The Prince of the Soviets

3. THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

The city was shrouded in a damp mist. On every side, trucks rattled past, and soldiers marched along wordlessly in felt helmets with the ear flaps down. Armored cars crouched darkly in the lanes and alleyways, and from time to time, the sound of a horse’s whinny or the hollow echo of hooves could be heard as the Red Cavalry prepared for the parade.

Nina walked along in the crowd, clutching Magda’s camera in its case to her chest. Magda had only one roll of film left and had instructed Nina to guard it with her life.

Everybody was gawping at Nina’s ridiculous coat. One little girl was so distracted by the sight that she dropped her bunch of chrysanthemums on the ground.

Her mother immediately fetched her a clip on the back of the head. “Look after those flowers,” she scolded. “What are you going to wave at the parade if you lose them?”

At the approach to Red Square, all was excitement and anticipation as if before a battle. Huge banners and portraits of Soviet leaders swayed in the swirling mist; military instructors made their rounds of the workers’ brigades, giving instructions about the order of procession, while the shivering men hopped from foot to foot in an effort to keep warm.

Nina was also shivering, but more from anxiety than cold. She was certain that at any minute, she would be accosted by a policeman who would ask her to explain just how she had managed to get ahold of a foreigner’s pass for the tribune.

But all went well. At the Iversky Gates, Nina showed her pass and walked out onto Red Square where the unpaved ground had frozen hard during the night.

A scarlet flag fluttered above the Kremlin wall. On the ancient spires of the Kremlin towers, the golden Imperial eagles, still untouched by the Bolsheviks, gleamed faintly through the mist. At the other end of the square, on the building of the State Department Store, GUM, an enormous canvas with a portrait of Lenin with his bulbous forehead and bourgeois suit and tie was flapping and billowing in the wind. As vast, mighty, and eternal as an Egyptian pharaoh, he looked down sadly at his own mausoleum built in the shape of a truncated pyramid. It was a strange quirk of history that twentieth-century Russia had revived the customs of Ancient Egypt.

Nina mounted the tribune and sat down on a wooden seat in the corner. Nobody seemed to be paying her any attention.

Gradually, the tribune filled up with foreign guests: Europeans and Americans, Indians and Arabs, but Chinese above all. Nina even saw some familiar faces among them. They were the men with whom she had traveled across the Gobi Desert. They appeared quite unsurprised by Nina’s presence on the tribune.

The foreign guests kept up a stream of lively chatter, blowing on their frozen fingers and trying to find a good position from which to take photographs and film the parade. A tall, round-shouldered man wearing a pince-nez moved between them, switching between various foreign languages to greet his esteemed guests and ask if he could do anything to help them.

“And who are you?” he asked amiably when he came to Nina.

She acted as if she had not understood the question.

The man in the pince-nez stamped around a little longer before sitting down on the bench behind Nina.

“Who is that?” she heard him ask somebody. “The woman in the red coat?”

“I don’t know, Comrade Alov,” said a young voice. “I don’t recognize her.”

“Well, find out then,” Nina heard Alov say.

He was almost certainly an agent from the OGPU, and Nina cursed herself for having agreed so thoughtlessly to Magda’s request. What if this Alov were to ask for her documents? Or what if one of the Chinese guests told him that she was Russian?

Just then, some members of the Soviet government came out onto their tribune, and all the foreigners jumped to their feet and began to take photographs. Nina had no idea who they were, but she took some pictures too just in case they might come in useful to Magda. It was strange how small and unimposing they all looked; in their military-style suits, they resembled a crowd of provincial clerks dressed up as war heroes.

A moment later, a woman holding a folder rushed up to Alov and began to whisper to him. Nina could make out the words “Trotsky” and “spontaneous demonstration.”

“Damn!” muttered Alov. Running down the steps, he disappeared into the crowd of soldiers standing in the cordoned off area.

Nina breathed a sigh of relief. She decided to take a few more photographs and leave while the going was good.

The bells of the Spassky Tower began to peal, and the roar of thousands of voices went up from the streets around Red Square. “Hurra-a-ah! Hurra-a-ah!”

To the strains of the “Internationale,” the Soviet anthem, the first columns of demonstrators began to file out onto the square.

Announcements blared from the loudspeakers fixed to the lampposts around the square:

“Now, at the time of this celebration, greater than any in the course of human history, our thoughts are of our great leader, Lenin, who led the victorious troops of workers in their fearless attack on the bastions of capitalism!”

The government representatives smiled, saluted, and waved to the demonstrators with their leather-gloved palms.

Then a column of young people came level with the mausoleum—students, apparently. They stopped, and a moment later, a banner unfurled above their heads emblazoned with the words, “Down with Stalin!”

The orchestra fell silent, and a deathly hush descended on the square. All that could be heard was the chirruping of the sparrows that had flown in to peck at the horse manure.

“Long Live Trotsky!” shouted a young man’s voice. “Down with opportunism and party separatism!”

His comrades sent up a ragged cheer.

A moment later, policemen came running in on the demonstrators from all sides.

Nina raised her camera and took a photograph. The foreigners around her were also snapping away.

“Stop! No photographs!” shouted a voice, and Alov came bounding up the stairs of the tribune two steps at a time.

His gaze fell on Nina. “I said no photographs!” he barked and snatched away her camera.

“What are you doing?” gasped Nina, forgetting that she was not supposed to speak Russian. “Give that back!”

“So, you’re Russian, are you?” Alov grabbed Nina by the shoulder. “How did you get onto the tribune? And who are you, anyway?”

Nina broke free of his grasp, beside herself with fear, and rushed down the steps.

“Stop that woman!” roared Alov, but the police were too busy to apprehend Nina. A fierce struggle between the police and demonstrators had broken out in front of the mausoleum.

Nina wandered about the city all day, at a loss as to what to do. She could not go back to her hotel room—the OGPU had almost certainly worked out already who she was and where she lived. For them, an emigrant who had returned to Russia to take pictures of a pro-Trotsky demonstration could only be a spy, and Nina would be arrested without fail.

She felt guilty about Magda. How would she manage now without her camera or her interpreter? Moreover, Alov was almost certain to question her about Nina. Nina hoped fervently that Magda herself would not be suspected of espionage.

Nina knew that she had to get away from the capital. She decided to buy a ticket to a city as far away from Moscow as she could afford and then work out how to get to Vladivostok and then to China. But at the station, she was told that all the tickets for the next few months had been sold.

Nina walked out of the station and boarded the first tram that came along. Her mind was racing. Where could she go now? Where could she spend the night? On a park bench? Even if she found a place to shelter, she would, in any case, get through all the money she had managed to save in less than a month. And what then?

“Fares, please, comrades,” said the conductor, pushing his way through the tightly packed passengers.

Nina reached into her pocket and froze. Her purse had disappeared.

“Are you going to buy a ticket or not?” asked the conductor.

“My purse has been stolen,” Nina said.

The conductor grabbed her roughly by the collar. “Off the tram with you. Look at you, dressed up to the nines in velvet without a kopeck to pay for your ticket.”

“The lady’s had a fight with her lover, I reckon,” grinned a blue-eyed soldier standing beside Nina. “And he sent her packing, skint.”

The passengers began to laugh.

Nina pushed her way to the door and, as the tram slowed down, jumped from the footplate out into the muddy street.

It was already dark. The howls of chained dogs in nearby yards echoed in the night air. The street lights were not lit, and the only glimmer of light came from the open door of a small church nearby.

So, that’s that, thought Nina. There’s no way I’ll get back to Vladivastok or to China. I’ll have to sell my coat tomorrow to eat, and then I’ll throw myself in the Moscow River.

She stood for a moment, looking distractedly about her. Then she headed toward the church. Surely she could find shelter there?

The church was almost empty. There was only a server in felt boots topping off the icon lamps with oil.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” he whispered angrily at someone behind Nina.

She turned her head and saw the blue-eyed soldier she had seen on the tram.

“You should take off your hat when you come into a church!” the server told him.

“But I’m a woman, and women have to cover their heads in church,” said the newcomer, throwing open her greatcoat. “You can check if you like.”

The server faltered. “Good gracious… and I thought—but what a face!”

It was, indeed, difficult to tell from her face that she was a woman. She had no eyebrows to speak of, her throat sagged, and half of her front tooth had been broken off. She had the look of a heavy drinker.

Nina approached the icon of St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker, the protector of those in trouble, and began to pray under her breath. “Help me, desperate and sinful as I am, to find a way to live.”

As she was praying, the blue-eyed soldier-woman stood behind her, scrutinizing her intently.

“What’s your name?” she asked at last.

“Nina.”

“Really? That’s my name too. Only I don’t like it—everyone calls me Shilo.”

She stroked the golden dragon on the back of Nina’s coat. “That’s some coat. Present from your man, is it?”

Nina shook her head. “No, I made it myself.”

“So, you’re one of us, are you? A working-class girl? I thought you had a lover working for the state department store. I knew a guy who was the boss of a chemist’s shop; he gave all sorts of presents to his girlfriends—condoms, douche bulbs, you name it. A nice guy, but he got shot for fraud.”

“I don’t have a lover,” said Nina.

“You must have someone! Is it a husband?” Shilo opened her eyes wide and nodded sympathetically. “So, they’ve arrested him, have they? And confiscated his property? The police have gone crazy lately. They’re picking up every profiteer they can find and arresting them under Article 7 of the Criminal Code.”

Nina did not bother to contradict her. The woman was clearly unhinged.

“Here, will you sell me your coat?” asked Shilo suddenly. “I love it.”

“I don’t have anything else to wear though,” Nina replied.

“We can swap. I’ll get a coat for you. I can give you some money too.”

“Citizens, the church is closing,” they heard the server say.

Shilo grabbed Nina by the arm. “Let’s go back to mine—I can sort it out.”

“Where?”

“You can stay over at my place. You don’t have anywhere else to go, do you?”

Nina glanced in wonder at the icon. St. Nicholas had sent her a miracle after all.

Shilo led Nina to an ancient monastery in the center of the city. A lantern hung above the iron-bound gates, and from time to time, its faint light fell on the writing of a notice on the gate: “—Corrective Labor.”

Nina was too hungry and too cold to feel anything, including fear. She did not care where Shilo was taking her, to a monastery or a homeless shelter.

Shilo knocked quietly at a side gate. “Zakhar, open up!” she called.

Behind a metal grille in the window, a head appeared for a moment. “Is that you, Shilo?”

“That’s right.”

“And who’s that with you?”

“A seamstress. Fyodor Stepanych asked me to find one.”

The bolt rasped, and the gate opened. “Come in.”

Under a low stone arch, a guardhouse had been set up, lit dimly by a paraffin light. The gatekeeper, a strapping young soldier, looked at Nina with suspicion.

“Show me your documents!” he demanded.

“She doesn’t have any,” said Shilo. The next minute, Nina saw her take a purse out of her pocket—Nina’s own—and count off a couple of rubles for the soldier.

So, she was the one who robbed me, Nina thought, amazed.

What should she do? Demand her money back? But Shilo would never give it back, and then Nina would end up out on the street.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go,” ordered Shilo.

“Don’t be afraid if you see a skull lying about,” she added a moment later as they walked over a board that had been put down over a puddle. “This used to be an old cemetery for noble families. Some of our girls messed it up a bit. Time was, you’d dig up some dead fellow out, and there’s enough gold on him to open a jewelry store. Then we’d have a party with Fyodor Stepanych; he’d bring vodka and food, and we’d have a feast that went on for days. But there are no more graves left to rob now—nothing but bones. Fyodor Stepanych keeps telling us to bury them, but they keep coming up again. Seems they don’t like being in a common grave, so they come climbing up out of the ground.”

“Who’s Fyodor Stepanych?” asked Nina

Shilo laughed. “He’s in charge of this center of corrective labor—prison, that is. I’ve been in here two weeks. It’s not bad.”

“You’ve been in here?” asked Nina in shock. “Do you mean to say you’re a prisoner?”

“That’s right. It’s fine so long as they give you a sentence without solitary confinement, taking into account your ‘low cultural level and difficult material circumstances.’ Fyodor Stepanych sends us out to make money, and we share it with him.”

“Doesn’t anyone run away?”

“We’d have to be fools to run away from here. Just you try finding a room to yourself outside with free food! They even take us to the bathhouse on Fridays, and the children even hold concerts for us to help reform us quicker.”

Nina gave a nervous laugh, despite herself. Well, she would have to live in a corrective workhouse for the time being. At least Alov would be unlikely to find her here.

Shilo walked onto the porch of a low one-story building and opened the door with a squeak. “In you come. Make yourself at home.”

The dark room smelled of candle wax and dust. Nina looked around. The room with its barred window was empty except for a pot-bellied stove, a bundle of firewood, and a trestle bed covered with a blanket.

“It’s a good place here,” Shilo said, spreading her greatcoat on the floor in front of the stove. “The angels often come and visit me in this room. I sit here with them at the window. We have a smoke, and they take all my sins away. It’s better than stain remover, I tell you.”

“Please,” asked Nina, “couldn’t you give me back my money? Everything I had was in that purse.”

“All right. But I get your coat. Deal?” Shilo tossed Nina her purse. “And I’ll find you another. Don’t you worry.”

“Are you going to steal one?”

Shilo did not answer. She reached under the mattress and took out a hunk of bread and a battered flask.

“Here,” she said, handing Nina the bread. “This is for you. And this is for me.”

She took a swig from the flask, and Nina caught an acrid whiff of home-brewed vodka.

“I like you, you know,” said Shilo a moment later. “It’s not even the coat. It’s just something about you.”

“What about me?” Nina asked.

“You’re like me, you see,” said Shilo. “Before they threw me out the window.”

Nina chewed away at the bread, feeling that nothing would surprise her any more.

They were awoken the next morning by a loud male voice. “So, who’s this then?”

Nina, who had slept on the greatcoat on the floor, sat up with a start to see a small, gray-haired Chinese man with a sheepskin coat over his shoulders.

“Hello, Fyodor Stepanych,” Shilo greeted the man cheerfully. “I’ve brought you a seamstress. Just look at what she can do!”

She handed the man Nina’s velvet coat. He examined it critically.

“Who taught you to sew?” he asked Nina.

“My parents were tailors,” she explained.

“Listen, boss. Take her on, why don’t you?” pleaded Shilo. “She can live here. She don’t have a place to go anyway—her husband’s been arrested for profiteering.”

Fyodor Stepanych scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I’ll need to give her a job and see how she manages. If you show you can do it,” he told Nina, “we’ll take you on. You can run courses in cutting and sewing. Let’s go!”

Nina could hardly believe her luck. If they let her stay here and paid her for her work, she would be able to raise the money for a ticket to Vladivostok.

Shilo gave her a blanket to keep her warm. Nina wrapped herself up in it and set off after Fyodor Stepanych.

In the daytime, the monastery did not look at all sinister. Nina saw brick walls with whitewash crumbling off in places, bare bushes, and puddles. It was clean and tidy, and the paths bore the traces of having been swept by a broom. There were no skulls anywhere to be seen.

In front of the ancient cathedral, a row of women stood performing exercises, supervised by a prison guard with a loudhailer. As she shouted out the order, they all raised their arms.

“Up on your toes!” she boomed. “Now breathe out!”

The prisoners obligingly breathed out small clouds of steam.

“I’ve introduced morning exercises to keep them fit,” Fyodor Stepanych said. “All our women here are victims of capitalism. Thieves and prostitutes, you know, and I reform them through labor. Nobody here is idle.”

With his captive women, he was like an estate owner with two hundred serfs. Some he used as groundskeepers and domestic staff, but most had been set to work making funeral wreaths and foot wrappings for Red Army soldiers.

Fyodor Stepanych made no secret of the fact that he sent the most accomplished pickpockets out to ply their trade.

“They only steal from the Nepmen,” he said. “And their number’s up soon, anyway.”

Nina knew already that “Nepmen” was the name for entrepreneurs who had been given permission to engage in manufacturing and trade since 1921. The NEP, or New Economic Policy, had been introduced to restore the economy to its prewar level. After this, the idea was that the class of Nepmen was to be “liquidated,” and the country would begin to build a truly socialist society in which all the means of production belonged to the state, and private enterprise would be forbidden by law.

Fyodor Stepanych took Nina to the vestry, which was in an outbuilding next to the church. Here, in a cold room smelling of mice, was a table with a sewing machine and some old trunks, black with age, on which were piles of church vestments.

“Here is your workstation,” said Fyodor Stepanych. He handed Nina a purple cassock. “I’d like you to make a couple of skirts out of this. I think there should be enough material.”

Nina looked at him, bewildered. “But that’s sacrilege—”

“The priests don’t need any of this stuff anymore,” said Fyodor Stepanych with a wave of his hand. “They’ve all been sent to the Solovki labor camp long ago—to speed them on their way to the Kingdom of Heaven.”

He began to lay out cassocks, surplices, and albs on the table.

“We’ll use the velvet for skirts,” he said, “the brocade for belts and collars, and we can use the winter robes to make coats for the proletarian women. You can sleep here on the trunks. I’ll give you a couple of logs a day to keep you from freezing.”