The Story of a Life

73

The Hall with a Fountain

The government moved from Petrograd to Moscow. Soon afterwards, my editor at the People’s Power sent me to the Lefortovo Barracks, where Lenin was to speak to a group of demobilised soldiers.

It was a raw evening. The air in the enormous barrack hall was thick with smoke from harsh makhorka tobacco. An icy rain lashed at the grimy windows. There was a sour smell of wet greatcoats and carbolic acid. The soldiers, in dirty puttees and sodden boots, their rifles beside them, sat on the muddy floor. Most of them were men back from the front, stranded in Moscow since the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Thoroughly disgruntled, they didn’t believe anyone or anything. They made noisy demands, one day clamouring to be sent back to their home villages, the next flatly refusing to leave Moscow amid loud protests that they were being tricked and the trains were not going to take them home but back to the front. Deserters and suspicious characters were riling them up. As everyone knows, if you bait and confuse the simple Russian long enough he will suddenly fly into a rage and rebel. In the end, the people who suffer the most in these army revolts are the ordnance men and cooks. A persistent rumour was going around Moscow then that the soldiers at the Lefortovo Barracks were at the point of revolt.

I pushed my way with difficulty into the hall and stood at the back. The soldiers gave me, a stranger in civilian clothes, a sullen, threatening stare. I asked them to let me through so I could move closer to the cheap plywood platform up front, but no one would budge an inch. It would have been dangerous to insist. Here and there, soldiers clicked their rifle bolts, as if they were playing around. One of the men yawned loudly. ‘To hell with this already!’ he said, scratching the back of his head under his sheepskin hat. ‘More of the same mumbo-jumbo. I’m fed up with their excuses and stalling.’

‘What d’you want? We’ve got tobacco and they’re dishing out some grub. Oughta be enough for us.’

‘Moscow’s all right,’ a scrawny, bearded soldier laughed. ‘Take the girls out, get a dose of clap, and you’ve got yourself a souvenir of the old capital for life. Better than a St George’s medal!’

‘Get a move on!’ soldiers shouted from the back, pounding the floor with their rifle butts. ‘Let’s hear it! Now you’ve got us all here, stop wastin’ our time!’

‘He’s just about to start.’

‘Who?’

‘Looks like Lenin.’

‘Lenin? Yeah, right. He’s just dying to get a look at your ugly mug.’

‘He’s got no one else to talk to but you and your toothless gob.’

‘Ah, for Christ’s sake, he …’

‘We know what he’ll say.’

‘More of the same old rubbish.’

‘I’ve already had a bellyful of their slogans. Enough!’

‘Listen, brothers, we’re not lettin’ anyone send us anywhere!’

‘That’s right. We’ll decide who gets sent and where!’

Suddenly, a noise went through the hall, and the men began to move and rose to their feet, sending rippling waves through the cloud of tobacco smoke. Blinded by the smoke and the dim light, I became aware of someone saying in an unusually calm, high voice: ‘Let me through, comrades, let me through.’ The man rolled his r’s as he spoke. The men in the back crowded forward to get a better view. They were met with pointed rifles. The soldiers began shouting and cursing at each other. It seemed gunfire might erupt at any moment.

‘Comrades!’ said Lenin.

The noise was cut, as if by a knife. The only sound was the wheezing breath of the agitated crowd. Lenin began to speak. I had trouble hearing him. I was being crushed by the throng of soldiers. I could feel a rifle butt digging into my ribs. Some man behind me had laid a meaty hand on my shoulder and squeezed it from time to time. His grip was so strong it hurt. The cigarettes stuck to the soldiers’ lips burned down. The men had forgotten all about them and had stopped puffing. Blue wisps of smoke swirled upwards towards the ceiling.

Through the sound of the rain I began to make out the quiet, simple words. Lenin wasn’t urging the men on. He was merely giving these inarticulate and embittered men answers to the questions they were themselves only dimly aware of, answers that they had heard before, but not in the right words. He spoke in an unhurried voice about Brest-Litovsk, about the treachery of the Left SRs,fn1 about the union of the workers and the peasants and about bread. He said rowdy meetings and raising hell in Moscow was not the answer, nor was waiting for someone to solve their problems. Rather, they should go back home to work the land and trust the government and the party to do the right thing. I could hear little of what Lenin was saying, but I had a good idea from the shift in the men’s breathing, from the way they pushed their hats back on their heads, their gaping mouths and the sudden, unexpected sighs of agreement.

The heavy hand on my shoulder had relaxed. Its weight now suggested the touch of a friend. Once he was back in his village this soldier would pat the cropped heads of his children with this hand, as he sighed with relief thinking that the land was at last theirs. He would be telling himself that all he needed to do now was plough and sow and raise these little rascals to do the same after him. I wanted to see what he looked like. I turned. He was a pale, young recruit with a broad, smooth face covered in fair stubble.

‘The chairman!’

‘What chairman?’ I asked, not understanding.

‘It’s him, the chairman of the people’s commissars. Promising us land and peace. Didn’t you hear?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Well, there you have it! My hands are itching for that land. And I’ve been gone too long from the family.’

‘Pipe down!’ hissed our neighbour, a scrawny little soldier whose forage cap kept sliding down over his eyes.

‘Hold your tongue!’ the recruit growled back and began to hurriedly unbutton his faded tunic. ‘Wait, hold on, I want to show you …’ he muttered. He fumbled around under his collar for a bit and then pulled out a sweat-stained canvas bag hanging on a string around his neck. It held a photograph, folded in half, that he blew the dust off and then handed to me. The only light was an electric bulb protected by a wire mesh high up on the ceiling. I couldn’t make out a thing on the photograph. The recruit lit a match and cupped it in his hands. He held it there until it burned down to his fingers and went out.

I looked at the photograph only because I did not want to insult him. I was certain that it was the typical family photograph that I had seen so many times before in peasant huts next to the icons. The mother was always seated in front – a dry, wrinkly old woman with knotty fingers. No matter what she was like in real life – kind and patient or shrill and bossy – she was always photographed with the same stony face and tight lips. In that instant when the camera shutter clicked, she was memorialised as the strict matriarch of the family, the embodiment of the severe progenitor of the clan, while gathered around her, some standing, some seated, were her wooden, bulging-eyed children and grandchildren.

You had to look hard and long at these photographs until you recognised in the stiff figures your well-known friends: the matriarch’s quiet, consumptive son-in-law, a village cobbler; his wife, a big-bosomed, shrewish woman in a frilly blouse and strap boots that showed her bare calves; a youth with a forelock and the same terrifying vacant eyes you encounter in street thugs; and then that other one, grinning and black-haired, whom you recognised as the finest blacksmith in the county. And the grandchildren – frightened little creatures who stared out at you like young martyrs. These were children who had known neither kindness nor affection. Perhaps their uncle, the cobbler, had secretly shown pity and given them his old boot lasts as toys. If so, then he had been the only one.

But the photograph the recruit showed me was nothing like these family waxworks. It showed an open carriage with a fine black pair. The recruit, young and handsome in a velvet waistcoat, sat on the box. In his strikingly long arms he held the heavy reins, while in the carriage, turned to face the camera, sat a young and incredibly lovely young peasant woman.

‘Light another match,’ I said to the recruit.

He hurriedly struck another one, and I noticed that he was looking at the photograph with the same attentive surprise as me. The young woman in the carriage was dressed in a long calico dress with a frilly collar and a white kerchief pulled down low over her forehead like a nun’s coif. She was smiling, her lips faintly parted. There was so much tenderness in her smile I felt my heart skip. She had large, sensitive eyes, which appeared to be grey in the photograph.

‘I worked as a coachman for the landowner Velyaminov for two years,’ he whispered. ‘We had our photograph taken in his coach, in secret. That’s my bride. Right before our wedding.’

He fell silent.

‘Well, what’s wrong? Aren’t you gonna say something?’ he said all of a sudden in a rough, challenging voice. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve seen many beauties like her before.’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Never, not once.’

‘My little Ryabina,’ said the soldier, calmer now. ‘She died right before the war. In childbirth. But we did have a daughter, and she’s just like her mother. Come and visit, my friend, you’re always welcome. I’m from Orël province …’

Just then the crowd surged forward, and we were separated. Sheepskin hats and caps flew into the air. Wild cheering erupted near the platform and swept back through the hall before echoing out into the street. I caught sight of Lenin, surrounded by soldiers, walking briskly towards the doors. He was laughing, one hand pressed over his ear to keep from going deaf, and saying something to the scrawny soldier whose forage cap kept falling down over his eyes. I looked around for the young recruit in the milling crowd, but unable to find him I walked out. Cries of ‘Hurrah!’ still rang out in the side street. Apparently, the soldiers were cheering Lenin as he was being driven away.

I walked home through the long dark streets. The rain had stopped, and a wet moon shone among the clouds. I thought about Lenin and the huge mass movement being led by this surprisingly simple man whom I had just seen making his way through a churning crowd of soldiers. I thought of the recruit and of the young peasant woman, and I felt almost as though I had fallen in love with her across the years, just as I loved Russia, and there was something that united all three – Lenin, the movement, this couple – in my mind, and together they captured my spirit and filled me with happiness. I could not quite understand what it was about this recruit, his dead wife and our shared connection to Russia that had made me feel this way. Perhaps it was just the excitement of those unprecedented days we were living through and the sense of a better future. I don’t know.

The façade of the Hotel Metropole, just below the roof, was decorated with a mosaic reproduction of Vrubel’s The Princess of the Dream. The mosaic had been badly damaged by gunfire.

It was in the Metropole that the Central Executive Committee (TsIK), the parliament of the time, met. The TsIK held its sessions in what had formerly been the restaurant. A cement fountain devoid of water stood in the middle. To the left of the fountain and in the centre (as viewed from the dais) sat the Bolsheviks and Left SRs, and to the right the Mensheviks, SRs and Internationalists, small in numbers but quite vociferous. I often attended the sessions. I loved to arrive quite early, before they had started, take a seat in a recess not far from the dais, and read. I enjoyed the hall’s dim light, its echoing emptiness, the two or three bulbs glowing in the crystal wall sconces deep in the corners and even that hotel smell of dusty carpets that no amount of airing could dispel. But most of all I enjoyed waiting for that hour when the merciless debates and brilliant speeches began and the empty hall would be transformed into an arena of stormy historical events.

Rozovsky and Shchelkunov were among the journalists regularly attending the sessions. Rozovsky had a knack for predicting the exact amount of heat an upcoming debate would generate. ‘Hold tight!’ he would warn us. ‘There’s going to be fireworks today.’ At other times he would say with a bored yawn: ‘They’ve got tea at the buffet, let’s go. They’re just going to be splitting legislative hairs for a while.’

For some reason Shchelkunov was afraid of Sverdlov, chairman of the TsIK.fn2 He was particularly disturbed by Sverdlov’s intense, piercing gaze, and if he happened to direct it at us journalists, Shchelkunov immediately looked away or ducked behind his neighbour’s back. A short, pale man in a shabby leather jacket, Sverdlov conveyed an impression of iron will with every word and gesture. His deep bass, which belied his sickly appearance, could subdue even his most resolute and fearless opponents, such as the Mensheviks Martov and Dan.fn3

Martov sat closest to the journalists, and we managed to examine him thoroughly. Tall, thin and fierce, a torn scarf wound around his sinewy neck, he was always jumping up, interrupting the speaker and shouting out impatient words in a hoarse, staccato voice. The instigator of every storm, he could not be silenced except by being stripped of his right to speak or suspended for a few sessions. He was rarely in a peaceful mood. On those occasions, he would join us journalists, borrow a book from somebody and lose himself in it, oblivious to time, space and whatever was going on around him in this hall with a fountain.

One day he borrowed A History of Islam from Rozovsky. Engrossed in the book, he sank deeper and deeper into his chair, his long spindly legs stretched out in front of him. A decree on sending workers’ brigades out into the countryside to requisition grain was being discussed. Martov and Dan showed no signs of derailing the debate, and so slowly everyone relaxed. Newspapers rustled, pencils scratched. Sverdlov removed his hand from the bell and, smiling, listened to his neighbour’s remarks. That more than anything else set everyone at ease, for Sverdlov almost never smiled. The list of speakers was nearing the end when Martov stirred and asked for the floor in an apathetic voice. The audience tensed and began muttering in anticipation.

Martov, shuffling slowly from side to side, made his way up onto the dais, cast a pair of vacant eyes over the hall and began to speak, softly, almost reluctantly, noting that the decree on the dispatch of workers’ requisitioning brigades needed, if you please, greater precision, both legalistically and stylistically. For example, clause such-and-such in the decree must be expressed more clearly, cutting a number of unnecessary words, such as ‘in the interest of’, which would read better as simply ‘for’, while clause such-and-such contained a clear repetition of something already said in a previous section of the decree.

Martov dug around in his notes for a long time but couldn’t find what he was looking for and shrugged his shoulders in annoyance. The audience convinced itself that there would be no outburst. Newspapers began rustling once more. Rozovsky, who had predicted an explosion, couldn’t believe it. ‘He’s simply evaporated, like so much liquid ammonia,’ he whispered to me. ‘Let’s go to the buffet.’

Suddenly, everyone sat up. At first I didn’t understand what had happened. Martov’s voice was thundering from the dais, practically shaking the walls. It seethed with rage. He had torn his dull, dry notes to pieces and flung them in the air, and they were now falling softly like snowflakes and settling on the chairs in the front row. Martov was shaking his clenched fists and shouting so hard he was practically choking.

‘This is treason! You came up with this decree just so you could clear Moscow and Petrograd of every last discontented worker – the finest flowers of the proletariat! Your aim is nothing less than to use this decree to squash the healthy protest of the working class!’

There was a moment’s silence, and then everyone leapt out of their seats. A storm of cries filled the hall. Some of them rose above the din: ‘Sit down!’ ‘Traitor!’ ‘Bravo, Martov!’ ‘How dare he!’ ‘The truth hurts!’ Sverdlov rang his bell furiously, calling Martov to order, but he kept on shouting, more vehemently than before. He had lulled the hall to sleep with his feigned indifference and was now revelling in their dismay. Sverdlov ordered Martov to stop, but he kept on going. Sverdlov suspended Martov for three sessions, but he ignored him and kept on making accusations, each one more wicked than the last. Finally, Sverdlov summoned the guard. Only then did Martov descend from the dais and slowly, deliberately exit the hall to the accompaniment of a raucous chorus of whistling, stamping, clapping and shouting.

Practically every session of the TsIK caused the walls at the Metropole to shake. Fights were often picked by the Mensheviks and SRs for the silliest of reasons – a speaker’s ill-chosen word or his manner of speech. Sometimes instead of indignant shouts, they greeted a speaker with sardonic laughter or, at a speaker’s first words, all stood up at once and walked out together, conversing in loud voices as they left. Their behaviour reflected a mixture of impotence and childish bravado. They turned protest into playground tussles.

The whole life of the country had been shaken to its thousand-year-old roots. These were threatening times, full of vague forebodings, expectations, ruthless passions and contradictions. This made it all the more difficult to understand such behaviour, this loud and pointless nonsense. Apparently, their party doctrines were more important to them than the fate of the country or the happiness of the ordinary people. There was something artificial and speculative in these doctrines that had been formulated in smoky cafés and meeting rooms far from Russia and its day-to-day life. Their intent on forcing the future to fit their abstract émigré theories proved both their contempt for people’s actual lives and their ignorance of Russian reality.

One session of the TsIK stood out for its deep solemnity. That was just days after the murder of Count Mirbach, the German ambassador. The German government issued an ultimatum demanding that German military units be allowed into the country for the ostensible purpose of protecting their embassy on Denezhny Lane and that the entire area be ceded to German authority. A more brazen and cynical ultimatum would be difficult to imagine. A special session of the TsIK was called immediately after the receipt of the ultimatum.

I remember well that muggy summer day declining towards sunset. The whole city was bathed in the pale gleams of the sun reflected in its windows and the yellowish shadows of the late afternoon. I entered the hall with the fountain and was struck by the silence despite the large gathering. I didn’t even notice a faint murmur of whispers. The pendulum of the wall clock ticked its regular beat. But for me and, I think, for everyone else, time had stopped and only this soft, dying sound remained. Sverdlov came in, rang the bell and in an emotionless voice said that the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, would be making a statement. A shudder swept through the audience. Everyone knew that Lenin was ill and his doctors had forbidden him from speaking in public.

Lenin walked quickly up to the dais. He looked pale and thin. A stark white gauze bandage around his neck stood out against the colour of his skin. He gripped the edge of the rostrum firmly and held the room in his stare for quite some time. We could hear his laboured breathing. Softly and slowly, one hand now pressed against his throat, Lenin said that the Council of People’s Commissars had categorically rejected the impudent ultimatum of the German government and decided to mobilise immediately all the armed forces of the Russian Federation. In utter silence, arms were raised and then lowered in favour of the government’s actions.

Shaken by what we had heard, we walked out of the Metropole onto Teatralnaya Square. Dusk had fallen over Moscow by now, and a Red Army unit, bristling with bayonets at the ready, went marching past the hotel.