The City with the Golden Sheen

At Christmas 1998 my brother Nils Asbjørn handed me three exercise books in which our father — Konrad Sundlo — had drafted his recollections of his time in the Caucasus and elsewhere.

As he himself wrote to our mother in a foreword dated 19 September 1947: "Dear Katrine. These memoirs are written for you and the children. It is my intention, when opportunity arises, to polish them and bring the style closer to my spoken manner of expression, which I believe to be my strength……."

This polishing he never managed to complete. But I — Harald Sundlo — have nonetheless set myself the task of transcribing the draft, which was written for us children and tells us much about our father's youth. The contents may perhaps also be of some historical interest. What follows is my father's own words, though I have permitted myself to modernise the spelling somewhat.

Konrad Sundlo tells:

1. A bit of everything in Schlüsselburg.

In my boyhood it was always a great event when a letter arrived from cousin Marie. For Marie was a governess in Kola, and Kola was at the end of the world. Moreover, my cousin wrote well. She told of the bearded but good-natured Russians, of the Norwegian family she worked for, of parties, troika rides under crackling northern lights, and of the ignorance and the bedbugs. Occasionally she sent us illustrated booklets with Russian text, and I gazed with awe at the strange letters. They looked as if they had been turned inside out.

At the Cathedral School where I studied we had Aksel Andersen for arithmetic. He later apparently took the name Arstal and was everyone's terror because he pulled hair so terribly. He did not pull one's hair as decent teachers did, but seized the hair near the ear and hauled one upwards. I can still see how my classmates stood on their toes and pulled faces as they were lifted higher and higher. Arithmetic lessons were therefore approached with no small dread, and it did nothing to calm us that rumour had it our arithmetic teacher had once broken a boy's collarbone.

I was presumably the only one in the class who admired our hair-pulling master. And not because he didn't pull mine — I received my fair share. But the fact was that I had heard that Adjunct Andersen could speak Russian. And this was decisive for me. Imagine being able to understand those twisted letters! Had Andersen known how I, a small boy, admired him, he might not have pulled my hair quite so hard. But that is something I only came to think of after I had grown up.

At the Military Academy I took Russian as an elective and found in Professor Olaf Broch the finest language teacher I have ever had. And so in 1907 I crossed over to Russia to learn the language on the spot. I had by then completed two years' service as adjutant at the Sunnmøre Home Guard Battalion, so the route ran Molde–Trondheim–Stockholm, from where I took the passenger steamer to St. Petersburg — then the name of what is now called Leningrad.

At the Hôtel d'Angleterre, directly opposite the magnificent St. Isaac's Cathedral, I obtained a pleasant room, then went out to find the Norwegian consulate, which had its office on Millionaya, quite near the Winter Palace. It seemed to me the best course of action would be to take a cab, so I approached one of the many izvozchik waiting outside the hotel.

"Millionaya 36," I said.

"Three roubles," replied the bearded ruffian.

I had not the sense to realise there were no fixed fares. I did not know that haggling and argument are the first commandment when dealing with Russian cab drivers, so I climbed in and rode the kilometre to the consulate. But I learned better manners later!

At the consulate I met Messrs Winther-Hjelm — a son of my singing teacher at the Cathedral School, the organist Winther-Hjelm — and Zeiner Henriksen. Both were exceedingly helpful and arranged lodgings for me with a family in Schlüsselburg. This took a couple of days, however, so before I departed I was invited to dinner at the home of Consul Olsen, who was a son-in-law of the great Nobel. Among the other guests I noticed particularly Canal Director Sæthren and Captain Nørregård, who had been Morgenbladet's war correspondent during the Japanese attack on Port Arthur.

It was a most agreeable evening. The charming hosts enquired about my plans and gave good advice, and the small, dry, sun-bronzed captain told his stories. I remember in particular his account of disturbances on Nevsky Prospekt in the turbulent year of 1905, when thousands of people — led by the priest Gapon — marched up before the Winter Palace and were met with volleys from the assembled regiments.

"There was quite a commotion afterwards, naturally," said Captain Nørregård, "and particularly bad on Nevsky Prospekt, where in the lower part of the street an enormous crowd had gathered. The upper part was empty, and there sat a squadron of Cossacks. As the crowd grew and the shouting worsened, the squadron commander went into action. He formed the squadron across the street and they rode forward — at walk, trot, gallop, and finally at full charge with lances lowered. I have never seen people disappear so quickly," said Nørregård. "They shot through doors, gates, and windows. The street was swept clean and the squadron returned in triumph. A quarter of an hour later a few people appeared again. They started shouting once more, and at last the squadron commander grew tired of it. But now he did not ride out with the whole squadron. He simply called over one of the Cossacks and pointed down the street. The Cossack managed the rest himself. He galloped alone into the crowd, laying about him without mercy with the nagaika." (A short-handled riding whip with long thongs — also called the knut.) "The horse spared itself no more than its rider. It both bit and kicked. And with that the street was clean again. Things move along briskly when the Russians sort out the traffic!"

Schlüsselburg lies at Lake Ladoga, so I took the steamboat up, and on this journey I witnessed a little of what one might call Russian ecclesiastical life. There was a priest or monk travelling on the boat who gradually became quite intoxicated, having fallen in with generous companions. By the end he was dead drunk. At a stopping-place the sailors therefore took him up, carried him ashore, and laid him on the quay. There he lay when the boat moved on, sleeping — nose in the air and two empty vodka bottles tucked into his belt.

Schlüsselburg — or Schlisselburg as the Russians say — is a small town situated precisely where the Neva flows out of Lake Ladoga. Colossal quantities of timber pass through from the inland forest districts. The town is otherwise chiefly known for a political prison on an island in the Neva. A number of historically famous figures have ended their days here, and if I am not mistaken, an emperor was even murdered in this place.

Here the gentlemen at the Norwegian consulate had found me lodgings with Marfa Ivanovna, who took in paying guests. She was a hard-working woman, widowed from a cashier, doing her best to hold the household together and get her three small daughters into the world. She had several boarders and also some dinner guests.

The boarder I spent most time with was Alexander Ivanovitch. He was a veterinarian with responsibility for all the horses that came hauling barges and rafts, and he had plenty to do, examining some twenty thousand animals a year. The examination was perhaps not so very thorough — it probably amounted to checking whether the horse still had four legs and could stand on them. But even such an "examination" takes its time.

Alexander Ivanovitch was in his early thirties: small, thickset, with hair far down his forehead, remarkably mobile nostrils, and a Mongolian grin when he became animated. I often said to myself that he reminded one not a little of a panther. Internally as well. For he was an ardent revolutionary, and perhaps something worse. Once I had learned to speak and understand something, Marfa Ivanovna came to me with lengthy confidences: "Alexander Ivanovitch is an anarchist. Soon the police will come and take him!"

The "anarchist," however, proved to be no anarchist towards me, as he evidently considered me a hopeless innocent from the countryside and took me under his protection. I remember his expression one day when I told him I had been cheated by the police in Petersburg on my arrival from Norway. I had been instructed by the hotel porter to go to the police office for my passport, and when I arrived the relevant officer told me there was some difficulty with it, but that I could have it back against a payment of three roubles for the city's sick poor. I was new to Russia, weak in the language, and inexperienced, so I paid without a murmur.

When I told the story to Alexander Ivanovitch he resembled more than ever a panther preparing to defend its dinner. "Sick poor!" he hissed. "Scoundrels! Rabble! Villains! That's how the Tsar's lackeys plunder trusting foreigners!" He was furious for several days. But then one day he came rushing in with the newspaper: "See here! See here!" It was the sensational news of the assassination of the Portuguese king. "Fine business!" said he. "The freedom fighters used carbines this time. It appears that carbines are better than bombs!"

Since I had a solid foundation in Russian from Norway, it was not long before I both understood and spoke the language quite well. The "anarchist" could therefore sit for hours telling me of Russian affairs, just as he often took me along on inspection tours along the canal.

And so it came to pass that I stood watching the traffic with him one day — there were three of us, having stopped outside the hut of one of the supervisors, talking with him while the barges passed, drawn by eight or ten horses in single file. Alongside the horses walked the driver, letting his whip hiss down over the nags under incomprehensible shouts. "Any sick ones?" was the veterinarian's question as each team passed. No, there were none that day at any rate. I cannot recall seeing a single decent horse at work on the canal. They were all small and thin.

While the vet attended to his work, the canal supervisor was occupied with his own. Each time a barge glided past he bellowed across to the helmsman: "Throw me a couple of planks!" And then a few great two-metre logs of firewood came sailing over. "One day it'll be winter and cold," the supervisor yelled. "I must lay in firewood, otherwise I'll freeze to death!"

One of Marfa Ivanovna's dinner guests was a large naval officer referred to as "the Inspector." He commanded the entire fleet of small tugboats that took rafts of barges down the Neva, and was thus one of the "big men" in Schlüsselburg. When I told him about my trip along the canal and about the supervisor begging firewood, he nodded knowingly: "A most provident man!" "Provident?" said I. "But it was theft!" "You mustn't say that, Konrad Ivantsch. What do a few planks matter to a barge carrying several hundred fathoms?" But I would not let it go: "A couple of planks here and a couple there, to every single supervisor along the route and from every single barge, can in the long run amount to quite a lot of firewood. And we in Norway would call that theft!" "Who cares about that wretched little country of yours?" said the Inspector. "We should have taken it long ago!"

After that we were no longer friends — to Alexander Ivanovitch's undivided delight. "The Inspector is a swindler and a villain, one of those who are ruining Russia," he explained one evening. "Naturally he thinks it right that the supervisor steals a little firewood, for he himself is a great fraudster of the worst kind. He has a flat in Petersburg where his family lives, and for the flat alone he pays more than his salary. His main income comes through bribes. He is the one who arranges tugboats for the barges here in Schlüsselburg, and he does not do it before receiving a certain percentage above the tariff. And that comes to money — there are thousands of tows in the course of a year. In the Inspector you have proof of Russia's rottenness. Is it any wonder we revolutionaries want change?"

Once I told of the priest who had drunk himself insensible on the boat, and Alexander Ivanovitch was not in the least surprised. "We stand low," he said. "Terribly low. Half the nation cannot read or write — not even all the clergy can. I am a priest's son from Samara and know what I am talking about. Hear this about the cultural level of our priests: In the country, the priest receives his income from the peasants in farm produce, going himself from door to door with a sack on his back to collect it. It can happen that a peasant, for one reason or another, does not wish to receive the priest, and so locks the gate into the yard. But the gate never reaches quite to the ground — the lower part is cut away so that dogs and cats can pass freely in and out. And therefore we see more than once that the priest lies down on all fours and crawls under the gate with his sack to get in. Such is our level of culture!"

There was another thing that made it clear there was a difference between Russia and Norway: One day I read in the newspaper about an episode in southern Russia that made me feel transported to the darkest Middle Ages. Some Cossacks had pursued some horse thieves, caught them, and buried them out on the steppe so that only their heads protruded. Then they rode away and left crows, ravens, and other animals to deal with the unfortunates. And almost the worst of it: the incident was not described as any crime, but as an expression of a sound and just sense of law and order among the Cossacks.

The veterinarian had a friend who often visited us — an agronomist, tall and handsome with golden hair and beard, the very image of Christ. He was in the state's service, seeking to spread enlightenment among the peasants by talking with them and distributing sometimes forbidden pamphlets. "The agronomist is also a revolutionary," said Marfa Ivanovna. "The police know about him and have warned him."

Then it was Christmas 1907, and one of the Christmas days the agronomist invited a party. Everyone present belonged to the opposition. They called themselves reformists, though the imperial police would have preferred the word anarchists. But they had my sympathy, and it was a pleasant evening, with Christmas songs and revolutionary songs. One of the latter I remember to this day, as it concerned a political prisoner's escape across Lake Baikal. It began thus:

Slavnoje morje / Svjistschennyi Baikal / Slavnyi i parus / Kaftan dyirevaty

The evening was revolutionary, and it produced revolutionary consequences. For when we went out that night, the police were standing in the hallway writing down our names, and a couple of weeks later the agronomist was transferred by "administrative means" to the guberniya of Vologda.

The Russian empire, which had long puzzled itself over why a Norwegian officer should choose to settle near one of Russia's most notorious state prisons, did not forget my humble person either. I received the solemn notification that my passport would soon expire and that I ought therefore to leave the country. Which I did. That I took the home route via Moscow to see the Kremlin and Tretyakov's world-famous painting collection was noticed in Schlüsselburg, I suspect, not at all.

For me this first Russian visit was of very great significance. I had come to know an uncultured but good-natured and intelligent people, settled in a land with immeasurable natural resources. And I resolved then and there to return to Russia and settle there. It was possible to make a future there — and besides, in Russia something was always happening. In Norway one merely ambled about and breathed. But in Russia one felt that the pulse was beating.

2. A/S Elektrokemisk sends me to the city with the golden sheen.

It is not so easy to scrape together travel funds for a foreign posting when one is a lieutenant drawing 83 kroner per month. In the fullness of time I became a captain. But even this did not increase one's income to any considerable degree, and so year after year passed without my getting away, until the World War of 1914 put a sudden stop to all my plans.

Not until 1918 did the horizon brighten. I had been in contact with my friend artillery captain Carl Rustad, whom I knew to have some connection with A/S Elektrokemisk, which conducted business in Russia as well. My friend wrote to say there was a use for me, so I presented myself one day at the offices of A/S Elektrokemisk. What was to be done?

It was Director Christian Christensen I conferred with, and the director immediately beckoned me to the wall where a vast map of Russia hung. He impressed me at once — no ifs, ands, or buts, just plain instruction from the start: "We have major interests in Transcaucasia and must have a man down there. Are you willing to travel?" Yes, that was precisely what I wished! And so the director gave me an overview of the firm's plans: the development of hydroelectric power, timber extraction, mining, and much else besides. I congratulated myself on having landed in the middle of it all.

Before departing, I must say a word about geography and history. Everyone knows that Stalin is a Georgian, from the country of Georgia in Transcaucasia. But very few know there is no country called Georgia in Transcaucasia. The actual situation is that Stalin is from the country that the Russians call Grusia, but which the inhabitants call Kartvelia. I shall therefore speak of Grusia and Grusians — and the Grusinian women renowned for their beauty, who are no less lovely for the correction.

Grusia lies in Transcaucasia, on the southern side of the Caucasus ridge. The capital is Tiflis, situated near the eastern and southern borders, and it was in western Grusia that Elektrokemisk held its properties and concessions. The western part of Grusia where the Norwegians worked was called Mingrelia, and it was with a prince of Mingrelia that the firm had concluded large property purchases. Who could have foreseen that the Soviets would march into Transcaucasia and annex everything without a penny of compensation? The Norwegians lost a great deal of money on the affair, and the poor prince fared even worse — it was said he starved to death in Leningrad.

Late in the autumn of 1918, two of the firm's engineers returned from Transcaucasia: the Norwegian Ottesen and the Swiss Burgeois. Their report on the situation in Grusia was not optimistic. The Norwegian firm's property had been taken over by the state. Nothing remained. "It will now be your task to have our properties released," explained Director Christensen. "Faye will help you at first, but then he comes home, and you will be there alone. We intend to have you down there for a year." Very well — no objections from my side.

Late in the autumn Director Heiler arrived in Oslo — a Russian who had had much to do with the business in Transcaucasia. He gave me rules for good conduct: "In Russia one always does business in the following manner: one holds a dinner. There one eats and drinks until one is in good spirits, and then one talks business." Another maxim: "Assume that everyone in Russia is a rascal until the contrary is proved!" Good heavens, I thought. How will it go with an innocent soul from the country like me, turned loose over there?

And so I prepared. I called upon the dentist, who filled a cavity and extracted a tooth that seemed unreliable. At the National Hospital they vaccinated me against smallpox and injected serum against cholera and paratyphoid. "There is as yet no vaccine against typhus," said the attending physician. "For the moment you must manage by keeping lice at bay — typhus is transmitted through lice." I also obtained quinine, strong laxative pills, and the equipment for an enema, on a pleasant physician's advice. "And do call in when you return — it may be of interest to hear your experiences."

I spent two or three weeks obtaining the necessary passports and papers, including a laissez-passer issued only to diplomats and couriers. The Danish official who stamped my passport last of all handed it back with a bow: "There you are, sir! Everything is ready. And now the adventure begins!"

At this time the value of money in many countries was plummeting with dizzying speed. I received English sovereigns — five hundred of them, worth 10,000 kroner — as a gold reserve that would never diminish in value. I distributed them among several stockings, bound well with string so they would not clink, put the lot in a small leather bag, and had the Foreign Ministry seal the bag as diplomatic post. When I shook it hard afterwards — not a sound. All in order.

One day in January I received my final instructions from Director Heiler, who pressed my hand: "Remember that we pay all your expenses — but not champagne and ladies!" A couple of days later — I believe it was the 28th of January 1919 — I set off. My friend Captain Rustad and Director Christensen had come to the station. It sluiced, and the gentlemen waved: "Have a good journey, then! Good luck!" Something piped somewhere. And then the train went.

Neither Norway, Sweden, nor Denmark had participated in the war, so the journey to Copenhagen was entirely ordinary. But from Copenhagen things began. On the train to Gedser I entered a compartment where a solitary traveller sat — a dark-haired, square-built little man with a cat's face, swinging a rubber club in his right hand. He did not return my greeting. He did, however, appear to have the strongest possible desire to strike me. Charming companion, I thought. I found out at customs in Gedser that he was a Finnish courier, a Finnish freedom fighter — and thus he had my full sympathy, which did nothing for the conversation. He simply went on being silent and sullen. The little Berlin Jew I met on the ferry was quite another matter — polite, helpful, talkative, an acquaintance I look back on with pleasure.

In Germany there were soldiers' councils, but the men at Warnemünde were correct and courteous. The Berlin Jew persuaded me to travel with him by a more easterly route via Pasewalk. As the carriage filled with soldiers at every station — men who had lain in the field for years and were unaccustomed to showing consideration — I noticed a tired lady leaning against the doorframe and rose to offer her my seat. She stared at me with such a peculiar expression that I concluded she thought she had experienced the surprise of her life. Courtesy was evidently a rare commodity in Germany at the time.

In the evening we were put off at Pasewalk — the train went no further today. We found a café, then put up in a barn. I used the "gold rucksack" as a pillow. As I lay there enjoying the hay, I puzzled over where I had heard the name "Pasewalk" before. Next morning — fog, bare ground, many degrees of frost — a railway man told us there was revolution in Berlin, so it was not certain the train would run all the way through. One might as well come along as far as it would go.

In a compartment with a German major and later many more soldiers, we arrived on time at Berlin, where I put up at the Hôtel Adler. There were bullet holes in the plate-glass windows, and a soldier stood in the lift checking the papers of travellers. Only a few blocks away the Spartacists had raised the red flag and maintained a lively exchange of fire with the government troops.

When Russia collapsed after the October Revolution of 1917, a number of independent small states arose. In Transcaucasia this produced the independent states of Grusia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, which were later swallowed by the Soviets. It was in the republic of Grusia that I was to work, and since the republic had a legation in Berlin I called there to have my passport stamped and received besides a special letter recommending all Grusinian authorities to take good care of the Norwegian vice-consul — for I had been appointed Norwegian vice-consul with residence in Kutais and jurisdiction over all of Transcaucasia.

In the afternoon I travelled on to Munich. One of my fellow passengers was a Bavarian who unburdened himself about the war: "We would have won if it had lasted a few more months. It was those armoured vehicles that broke us — what can an infantryman do against a steel house that comes rolling towards you?" In Munich there was a change of trains and many degrees of frost; I hung my sheepskin coat over the missing compartment window. When we crossed into Austria during the night, the red Germany border official was charmingly jovial about my unusual destination.

In Vienna the old Austrian gentleman I had met on the train — who turned out to be a jurist, not a police commissioner as he claimed when wishing to be rid of young ladies in the Rathauskeller — showed me round the Ringstrasse and the Stefansdom before I continued to Budapest.

The train journey to Budapest offered a Hungarian sailor insisting on the wrestling prowess of his nation, a young Communist reciting Ibsen, and a Jew performing his evening prayers with such theatrical elaboration as to suggest a firm belief that God preferred an audience. In Budapest, a commissioner — a man who arranged everything: hotels, passports, railway tickets, restaurant reservations — installed me within an hour in a room in a laundry belonging to the janitor's flat. The janitor, loosened by wine, spoke fondly of his days in the hussars when there had been girls.

Next morning at the Romanian legation, the stairs were packed with desperate people seeking travel permits. My commissioner hurled himself in with roars of "Courier! Make way for a courier!" The crowd was sceptical. But cracks appeared, I followed close in the slipstream, and we shot through. A large fellow who had been coming every single day for two months trying to get to Kolomea in Galicia bellowed after us: "They let capitalists in, but have no use for us honest workers! But a day will come!" Inside, the Romanian officials were entirely charming — quite a different matter from the commotion on the stairs — and provided a young lieutenant to accompany me and see me safely on my way.

For the railway ticket, I had to see the Hungarian railway director — a gruff, grey-haired gentleman with a lion's mane, who immediately began to castigate Bjørnson: "You Norwegians always meddle in matters that do not concern you! The worst of you is this Bjørnson. He has supported Romanians, Ruthenians, Czechs, and other rabble and shown himself an enemy of ours — so I do not understand why I should help you!" Well, well. That was certainly one point of view. I then received a lengthy lecture on how unjustly Hungary was being treated, and when the old firebrand had unburdened his heart, he suddenly said: "Was it a ticket to Bucharest?" Yes, it was. "I shall reserve a compartment for you." He did so, wished me good luck with a genial nod, and I was thunderstruck. The only explanation I could find for the sudden change of weather was that he had concluded I didn't look like Bjørnson.

On the train I made the acquaintance of Rittmaster Tverdovski — now in the Polish army, formerly adjutant to the dragon regiment in Tomsk — who was travelling to Odessa to report to the Polish staff. A man of few words and great watchfulness, with him his horse, whom he called Ravnen, the Raven. We fell quickly into companionship.

At Braşov Tverdovski went to buy food and drink but came back looking like a thundercloud — he had encountered Romanian officers who had treated the Pole as if he were invisible. "They have forgotten that it was we who trained them. Without us they would have been nothing!" It required considerable quantities of spirits to restore his equanimity. I asked about the Raven, and later he told me the full story:

"The regiment's horses were the finest in Russia — bred for centuries of hard relay postal work, extraordinarily hardy, half-wild, kept outside even in the Siberian winter. At one horse inspection we got hold of a coal-black stallion which I named Ravnen and which was worse than any other. It screamed and lashed out like one possessed, and before it had stood many weeks in the stable it had kicked two lads to death. I was summoned to the colonel: 'See to it that the black devil is shot!' But I had grown fond of the horse and said: 'Might I not try it for a while? It would be a shame if we could not manage it, and besides, it would make a fine horse for the regiment's adjutant!' The colonel allowed me to try.

"I took over all care of the horse myself, accustomed it to seeing and hearing me, let it run on a lunge in the barrack yard where my men could watch, and finally put a saddle on it. Then came the day it was to be ridden. I had my orderly Ivan mount the fastest horse and ride out of town with Ravnen on a lunge, and when we were well outside, I threw myself over onto the stallion. Ivan protested: 'Don't do it, Barin! It will kick you to death!' And I must admit the horse did its best. But I held on, and when it could not get rid of me, it bolted — verst after verst, hour after hour across the vast plain around Tomsk. I discovered what powers and lungs were in that animal. Ivan and his horse were soon a tiny speck behind us.

"But a horse is not a machine. Even the finest will tire, and when we reached a long rise towards the mountains, the Raven slackened to a trot. Then came my moment: I spurred it back into a gallop, and every attempt to slow down met with stinging spur-strokes and cracking whip blows. Finally exhaustion had its way — it stumbled more and more, at last could not collect itself after a gallop-step, staggered forward, and went down. It was white with foam and entirely done. I sat beside it, patted its head and spoke kindly to it, and when Ivan came up, I had won. We had become friends. It never again made any attempt to throw me. I rode it for several years and won more than one equestrian competition with it.

"In the autumn campaign of 1914 in Galicia it met its end. One day I was sent out on patrol with a troop of my men when we came up against a larger force of Hungarian cavalry. There was nothing for it but to ride. Unfortunately the terrain was flat, fine ground suited to the long-legged Hungarian horses. They gained on us, and one by one my men were overtaken and cut down. In the end only I remained. Then fate willed that I reached a steep stream, and without hesitating I sent the Raven down through the rocky streambed — a wild animal from its first years, accustomed to all sorts. The Hungarians had to hold their horses back lest they break a leg, and I gained a long lead. But then open plain resumed and they gained again. It looked bad — when suddenly I caught sight of a Russian squadron coming towards us. The Hungarians halted. But instead of riding, they began to shoot. I heard a crack and felt the horse break beneath me. It had turned its head to one side and received a bullet through the brain. I freed myself from the stirrups and removed the saddle and bridle. The Hungarians galloped back, so I sat undisturbed and waited for my compatriots. When the Cossacks finally reached me, I am not ashamed to say I sat there patting poor Raven's head and weeping like a child."

On the train from Bucharest to Odessa — eight days, when the journey should take a few hours — I travelled with a Franco-Romanian cavalry escort transporting horses eastwards. The officers played cards from morning to late at night and never once inspected their soldiers or horses. A Romanian orderly sitting in the corridor had been placed there in a blizzard blowing through broken windows; when I suggested he come in out of the cold, he stared: "Come into the carriage? But the officers are there!" The gulf between ranks on that side of the world was, shall we say, pronounced.

At Akkermann, Tverdovski was falling ill — the legacy, he thought, of swimming the Vistula in winter. I wrote a note on behalf of "the Romanian divisional command," and next morning at nine a trim Romanian soldier arrived to announce a military doctor was coming. The soldier remained standing in the room; when I asked if he was awaiting an answer, he said no: "The general told me to stay here to see that the doctor actually came." I was absolutely impressed — a man who could not only give an order but ensure it was carried out. The doctor arrived, diagnosed constipation — "Poisoning of the system! Take a powerful laxative and all will be resolved!" — and proved entirely correct. After a night's work by the Glauber's salt, the rittmaster emerged a different man: light, cheerful, and witty.

Over dinner in Akkermann a Russian nurse recognised me from 1913 in Trondheim, where her brother had been among a group of Russian teachers I had guided around the city at the request of Consul Ivar Lykke. It emerged that her brother had fallen in 1915. "Nitschevo!" she said — that admirable Russian word expressing fatalism in the face of what is written. We spent the rest of the evening marvelling at how small the world was.

To cross the half-kilometre-wide frozen Dnieper to the Russian station on the other side, I recruited two Romanian soldiers from their border post for fifty roubles each to carry my luggage across the ice and up to the waiting train. The arrangement offended no one's dignity. "Fifty more if you carry them all the way to the train." They put aside their rifles and belts, stacked the cases, bound them with a strap, and marched. Crisply and thoroughly. The Romanians, one has always said, are honourable people. I gave them a smoke and they vanished back to their post, one trusts before any inspection.

On the ship Rossija from Odessa — vastly overcrowded with Cossacks, Tatars, Persians, Turks, and representatives of every Caucasian people — I dared not leave my luggage and sat in the packed saloon guarding it around the clock. Life was wearing: I queued to wash, queued for the lavatory, gnawed on fruit and dried provisions. After about a week I went to the captain and asked whether he could find me a cabin. He looked at my legation papers and began speaking of Norway and Norwegian friends, particularly a certain Kristian who had won his heart in some distant port. "In Ecuador there were ten policemen who tried to arrest him, but they didn't manage it!" A sailor was summoned, whispered to, and shortly a Jew came flying headlong out of a cabin — his luggage thrown after him — and the sailor appeared in the doorway: "Barin! There is a free berth here!" The Jew, I was told, had paid 500 roubles for it. I had mine for nothing, because the Russian captain remembered his friend Kristian and wished to do his countryman a small favour.

In Novorossiysk the ship went no further. I called upon the Norwegian vice-consul Gelmuyden, who invited me most kindly to stay with him for the fortnight I had to wait for a ship to Batum. He occupied a prominent position: not only Norwegian consul but also British vice-consul, with constant visits from British officers. His charming wife was a Greek beauty. "But my boys shall be Englishmen," said the consul. "That is why they are now at school in England." One day at table I remarked that it seemed curious how little fish was used in the household, given that Novorossiysk was a port city. "Some months ago," said my host, "the Bolsheviks attacked the large military barracks here. They could not take them, which were defended by four hundred naval officers, and so offered the officers free passage if they would surrender their weapons. The officers came out and surrendered, trusting the promise, but were all put aboard barges, taken out into the harbour, and drowned. Since then people here do not eat fish."

In Novorossiysk I acquired a Jewish secretary named Moses — a resourceful young man of about twenty who proposed a practical arrangement: he would stand in queues and manage formalities; I would procure the travel permits for both of us. Moses had been stranded since the revolution and was trying to get home to Merv in Turkestan. He told me that in 1917, caught on the wrong side of the collapsing front, he had been swept eastward on a train commandeered by deserters. By degrees he made himself their indispensable leader — through flattering their revolutionary vanity — until at a station where a stationmaster refused to let the rogue train pass, Moses leapt up: "Comrades! Shall we be stopped by a damned bureaucrat? Are we not the masters of Russia?" The stationmaster sent them on at once. On arrival in Tashkent, the loyal deserters insisted on seeing Moses safely home; he led them to a fine house, knocked, and when a terrified old man answered, embraced him with a roar of "Here I am, uncle!" The deserters, delighted, departed. Moses spent months with the bewildered old gentleman. "One must try to live," he observed. "And it goes well enough for us two, doesn't it?"

He was equally resourceful at the British-occupied Batum station, controlled by Indian Sikh soldiers. A tall Sikh began unbuttoning my coat in the gateway. I did not care for standing there with my gold rucksack among a crowd of Caucasian bandit-types, so I said: "I should like to see your lieutenant." The Sikh's face broke into sunshine; he re-buttoned my coat, smiled, nodded, and ushered me through into the station where a whole Indian company stood at ease. Moses, simultaneously, had indicated to the soldier that he was servant to this obvious Englishman, and slipped through beside me — his fingers already busy at the laces of my rucksack, the quick-fingered rogue.

We parted at Rion station in the small hours: Moses continuing towards Tiflis and his distant home, I changing for the branch line up to Kutais. I made a small speech of thanks; Moses replied, with impeccable secretary's courtesy, that the relationship was rather the reverse. And then his train went.

An hour later, arriving in Kutais, I was met by a young soldier sent by Faye and conducted up the hill to Faye's house, where I was received by the tall, dark, beautiful Regina Antonovna. Faye was in Baku. She had opened my telegram and made all arrangements: I was to have the corner room with the view to the north. I stacked my luggage, sat down, and drew a breath of relief. I had arrived. Fifty-six days from Oslo, more than forty nights without a proper bed — spent on floors or benches in railway carriages. Not ill a single day, not even a cold, and all my luggage safely delivered. "Well done, Konrad," I said to myself. "Now the sequel begins." Whereupon I stretched out on the bed and slept for a very long time.

Faye returned after a fortnight. I quickly saw why Elektrokemisk had left him as the last man standing in the Caucasus: he was a driving sort of fellow, full of ideas and plans, a happy-go-lucky character with a cheerful and roguish view of life. We quickly agreed on what must be done. First, a visit to the city's great bank where Elektrokemisk held an account — to show that the Norwegian connection was intact and operations were to resume. After the bank visit, a young man named Gdselief presented himself. He was to be my most faithful servant and helper in many a tight corner for the year ahead. I can still see him as he stood before me: in the white linen suit he had received from Faye, heels together and a shy smile on his broad face. Not the typical Grusinian — not tall, dark, and slender, no southern Adonis. One might have taken him for a farm boy from a Norwegian valley, were it not that he had not a single flaw in his thirty-two teeth. "Batoni!" he said — the Grusinian word for "Master." "Batoni! I have been in the service of the Norwegian gentlemen who were here before you and would be grateful to continue." "He's a damn fine fellow," said Faye. "Just take him on." And so Gdselief was engaged on the spot.

We drafted an official letter to the government of the Republic of Grusia in Tiflis, notifying them of the arrival of the Norwegian consul and the purpose of his appointment. Gdselief was called in to give it the proper official tone. "Now the idiots know you have arrived," said Faye. "Now we must actually do something about it."

We resolved to travel to Tiflis to negotiate with the government. We met not the Prime Minister — who was in Europe lobbying for recognition of Grusinian independence — but the entire cabinet, presided over by the Trade Minister, who had been a teacher in Moscow and was well versed in European affairs. The interview was in Russian, which all the ministers spoke fluently. The Trade Minister welcomed us warmly and then offered his colleagues a short geography lesson about Norway: "Norway is so rich, gentlemen, that the banks have now decided not to accept deposits in gold." Deep and admiring silence from the entire cabinet. "Blimey," murmured Faye. "That was a thick one."

After conferring among themselves in Grusinian — the word tumani, meaning "money," recurring frequently — the Trade Minister returned to Russian: "It will naturally be our pleasure to give the Norwegian gentlemen the opportunity to work here. You may count on us lifting the sequestration of your properties. However, we are of the opinion that in return for our concessions, you might assist us in obtaining a loan from Norway." What were my views? I had been sent to recover millions for Elektrokemisk, which had been robbed of its properties. The Norwegian government was far away. Without blinking I declared: "I shall try to arrange a loan for you." New conference in Grusinian. "If you can guarantee us a loan of three hundred million, your firm shall have its concessions back," said the Trade Minister. "That's a lot," I muttered to Faye. "Say yes," said he. "Damn the expense in times like these." And I guaranteed it. Three hundred million — to be paid to the Republic of Grusia on the day Elektrokemisk received its sequestrated properties back. It was not specified in what currency the millions were to be paid. I consoled myself that it would presumably be in Grusinian roubles, which were plummeting towards the depths. For all I knew, the cabinet may have been thinking in English pounds.

At dinner we met Director Tumanov of the great Tiflis bank — slender, dark, handsome — belonging to one of the many Grusinian princely families and addressed accordingly as "Prince." His faith in Grusia's future was touching. There was only one cloud on his blue sky: the thundercloud of the Soviets to the north. This thundercloud rolled in over his fatherland in 1921 and destroyed everything he had hoped for. He was obliged to flee and has long since come to rest in a Parisian churchyard. But we did not know this that summer of 1919, and he could give his optimism free rein: "Your firm shall have room to work here. We would rather collaborate with representatives of a small state than with a great power, and we very much wish Norwegians to invest capital here and help us build up this land, which is so rich but so lamentably neglected." The engineer Gurski — a Pole with twenty-five years in the Caucasus — offered a rather more sardonic view over dinner next day: "Those fellows can do nothing! They are like children playing at government. They imagine they can raise money by confiscating properties and don't understand that this is the surest way to keep foreigners away." His own coal fields had been seized without compensation, so perhaps his irritation was understandable. "Five and twenty years in the Caucasus has taught me that the Grusinians are hospitable and pleasant people, but full of wild plans and utterly unreliable." "He's right," said Faye. "That's exactly how they are."

When Faye finally resolved to return to Norway, there followed a week of selling his household effects — furniture, linen, poultry, all found buyers. Our Polish friends came, and Grusinian ladies, and the police chief's wife. I had first pick and was presented at the end with a large myrtle plant as a gift. I was touched. Only after Faye left did I discover the plant was dead. I chopped it up for firewood, where it burned splendidly. The dear Regina had deceived me. Such is woman's cunning.

The day before his departure I naturally held a great feast. This time Faye's man — the Cossack Alexej, come down from his mountain village of Muri — acted as executioner of the hens. He did not approve of Gdselief's delicate penknife method and reached for an axe, whereupon the heads of the hens flew, and into the pot with them. The operation was witnessed by our landlord Noa's housekeeper Anastasija from the Don, who whispered to me when Alexej had gone to the kitchen: "Alexej is a butcher. He was a prison warder and tormented prisoners. He is an evil man." But the beheaded hens tasted excellent. They were washed down with appropriate quantities of vodka, brandy, and wine. Toasts and songs were made in Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and Grusinian, and all was joy and plenty.

The following afternoon at four o'clock the departure took place. I followed Faye only to the station, where with all his many friends I saw him and Regina Antonovna comfortably installed. We pressed their hands, wished them a good journey, and waved and waved. Little did we know that Faye and Regina Antonovna had thus gone out of our lives forever. It was written in the stars that they should never reach Norway — they were not even to leave Caucasia. For that same night, on the quay in Batum, they met their fate. Assassins cut the life-thread of these two people who were our friends and whom we had come to love.

Some time before Faye's departure, an elderly Polish couple had called on us who had settled in Kutais. The husband had long been in the Russian customs service but now had been ordered to report to the White Russian customs service in Transcaspia — a journey from which, some months later, it emerged he had not returned. A letter arrived with news that somewhere on the southern desert border of Transcaspia, typhus had taken him. His wife had offered to serve as my housekeeper without wages if she could keep her children with her — a son of twenty-one, a daughter of nineteen, and a small boy of nine. I did not hesitate: "The position is yours." And many a time since have I said to myself that with this quick decision I did myself no small service. She was a practical woman who never spared herself, and her twenty years in Transcaucasia gave her an experience invaluable to a greenhorn like me. Every morning at four o'clock she was in town buying provisions; if she bought meat it was cooked by nine, for in the heat — thirty-eight to forty degrees Celsius in the shade from May to October — meat could not keep until dinner. She washed all the floors and outside stairs every single day with a paraffin solution, which kept all vermin away. In my house there were therefore neither lice nor bedbugs — almost unheard of in Transcaucasia. Her name, I confess with shame, I have forgotten. Such is the deplorable nature of memory.

Faye left me two animals: a smooth-haired black-and-white terrier called Munk, and a black kitten called Mons. Mons started with purring, sunshine, and tail erect, but developed into a devil and ended his days with a bullet through the skull — a bullet I sent. Munk started as my enemy but gradually became my dearest companion. He came from a terrier family that had once lived in Munich — hence the name, which has nothing to do with monks or cloisters. Faye had received him as a puppy from Prince Murat, who had brought him from Europe. (The Murat family: a Grusinian princely family taking its name from Napoleon's great Marshal Murat, one of whose descendants emigrated to the Caucasus. I had met the then representative of the family at British headquarters in Tiflis — a tall, relatively fair man, the complete European man of the world, serving as interpreter for the British.)

Munk liked me not at all. He glowered at me when I spoke politely to him and moved away when I tried to pat him. I believe his faithful dog's heart had concluded that I was responsible for his master's departure — which was, in a manner of speaking, correct. So I left him alone. One should never force one's friendship on dogs and children. I waited.

And one day the change came. One morning Munk came limping home, bloody and torn, after a terrible fight with a monster of a stray. Eyewitnesses told me it had been a fierce affair, for Munk was no terrier for nothing, and in the end the enemy had fled — though there was not much left of Munk either. And from that morning, he was mine.