Russian Treasures

14. THE SIEGE OF KAZAN

That night, Nina felt better and managed to sleep. Klim held her hand, trying to imagine that his own vital energy was being passed to her in some mysterious way. He looked into the humid darkness behind the porthole, listening to the drone of the engine and praying, “Faster—faster—”

They reached Kazan at dawn. The Nakhimovets anchored in the middle of the river, and Pukhov went ashore by boat to receive further orders from the high command.

Klim went on deck. Between the city and the river bank was a dreary-looking plain crisscrossed by the light ruts of roads. On the pier, crowds of people were running to and fro with lanterns and flashlights. Dogs barked, and a rumble like heavy thunder could be heard in the distance.

“That’s our artillery,” one of the sailors said, approaching Klim. “Haven’t you heard it before?”

The sailor had been to Kazan many times, and now, he told Klim how to find the Shamov Hospital, which, he said, was the best in the city.

A fiery flash lit up the sullen clouds, and several powerful explosions came from the direction of the city: first one, then a second, and a third. A cloud of black smoke rose over the distant roofs.

Pukhov came back to the ship.

“What’s going on over there?” Klim asked.

“The Red Army have shelled railroad cars.” Pukhov swallowed nervously. “The Czechs are already on the outskirts of Kazan, and we don’t have enough soldiers to resist them. Get the Chinese together quickly. We’re leaving now.”

“Where to?”

“We’re going to the center of Kazan, and you’re coming with us.”

“But listen, I—”

Pukhov glared furiously at Klim. “One more word about your girlfriend, and I’ll shoot you.”

Nina raised her head as Klim ran into the cabin.

“Listen to me,” he whispered hurriedly. “Here’s the money, and here’s the address of the hospital. Pukhov has ordered the Chinese to go ashore, damn him—and he wants me to interpret for him. As soon as we leave, give the sailors some money and have them take you to the pier. There are always cabs there waiting for customers. Just say you need to get to the Shamov Hospital.”

“But what about you?” Nina said, looking at him fearfully.

Klim put his arms around her and kissed her. “I’ll come and find you later. Don’t worry about me. You have to get to the hospital—spend all the money you have if necessary, but get yourself a doctor. Do you think you can manage?”

Nina nodded.

“Rogov, damn you! Where are you?” came a voice from the corridor.

Klim stood up without letting go of Nina’s hand. “I love you, do you understand? I need you. Please do as I say.”

“Rogov!” The cabin’s door banged open, and Pukhov appeared on the threshold with a revolver in his hand. “Are you crazy?” he shouted. “The Czechs are on their way!”

“Don’t yell at me,” snapped Klim.

They went on deck where the Chinese were already lined up in formation.

“Dear comrades!” Pukhov shouted. “You are entrusted with an extremely important task. We have been ordered to evacuate valuable property from the city. We need to take this mission very seriously. If we succeed, anyone showing outstanding service will be rewarded. Long live the world revolution! Now, to the boats!”

The beautiful, ancient city of Kazan was almost empty with only the occasional small cavalry unit or truck sweeping through the straight streets every now and again. There was the smell of burning in the air.

Pukhov and the local commissar—a man whose eyebrows met in the middle—were urging the Chinese forward. “Come on! Come on!”

Sweat flew down the men’s dusty foreheads. They passed a flask of water between them and drank as they ran.

“Where are we going now?” Klim asked the commissar.

“To the state bank.”

The gloomy sky was split by a deafening howl, and a second later, an explosion struck close at hand.

“The Whites!” yelped Pukhov.

The heavy-browed commissar rushed to Klim. “Tell the Chinese that that was our troops shelling the approach roads to the river bank to give us a chance to take state property out of the city.”

They turned onto Prolomnaya Street. Several carts were standing outside a large columned building. All around sailors and soldiers were running back and forth. One of them dropped a tightly packed bag. Small coins scattered all over the pavement, but nobody bothered to pick them up.

“Comrade Tarasov has brought the Chinese,” somebody shouted. “Let them take on the loading.”

The dim lobby of the bank was piled with wooden boxes. Klim noticed writing on their sides in charcoal: “State Bank” or “Winter Palace” or “Anichkov Palace.” Khitruk had told him that during the German offensive, the Bolsheviks had seized imperial treasures from the capital and moved them somewhere inland. Maybe they had sent them to Kazan?

Tarasov ordered the Chinese to take one box at a time and load it carefully onto a tramcar that had just come in. Klim heard him explaining to Pukhov, “Until we have electricity, it’s easier to transport everything by tram. The rails go right up to the pier.”

Pukhov nodded grimly. He pulled a sheet of paper from his map-case, wrote something with his indelible pencil, and slipped the note behind the wooden slat on the bank front door.

So, the Reds are retreating, thought Klim.

Pukhov grasped a box and tried to lift it, the veins in his temples standing out with the effort.

“What are you staring at?” he shouted at Klim. “Help me!”

The box was extremely heavy. Together, they dragged it to the tramcar.

“Get inside and help take things on from that end,” Pukhov ordered.

Klim stepped up the footboard.

“Hurry! Hurry!” the tram driver groaned.

The aisle and seats of the tramcar were already filled with boxes. Tarasov gave Klim a heavy bundle wrapped in sackcloth.

“Be careful—it’s a statue,” he said. “The crate broke, and we don’t have a hammer and nails to fix it. Just take it like this.”

Klim made his way into the center of the tramcar where there was free space.

A loud crash came overhead so powerful and unexpected that Klim missed his footing and fell, showered with pieces of broken window glass. The tramcar jerked and bounced down the street.

Klim was lying flat on top of the boxes. In the rearview mirror of the cabin, he could see the wild eyes of the tram driver. The tramcar turned onto another street where houses were ablaze at its far end.

Once again, Klim heard the howl of an approaching shell. The blow derailed the tramcar, and it fell onto its side, smashing through a shop window.

Klim’s head was ringing, and the skin on his forehead was tight with dried blood. He could barely make out anything in the darkness. The tramcar had entered the building like a dagger going into a sheath, and all that could be seen now in the narrow gaps between the boxes was the dim glow of fire from the street.

Klim tried to get up, but the edge of a box wedged between the seats was digging into his chest.

“Help!” he called. “Somebody, help!” But no one answered.

Klim had no idea how long it took for him to work himself free and climb out of the tramcar. It seemed to be evening already. He was weak with exhaustion, his hands were torn and full of splinters, and he was terribly thirsty.

He looked into the cabin at the driver. The poor wretch was dead—one of the boxes had smashed his skull.

Klim forced his way between the wall of the shop and the roof of the tramcar and peered out. The building on the other side of the street was burned out, its beams collapsing. Flakes of ash drifted in the air.

Klim tried to remember the directions the sailor had given him for the Shamov Hospital. It’ll be pandemonium there now, he thought. To find a cab was out of the question; moreover, Klim didn’t have two coins to rub together since he had given all of his money to Nina.

Then he remembered that the boxes he had loaded were full with the treasures of the Tsar.

Klim went back to the tramcar and made desperate attempts to open several boxes to no avail. They were well-made, none of them had broken in the crash, and Klim couldn’t do anything with his shaking bare hands. What a joke to have a whole tramcar full of valuables at your disposal but neither the time nor strength to get at the treasure.

As he was climbing out again, Klim caught sight of the bundle Commissar Tarasov had given him. He undid the twine and unwrapped a beautifully sculpted bust of a satyr with small blunt horns above a wide forehead. A label glued to the base read, “The Winter Palace, a gift to Alexander III from French industrialists. Sterling silver.”

Klim tore off the label and wrapped up the satyr in the sackcloth again. The sculpture was heavy, but at least he could carry it.

Shells were still falling now and again on Kazan. Klim watched as one of them demolished the corner of a house, another knocked down a chimney, yet another brought down an old birch tree, which fell with a crash and blocked the road. Shrapnel rained down on iron roofs, and from somewhere came the rattle of machine guns.

When Klim reached the redbrick building of the hospital, his heart was empty of all emotions save one: the sense of a huge, overwhelming disaster swallowing up everything and everyone he saw around him—soldiers, sailors, Tatar women and children, bearded men, and mullahs in their long robes.

He noticed a wagon with a red cross on its side standing at the hospital gate. An elderly nun wearing a stained cassock and round-rimmed spectacles was berating her white horse. “Don’t just stand there, you stupid animal! People are waiting, and we’re letting them down.”

Klim walked past them and into the courtyard, which was full of injured, groaning people—soldiers and civilians. Nurses in bloodstained aprons were rushing to and fro with basins and trays of surgical instruments. The wounded were lying on the ground, and other people were stepping over them as though they were logs.

Needless to say, nobody had any news of Nina.

“How the hell should I know where your wife is?” a medical orderly yelled when Klim ask him. “You can see for yourself what’s going on here.”

Klim spent a long time walking from one ward to another looking at the faces of all the patients. Finally, he went back into the courtyard where the nun was still trying to go through the gate.

“You’re not a mare; you’re a lazy dog!” she shouted. “And don’t you look at me like that! I know there’s nothing wrong with you. I saw you gobbling oats from that other horse’s sack.”

The horse kept pulling hard at the wagon, which refused to budge.

“Your rear axle is caught in the gate,” Klim told her.

The nun went around to take a look. “Oh, dear, so it is!”

Klim helped her to make the horse move back so that she could release the axle. Then the wagon rolled onto the road.

“Which way are you going, soldier?” the nun asked. “I’m going to catch up with the train of carts taking patients to Sviyazhsk.”

“Are any of the patients civilians?”

“The head of the hospital had ordered us to take all those in need of urgent help. Sviyazhsk is full of monasteries. There’s plenty of space for the wounded. Come with me, soldier. I’m afraid someone might try to steal my mare, Matrona. She’s a good horse, and I wouldn’t want to lose her. I have to deliver dressings to the hospital. Sit up here beside me on the box. I’m Sister Photinia. And what’s your name?”

The rain had all but washed away the road, and a slow train of refugees was dragging itself along through the mud in carts, wagons, and wheelbarrows. Everybody moved blindly forward, unthinking, like small fish in a shoal.

In Abbot Village on the outskirts of Kazan, Klim saw a dead man hanging from the tree by his leg, his entire body bruised black and blue. The sailors stopped as they went past, removed their caps, and crossed themselves. For a long time afterward, Klim couldn’t bring himself to look up. He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing yet more death.

Sister Photinia sniffed and wrinkled her snub, sunburned nose. “Soon, we’ll be in Sviyazhsk—it’s a special place, a very holy place.”

Drowsily, Klim listened to the murmur of her voice, the distant rumble of artillery, and the swish of hundreds of wet bast shoes in the mud. A sharp piece of the satyr sculpture was poking him in the ribs despite the sackcloth wrapping. From time to time, he noticed a shadow flitting along in the bushes at the side of the road and felt his stomach cave in as he thought, It’s an ambush! A second later, he realized it was only a bird.

His muscles were trembling, and he could feel his pulse beating somewhere beneath his knee. The faces of refugees loomed up and dissolved in the gathering darkness, and all the time, the rounded white rump of the horse shone dimly before his eyes.

It began to rain.

“Drop anchor!” shouted one of the sailors.

They were entering a village. Paying no attention to the indignant shouts of the villagers, people poured into the houses and flopped down wherever they could find a spare corner, falling asleep where they lay.

Klim and Sister Photinia shared a bathhouse with a dozen Red Army soldiers. The air smelled of soap. The window was broken, letting in a cold, damp draft along with the noise of the rain. Occasionally, tiny raindrops hit the windowsill and splashed Klim’s face.

“Mama called our pig Contra,” came a boyish voice from outside. “And yesterday, the Red soldiers arrested it and shot it behind the barn.”

“You should have called your pig Lenin,” another boy said. “Then no one would have dared to touch it.”

“Quiet, you fool!” said the third boy. “Who do you have billeted in your house? Soldiers?”

“No. Patients from the Kazan hospital. The men who arrested our pig were from the Red Army headquarters.”

Klim sprang to his feet and ran outside. It was pitch dark, and he couldn’t see the boys’ faces.

“Hey, lads,” he called, “which of you has patients from Kazan staying in his house?”

The boys didn’t answer.

“I’m looking for my wife. She must be here.”

“What does she look like?” one of the boys asked in a cautious voice. “We’ve only got one woman—with curly hair. Mama says she is dying.”

Klim started forward and bumped straight into a wooden pillar supporting a canopy.

The boys laughed. “Look where you’re going!”

“Please, lads,” Klim said, “take me to see this woman.”

Nina could barely remember how she had gotten to the hospital. Somebody must have helped her. She was dizzy, and her head swarmed with a mixture of real impressions and delirious visions.

A terrible pain in her abdomen, a white ceiling above her, a bright lamp. A doctor in a surgical mask bending over her. “It’s peritonitis. My dear lady, you must be operated on immediately.”

Then exploding shells and panic. Somebody running by had said, “If we leave this one behind, she’ll die. Let’s try to take her to Sviyazhsk.”

Then a bumpy journey along the road in a shaking wagon and a dreadful pain that had made Nina want to throw herself out and dash her head against the cobblestones. After that, a strange, numb weakness.

She had watched the spruce branches arching over the road like the vaults of a temple, wreathed with sparkling raindrops. Stream rose from the drying rain, and rays of sun slanted through the treetops.

The Cheka arrested Zhora and Elena. Nina was certain of it.

The voice of a doctor again, “In no circumstances should she be given anything to eat or drink.”

Now, Nina saw Klim silhouetted against the dark blue sky outside the window. He pressed his unshaven cheek to her hand. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered.

Then he began to speak in Spanish so quietly she could barely hear him, repeating the same words again and again like a prayer.