The Crossing Read online

  “Did he talk you into staying?”

  “No. He was very critical of … ” He shrugged, “… no, I wanted to stay.”

  Josef never went back to his old committee in Petrograd. After the extension course he was sent as secretary to a committee in one of the Moscow suburbs. Anna went as an administrator to the security organisation, the Ve-Cheka, which controlled all local Chekas throughout the Soviet Union. Its chief was Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinski, an austere and ruthless man who came from an aristocratic Polish family.

  Josef and Anna saw one another regularly during the following six months. They recognised the dangers of talking about their work even to one another. Zagorsky was now even more important and he seemed to go out of his way to encourage their relationship. When they decided they wanted to live together it was Zagorsky who used his influence to get them a room in a new block of workers’ flats.

  It was in August 1918 that Josef was called to the building that had once been the offices of the All-Russia Insurance Company and had now been taken over by the Party. Three men interviewed him. One of them was Zagorsky. They asked him question after question about his background in England and his work in Petrograd and Moscow. When he left he had no idea what the purpose of the meeting had been. It was two months later that he heard he was being transferred as an administrator to the Cheka division which Zagorsky controlled. The Secret Political Department.

  By that time the Cheka was quite plainly an instrument of brutal power which was outside any legal control, and was used openly to suppress even the mildest resistance to the regime. Imprisonment without trial, on speculation alone, and liquidation when necessary, were its normal weapons against the people. Apart from political suppression, personal rivalries and old scores were being settled by the newcomers to power.

  It was a stifling summer evening in their small room when Anna told him that she was pregnant. As soon as she saw that Josef was delighted with the news she was happy too. They had a state wedding a month later. Zagorsky had smiled and said that they were two little bourgeois, not real Bolsheviks, but he had come to the brief ceremony together with half a dozen of their friends. Afterwards they had all had tea and cakes in their room.

  When Anna stopped working, a month before their child was due, it gave them more time together and they walked every day to the local park and watched the mothers with their babies and the old babushkas who looked after toddlers while their mothers were at work.

  One day they sat there for ten minutes without speaking and then Josef said, “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled. “I’m fine. I can’t wait for it to arrive.”

  “You seem very quiet these last few days.”

  “Do I?”

  Josef noticed the evasion. “Is there anything else troubling you?”

  She nodded as she looked at his face. “I don’t want to go back to that place.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like the things they do.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “You must know what they do, Josef, you work there too.”

  “What things do you dislike?”

  “They treat the people like they were enemies. Not just the counter-revolutionaries but ordinary people. There are thousands of people being arrested every month.”

  “There’s a constitution now, Anna. State laws that govern what can be done.”

  “They’re not interested in the constitution. They don’t care about the laws. Most people arrested never get to a court. And if they do then the Cheka tell the judge what his verdict has to be.”

  “They just want to make sure that the revolution is not destroyed by counter-revolutionaries. It will get back to normal when things have settled down.”

  “But it’s been almost two years now, Josef, and it’s getting worse not better. They haven’t done the things they promised. None of them.”

  “It has taken longer to remove the kulaks than anybody expected. Until that’s done there is no land to give to the peasants.”

  She shook her head slowly. “They’ve taken tens of thousands of hectares from the kulaks in the Ukraine alone. The peasants have been given none of it. They work on collective farms owned by the State. They’ve just exchanged one set of masters for another.”

  “You don’t say those kinds of things to other people, do you, Anna?”

  “Of course I don’t. I’m not a fool.”

  “Is there anything else that worries you?”

  “I want to go back to Poland, Josef. I can feel at home there. There aren’t the same problems.”

  “There are plenty of problems in Poland, my love.”

  “I know, but they’re only the problems that all countries have.”

  “They’d never let us go to Poland, Anna. We know too much.”

  She looked at his face. “And what we know is bad for the Bolsheviks, isn’t it?”

  Josef sighed and looked towards the children playing by the small ornamental lake. “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  “You feel the same way I do, don’t you?”

  “Not really. There’s a difference. This isn’t my country. I don’t feel responsible for what they do.”

  “But you know that these people are evil men?”

  “Not even that, Anna. I know that they are ruthless and unjust in many ways. But I’ve always felt that they mean well. They will carry out their promises when the country is organised, settled down. The problems are so big, Anna. Even the fact that they are trying to put things right means that they deserve our sympathy and our support.”

  “You must decide what you think, Jo-jo. As long as I don’t have to go back to that dreadful place.”

  “I’ll think of some story, Anna, and I’ll see what I can do with Zagorsky.”

  “You won’t tell him what I’ve said, will you?”

  “Of course I won’t.” He smiled and took her arm. “Let’s go back and I’ll make us a meal.”

  Zagorsky had arranged for her to have the baby in hospital. A rare privilege but one that Josef’s hard work justified.

  Josef took flowers to her and was allowed to hold the baby who lay contentedly in his father’s arms, the big, pale blue eyes like his father’s eyes, his neat nose like his mother’s.

  For several months the new baby had occupied their minds and then Anna’s official maternity leave came to an end.

  Zagorsky listened in silence as Josef explained that Anna wanted to stay on leave for another six months to be with their child. When his lame explanation was finished Zagorsky looked at him.

  “Why do you lie to me, Josef?”

  “It’s not a lie, Comrade Zagorsky. She wants to be at home.”

  “That’s just another way of saying that she doesn’t want to be here. She is more interested in the child than her work.”

  “I think there is that too.”

  “So why didn’t you say so?”

  “I didn’t want you or the Party to feel that she was discontented.”

  “Josef, she has been discontented for the last six months.”

  “You mean she has said so?”

  “No.”

  “Her work is not to the standard you expect?”

  “Her work is well done, she is conscientious and she carries out her orders meticulously.”

  “So what is wrong?”

  “I didn’t say anything was wrong.” Zagorsky shifted in his chair and looked back at Josef. “I told you a long time ago not to believe men’s words. With some people they show their discontent or unhappiness by working harder and longer than anyone could reasonably expect. Over-compensation for inner feelings of guilt.”

  “Guilt of what?”

  “Their lack of faith. In this case, lack of faith in the correctness of what she is doing. Or maybe the correctness of what others are doing with whom she is connected.”

  “I don’t think . …”

  Zagorsky waved his hand t
o silence him.

  “There is another thing, isn’t there? Another thing that occupies her mind, not just the child.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’ve not heard her when she’s bouncing the boy on her knee? Crooning away in Polish—‘Jedzie, jedzie, pan, pan—Na koniku, sam, sam.…’ ” He shrugged. “She even has the boldness to address me at the office in Polish. And that doesn’t do her a lot of good with senior people. Nor me either.”

  “There’s no law against speaking Polish so far as I know.”

  The aggressive defence of the girl confirmed Zagorsky’s guess that Josef knew all about Anna’s attitude to Moscow and the Party.

  “Don’t play the committee secretary with me, my friend. It won’t work.” Zagorsky slammed his fist on the table. “I want her back here in the department no later than next week. You understand?”

  “Yes, Comrade Zagorsky.”

  “She is entitled to use the crèche. The child will be properly cared for while she is working.”

  Two months later they were notified that both of them were being transferred to Warsaw to work with the Polish Bolsheviks, Josef as liaison with the Polish section in Moscow and Anna as secretary to the Commissar for Internal Affairs.

  Josef’s liaison point in Moscow was Zagorsky. It was not an easy relationship and Zagorsky seemed to go out of his way to keep their meetings formal; showing no signs of any personal friendship. Although it was obviously he who had arranged their assignment to Warsaw. The years of struggle and imprisonment were finally beginning to take their toll on him. He was only five years older than Josef but he looked much older.

  They had the top floor of a small house in the centre of Warsaw and Anna had time to make it comfortable and there was room for a small bed for the toddler.

  Their lives were very different from their time in Moscow. They had few contacts away from the Party and they were part of an underground movement that was being constantly harassed by the Polish government whose hatred for Moscow was traditional and bitter.

  There were new problems for Anna who daily recorded the Bolshevik plans for the overthrow of the Polish government. Meetings where men coldly and calmly discussed the assassination of the President of Poland, Pilsudski, and the planning to turn Poland into another Soviet state disturbed her. She found herself suddenly more patriotic and nationalist than she had ever thought possible in her first surge of enthusiasm for the reforms in Russia. What was good for the virtual slave population of that sprawling continent seemed obscenely inappropriate to a civilised culture that was determinedly Western not Slav. Even in Russia there were still large armed forces actively fighting Moscow for the independence of the Baltic States and the Ukraine and Transcaucasia. And when in the spring of 1920 Moscow offered Poland a peace treaty, the Polish government saw it as a sign of Moscow’s weakness and a chance to ensure Polish independence by fostering the independence of Lithuanian, Belorussian and Ukrainian states.

  On April 25, 1920, in agreement with the weak government in Kiev, Polish forces launched a surprise attack into the Ukraine. It met little resistance and by May 6 Kiev was occupied by Polish forces.

  But the foreign invasion invoked a patriotic upsurge against the Polish invaders and in the space of a month the Polish forces were pushed back to their own borders and beyond. Moscow saw its success as the herald of a communist Poland and in a small town in occupied Poland Feliks Dzerzhinski was set up as the supreme Bolshevik authority in Poland. But the spread of Communism in Poland was a dismal failure and in Moscow the blame for the lack of success had to be allotted, not only for that failure but for the lack of warning about the Polish invasion of the Ukraine. It was easier, and to some extent logical, to heap the blame onto the shoulders of Moscow’s Poles rather than its Russians.

  When Josef opened the envelope that one of the committee had brought from Moscow the message inside was chilling. It said briefly that they were both wanted urgently in Moscow for discussions. His hands trembled as he folded the half-sheet of paper and tucked it into his jacket pocket. They made arrangements to leave the next day and arrived in Moscow that night. An official from the Internal Affairs department met them at the station, and from him they learned that Zagorsky had been arrested. When they asked what he had been charged with the man merely shrugged. They were taken to a hostel and given a room. There was just a mattress on the floor.

  They were careful to say nothing to each other of any significance and they lay with their son between them. It was already getting light the next morning before either of them slept.

  Josef sat with their son on a bench outside the room where Anna had been taken and it was three hours before she came out, her face white and tear-stained. A Cheka officer stopped them from speaking to one another and pushed Josef roughly to the door of the room, knocked and waved him inside. There was a militiaman on each side of him as he stood facing the three men sitting at the trestle table. The man in the centre looked down at his papers and then at Josef.

  “You are a friend of Boris Zagorsky?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Since October 1917.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “I was cabin-boy on a British ship berthed in the docks at Petrograd. The crew had been arrested by the docks committee; Comrade Zagorsky and I were left to guard the ship.”

  “Did he talk politics with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell us what he said. An overall impression.”

  “He was very pro-Bolshevik. He said that the Bolsheviks would take over and put the country right.”

  “Why did you join the Party?”

  “Because Comrade Zagorsky said I could help in the struggle.”

  The man looked down at his papers and then back at Josef.

  “When did he start criticising the Party?”

  “I never heard him criticise the Party.”

  “How did you come to work for him?”

  “I was ordered to by the Party.”

  “Your wife is Polish?”

  “Yes. She is also a member of the Party.”

  “You knew that Zagorsky was Polish?”

  “I heard that he was. He didn’t mention it himself.”

  “Why did you stay in this country?”

  “I told you. Comrade Zagorsky said I would be of use and I wanted to help, so I stayed.”

  “Why did you continue to stay? Why are you still here?”

  “Because this is where I belong.”

  “What about your family in England?”

  “I have no family in England. I was an orphan. I lived at an orphanage.”

  “When do you intend to return to England?”

  Josef shrugged. “I had never thought of returning to England.”

  “Who gave you permission to stay here?”

  “Nobody. I joined the Party and I was given work to do.”

  “Do you share your wife’s views on political matters?”

  “We are both Bolsheviks, we have no need to discuss our views.”

  “But she defends Zagorsky’s actions.”

  “I don’t know what actions you refer to.”

  “You mean that after all your training you were not able to recognise that Zagorsky was a counter-revolutionary? A traitor, more concerned with the politics of Poland than the security of the Soviet Union?”

  “I have seen no evidence that would suggest that he was anything but a loyal Party member.”

  “Are you a loyal Party member?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “I don’t know any way of proving it. But it’s a fact.”

  “Would you work for the Party in England?”

  For only a moment he hesitated and then his training took over.

  “I would do anything to establish a fair distribution of work and wealth for the proletariat in Britain.”

  “Zagorsky will be trie
d by the People’s Court tomorrow. Both you and your wife will attend. We may need you as witnesses. If not you will do well to observe what happens to enemies of the people.”

  They said nothing to each other about the interviews while they were in the hostel but as they walked the next day to the Cheka buildings he said softly, “Did you make any mistakes at your interview?”

  “Only one, I think.”

  “What was that?”

  “I said that Poland was my country even if I was a Bolshevik. I said that it was possible to be a loyal Bolshevik and a loyal Pole as well.”

  “That was stupid, Anna.”

  “They provoked me. They referred to Poles as savages. I couldn’t let them get away with that.”

  “You should let them get away with anything. It’s just words. And words don’t matter.” He paused. “If they make us witnesses, don’t say anything like that in court.”

  “You want me to act like a coward, for God’s sake?”

  “No. Not for God’s sake. For our sake and the boy’s sake. We can think of what to do when this is all over.”

  The panelled room held no more than two dozen people, and most of those were officials. Josef was surprised to see that the five judges were all in army officers’ uniforms. So was the prosecutor. The defence lawyer, a civilian, was sitting at a small table, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes closed. There were several policemen and soldiers in the court and on a bench below the tall windows were several civilians. Josef recognised two of them from the committee in Petrograd.

  The senior of the judges rapped the gavel on the block and the prosecutor stood up, a sheaf of papers in his hand. And only then did the door at the back of the hall open and Zagorsky was led through to the witness box by a uniformed policeman.

  The charge was read out. It merely accused him of being an enemy of the State. There were no specific examples or indications of what sort of evidence would be offered to the court.

  As Josef looked across the courtroom at Zagorsky he saw him standing there, one hand pressed to his back as if to relieve a pain and Josef guessed that they’d beaten him across his kidneys. It didn’t make too much of a visible bruise but the damage inside was always extreme. Zagorsky stood bent as if he were unable to stand up straight, and his left hand clutched the rail of the witness stand as if to keep himself from falling forward.