The last weeks of summer at his aunt's dacha had gripped Konni. It soon it passed into autumn but the sun shone in October as if it had forgotten what time of year it was. There were glowing landscapes and glorious golden days that were mild and windless, and warm enough to abandon coats to the house when walking out. But then came November with the chill of the coming winter and a shiver of approaching danger.
His aunt returned from the town looking distraught and, without taking off her hat or even unbuttoning her coat, immediately went into a huddle with her daughters. She then called Konni to her side and led him into the drawing room where an oil-lamp burned above the table. "It's all finished," she remarked.
"Why do you say that? You seem anxious and unhappy. Is something happening?"
"I've been to the town and the news is bad - the worse. The White Russians have suffered a serious reverse and are abandoning the region we live in. Within a few days the Red Army will be amongst us."
He sat solemnly and listened while his aunt told him of her distress. "We are to be governed by the Bolshevik's, political adventurers who are prepared to experiment with the lives of 130 million people. The Communists detest we kulaks and insist everyone should live a life as low as the floor. When they arrive here their nakaz committees will confiscate everything of value we own. The State will be the new religion. Everyone will be made to conform and behave like mechanical dolls. There will be no room for diverse opinion."
Her lyrical voice had a suggestion of tears, and a wave of melancholy swept around her as she spoke. "It's a sad end to a way of life we hold dear, but enviable. The girls and I have discussed the matter and have no desire to flee Sarocherkassk. There is no question of us leaving. This place is our blood and our life and we are reconciled to our fate. Co-operation may at least ensure we survive. You on the other hand are a different matter. As the son of a boyar you will be in peril."
"Will it come to that? A struggle to survive?" When his aunt didn't reply he gave the answer himself. "Yes, I suppose I will. It puts an end to all this playacting in skirts. I may as well go and stand by my father on his estates."
"No. I've put off telling you until now in an attempt to spare your feelings for as long as possible, but your father was arrested weeks ago. If he's not already been shot he'll have been put to work in a forced labour battalion, which only means he's as good as dead anyway."
"Arrested? Arrested for what?"
"For the crime of being a wealthy man. The Communists seem need no other reason than that."
It was a shock to hear about his father and he waited for some kind of emotion to rise up, but he felt nothing. He'd felt sadness and loss when his mother had died of her disease. She had been a big warm cushion full of comfort and love and yielding softness to him, but in the case of his father there was a void in his heart. He could only remember him as a bearded angry man with fire in his eyes, a man whose greatest love was the land he owned, and who ignored his own son when he went home on holidays from school. "In that case I must stay here with you."
She could see anguish in his eyes and, awkward with her own transparency, she turned away. But she went on talking. "You can't do that either. You can't live your whole life as a masquerade. With the Bolshevik soldiers will come their political commissars and the Checka, the secret police whose purpose is to root out counter-revolutionaries. They will scrutinise every soul in the valley. They'll pay special attention to those who have recently come here, and I suspect it won't take long for them to discover who you really are."
"What else can I do?"
"You've lost your father and your inheritance, but you still have your life. It would be best if you leave all this mess behind. I told you when you first arrived here that you were lucky to be part of a well disposed extended family, and now we have a need to test the matter. I have been corresponding with your Uncle Sergei in Odessa over the past months. He is an important official in the Port Authority there, and he swears he can get you out of Russia and over into Greece where his brother settled years ago. The country towards the coast is still in the hands of the White Russians, but it will be dangerous to delay. Things are changing quickly."
"Greece!" murmured Konni.
"Yes. Some things will be different there of course. A similar religion, but different language and different customs. It will be hard for a while, but you will be safe."
That night Konni prepared for his journey, although there was really little to prepare other than his mind. He didn't wish to leave. His aunt's dacha was the best place he'd ever lived, and he'd stayed in some very grand houses. There had been times - when he'd been at the school in Kharkov - when he'd allowed no time for consideration of houses less fine than his father's. It was only recently that he'd come to realise that a house was only as good as the people who lived in it.
Since he was going to make a journey it occurred to him he should pack a bag. But then it struck him that his father's estate had been confiscated, and he was now a penniless orphan. He possessed nothing. He didn't even own the clothes he stood in, but he had become so attached to them that he would insist that he be allowed to travel in the guise of a girl.
He didn't find the idea of going to Greece at all distasteful. After all it was the land of Aristotle, Plato, Homer and Pythagoras, and the source of countless colourful myths and legends. It had been a crucible of art and cultured civilisation a thousand years before the Vikings and Slavs combined to form the hybrid Rus to give a name to Russia and the Russians.
In some ways Sarocherkassk seemed much the same as usual the following day. The shops in the town square were open and the church doors invited worship, but the school was closed and Madam Kormilov had disappeared. Overnight red posters had appeared and were now on every street corner on every wall. Directives telling everyone how to behave when their Communist saviours arrived. The new regime seemed imminent and some people had put on red arm-bands to display their compliance even before it became installed. He saw Dmitri, active beside his father the postmaster, daubing a slogan on a wall with whitewash.
WELCOME TO THE HEROIC SOLDIERS OF THE GREAT SOCIALIST REVOLUTION.
When he saw Konni walking towards the station he came over, filling his head with doubt about whether he wanted to leave at all.
"So, m'lady, you're running away. That can only mean you're a supporter of the White Russian scum," Dimitri said stonily. "I suspected you as a bourgeois capitalist when you mentioned you'd once had a nursery nurse. Just as well we didn't become too involved with each other. You'd never make a good comrade. Good riddance I say." Without waiting for a reply he made an abrupt about face and walked away.
Konni stood, head bowed, feeling dejected and misunderstood until his aunt put an arm around him. "Ah, the friendships of youth are so fragile. But being young means there is always time for striking up new friendships."
The railway was his introduction to the misery of refugees fleeing the Bolshevik advance. The tiny, insignificant station at Sarocherkassk swarmed with people from the surrounding countryside, most of who had been rich with large houses, but were now desperate just to gain a place in a fourth-class railway carriage. He noticed that the women, many of them reared in luxury, faced their hopeless future with fortitude. It was the men who were much more given to self-pity. His aunt handed him two tickets.
"We are lucky. This train will probably be the last one to leave before the Communists arrive." Svetlana and Katerina each gave him the silver teaspoon that had been bought to mark their birth, and his aunt gave him a fob-watch that had belonged to her husband. All were family treasures, but to hold onto them would risk them being stolen or confiscated in the following days. His aunt also pressed into his hand several white one- rouble notes to assist with incidentals along the way.
The farewells were sad, but once they were done Konni had to contend with the company of Lyuba, an imposition he resented. But his aunt had explained that the communists would be vindictive towards anyone who employed a house servant, and since his uncle was in urgent need of a cook the old woman would be better off in Odessa. And also, his aunt had said, since he had decided to maintain his deception and travel in the guise of a young girl it made sense to have a mature female companion. Respectable girls didn't travel long distances alone.
They were fortunate enough to be allotted places in a terplusshka, a boxcar fitted with double wooden bunks and a small stove called a burzhuika which had been designed to burn anything, coal, timber, books, rags. People would have to scavenge for fuel whenever the train stopped, but if kept stoked up it could keep them reasonably warm and heat water for tea.
Outside it was a drizzly November day. The weather was terrible, and everyone knew the rain could be followed by the first winter snow and the kind of temperatures that made everything freeze solid. For half a day they rumbled along at eight to ten miles an hour, the monotony often punctured by stops at small wayside halts where more people would clamour to climb aboard. Soon the boxcar they were in, built to accommodate sixteen people, was holding twice that number.
Inevitably there were other unscheduled stops and delays; to take on water or fix a faulty coupling, or to cool a hot axle-box, but on the second day of their journey the whole train was mysteriously shunted into a siding to leave the main line clear. After a while a railway official came along and explained there was only a single rail track for the next hundred miles, and a military train going in the opposite direction had been given priority for its use. Their own train would have to wait until it had passed through.
For a while a group of people in the boxcar stood at the door looking out. In the distance could be heard the rumble of heavy artillery, and it was clear that the Whites were suffering much more than just a local setback. They were being pressed into retreat, and everyone on the train began to fear the Communists would overtake them before they moved again. The flat landscape allowed them all to see for miles and an orange-red glow lit the skyline some distance to the west. A house was burning on the horizon. They had been passing through a comparatively peaceful region, but the country had already gone very Red and Bolshevik sympathisers were known to be raiding vulnerable places.
