Because governments had been rising and falling every time a door slammed, there were Nicholai rubles, Kerensky rubles, State of Archangel rubles, and finally Bolshevik rubles, which were every one of the previous rubles stamped with the word “Bolshevik” in red ink. Private Hugo’s company had been required to exchange their dollars for Kerensky rubles, which, it turned out, no one would take.

Every individual in Archangel was a black-marketeer. Complex trades were made of sable for sugar, eggs for Scotch, and sex for food, the latter with the exchange rate of one Hershey bar and one tot of whiskey for a nimgimmer special at the bathhouse.

Even the Red Cross, which was supposed to be free, began to charge ten cents for a doughnut. Cigarettes, also free, were two dollars a pack. There was no explanation.

Hugo was favored by the ten-year-old boys who appeared at the American barracks every afternoon with rolls of money and offers of goods and services. He was a perfect mark, in that he believed he would learn from his mistakes. He bought eggs that turned out to be spoiled. He traded away a perfectly good kilo of butter for a watch and a compass. The watch broke the first time he wound it, and the compass pointed southwest. After he threw it away, he learned that above the Arctic Circle all compasses pointed southwest.

Most days, he made do with his British rations: bully beef canned in Argentina. Sinews of rabbit that had been, according to its tin, killed and frozen in Australia in 1910. He ate M&V—of which there was no “M,” just stewed vegetables with a glob of fat. Every day he was given another biscuit that was four inches long, two wide, and invulnerable to chewing. The jam he was supposed to spread on it was seasoned with pellets of lead.

“There are no rewards to being here,” he moaned to Gordon.

“Your reward is to kill,” Gordon reminded him.

“Oh, everyone says that,” he said, “but they don’t really mean it.”

“It’s going to get better,” Gordon said. “Ironside is coming,” he said; that explained nothing, but it was what everyone was saying.

Hugo drew guard duty at a warehouse near the cathedral. It was cold, he was always hungry, he did not know what he was guarding, and, worst of all, his partner was Wodziczko.

Hugo—train engineer, trolley-car wit—had become Wodziczko’s hero. Wodziczko was astounded that Hugo knew French. And read books. And could dance like a cotillion escort. None of which Wodziczko understood, but all of which made Hugo displace Lieutenant Gordon in Wodziczko’s worshipful little heart.

To Hugo, the hours of lonely sentry duty, the long, dull minutes dripping by, were heartbreaking. But Wodziczko remained peppy, certain that Hugo would soon vanish fifty-cent pieces and juggle fire.