The People's Train (34 page)

When we made it through the lobby of the Marinsky and stood outside, the fresh, cold air hit me like a kindly slap on the cheek from a mother. But there were no trams. We marched across to the cathedral into a side street skirting the Winter Palace – guarded by cannon and gunners on the orders of Kerensky – and walked flat-out to the Prospekt. Part of the way down this broad thoroughfare we came to sandbags and barbed wire behind which stood soldiers and sailors in place. Though they wore no red armbands we presumed they belonged to us – none of the sailors were for Kerensky. Antonov-Ovseenko – the calm, grubby, tiredlooking fellow back in No. 36 – had placed such barriers and squads all around the city to stop Kerensky ordering more of his troops into the area around the Winter Palace.

Suvarov stopped and talked to them and the sailors told him more of their comrades were coming – there were still thousands of them on the way or waiting to come across from Kronstadt in launches and other vessels.

I noticed a string of cars lined up empty along the pavement between the autumn trees. Another automobile on the way to the river rolled up to the barrier and the soldiers and sailors stopped it. Inside were a driver and a prosperous-looking middle-aged man and his wife. The guards told them that if they wanted to get where they were going they’d have to walk. A soldier took to the wheel of their car and roughly kangarooed it into place among the others. Suvarov asked me did I think we should use one of these to get to the Smolny. But a tram was waiting further down the Prospekt and Suvarov and I hurried towards it.

Did you see? Suvarov asked me once we were aboard and rattling along. Those sailors had on their hats the name of their ship. It was
Aurora
– the name of the cruiser in the river. If it starts firing on Kerensky and his cabinet – well, it’ll be the end of all blather.

A barefoot urchin jumped on the tram selling copies of
Rabochii Put,
the newspaper Koba had been editing overnight. Suvarov read headlines which told soldiers, workers and citizens of Piter that the enemies of the people had gone on the offensive by bringing into the capital by dead of night the female Shock Battalions of Death from Oranienbaum – a palace west of the city – to join forces with Junkers from the officer schools. Even so some of the Junkers were refusing to defend Kerensky and the provisional government. I thought it was strange that women’s battalions – if you were going to have them in the first place – would put together the two words
Shock
and
Death
in their title. You’d think one of those alone would have done. It was another Russian mystery.

A number of delegates and others joined our tram as it rolled along and it was nearly full by the time we arrived at the Smolny. Suvarov knew the clerk on the desk and got me inside again. Then he went into the main ornate hall where once the noble girls of Smolny had danced with naval cadets to a meeting at which – I would learn later – five delegates from each city ward convened with Trotsky and the other members of his military committee. Suvarov represented Vyborg.

I went back to the room where I’d met Reed and tried to get my thoughts in order. There was no message waiting from Artem. Why would there be? As later reading of the history of those days would show – there was a ferment in No. 36 where Vladimir Ilich and a few allies like Artem were trying to persuade the doubters that they must act before the Congress of Soviets met in less than two days’ time. Otherwise the party would be swamped and its plans blunted down to nothing – to some daydream of a future always far off.

Now I wrote a note to Artem telling him that I’d found Suvarov – that he’d been working all the time downstairs in the Bureau of Factory Committees. I gave it to a typist delivering documents to take it in to him and I waited. I wrote about the afternoon but did not work at any speed. I was still a bit edgy about the fact Mr Reed was writing the same story as me but with the extra advantage that he could speak Russian and seemed well educated.

When night fell outside the bare windows the darkness looked cold. Even though I stuck to the Roman calendar printed in one of my little notebooks – which said it was October in the world I’d left – it was already in fact the Russian month of November and nights felt even to me as if the air was getting itself together to produce snow. I sat on the office floor with my back to the wall and fell asleep. I slipped into one of those dreams where the same thing happens over and over but it’s totally crazy – in this case that Commissioner Urquhart of the Queensland police would cancel all charges against me if I would marry Trofimova, and though Trofimova stood by smiling I couldn’t get her to speak. So I began to feel rage towards her. I harangued her as I climbed with Urquhart over breakneck sandstone rocks. Trofimova stopped to smoke a pipe. I didn’t know you smoked a pipe, I growled at her. She told me Krakowski – the man whose warehouse we plundered – had given it to her and she didn’t want to waste it.

Suvarov woke me. I was embarrassed to be caught asleep on a day like this – when hardly anyone in the Smolny was sleeping. Behind Suvarov I saw Slatkin. He was wearing his usual knowing grin and his overcoat with fur lapels. But he’d taken off his tie and his collar looked greasy in the Smolny style.

Suvarov was saying to Slatkin as I stirred, This is the same argument we had this afternoon. And it’s rolling on and on. Then he saw my eyes were open. Ah, Paddy. Welcome back to the evil waking world, my friend. Do you know Mr Slatkin?

I told him I did.

He wants you to go on an errand with him.

I immediately struggled to my feet. Would he put a Mauser in my hand again? With the Junkers placing their artillery in front of the Winter Palace, why shouldn’t I have a bloody Mauser?

Ready to go? Slatkin asked.

I was still dopey from sleep. But I said I was ready.

Bring your rifle – though it’s only for window-dressing.

I didn’t know what in the hell he was talking about but I went and fetched it from the corner of the room I’d left it in earlier – not even leaned against the plaster but lying still like Moses’ rod that might turn into a snake.

Suvarov offered me an overcoat. I found this for you, he said. You’ll need it tonight.

It smelled of sour wool but I put it on gratefully and followed the two of them out into the hallway.

Where are we going? I asked.

Slatkin placed his finger at the side of his nose. Something about all this fake secrecy and smart-alecry of his angered me.

Tell me, I insisted. Where in the hell are we going?

Slatkin didn’t seem put out by my insistence. He said, We’re going to meet some of the sailors.

That makes everything clear, I muttered.

You’ll be an example to them, Paddy, Suvarov assured me.

Slatkin was for once sober-faced. It’s an order of the military committee, he said.

I shook my head but was willing to serve. We bid Suvarov farewell then went down the stairs and pushed and shoved across the crowded lobby.

Out we went through the front door past the sentries sitting at their Mannlicher machine-guns. The soldiers in the garden stood by their fires with a strange mixture of seriousness and dreaminess. Slatkin fetched a rifle for himself from a stacked stand of them and slung it over his shoulder. He collected four young soldiers who had been waiting by a fire and we marched out the front gate to one of the armoured cars now waiting there.

There were two more soldiers in the car. One was standing up on a platform in the middle – the machine-gunner – and another sat at the steering wheel in the front. As soon as we were seated on the benches – rifles between knees – he drove off. Because we were encased in steel I couldn’t see out into the streets. But squinting through the front slit of the armoured car they looked strangely empty to me except for trams. Their drivers stood beside them waiting for something definite to happen or for news about which routes were barricaded and which not.

We cut off a main road and followed narrower ones until we reached the river and turned left along an embankment. The armoured car soon pulled up and the machine-gunner got down from his stand and came and opened the rear door for us. Slatkin and his four soldiers and I jumped out. We were right outside the door of a
tabak –
a sort of tobacco and cigar shop that also sold coffee and liquor. It was locked up. But Slatkin gave his rifle to one of his soldiers and crossed the pavement and hammered on the double doors.

One of the leaves of the door opened a crack and I got a glimpse of a young man in a navy blue overcoat. He and Slatkin seemed to exchange passwords and the door opened fully.

We entered a long bare room. All the tobacco had vanished from the shelves and all the liquor from the counter. The room was bare of the normal furniture too – it had a scrubbed table lit by a kerosene lamp set in the middle, and around the table six or seven sailors were sitting. They were drinking vodka out of pannikins – there were two nearly empty bottles on the table.

The fellow at the head of the table was an older man with a heavy beard. By the air of command I saw when he pointed us to two empty chairs he must have been elected to some level of power by the fleet soviet. Slatkin and I set our rifles aside and sat down. A young sailor along the table offered us each a pannikin of liquor. I said no and the bearded sailor frowned at me.

Then – picking up a mug – he flicked some drops left from a previous drinker onto the floor before half filling it and passing it to Slatkin.

Slatkin began talking to the sailors. When he finished the older sailor at the head of the table spread his hands and argued for a while. Slatkin pointed to me. He made quite a long speech then turned to me.

Paddy, he said, if I declared you were a friend of Kerensky – what would you reply? In Russian, I mean.

Inpravda!
I said.

Bravo!

He turned back to the sailors and spread his hands like a reasonable merchant making a sale. Then he turned back to me. I’m telling them that if you could come all the way from Australia for the revolution, they can bring all their men across from Kronstadt and at least open fire on the Winter Palace from their cruiser in the river.

I didn’t know why they should be at all unwilling. Maybe they couldn’t guarantee the movements of their men.

Then Slatkin and the sailors started talking again. I had served my role – as the sort of statue you saw in churches acting as a spur to the faithful. Except for my one word.

When we were leaving there were handshakes all round. The sailors smiled at me and clapped my back again and again. Then Slatkin and I left through the door to the street where Slatkin’s four soldiers guarded us on our way into the armoured car.

Slatkin beamed at me as the engine roared. That went very well, he told me. You impressed them, Paddy.

22

I was taken back to the Smolny and vouched for again. Out of curiosity I went through the lobby into the grand hall which just now was serving as a bivouac for soldiers and Red Guards.

The Smolny stink was still very sharp where tomorrow night– apparently – the All-Russia Soviet Congress was to gather where all the delegates of all the factions would meet and argue on the one great issue – to destroy Kerensky and his government or not.

I climbed the stairs to the office in which I’d been working what seemed like an age ago. Three typists were still typing flat out in there. Reed wasn’t around and I felt sorry about that. Because I thought he clearly had a nose for where and what things were happening. I sat down at a table. I had another incident of the would-be revolution to write up but I found it was hard to settle to anything. The building itself seemed restless. A lot of people rushed down to the lobby to hear that a Bolshevik agent had been out to the Twelfth Army on the northern front and its regimental soviets had all voted to follow the orders of the Military Revolutionary Committee. The earth was shifting under the Smolny but none of us knew how far it would slide.

Then I saw Artem amongst the press of people listening to the tidings. He didn’t look exhausted at all as I made my way to him. He turned to me with his bright face. I couldn’t believe he could still look so fresh – but that was one of Artem’s gifts.

Paddy, he yelled. But where’s Suvarov? I sent one of our people looking for him.

We looked around the room ourselves but he did not seem to be there.

It was time for the reunion of the two old campaigners – to hell with everything else! We went searching for Suvarov all through the Smolny and in the end found him in the garden smoking a cigarette by a bonfire. Artem was approaching him with arms thrown wide and calling his name before Suvarov even saw him. Suvarov stood, hiccoughed a laugh and brought both his hands up to his forehead under the rim of his cap. They embraced like bears wrestling. Watching the two of them I got a feeling that all the right people were now in place and in touch. And now anything at all could happen. The world could after all turn itself upside down. It could be taken from the men in flash uniforms and frock coats and given to a fellow like Suvarov.

I’ve told him, Artem yelled at me, he’s got to come to Kharkov and work with us. No Don coal, no bloody revolution!

Artem soon had to excuse himself but Suvarov and I stayed by the fire. He kept saying, Imagine
that,
eh? Imagine Artem! Central Committee. Well, blow me down!

Appreciating it all, he stared at the flames and spat into them with utter happiness.

Did you know, he asked me, I nearly got trapped into marriage with a girl in Sydney?

I’d heard something, I admitted.

Imagine that. What would I be doing now? Probably washing up.

He threw his arm up at the dark sky the sparks from the flames disappeared into. Then what would have happened to all this?

We waited there for two hours and Artem at last came back to join us for a while. He told us an anecdote about Vladimir Ilich. In disguise he’d come across to the Smolny that morning on a local train from the flat he’d sheltered in and he’d had a choice of seats – no one else dared travel in case Kerensky’s troops or the gendarmes boarded the thing. So there came Lenin – to deliberate on great schemes – all alone on a little neighbourhood rattler.

There’d been a lot of vacillating and even fright in room No. 36. Our old friend the moving-picture enthusiast Grigorii Zinoviev and his comrade Kamenev didn’t think things were ready yet. Maybe the stars weren’t in alignment. Vladmir Ilich had said to them something like, In two years you’ll still be saying that. Artem had voted to go ahead without hesitation – which maybe explained his air of repressed excitement as he talked with Suvarov and me.

So if we actually win – someone at the meeting had asked – what will we call our ministers of state?

Trotsky suggested
commissars
– that was the term the Jacobins used in the French revolution. That’s how casually and how fatefully things happened in No. 36 – with the rest of the building and the soldiers in the garden and the people of the city and country and world itself none the wiser.

Artem disappeared again and Suvarov and I remained at the fire – excited innocents. In Room No. 36 Antonov-O – former engineering officer – was working on the plans for the next day and sending out messengers to the barracks around the city. The telegraph office had to be occupied. Then the telephone exchange, the Marinsky and any of the bridges held now by the Junkers. The sailors from Kronstadt were expected to be in place with the soldiers by the middle of the morning. Ready to do all! The Winter Palace and Kerensky inside it would be assaulted in good time for its capture to be proclaimed before the Congress of Soviets met downstairs tomorrow evening. And if not, we’d all be looking for places to hide.

We rattled on at the fire while upstairs Vladmir Ilich was stretched out on the floor resting his back. He was a man who’d settled everything in his mind and the great stone set rolling! Within thirty-six hours he could be dead – but he didn’t want to go down with backache.

Artem returned and announced we could go to the Alliluyevs’ apartment now. All three of us would have to fit into the sewing room since Suvarov couldn’t possibly get back to the Vyborg side because government troops held the two bridges.

Don’t worry, Artem assured him with a yawn. We’ll clear them out tomorrow.

You’d think he’d just been to another normal small-beer union meeting. Happily he found a car and we were driven across the city to our Piter home where Alliluyev and his wife were still up, fully dressed and very excited. We were offered tea but refused with thanks. As the most junior rebel in the sewing room I insisted I would sleep on my overcoat on the floor. In fact it looked inviting. But Artem said, I must be up early. And over our protests took the floor himself. I saw Suvarov was still asleep when I woke three or four hours later. But Artem was already gone.