The People's Train (37 page)

He held up a page on which one of the ministers – instead of writing an edict – had drawn a lamppost.

Why not? asked Artem. Kerensky’s abandoned them.

A large group of Red Guards flooded into the room and tried to grab Reed and his woman-friend – presuming they were well enough dressed to have something to do with the Provisional Government. Artem ordered the guards to leave them alone. Foreign comrades, he said. He pointed to me. Like Mr Dykes, he told them and grinned at me. A huge joke! After all – soon he’d be back at the Smolny with the best of news.

It was all over on that floor. But there was still firing elsewhere. As we came down the stairs again we had no way of knowing then that that was about the time the Red Guards started looting the wine cellars and drinking up vintages beyond their maddest dreams. We could hear soldiers still exchanging shots at the back of the building. Someone must have been resisting! Surely the shots weren’t executions.

Suvarov suggested we head through the room he and I had been in that afternoon. As we reached the corridor we found a number of unarmed Junkers – pale-faced and hatless – under the guard of two sailors. Some looked sullen. A few of them trembled and were tearstreaked. The Red Guards were yelling threats of execution.

It was Suvarov who stepped up this time – taking Artem’s cue – and told the Junkers he realised they’d been forced into defending the place. Now they could fight on the side that was naturally theirs. After this same speech Artem had given the women prisoners the Red Guards began escorting the Junkers downstairs. No executions, called Artem.

I thought innocently what a model revolution this was – passion and no slaughter.

We strode into the big room with the paintings of Russian victory set high up on the walls. In the windows the machine-guns we’d seen that afternoon stood still unmanned and still pointing out into the square. We went up to look at them for a second and felt them and found them cool to the touch. These weren’t fired much, said Suvarov.

A good thing, said Artem.

Abandoned rifles and rubbish and strewn blankets littered the floor of the big chamber. A door stood open at the far end of the room and we could hear a shot or two coming from somewhere close by. There were some voices and the sound of boots. Then silence. The place
was
being converted. From a place of power to a museum. We crossed the floor littered with dropped rifles and rubbish and were ready to go through into that further corridor but we heard before we were even at the door the sudden screams of a woman. Then the screaming gave way to a howl of pain. We emerged into the corridor to find the bloodied bodies of two Junkers and, a few yards further along, someone in a frock coat with his black and grey striped trousers pulled down, grinding into a wailing girl of the Death Battalion. She wailed and had her hand on his jaw pushing it up. One of her fingers fell into the man’s mouth and he bit it and she screamed piercingly.

The man was Slatkin.

My first thoughts – if you could call them thoughts – are shameful to admit. They are a confession of what war and conflict can call forth in men who’ve always fancied they’re decent fellows. I hadn’t felt any rage about the Death Battalion women on the stairs. But on seeing Slatkin – instead of being shocked – I thought yes, this is a girl who’d chosen to serve the tsar until death. Why shouldn’t the bitch be split open and torn apart and punished?

The shock of that idea stained everything. It was one of those things that if you thought them once they could poison a lifetime. But then – the next second – the object of my anger became Slatkin. He went on struggling with the girl. It seemed he hadn’t noticed us. A tapestry and a Meissen vase were damn all compared to this. Why would he shame the revolution after all he’d done: the raids on arms depots and the planning with the sailors. The wealth Vladimir Ilich had let him enjoy? And on the rim of a new world. Why would he betray us and the woman by hauling her army pants down around her boots and exposing her to his anger and his punishment like that?

I could see Artem was for once flabbergasted. Suvarov yelled, S latkin, stop it for Christ’s sake!

My reaction was more primitive. I went to Slatkin and kicked him full-force in the ribs. He fell off the girl. One of his arms was folded into his torso like a broken wing and he began cursing me in his mother tongue. Artem and I moved in and hauled him upright with his pants around his knees still.

Slatkin, Slatkin, said Artem as a reproach. Slatkin’s prick was still upright but he didn’t blush about that and he was telling us he’d kill us. Artem reached down to the girl – her hair was dark and her face an oval of fright and she trembled and thought we were part of her punishment too. Artem reached down and – as she yelped in terror again – began pulling up the army pants she should never have been let wear. If he hadn’t been so quick about it I would have said he’d done it tenderly. His face was scarlet as if he was the criminal. Letting go of the girl, he yelled something angry at Slatkin. Slatkin didn’t bother fixing his own dress up. I heard Suvarov whistle and turned and saw Slatkin had pulled a Mauser from a holster strapped near his armpit. He swung its elegant black barrel between all three of us.

Artem said, Stop it, Konya.

I’d never known that was Slatkin’s pet name. Konya Slatkin was certainly selecting who to shoot and I felt the old anger rising in me at being a target in the first place and knew I’d charge at him soon – regardless. The girl saw the gun and was screaming anew– certain she would be the chief target. But it didn’t seem so. It was between me and Suvarov that Slatkin swung the gun. He had decided not to kill his old friend Artem but he hadn’t given up the idea of shooting one of us. Suvarov wisely reached out and held the thin girl with the oval face by the wrist – an instinct told us both that if she fled he would then have certainly turned the gun on her.

I was saved from making a mad run at him by feeling on my shoulder the weight of my now-familiar rifle. For the first time I unshouldered it to point it at another human – Slatkin. I moved the safety lever and worked the bolt while I yelled at him. I called him obscene names – a fucker, a rootjockey, a sodding disgrace. Suvarov– while hanging on to the girl with one hand – had his other one out while he pleaded in Russian. Artem said, Slatkin, men and women were killed taking this palace. Will you disgrace them?

Nothing changed. Slatkin’s pants still had him hobbled and he still looked like a crime against heaven. I had raised my rifle and had him in my sights even while he had the little black bore of the Mauser pointed at me. Then he simply swung the Mauser to the girl and shot her in the head. The bullet and the sound both flew off the walls of the corridor.

Artem rushed to Slatkin and restrained him. And Suvarov came to restrain me from shooting Slatkin. Then the three of us – me still holding my rifle – knelt beside the girl whose eyes were still half-open. Her lips made a hissing sound – lower than a hiss though – a whisper without words. I started crying like a kid because I could see a light – already dim in her eyes – going dimmer still and dwindling away to the very limits of dimness. Piss stained her pants, poor thing.

I got up again and Artem – who’d once insisted I select one – now reached out to take my rifle from me. But I clung on. Slatkin had dressed again and had a look on his face that showed you he’d already begun to make excuses for what he’d done. I came raging in at him and smashed him in his uninjured side with the butt of the thing. The Mauser flew from his hand and fired when it hit the marble floor. Where the shot went none of us knew. It harmed none of us and it was the last poisonous shot of the capture of the palace.

I retreated from Slatkin and picked the Mauser up and made a gift of it to Suvarov who was still kneeling beside the girl as if he thought she could be revived.

Suvarov pocketed it and stood and went either to hit or help Slatkin. But in his pain Slatkin refused all friendly hands. He glowered over his shoulder at me.

Bugger you! I yelled.

I had probably made an enemy for life. I hoped so. He’d besmirched everything. He had soiled me with all the rest. The bastard! At the highest point of fraternity – when the world had changed – I had found out too much about the beast inside me, the one I had rushed to wall up but had never known was there until now. And the beast in this old campaigner Slatkin.

Artem went to Slatkin who was crouched from my assaults. He spoke almost gently to him.

Get a blanket from in there. He pointed towards the door of the great hall we’d been in. And then cover her, he said.

Slatkin stood crookedly and went on buttoning his jacket. Get one of your lackeys to cover her, he said.

No, Artem roared. No. You! He pointed again to the big ballroom. If not, he said, I’ll make you carry her across the square.

Slatkin slunk off in a way I wouldn’t have said was possible for the man who raided the Kharkov arms depot – though it was credible in a man whose ribs had been assaulted. Soon he was back with a blanket and threw it slapdash over the girl so Suvarov had to finish the job. I noticed how bony the girl’s wrist was and how small her hand – the only bits Suvarov didn’t cover. A few tears stung my eyes. I thought that something as vague as what had brought me to Russia had driven her into the Shock Battalions of Death.

When I looked up again Slatkin stood upright in spite of his pain and pointed a finger at me. It was meant to be a threat. Then he began arguing with Artem in Russian. But I could guess what he was saying. We’re all men together. These things come over a fellow. The silly bitch provoked me. Artem shook his head but not in the way I would have wanted – not like someone casting Slatkin off forever.

We’ll go, Artem said.

It was one o’clock before we came down the steps to the massive entrance hall of the captured Winter Palace. Red Guards sat on the marble drinking the tsar’s wine. Other men and women were reeling round and raising the bottles they’d captured so easily. One of them yelled, Rasputin’s altar wine! and then poured the stuff half down his jacket and half into his mouth. They knew by now we had the palace and the main blood they were spilling was the blood of the vine.

Out in the square there were lumps of plaster in the square fallen from high above where a shell had dislodged it. Apart from that the building looked the same as it had that afternoon. But now, as Suvarov said, it was under new ownership.

We got a lift back to the Smolny in a truck. This time we were not exhilarated. Slatkin also sat with us. Sometimes he talked in Russian to Suvarov and Artem and sometimes turned hard eyes and hardened mouth at me as if I were the bloody miscreant.

We’ll see who comes out of this standing, I wanted to tell him. But it would have been useless. I decided the bastard would have enjoyed robbing banks whether asked to by the party or not.

The sentries at the gate and in the garden of the Smolny wanted to know what the news was. Suvarov told them the Winter Palace had fallen and they cheered and embraced everyone in sight. Inside the Smolny – beyond open doors in the hallway – the congress was still in session despite last night’s walkout of some delegates. We could hear the little schoolmasterly Kamenev who a few weeks before had written articles saying revolution was impossible. He was reading a list of arrested ministers and declaring that Kerensky had fled and the provisional government had fallen. All organs of government were in Bolshevik hands. The Bolsheviks in Moscow and other provincial cities would both act and make the reality of revolution apparent to all in every part of Russia.

From the stairs above us appeared Vladimir Ilich free of all disguises and walking into the ballroom to speak. Koba strode behind him – smiling like a cat and winking at us. The Alliluyevs would later tell me admiringly that Koba had been up for five days straight without so much as a doze. Slatkin attached himself smoothly and with an air of revolutionary responsibility to Vladimir Ilich. For that reason Suvarov and I didn’t go in to listen to Vladimir Ilich. When you’re tired out and disgusted it’s easy to miss history. We went upstairs to No. 36 – the door was open now. Artem was already there – reporting to Antonov-O. I could tell somehow – maybe from the pace of his delivery and the evenness of his tone – that he was not making a large issue of Slatkin. But I suppose that was understandable when it came to politics – one Russian girl balanced against the whole Winter Palace and its cabinet and garrison. I saw a dozen other notables in the room – including Madame Kollontai. Artem pointed us out to the others and some came over and embraced us in congratulation.

Suvarov and I then wanly slouched next door and just slumped there. Artem came in where I sat idle at a typewriter and told me that Slatkin had made a complaint against us to Vladimir Ilich.

Of course, Artem acknowledged, he’s a barbarian.

The bastard tried to shoot us, I reminded them.

Shades of Menschkin, said Artem, shaking his head. But listen. I spoke to them. Trotsky, Dybenko, Antonov-O. I didn’t leave them in any doubt as to what happened.

And what will they do? asked Suvarov.

They’re very tired, said Artem.

And...?

They think it’s bad to admit Bolsheviks were fighting with each other. So they’ll make Slatkin a Hero of the Winter Palace. He can’t say anything or do anything to us then. He’ll want that on his grave.

I never told Artem how deeply disappointed I was.

But he looked at me and I knew he understood my feelings. Paddy, he said, we can have a revolution. But it will take time to overthrow the squalor of the human soul.

Already soldiers were rushing up the stairs to No. 36 with further weighty news. Telegrams that said yet one more time that Kerensky and Kornilov were sending soldiers against Petrograd. Artem left us and went downstairs to the great hall to call on all soldiers in Russia to refuse to board troop trains and to call on the railway men – Bolshevik and Menshevik – to refuse to drive them.

I went downstairs and out under the archways where the bonfires blazed scarlet against grey. It wasn’t a great day for the beginning of history – if that’s what today was. A cloudy morning was just starting. Trams went rolling past the Smolny because no one had told them not to. I wondered if we had dreamed it all up – taking the palace. And the chocolate soldiers called Junkers. And even Slatkin shooting that girl. It seemed possible at that fantastic hour that it was all the vapours or hallucination. Because there was an emptiness out there. In the air and the sky.

The girl lay under the blanket. Or had they moved her away? Had they been tender? I wanted to go back and see to it but I also felt a sudden need to write a letter to Trofimova if I could and make contact with her honesty. I could not forget my second of sympathy with Slatkin when I first saw him on the woman who was then murdered. I needed to be civilised by Trofimova.

A brief letter full of the most simple and butchered words I could put together – Dykes’s first Russian note – was written. Hunger got to me in the end and I went downstairs for some acorn coffee and bread. There sat Rybakov – wide-eyed with exhaustion – drinking tea from a tuna can. He smiled and I felt consoled. I was the sort of man who would have laughed before now at the idea I needed consolation.

It’s all done, I believe, he said.

It’s all done.

The People’s Train was rolling along in that steamy room and in the streets beyond. But for the first time I knew not just in my mind but in my blood that some travellers were the best of men and women.

While others ... Artem had said it. Bastardry doesn’t die in a night.