Time Will Run Back

Chapter 5

WHEN they had got up and brushed the dust from their trousers, Peter turned to Edith. “What are you doing now?” “I join my ORP, of course.” “ORP?”

“My Organized Recreation Platoon. Ours forms in ten minutes at Engels Square.” “May I walk over with you?” “If you wish. But haven’t you been assigned to any ORP of your own?”

“No—that is—not yet.”

At Engels Square a number of platoons were already forming.

“How long will this take?” asked Peter.

“Till four o’clock.”

“Does the platoon come back here?”

“Yes.”

“May I see you then?”

“I’m taking my father out. He’s just recovering from pneumonia. I have a permit to take him out for an hour a day for the next week. See!” She pulled out a card.

“May I walk with you and your father?”

She hesitated. All over the square platoon leaders were shouting the command, “Fall in!” She ran toward her platoon and waved a quick good-by to him. “All right!” she said finally. He watched her fall into line.

The platoons marched off until the square was almost deserted. But not quite. Peter looked around. Behind him was the man with the bushy eyebrows. And somewhat further away was a new figure—a short, gorilla-like man with extraordinarily long arms.

“Did you have a good time?” asked Peter. Edith’s ORP had returned to the square and been dismissed. He himself had put in four dreary hours.

“Oh, wonderful!” she answered. “We had lunch; then setting-up exercises; then we played organized softball; and then we were taken to see the kulak family guillotined.”

They walked through blocks of drab tenements. Edith stopped in front of one. “Here we are!” she exclaimed. She led him up three flights of stairs and opened the door to a dark room looking on a tiny courtyard. “Isn’t it nice?” she asked.

Peter looked around. It was a medium-sized room into which had been crowded four beds, a number of chairs, and a couple of packing cases apparently used as bureaus. Two of the beds were in complete disorder.

“This is our part of the room,” said Edith proudly, pointing to the two neatly made-up beds.

The only occupant of the room as they entered was a white-haired man, distinguished and intelligent looking. He was sitting in an invalid’s chair.

“Father,” said Edith, “this is Comrade Uldanov.”

Her father glanced suspiciously at Peter’s empty lapel.

“He just got into Moscow yesterday, father, but he expects to get his license number tomorrow.”

“Uldanov...” said the old gentleman. “That sounds familiar.”

He held out his hand. “I’m glad to know you, comrade. My number is EN-57.”

Peter shook hands. “My full name is Peter Uldanov.”

Her father shot a questioning glance toward Edith, who gave him a reassuring one in return. “My name is John Maxwell,” he said.

“Oh—you are English?”

“Yes, an engineer.”

“Father was one of the chief designers of the new Lenin super-dam!”

“Where is that?” asked Peter.

“Why,” said Edith, “it will be the biggest dam ever built—”

“It’s still in the blueprint stage,” cut in Maxwell. “The old story—shortage of labor, shortage of raw materials, and above all, shortage of ration tickets.” Peter looked around. “Do you have to share this room with other families?”

“Only with the O’Gradys,” said Edith. “A nice quiet family. They have a little boy of three and a nine-months-old baby girl.”

“How about privacy?” The question was out before Peter had decided whether it was tactful.

Father and daughter exchanged distressed glances. ‘I’m surprised that you should mention such a bourgeois concept,” said Edith. “We have all the privacy that a socialist society needs. See!” She pointed to wires near the ceiling that intersected the room. There were curtains, or rather sleazy sheets, hanging from them. They had been pushed up against the walls, and she pulled them out straight. They divided the father’s from the daughter’s bed and both from the rest of the room.

“Snug, isn’t it?” she asked.

Peter became indignant. “Couldn’t they give you anything better than this?”

Another distressed glance between father and daughter. Edith looked appealingly at Peter, put her finger to her lips and shook her head, as if they were being overheard by someone not present. “How could you ever get anything better than this?” she said loudly and distinctly, as if speaking for an audience. “All of us will indeed get still better living quarters if we work longer hours and tighten our belts. And now let’s go out for our walk!”

They helped Maxwell out of his chair and handed him his cane. “Father has just recovered from a bad case of pneumonia,” said Edith, still very loudly and distinctly. “The doctor prescribes walking, and I have a permit to take him out at this hour.”

There was something abnormal about the conduct of these two that made Peter uneasy. When they were in the street and well past the house, Edith asked coldly: “What made you say things like that, when you knew we might be listened to?”

“But by whom?”

“You know that every room in Moscow is wired for sound reception and that the secret police may be listening at any time.”

“Can we be overheard now?” asked Peter. “Not unless we’re being followed,” said Edith. “That’s why I waited for the privacy of the street to tell you this.”

Edith’s remark reminded Peter. He looked back. There was the inevitable man with the bushy eyebrows, and behind him in turn the man with the long arms.

“Well, we are being followed,” Peter laughed. “I’ve been followed ever since I got to Moscow yesterday. And by the same handsome pair.”

Edith and her father glanced back. Their faces became livid. Edith turned on him. “You knew you were being followed?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you did not hesitate to lead these people to me, to my house, to put them on the track of myself and my father?”

“But they aren’t following you; they’re following me!”

“Don’t you know that whenever the secret police suspect anyone of disloyalty, everybody he associates with is under suspicion?” Tears came into her eyes. “The least you can do now is to leave us immediately, and take your spies with you!”

Maxwell faced him with a menacing expression, but said in a low tone, “You must establish yourself as our enemy.”

“What can I do?” asked Peter, bewildered.

“Anything—You are forcing yourself on my daughter, and she and I resent it—” Peter grabbed Edith, pulled her to him, and kissed her vehemently. He suddenly realized that he had been wanting to do it all along.

He felt Edith’s hands on his chest pushing and Maxwell’s hands on his shoulders pulling him away. At arm’s length Edith gave him a stinging slap on the face. Maxwell shook his fist at him.

He turned and ran. When he had run half a block he glanced back. He was relieved to find that both his followers were running after him. At least, he thought, they won’t bother the Maxwells.

He walked directly to his hotel.

When he had got to his room he closed the door (it was illegal, he had found, for Proletarians to lock their doors) and examined the room from base to ceiling to see whether it was wired for sound reception.

He found two tiny microphones built into the walls at diagonally opposite corners.

He sank onto the bed.