The People's Train (26 page)

I slept very soundly that night. I was excited by the surroundings and the pulse running under things. And it would continue to do that. I’d been promised by Artem that he would speak at a public meeting at the technical university the next night.

In the meantime our host was off very early the next day and left us to wander about the city. We crossed the avenue and walked maybe three hundred yards and were in the great square. As yesterday every street corner running off it was full of ragged men listening to speakers of all kinds. Between the groups I saw women in what had once been good dresses and with boas around their necks hoping a man would pay them for the obvious. There were a lot of war widows, said Artem, and people who had lost their jobs through factories being burned down.

We pushed on past a scrum of newspaper sellers and maimed soldiers and pencil vendors until we were in the parkland beyond. Here we started down a pathway by a river that was – I think – some tributary of the Don. I remember it was running well – it looked as if the snow of the last winter was still in it. I enjoyed walking in a bright day in a city where no one knew me.

This park though wasn’t quite like the Botanic Gardens in Brisbane. I could see among the trees humpies where soldiers lived and Artem and I could smell the smoke of their cooking fires. These weren’t soldiers under command; these were men who were striking out for themselves – refusing to follow the orders of officers unless their regimental soviet voted to do it. Artem told me they were survivors of General Brusilov’s Polish offensive that had killed millions. But though they were mutineers, they seemed very well-mannered and unlikely to trouble anyone who passed by.

The conversation between Artem and myself was slow and easy as we strolled. We were discussing our host’s claim the night before that he was prepared to lose his apartment – which would mean putting up with garbage in the courtyard and queuing to use his own lavatory. Tom believed Federev was sincere but that he was in for a few shocks.

Because he’s our friend, said Artem, we’re all very respectful when we go into his apartment. The soldiers are respectful. A respect for property is implanted in us. But he might get a surprise when people really believe that his bedroom is theirs. There’s something in Gorki and our lawyer friend and me that we want all peasants to be novelists. But they aren’t. Oppression’s made them rabid. There aren’t so many noble souls. My sister is one.

I didn’t know if he knew anything about Trofimova’s adventure with me. Something of the leftover Catholic in me wanted to confess to him, but I couldn’t imagine the words. I didn’t have the gift for describing that sort of thing – or even the other thing: that his big sister came to my mind when I was half asleep. And when I was full awake too.

From among the remnants of park benches that hadn’t been totally used up for firewood there appeared a determined bunch of threadbare soldiers. Three of them were pushing along a wiry young man they had hold of and two others behind had their rifles aimed at his back. Their captive was bleeding from his nose and mouth. Tom called something to the soldiers, his whole approach a mixture of humour and authority. What has gone wrong here? he seemed to ask. One of the soldiers explained to Artem that the fellow they held prisoner was a thief.

A debate began between Artem and the others. The soldiers were young and a little edgy at being challenged. They told Artem that bullets had to be kept for the ultimate enemies of the people, not just for common thieves. So they weren’t going to waste a bullet on this man – who had stolen one of their coats. They were going to throw him in the river and let it look after him.

Some kids turned up and started dancing and yelling and skipping because it was just a theatre piece to them. But the soldiers weren’t acting. One of those with a rifle advanced on Artem and began yelling. Artem got angry and told him to go to hell. Touch me, he told them, and you’ll answer to the city soviet. I am Artem Samsurov who led the uprising in Kharkov in 1905, when you were still shitting your baby pants.

It’s a study to see how even men with rifles will back away from someone so certain of his authority. Even though these fellows had lost faith in their officers they still seemed to believe Artem. Still, they were determined to have their way, and the man was taken onto a little boat pier and hurled off it. He went under then rose to the surface and thrashed around a bit, clearly a man who couldn’t swim a stroke.

As he was swept away the kids went running along the bank, chanting and cat-calling.

Please! he screamed.
Budte dobry!
Please. I’d been numb till now but I all at once felt his terror. I couldn’t swim, but I had a mad impulse to dive in after him. Mercifully, one of the two soldiers who held a rifle stepped onto the pier and took aim and – regardless of the desire to save bullets – shot him between the shoulder blades. The man in the water gave a shriek and then surrendered to the current and sailed away.

In a daze, we walked back to the square and Tom bought a paper. He stood scanning it while I waited, as if he was looking for something to take the weight of what we’d seen away. He whistled.

It’s all happening in Piter, Paddy.

Piter
was Petrograd.

The cat’s among the pigeons.

He frowned. While we were settling into Kharkov something m assive had been happening in the capital. A vast crowd of people – sailors, workers from a huge Vyborg factory (the Putilov works where Suvarov had once been employed) – had marched on the Tauride Palace and begged the Supreme Council of Soviets – who shared the building with the parliament, the Duma – to give them leave to do away with the Duma, the government and the war itself. This was the moment, they cried.

We were attending worthy meetings in Kharkov. But the main action was in Petrograd. Would Artem rather be there? That’s what I wondered.

If Artem was disappointed not to be part of the events in Piter, he didn’t show it. He seemed excited as we travelled with Federev in his large car. This time it was protected by a number of Red Guards either sitting inside with us or riding on the running boards. In a narrow street somewhere between the centre of town and its older wooden outer reaches, we picked up the two sisters from what looked like a half-finished block of flats into which the windows had not been fitted. The sisters lived in the basement.

Artem greeted them with a smile large enough for the two of them to share. They were all obviously rattling on about the events in the capital – what it all meant – and whether this was
it,
the promised day.

Again, said Federev, there’s every sort of beast in the menagerie tonight. There are anarchists and Ukrainian Nationalists and Great Ukrainian Nationalist Mensheviks. There are Great Russian Mensheviks. And then us. The absolute lot!

The hall was grander than anything I had ever seen. Big Greek columns and a great arch held up a group of plump angels. This was going to be a bigger version of all the meetings I’d been to and seen on railway stations and in halls while we chugged our way across from Vladivostok. The welter of ideas contained in here seemed to make its own heatwave. But the Abrasova sisters didn’t seem timid about it at all as we fought our way in.

Some soldiers had wrestled others off to keep seats for us near the front. I noticed Tasha’s eyes as she sat down. She was a creature on a leash, sitting forward with her white fists on the knees of her dress. She was coiled. Her sister Olya meanwhile was looking around as if she were trying to count how many people lay between her and the side doors. Artem in turn sat beside Tasha and made some remarks that caused a laugh to stutter up over her bottom lip. She leaned across Artem and told me in thick English, I speak tonight.

So we’re off to the races, Paddy, Artem told me, beaming.

A Ukrainian Menshevik spoke first, a man in dark suit, collar and tie – not the kind that come from the best tailors. Every sentence was yelled out in a lusty way. But he had to roar and rage like that to be heard. The Ukrainians had their own language, as it turned out, but Russians used to say it had come late in history and was based on Russian anyway. It was like the difference between Portuguese and Spanish, Artem would tell me. But I got the idea that anyone who spoke in Russian believed in a great All Russia, and those who spoke in Ukrainian wanted a separate republic of the Ukraine. So this first speaker had started to talk sentimentally about the glories of ancient Kiev, and how they wouldn’t come back – that brotherhood of knights and warriors – without Ukraine being separate from Russia.

A fantasist, Artem told me, shaking his head.

Some people in our group – soldiers and factory workers and others – began roaring questions at him, along the lines of who cleaned out the nobles’ shit in golden Kiev? His face grew red with the effort of pushing his dream on people and the noise was bigger than a cattle auction.

Next there was a member of the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, a socialist who was listened to a bit more respectfully even by our crowd.

After that we had a Cadet in a frock coat and collar not much different from Federev’s. It turned out he wanted the Ukraine to ally itself with Germany. In some other forum he might have got a better reception – here he got a lot of boos. He kept on asking whether the crowd wanted continuing tyranny from St Petersburg. All our crowd were on their feet asking where the tyranny was.

Suddenly it was Tasha’s turn. By now her sister Olya had anxious bulging eyes and her forehead was waxed with sweat. Federev escorted Tasha to the stage and seemed determined to stay to protect her from the insults the other speakers had copped, but she shooed him back to his seat.

When she started speaking she was like a woman transformed. Not that I could understand a single word she said. Well, that’s not true – I understood a few. But I could tell that she was a spellbinder and seemed to grow in height and in substance as she spoke. Her voice was contralto but it didn’t have an ounce of yield in it. And the audience was stunned for a time by this combination of the angelic and the political.

She’s like a muse, Artem whispered to me.

Among other things, she argued that if the Rada continued its plan for an independent republic there would be civil war. Some people yelled out that if Bolsheviks were so brave, why didn’t Vladimir Ilich surrender himself to the provisional government who’d now issued a warrant for his arrest?

Mensheviks were holding up newspapers. Reports from Piter said that Kerensky had issued an order for Vladimir Ilich’s arrest and that he’d fled the city and was in hiding.

Federev seemed less confused than Artem and was immediately on his feet, raging away. No doubt Kerensky would have Vladimir Ilich killed on the way to prison! So why wouldn’t he hide? He knows you fear him enough to kill him!

On the platform Tasha leaned forward from her hips and both her fists were clenched. She sang out her own answer above the racket of the hall. But the debate was going to take a further slide still, because all at once a cry was raised. A man’s voice directed at Tasha. It yelled,
Zhidy Bolsheviki!
Bolsheviks in the audience, various soldiers, workers, Olya and Federev stood up at this and turned around to the crowd behind and screamed at the accuser. The cry
Bolshevik Jew!
was one I’d get used to. The interjector kept on shouting it and others took up the chant.

Total pandemonium!

The offender – who like the first speaker wore a suit halfway between that of a gent and a worker – made a further speech. He asked his fellow citizens of the Ukraine if they wanted to starve the way the Russians were doing in Petrograd. Would they want their children to starve because of Jew speculators and Jew Bolsheviks?

I could tell now Tasha was getting to be less attractive to the crowd. I’ve never seen people hate a Jew like they did then. The family of Jewish drapers in Broken Hill, the Lendls, had snide things said about them. All the less so because young Lendl was a champion fast bowler – at least by Broken Hill standards. But all this was on a different scale. Tasha didn’t take a step back. In fact she took a step forward and in her anger looked more in charge. She moved without any concern from here to there as fists reached up and pounded the floor of the rostrum. It sounded like she might be eaten alive. They’d discovered a spy among them – someone who had deceived them by dressing herself up in a fashionable gown and Ukrainian or Russian hair. To a lot of them, it appeared, she was a witch in disguise and they couldn’t wait to have at her.

We’ll have to get her out, Artem told me as people rushed into the aisles to charge the stage. There was already a crowd blocking the way to the stairs and we had to fight our way through it. I’m not using that word lightly: it
was
fighting. Artem was willing to push people to the ground – even women – to get onto the stage. Over his shoulder he was yelling, Come on, Paddy! as if he really needed me. I followed, kicking and pushing. The more I was blocked by this mass of human stupidity – who wanted to punish Tasha instead of Kerensky – the more my old state of barbarism started to come over me: I saw everyone in an extra-sharp way. I saw beforehand how I could break their jaws and grind their bones. It was a strange feeling – unfamiliar to me normally. But I more than enjoyed it. I was let loose and everything I did felt as if it was permitted – by who I don’t know. A gaping mouth full of hate presented itself and I smashed my forearm into it and wanted to hear the cartilage in the nose snap – though that would have been impossible over the noise of the crowd.

When we made it onto the stage there were maybe thirty ot hers who were already there with unkind intent. I could see our host Federev on the far side of Tasha with a hold on her arm and trying to get her away. Tasha was still yelling some point she wanted to make. I kicked a man who was trying to drag her by her right arm towards the mob who wanted to devour her. I’ll beat the bloody lot of you, I was yelling. Bastards! Fuckers! I drove a flank of men and women away from Tasha to the back of the stage. It wasn’t one-sided. Someone slammed me in the ribs. But some fierce-looking moustached soldiers and some of Federev’s Red Guards – who often stood on the running boards of his car – came up around me and we held one side of the platform while Tasha and Federev and Artem made a retreat towards the wings. With the soldiers to help me I fought a rearguard down the steps leading to a stage door. I saw Tasha’s shy sister Olya in front of me. Somehow she’d fought her way out too without anyone caring for her in the same way they looked after her orator of a sister.

Outside we ran for our host’s car and the Red Guards standing on the running boards had rifles in their hands. That made the crowd pause and think. We all tumbled in – our host and Tasha, Olya and Artem, his big hand reaching for me.

Make way for the little tiger! Artem cried in English, hauling me aboard.

Inside the car, everyone was laughing, even though people outside were pounding the windows and our host’s Ukrainian driver was yelling curses at the hundreds who stood in his way. We were suddenly all laughing like crazy and when some of the mob threw stones and horse manure at the back window of the car it made us laugh even more.

That’s nationalism for you! our host told me – shaking his head. That’s idiots of all classes going for old nationalist fairy tales about Kiev the Golden and
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
– the dreadful Rasputin’s favourite book by the way. And the tsar’s as well.

But they tried to arrest Vladimir Ilich? asked Artem as all the jollity died down.

I know, said Federev. Don’t worry. He’ll be hidden. They don’t have the whip-hand they did once.