Russian Treasures

27. THE RED PROPAGANDISTS

The “propagandists” were up half of the night whispering and trying to work out how to get across the frontline.

Sablin knew that it was useless to discuss it at this point—they needed to get to Kursk first of all and see how the land lay—but he still found himself arguing with Klim. “We mustn’t take on any guides. They might lure us into a trap and kill us, or they’ll give us away to the Reds.”

“First of all, we need a map,” Nina insisted. “If we had a good map, we could figure it out.”

Sablin could hardly contain himself. “If they search us and find a map, they’ll know exactly what we’re up to.”

Sofia Karlovna couldn’t offer any advice but sat fretting silently and swallowing the sedative drops she had brought with her.

At last, quite worn out, they climbed into their berths. Sablin listened to the drumming of the wheels on the track. A single thought went around and around in his head: Will we get through? He folded his arms behind his head and caught the smell of sweat from the underarms of his dirty tunic, the smell of a live body. Still alive.

The window curtains fluttered, and an enamel cup on the table tinkled softly.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. “Get up! Show your documents!”

Sablin sat up suddenly and hit his head on the luggage rack. The old countess lit a candle in a tin.

“What’s going on?” asked Klim.

“I don’t know—” Sofia Karlovna said. “I suppose they’re looking for deserters again.”

People were stirring in the next-door compartment. The guard was walking down the corridor crying, “Look lively there, comrades!”

Sablin climbed down and sat next to Sofia Karlovna. She had covered herself with her overcoat—she always shivered during searches.

Klim opened the door and peered out. “It seems there’s a whole congress of soldiers’ deputies here,” he said. “Dr. Sablin, give me the documents.”

Sablin shoved the tattered papers into Klim’s hand.

“Here are our propagandists, sir,” the guard said respectfully to someone standing in the corridor with a crowd of Red Army soldiers and other passengers behind his back.

“Goodnight, comrades. Sorry to disturb you.”

Klim yawned into his fist. “That’s fine.”

The guard looked over his shoulder again, the soldiers stepped aside, and Osip Drugov entered the compartment.

In a flash, he understood everything. Sablin sat speechless with his heart thumping in his ears. That’s it. We’re done for, he thought in horror. But Osip wasn’t looking at him.

“So, you took Nina with you, did you?” he asked, glaring at Klim. “Weren’t you afraid she’d be killed?”

Klim bit his lip and said nothing. Osip snatched the documents from his hand, took a flashlight from his pocket, and carefully scanned the papers. Then he tore them all to pieces—permits, identity cards, and even Klim’s Argentine passport.

His face contorted by a nervous grimace, Osip directed the flashlight into Klim’s eyes. “When they told me you were in the fourth car, I immediately made up my mind to come. I was hoping to see a friend. I hoped we’d go to the front together.” Osip turned to the soldiers. “These traitors are making their way to the Whites—as a family, so to speak. So, Dr. Sablin, you’re going to join General Denikin too, are you? You decided to leave Lubochka behind?”

Sablin tugged at the collar of his tunic as though it were choking him.

“Search the place,” Osip ordered the soldiers. “Check their clothing. They might have jewels hidden anywhere—in pencils, candles, or bread. They might have coins in the soles of their shoes or covered with cloth and sewn on instead of buttons. As for you,” he turned to Klim, “you come with me.”

Nina rushed to Osip and clung to his arm. “No! Please—don’t!”

Osip pushed her away so hard that she fell against the table.

“Good God, are you out of your mind?” Sofia Karlovna shrieked.

The soldiers dragged Klim out of the compartment.

“Wait!” cried Sablin. Elbowing his way through the soldiers, he rushed into the corridor and then along to the rattling gangway at the end of the car.

“Open the door,” Osip told the terrified guard, “unless you want to clean up the blood from the floor.”

The door clanked open. A gust of cold air filled the gangway, and the sound of the wheels grew louder. The early morning sky glowed pale behind the surging mass of the dark forest.

The soldiers put Klim against the door. Osip gave his flashlight to the guard—“Point this at him!”—and pulled his revolver out of its holster.

“Osip, don’t you dare!” Sablin shouted, grabbing him by the arm.

A gunshot rang out, and Klim fell from the car. A woman’s desperate shriek echoed inside the compartment.

Osip fastened his holster slowly and carefully. Then without warning, he slammed his fist hard into the doctor’s head. Sablin fell facedown on the spittle-covered floor.

“Comrade Drugov, they have a box full of spirits,” a soldier shouted from the compartment.

Trembling all over, the guard gazed pleadingly at Osip. “Believe me, I didn’t know they were deserters.”

“You should have been more careful,” Osip said through his teeth and strode away.

The Red Army soldiers took Sablin, Nina, and Sofia Karlovna off the train at an unnamed station and brought them to a military checkpoint in a requisitioned grain elevator. Grain lay scattered all over the ground. People trampled it into the mud, and cavalry horses strained their necks to reach it with their lips.

From time to time, artillery fire boomed in the distance.

The prisoners were all put into a large hall, men and women together. There were two guards at the door: one was in a soldier’s uniform with a revolver in his hand, and the other was wearing torn trousers and a sailor’s cap with a handwritten inscription: “Red Terror.” His only weapon was an ax.

“Is the Red Terror the name of your ship?” Sablin asked.

“It’s the name of our campaign,” the guard answered grimly.

Sofia Karlovna was fussing around Nina. “Do you want me to see if I can get you some water?”

Nina didn’t even look at the old countess. Her face was bloodless, and her pupils were so dilated that her eyes looked black.

Sablin too was having trouble grasping what had just happened. How had Osip ended up in their railroad car? Why had he killed Klim and then disappeared without showing the slightest interest in the rest of the “traitors”?

Sablin’s throat tightened with sorrow for his friend. Klim had come bursting into their world and turned it upside down, stealing Nina’s heart, poor girl.

And they’ll kill you in a couple of hours too. The sudden thought brought Sablin up short. Oh, Lubochka—you chose to love a murderer.

There were about thirty prisoners in the room. Some were telling others the stories of their arrests.

One seventy-year-old man, formerly a village chief, had been arrested for pinning on his medal when he had heard that the Whites were on their way.

Two other prisoners said that they had come to the railroad station to try to exchange a barrel of pickled mushrooms for agricultural tools. They were arrested and charged with profiteering.

Sablin stood at the window watching as an endless train of carts passed by. The Bolsheviks were hastily evacuating the town. He already knew that their situation was hopeless. The Red Terror sailor had told them that prisoners wouldn’t be taken back behind the lines but executed.

The sailor was nervous. He kept leaving the room to find out when the military checkpoint was to be evacuated. A second guard stayed with the prisoners in his absence.

Sablin felt his whole body burning as though seized by a fever. At first, just one thought kept going around and around in his head: Are they really going to kill us? Then he felt a rising sense of indignation and outrage. We have to do something. We have to fight!

He gazed at the remaining guard. The man was about forty-five, his face tanned and weather-beaten with bags under his eyes and a prominent mole on his nostril. He was sitting in the doorway and—for lack of anything to do—spitting at his feet trying to make the string of saliva reach to the ground.

Should I talk to him? Sablin thought. Try to frighten him? Tell him that the other Red Army soldiers have left him behind?

Now, the street outside was empty, and only the occasional messenger galloped by from time to time.

Sablin approached the remaining guard, trying his best to appear confident.

“Wait a minute,” he said with a fake smile plastered on his face, “I think I know you. Where are you from?”

The soldier glared sullenly at him. “From Vladimir Region.”

“What village?”

“Kostrovo.”

“I knew it!” Sablin exclaimed. “I was there on holiday. I lived at the old woman’s house. What was her name? She was all hunched and bent.”

The soldier raised his eyebrows. “Do you mean old Nura?”

“That’s it! Have you been there recently? How is she?”

“She’s fine. Her hut is two streets away from where I live.”

Sablin gave the guard a friendly slap on the shoulder. “That means you and I are almost family, aren’t we? Fancy meeting you here!”

The soldier’s name was Damian. He told Sablin in great detail all about his village, old Nura, and his family. Sablin found to his surprise that he was an inspired liar, telling the soldier that during the Great War, he had fought on the same part of the front as Damian and been wounded in the leg. They reminisced about battles, spoke critically of their commanders, and complained about the poor quality of their army greatcoats, which would come apart at the seams if they caught on anything.

I hope that damn sailor won’t be back anytime soon, thought Sablin, peering out the window.

“Hey, Damian, do you know where your friend with the ax went?” Sablin asked.

The guard grinned. “He’s gone off to ask for a machine gun to finish you all off.”

“Are you going to shoot me?” Sablin asked, looking the guard in the eye.

Damian turned away. “Oh, come on!”

“So, you’re going to let your friend do it for you?”

Damian quickly looked out. There was no one in the street.

“Go on,” he hissed, “get out of here. Now. Don’t worry about me—they won’t touch me. They haven’t registered the people who were arrested this morning. I’ll say I never saw you.”

“What about this lot?” Sablin asked, pointing at the silent prisoners. “After all, they might report that you let me go. What if you let all of us go home? Why bring more misery on everyone? Come to that, it’s probably time you ran away yourself. The Whites are coming, and if they catch you here, they’ll shoot you.”

The square in front of the church was crowded with people. A Bolshevik agitator on a cart was calling on the women and children to resist provocation. “The colossal propaganda machine of imperialism is trying to corrupt the minds of our people,” he ranted.

It’s no good coming here, thought Sablin, stepping back to the alley where he had left Sofia Karlovna and Nina.

They had been circling around the town for more than an hour trying to find a place to hide until the arrival of the Whites. Sablin’s knees were shaking from excitement or exhaustion. He still couldn’t believe they had been set free. He glanced anxiously at the two women. The old countess was half-dead with fear while Nina looked as though she didn’t care anymore where she was going or what was going to happen to her.

There was the sound of hooves, and a mounted patrol turned into the alley. Sablin held his breath: the Whites!

They rode along quite openly in their black and red caps and epaulets. They stopped, dismounted, and walked to the church square, leading their horses by the bridles.

The Bolshevik agitator was so carried away with his own eloquence that he failed to notice anything. “We’ll crush the White bandits with the full might of our proletarian wrath—”

At that moment, his gaze fell on a White officer standing and swishing at his boots with a horsewhip.

“Go on, comrade, don’t be shy,” the officer prompted. “We’re all ears.”

The crowd burst into laughter.

A bell on the church tower pealed once and then twice. Large and small bells rang out in a merry chorus just as if it were Easter.

Sablin walked down the street limping even more heavily than usual. He felt joy bubbling up inside him from his heart to his throat, a joy so intense that it exceeded even his grief at the loss of his friend and the fear of death he had just experienced. The Whites were in town!

Everything around him had become meaningful again. The colors had become brighter, the air fresher. Never before had Sablin felt such a feeling of inspiration, such gratitude before fate. He wanted to kneel down in the middle of the road and weep for joy.

The dashing soldiers of the Kornilov Regiment, sunburned and dust-covered, filled the streets of the town. Children hung around them, boys gaping at the skull motif on the men’s caps and badges.

“Look, look! See the skull and crossbones?” they whispered in awe. “That means, ‘We’ll destroy you all, sons of bitches.’”

“No, boys,” Sofia Karlovna said, her voice trembling with emotion. “That symbol is known as ‘Adam’s Head.’ It stands for the resurrection of the dead after the sacrifice of the body for one’s country and one’s people.”

The orchestra in the church square struck up a tune—not any tune but none other than “God Save the Tsar.”

Sablin turned to Nina and Sofia Karlovna. “I’m sorry, my dears, but I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to join the White Army. You’ll have to find your way to Novorossiysk by yourselves.”

“Oh,” gasped the old countess. She stared at him for a while and then shook his hand. “It’s a sacred cause, doctor. God bless you.”

Nina said nothing. She stood at the old countess’ side looking at the ground with a curl of hair come loose from her comb and hanging over her cheek. She was fingering mindlessly at the flap of her jacket.

Sablin felt alarmed. “Nina—dear—”

She looked at him vacantly. “Klim didn’t make it by one day.”

As soon as the railroads were working again, Sablin found places for Nina and Sofia Karlovna on a train to Novorossiysk. The acting commander was so happy with Sablin’s work in caring for the wounded that he had issued a special pass for the “doctor’s family,” and the women were given places in a second-class officers’ car.

Sablin—now wearing a cap with the emblem of the skull and crossbones—came to see them off.

“Do take care of yourself,” the old countess said as she made the sign of the cross over him. “We shall try to get to Paris via Novorossiysk. Promise you’ll write to us. Send us a letter to the Central Post Office, general delivery.”

Sablin nodded gloomily. “If I’m still alive.” He stood on the platform, waving them goodbye.

“He’ll be killed for certain,” Nina said with conviction as the train started moving.

“Why do you say that?” the old countess asked.

“Because it’s obvious. It’s always the good people who die. Always.”

“Well, we’re still alive.”

“And we’ll be killed too unless we learn how to—” Nina passed her hands over her face. “I don’t know—to rob and murder. We’re penniless, and I don’t see how we’re going to get to France with no money.”

Sofia moved closer to Nina. “I have something hidden in here,” she whispered, tapping her cheek. “It’s in my tooth—or rather what’s left of it. It’s a half-carat diamond. It will keep us going for a while. Forgive me for these anatomical details, but I had no other hiding place.”

The train slowed down and stopped to let an oncoming train pass. Nina was silent.

“A shrewd housewife never puts all her eggs in one basket,” Sofia Karlovna added.

The old countess was eager for Nina to appreciate her prudence and foresight, but her daughter-in-law was staring out the window. Sofia Karlovna followed her gaze and saw the body of a hanged man dangling from a signal post.

It was Osip Drugov.

Sofia Karlovna couldn’t remember at what point she had stopped seeing Nina simply as that woman and begun to look on her as a daughter. At first, the old countess had been unable to forgive Nina for marrying Vladimir. Later, Sofia Karlovna had been furious with Nina for having an affair with Fomin, and then she had smarted at her marrying Klim Rogov. The very idea that Nina had found comfort in the arms of a stranger was insulting, but Sofia Karlovna had been forced to hide her feelings because her daughter-in-law and Klim were the only people she had left in the world.

After Klim’s death, she had become reconciled to Nina. As for etiquette, thought the old countess, let he who is without sin throw the first stone.

Now, Sofia Karlovna kept an eye on her daughter-in-law’s state of mind and tried to make sure that Nina ate.

After the death of her first husband, Nina had been hysterical, which had been understandable. Now, she was calm and didn’t even cry, although Sofia Karlovna could tell that something was very wrong. In an attempt to reassure Nina, the old countess babbled away about the life they would have together in France.

“We’ll spend winters in Paris,” she said, “and go to Burgundy in summer. I have some money in Crédit Lyonnais, and I’m thinking about buying a vineyard not far from Dijon. When I was your age, what I really wanted to do was to make wine. So, why not?”

Sofia Karlovna could almost see the dusty purple bunches of grapes and taste the juice of the first berry.

“Your grief will pass,” she told Nina. “Not immediately, of course, but eventually, everything will fall into place. I loved my husband very much too. He was killed by a terrorist—in those days, students kept assassinating government officials one after the other.”

“I’ll never forget Klim,” Nina replied and fell silent, realizing that not so long ago she had said the same thing about Vladimir.

Sofia Karlovna sighed.

“Only the first love stays with you forever, and the older you get, the more it means to you. When I was fourteen years old, my family lived in St. Petersburg right next to the residence of the Japanese consul. His son—we called him Jap—was always spying on us through the hole in the fence as we played in the backyard. One day, he sent me a letter: ‘My dear cherry blossom, Sofia-san—’ He finished with the line, ‘As my body does its work, my soul is always with you.’

“I was stupid and showed the letter to my friends. They teased him, ‘Hey, lover boy, do you want us to call for Sofia-san while your body is doing its work?’ Soon, his family went away, and I never saw him again. Fifty years have passed, but I still remember him. And you will remember my son in that way too.”

“Yes, I will,” Nina said faintly.

Sofia Karlovna kept asking Nina, “Why are you so silent?”

Because there was nothing to talk about anymore. Nina had turned to stone: a swift reaction had swept through her body so that everything—her skin, muscles, and even her thoughts—had curdled and solidified.

What can I do with myself now? Nina wondered. She spent her days mired in contemptuous hatred of those who were still alive while Klim was dead. These other people breathed his air and ate his bread, and they had stolen the time that Nina had intended to spend with him alone. It was a daily desecration and sacrilege.

At night, she lay on her bed curled into a ball and repeated to the rhythm of the wheels, “Come back, come back—” She tried, again and again, to realize that never again would she look into Klim’s laughing dark brown eyes.

The second-class car was dark, filled with a foul haze and the sound of snoring.

Do you want me to learn to live without you? But there’s so much I still want to say to you. I want to sleep in your arms, watch you drink your tea in the morning, smooth down your hair, help you find your keys that have fallen under the table in the hall, bend to reach for them at the same time as you, and forget everything to kiss you on the lips. I want to wait for you to come home in the evening, look forward to it, be angry with you for always being late—always late—