Kenneth’s death would make no difference, except to Joyce. No difference to Bertram. He had left Joyce forever. She had finished with him, and he with her. Perhaps she would go back to Holme Ottery for a time, until the American took possession. What did it matter where she went? He must cut her out of his mind. It was only a year’s habit, and weak sentiment, that made him think of her so much, with a dull ache of pain. . . . How long to Moscow, on this abominable journey? Damn those bugs!
XLIX
Moscow—and old Christy! Bertram saw him on the platform amidst a group of Red soldiers, bearded porters, and droschke drivers in fur caps and long blue coats. He was wearing the same old grey suit in which Bertram had last seen him in London, with the addition of a sheepskin waistcoat. His lean, ugly face was twisted into a humorous smile as he saw Bertram.
“Welcome to our city!”
“God in Heaven!” said Bertram. “This is a grand meeting.”
For some reason, inexplicable to himself, the sight of Christy was like finding a solid raft after shipwreck.
“Follow me, and don’t rub shoulders with your fellow men,” said Christy.
He led the way from the platform into the station hall. It was a great place with white-washed walls and filled with such a stench of human filth that Bertram felt like vomiting. The great floor space was entirely covered with the heaped-up bodies of men, women, and children. They lay piled up on sacks and bags, and across each other’s legs and arms, in a tangled mass of sheepskins, rags, and mangy fur, all brown with mud and dirt as though they had been dipped in the slime of Flanders, as Bertram had known it in war-time winters. It was nightfall, and they were settling down to sleep, restlessly, so that there was a heaving of bodies, and a tossing of arms. Some slept with stertorous breathing. Children wailed. Girls who were almost women lay in the arms of bearded men. One man lay dead among the living, as Bertram saw at a glance, not unfamiliar with death. His head was thrown back on a bit of sacking, showing a thin, turkey-like neck with loose wrinkled skin. His eyes were wide open and glazed.
“What’s all this?” asked Bertram.
“Refugees from famine,” said Christy. “The end of the journey. To-morrow they go into camp. Apart from typhus, they’re all right now.”