“No.”
“I’ll lend you some. Otherwise you’ll be eaten alive.”
But for Cherry, Bertram would have reached Moscow even more of a wreck than he did. In spite of the powder, he was attacked by many different species of insect as he lay on an upper plank, with Cherry beneath. He saw them crawling in legions up the wooden walls. They ambushed him beneath his blanket, sent out scouts and advance guards and then attacked in mass formation. The nights were torture. In the day time the enemy retired to their hiding places.
The train was crowded with Russian and Lettish couriers, all in charge of heavy packing-cases and sacks. Next to them, four to a carriage, was a contingent of young Americans, going out as clerks to the headquarters staff of the A. R. A., in Moscow. Certain mysterious young men who talked to each other in low voices, were pointed out by Cherry as Russian Soviet officials belonging to the secret police of the Extraordinary Commission, known as “the Cheka,” because each letter of that dreaded word formed the initial of the full Russian title for this organisation.
There was no heat in the train, and it was cold after crossing the Russian frontier in the rainy season of early autumn.
Bertram’s cheese and biscuits, which he had bought in Riga, became utterly distasteful to him after two days, and he yielded to Cherry’s insistent invitation to share his bully beef, pork and beans, tinned butter, and fresh bread. It was Cherry, also, who taught him how to get the one source of comfort available on Russian journeys—a plentiful supply of hot water at every wayside station. The pass-word was “kipyitok,” and this was yelled by Cherry to the provodnik, or guard, of the train, who filled the passengers’ kettles so that they could make tea in their carriages.
The Russian frontier was at a place called Sebesh, the other side of a long stretch of flat, barren, abandoned country which seemed to be a kind of No-Man’s Land. The train was immediately boarded by a number of hairy men in sheepskin coats and fur caps, accompanied by two soldiers of the Red Army. Bertram felt a thrill at his first sight of Bolsheviks and Red Soldiers. His mind went back to the atrocity tales of Countess Lydia and her sister, and other refugees from the Russian Terror. These men who pushed their way down the corridor were agents of that terrible new social code and faith which had declared war upon all civilisation based upon individualism and private property, and proclaimed Communism as the new gospel which mankind must accept, whether they liked it or not. Those soldiers represented the power by which that code was enforced upon one hundred and fifty million people. It was their Army which had defeated Koltchak, Denikin, Judenitch, Wrangel, and all the counter-revolutionary forces—financed, armed and equipped by the Allied Powers—which had invaded Russia, laid great districts in ruin and flame, hanged many peasants to the branches of trees, and retreated in disorderly masses from the relentless pursuit of “the Reds.”
The two soldiers escorting the hairy Bolsheviks were not formidable in appearance. They were both about eighteen, with puffy, pale faces, and a hang-dog, under-fed look. They wore long grey overcoats, reaching to their heels, and curious cloth caps, shaped like Assyrian helmets, with stiff peaks behind, and in front the Red Star, five-pointed, of the Soviet Republic.
“See how these Tavarishes love me!” said Cherry.
Certainly the small group of Bolshevik officials who came to examine passports and baggage, greeted Cherry with a kind of forced amusement, in which, as it seemed to Bertram, there was a hint of fear. Perhaps it was due to the vice-like grip with which he insisted upon shaking hands with them; and the bear-like way in which he thumped them on the back.