Cold Blood (36 page)

“Capture the place first,
duraki
, idiots,” said the lieutenants and junior captains wearily. “Can't you understand even primitive reasoning?” But they too were pretty well scunnered. What was the point in having officers whose orders could be refused if disagreeable to those being ordered? Why not run away if one's destiny was to be taken to the back and shot for failure?

But fear is powerful and it was fear of Trotsky that had given the Reds the courage to secure the railway line by which we were entering Kazan. Having pushed out the Whites, who'd always loathed fighting in the dark, they'd driven a couple of
lorries onto the foot crossing, set a few sentries and then climbed into the lorries and gone fast asleep, piled on top of each other like a mob of piglets because they'd been fighting non-stop for two nights and a day.

That's how we found them, that's how I know.

Boltikov said, “Let's smash through the lorries, Charlie. Get Shmuleyvich to put up some smoke and then wap them in the guts, send them sky-high.”

I said, “Why'd we want to do that carrying Bolshevik slogans on our train and wearing Red Army uniforms? What'd happen if they've torn up a rail and we hit the gap at speed?” My idea was to shimmy through the cordon into the no-man's-land between the armies and do the business discreetly.

“We'll keep the fireworks till we're leaving,” I said.

He said, “You sure the Whites are going to try and run the gold out tonight?”

“That's what Stiffy says the intercepts say.”

“So that's the strategy at the top, but as their great plan is unfolding, some of it just squirts out on our side, that it, Charlie? What's with the women while this is going on?”

“Xenia'll be in the monastery. Annushka has volunteered to go swimming.”

“Annushka?” he said.

“Shmuley has got familiar with our good doctor. It's Annushka and Yuri now. One moment there was nothing between them and the next . . . That's how things happen, whether there's a war on or not. Anyway, the two largest people on the train turn out to be the strongest swimmers, how's that?”

“Sounds like true love.”

“They'll be too busy for love.”

Boltikov, daintily scratching his nostril with his pinky then clearing his throat: “Now—hmm—ha ha—know something, Charlie? That we're within a rifle shot of the greatest fortune in the world? I'm not suggesting we give up on Glebov. But the thing is—one small barge—do we really have to be so frugal? Listen, if we were to cut the Yanks out of the loop, then it'd be you and I alone as principals. That'd be 330 million dollars more for us. Huh, Charlie? I mean, we're men, aren't we, Charlie? To anyone with his full quota of spunk it's got to be tempting.
The whole caboodle. The entirety of one hundred per cent, that's what I'm referring to.”

“How'd we get it out of Russia? Then how are we to find a buyer for such a quantity? Think I haven't thought about it?”

“You just leave all that to me. You get the stuff and I'll deal with the rest.”

“Get through this rail block first, shall we?” I said.

“One thing at a time,” he said, mimicking me.

Shmuley tooted twice. It was my signal. Slowly, in an appeasing way, he brought the train to a halt about fifty yards in front of the barrier of red lamps strung across the rails.

I said to Boltikov, “You can pray they haven't torn any of the track up. On your knees. Proper praying.”

Then I opened the carriage door and dropped onto the clinker—stayed there crouching, waiting for the challenge.

The sky and the clouds still had the same queer violet tinge, which was even reflected onto the rails at my feet. Because the shot was late in coming, I had time to notice that. Plus the smoke drifting across the sky from the burning warehouses.

The sentry must have been uncertain what he'd seen. His bullet plashed against a rail some distance away and went whining into the night.

“Friend,” I shouted, thickening my Estonian accent. “Comrades escaped from Strabinsk with stores—food and ammunition. Don't shoot.”

Now I could see him, a boy with a rifle at his shoulder and his head too high to aim it properly: looking at where he wanted the bullet to go rather than looking down the sights. “I'm going to walk slowly towards you. Please fetch a comrade of the officer type.”

I walked with my hands as high as they'd go. It was just dark enough to have stumbled over a shovel or something and got myself shot. I poked holes in the sky and approached him gently.

Below me, along the wharf area of the riverside, the gunfire was heavy. Nothing seemed to be happening elsewhere, only down at the river. Right now the gold was being unloaded from the barges. The Czechs would have occupied fixed positions in the warehouses alongside the wharves so they could give cover during the operation. When the gold train had left, they'd drop
back, abandon the city and follow in their own trains. Meanwhile the Reds'd be trying to worry them out of their positions before they were prepared to leave, that was how I read it.

In front of me there was a flurry of movement. The sentry had got an officer down from one of the lorries parked on the crossing. The two of them were waiting.

I could tell from his accent that the officer was one of those who'd been making no headway in the Tsarist army and had turned their coats. He'd be worse than a Bolshevik if he rumbled me.

But it was all right, he only wanted to get back to sleep.

He rubbed his chin and yawned. “Suppose I'd better inspect your lot, though God knows we'd take help from the Devil if it included ammunition. Make your driver a signal to come in. I'm not walking all the way down there.”

It'd been Joseph's idea to tie a couple of crossed red flags to the front of the train. The officer liked that. He had the sentry shine his lantern over our propaganda pictures and liked them too. He liked Mrs. D.'s madeleines even though they had no coconut on them. Best of all was the tumbler of vodka.

Tornado whinnied eerily within his wagon.

I shouted, “Kobi, how often have I told you, keep the horses quiet when we halt. You're just telling the enemy there's a train-load of horse reinforcements arriving, that's all you're doing.” I thumped the wagon with my fist. “Hold still, damn you.”

The officer scratched himself. “All horses?”

“Yes, Comrade Excellency.”

“Pass. I just want the rest of my sleep. Can I bunk in one of these wagons of yours? No, best not to try it. Might get nabbed by that swine Piatnitsky. He'd have me flogged, wouldn't think twice about it.”

Joseph offered the officer another slug. Shoving his tumbler forward, he said, “Coal tenders as well, I see. They'll be useful. Go on down the track for a couple of miles and you'll come to Stavka—headquarters. You'll find Comrade Trotsky's train at the junction with the westbound line. He'll tell you what to do.”

“Fine fellow, Comrade Trotsky!”

“Fine, fine man. Dedicated. Wholly without scruple. That's how we want our leaders. No namby-pamby stuff for us, eh!”

“That's right! Men of steel, men like Comrade Prodt!” I said, and when I saw the blank expression on his face—“or Glebov, whichever name he's using now. Muraviev's men are as afraid of him as they are of Comrade Trotsky.”

“Ah yes, People's Commissar Glebov! The stories one hears about that fellow! Enough to make one's hair curl!”

The violet of the sky seemed to have got into his eyes and made them weird, as if he had rabies. But it was only the sentry playing with the lantern, which was one of those with coloured slides—white, green and orange. “Look, Comrade whatever your name is, just get on down to Stavka and report there. I'll send this boy with you in case you meet another blockade.”

The lad unshouldered his rifle and climbed into the cab. Shmuleyvich caught my eye and nodded. Then he showed him the wire to sound the whistle and had him give a toot-toot for the lorries to get themselves shifted off the crossing. Nice touch that by Shmuley, giving him one last treat.

We glided down the glinting rails between rectangular wooden houses, vegetable gardens, small horse pastures and sheds for a milking cow. The sky was at a standstill, scarcely breathing. I went in to see how Xenia was. The clock showed half past two. We had four hours in hand.

B
ELOW AND
in front of us was the Volga, wide enough to take an entire fleet steaming abreast. In that strange light it was gleaming like a huge strip of salmon-coloured tin.

At a sharp angle on our left was the Zilantov Monastery. The way the railway line was curving round, the closest we'd get to it would be at the back, at the foot of its hill. We dawdled along until we came to its private siding. I switched the points to get us in and switched them back afterwards. Then I sent Kobi to reconnoitre the track up to the monastery.

The Bolshevik boy soldier was shitting himself. As soon as Shmuley and I had started to talk he'd have known what was coming. I felt sorry for him, ridiculously sorry. I said to him, “It's the luck of the draw, as it was for my wife.” Shmuley let him go and as he scrambled down the ladder from the cab I shot him from above, through the top of the head. We took him by the ends and lugged him into the bushes. There was no weight to him, must have had worms.

Anyone who thinks that this civil war of ours had any element of chivalry needs his brain hosed out. It was an affair so purely Russian that when other nations attempted to intervene, they retired, baffled. Being for our purposes and ours alone, it reflected on the one hand our national temperament and on the other our history. The first ensured that it would be disorganised and provincial and the second that it would be marked by instances of unspeakable viciousness, so cruel as to fall into the realm of medical experimentation or even vivisection in some cases. I'm not referring directly to the fate of Elizaveta, though obviously hers is one such example.

What's it like to fight in a war when so terrible a thing can happen to someone's wife? Or where a prisoner risks being fed head first into the firebox of a locomotive, as happened to General Staklo? I'll tell you. It means that when one's skin depends on killing a man promptly, one does it, as I did that boy at the foot of the Zilantov Monastery. He wasn't old enough to have seduced his sister or shot a policeman. Maybe he'd never even got round to stealing apples. Morally, he'd done nothing whatsoever to deserve his death. Yet he had to die, because had he lived he could have compromised my plans—and then I would have died.

God's will is the only answer. One cannot blame history for everything.

But who am I to talk about morals? By others' standards I'm the most despicable creature alive. I've seen the revulsion in the eyes of people who know what I did. But I don't really understand what is meant by the word “morals”—that is, I don't understand its precise meaning, one that can be applied at any time on any day without having a dictionary in one's hand. I ask myself, What's the point of having a word that only fifty people in the world completely and thoroughly understand without arguing? I didn't need a grounding in morals to see that she was in agony, that her body, her mind, her very life, were all of them ruined. Nor did morals have any relevance to what happened next—to what I did. Any half-decent man would have done the same.

Xenia informs me that my vocabulary is stocked only with imperatives and the selfish words like
must
,
me
and
ought.
I say, What do you expect? The fact is that they come to me like the most faithful of dogs. I don't even have to whistle: they're there all the time and have been since my father died of the plague and left me and my mother with a minus sum in everything that matters for modern living.

Only Elizaveta was capable of tempering my selfishness.

Her death has intensified my feelings of
againstness.
Inevitably so when daily I have to consider the rawest of all our words, which is survival. My grandparents on both sides would have had no concept of it. The closest the Doigs would have got to it
was
rubbing along
, which would have been second nature to them. Until my mother's generation, the Rykovs were wealthy enough to be immune.