Comrade Krasnov

COMRADE KRASNOV

SHE WOKE UP when the rocking of the train suddenly stopped. Muzzily, she lifted her head, marveling at the empty space around her. Then, she realized she had almost half the berth to herself because Andrei was gone.

She was instantly alert, her heart hammering. The people below murmured uneasily. The twins on her berth still huddled together, keeping as far away from her as possible. The naked bulb above swayed in the smoky air but at least electricity gave some protection against the Enemy who might be hiding in the mass of the passengers.

“Where are we?” she asked the twins, but they did not respond. They merely stared at her as if she had spoken in a foreign language.

Where was Andrei? Had he left while she was sleeping? Svetlana bit her lip, torn between relief and consternation. Since their twilight meeting, her life had been a string of disasters, and she still was not sure of who he was. Not one of the Enemy, this was certain, but her previous explanation that he was a soldier who had lost his memory due to battlefield trauma did not hold water either. First, he showed no sign of having been wounded. Second, there remained the enigma of his strange weapon, his unfamiliar uniform, and those weird newspapers he had had in his boots.

What if he was a foreigner? Motherland was surrounded by the iron ring of enemy countries, populated by inhuman monsters or humans who had willingly abandoned Light and sold themselves to Darkness. The Enemy was just a vanguard of those evil forces, ceaselessly plotting against the People of Light and their Voice. There was Thunderland whose inhabitants engaged in constant barbaric warfare, half-naked men clubbing each other with spiked maces, their women raped, and their children starving. There was the Swamp Country where the humans were enslaved by the devious Leech-masters: fat bags of lard with sucker-covered underbellies and smirking faces who minted gold out of their duped subjects’ blood. There was the rotten Freehold where invisible parasites infested men’s brains, causing them to shun Light. There were nameless little countries ruled over by kosmops and fists. Worse of all, there was the realm of Wulfstan where the Enemy had taken a human form. It was believed that the population of Wulfstan had, by now, been reshaped into the race of implacable bloodthirsty automata with baying canine maws and steel-clawed hands. Fortunately, the Voice, in his infinite wisdom, had negotiated a peace treaty with this dangerous foe, which gave Motherland a breathing space to strengthen its defenses.

But could Andrei be a native of any of those damned countries? Svetlana could not believe it. He was one of the People of Light. She had no real proof of it, but she felt it in every cell of her body. He may have called her “little sister” just to be polite, but now there was a bond of kinship between them.

Could he be a spy? Svetlana shivered because this was a much more real possibility. Denunciation of spies and saboteurs was a frequent part of the Voice’s pronouncements. Spies were not necessarily of the Enemy; sometimes they did not even know who they truly were until the spell of Darkness had penetrated deep into their bodies and souls . . . Svetlana’s mind shied away from the memory of her father like a finger refusing to probe an inflamed wound.

Her thoughts were interrupted when the mass of people below swayed and shifted like a field of corn as somebody was pushing through. Andrei! Oblivious to the indignant muttering in the wake of his passage, he elbowed aside a plump woman who squatted on her bags like a bird on the nest and jumped up into the berth.

“Where have you been?” Svetlana whispered.

Andrei blushed and nodded in the direction of the makeshift toilet. Svetlana smiled, pleased with his refinement—clearly, he was not of those kulak-breeding country people who took care of their needs in the open like animals. This was just one more proof that he was a person of Light.

Still, it reminded her of her own bladder. As solid as the plug of people below seemed to be, she would soon have to brave it. Perhaps some passengers would disembark at the next station.

Then she realized that since her waking up the train had not moved.

“Did you see where we are?”

“A small station. In the middle of nowhere. I could not see the name.”

This was worrisome. Was the train even going to the City of Light? What if it terminated in some obscure provincial town or worse, a village? The countryside was infested with the Enemy. This was why so many Patrolmen were sent there to hunt down the Fists and to procure grain needed to feed factory towns. Recently POP had ratcheted up its efforts to arrest infiltrators from the countryside who came to Loadstone Rock to steal food. And there were those proscribed zones, the Wastelands . . .

Still, since nobody was disembarking, it must mean that this was not the final destination. Svetlana was trying to psych herself up to make her way to the toilet bucket when a wave went over the people below, heads turning in unison toward the sliding door at the end which suddenly flew open. A portly figure in the Train Service green uniform stood there.

“Tickets!” the man bellowed.

Svetlana and Andrei exchanged glances. Tickets had been the last thing on their minds as they were escaping from the spider-eyed Patrolmen and the murderous kosmops. Indeed, they could not have gotten tickets even if they had tried. Svetlana’s minor’s card did not allow her traveling beyond the municipal borders of Loadstone Rock.

Apparently, they were not alone in this predicament. A hubbub of voices erupted from the crowd.

“Tickets!” The conductor’s roar rose to an almost supernatural volume, instantly silencing everybody. “Out everybody! Show me your ticket when you go by. If I stamp it, go to the right. You’ll be allowed to come back on the train. If not, go left! Now! Move!”

To emphasize that he meant business, two more uniformed figures appeared at the door, both cradling large military-style electric torches.

People started filing out obediently. Some tried to carry their luggage with them, but the big conductor barked an order to leave everything behind. Soon the car that had seemed to bulge with people deflated into an empty space littered with bags, sacks, and suitcases.

Andrei, Svetlana, and the twin sisters did not stir. They were on an upper berth, close to the shadows-veiled ceiling and perhaps they would go unnoticed . . . This hope was swiftly wrecked as the conductor, accompanied by the two Patrolmen, went down the car, checking out every berth.

Exchanging glances, they both jumped down and stood in front of the conductor. The twins remained in the berth, cowering and pressing themselves into the corner, as if hoping to become invisible.

“Tickets,” the conductor commanded.

From close up, Svetlana could see his eyes. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Bloodshot and hung with dark pouches, they were, nevertheless, free of the spider-star taint, and the two Patrolmen had clear eyes as well.

“Who are you?” the conductor frowned, suspiciously eyeing Andrei’s unfamiliar uniform. Svetlana opened her mouth, but Andrei forestalled her, which was just as well. It would be strange to have a young girl answer instead of a soldier.

“We are escaping Loadstone Rock where there has been a suspicious infestation,” he responded smartly.

The conductor gave a braying laugh.

“You and everybody else on the train,” he said mockingly. “Names? Cards?”

Svetlana offered her ration card which she had taken from her family’s apartment. The conductor barely glanced at it.

“A minor!” he barked. “You?”

Andrei unhesitatingly offered him his strange documents.

“What is this?”

“These are my papers,” Andrei said levelly. “They are real. Paid for in blood.”

The conductor’s sagging cheeks wobbled as he opened his mouth, then closed it, and motioned to Andrei and Svetlana to stand aside. The two Patrolmen hefted their torches but did nothing else as the conductor turned his attention to the twin sisters, still huddling in the berth.

“Down,” he yelled.

They obeyed. Now Svetlana saw how frail they both were. It seemed that a gust of wind could blow them away. They stood up unsteadily, holding on to each other for support.

The conductor smirked.

“Fists,” he declared. “Running away to the city, thinking we won’t find you! Take them away!”

A Patrolman grabbed one of the sister’s arms and hauled her out. The other followed as if glued to her twin. Svetlana was perplexed: were they really kulaks? They looked human, albeit unnaturally weak and emaciated.

“Valya!” one of them wailed, clinging to her sister.

“Valya!” the second one responded, like an echo.

They couldn’t be both named Valentina, could they? But Svetlana had no time to puzzle over it because the conductor turned his attention back to them.

“Come.” The conductor pushed Andrei and Svetlana out. The platform was filled with people divided into two uneven groups. The lucky ones whose papers were found to be valid were being herded back into the cars, while the illegals were being led away by a couple of torch-armed teenagers who seemed too young for such a task.

“Let POP decide what to do with you,” the conductor muttered.

Despite being warmly dressed, Svetlana shivered. The sky was as white and flat as a blank page; steely snowflakes occasionally drifted down onto the dirty drifts that surrounded the platform. The snow must have thawed and frozen repeatedly because it was covered with a gray pitted crust, and a bundle of discarded clothing was embedded in it.

A Patrolman, hefting his chrome-plated torch, pushed them toward the exit from the station. As they passed by, the clothing bundle stirred and tried to sit up. A skull-like face emerged from the wrappings like a turtle from its shell. The hollow eyes stared through Svetlana. Then, the man settled back softly into the snow as if it were a down mattress.

The Patrolman yelled at them to move on, and they trudged down the icy track that led to a huddle of thatch-roofed low buildings. On both sides of the road, featureless snowfields stretched as far as the eye could see.

“What’s the name of this village, brother?” Andrei asked.

The Patrolman spat makhorka-brown spittle. “Little Wells,” he answered.

So, this was a village? Svetlana wrinkled her nose. Everybody knew that villages contributed to the defense of Motherland by feeding the cities where the sacred work of manufacturing weapons of Light was being carried on. But Svetlana was a city girl and had no precise image of the countryside beyond the golden sheaves of corn on the cover of her textbook. What she was seeing bore little resemblance to the picture.

The track became the main street. Mean houses frowned at them with their shuttered windows. Bare trees stuck out of the snow, their black arms adorned with white sleeves. There seemed to be nobody around, not even a dog or a cat.

The bigger house they approached had a large banner above the entrance, frozen into a brittle sheet. But even under the furring of rime, the red star stood out. Svetlana breathed a sigh of relief.

Inside, a fat little stove radiated heat. A man sat at the table, going through reams of paper.

“Comrade Krasnov,” the Patrolman saluted him. “Two suspicious elements removed from the train.”

The man lifted his head. He was young, barely older than Andrei. His face was darker than his blond hair as if a summer tan still clung to it in the midst of winter. His blue eyes, ringed by the circles of fatigue, lingered on Svetlana. She blushed and hated herself for that.

Before the man even opened his mouth, Andrei stepped forward and launched into a detailed recital of all that had happened to them since their twilight meeting that had seemed to Svetlana to be lost in history but, in fact, had only happened three days ago. Krasnov listened attentively and without interruption. When Andrei described the arrest of Svetlana’s father, Krasnov glanced at her again. She forced herself to return his gaze. She had nothing to be ashamed of, after all.

“I see,” Krasnov said thoughtfully at the end. He had a pleasant baritone and spoke crisply, like an educated man, without the sloppy vowels of recent arrivals from the countryside that were mocked in Loadstone Rock. “So, you are not related, are you?”

“Not that I know of,” Andrei said.

Krasnov lifted an eyebrow.

Svetlana, no longer able to contain herself, barged in, “Comrade Patrolman,” she exclaimed. “Loadstone Rock, our glorious city, has been taken over by the Enemy. My Dad . . . he is a victim. So is my Mama. They are holding her hostage! You need to do something!”

Krasnov smiled, his face relaxing momentarily and then settled again into a frown.

“Normally, I would arrest you for spreading false rumors,” he said, “but unfortunately I know you are right. We had info on this infestation already, but now I am more interested in the two of you. You said you came from the frontline on R&R,” this to Andrei. “But where are you fighting? We have a peace treaty with Wulfstan.”

Andrei snorted.

“I am fighting Nazis,” he said and when Krasnov continued to stare at him, he shrugged.

“I think I come from a different planet, maybe,” he said. “I read a book once . . . about the revolution on Mars. Is this Mars?”

“I don’t know what Mars is,” Krasnov said. “Are you saying you lost your memory?”

“More like I have a different memory. This,” he swept his arm around, “is almost familiar but not really. Still, I know what you are doing, and I want to help. Maybe we are just fighting the same thing under different names.”

Krasnov studied Andrei’s passbook and then put it aside.

“I am not sure what this is,” he said, “but the headquarters will figure it out. I don’t think you are of the Enemy. Vadim,” he nodded at the Patrolman who had brought them in, “says you are not afraid of Light. You were sitting under an electric bulb on the train.”

“20-watt,” Andrei mumbled, “not much. We have better ones at home.”

Svetlana elbowed him indignantly, but Krasnov let it slide.

“We have a situation here,” he continued. “Fists are breeding like lice. We have fulfilled our grain quotas, so you’d think they would leave Little Wells alone, but no. The more they starve, the more uppity they become. Now people are coming from Loadstone Rock—refugees, kids—and we have nowhere to put them up. We have tried to inform the City, but the lines of communication are down.”

“Sabotage?” Svetlana breathed out.

Krasnov nodded. “Damagers,” he said grimly. “We had not had their kind before. Now they are here, and the Fists are working with them, naturally. We are short on manpower. You,” he nodded at Andrei, “you say you are a soldier. We are doing a sweep in an hour. Want to come with us?”

“Of course.” Andrei straightened up, a broader smile than any Svetlana had seen so far on his face. “Thank you, Comrade.”

“I’ll come too,” Svetlana exclaimed.

Krasnov shook his head, but she persisted.

“I have had nurse training. I can help!” This was a white lie, but Krasnov looked persuadable.

“We do have a sickness here,” he muttered. “All right. Vadim, bring them some chow. I’ll be back.”

He swept out of the room, the tails of his greatcoat flying like an eagle’s wings.

Surly Vadim plunked a steaming pot and two spoons on the table. The thin gruel inside was almost exactly the color of the dirty snow outside. Svetlana tasted it and made a face. It seemed like a tiny bit of rancid butter had been used to flavor gallons of water boiled with a handful of buckwheat. Wasn’t this the countryside where all the food was supposed to come from? She was hungry, though, she choked down a couple of spoons. Andrei ate mechanically but polished off the rest. He did not look at Svetlana. Was he angry with her? Why? She had not behaved in any way unbecoming to a battlefield nurse. What right did he have, anyway? He was not her father or brother.

A commotion outside made them both sit up. The door flew open, and a woman burst in, discolored rags swaddling her body and making her look like an upright postal package. In her arms she held another, smaller, package.

“Comrades,” the woman cried shrilly. “Pity an innocent babe. Mercy for a poor child!”

She thrust the small package at them. It reeked of dirty diapers. From between the folds of cloth a shrunken face stared with sightless eyes at the ceiling.

Svetlana backed off. The woman dropped to her knees, striking her forehead on the floor.

“Take him,” she pleaded, her piercing voice drilling into Svetlana’s eardrums. “Take him, please!”

Vadim the Patrolman burst in and tried to drag the woman out, but she resisted, clinging with an unexpected strength to Svetlana’s legs. The woman’s hands were bloated and translucent, as if her body was filled with dishwater instead of blood. Her kerchief slipped off, exposing the pink scalp between thin tufts of hair. Throughout the scene, the baby was silent. Andrei picked him up and shook his head. The woman dissolved into hiccupping sobs and Vadim finally managed to maneuver her out.

“Demi-kulak?” Svetlana asked, breathless. She had read about this particular variety of the fists—their faces more or less human but a tightly packed egg-sack filled with the larvae of their voracious young protruding from under the breastbone.

Andrei shrugged and turned away.

“Maybe,” he said in a toneless voice. “The baby was dead, though.”