I handed him over my parcel. “Good-morning,” I said civilly, “I will say that Mr. Marsh is arrested.” The man moved away from the door, still looking hard at me as I passed out into the street.
Agitated by this misfortune, I turned my steps in the direction of the hospital where I hoped to find Melnikoff. The hospital in question was at the extreme end of the Kamenostrovsky Prospect, in the part of the city known as The Islands because it forms the delta of the river Neva. It was a good four-mile walk from Marsh’s house. I tried to get on to a street-car, but there were very few running and they were so crowded that it was impossible to board them. People hung in bunches all round the steps and even on the buffers. So, tired as I was after the night’s adventure, I footed it.
Melnikoff, it appeared, was a relative of one of the doctors of this hospital, but I did not find him here. The old woman at the lodge said he had been there one night and had not returned since. I began to think something untoward must have occurred, although doubtless he had several other night-shelters besides this one. There was nothing to do but wait for the afternoon and go to the clandestine café to which he had directed me.
I retraced my steps slowly into town. All around was shabbiness. Here and there in the roadway lay a dead horse. The wretched brutes were whipped to get the last spark of life and labour out of them and then lay where they fell, for the ladies who were made to sweep the streets were not strong enough to remove dead horses. Every street, every building, shop, and porch spoke to me of bygone associations, which with a pang I now realized were dead. A few stores remained open, notably for music, books, and flowers, but Soviet licences were required to purchase anything except propagandist literature, which was sold freely at a cheap price, and flowers, which were fabulously dear. Hawkers with trucks disposed of second-hand books, obviously removed from the shelves of private libraries, while a tiny basement store, here and there peeping shamefacedly up from beneath the level of the street, secreted in semi-obscurity an unappetizing display of rotting vegetables or fruits and the remnants of biscuits and canned goods. But everything spoke bitterly of the progressive dearth of things and the increasing stagnation of normal life.
I stopped to read the multifarious public notices and announcements on the walls. Some bore reference to Red army mobilization, others to compulsory labour for the bourgeoisie, but most of them dealt with the distribution of food. I bought some seedy-looking apples, and biscuits that tasted several years old. I also bought all the newspapers and a number of pamphlets by Lenin, Zinoviev, and others. Finding a cab with its horse still on four legs, I hired it and drove to the Finland Station, where upon arrival in the morning I had noticed there was a buffet. The food exhibited on the counter, mostly bits of herring on microscopic pieces of black bread, were still less appetizing than my biscuits, so I just sat down to rest, drank a weak liquid made of tea-substitute, and read the Soviet papers.
There was not much of news, for the ruling Bolshevist[1] class had already secured a monopoly of the Press by closing down all journals expressing opinions antagonistic to them, so that all that was printed was propaganda. While the Press of the Western world was full of talk of peace, the Soviet journals were insisting on the creation of a mighty Red army that should set Europe and the globe aflame with world-revolution.
At three o’clock I set out to look for Melnikoff’s café, a clandestine establishment in a private flat on the top floor of a house in one of the streets off the Nevsky Prospect. When I rang the bell the door was opened just a wee bit and I espied a keen and suspicious eye through the chink. Seeing it was immediately about to close again I slid one foot into the aperture and asked quickly for Melnikoff.
“Melnikoff?” said the voice accompanying the eagle eye. “What Melnikoff?”
“N——,” I said, giving Melnikoff’s real name. At this point the door was opened a little wider and I was confronted by two ladies, the one (with the eagle eye) elderly and plump, the other young and good-looking.
“What is his first name and patronymic?” asked the younger lady. “Nicolas Nicolaevitch,” I replied. “It is all right,” said the younger lady to the elder. “He said someone might be coming to meet him this afternoon. Come in,” she went on, to me. “Nicolas Nicolaevitch was here for a moment on Saturday and said he would be here yesterday but did not come. I expect him any minute now.”