He gave her a bundle of paper money, and she stared at it with dazed eyes, and gave a little cry, not of joy, but of anguish. Perhaps this charity from a stranger only sharpened her sense of misery, made more poignant her knowledge of inevitable death.
Bertram raised his hat, and moved away, joining Christy again.
“It’s useless, old man,” said Christy. “I began like that. But I’ve chucked it up. How much did you give her?”
“Five hundred thousand roubles. Surely that will help her a little?”
Christy shrugged his shoulders, and laughed.
“In this city one pays a hundred and twenty thousand roubles for a pound of tea. Eighty thousand roubles for a pound of bread. Sixty thousand roubles for ten cigarettes. What can you and I do in private charity? It’s merely pandering to one’s own sentiment.”
“One can’t leave a woman like that without giving her something. One’s coat, if one has nothing else.”
“Useless, Major. Useless. There are millions like her, as she said. We can do better than that. Our job is to tell the truth about the agony of these people, so that the outside world may help in a big way. Poke up the conscience of all our Pharisees who pass by on the other side, while Russia lies bleeding in the ditch.”
He took Bertram to a camp for refugees from the famine districts of the Volga.
“You saw some of these on their way in the cattle-truck trains. This is the end of the journey for some of them. I’m told it’s worth seeing.”