7. AGROSS THE CASPIAN SEA

ON reaching Tashkent in the evening I was told that our express would go no farther and we must change trains. The enormous square in front of the station was packed with thousands of men, women, and children, standing, sitting on their belongings, or milling about among stuffed burlap bags, huge bundles, and rickety trunks. They had been brought here on cattle trains from faraway European Russia arid put off with no idea when or where they would go next. The station itself was empty, the tall windows of its spacious waiting rooms casting a bright light on the wet and shivering crowd.

I learned that I could not get the ticket to continue my journey until the next morning, and that to get it I would have to present, besides the other documents, a certificate that I had bathed in a public bath and that my clothes had been disinfected in Tashkent. I also learned that no one was allowed inside the station because of the expected arrival of an important official.

Since the prospect of sleeping on the square did not appeal to me, I checked my two bags and set out to find a room. The city was dark and gloomy. Although the front was far away all the street lights were out; only a small blue-tinted electric bulb flickered feebly here and there. I made several attempts to secure a room at one of the near-by hotels, but the complacent clerks answered my questions as though I had just escaped from a lunatic asylum, or else they didn’t answer at all but turned their broad backs on me. As I wandered farther into the town, pondering my problems, a brilliant idea occurred to me. After a few inquiries and a few more darkened streets I found what I was looking for: a large door with the sign ‘Public Bath’.

A number of men and women sat dozing along the walls of the large entrance hall. As I entered three men accosted me so suddenly that I stepped back. They pulled at my sleeves, all talking at once.

‘Do you want a certificate?’

‘Of disinfection?’

‘Of having bathed?’

‘Are you going west?’

It took me some minutes to grasp the fact that they were professional certificate procurers. For a small sum they would go through the governmental cleansing and disinfecting process for people who did not want to risk ruining their own clothes in the disinfection chamber. Looking the certificate procurers’ clothes over carefully, I became convinced that it would be madness to risk my own: all their garments looked as if a great cow had chewed them thoroughly and for a long time.

I inquired what the friendly services of these representatives of a hitherto unheard-of profession would cost me. It was ten rubles for my suit and five for myself. That seemed fair, and I gave my name to two of them who wrote it down carefully on a piece of paper and joyfully departed to wash and be disinfected. The third one remained with me.

‘That’s all,’ I said, ‘I don’t need any duplicate certificates.’

‘I take antityphus shots for anyone who needs a certificate of immunity to typhus. They won’t let you past Ashkhabad without one. The shots are given right here. If you want one, I’ll be glad to take it for you.’

It might be useful I thought, and I had no desire for an injection myself.

‘How much?’ I asked.

‘Twenty-five rubles,’ he said. Then, seeing my face lengthen perceptibly, he added zealously, ‘But you must understand – this is an injection against typhus, it’s not just giving your clothes to be disinfected. Look, I’ll show you.’ He bared his arms and his back. They were speckled with needle pricks.

‘Yes, but you gain by all this, too,’ I said. ‘You’ve had over a hundred shots. That’s enough to make you immune from typhus for life. I’ll give you ten rubles.’

‘Twenty.’

‘Fifteen is my limit.’

‘All right,’ he agreed happily. And writing my name on a smudgy piece of paper, the typhus expert disappeared down a corridor.

I went to the ticket window, behind which a young girl was peacefully sleeping. Waking her up as gently as I could I asked her if private bathrooms were available.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘First class, three rubles an hour; second class, one and a half.’

‘Can I rent one for the whole night?’

‘For the whole night? Are you that dirty?’ she asked incredulously.

‘No, I just want to sleep there. There’s a couch in the room, isn’t there?’

‘Yes, in a first-class room. But I don’t know about letting it for the whole night. We never do that. This isn’t a hotel, citizen.’

‘But what’s the difference?’ I said. ‘I’ll pay for eight hours and everything will be in order.’

‘Are you alone?’ the girl asked with sudden suspicion. ‘Two people as a rule are not allowed in one bathroom.’

She put an emphasis on ‘as a rule’. I understood and set her mind at rest that I was alone.

But as I turned around with my eight tickets, I found that two young girls had got up from a bench while I was talking and now stood waiting.

‘Pardon me,’ one of them said in a low voice, ‘did you get a private bathroom?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just for one person?’

‘Just for one.’

‘You don’t want to get one for two?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Excuse me,’ said the girl almost in a whisper and moved back to her seat.

I thought for a moment and then went after her.

‘Do you need money very badly?’ I asked, touching her arm.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, not looking at me.

‘How much?’

‘One hundred rubles for a ticket to Novosibirsk.’

I quickly figured up how much money I had left. It seemed to be enough. Taking 100 rubles from my wallet, I handed them to the girl. She looked at me inquiringly.

‘Shall I go with you?’

‘No, thank you. I want to sleep.’

The disinfection specialist was the first to come back with a certificate. Then came the typhus pincushion, and last of all my representative at the public bath. I paid them all and went to my private bathroom where I took a good hot bath and went to sleep soundly on the soft couch.

It was barely dawn when I joined the throng which was besieging the ticket windows of the Tashkent railroad station. From all parts of the crowd there arose sighs and grunts from people who were being pushed and squeezed. After a while I felt someone’s hand making its way into one of my pockets. I turned around and saw a young man next to me. He was looking into the distance with a vacuous expression on his face.

‘Hey, friend! You’ve made a mistake. My money is in a different pocket.’

He looked at me quickly and the hand disappeared from my pocket. A few moments later there was a shout in the crowd, ‘My money’s gone! Police!’

Ploughing my way ruthlessly through the mob, I soon reached the window in spite of the clutching hands of my fellow citizens. I was too experienced to try to find the end of such a fan-shaped queue. Straining every muscle, I reached for the thick iron grill which protected the cashier from the frenzied crowd, gripped it tightly, and shoved a bunch of papers and money through it, yelling at the top of my lungs, ‘To Krasnovodsk!’

A man in N.K.V.D. uniform sitting next to the cashier took my papers and began to look through them. I held my breath. Could something be missing? But everything seemed to be in order and in five minutes I had my ticket and my papers back. The only thing withheld was my change, 50 rubles, but I had expected this. It was a wartime levy, not provided for by law, which ticket agents all over Russia were imposing on travellers.

Before I had elbowed my way out of the building a loud voice behind me shouted, ‘No more tickets! Clear out, citizens!’

I learned at the station that the train would not leave before noon, although it had been scheduled for the evening before.

Contrary to expectations, the train was not crowded, there were even empty seats, and the crowd in front of the ticket windows began to seem a figment of my imagination. There were four people in my compartment: two Red Army lieutenants, an engineer from a Moscow factory, and myself.

The lieutenants had been wounded at the front, had spent a month in the Tashkent military hospital, and were now returning to the front. The engineer had been evacuated from Moscow with the equipment from his plant, and was now on his way to look for his family who had been evacuated to Saratov by mistake. The plant equipment had been dumped along the road, because the train was confiscated by the military authorities and had to be unloaded immediately. The engineer had impressive documents from the Central Committee of the AllUnion Communist Party, and he was able to buy tickets to any destination without trouble. He also had a good deal of money.

The train was considered a fast one, although it travelled at the usual wartime speed of 10 to 15 miles an hour. The lieutenants and the engineer decided to start a poker game. I was invited to join, but I refused. A man from another compartment came in; and the game started. I lay on the top shelf and watched it from there.

The game was for fairly high stakes. Some of the pots amounted to 1,000 rubles, and most of them were taken by the lieutenants. After a while I succumbed to temptation and sat in on the game. At first I lost, but then I got a streak of luck and won so steadily that presently the others refused to play. My winnings amounted to 4,000 rubles. We all talked it over and decided to spend the money together at the first chance.

The chance came the next day. When the train was approaching Ashkhabad, the capital of the Turkmen Republic, a rumour started that it would go no farther and we would have to change there. The rumour was confirmed and we soon found ourselves going out into the square in front of the Ashkhabad station. There was a fifteen-hour wait until the next train, and we decided to explore the town and rest somewhere until it was time to go to the station again.

Our exploration for the most part consisted in buying bottles of vodka and food to go with it. Then one of the lieutenants went out on reconnaissance and came back with the information that he had found an apartment where we could stay for 1oo rubles until our train left. We set out, heavily laden with food and drink bought with my poker winnings.

The old woman and her two daughters who lived in the apartment greeted us pleasantly and quickly set a table for us. Soon an impressive battery of bottles was arrayed on it. A fire was started in the stove and the old woman began to cook supper with the food we had brought. She and her daughters were obviously very hungry, and we invited them to eat with us. One of the girls disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a friend, a pretty eighteen-year-old girl called Valya. We all sat down and the feast began.

I sat between one of the lieutenants and Valya. On the other side of Valya sat the other officer. We ate a lot but drank still more. The glass in front of me was never empty for a second. The lieutenant next to me kept filling it up. After a while I began to feel dizzy and tried to refuse to drink more; but Valya, who had been whispering in the ear of the lieutenant next to her, started persuading me to take another drink. Looking into her pretty dark blue eyes, I drank again and again until there came a moment when everything vanished and I sank into an abyss.

It was dark and quiet when I awoke. I was in bed. I began to feel my pockets with nervous movements. My wallet was gone.

What time was it? My train was leaving at 4 a.m. And my tickets? They were in the wallet! I jumped out of bed and put on the light. I checked my pockets again: no wallet, no watch. I went into the next room and turned on the light. From three beds the eyes of the old woman and her two daughters looked at me.

‘Where is everybody?’ I asked.

‘They’ve gone to the station. One of the men said he would come back and wake you in time for the train.’

‘They’ve taken my money. I’ve been robbed.’

‘Good lord! That can’t be. Maybe the officer that slept in the same bed with you, the blond one, took it along so you wouldn’t lose it. He’ll surely bring it back.’

Not at all reassured I hastened to the station. Remembering my two suitcases – the checks for them gone, too – I stopped at the baggage room, explained what had happened, described the suitcases, and asked the attendant to see if he still had them.

‘I don’t need to look,’ he said. ‘An officer came and got them about half an hour ago.’

I plunged into the crowd looking for the thieves and soon found the engineer.

‘Where are the officers?’ I cried.

‘I lost sight of them a while ago. They disappeared all of a sudden. Why?’

I told him.

‘I’ll watch for them here,’ he said, ‘and you run to the N.K.V.D. and notify them.’

The N.K.V.D. officer on night duty interrupted me as soon as I opened my mouth. ‘Who are you? Show me your papers.’

‘My papers were stolen along with everything else. That’s just what I’m trying to tell you!’

‘I know nothing about that. Till I see your papers I can’t be sure that you are not a deserter or a runaway from a concentration camp. I can’t do anything for you without your papers.’

I went back to the waiting room. Naturally there were no lieutenants there. The train came in at last. I stood watching everyone who went through the entrance to the platform but it was no use. The engineer promised to look for the thieves at the terminal station in Krasnovodsk, but this was not very comforting.

It was already morning. I went to the N.K.V.D. again, but the man on the day shift was even more suspicious of me than the night man had been. He would not even talk to me and when I kept on trying to prove my statements he yelled, ‘Shut up or I’ll throw you in jail!’

I went back to the apartment where the ill-fated party had taken place. The old lady looked at me with frightened eyes and asked about the results of my search. She advised me to go and see the city prosecutor and also to apply to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen Republic.

One of the girls handed me my silver cigarette case. ‘I found it on the floor,’ she said. ‘At least you’ve got something to sell.’

I sold the cigarette case in half an hour, at the first jeweller’s shop I came to, for 100 rubles, and went to find the prosecutor.

The prosecutor’s secretary was curt and official. ‘File a written application and the prosecutor will examine it and give your case the required action,’ he said.

I asked for a sheet of paper and wrote out my application. Then I went to the other side of the city, to the palace which housed the government. After a few hours’ wait, I was received by a secretary who made an appointment for me to see the President of the Republic the next day.

I made one more try after leaving the palace. I went to the headquarters of the city police and spent the rest of the day trying to find an official who could help me. I never found one. Everyone I spoke to looked at me with suspicion, although I was well dressed, spoke politely, and could produce witnesses that I had been robbed. Finally an old and respectable policeman gave me some good advice, ‘Better run along. I’ve heard people talking about you here. If you come again tomorrow, you’ll be arrested.’

‘But what can I do? I have a long way to go, no money, and still worse, no papers. If I travel without papers I may get sent to a concentration camp.’

‘It may be worse for you if you stay here. Remember, Ashkhabad is only 15 miles from the border and there is a special regulation here: people without documents can’t stay in the city more than a day. Take my advice and beat it.’

I decided to try my luck the next day anyway, when I would see the President of the Republic.

The President’s reception room was not in the government palace but in a small building on one of the central streets of the city. I was surprised to find only four people in the waiting room – three natives and a Russian. I could not understand why there were so few people who wanted to see the President and why I had been granted an appointment with so little trouble, without even being asked for my papers. I was about to ask the Russian about this when the door opened and an attendant called my name.

I entered a long, modestly furnished room. At the far end of it, behind a large desk, sat a little old man with an unimpressive Mongolian face. His secretary stood next to him.

The President extended his hand across the table to greet me.

‘Take a seat please. What can I do for you?’

I explained that I had been robbed and needed money and some sort of papers to get home. I promised to send the money back if it could be loaned to me.

The President listened intently, putting his hand to his ear and nodding sympathetically. When I finished he looked up at his secretary.

‘What can we do to help this unfortunate young man?’

The secretary shook his head and said, ‘We can’t do anything to help you. For documents you should apply to the police, and as for money, you’ll have to get it any way you can. The budget has not been approved yet and the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen Republic has no money for unforeseen expenses.’

The President shook his head sadly.

‘Yes, no money, no money at all. I’d be glad to help you, but we have nothing to help you with. And as for the papers, you’ll have to get them from the N.K.V.D. They know all about papers; they’ll give them to you.’

I explained that I had already been to the N.K.V.D. and to the police and that they had refused to issue me any documents at both places. I asked the President to write a short letter to the N.K.V.D., asking them to give me some papers. He shook his head again.

‘No, we don’t write anything here. I’m sorry.’ And he extended his hand to me again.

I left the reception room. It was clear to me now why so few people came to the President of the Republic with their problems.

I had to do something and do it fast. I did not dare to begin to travel again without a passport or an equivalent document. A week’s journey was still ahead of me and dozens of police check points at any one of which I could be put in jail simply and easily.

I started up the street in dismay and soon came to a handsome grey mansion separated from the street by a beautifully kept garden, surrounded by a tall iron fence with a gate and a sentry. The sign on the gate read: Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkestan.

Here is the real power, I thought, and with an air of implacable determination I asked the sentry for a pass to see the First Secretary of the Central Committee. The sentry looked at me with surprise, and I told him my story.

‘What tommyrot,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. But still he picked up the telephone and began to repeat what I had told him to someone. Hanging up the receiver, he shrugged his shoulders again and wrote out a pass for me. Then he pressed a buzzer and instructed a soldier who had appeared as if from nowhere to take me in.

I was led through endless corridors into a large, sumptuously furnished room filled with the pleasant fragrance of good brandy. Two men and two girls were seated comfortably in a couple of armchairs and a sofa.

I stopped at the door, not knowing whom to address. One of the men, sitting on the sofa, said, ‘Well, let’s have your story. I’m Ivanov, Secretary of the Central Committee.’

Trying my best to fit into the convivial tone of the company, I told the story of my misfortune once again, embellishing it with amusing details, both true and improvised. They all kept laughing gaily, evidently pleased with the tale.

‘Well, brother, you certainly got yourself into a mess,’ said Ivanov. ‘Our N.K.V.D. men will put you behind barbed wire in no time.’

‘That’s just what I’m saying,’ I hastened to agree. ‘They’ll put me there and I won’t get out until the end of the war.’

‘I don’t really quite know how to help you,’ said Ivanov. ‘We don’t give out documents to suspicious characters and if I send you to the police they’ll arrest you. Well, I’ll see.’

He went to a telephone and took up the receiver.

‘This is Ivanov, Secretary of the Central Committee. Look here, a scrawny chap will come over to see you shortly. He’s been robbed of all his money and papers. Give him some sort of a paper so he can get to his home town. What? Yes, I know him, not too well though. What? No, I won’t write anything for him myself. You write it; that’s what you’re there for.’ And he hung up.

‘Now you go straight to the station, and they’ll give you a paper. And don’t hang around here long. You’ll get in trouble. Leave tonight.’

‘And what about money for the ticket?’

‘Money?’ Ivanov laughed loudly. ‘You’ll have to look for money somewhere else, brother. I haven’t had enough for myself for a long time. And what do you need money for – can’t you steal a ride?’

We parted in the friendliest possible way.

At the station the N.K.V.D. man on duty, the same one to whom I had applied the night I was robbed, issued me a paper, cursing softly. The paper stated that I had officially reported the loss of my passport and that this was to serve as a certificate of my identity for one week. As I left the room he murmured something to the effect that my sort should be in jail.

Although I had a little money from the sale of the cigarette case, I decided not to buy a ticket in order to save the money for future needs. When the Krasnovodsk train pulled in I ducked into a coach while the ticket inspector wasn’t looking.

The two-day journey in the train was torture. The fact that I did not have a seat was not so bad; some of the passengers were kind enough to let me use their seats from time to time. But I couldn’t sleep. As soon as I saw a group of inspectors come into a car (tickets and documents were checked at the same time) I would go to the other end of the train immediately. The inspectors were so slow that they never reached me. At the first stop I would get off the train and run to the end which had already been checked, and work my way back to my car. The passengers soon noticed that I always left the coach just before a check, and they began to take an interest in my case. Two wounded Red Army men found out that I had very little money and shared their food with me. When I was with them I could risk dozing off for a few minutes because they would always wake me when the inspectors appeared. In this way I finally got to Krasnovodsk.

I had neither the time nor the desire to look around the city. I learned that there was a ship in the harbour which was about to leave for Makhachkala, on the Caucasian side of the Caspian Sea. I also found out that before getting on the ship everyone had to go through an especially thorough documents check. You had to have a passport, a certificate from the army, permission from the military commissar to embark, a medical and disinfection certificate, and a ticket. I had none of these, and so it was hopeless to do anything legally. I would have to sneak aboard at all costs, because there was not to be another ship for two weeks.

It was getting dark when the ship started loading. I made two attempts to go aboard as a porter, offering to carry people’s baggage for them, but each time the grim N.K.V.D. men on the gangplank chased me back into the crowd on the pier. The crowd got smaller and smaller, and I kept on trying to find some way of getting aboard without papers and without a ticket.

Soon it was completely dark, and almost no one was left on the pier. A strong, cold wind was blowing and I thought longingly of the warm coat which had been stolen along with the other things by those damned lieutenants. Lost in that sad thought, I stumbled over a cleat to which a hawser leading to the bow of the ship was attached. I caught my breath and, glancing quickly around, grabbed the rope and jumped off the pier. Going hand over hand as fast as I could, shaken by the wind and hearing the sounds of the black water under me, I finally reached the bow and clambered aboard with difficulty. I saw something whitish beside me. It was a gun, with a canvas cover over it. I got underneath the canvas and lay still, shaking like a leaf from the cold.

I don’t know how much time passed before the ship’s whistle gave two blasts and I began to hear the sound of the capstans pulling in the ropes. The old ship, trembling and rolling slightly, slipped into the night.

Feeling sure that I could not be thrown overboard, papers or no papers, I crawled out of my hideout and set out to explore the ship.

The vessel was old and decrepit but in my position I could not complain. I found my way to the steerage where it was warm, but seasickness was spreading among the passengers. There were no empty bunks. I wandered about the passageways of the rolling ship, hanging on to rails and banisters, until by chance I came across what seemed to be the officers’ smoking room. It was empty, and letting the morrow take care of its own evils, I stretched out on a couch and went to sleep.

I woke up when a large wave hit the old ship so hard that I was knocked off the sofa. My head banged on an iron table attached to the floor next to it. When I had got my wits together and understood where I was, I scrambled back on the sofa and sat up. An elderly man in naval uniform sat on the other side of the table looking at me. In front of him was a bottle and some food on a spread-out newspaper.

‘Had a fall?’ he asked rather indifferently.

‘It seems so,’ I answered.

‘Why aren’t you in a cabin?’

‘I don’t have a cabin.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t have a ticket,’ I answered defiantly.

The man thought for a while, or perhaps just did not feel like talking.

‘Do you play chess?’ he asked, with no obvious connection with our previous conversation.

‘Sure.’

He pointed to another chair at the table and drew a box of chessmen out of the drawer. The board had little holes in it, so that the rocking of the ship would not spill the men all over the floor. Silently he arranged the board and nodding his head at the remains of his breakfast asked, ‘Hungry?’

I said I was. Holding a sandwich in one hand, I bravely moved the king’s pawn with the other.

The seafaring man turned out to be an enthusiastic chess player. By the time the Caucasian shore could be seen through the misty dawn we had finished perhaps twenty games, each of us winning about an equal number. When it was fully light my partner got up and said, ‘Thanks for the company. We’ll tie up in an hour. Better think of a way to get ashore.’ With that he walked out.

Even without his advice I had been thinking about this problem. It was a complicated one. I couldn’t pull the same trick I had in Krasnovodsk because it was broad daylight. When the gangplank was lowered I saw that there were three men from the port security force at each end of it. I realized that I would have to face the music. I joined the crowd of passengers moving toward the gangplank.

‘Your papers?’ said a tall man in military uniform.

‘I don’t have any papers.’

‘What? Hey, you on shore, take this man to the guardhouse!’

A policeman, holding a rifle on the ready, grabbed me by the sleeve as I stepped off the gangplank and led me off the pier. In a few minutes we reached the headquarters of the port security force. The policeman shoved me through a door with a sentry in front of it, not too politely, and said, ‘Wait here.’

I found myself in a dimly lighted room where several people lay on the ground or squatted along the walls. At the end of the room, where there was more light, sat a man in uniform at a desk littered with papers.

Something had to be done. In a couple of hours I would be in jail, and there was no chance that I would be released, I stood by the door for a while, opened it slightly, closed it again, and then firmly approached the uniformed man at the desk. He raised his eyes.

‘What do you want?’

‘Where’s the chief?’

‘He’s not here. What do you want him for?’

‘I have information that the two thieves who robbed me are on board a ship which is due this morning from Krasnovodsk. I want to file an application for their arrest.’

‘Well, you better hurry. The ship is already in and the chief is down there checking papers. You’d better get there in a hurry; the passengers are already coming ashore.’

I started for the door.

‘Not there, you can’t go out there. Use this door,’ he shouted, pointing to a door behind him.

I left by way of the back door. Asking a passing worker how to get to the railroad station, I set off as fast as possible in the direction he showed me. There, I lost myself in the crowd which filled all the corridors and halls of the station as well as the square in front of it. These were people trying to get a passage either north to the Kuban or in the opposite direction to Tiflis.

I managed to get some rye bread and a glass of tea without sugar at the station restaurant, and then I mingled in the large crowd by the ticket windows, where it was dark enough so that the police could not find me in case they decided to look for the man who had arrived from Asia without any documents.

The train was more than twelve hours late, but the crowd waited patiently. About 10 p.m. the ticket window opened and the ticket agent shouted:

‘The train from Tiflis is full and will take no more passengers. No tickets will be sold!’

That didn’t matter to me. I had no money for a ticket. Pushing my way through the angrily muttering crowd, I went to another window where platform passes were being sold for only a ruble each. I bought one and rushed out on to the platform as soon as I heard the bell announcing the incoming train.

The train was on the first track. With a banging of teakettles passengers poured out of it to get hot water in the station. I concentrated my attention on the nearest car, at the entrance of which stood a woman porter, waving a lantern. The engine gave a whistle, signifying its imminent departure. The passengers were running back to the train, and I went with them.

‘Where are you going, citizen? This isn’t your car,’ shouted the woman with the lantern.

‘Never mind, I’ll get to my car later.’ I shouted. ‘Can’t you see I’m from the train? I haven’t even got my coat on!’ I paid no more attention to the woman and climbed into the coach.

The train was jammed with people. There was hardly room to stand. I managed to push my way into the middle of the car and crawled under a seat, with the consent of the passengers sitting there. Some of them expressed the fear that I would steal the belongings they had shoved under there, but I did my best to assure them that I had no such intention. When I was safely installed between their bags I stuck my head out from under the bench and said, ‘One more thing, citizens! Do me a favour. Don’t wake me up if the conductor comes for the tickets; I don’t have one.’

They did wake me up, but not until morning. The train was slowing down. My journey was almost over.