Midnight in St. Petersburg Read Free

pity for him, with his cruel, stupid job.
    â€˜Looking out for Yids on the run,’ he added in a stronger voice, straightening up. Inna noticed that he had a double-headed eagle pin on his stand-up coat collar. ‘Murderous Red swine. Scared they’ll get their come-uppance. Don’t want to stay and take the punishment they’ve got coming. Running everywhere, thousands of them – like cockroaches. But we don’t want that filth here, do we?’ If he was expecting an answering leer from her, he was disappointed. ‘Well … well … I wish you a pleasant stay in our city, your excellency.’ He handed back the booklet and, avoiding her eyes, turned to seek out a new victim among the hurrying third-class passengers.
    Inna watched as he moved to intercept one of the other shadows she’d been aware of, a man in his early thirties, with the sadness in his soul clearly visible. He had a deathly white face behind his dark Jewish-looking beard and shadows under his eyes, and, every time Inna had glimpsed him, on both trains, he’d been holding tight to the hand of an unnaturally quiet little girl of about ten. No mother; Inna had tried not to wonder what had happened to her. Now, as he saw the approaching gendarme, the last flicker of hope left him. The little girl’s face crumpled into panic.
    Inna hurried on. So they had no passports. But since hers was stolen, and Olya Morozova’s father might at any moment think to telegraph his colleagues to watch out for imposters, there was no time for pity.
    But, when she looked more closely at the station building ahead, she realized it offered no safety. Instead there were more gendarmes guarding the doorway and pouncing on people in the crowd. Some were converging on youths in scruffy overcoats, filleting leaflets from their pockets; others were grabbing urchins, and flicking wallets from their hands. But most were looking for incomers.
    Inna stopped dead. Someone bumped into her from behind. Scurrying feet shifted course. Then she felt a hand on her arm.
    Inna closed her eyes and bowed her head. So this was it, she thought: how your lifeline petered out.
    â€˜I thought so … you’re the little lady from the train who had your fortune told, aren’t you?’
    It was the peasant from the train.
    â€˜I saw you, and I thought, Well, you must be new to the city if you’re trying to leave through the station building. Police everywhere, snooping through your papers – waste half your day if you give them a chance. So why don’t I walk you out the way Petersburg people go, the ones who’ve got any sense. You don’t want to look like an outsider, do you?’
    She nodded gratefully, noticing his extraordinarily calm pale-blue eyes again.
    â€˜Come on, then.’ He set off briskly to the left into a narrow lane that went straight from the train platforms all the way round the side of the station hall to the street.
    It only took a minute.
    Inna looked round and realized that the great modern square they’d come out into, with its grey cliff-faces of hotels, and tramlines, and squealing motorcars and carriages and pedestrian crowds all rushing here and there under a lowering sky, was actually outside the station. There wasn’t a gendarme in sight.
    â€˜So … that’s it? Are we out, in the city?’ she asked. ‘Really?’ She took a deep breath, dizzy with relief. She was in St. Petersburg. She was safe.

 
    CHAPTER TWO
    She began walking, one bag in each hand, impatient to be off and free of the peasant.
    Yet the fact remained: she didn’t know where to go. She knew she had to walk into the centre, along Nevsky Prospekt, the great avenue which ran through the city in a dead straight line. But she had no idea which of the roads leading off this square would get her to Nevsky.
    From behind her came a chuckle. ‘That’s the road out of town,’ she