Alias uncle hugo, p.13
Alias Uncle Hugo, page 13
Filline seemed to think that he had been talking rather too much. “Probably nothing at all. You know what provincial towns are. Everybody is everybody else’s cousin and whenever some silly rumour gets started they all run together and whisper violently in corners.”
“Yes, but surely they whisper about something.”
Filline shrugged his shoulders and emptied his glass, which Hambledon promptly refilled.
“There is always a chatterbox or two, Comrade Filline. Take one of them out to dinner and make him drunk.”
“I did. Three of them, separately. They knew nothing, of that I am sure.”
“Make love to the ladies.”
“That is the most suspicious symptom of all, to my mind. I am no longer allowed to visit the ladies.”
“Shattering,” said Tommy, and Filline laughed.
“Very boring, anyway,” he said, and seemed about to embark upon anecdote but Hambledon cut in first.
“But surely you know whether it’s something they’re doing themselves or something they are afraid will happen to them?”
“I think the latter,” said Filline slowly. “People don’t try to get away if they’re engaged in something important.”
“Such as a little local revolution, for example?”
“Have you heard anything, Comrade?” asked Filline bluntly.
“Not a word,” said Hambledon. “There’s only one thing I have noticed, and that’s so slight that I may be imagining it all. I did think that people are not now so willing to talk to me as they were when I first came. It may be only my novelty wearing off, of course.”
“What is worrying me,” began Filline, upon whom the good Crimean wine was beginning to take effect, “I’m worried.”
Hambledon refilled the Russian’s glass.
“In what way? Have a cigarette.”
“Thanks. What I want to know is, do I report it or do I not report it? Eh?”
“I should say that that depended entirely upon whether you have anything definite to report, doesn’t it? If you send in a lot of rather vague stories and there’s nothing behind it all—”
“I shall lose my job an’ get shent to Shiberia.”
“That seems rather drastic,” said Hambledon.
“Ah. You do not know what happened in Moscow. Very—very tricky place, Moscow,” said Filline, screwing up his classic nose in a most unexpected manner.
“I expect so. Well, suppose something happens and you haven’t reported all this?”
“I get shent to Shiberia.”
“Well, if you’re going to be sent to Siberia anyway, why not have an easy time while you can?” said Tommy, who certainly did not want hordes of official investigators in Poltava while he was there.
“Comrade Britz, you are quite right. Are you not?”
“I don’t suppose there’s anything in it, really.”
“Comrade Britz, you are very wise.”
“Splendid,” said Hambledon, and soon thereafter speeded the parting guest. Filline sober and on his best behaviour was a bore, but Filline drunk and becoming confidential was a shocking bore. Hambledon had found out what he wanted to know: Filline knew nothing and had not reported any of the symptoms.
Early next morning Hambledon rang up the Director of Studies at Kaspar’s school and asked, as he always did, for permission to take the boy out that afternoon.
“I am sorry, Comrade Britz. I’m afraid it is impossible this afternoon.” The Director’s voice sounded tired and strained.
“Oh. That’s a pity. May I ask why, Comrade Director?”
“There has been a—er—a certain unfortunate and distressing occurrence here, Comrade Britz, and the police have ordered that none of the boys are to be allowed out today. They are, in fact, confined to their classrooms.”
The police! What the hell had Kaspar—
“Is my wretched brat involved in it, whatever it is?”
“Let me reassure you, Comrade Britz. There is no evidence whatever to suggest that your nephew had the faintest connection with the affair.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” said Hambledon.
“I am sure you are. If I may say so without offence, Comrade Britz, your sigh of relief was fully audible at this end of the wire.”
Hambledon laughed, but the Director did not.
“I am sorry,” said Tommy sympathetically, “that you have been involved in any sort of trouble.”
“Thank you. Will you ring again tomorrow morning? Perhaps the restrictions may be lifted by then. I hope so. Goodbye.”
“Now what the plague,” said Hambledon, replacing the receiver, “is all that about? Police, indeed.”
He took up his hat, for he had spoken from his own rooms before going out, and departed for the factory. It was immediately plain that something serious had happened, for all Poltava’s town police seemed to be on duty at once. Hambledon did not go through the town on his way to the factory but he had to cross the West Bridge, an uninspired iron structure, and pass along a few hundred yards of unimportant streets tailing off into lanes such as are found upon the outskirts of every country town. There were a couple of policemen at each end of the West Bridge, stopping everyone, examining their papers and asking them, it seemed, one question. All the passers-by replied with a shake of their heads and were then allowed to go on. Hambledon came up to the bridge in his turn.
“Your papers, please, Comrade.”
“Certainly, Comrade.” He handed them over to be cursorily glanced at and returned.
“Now, Comrade, have you seen five boys in the uniform of the Poltava State Gymnasium anywhere about this morning?”
“No. No, I certainly haven’t.”
“Thank you. Pass on, please.”
The school uniform, which was of a rather violent shade of blue, consisted of a loose blouse held in at the waist with a leather belt, knickers, stockings and rather low boots. It was topped off with a flat blue cap with a shiny black peak. Kaspar’s opinion of it was as nearly obscene as his limited vocabulary allowed; he said, and rightly, that it made him look like a baggage porter. It was quite obvious that there had been a breakout from the school but that, unlike Kaspar and his three fellows, these boys had not returned before the morning light. In fact, not at all.
“Poor little beasts,” said Hambledon to himself, “what will happen to them when they’re caught?”
The police were systematically searching the houses in the street as Hambledon passed along. It was a poor district, the wooden weather-board houses were in bad repair, their roofs patched and panes missing from the small windows. They stood a little back from the street with dusty patches of ground in front which should have been gardens; sagging lengths of wire between uneven posts took the place of fences. The police procedure was simple; house by house they ordered the inhabitants out upon the road in all stages of disarray, age, sickness or infancy, searched the house and ordered the people back. They were not taking anybody’s word for it that they were not harbouring truants. Hambledon had to go into the road to pass one of these little groups and he noticed that they were all silent. No complaining, no jibes, not even backchat. No “Turning into boy-catchers? Try a butterfly net,” no helpful suggestions about looking for footprints or borrowing old so-and-so’s ferrets. They just stood there looking frightened.
“I think your police are wonderful,” murmured Tommy sarcastically, and went his way.
12
hambledon was allowed to take out Kaspar on the afternoon of the following day and Kaspar himself suggested that they might go for a nice long walk if Uncle Hugo did not mind. “I haven’t had any exercise since the day before yesterday,” he said. “One gets sort of stodged, doesn’t one?”
“One does,” said Hambledon, and set a good pace along one of the long straight roads leading out of Poltava. There were flat fields on either hand stretching for miles towards the horizon with neither hedge nor fence to divide them. Indeed, why should they be divided since they were no longer owned by different people? Only the changing colours of various crops chequered the countryside and that only at long intervals, for this was Collectivized Farming at its most collective. It is said that there are fields in the Ukraine so vast that they are measurable in miles, not acres; a tractor man starting to plough a furrow in the morning will finish the same furrow that night twenty miles away. Hambledon remarked that whatever might be said in favour of collectivized farming it made the countryside most deplorably dull.
“I think the whole place is,” said Kaspar. Hambledon looked at him with raised eyebrows and he amended his remark. “Not dull in the sense of nothing happening, but depressing. Like a prison.” He waved an explanatory hand at the wide fields. “Uniformity, uniformity,” he said.
Hambledon reminded himself that Kaspar had spent the whole of his life so far being tutored by a professor of English literature. “By the way,” he said suddenly, “how many languages can you speak?”
“German, of course. English, French and enough Russian to scramble along in. I’m not getting on very fast with Russian,” he added. it is one thing but writing and reading it is quite another.”
“It’s their awful alphabet,” began Hambledon and realized at once by the glance Kaspar threw him that he was missing something. He laughed and asked what it was.
“Obvious. So convenient. If you’ve put something wrong in an exercise you can always say that wasn’t what you meant at all. It’s just an error in expression.” His face clouded. “I don’t mind real lessons about mathematics or geography or languages, but oh, their dreary politics. That weary Lenin, that foul Communist ideology, that filthy list of deviationist Trotskyism and all the other minor prophets. Uncle Hugo, is it fair to have to cram up all that muck at my age? It isn’t fair, is it? We had a long lecture this morning on the evils of Menshevism. Hang Menshevism!”
“I don’t even know what it is,” admitted Tommy.
“Lucky you, that’s all.”
“Must you listen?”
“In order to write an essay about it,” nodded Kaspar.
“Oh lor’. Oh dear. Do you have much of this sort of thing?”
“At least an hour every day and two and a half on Sundays.”
Hambledon contemplated with awe the abysses of boredom laid open before him. “You aren’t having too easy a life, are you, Kaspar?”
Kaspar’s face suddenly took on the prematurely adult look which had so startled Hambledon at their first meeting. “I haven’t been taught to expect it. Kings don’t have easy lives.” Then his expression changed to impishness. “Bombs,” he said dramatically, “pistols and daggers, yes. An occupational risk as you might say. But I never expected anybody would set out to bore me to death!”
“About what happened yesterday morning,” said Tommy. “Would you rather not talk about whatever it was?”
Kaspar gave a little skip. “Good. I’ve won! I thought you’d simply have to bring up the subject if I kept off it for long enough.”
“Five boys broke out, didn’t they? That’s all I’ve heard about it. The Director told me that there was no evidence to suggest that you knew anything about it.”
“Nice old boy, the Director.”
“Yes, isn’t he?”
“Did you believe him?” asked Kaspar, walking backwards in front of Hambledon in order to watch his face.
“It might have been true. If they were in a quite different section or class or whatever you’re divided into, you might not even know them by sight. It’s a big school.”
“You’re quite right, Uncle Hugo. If one of them hadn’t been Leonhard Hoffenburg from Bereghark I shouldn’t have known anything about it. The other four were Greeks, they were stolen away from their homes when they were quite kids and brought up in Rumania. They’re big boys now, like Hoffenburg, all sixteen or so, but they haven’t forgotten Greece.”
“I don’t know much about it personally,” said Hambledon, “but I understand that Greece is not a country one forgets.”
Kaspar nodded. “I haven’t been there myself,” he said, “but Hoffenburg’s people lived there for years, so he could speak the language. That’s how he came to pal up with them. When they made plans to get out they offered to take him too, they said they’d look after him when they got home.”
“When,” said Tommy. “I think the outlook is pretty poor.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Uncle Hugo. They’re well away now. Slow but sure, you know. You see, it all happened like this—”
The six boys from Bereghark were not encouraged to cling together at the school, they were in different classrooms and dormitories, but they naturally met in the gardens and at meetings if not forcibly parted. Leonhard Hoffenburg was the eldest and Kaspar the youngest, but there was that about Kaspar which overpassed mere differences in age.
Hoffenburg loitered near Kaspar, who was setting out seedling lettuces for the good of his soul—he loathed manual labour—and asked in an audible voice if Kaspar had done with the line.
“In a minute, Comrade. When I’ve got to the end.”
“All right,” said Hoffenburg, and waited till some adjacent fellow gardeners had moved beyond earshot. “Listen, Groenwald,” he said, dropping his voice, “I and those four Greek fellows are making a bolt for it tonight.”
“You’re mad,” said Kaspar briefly.
“Not mad at all. You know those barges tied up at the factory wharf opposite? They’re loading machinery for the Crimea. Those big cases.”
“I’ve seen them.”
“We’ll open one of the cases, drop the junk in the river and get inside. We’ll take some cord and put it through knotholes or something in the side of the crate we’ve opened so that we can pull it shut from the inside.”
“What are the crew going to be doing all that time?”
“Getting drunk ashore. The porter told me, one of them is courting his sister and he’s getting leave tonight to attend the party.”
“But five of you can’t live in a packing case all the way to—”
“Certainly not. When we’re well away we come out.”
“But they’ll only give you up.”
“Oh no, they won’t. There’s only two men on the barge and there’s five of us, all armed.”
Kaspar’s eyes rounded. “What with?”
“Dinner knives, ground sharp on both edges. One of the Greeks did them yesterday on the grindstone when he was supposed to be sharpening shears. It’s only to get over the wall here and we’ll manage. Mustn’t talk any more, they’re beginning to look. Let me help you finish this row.”
Kaspar handed him some spare lettuces and said: “No need to get over the wall. I’ll show you. You must mind the night watchman too. He carries a light, you know.”
“I know that. We can dodge him. Do you mean there’s a way out?”
Kaspar nodded. “Quick, there’s somebody coming. What time? Hour after lights out—right—meet you by the potting shed—thank you very much, Comrade Hoffenburg, you have helped me a lot. Shall I roll up the line for you?”
The rest of the day dragged. Evening prep, supper, a talk on Soviet factory organization and bed. Lights out. The footsteps of Authority walking up and down the passages to ensure that the boys were settling down; outside the uncurtained window the darkness gathered slowly.
“Kaspar!”
Kaspar moved sluggishly.
“What is it, Dmitri?”
“Going out tonight?”
“No. Too tired. All that gardening.” He yawned audibly.
“So’m I,” said the voice from Nikolai’s bed. “Shut up and go to sleep, Dmitri.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“There’s some water on the shelf.”
“I want an apple.”
“Well, you can’t have one,” said Kaspar indignantly. “Even if we were going out we couldn’t start for another hour yet. There’s still people about. Have a drink and go to sleep.”
Dmitri obeyed and presently deep breathing told Kaspar that the other three were asleep. He slipped out of bed and dressed in careful silence. All very well to say an hour after lights out, how was one to know when an hour had passed? He watched from the window and drew back as a lantern came wavering along the path outside, the night watchman on his rounds. The light stopped and there was a muffled metallic rattle. Kaspar ventured a peep through the window and then a horrified stare. The night watchman had upended a bucket and was sitting on it apparently removing his boots.
At least, he took one off, shook it upside down and put his hand inside as Kaspar could see by the light of the small lantern. The night watchman paused for a long moment, took his knife from his pocket and began to work away at a nail which had come through the sole of his boot. Kaspar, biting his fingers with impatience, realized that of course this was fine for the fellows getting out but what must they think of him, he was late, they would be waiting—
The night watchman shut up his knife, put it back in his pocket and resumed his boot. He sat still for a little longer enjoying the comfort of having no nail pricking him and rose slowly to his feet, for he was elderly and rheumatic. He put the pail back against the wall and walked away, his lantern swinging at his knee. He turned a corner and in an instant Kaspar was out and after him. The trouble was that he was walking towards the potting shed. Kaspar, who had eyes like a cat in the darkness, made a detour to get ahead of him but there was not enough time. He came from behind the shed to see the lantern standing on the ground; within its weak circle of light the watchman was lying face downwards upon the earth and his body was surrounded by legs. Upright legs, with boys standing upon them in the ordinary way; it was only the macabre lighting which had startled him for a moment. “Hoffenburg!” he whispered. “What—”
Somebody moved like a flash, the lantern seemed to leap at him with a shining blade at its side.
“All right,” said Hoffenburg. “Hide that light—”
“What have you done? You’ve killed him.”
“Sh—sh,” whispered Hoffenburg and one of the Greeks said something in a low voice and laughed softly.
