第 12 页

'Looking at that suit I'd say you couldn't afford it, boy!' Wladek could tell from the man's voice that he hoped he could. 'I would want seventy-five rublm'

'I'll give you forty,' said Wladek.

'Sixty,' said the gambler.

'Fifty,'said Wladek.

'No. Sixty is the least I'd let it go for; it cost over a hundred,' said the gambler.

'A long time ago,' said Wladek, as he considered the implications of taking extra money from inside the lining of his coat in order to secure the full amount needed. He decided against doing -,o as it would only draw further attention to himself; he would have to wait for another opportunity. Wladek was not willing to show he could not afford the coat, and he touched the collar of the garment and said, with considerable disdain, 'You paid too much for it, my friend; fifty rubles, not a kopeck more.' Wladek rose as if to leave.

'Wait, wait,' said the gambler. 'I'll let you have it for fifty.'

Wladek took the fifty rubles out of his pocket and the gambler took off his coat and exchanged it for the grimy red note. The coat was far too big for Wladek, nearly touching the ground, but it was exactly what he needed to cover his conspicuous suit. For a few moments, he watched the gambler, back in the game, once again losing. From his new tutor he had learned two things : never to gamble unless the odds are tipped in your favour by superior knowledge or skill, and always to be willing to walk away from a deal when you have reached your limit.

Wladek left the carriage, feeling a little safer under his new-old coat.

He started to examine the layout of the train with a little more confidence. The carriages seemed to be in two classes; general ones where passengers stood or sat on the wooden boards and special ones where they could sit on upholstered seats. Wladek found that all the carriages were packed, with but one exception, a sitting carriage with a solitary woman in it. She was middle-aged, as far as Wladek could tell, and dressed a little more smartly with a little more flesh on her bones than most of the other passengers on the train. She wore a dark blue dress and a scarf over her head. She smiled at Wladek as he stood staring at her, and this gesture gave him the confidence to enter the carriage.

'May I sit down?'

'Please do,' said the woman, looking at him carefully.

Wladek did not speak again, but studied the woman and the contents of the carriage. She had a sallow skin covered with tired lines, a little overweight - the little bit you could be on Russian food. Her short black hair and brown eyes suggested that she once might have been quite attractive. She had two large cloth bags on the rack and a small valise by her side. Despite the danger of his position Wladek was suddenly aware of feeling clesperately tired. He was wondering if he dared to sleep when the woman spoke.

'Where are you travelling?'

The question took Wladek by surprise and he tried to think quickly.

'Moscow,' he said, holding his breath.

'So am I,'she replied.

Wladek was already regretting the isolation of the carriage and the information he had given. Don't talk to anyone, the doctor had warned him; remember, trust nobody.

To his relief the woman asked no more questions. As he began to regain his lost confidence, the ticket collector arrived. Wladek started to sweat, despite the temperature being minus twenty degrees. The collector took the woman's ticket, tore it, gave it back to her, and then turned to Wladek.

'Ticket, comrade,' was all he said in a slow, monotonous tone.

Wladek was speechless, and started thumbing around in his coat pocket.

'He's my son,' said the woman firmly.

The ticket collector looked back at the woman, once more at Wladek, and then he bowed to the woman and left the carriage without another word.

Wladek stared at her. 'Thank you,' he breathed, not quite sure what else he could say.

'I watched you come from under the prisoners' train,' the woman remarked quietly. Wladek felt sick. 'But I shall not give you away. I have a young cousin in one of those terrible camps, and all of us fear that one day we might end up there. What do you have on under your coat?'

Wladek weighed the relative merits of dashing out of the carriage and unfastening his coat. If he dashed out of the carriage there was no escape. He unfastened his coat. 'Not as bad as I had feared,' she said. 'What did you do with your prison uniform?'

'Threw it out of the window.'

'Let's hope they don't find it before you reach Moscow!

Wladek said nothing.

'Do you have anywhere to stay in Moscow?'

He thought again of the doctor's advice to trust nobody, but he had to trust her.

'I have nowhere to go.'

'Then you can stay with me until you find somewhere to live. My husband,' she explained, 'is the station master in Moscow, and this carriage is for government officials only. If you ever make that mistake again, you will be taking the train back to Irkutsk.'

Wladek swallowed. 'Should I leave now?'

'No, not now that the ticket collector has seen you. You will be safe with me for the time being. Do you have any identity papers?'

'No. What are they?'

'Since the Revolution every Russian citizen must have identity papers to show who he is, where he lives and where he works, otherwise he ends up in jail until he can produce them, and as he can never produce them once in jail, he stays there for ever,' she added matter of factly. 'You will have to stick by me once we reach Moscow, and be sure you don't open your mouth.'

'You are being very kind to me,' said Wladek suspiciously.

'Now the Tsar is dead, none of us is safe. I was lucky to be married to the right man,' she added, 'but there is not a citizen in Russia, including government officials, who does not live in constant fear of arrest and the camps. What is your name?'

'Wladek.'

'Good, now you sleep, Wladek, because you look exhausted, the journey is long and you are not safe yet!

Wladek slept.

When he woke, several hours had passed, and it was now dark outside. He stared at his protectress, and she smiled. Wladek returned her smile, praying that she could be trusted not to tell the officials who he was - or had she already done so? She produced some food from one of her bundles and Wladek ate the offering silently. When they reached the next station, nearly all the passengers got out, some of them permanently, but most to seek what little refreshment was available or to stretch their stiff limbs.

The middle-aged woman rose, looked at Wladek. 'Follow me,' she said.

He stood up and followed her on to the platform. Was he about to be given up? She put out her hand, and he took it as any thirteen-year-old child accompanying his mother would do. She walked towards a lavatory marked for women only. Wladek hesitated. She insisted, and once inside she told Wladek to take off his clothes. He obeyed her unquestioningly as he hadn't anyone since the death of the Baron. While he undressed she turned on the solitary tap, which with reluctance yielded a trickle of cold brownish water. She was disgusted. But to Wladek, it was a vast improvement on the camp water.

The woman started to bathe his wounds with a wet rag and attempted hopelessly to wash him. She winced when she saw the scar on his leg. Wladek didn't murmur from the pain that came with each touch, gentle as shee ttied to be.

'When we get you home, I'll make a better job of those wounds,' she said, 'but that will have to do for now.'

Then she saw the silver band, studied the inscription and looked carefully at Wladek. 'Is that yours?' she asked. 'Who did you steal it from?'

Wladek looked offended. 'I didn't steal it. My father gave it to me before he died.'

She stared at him again, and a different look came into her eyes. Was it fear or respect? She bowed her head. 'Be careful, Wladek, men would kill for such a valuable prize.'

He nodded his agreement and started to dress quickly. They returned to their carriage. A delay of an hour at a station was not unusual and when the train started lurching forward, Wladek was glad to feel the wheels clattering underneath him again. The train took twelve and a half days to reach Moscow. Whenever a new ticket collector appeared, they went through the same routine, Wladek unconvincingly trying to look innocent and young. The woman a convincing mother. The ticket collectors always bowed respectfully to the middle-aged lady, and Wladek began to think that station masters must be very important in Russia.

By the time they completed the one-thousand-mile journey -to Moscow, Wladek had put his trust completely in the middle-aged lady and was looking forward to seeing her house. It was early afternoon when the train came to its final halt and despite everything Wladek had been through, he had never visited a big city, let alone the capital of all the Russias. He wai terrified, once again tasting the fear of the unknown. So many people all rushing around in different directions. The middle-aged lady sensed his apprehension.

'Follow me, do not speak, and whatever you do don't take your cap off.' Wladek took her bags down from the rack, pulled his cap over his head - now covered in a black stubble - down to his cars and followed her out on to the platform. A throng of people at the barrier were waiting to go through a tiny exit, which caused a holdup as everyone had to show their identification papers to the guard. As they approached the barrier, Wladek could hear his heart beating like a soldier's drurn, but when their turn came the fear was over in a moment. The guard only glanced at the woman's documents.

'Comrade,' be said, and saluted. He looked at Wladek.

'My son,' she explained.

'Of course, comrade.' He saluted again.

Wladek was in Moscow.

Despite the trust he had placed in his new-found companion, his first instinct was to run but as one hundred and fifty rubles was hardly enough to live on, he decided for the time being to stay put. He could always run at some later time. A horse and cart was waiting at the station and took the woman and her new son home. The station master was not there when they arrived, so the woman immediately set about making up the spare bed for Wladek. Then she poured water, heated on a stove, into a large tin tub and told him to get in. It was the first bath he had had in over four years, unless he counted the dip in the stream. She heated some more water and reintroduced him to soap, scrubbing his back, the only part of his body with unbroken skin. The water began to change colour and after twenty minutes, it was black. Once Wladek was dry, the woman put some ointment on his arms and legs, and bandaged the parts of his body that looked particularly fierce. She stared at his one nipple. He dressed quickly and then joined her in the kitchen. She had already prepared a bowl of hot soup and some beans. Wladek ate the veritable feast hungrily.

Neither of them spoke. When he had finished the meal, she suggested that it might be wise for him to go to bed and rest.

'I do not want my husband to see you before I have told him why you are here,' she explained. 'Would you like to stay with us, Wladek, if my husband agrees?'

Wladek nodded thankfully.

'Then off you go to bed,' she said.

Wladek obeyed and prayed that her husband would allow him to live with them. He undressed slowly and climbed on to the bed. He was too clean, the sheets were too clean, the mattress was too soft, and he threw the pillow on the floor, but he was so tired that he slept despite the comfort of the bed. He was woken from his deep sleep some hours later by the sound of raised voices coming from the kitchen. He could not tell how long he had slept. It was already dark outside as he crept off the bed, walked to the door, eased it open and listened to the conversation taking place in the kitchen below.

'You stupid wornan.' Wladek heard a piping voice. 'Do you not understand what would have happened if you had been caught? It would have been you who would have been sent to the camps.'

'But if you had seen him, Piotr, like a hunted animal.'

'So you decided to turn us into hunted animals,' said the male voice- 'Has anyone else seen him?'

'No,' said the woman, 'I don't think so.'

'Thank God for that. He must go immediately before anyone knows he's here, it's our only hope.'

'But go where, Piotr ? He is lost, and has no one,' Wladek's protectress pleaded. 'And I have always wanted a son.'

'I do not care what you want or where he goes, he is not our responsibility and we must be quickly rid of him.'

'But Piotr, I think he is royal, I think his father was a Baron. He wears a silver band around his wrist and inscribed on it are the words . . .'

'That only makes it worse. You know what our new leaders have decreed. No tsars, no royalty, no privileges. We would not even have to bother to go to the camp, the authorities would just shoot us.'

'We have always wanted a son, Piotr. Can we not take this one risk in our lives?'

'With your life, perhaps, but not mine. I say he must go and go now.'

Wladek did not need to listen to any more of their conversation. Deciding that the only way he could help his benefactress would be to disappear without trace into the night, he dressed quickly and stared at the slept-in bed, hoping it would not be four more years before he saw another one. He was unlatching the window when the door was flung open and into the room came the station master, a tiny man, no taller than Wladek, with a large stomach and an almost bald head covered in long strands of grey hair. He wore rimless spectacles, which had produced little red semicircles under each eye. The man carried a paraffin lamp.

He stood, staring at Wladek. Wladek stared defiantly back.

'Come downstairs,' he commanded.

Wladek followed him reluctantly to the kitchen. The woman was sitting at the table crying.

'Now listen, boy,' he said.

'His name is Wladek,' the woman interjected.

'Now listen, boy.' he repeated. 'You are trouble, and I want you out of here and as far away as possible. I'll tell you what I am going to do to help you.'