The Romanov Bride

Chapter 38 PAVEL

We pulled the tsar by his prick from the throne, and it was a big surprise what happened after that: the Germans sent Lenin back to Russia. It was true. They put him in a sealed train, they gave him hundreds of thousands of rubles to make a revolution, and they snuck him through Finland and back into the country. Which meant Lenin was the only real traitor, financed by none other than our enemies who wanted only one thing: to get Russia out of the war.

All this I found out at a secret meeting that fall in Moscow. The Comrade Trotsky told me everything, that all the rumors were true. He also told me that if I talked about it at all, if I spread word of it, they would shoot me like a dog, a bullet in the back of my head. Without saying anything, I thought how funny this was-everyone had gone after the ex-empress because they said she was working for the Germans, but in fact it was our man, Lenin, who worked for them. I understood all this but it didn’t bother me. I didn’t care how Lenin had come back from his hiding in Switzerland.

“All I care about, Comrade,” I told Trotsky right to his face, “is three things: Land to the peasants! Factories to the workers! Peace to the soldiers!”

“Exactly! Kerensky and his Provisional Government are keeping us in the war, but we have more important things-we haven’t finished the revolution of the proletariat!”

No, we hadn’t. There was lots more to do. Many, like Trotsky, were even calling for complete equality for the Zhidki, which was just what Trotsky was, one of them, a Jew man. Such interesting times.

Those months were chaos, the capitalists demanding one thing, the socialists another, and then that summer Lenin even had to flee again because suddenly Kerensky sent his men to arrest him. But our hero got away, he slipped right out of town. No one knew quite where he went-had he run all the way back to Switzerland?-but later they said that he’d scurried toward the Finnish border, where he dived into a haystack. They said he stayed hidden there almost all the way until the real Revolution but I think maybe he lived somewhere else, in a hidden dacha or something.

Da, da, da, and finally that fall a great miracle happened: The Great October Revolution!

The second Revolution was so different from the first, the February Revolution. The second, the October Revolution, was much wilder. In Moscow there was shooting from the roofs and battles on the street, us Bolsheviks trying to kill as many Kadets as we could. From everywhere you could hear the rat-tat-tat of machine guns, and there was one big, long battle near the Arbat where there was a military academy and where so many of the wealthy bastards lived. Villa after villa was burned, and there were bodies lying everywhere. For the first time tank trucks rumbled the streets, too.

It was during this time and on one great day that they gave me a big, important task. More than anything the Revolution needed two things: weapons and money. That was why on one particular morning they sent a group of Red Guards marching on the Kremlin. At the same time they sent me and four comrades to one of the big banks that did, they said, all sorts of business with the warmongers and foreign capitalists. My instructions were very clear: Grab nagrablenoye!

Not too very long after it opened we went into this bank. Actually I went first, dressed all special in a black leather coat that they gave me and instructed me to wear. They didn’t want me to look like the peasant that I was, they didn’t want me to look suspicious. So they made me look pretty good, and in I went through the big brass doors and into the main hall that was all covered with dark wood. Only one of the clerks, a pale man with a small, neat beard, looked up at me with any interest. It was just before ten, which meant the bank was still pretty empty, just workers and only one customer, a short old man with a cane. Not thirty seconds later, my other four comrades came in, two of the men posting themselves at the big front door, one at a side door, and another, Sasha, coming up by my side, all according to plan.

I whipped out a revolver, held it high, and fired two shots right into the ceiling. There were screams and some chunks of plaster came down on my head.

As loudly as I could, I shouted, “All of you on the floor! In the name of the Proletariat and the Revolution, we are seizing this bank! Get down on the floor! All the money in your vaults now belongs to the people! Death to the exploiters! Glory to the Revolution!”

I had thought the bankers and all the clerks in their white shirts would do nothing and give up like schoolgirls. But they were rather tough. A man with glasses, who turned out to be the director general, came out of an office, a small pistol in hand. Without hesitating, he aimed at Sasha, my comrade, who was standing right next to me, and shot him in the left shoulder. Sasha, a big guy, groaned in pain but just as quickly let out one shot and then another, killing Mr. Director General, who toppled over, landing with a juicy thud. That was all it took, actually. I turned this way and that, saw all the clerks now practically throwing themselves on the floor and covering their heads with their hands.

And then it was quiet, but only for a second. That poor Sasha. I heard another groan, turned, and saw blood bubble and flow from his lips. He looked down, as did I, and it was then that I saw a long, razor-thin sword poking out of his stomach. Gospodi, he’d been stabbed from behind! Sasha glanced up at me, tried to say something, choked on his own blood, swayed, and fell over. Behind him stood that old man-a sword had been hidden in his cane! And he had stabbed Sasha in the back, running the sword right through my comrade!

Purple with anger, the old man said to me, “You fucking Reds can go to the devil!”

Knowing full well what would happen next, the old shit quickly crossed himself, and I waited, I let him finish. Once he’d made his sign to a god I was sure didn’t exist, I did the deed. I fired a bullet right between his eyes. When he hit the floor a black velvet bag fell from his hands. I ripped it open, and in it were twenty brillianti, all about the size of my thumbnail, and some fifteen or so big red and green stones, too. I quickly understood that the old man had probably just removed these things from a storage box there in the bank. He was probably taking his jewels and getting ready to run away, to leave the country. Good, I thought. All I had done was stop an enemy from taking his riches out of Russia.

We only had to kill one other person, a woman clerk who tried to sneak out the back door. One of my comrades shot her in the neck and stole her gold rings.

It was about then that we heard and felt a distant explosion that was bigger, well, than anything I’d ever experienced. Ha! I thought with a smile. Ha! Our Red brigand had succeeded, they had blown up the Kremlin gates! They were storming the Arsenal!

Yes, it was a very good day for the Revolution. Me and my comrades seized almost five million Kerensky rubles from the bank, the Red Guard had got piles of weapons and ammunition from the Arsenal, and by nightfall our red flags were flying from the Kremlin towers.

A very good day for the people, indeed: Glory to the October Revolution!