“Dmitri Dmitrievitch Melnikoff,” he read. “Real name Nicholas Nicholaievitch N——?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He was shot between the 15th and 20th of January,” said the Policeman.
CHAPTER VI
STEPANOVNA
Meanwhile, as time progressed, I made new acquaintances at whose houses I occasionally put up for a night. Over most of them I pass in silence. I accepted their hospitality as a Russian emigrant who was being searched for by the Bolsheviks, a circumstance which in itself was a recommendation. But if I felt I could trust people I did not hesitate to reveal my nationality, my reception then being more cordial still. I often reflected with satisfaction that my mode of living resembled that of many revolutionists, not only during the reign of Tsarism, but also under the present régime. People of every shade of opinion from Monarchist to Socialist-Revolutionary dodged and evaded the police agents of the Extraordinary Commission, endeavouring either to flee from the country or to settle down unobserved under new names in new positions.
One of my incidental hosts whom I particularly remember, a friend of the Journalist and a school inspector by profession, was full of enterprise and enthusiasm for a scheme he propounded for including gardening and such things in the regular school curriculum of his circuit. His plans were still regarded with some mistrust by those in power, for his political prejudices were known, but he none the less had hope that the Communists would allow him to introduce his innovations, which I believe he eventually did successfully.
The Journalist was promoted to the position of dieloproizvoditel of his department, a post giving him a negligible rise of salary, but in which practically all official papers passed through his hands. At his own initiative he used to abstract papers he thought would be of interest to me, restoring them before their absence could be discovered. Some of the things he showed me were illuminating, others useless. But good, bad, or indifferent, he always produced them with a sly look and with his finger at the side of his nose, as if the information they contained must be of the utmost consequence.
I persuaded him to sell off some of his books as a subsidiary means of subsistence, and we called a Jew in, who haggled long and hard. The Journalist was loth to do this, but I refused ever to give him more than the cost of his fuel, over which also I exerted a control of Bolshevist severity. He had no conception whatever of relative values, and attached though he was to me I thought I sometimes detected in his eye a look which said with unspeakable contempt: “You miserly Englishman!”
I was unfortunate in losing Maria as a regular companion and friend. She returned to Marsh’s country farm in the hope of saving at least something from destruction, and visited town but rarely. In her place there came to live at the empty flat “No. 5” the younger of the two stable-boys, a dull but decent youth who had not joined the looters. This boy did his best no doubt to keep things in order, but tidiness and cleanliness were not his peculiar weaknesses. He could not understand why glasses or spoons should be washed, or why even in an untenanted flat tables and chairs should occasionally be dusted. Once, the tea he had made me tasting unusually acrid, I went into the kitchen to investigate the tea-pot. On removing the lid I found it to be half full of dead beetles.