She showed her hands, coarsened and begrimed, like a gipsy’s.
Then she had been arrested for the crime of private trading, and imprisoned for six weeks. All that time she had thought only of Katia, left alone with the brutal soldier-boys. But God and His angels had guarded the child. Two months after coming out of prison her husband was liberated, without explanation or excuse. Just pushed out of prison with the words, “You can go, tavarish!” That was happiness beyond words, to be together again, in spite of poverty and starvation and coarse toil.
“We have suffered less than others,” said the lady. “We have been lucky. My friends have been worse treated by the cut-throats and robbers who rule our unhappy country.”
Her husband whispered to her.
“Hush, my dear. For the love of God—”
A look of terror came into his eyes, because two young men came into the restaurant and sat down at a table near the counter. The lady became as white as death for a moment, lest they had overheard her words. But they called for plates of Bortsch and talked together in low voices, paying no heed to those who served them. They were unshaven and dirty, with long over-coats and top boots, caked in mud, and the Red Star of the Soviet Republic in their caps showed them to be officials of some kind.
There was no more conversation from the lady. She went into a little back kitchen. Her husband, once painter to the Imperial Court, peeled more potatoes. Katia added up some figures on a slate, glancing over at Bertram with a little smile about her lips and in her timid eyes.
There seemed to be no sense of freedom, no respite from fear in Soviet Russia. Those women in the market place had been scared when he approached them. This little family dared not talk a word before unknown men of their own city.
LII
“I’m off to Petrograd for a couple of days,” said Christy one night in the Guest House. “You’d better come while you’re waiting for a train to the Volga district. I’ve fixed it with Weinstein. Here’s your pass.”