sad and disapproving eye. Even as I crawled back towards the compartment I thought she had died exactly as her romantic nature might have demanded. Few of us are given the opportunity.
The Bolsheviks in my compartment were searching in their luggage for the pistols they all seemed to carry. I was astonished to see so much metal in those limp hands. I pulled my own bags down from the rack and, pushing them ahead of me, scrambled through the connecting door into the next carriage. I had no wish to be identified with the Reds.
I found myself in a press of peasants who screamed uncontrollably or sat with their hands covering their heads. The glass here had also been shattered. Several people were wounded while others were quite dead, sitting bolt upright between fellow passengers who could not or did not wish to move. It was a peculiar moment. The peasants thought I was an official. They began asking me what had happened. I said I intended to find out. They must let me through. They pushed one another back, some even removing their caps, to allow me to pass. There were more machine-guns firing. It was from our side. Another volley. There were shouts from the embankment and from our own soldiers. The firing stopped. They seemed to be parleying.
