The City with the Golden Sheen – Book 3

To Georgia, 1920

Let me now tell of this second journey to Georgia.

It caused considerable stir when, over the New Year of 1920, I reappeared at the offices of A/S Elektrokemisk. It emerged that Faye had not arrived, and that none of the many reports and proposals I had dispatched had reached their destination. The firm had heard nothing from me since I had sent greetings from Budapest in February 1919. Since then I had been missing, and the directors had for some time been discussing the question of sending someone out to look for me.

My dear brother Halfdan had likewise concluded that he would never see me again. I learnt from Mrs Kulstad, of Kjøpmannsgate in Trondheim, that he had come to collect my furniture, which was stored with her. I had lodged with the Kulstads for several years.

"Konrad is dead!" Halfdan had declared.

But Mrs Kulstad was not so certain.

"We had better wait a little longer," she said — and in this way rescued my household effects.

I was told that the board of A/S Elektrokemisk was satisfied with my work. They were fully aware that I had done what could be done. Engineer Faye had been relieved and sent home, and I had remained long enough to establish that conditions in Georgia made work there impossible for the time being. Moreover, I had not saddled the firm with unreasonable expenses. The entire expedition, my salary included, had cost the firm twenty thousand kroner.

"You are therefore the cheapest man we have ever employed!" accountant Pettersen assured me.

My salary was six hundred kroner per month, with all expenses met.

I had not thought much about the salary. I believe I would have gone without pay. For me the chief thing was to get out, to see, to learn, to experience something.

Meanwhile, the question of Faye came increasingly to occupy the board. Was he alive, or was he dead? His elderly mother made anxious enquiries at regular intervals, and whenever she sought me out I said I believed he was living. There was no firm evidence to the contrary.

The uncertainty was therefore considerable, and in the end the board asked whether I would go down once more, this time with the principal object of discovering what had become of Faye.

And I declared myself willing. I considered it my duty.

It was on a Wednesday afternoon before Easter 1920 that I departed. The weather was gloriously sunny, and as I paced the platform at Østbanestasjonen I looked with some envy at a train filled with people setting off for the Easter holidays. I found myself thinking involuntarily that cousin Christian and Harald and Lauritz 'rarmann' were now heading up to the cottage in Fagerlifjellet, thence to Færsdalen and its memories.

The foreign atmosphere commenced at once, as I found myself in a compartment with an Italian who prattled and thundered away in German.

And so one was in Stockholm. On this occasion I had decided to take a more easterly route than the year before, conditions in Europe having by now become somewhat more stable. I did not wish to swing round via Munich but to press on more directly, so in Stockholm I boarded the scheduled steamer to Danzig and enjoyed a quiet, fine crossing of the Baltic. My companion for this leg was a young Swede who told me: "I've been fighting for the Central Powers in Italy, and now I've obtained a posting in the Lithuanian army." A Swedish soldier of fortune, in other words.

In Danzig there was quite a distance to walk, so I accepted the offer of a German naval rating to help me with my trunk.

He was a diligent talker.

"In the last months of the war I was with the naval division standing in Belgium for flank security. Oh, you're Norwegian? Do you know Kristiansund?"

"No."

"A pity. For otherwise you might have carried a greeting from me to a pretty girl I once met there. We were up that way with the fleet quite often."

"What was her name?"

"Martha Vormdal. A remarkably pretty girl, I can tell you!"

When we lived in Kristiansund in 1927/28, I made some enquiries and established that the young lady was not a fiction. She lived on Nordlandet, though I never met her, and so I cannot say whether she still remembered the German sailor upon whom she had made so deep an impression that he carried her image through four years of war and revolution.

Danzig was a pleasant town, I thought. I was there a couple of days and had the opportunity to admire the many fine old buildings from the Hanseatic period.

Then on again, this time by train to Warsaw. There were not many fellow travellers from Danzig — only a pleasant young Polish couple who entertained me with an account of a visit they had made to the city. It promised to be a peaceful journey.

But it became a different matter once we had crossed the border and entered Poland. A Polish officer — a captain — who had been sitting further along the carriage came in to us and requested that we make ourselves scarce. He spoke in German.

I replied in the same language that this was quite out of the question. This answer came without difficulty, as the fellow struck one as entirely unsympathetic.

He disappeared, but returned a little later with a notice which he stuck to our compartment door, and on the notice it read:

"Reserved for officers."

As this notice made no impression whatsoever upon the Polish couple or upon oneself, he alighted at a station where we stood for quite a while and returned with a soldier equipped with both rifle and bayonet. This soldier entered the compartment and received orders from the officer to throw us out.

At which point the young Polish gentleman exploded. He unleashed a volley of invective quite out of the ordinary — he was so angry he went chalk-white in the face — and then he strode out and fetched the station commander, to whom he explained the situation. The station commander arrived, and as he was a major he ordered the captain and the bewildered soldier out of the compartment, and scraped off the notice that had been affixed to the door.

"There, ladies and gentlemen. I trust you will now have some peace."

And so we did — all the way to Warsaw. But I found myself recalling something Gurski had once said to me when I was speaking of German militarism:

"Militarism? Just you wait until we Poles are independent, and then you shall see militarism."

He knew his countrymen. One could now attest to that oneself.

In Warsaw there was a shortage of hotel rooms, but I was assisted by a helpful railway official and obtained a room with a family where I was well looked after during the several days I needed to remain in the city to arrange travel permits.

I required a travel permit from the British, and in that connection went first to our minister in Warsaw, Sam Egede, who said he would manage that business well enough.

"I am having some guests this coming Wednesday. The British commander-in-chief will be among them, and so will you. And then we shall see."

Well. One did see. The British commander-in-chief spoke very agreeably, and the following day my papers were in order.

However, the trains did not fit. I had to wait several more days in order to continue southward, and it was during this time that I made the acquaintance of the lieutenant and the lady with the cat's eyes.

It came about as follows. One evening I stopped to buy matches from an old woman who made her trade in such articles.

"How much for the box?" I asked in German.

"She doesn't speak German," I heard beside me, and turning my head I saw it was a Polish lieutenant who had inserted himself into the affair.

"Are you Hungarian?" he asked, in a decidedly disagreeable tone, which stung me into an immediate: "I am not Hungarian. I am Norwegian!"

A complete and absolute change of scene.

"I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon! If I was mistaken it was because you have the accent of a Hungarian when you speak German."

So we became acquainted. He told me he was a jurist and thus only temporarily in service. In two days, confound it, he was to travel on duty to Kraków. But in the meantime he might perhaps show me round Warsaw?

Very well. I agreed to that. Not that evening, but tomorrow morning, say, and we arranged where to meet.

The fellow was an agreeable guide. He took me through Warsaw's royal palace, where Charles XII had once granted audience in the days of Sweden's greatness, and we also visited the barracks of his regiment, where I went in and looked at the men. Powerfully built, good-natured fellows. I pinched one of them in his great biceps and thumped another stout lad on his impressive chest. The men grinned with pride, and the lieutenant swelled with satisfaction over his magnificent soldiers.

Then I invited him to dinner, of course, and when he expressed regret that he could not come as he had an engagement with his fiancée, I said he might bring her along. She was a very pretty young woman, but what one particularly noticed was that she had green eyes — pure cat's eyes. One had never seen such eyes in a human being, before or since.

This dinner determined the time of my departure from Warsaw. I had previously said I would travel on the same train as the lieutenant and his fiancée, but now I suddenly discovered that our legation wished me to wait a couple of days in order to carry a little courier mail to Bucharest. The fact was that I did not care for those eyes of the lady's, and there was also the circumstance that the couple showed rather too much interest when I drew out my wallet to pay.

Now of course one ought not to think ill of a lieutenant and his sweetheart merely because he happens to be a jurist and she goes about with a greenish cast to her eyes. For all one knows they may both have been treasured members of a Sunday school. But one did not wish to take any chances, and so one simply expressed regret. One unfortunately could not travel on the same train. One was held up — most regrettable, but there it was. Farewell, farewell.

One is quite certain that the — most emphatically — affianced pair looked disappointed when they parted. One hopes it was because they would now miss one's excellent company. But it may also be that they had more thoughts for one's wallet.

The landscape between Warsaw and Lemberg had been during the war one vast battlefield. Kilometres of trenches, burnt-out villages, and walls pocked with loopholes testified that here the two parties had done their best — with the Almighty's assistance, it was generally claimed — to kill one another. That the effort had produced admirable results was attested by enormous military cemeteries and solitary crosses standing scattered widely across what the military language rather grandly calls the field of honour.

One could not of course expect the railway to be fully restored after such upheaval, and indeed it was not. At times we crept forward as if across thin ice, and at one point the locomotive even left the track. But as the speed was no greater than that of a tram going uphill, no harm was done. By one means or another it was replaced, and we ambled on.

"This is a damned country!" said my American travelling companion. "Not in order yet, two years after the war's end. Things would be different with us."

He was travelling round Europe "to have a look at things," this American, and when I told him there were several million unsold Persian skins east of the Caspian Sea waiting for a buyer, he immediately caught fire:

"You and I shall go into business together! I'll give you fifty thousand dollars."

"But you don't know me at all," I protested.

"Oh yes I do. You're Norwegian, a consul, and therefore an honourable man. That's sufficient. I shall raise fifty thousand dollars. We'll discuss the details in Constantinople."

But we were not to discuss anything further in Constantinople. For he vanished on me in Lemberg. One has no idea what became of that optimistic businessman from God's own country. He certainly did not arrive in Constantinople while one was there.

The train rolled on from Lemberg past a succession of places one remembered so well from the war dispatches. In Kolomyia one spent the night. It was a desolate spot — a small town devoid of people, in the shadow of the Carpathians rising against the western sky.

The following day there were few travellers on the train, but one of them was a young Pole who had been conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army and had taken part in the winter campaign in the Carpathians in 1914/15. He told me hair-raising things about lying out in the snowdrifts for weeks on end without a roof over one's head, and about entire lines of trenches that had frozen to death. "Carpathian Hell" was the name the soldiers had given to this winter campaign, and it was a name that fitted perfectly.

Czernowitz — Romanian Cernăuți — is a German promontory pushed eastward. A fine, well-ordered German town set slightly on high ground, with a view over a vast steppe landscape. We arrived there around midday, and as the train did not depart again until midnight I went up into the town to try to get some rest, having been awake the entire previous night.

I ended up in a small restaurant owned by a Jewish family. It was a very neat and tidy establishment, and I accepted the stout proprietress's offer to rest a while on the divan in the back room. I enjoyed a fine nap, and afterwards had a long and convivial conversation over coffee with the assembled family, who wished to hear about Norway.

"A paradise!" declared the father of the house.

There was a grown daughter in the family, and a dapper son-in-law who had been a lieutenant and commander of a machine-gun section on the Italian front. There was therefore much to talk about, and when we had consumed enough coffee and wheat-rolls he showed me round the town, which presented itself very pleasantly in the sunshine.

That night I took my leave of the amiable family, who urged me to call in again on my return journey, whereupon the lieutenant accompanied me to the station, where I installed myself in a second-class carriage that was something of an invalid — all its windows were broken and the seats had disappeared, so we were obliged to sit on bare wood.

When the train failed to move at the appointed time, the lieutenant went out to reconnoitre.

"There has been a derailment on the line," he reported.

"Many dead?"

"Seven or eight."

"Is that all?" was the reaction of my fellow passengers to this tragedy.

Off we went, and a fur-dealer from Brăila took charge. First he produced a candle-stub, lit it, and made things cheerful; then he drew out a bottle of spirits and poured a round.

"It's cold. Let us drink to a happy journey."

Where the derailment had occurred, people were working in the light of great bonfires to set things right again. The worst was already dealt with, and we passed the broken section slowly. Afterwards we made good progress. The fur-dealer was in radiant spirits — he sang, he poured spirits, and he pressed upon me a wolf-skin for twenty kroner. It accompanied me to Georgia and subsequently back to Norway, where it came to rest — finely cured by Bruun in Trondheim — as a hearth-rug in the drawing room.

In brilliant sunshine we rolled away across Moldavia's flat landscape, where one had rich opportunity to admire the beautiful Romanian national costumes. Romanian peasants are not like Norwegians. They do not dress for Sunday in a windcheater, galoshes, and a flat cap. They are not so civilised. They still wear their centuries-old national dress, with the most magnificent embroidery on breeches, jacket, and waistcoat.

The Romanians have spirit, moreover. One witnessed it at a station where a peasant stood with a pig. As the train was full and neither peasant nor pig could obtain a ticket, his countrymen — a good many of whom were perched on the roof of a bogie carriage — showed wit in adversity. Amid much shouting and squealing, owner and pig were hauled up onto the roof, where they were evidently treated as guests of honour. Several of the hosts popped into the station for the necessary fluid, and soon the proper sociable atmosphere had been established on the roof, with toasts, hurrahs, and song.

Only the pig received nothing. Not a single dram. He was merely yanked by the tail as the train departed.

The Bucharest I arrived at in the summer of 1920 was something quite different from the city I had visited a year earlier. The town had smartened itself up considerably. People looked well, and the better classes no longer drove about in old boxes behind worn-out horses but in motor cars, and the horses one saw were handsome and well-kept.

One looked about for a hotel and ended up, as best one can recall, at the Bristol, where a fine porter with braid both fore and aft enquired how he might be of service.

A room, if he could manage it.

No difficulty there, but only double rooms were available.

The best was good enough. One had no objection to a double room.

At which his magnificence looked at one sideways, and then it came:

"You will of course wish the room with a lady?"

"A lady?" one replied, adopting an innocent expression. "Are you mad? I'm married!"

The braided one was immeasurably astonished. "Married! But Monsieur — that makes absolutely no difference."

A/S Elektrokemisk had for some time had a man working in south-eastern Europe, and his name was Dr Jahnke. He was, I believe, from Halden.

I sought out this Jahnke, who was at that time in Bucharest, and together we attempted to arrange some business between our firm and the Romanian government. We worked at it for about a week, but then I had to press on, as the main purpose of my journey was to search for Faye.

But first a word about my friend Jahnke, who has long since departed this world. He was a tall, handsome young man in his late twenties, I should think, with an unusually winning smile. One has never met his equal for making friends, and with ladies he was the purest flypaper imaginable. There were instances of women, having made Jahnke's acquaintance and spoken with him for five minutes, arriving breathless at the station with chocolates and flowers when he left.

Such was Jahnke.

We worked together in Bucharest for some days, then continued on to Constantinople, where Jahnke was a known quantity. The route lay via the port of Constanța on the Black Sea.

On the journey to Constanța we shared a compartment with a Polish cavalry captain who had served in the Austro-Hungarian army during the war. He limped, and explained that this was because the Russians had sent some bullets into him when he charged their battery with his squadron.

"It was at the beginning of the war. We didn't know better, so the colonel ordered me to take the battery. And off we went. How was I to know the Russians had strung barbed wire all round it? They received us in such a fashion that half the squadron was left there, and the rest of us could do nothing but ride back as hard as possible. But they caught me, the swine, and that is why I limp."

The captain appeared to be a man of some means, as he was constantly speaking of his estates and the great hunts he organised.

"But when I am sound on my feet again, I shall go to Norway to shoot bear. For there are so very many of them there," he explained.

Constanța is planned as the export harbour for Romania's oil and in its present form is entirely new — fine streets, handsome houses, and a modern, enormous port installation. It looked as though it had just been delivered fully finished from the factory. The only thing missing was people. The town appeared almost deserted.

Jahnke and I had considerable trouble getting out of the city, as we had to deal for a change with a quarrelsome, ill-tempered Romanian passport inspector. But in the end we managed that too, and set out across the Black Sea in a pretty little Romanian steamer with oil-firing. It was the first time one had sailed in a vessel that did not burn coal, and one was struck by how clean and bright she was.

There was thick fog lying over the sea, which would not have troubled one in the least aboard a Norwegian vessel. But Romanian? One had one's doubts about these sailors.

A young Pole who had attached himself to me evidently harboured the same misgiving:

"They'll run aground — they can't see anything."

It did not help to explain to him at some length about courses, about running so many hours on such-and-such a heading and then so many hours on another. He simply did not trust his fellow men, and least of all Romanians at sea.

"You Norwegians may do it that way, but you should remember that this vessel is Romanian."

The fellow was loquacious, for he now delivered me a lengthy lecture on the causes of the Russian revolution:

"The Russian people had no capacity to resist Bolshevik propaganda. They were completely rotten. And do you know who is responsible for that?"

"No."

"Russia's great writers. It is Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky and their like who have ruined the Russians. These authors have done nothing but glorify mad people. Can anything good come of that? Can it end otherwise than in catastrophe?"

Meanwhile we steamed on through the fog, on a southerly course. Several hours passed, and it began to seem to one that the vessel might drive itself up onto the fields of Asia Minor, when a gust of wind came and the fog parted.

No — we did not drive onto the fields. It missed by exactly a hundred metres, after the engines had done their best with full speed astern. But it had been a close-run thing. The captain was wiping perspiration from his brow long after we had set course westward and were heading for the Bosphorus.

In the Bosphorus the sun came out, and one had, as the year before, ample opportunity to enjoy the sight of that magnificent waterway dividing Europe from Asia. The many beautiful villas half-hidden among flowers and trees, and the fine castle ruins and crumbling fortress walls, are images one never forgets. The Bosphorus is beautiful. One sometimes thinks one would gladly see it once more.

We went ashore, however, in the Sultan's city, and Jahnke, as the local expert, took the lead.

"We shall go to the Pera Palace. I have stayed there before, and it is rather good."

So we drove to the Pera Palace, which stands on the heights with a view over the city and the Sea of Marmara, and were received like the prodigal sons returning home. We were given rooms — splendid rooms — and afterwards went down to the bar to fortify ourselves a little. A trim young fellow in a white jacket and fine black moustaches nodded recognisingly to Jahnke:

"You are back again, Monsieur? It delights us all. Welcome, Monsieur. It will naturally be the usual little one?"

And with that he set about shaking cocktails.

"He is Greek," said Jahnke. "He was a lieutenant in the war against the Turks, but now he is here. A pleasant fellow, incidentally."

"There you are, messieurs."

And one drank one's first cocktail.

There are no doubt those who will not consider this possible in this age of the cocktail. But it is true. There is nothing particularly scandalous about it. Nature, after all, produces a great variety of curious creatures.

One discovered later that the barman — or the lieutenant — had been baptised with the splendid name Themistocles. But as certain guests had difficulty pronouncing this word after the tenth cocktail, he was renamed Charles. The English language has its advantages.

One's first call was upon the Norwegian consulate and the agreeable consul Reppen, who took hospitable charge of all countrymen who passed through. One put him in the picture regarding Faye, and he promised to enquire whether Faye had passed through Constantinople. This should not be too difficult to establish, as the controls in Constantinople were very thorough.

As one was in Constantinople for a couple of weeks, Reppen had time to make the necessary enquiries. They led to the conclusion that Faye had not been in Constantinople. He could not have left Batum, as there was no other scheduled connection with Europe than the steamers running between Constantinople and Batum.

The couple of weeks in Constantinople were used to look about, though the possibilities were limited, as the city was under occupation. The great powers' warships lay in the roads and their soldiers patrolled the streets — British troops, French colonial soldiers, and Greeks, who were also present to remind their powerful friends that Constantinople properly ought to belong to Greece.

One managed, however, to visit the bazaars — the great trading centre where life is entirely Asiatic. And one went inside the Hagia Sophia, that magnificent church of the Eastern Roman Empire, completed in the sixth century, and converted to a mosque eight hundred years later when the Turks took Constantinople in 1453.

It was very beautiful and strange in this great sanctuary. Among the most curious things were two marble blocks, one on each side of the door just inside the mosque. Both had a vertical cut surface, and in this cut surface each stone contained a lifelike image of the devil — and both images were identical.

Had Faye been with me and seen it, he would have said: "That's the devil's own business, that is."

Then there was the column bearing the deep notch made by Emperor Constantine's sword-stroke. The legend has it that when all was lost, the last Byzantine emperor rode into the church and struck at one of the columns so that the church would collapse. The horse reared, so the blow struck high up. But there it remains.

One can conceivably understand that a craftsman might chisel a notch in a column to make it look like a sword-stroke. But how the builders could have cut two stones with the identical devil-pattern in each of them — that defies one's comprehension. Was it mere chance? If so, the builders were remarkably lucky.

At our hotel there was a constant flow of travellers arriving and departing, but there were also some who had been resident there for some time.

One of these was a Dane travelling for a Danish seed firm. He was attempting to sell seed to the Turks, and had been in Constantinople so long that his seed was beginning to sprout through the sacks. One may assume that during the day he worked diligently in his firm's interests. That at night he worked equally diligently in his own was evident, for every morning his eyes were bloodshot after the previous night's revels.

He was a well-built, handsome fellow, and one day when he was sober he showed me with great pride a photograph of his wife and children. But in the evenings he was off again, drinking like a sponge. It is truly not easy for a firm to be represented by such persons abroad.

There was also another Dane — a solid, stocky sea captain, thoroughly a man of order. He had been living at the hotel for a couple of years, his steamer having been caught by the war, and the Turkish authorities having ordered her to anchor in the harbour until further notice.

He and one became excellent companions, and one day when he learnt that his ship had been released and he could simply leave, he came to one:

"We're going to Alexandria in a week. Come along — I'll give you the job of boatswain."

"Boatswain? Are you mad? I'm no sailor."

"You're Norwegian and a good enough sailor. I want you along to have a decent man to keep an eye on all the black riff-raff I'm forced to sign on down here. You don't need to set a course or anything of that sort. I can manage that."

One must admit that one felt strongly tempted to abandon oneself to adventure — to wander the world aboard a tramp steamer; to bid farewell to the self-satisfied, boastful, foolish, and defence-nihilistic Norway that knew everything so very well.

But there were things that prevented it.

In Oslo sat A/S Elektrokemisk, trusting in one. Far away in Hankow, deep in China, sat one's brother Johan, proud of his brother the officer. And in Trondheim sat you, Katrine. And you exerted the strongest pull of all.

So one declined. Being a boatswain aboard the Dane's vessel was not for one.

And so one's Danish captain sailed alone — managing without one's assistance to get his ship over to Alexandria and thence onwards to an unknown destination, by means of a crew that was more or less composed of, as he put it, 'niggers' and 'ruffians'. He managed it well enough. He was a capable fellow.

The Svenska Orient Line had vessels at Constantinople, and one day one of the company's captains came up to the hotel and settled there for a few days. He was a lively chap — a real merry soul — and handsome too. He had only one fault, and that was that he had lost one ear.

One evening he said: "Come out then. I know of a restaurant where there's rather a nice Danish girl."

When we arrived at the restaurant and had placed ourselves at the appropriate table, the girl came and asked what we wished. My Swedish friend explained that one was out "to eat and drink and have a jolly evening," and incidentally he had brought a companion, namely "Captain Sundlo from Norway," who greatly wished to make the acquaintance of his "little lady from Copenhagen."

Very well. We were served, and when the business of eating was concluded, the girl had taken stock of the situation and seated herself beside one — who had two eyes and thus presumably presented the more attractive appearance. She became agreeable and began to make conversation:

"Are you a captain?"

One was.

"Where is your ship lying?"

"I haven't a ship," one said. "I've been dismissed. On this voyage I'm just along to tend the engine. I've had to take on work as a coal-trimmer."

A long and painful silence.

Then the beauty departed with a: "I think I must go and help with the service."

And when that was over she settled herself beside the Swede. One was invisible. What sort of fellow was one, after all? True, one had two perfectly good ears. But one was merely someone who wrestled with coal bunkers, whilst the other was a fine captain — and in those circumstances it made no odds whether an ear or two was missing.

One's acquaintances naturally dragged one out to a night café one evening. It was not a pleasant establishment. Not at all. One spent the evening emptying one's drinks into the establishment's pot-plants, which no doubt benefited considerably from the exercise. For it was one's so-called friends who were hosting, and they hosted lavishly and gave one nothing but first-class whisky — charged, naturally, to their respective imposing firms.

When the Danish seed-merchant reappeared at the following day's lunch, his eyes were crimson. But then he had been at it steadily. When one left, he was engaged in dancing — that is to say, he was swinging a Cossack girl so that she lay horizontal in the air — and drinking like a sponge. So it was no great wonder that his eyes changed colour.

At last one day one was off. One parted from Mr Jahnke, whom one was never to meet again, and took the steamer to Batum.

One had previously travelled through southern Russia and across the Black Sea. Now the route touched all the larger Turkish port towns — Samsun, Trabzon, and others — so one also saw something of Asiatic Turkey.

What one saw was strikingly reminiscent of the Trøndelag coast — a bare, barren landscape with snow on mountains far inland, and solidly built women and men who came rolling down to the quays.

At one small place we took on sheep, and it was conducted with a fine lack of ceremony. The quayside people threw a line round horns, neck, and hind legs of eight or ten sheep, hooked the winch-hook into the bundle, and:

"Heave up!"

It looked like a cluster of earthworms ascending into the air and wriggling.

In the fullness of time one arrived at Batum and called on the police, who maintained that they had never heard of any Norwegian engineer Faye. One therefore continued to Tiflis, where one's friend Gurski also knew nothing. He had, after one's departure, been to Kutaisi and made enquiries, but had been unable to obtain any information about Faye. In a European society one might, for instance through the newspapers, have found travellers who had seen Faye on the train. But the Caucasus is not a European society — most people there do not read newspapers — and the times were troubled.

One also sought audience with the government, and the relevant minister was very cordial and promised to look into the matter. But one has little faith that he did so. The mood within government circles was strained, as large Soviet forces were marching on the country's northern frontier. There was also a fierce pro-Soviet agitation in Georgia undermining the government's position. The minister therefore had other and more pressing matters to think about than to occupy himself with a Norwegian who had gone missing. In their eyes this was a trifle — people disappeared or were killed almost every day.

Slowly at first, but then with increasing speed, the Georgian national spirit was damaged by the poison of Bolshevism. One had been impressed by the Georgians' respect for the dead, and had on more than one occasion made comparisons not favourable to one's own countrymen. One recalls a funeral in Steinkjer where some fellows leant over the churchyard fence five metres from the open grave, chewing tobacco and spitting while the priest spoke. And naturally they kept their hats on. Naturally — for it is the rarest of events to see the civilised, enlightened, Christian, humane and democratic Norwegian remove his hat for a funeral procession. But the uncivilised Georgian does it. One has not seen a single Georgian who did not.

But perhaps it is different now, after the Soviet's poisoned needle came into operation.

In any case, one knows that one of the leading Communists in Tiflis was buried in the manner proper to a Communist when he is dead — in a sloppily knocked-together box, without Chopin's funeral march (which was customary thereabouts), without horses with white crepe (white being the colour of mourning), and without a priest, naturally. The only thing that remained the same as before was the hole in the ground, and the box was simply tipped into it, the earth shovelled over and stamped down.

The man was dead. Done with it.

That the weather was turning over the Caucasus was brought home to one vividly one day when there was a knock at one's hotel door and one received a visit from General Chagondokov.

He was a Circassian, but his mother was Polish — and if there is a combination that produces fine soldier material, it is the Circassian and Polish blend. His father had fallen as a colonel in Russian service during the assault on the Turkish fortress of Kars in Armenia in the Turkish war of the 1870s, and he himself had served throughout the Great War, ending as commander of the famous Wild Caucasian Division. This division consisted exclusively of Caucasians — people from a whole collection of different tribes, some of them mortal enemies of each other, none of whom could be described as a milksop. A Western European would without hesitation have called the division a collection of bandits and rogues. But they were outstanding soldiers, make no mistake about that. Many of them were highwaymen and footpads by profession and felt entirely in their element when the Great War gave them the opportunity to practise their art on a wider stage.

Ah well. It was a glorious time for Circassians, Chetniki, Ingush, Imeretians, Mingrelians, Lezgins, and all the rest of those knights of the flashing kindjal.

They lived grandly, all these fellows, and it requires no great effort of imagination to understand that the man appointed to command this division did not always have an easy time of it.

But Chagondokov was the man. He managed it. He made the Wild Division the most celebrated division in the Imperial army, and when the revolution came and the soldiers deserted, there was at least one division that did not dissolve — and that was the Wild Division. The general led it from the front through southern Russia to the Caucasus, and along the way rescued a great many unfortunate people from the fury of the Bolsheviks.

Already by 1920 there was something legendary about this man, and it will not therefore be surprising that one felt honoured to see this lithe, black-haired six-foot figure in the beautiful Circassian uniform step into one's room.

He made no great preamble:

"The Bolsheviks are gathering in the north and soon we shall have them here in Georgia," he said. "We must reckon with disturbances here in Tiflis, and my family lives here. I have therefore come to ask whether my family — if the need arises — might seek shelter under the Norwegian flag."

Indeed they might. One promised to look after them as best one could, and the general was gratified:

"Thank you," he said, extending his hand. "You are the second Norwegian I know. The first was Captain Nyquist, who was with us in Manchuria during the war against Japan. Do you know him?"

"Yes," one said. "He is a colonel now."

"Give him my regards," said Chagondokov. "Give him greetings from the adjutant of the 2nd Manchurian Division. For Captain Nyquist was a soldier and a man of extraordinary courage."

And this greeting one duly delivered to Colonel Nyquist on returning home, and he was glad to receive it.

But General Chagondokov — how did it go with him and his family?

As there were no disturbances in 1920, one did not receive a visit from the general's family, and what happened in 1921, when the Bolsheviks occupied Tiflis, one does not know, as one was not in the Caucasus then.

One can add, however: in the winter of 1946/47 one obtained a Soviet newspaper — Pravda or Izvestiya — and came across a small notice reporting that the commander of the imperial-era Wild Caucasian Division had been shot for counter-revolutionary activity. But the name given for this division commander was not Chagondokov.

And so one is uncertain. Were there perhaps several commanders of the division, or has General Chagondokov, that magnificent warrior figure, truly fallen by a murderer's hand?

One sincerely hopes not. It would be as if an eagle had been torn to pieces by crows.

A nasty incident occurred while one was in Tiflis.

As British imperial policy aimed at creating a continuous British zone from Constantinople through the Caucasus to Persia and India, the British had occupied Batum. As a prelude to further occupation, British units were stationed throughout Georgia. One recalls seeing on one occasion how a British battalion had arranged itself in the desolate steppe area west of Tiflis. The tented camp lay some distance from the railway line, at the foot of a slope, and in that yellow-brown slope the battalion had written its number in huge letters with white stones. Nobody was to be in any doubt as to which battalion was encamped there.

In Tiflis there were evidently a considerable number of units. One constantly saw British officers and British supply columns, and one day one went into the barrack yard of a unit of Indian Sikhs and photographed a couple of these tall, fine men who in their leisure hours strolled about the city with a little walking cane and a turban. There was not the faintest suggestion of the underclass about these Sikhs. They were no pariahs. They gave one the impression of feeling themselves lords and gentlemen, elevated far above the great mass of peoples of their Indian homeland.

One also saw some white soldiers — one in particular who was engaged in a persistent campaign against an Armenian woman in the neighbouring house during one's month-long stay in Tiflis on account of the scratch. He evidently never used the door — at any rate it was always through the window that he conducted his visits on the occasions one observed him — and one day when one had paused to admire his climbing technique he came over and struck up a conversation:

"She is beautiful," he said. "Lovely. I want to marry her."

"Where are you from?" one asked.

"Aberdeen. I shall send her travel money when I get home."

Hm. Well. He might do as he pleased. Best not to involve oneself in other people's affairs.

But the nasty incident was this:

Because British imperial policy had made the British unpopular in Georgia, this was taken out upon a wretched sanitary captain who late one night passed a Georgian barracks. He was set upon by some soldiers, dragged into the barrack yard, and horribly maltreated. The brutes cut off his nose and ears, smashed his chest, and finally threw the unfortunate man into the river Kura, where he drowned. The body washed up on a sandbank, investigations were set in train, and the murderers were found and sentenced.

But during their transfer from one prison to another they contrived to escape.

The British maintained that the bandits were simply released, and one is inclined to agree with them. Feeling against the British was so virulent that anyone who murdered an Englishman reaped honour and glory from the populace and received a testimonial as a good and true patriot.

The Georgian chauvinists had altogether rather a fine time during the years 1917–21. Russian street-names in the towns were replaced by Georgian ones, and there was much loud talk of expelling the British, expanding Georgia's borders at the expense of her neighbours, and requesting the Soviets kindly not to come south of the Caucasus — otherwise it would go badly for the Russians.

But the Russians came nonetheless, in the summer of 1921. Battles were fought near Tiflis, and the Georgians, who fought with their customary courage, appeared to have luck on their side — when suddenly the entire cavalry went over to the enemy.

And that was that.

Now the Soviets sit managing the country's affairs, having shot a considerable number of people who had worked for years for a free and democratic Georgia. These people were, in the Soviets' eyes, corrupters of the people and counter-revolutionary capitalist lackeys.

One remained in Georgia for a couple of months and conducted such enquiries as one could, and when they led nowhere, one decided to return home by way of Galatz, on the chance that Faye had taken that route and continued northward through eastern Europe.

So — first back to Constantinople across the Black Sea.

This time one had considerable trouble with the Georgian customs at Natanebi, on the border of the British Batum zone. One had bought a number of carpets and skins, but had no export permit, and the customs officer refused to allow them out of the country.

One argued, but to no avail.

One then suggested that the head of customs should settle the matter, and went over to him.

He could do nothing. Nor would he ring the higher authorities in Tiflis, as it was the middle of the night.

"Can you not name a sum?" one said. "I shall pay it, and surely that will settle everything."

No — it was apparently not quite so simple as that.

"What are we to do?" one said. "Will you really take the responsibility of preventing Norway's consul from proceeding with his baggage? You heard that I was willing to pay whatever duty you determine."

The fellow stared stupidly at one. Then he had an idea:

"Throw the cases back in the cart!" he bellowed at his assistants. And addressing oneself: "Drive off."

And so one did. The Republic of Georgia had not received so much as a farthing in duty.

The Pera Palace was quiet and empty, as all one's acquaintances had departed. One used the day there to visit a carpet-dealer and enquire about small wall-hangings.

The price was too high, however. One had been educated in carpet prices while in the Caucasus, so instead of acquiring more carpets — of which one already had a considerable collection — one decided to buy some ladies' kimonos. And now one witnessed what an oriental tradesman does to secure a sale:

When one expressed doubt as to whether a particular silk kimono would suit a tall Norwegian lady, the proprietor sent for his wife, who was also tall and dark. One was then treated to a mannequin display. Kimono after kimono was draped upon the wife, who turned and posed most obligingly, and one bought. In the end one was invited to drink coffee with the couple in the shop, amid stacks of carpets and other oriental wares. This was, one notes, after the deal had been concluded — but the couple evidently reckoned that tomorrow was another day, and that there is such a thing as a good reputation.

Then one embarked once again on a Romanian steamer, this time one bound for Galatz. There was passport control as we were departing, and all passengers were ordered into the saloon where a British and a French lieutenant attended to the formalities.

It occurred to one suddenly that one ought to test how effective the control was. One had a Romanian visa for travel to Romania. The Allies, however, maintained that one also required an Allied visa, and in any case one was not permitted to leave Constantinople without an Allied stamp. That was what the two officers were there to enforce — and one found the whole thing quite unreasonable. Moreover one considered the entire arrangement was humbug.

Which indeed it was. One entered through one door, stood for a while among the other passengers before the table where the two officers sat stamping and writing, and then calmly walked out through the other door with some of the others. There was no Allied stamp in one's passport, but neither did anyone ask for one either aboard or upon arrival in Romania.

The controls in Constantinople were, in short, mere ceremony.

Galatz lies on the lower Danube, which at that point is so deep that large cargo steamers can go all the way up. Although the town is far inland, it is therefore a seaport from which a substantial part of Romania's grain and oil is exported. It was an interesting journey up the Danube. One saw the Danube Delta — that mile-wide expanse of marsh through which the Danube pours itself into the Black Sea through a multitude of small channels. One can well understand that in this wilderness of water, bog, islands, reeds, and brushwood, criminal elements might for years operate as highwaymen — or more accurately, waterway robbers.

On one's left one saw the remains of Romanian defensive works from the war, and far away to the right, beyond the sea of reeds, one caught a glimpse of the border station at Reni, where Rittmeister Tardowski and one had frozen together in February the year before. Now one travelled in sunshine, first class, in peacetime, and one congratulated oneself on this change for the better.

In Galatz one sought out a magnificent Norwegian — Gisle Johnson, a missionary in the Israel Mission. One liked him immediately. And one believes the feeling was mutual — that one arrived just in time for this brave man, who had been separated from his homeland for years while the war raged around him.

He was unmarried. His mother had kept house for him for several years, but had died just before one arrived, and he was feeling rather low.

"But then you came," he said. "You were like a breath from the north that gave me new life."

And when in 1928 he visited us in Kristiansund, you may recall that he mentioned this in his sermon in church. He had been rather despondent after war, illness, and his mother's death. The work had lain fallow. But then a compatriot had come and cheered him up, so that he had regained his joy and energy in his work.

When the Russians had held Galatz under occupation, a divisional commander had lodged with him. He was a Finn — one cannot recall the name. Gisle Johnson said that this Finn was a man of honour of the rarest kind, and he mentioned in this connection that when the Russian army collapsed and the mutinies spread, no one laid a finger on this general.

"He walked about Odessa in his general's uniform and no one did him any harm," said Gisle Johnson. "He was, you see, fabulously popular among the soldiers."

The general had had an honorary sabre that Gisle Johnson had been keeping for him. One took this back to Norway and ensured that it was returned to its rightful owner. The general had by then laid aside his uniform and taken up the position of director of one of the banks in Finland — Åbo, one rather thinks, but one is not certain.

Gisle Johnson helped one enquire whether Faye had possibly passed through Galatz, but no trace could be found. However, as one's host was about to make a journey to Batum, we agreed that he would there, through his contacts, make one further attempt to discover what had happened.

And so one considered one's work concluded. One could do no more than one had done, and decided to return home.

A final word about Gisle Johnson:

He visited us, as mentioned, in Kristiansund in 1928 — with his Slovenian wife and little daughter Gudrun. She was a bright little girl with an eye for things. For as they steamed along the coast by scheduled steamer, Gudrun — who had grown up in the crowds of central Europe — said:

"Papa. Where are the people?"

For a number of years one corresponded with Gisle Johnson, including when he was transferred to Budapest. But then the war came, and that was the end. And when Soviet troops entered Budapest, this excellent man suffered the same fate as so many compassionate Samaritans. He fell at his post. A bullet ended this faithful man's active life.

On the train northward through Romania one found oneself in a compartment with a Polish engineer returning home to Poland after several years in the Caucasus. He had his elderly mother with him — she was over seventy.

In the compartment there was also a Russian lieutenant-colonel with his Polish wife, and a solitary young Polish woman with platinum-blonde hair and occupation unknown.

This became a little band, which was to stay together all the way to Warsaw.

In Lemberg — or Lvov, as the Russians call it — the engineer was well known, so there we ate dinner at a very pleasant establishment, whereupon the engineer said:

"We are now changing trains, and for my mother's sake I should like to ask whether you would help me secure a compartment so that she may have a seat."

Certainly — with the greatest pleasure. One was glad to help the old lady.

We were at the station in good time, and the engineer explained that the empty train stood far away on a siding, and that the object was to get into it and secure places before it came in to the platform. Boarding while in motion, in other words. This promised fine sport, and one said to oneself that the person who was going to go furthest out onto the tracks and board it first was oneself.

The boarding went splendidly. The train was moving at a fair pace, but one was not so foolish as not to run alongside and jump onto a step as it passed. So when we came into the platform one was feeling rather pleased with oneself.

But one ought not to have been.

One ought to have reckoned with human villainy and the awkward detail that the carriage door did not open inward — as in Norway — but outward. To get into the carriage one had to step slightly down from the step and pull the door towards one — and then it began.

People were absolutely mad. They pulled at one's jacket, tried to squeeze between the door and oneself, and the scene reached its climax when one fellow climbed up over one's back and landed on all fours inside the carriage, directly above one's head.

At which point one became somewhat annoyed. Hitherto one had conducted oneself according to the rules of politeness and civilised behaviour, but now one gave those rules up as a bad job. What — had one not practised both boxing and wrestling, and had one not the gold athletics badge?

One gave as good as one got. One thought of the old lady who might not get a seat on account of this rabble forcing their way in, and drove one's elbows into stomachs and chests to considerable effect. One also trod on a considerable number of toes that had come rather too close.

The result was highly satisfactory. Amid the roars — of approval, one preferred to think — of one's immediate neighbours, one entered the carriage and made one's way to compartment number two, which according to the engineer was theirs. He had paid a conductor a substantial sum to reserve the compartment for the party.

Outside the compartment there was indeed a conductor, but he did not look at all pleased. When one asked how matters stood with the compartment the engineer had paid for, he simply pointed inside:

"Occupied," he said. "The Jews."

The compartment was full. All seats were taken by Jewish passengers, who bestowed upon one a condescending smile.

When the engineer and his mother arrived, one could only say that all seats were taken. Neither the conductor nor one had managed the task assigned to us, and one both felt rather embarrassed about it.

The engineer, however, received the news with quite different feelings. He became furious. He became incandescently furious. One watched him sprint off the train towards a lieutenant standing on the platform with a detachment of soldiers.

And then the Polish army went into action.

A group of young soldiers stormed the train and, amid laughter and jeering, took the Jewish passengers and simply threw them off the train. The luggage flew after its owners through the windows. The whole thing was done in a trice. One-two-three — the compartment is empty. Please be seated.

Polish blood is not to be underestimated. There is much in what one's friend Gurski said when the conversation turned to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71:

"It was not the Prussians who were the best. It was us. In a great many Prussian regiments the Poles were in the majority. It was we who broke through at Gravelotte. Not the Prussians."

One never disputed this point with one's friend, for one had by degrees learnt to admire, love, and fear the Poles — who are nothing other than a chemical compound that explodes at the lightest touch. And they do not fizzle like a damp squib. No. They go off with a bang.

The engineer offered his commentary on the affair:

"I knew the lieutenant, and the matter was clear when he learnt that the Jews were not sitting in the compartment to travel, but solely to compel those who wanted a seat to pay an exorbitant sum. That is their way. They are damned swine."

For a time one reflected on whether this account was accurate. The Jews had luggage with them, had they not? But one did not undertake a formal enquiry. One let the matter rest. There is, after all, the question of Polish blood. And the Jews could not re-board in any case, as the train was by then well in motion.

The journey to Warsaw passed without any particularly nerve-racking experiences — except that the lady with the platinum hair persistently addressed one as "Mr Scotsman." Heaven knows why she did this, and why in Warsaw she was so disagreeable to a police constable that she was arrested and "taken to the station." One has often wondered what manner of person she was.

From Warsaw one pressed on as soon as possible to Stettin, and found oneself feeling almost at home upon crossing the border into Germany and hearing German spoken. Germans are our racial kinsmen, and German and Norwegian have much in common — which is something to be said when making a comparison with Norwegian and Russian or Polish, not to mention any of the Caucasian languages. All these tongues stand at a partly immeasurable remove from Norwegian.

Stettin was a pleasant town. One liked it there. It was a Sunday when one continued on, and there was a large outing of people going to the countryside, giving the impression that Germany was pulling itself back to its feet after the miseries of the war.

At Sassnitz one lost one's pistol — the pistol one had carried through Europe on all one's travels. One had thought one ought to be honest enough to declare it now, when leaving Germany. Surely there could be no risk in that?

But this honesty cost one the pistol, as it turned out. The German customs officer pounced on it with a cry of delight and declared with satisfaction:

"I'll take that. It is forbidden to export weapons from Germany."

One protested, of course. The pistol had not been purchased in Germany. It was in transit. He could see from the stamps in one's passport and the ticket that one had come directly from the Caucasus. But nothing availed. Export of weapons was prohibited. There was nothing more to say about it. One received a receipt showing that the German customs had taken possession of the pistol whose greatest feat of arms was the shooting of the cat in Kutaisi, and thus all formalities were in order. The customs officer clicked his heels and handed over the receipt:

"There you are, sir. A pleasant journey."

No — it is pointless to argue with Germans. If something is decided, it stands fast as iron. In the Caucasus one could argue, and even say that the regulations were nonsense. One did this when passing through Natanebi with one's carpets and succeeded in obtaining duty-free passage for the lot.

One did not have the opportunity to discover what the German customs would have said about a transit of oriental carpets, and whether they too would have been confiscated — as one had dispatched them from Batum by Norwegian ship direct to Oslo, where one received them — to one's considerable astonishment — duty-free. The customs had determined that they were second-hand and formed part of one's household effects, and in that case there it was.

The Norwegian customs officers perhaps did not know that it is precisely when a carpet has been in use for some time that it acquires its finest lustre and increases in value. This is why the carpet-dealers in Tiflis put their carpets out on the pavement for people to walk on for several weeks.

One then delivered one's report to A/S Elektrokemisk, and with that one's work for this firm came to an end — a firm by which one had always been met with goodwill and understanding. They were capable people — men of broad horizons, these gentlemen directors. Had their plans been carried out, Norwegian enterprise would have gained a firm footing in those by nature so extraordinarily rich landscapes between the Black Sea and the Caspian. A Norwegian colony would have been established there, something from which Georgia in particular would have benefited.

But It Did Not Go That Way

The course of world events overturned all Norwegian calculations. The Soviet advanced into the Caucasus and confiscated everything owned by A/S Elektrokemisk — from land, forest, and fields to books and equipment stored with Gdseliev. Lenin's and Stalin's democracy demonstrated in practice the doctrine of equality for all. Why should Norwegians own all this? Did not the people at large have equally good claim to it?

Naturally they did.

And then there was the very important circumstance that the Norwegian gentlemen had only the law and justice on their side, whilst the Soviets had the cannons. And in the intercourse between nations it is, in the end, the cannons that decide.

There are a couple of things one wishes to add, by way of illustration of conditions in the Caucasus:

The Georgians live principally in the lowlands. Their small landholdings with their frail wooden houses — through the roofs and walls of which one can often see the stars — lie scattered or in clusters, and the peasant life suits them tolerably well. They grow maize and other grains and vegetables, keep geese, cattle, and poultry, and get by in this fashion.

Harder is it for the mountain tribes.

A rocky Norwegian mountain farm they would consider a paradise, as their plots are often formed from soil the peasant has carried up from the valley. The hillsides are steep, and to prevent the earth from sliding away they build stone walls along the lower edges of the fields to hold it in place. But it does happen that a flood sweeps both field and wall down into the valley.

The following story is told in the Caucasus, which is useful for understanding things:

A Lezgin — a mountain tribe of Dagestan, in the eastern Caucasus — went out one day to do his spring sowing, and as it was warm he took off his coat. He had three plots of land, and when he had finished plots one and two, he turned to make a start on the third — but could not find it. He searched and searched, but it was gone, and in the end he became frightened and said:

"The devil has taken it."

He reached for his coat to run away — but then stopped dead. For the missing plot of land was lying under the coat.

The mountain people live in villages called "Aul" — the word pronounced in two syllables, with the stress on "ul." Each house is a fortress.

Interesting is the question of a possible ancient connection between Norsemen and the Caucasus. A chest one purchased was adorned with what appeared to be Norwegian rose-painting on its lid, and one saw photographs of veranda railings identical to those often seen on old Norwegian farmhouses. The physical type is also entirely Germanic, particularly in the mountains.

There are not many words in the Georgian language that recall Western Europe, but one found at least one — "dsumpe," meaning "marsh." Evidently the same word as our "sump," is it not?

The Caucasian mountain peoples do not know the use of skis, though some of them use snowshoes. One was told, however, that they do not understand how to fit snowshoes to horses.

The year 1919, when one was compelled to manage with foreign languages, was a rare and excellent training for one's ear for language.

In January 1919, just before one departed, one had attended a general meeting at A/S Elektrokemisk and heard Director Heiler reading out the annual report in English. One understood only a single word — "shares." One reads English well enough, but pronunciation and the like had always been somewhat poorly attended to, as one is a Latinist by schooling.

But then one sat for weeks and months listening to foreign tongues, and one recalls telling oneself upon arrival that one's brain had now been honed so sharp that it could cut through birchwood. For the fact is that when over the New Year of 1920 one again heard Director Heiler read out the annual report in English, one understood almost every single word — and yet throughout all of 1919 one had heard no English whatsoever, beyond the brief conversations one had conducted with the English gentlemen in Batum.

One's hearing had evidently been sharpened to a very considerable degree.

When it had been decided that one was not to go back to the Caucasus again, one arranged for the Norwegian government to appoint one's friend Gurski as Norwegian vice-consul in Tiflis. He set immense store by this honour, which brought him no advantage in practice — rather the contrary.

When the Soviets entered Georgia in 1921 he was driven out of the country, not least because he was the official representative of a capitalist state.

He came to Norway in the summer of 1922 and visited us at Villa Skogly, near Heimdal, Leinstranda.

There he astonished you, Katrine, by leaving his watch behind when he went out for a walk, and when you asked why he did so, he replied:

"One leaves it behind as a matter of course, Madam. One might, after all, be set upon."

One day he came with one down to the parish constable at Heimdal, and when we were standing inside the constable's office he asked:

"Is this the police?"

"Yes."

"It cannot be. All the windows are intact. And where are the horses?"

"What horses?"

"The horses for the riders, of course. The horses for the riders who go out to catch the bandits."

As we walked home, he looked at the telephone wires running along the road and remarked: "This is how it is in the Norwegian countryside. In Russia there are many towns that have no such good telephone network."

Gurski spent his last years in Constantinople. He died some time before the outbreak of the Second World War — around 1935, one thinks. He was spared the sight of Poland's collapse. He lived always in the belief and hope that his fatherland would rise again and become a new great power whose voice would be heard and respected in the community of nations.

In Leningrad, in Nansen's Service

Some time in the summer of 1921 one was suddenly invited to call upon Professor Nansen at his villa at Lysaker. Nansen wished to speak with one.

One was naturally somewhat curious. What could the famous man want with one? But one went, and was received by a vigorous, sunburnt fellow in canvas shoes, sailing trousers, and a white flannel shirt. His sixty years appeared to trouble him not in the least.

Nansen came straight to the point:

"As you know, the powers have set up a relief committee to direct the work of distributing aid to Russia. I have been elected chairman of this committee and we are now to begin work. We have a consignment of stockfish in Viborg and another in Åbo — each about three hundred tonnes — and this fish is to be brought in to Leningrad and distributed there.

"You have been recommended to me as a man who can manage the job. Will you take it on?"

"With the greatest pleasure."

"You will receive no salary — only expenses covered. Can you travel in a couple of days?"

"Yes."

"Good. Let us look at the matter then."

He put one in the picture and gave one the necessary papers. And then he said something that only the truly superior commander can say:

"That is all I can tell you. How you manage things will be your own affair. You know Russia better than I do."

Such was Nansen.

Had a government ministry sent one out, one would have received a trunk full of instructions. But Nansen was not a government ministry, and that is why he also got things done. He chose his assistants, gave them their tasks and a free hand to accomplish them — and this method produced swift and good results.

A week later one was in Helsinki. One had taken the boat from Stockholm to Åbo and continued by train, arriving in Helsinki at the hotel where the German commander-in-chief, General von der Goltz, had stayed during the Finnish War of Liberation in 1918.

The following morning one presented oneself at the Soviet legation and requested a meeting with the chargé d'affaires, Comrade Tschornyi. One showed him one's papers, explained one's errand, and asked for permission to enter Russia.

To one's considerable astonishment, Mr Tschornyi said no.

"You will receive entry permission when you travel with the fish consignment. Not otherwise."

With that reply one had to depart.

But that evening something occurred. One was called upon at one's hotel by some Finnish journalists who wished to know what one was about, and one did not conceal from them that the Soviets were refusing Nansen's representatives permission to enter the country in order to make the necessary preparations for receiving several hundred tonnes of food.

"The Soviets are begging for help. Here I come with help, and when I then ask to be allowed in to look around, the Soviets say no. 'Bring the fish and then you may come in,' says the Soviet. But I will not do that. I am not willing to deliver myself unconditionally to the Bolsheviks."

From what one learnt later, the journalists had written a fine article about this and telegraphed it round the world, and it had its effect. The Soviet legation changed tactics. One was telephoned with a request to call at the legation, and there one was informed that there was no objection to one's travelling to Leningrad.

So one took the train eastward and crossed the border at Riihimäki, where the Russians took over the train and the controls. The passport inspector was of the right sort — a tall, gangling fellow in riding breeches, without a jacket and with his shirt open, so that one could see him far down his navel.

From Helsinki one had been travelling in the company of some senior Russian officials. One of them was head of the Leningrad section of the Ministry of Trade, which, like the other ministries, was based in Moscow. These Russians had evidently come prepared for most eventualities, for they barricaded themselves into their carriage by placing planks and poles under the door handles so that they could not be moved.

"No one has any business in our carriage," they explained.

When we arrived in Leningrad, one was invited by the aforementioned head of the Ministry of Trade to ride with him. He had been tasked with conducting one safely to the Hôtel de l'Angleterre, directly opposite the St Isaac's Cathedral, and as soon as one came through the door one was invited to a little celebratory gathering — which had in fact arisen from a misunderstanding, as it was thought in Leningrad that Nansen himself was coming, and it turned out to be only one.

The party was held in any case, and one received the food that had been intended for Nansen: meat patties that smelt rather suspicious, vegetables, tea brewed from lingonberry leaves but without cream or sugar, and dark rye bread.

That was the menu. It gives some picture of the food situation in Leningrad in July and August 1921.

One had been given two large rooms with carpets on the floors, respectable furnishings, and electric light — nothing to complain of. But then the d'Angleterre was the prestige hotel where simple-minded foreigners were lodged in order to give them a favourable impression of Russia. Electric light was otherwise scarce, and as far as one recalls there was no street lighting at all.

Having stayed at the d'Angleterre fourteen years earlier when one first came to Leningrad — the city was called Petersburg in those days — one asked the following morning whether porter Arrajum was still there.

"He's been knocked on the head," came the laconic reply from the new porter. A reply one was to hear more than once when asking after this person or that.

The following days one rushed from one office to another trying to obtain a steamer that could go to Finland to collect the fish. Everyone was agreeable, everyone was willing, but it took a full week before everything was settled.

During this time one carried out some commissions and looked about the city.

The first commission was of a private nature. Just as one was about to leave Oslo's Østbanestasjonen, a Russian had come down to the platform with one of one's Norwegian acquaintances and introduced himself as Colonel So-and-so of a Russian Guards regiment. And then he said:

"I hear you are going to Leningrad, where my family still lives. Could you be so kind as to buy a pair of shoes in Finland for my little boy? He is six years old."

The colonel gave one the family's address and one promised to do as he asked.

So one of the first things one did was to make one's way to the colonel's family. One had learnt that only ten of Leningrad's ten thousand cab-drivers remained, and that the available motor cars had been requisitioned by the state. So there was nothing for it but to walk. It was a considerable distance to the colonel's — nearly an hour on foot — but one arrived in the end and was received with delighted warmth, as if one had been a messenger from heaven.

One delivered the greetings and the boots, which were tried on at once and found to fit. A little large, perhaps, but such things correct themselves in time with a six-year-old.

One was then treated to whatever the household could offer, which was the tea brewed from lingonberry leaves and dark rye bread. Full stop.

Living with the colonel's family was his wife's mother, widow of a general — a very alert old lady. And so one asked:

"So this is how you have been living since the revolution broke out four years ago. How do you manage?"

"We manage very well," said the general's widow. "Those who could not manage are dead."

Of the daily struggle to keep alive she continued:

"Did you drive into any holes in the street on the way from the station?"

"No."

"Then you were fortunate. For we go out at night and steal from the wooden paving to use as firewood, with the result that from time to time accidents happen when people drive into these holes in the dark."

"Is it not forbidden to break up the street?"

"It is punishable by death. Hiding firewood is also punishable by death. But last winter we had an enormous quantity of wood hidden under the beds and elsewhere, and the police did not find it when they inspected."

She went on to relate that one evening she had found in the street one of those tall wooden arches that form part of Russian harness, rising up over the horse's withers.

"I took it home," she said triumphantly. "We cooked an entire dinner with it as fuel."

The colonel's wife's younger brother also lived with them. He was a lieutenant in the Soviet air force.

"One has to live, hasn't one? I joined them to avoid starving to death. But one fine day I shall fall and kill myself, for the machines we fly are dreadful. But up we must go, in all weathers, and it has been touch and go with me more than once."

One naturally also touched upon the question of flight — a question the poor people had evidently discussed more than once. For they had it all planned out:

"If my brother flies over to Finland, we shall be shot," said the colonel's wife. "And we cannot get away in any case, as we have no money. Those who help refugees out of the country run great risks and therefore also charge greatly for it."

From Finland one had brought a large box of confectionery, which one gave to the colonel's wife as a farewell gift. When she received it she was so moved that she burst into tears.

On the way back one wished to carry out another commission, went to the address given, and knocked. For a long time. Eventually one heard someone stirring on the other side of the door.

"Is anyone at home?" one asked. One knew one had come to the right place, as the person's name was on a slip of paper outside the door.

No answer. Only a little stirring.

"Open up," one said. "I bring greetings for you from Norway."

More stirring. And low whispering. There was clearly more than one person behind the door.

"Open up," one said, and rattled the door-handle.

But one ought not to have done that. It became suddenly deathly quiet behind the door, and to all one's entreaties to open up one received no reply. The poor people had clearly been terrified and thought one was a criminal intending to come in and seize whatever might be had — which, in that time and place, was not an unreasonable fear.

So this commission went unaccomplished.

With the authorities one had considerable trouble. There was always a friendly reception, friendly words, and "come back tomorrow." The manner of conducting business at the offices was extraordinary. One arrived on one occasion at a public office, was told the chief was engaged, but — do take a cigarette, do sit down and wait a moment.

Then another visitor entered and received the same agreeable welcome. Likewise visitor number two, three, and four.

The chief's secretary appeared in the doorway:

"Will you" — pointing to visitor number four — "come in."

"We have been waiting longer!" the rest of us cried.

A new visitor, number five, entered.

"You might as well come too," said the secretary, beckoning to him.

But now the rest of us were assisted by number four:

"It's my turn, damn it. You said so yourself just now."

And the rest of us also put in a word.

It gradually emerged that the secretary's concept of order consisted in having the latest arrival go in first. "The chief will finish with him quickly, so that he can give the rest of you proper time."

One protested, then rose and walked past the astonished secretary and into the chief's office.

"I spoke with him yesterday," one said, "and he told me to come in without delay."

Which was not a falsehood either. The office — or waiting room — one has described was the anteroom of the Soviet official one had travelled with from Helsinki and who had driven one to the d'Angleterre. He was an agreeable man and one liked him. He was Jewish — of the beautiful Christlike type, though not fair but dark. A genuinely handsome man. One wonders what fate has befallen him in the new Russia.

One was told that one might perhaps obtain a car by applying at such-and-such a place, and so one did. One received many promises but no car, and remembers this visit vividly because in the corridor of the office sat a guard soldier who was quite certainly insane. He had that gleam in the eyes that is seen only in lunatics. He reminded one of the cat one had shot down in the Caucasus — with the disagreeable distinction that whereas the cat had sat behind a door and had nothing but teeth and claws to fight with, this fellow sat a couple of paces from one and was fingering a loaded rifle. One was fully prepared to receive a bullet in the back as one left, but fortunately no shot was fired. The lunatic was perhaps sane in that particular moment.

One's time in the Caucasus had trained one in frugality, but the fare at the hotel was such that one accepted an offer from the Finns to take one's dinner with them. They had arranged communal catering and were doing well, as they received food parcels from Finland.

One day one experienced something one is glad to record:

A girl from the hotel came in and said: "A compatriot of yours has arrived. Could you not go up and see what he wants, as he speaks no Russian?"

One went up to find this compatriot, who proved to be an engineer Friis from Oslo. He told one that he was the brother of the well-known Communist Jakob Friis, and that through his brother he had obtained a job with the Soviet government — something to do with harnessing the River Sver and constructing an electric power plant for Leningrad.

Then Mr Friis, who was a most agreeable fellow, said:

"The food here is terrible. How do you manage? Have you brought provisions?"

"No," one said. "I eat with the Finns, so I'm perfectly all right. I'm accustomed to Russia, having lived here before, so I brought nothing with me. I shan't be here more than a month."

"Well then we must at least have a cup of coffee together," said Mr Friis. "There is electric current here and I have an electric percolator, so that will be all right. And food I have plenty of — just look there." He pointed to several crates standing about on the floor, some of them opened, so one could see bread, butter, and tinned food.

"How very prudent of you," one said. "However did you think of it? Have you been to Russia before?"

"No," said Mr Friis, "but my brother Jakob has. He was here three months ago, and he told me I must bring food if I did not wish to starve, so I have brought food worth three hundred Swedish kroner."

So there it was. Jakob Friis had told his brother the truth. But at home in Norway he was agitating and lying, persuading his countrymen that things were better in Leningrad than in Oslo. And when one came back and said how things actually were in Russia, people smiled indulgently. They knew better. They had heard Jakob Friis.

After about a week in Leningrad, one was visited late one evening by two Soviet fellows. They came to say that the Soviets had now placed a steamer at one's disposal, and that a little later that night one would be driven down to the vessel, which was at that moment being inspected by the police in case any unauthorised persons had secreted themselves aboard.

One of the two was a man of sparkling energy — a man who knew his own mind. Such people can indeed build a new society, and one listened with interest to his accounts from the Archangel front, where he had been supreme commander in the fight against the White Russians and the Allied expeditionary forces. One imagines he must have risen far in the new state society he was helping to build.

So one was driven down to the harbour. There was fine moonlight and stillness. There was not much life in the city of millions that night. One was set down at the harbour commander's office whilst one's companions went down to the vessel to check that all was in order.

One then sat and chatted with the duty watch, who was a naval rating in uniform. The illumination in the room was a candle in an empty bottle, and one was agreeable to each other — one giving the rating cigarettes, while he offered something even more precious: pieces broken from a dark rye loaf.

One asked what he thought of the development in Russia, and he replied that things were going well. The rule of the aristocracy was over for ever. Now the common people would get their rights, so that even those without means could obtain an education and rise to the highest positions.

As soon as one was aboard, the vessel cast off and departed. It proved to be the little Subotnik, which before the war had run between Arkhangelsk and Vardø — a neat little vessel about the size of one of our smaller fjord steamers, only much lower in the water than most of them. It would not have taken much of a sea before she washed in over the stern deck.

The crew consisted of captain, mate, engineer, and some sailors and firemen — plus a female steward. But then there were two personages of a kind one had never encountered on any Norwegian vessel — two political commissars. The elder was a bespectacled Jew in his thirties, while the other was a stripling of seventeen or eighteen.

We reached Viborg without incident, where one of the fish consignments was lying — but there it began. The harbour doctor came aboard and declared that we would have to lie in quarantine for — six weeks, one believes — since we had come from Leningrad, which was infected with cholera.

Great commotion aboard. One protested and the Russians swore. All to no avail.

So we lay there, day after day and week after week, and nothing is so bad that it has no good in it. For one made the acquaintance of the best storyteller one has ever encountered — the Jewish commissar.

He was extraordinary, and his stock of stories inexhaustible.

And what a way he had of telling them.

He did not merely recount the stories. He performed them. He mimicked dialect and facial expression, he laughed and wept, he waved his arms and legs and whinnied. He had us all bent double with laughter and congratulating ourselves on having him aboard.

He was a genuine find. One hopes it may go well with him in this world that is so unkind to the children of Abraham.

One had other diversions too.

There was, for instance, the long, lean Finn who provided us with bread, spirits, and other good things when our stores ran out. The Subotnik had not been provisioned for a lengthy expedition but for a trip of a few days, and the provisions one had been given were precisely calculated. There was no surplus in Soviet Russia. We were expected to be as hungry as those at home.

But when everything was eaten and the quarantine continued, something had to be done. The captain had money, so we signalled to our friend the ship's chandler, who puttered round the Subotnik many times a day, and invited him aboard. There he received an impressive order for bread and butter and the like. But then there was the question of spirits.

"Forbidden," declared our friend. "We have total abstinence now."

The captain looked at him and snapped his fingers:

"Shall we say five bottles of vodka? That is perhaps a little modest, but we can surely have more later?"

There is nothing more to say about this. Every single time the "temperance apostle" subsequently came to us, he produced a vodka bottle or two from his trouser or jacket pocket. He received his ample commission and everything went smoothly. Only one deal fell through for him — when he tried to foist drinking water upon us that was exclusively prepared for steamships. The captain fired off one of his multi-storey oaths, and the storytelling commissar roared with laughter. The Finn's effrontery was so magnificent that it appealed to the Jew's sense of humour and business acumen alike.

Besides the ship's chandler, there were also other people who rowed or motored round the Subotnik and watched us, and it was plainly evident that the sight of the red flag with the sickle and hammer pained them. It was only three years since the Finns had fought their War of Liberation and freed themselves from Russia, so Finnish affection for the Bolsheviks was not so warm that one could not detect the absence of it. What the visitors shouted across to us was therefore certainly not wishes for good health and a long life.

One recalls in particular one Sunday when a very fine mahogany motor-boat came close up alongside the Subotnik. One was walking on the stern deck, and the well-dressed people aboard looked to one like members of Viborg's highest circles — when one of the gentlemen stood up, shouted something up at one, and then turned round and slapped himself on the backside.

The meaning was sufficiently clear, and the ladies and gentlemen in the boat laughed uproariously at the treatment their friend had given "the Bolshevik skipper" — for they naturally took one for the captain, as one was walking about in a respectable suit.

By one of the sawmills there lay a large American vessel loading, and one day a boat came over from her. It carried several ship's officers, and after exchanging greetings, one of them said:

"Have you any diamonds to sell?"

"Diamonds?"

"Yes — the diamonds you have taken from the Tsar. We'll pay well."

One could not find a response to this. One of the sailors, an Estonian who spoke English, took over the conversation that was necessary, and he spoke fluently. One does not know what he said, for the words he employed were ones one had never encountered at school. But they must have been forceful. For the American turned red in the face and rowed back again in what was presumably a cloud of expletives.

After considerable telegraphing back and forth with one's consulate — or legation? — in Helsinki, one succeeded personally in obtaining release from quarantine after a couple of weeks. The Subotnik, however, had to remain for the full quarantine period.

One therefore made a trip to Helsinki, where with the help of Professor Mikola one obtained a pleasant room at "Munksnäs" — in Finnish, Munkkiniemi — outside the city. One had called on the professor the moment one arrived from Norway and had found in him one of the leading men in the Finnish independence movement. If one recalls correctly, he had received the German expeditionary force under General von der Goltz when it landed in Finland, and accompanied it during the advance on Helsinki. One clearly recalls him saying to one:

"A few kilometres before we reached Helsinki I saw the first dead Bolsheviks."

It was Professor Mikola who led the delegation that travelled to the governments of Europe asking for support and recognition of free Finland.

The professor, who was small in stature, was a very agreeable and sociable man.

But he had a sister.

She was a well-known authoress. One seems to recall that her pen name was something like "Maila Taivilo," and she was a woman with clear lines. Her brother the professor had, incidentally, found it necessary to give one a small briefing before one met her:

"My sister is an ardent Fennoman. She cannot bear the Swedes and therefore never speaks Swedish."

When one met the lady one evening at the professor's, she was very direct:

"I will not speak Swedish with you. I wish to speak German, but I would appreciate it if you would speak Norwegian, as I wish to acquaint myself with certain features of your language."

So she used German and one used Norwegian, and it went admirably. But one found oneself somewhat at a loss when she wished one to explain the difference between certain Norwegian words — "ås" and "li," for instance. What sort of trees grew in a "skogholt" and which in a "lund?" And so forth. One genuinely felt oneself out in rough weather. For she was a formidable woman.

Among others one met that evening was Finland's greatest lyric poet. One has forgotten his name. He was treated with great respect, and it was a pleasure to receive from him his latest long poem, which had just been published. It was in Finnish, and like so much else that was beautiful, it burnt up during the fighting in Narvik in 1940.

One returned to the Subotnik a few days before the quarantine period expired and saw that she had already begun taking on the fish.

The fish was not good, but this was not Nansen's fault. It had simply been stored too long in old lighters that evidently leaked. For one did not see a single fish that was white or cream-coloured. All had the same colour as brown wrapping paper, and in some crates the fish was in such a wretched state that the contents appeared to be nothing but a brown paste.

One therefore refused to take aboard a number of the crates.

One was not comfortable. One felt embarrassed before the Russians, even though they all said that we Norwegians bore no responsibility for it. The entire crew laid the blame on "the damned Finns," who they believed had deliberately withheld good fish.

On the last afternoon we went up into the town to do some shopping, and there the captain bought all the food and drink he dared to buy. He would have to give an account when back in Leningrad. But it most likely went well on the day of reckoning, for the Jewish commissar was along and personally selected a great quantity of good things unavailable in Leningrad — cheese, butter, sugar, for instance.

One liked the captain. He was a tall, handsome, serious man, and one took offence on his behalf at the Finnish shop assistants who gave him anything but friendly glances.

But we finished our shopping, went aboard, and put to sea that evening. Course: south-west.

When one came out on deck the following morning one expected to find oneself in harbour, but instead saw no land anywhere. It emerged that we had sailed almost all the way over to Reval to get clear of a minefield, then set an easterly course and entered through the cleared, narrow channel. In this way it took a couple of days to get from Viborg to Leningrad.

The stockfish was brown, true enough, but it was good. One ate it at every meal, mixed vodka and water in equal parts, and made a feast of it — this stockfish that would have caused a mutiny on any Norwegian army camp where one might have attempted to serve it. Norwegians are dreadfully spoilt when it comes to fish.

The crew assumed one was a sailor, as the Russian word "kapitan" can mean both military captain and sea captain, just as in Norwegian. And one left them to their assumption. One was treated as a comrade, and one had a very pleasant time of it, sitting round the brown fish and sipping vodka and water.

When we had come some way into the Gulf of Finland we took aboard the Russian pilot. One gave him half a pound of sugar when we parted, and one can still see the grateful eyes of that fine old grey-beard.

The first engineer was from Ukraine and one often talked with him. He told one that the Jewish commissar was there to ensure that the crew did their duty, that the vessel went where she was supposed to go, and so forth. He did not like the commissar, and was generally quite open in his opinions. For when one asked what he thought of the revolution, he replied:

"For four years the Russian people engaged in revolution. It burnt, plundered, stole, and killed, and now when it looks about it discovers that there is nothing left."

Commissar number two — the young whippersnapper — had kept himself in the background until we were approaching Leningrad. Then he emerged and began strutting up and down the deck.

"What are you doing here, comrade?" one asked.

"I am making sure that the captain does his duty."

When one later asked the captain whether this was indeed the case, he confirmed it.

"It doesn't matter now," he said. "Now we conduct ourselves as we see fit. But in the first period after the revolution it was beastly, as a good many of these ignorant fellows interfered in things they had no understanding of."

So we put in to the quay in Leningrad's deserted harbour, and a sentry was placed at the gangway. As one expected some official to arrive, one remained aboard.

The sentry became a puzzle to one, for he stood there without relief. And so one said: "Are you not getting a relief, comrade?"

"Not yet."

"How long do you stand, then?"

"There are two of us on this watch, so we stand twelve hours each."

There was evidently no question here of two-hour shifts and an eight-hour working day.

"But have you brought something with you?"

The soldier put his hand into his pocket and produced a crust of dark rye bread:

"Yes. I do have food with me."

As no official came, one went up to the watch office and asked to be allowed out. One explained who one was, showed all one's Russian papers, and expected the matter to be settled in short order.

But it proved far from simple. The chief — or whoever one was speaking with — said no. One explained and explained, to equally little effect.

Then one noticed one of the old tsarist customs officers standing in his uniform behind the fellow one was speaking with. He winked at one and tapped himself meaningfully on the forehead.

Aha. So the Soviet man was having one on. And with that one declared that one would report him if he continued to obstruct the distribution of the stockfish that was to go into the city.

One was then let through and went straight up to "the Ministry" to report that the fish had arrived, and that one wished to be present at the distribution.

Some days later one was informed that the fish had been distributed and that a particular school had had it for dinner. One went up to the school and met the headmaster — a tall, starved-looking man who thanked one warmly for the fish.

"It is many years since we have eaten so well as today," he said.

Professor Nansen had asked one to convey his greetings to Russia's great writer Maxim Gorky. So one went out to Gorky, who lived near the Peter and Paul Fortress where the Bolsheviks shot their political prisoners at night.

A barefoot woman was sweeping the landing outside the writer's flat. One said who one was, asked to pay one's respects to Gorky, and gave her one's visiting card.

She turned it over several times and gave a small laugh:

"Are there still places in the world where people use visiting cards?"

The great Gorky lit up when one brought him Nansen's greeting. But his face became hard and cold when the conversation turned to the current situation in Russia.

"They have been shooting again tonight," he said, and told one that the Bolsheviks had the previous night executed some professors and others who were his personal friends.

Of Nansen's work he said:

"Tell your Professor Nansen that all food, and everything else that is sent here, must be distributed by foreigners. He must not allow this work to be carried out by the Soviets."

One sat talking with him for about an hour, and when one was about to leave he offered to drive one into the city, as the Bolsheviks had allowed him to keep his horses. And so one had a swift drive through the deserted streets. Everyone who could had gone out to the country; grass was growing in the streets, and only the fewest of houses had all their windows intact. It was a sad sight.

When one parted, one said to Gorky:

"One last question. What is your view of the revolution?"

He lifted those great shoulders of his:

"Young man. You have witnessed the greatest tragedy in world history."

He looked at one for a moment and extended his hand:

"But it is also a memory."

Since then one has not seen Russia's great proletarian writer — the genius who began his existence as a vagabond. It will be known that he occupied a highly esteemed position in the Soviet state for some years, until it was eventually found that he was too troublesome, and he was disposed of by poison. That was the fate the proletarian poet received in the fatherland of the proletariat.

Then there was the fish consignment in Åbo:

One took the train back to Helsinki from Leningrad and discovered once again, the moment one crossed the border at Riihimäki, that one had entered a different world. On the Russian side — filth, squalor, and misery. On the Finnish side — well-dressed, civilised people, and in the station restaurant everything a decent person expects to find in a modern station restaurant.

One downed several cups of coffee with cream and despatched a quantity of open sandwiches with butter and cheese, whilst thinking of the colonel's family in Leningrad, who were fortunate if they obtained dry bread in the Bolshevik paradise.

And of that rogue Jakob Friis, going about telling people that things were better in Leningrad than in Oslo.

At Riihimäki station one fell into conversation with the commander of the Finnish border guard at that point — Captain Stålhane, if one recalls correctly. He pointed out to one that the Finns would not allow the Russian trains across the border. They had therefore not repaired the railway track from the station over the border, so that passengers had to walk a short distance from the Russian train, which had stopped on the Russian side, across to Riihimäki.

In Helsinki one called on the Soviet legation and said one wished them to appoint a man who could accompany one to Åbo to inspect the fish there. One explained that the fish in Viborg had not been as good as expected, and that we Norwegians did not wish to bear any responsibility for that.

A man was appointed — a Jewish jurist — and one travelled to Åbo with him and the Finn who had been responsible for storing the consignments.

It emerged that the fish — approximately three hundred tonnes — was stored in a solid, handsome cellar. It had however rained a little, and rainwater had seeped in through the door, making the floor somewhat damp. To avoid dirtying one's shoes, one laid some boards across the floor.

One opened some crates and some barrels. The fish was partly packed in ordinary fish boxes, partly in small barrels about a metre high, and one has the impression that these barrels were of oak. As the fish was chalk-white — not cream-white as from Møre — it was probably stockfish from southern Norway. The fish one had taken on in Viborg was from Møre or Trøndelag, as the name of the relevant fish-dealer was on the crates. One seems to recall his name began with "B" (Bruvoll?) and that he lived in Trondheim.

The fish was excellent. There was no doubt about it. And the Soviet's representative declared himself very satisfied.

When one was to return for regimental assembly, one had obtained Nansen's permission to arrange the delivery of the Åbo consignment by dispatching it to the border, where the Soviets would take it over. One arranged the necessary details with the Soviet's men and the Finnish representative, after which one parted as the best of friends and in full agreement.

But the Soviet is the Soviet, and its morality is not ours.

One had not been home many weeks before one received a letter from Nansen asking one to comment on a couple of letters he had received from the Soviets.

The first letter concerned the fish in Åbo. On this, the Soviets wrote that it was regrettable to have to note that one had attempted to deliver inedible food to Soviet citizens. For their representative had inspected the consignment in Åbo and reported that there was three-quarters of a metre of water in the cellar and that the fish was rotten.

The second letter concerned the distribution of the first consignment, and here the Soviets had drawn up a full folio page of destinations to which the fish had been sent.

One was not slow to reply to Nansen.

One stated that the Soviet's claim about rotten fish in Åbo was a lie, and pointed to the fact that the Soviet's own representative had declared to one's face that the fish was excellent. And as for the Soviet's distribution list — it showed, one wrote, that the Soviets evidently believed Norwegians to be idiots. Only one train ran each way per day between Leningrad and Moscow, and rail traffic in the Soviet Union was otherwise in the wildest disorder. Yet the Soviets were trying to persuade Nansen that the fish had been distributed all over the country — to Kazakhstan and Turkestan, no less.

The entire report was fraud, one wrote. Though in point of fact, it was of no great consequence to the International Relief Committee where the fish had gone, provided it entered the Soviet Union. There were more than enough hungry people everywhere who would have been glad of it.

One added, for one's own part, that in one's private opinion the world should not be straining itself to send food to the Soviets. They should instead be sending regiments to clean out the nest of wickedness that was there in full operation, hatching something that would not bode well for the world.

Later in the autumn of 1921 one received an enquiry from Nansen as to whether one would take charge of and lead a food transport that was to start from Genoa and proceed into the Black Sea.

One declined.

As one's successor one recommended Captain Vidkun Quisling, whom one had met in Helsinki, where he was military attaché, if one remembers correctly.

Vilna, 1922

The Poles had simply occupied Vilna, and to bring order to the situation the Allies planned a plebiscite under the supervision of foreign troops.

Norway was to send a company, and as "chief inspector" our General Carl Gulbrandsen was appointed, with a number of district supervisors under him. One was to be one of these.

The entire affair came to nothing. There was no plebiscite in Vilna. But those of us who were to have gone had been given money to smarten ourselves up, and one had accordingly acquired a fine new uniform.

One had derived some benefit from the plan.

Conclusion

As a conclusion to these memoirs of mine, one wishes to send a thought of gratitude to one's parents who, despite limited means, provided one with the solid education one had. Without it one could not have moved with such ease as one did among all these strange peoples, and without it one could not have had eyes and ears open to all the extraordinary things one saw and heard. One would also not have had the prerequisites for understanding what was taking place around one.