However, things were getting more and more dangerous, and we had to invent something if we were to save ourselves.
Earlier, before our marriage, when things were not so bad and we were all seeking ways of getting out of Russia, I had applied for a foreign passport to go abroad. At first some people were being let out before the Bolsheviks clamped down on everybody.
Now, this application at the Foreign Office or Commissariat was a dangerous identity of myself and a disclosure, especially when I was being searched for because of my connection with the British Mission.
Nelka knew this situation and one day unknown to me she went to the Commissariat. There she very naively inquired about the application of Michael Moukhanoff. The girl looked up and brought out my file, looked it over and said that no decision had been made yet. Nelka then asked when one could hope to have an answer. The girl said she did not know but could go and find out. If Nelka would wait she would go and inquire. She left the room and Nelka then did a very desperate thing. She picked up the file from the table, walked quickly out of the room, down the corridor and then faster down the steps and into the street where she mixed into the crowd. A dangerous thing to do, but my file was gone, even though my position became that way only more illegal and perhaps even more dangerous. But Nelka as usual did the decided thing with courage and determination.
Like many others we were now trying to escape. Like always in such cases, there are people who for a price were getting people out of town and over the Finish border. It was very dangerous work for them—dangerous for the people trying to leave and also expensive. We established contact with one such person who turned out to be a very decent fellow, and he agreed to try and get us out. He had peasants along the border whom he knew and who were helping him. These he had to pay and quite highly for it was all dangerous work for them also. He warned us that he could not tell when he would be ready to move us and that we should be ready to go on a moment's notice. Therefore, we prepared what we thought we could take with us and waited.
In the meantime my father had succeeded to get some false papers through his Jewish friend in Moscow and with these he and my mother managed to get over the Finnish border into Finland by train. They were by now in Stockholm and getting ready to sail to America.
By this time also, Nelka and I were living in another house, in a closed apartment in a house where some very close friends of ours lived. Nelka was registered there under a false passport in the name of Emilia Sarapp. I was not known, unless as a boy friend.
The food situation had become absolutely desperate. There just was none. Some mornings I would go to the outskirts of the city where peasants would come in their sleighs selling milk. People fought to get a quart of this watery stuff.
We also had some frozen potatoes. When frozen, potatoes are pink and sweet and slimy. These we ate without butter or even salt which was not available. The watery milk sometimes helped. Once in a while we got a loaf of black bread with a mixture of straw. I saw people cut off chunks of meat from a dead horse lying in the street and carry it home for their dinner.
So we packed some clothes and valuables and waited. Before leaving, we wanted once more to see my old aunt in Tsarskoe and we went there to say goodbye. We spent the day with her and were returning to Petrograd before dark, for a curfew was sometimes imposed and it was not safe to be around in the dark.