But was it the life she wanted? Things looked different stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere with only your own thoughts for company. The job, the office, the missionary zeal—they started to feel like a life to be chosen rather than taken for granted. Take that thought further, and other jobs, other offices, became possible. Russia had stolen her heart, but it wasn’t where her family was, and it wasn’t the only place she could make herself useful. She didn’t think she could ever abandon Kollontai and the Zhenotdel, but the way things were going she might not get the choice. Politics and loneliness were already fraying the edges of the life she had lived these last few years; sometimes she felt like a pond pierced by a stone, rippling away from her center.
Eventually she slept, and darkness had fallen when she woke up feeling cold and very alone. She needed to talk to someone—anyone. It had been almost three days since she had shared a normal conversation.
She washed her face and brushed her hair, practiced a smile in the mirror. There, she could still do it.
There were three men in the saloon—Jack and Komarov playing chess and a young Red Army officer whom she hadn’t met. When the latter stood and offered the seat beside him, she thankfully accepted—sitting with her back to the other two felt like an ideal arrangement.
The officer introduced himself as Semyon Krasilnikov and told her he was on his way to take up a post in Orenburg. Rather than attempt to explain her own presence on the train, Caitlin simply said that she was a Zhenotdel official with business in Turkestan—mentioning she worked for the women’s department deterred most men from probing further.
Krasilnikov proved an exception. Once they’d exchanged the usual traveler pleasantries—the excessive heat and all-too-frequent delays, the dreadful food and unyielding beds—he actually asked her to tell him more about her work. “How did the Zhenotdel come into being?” he wanted to know.
“That’s a long story,” she protested.
“We don’t seem short of time,” he said reasonably.
He even looked interested as she skimmed through the history of Russian feminism and the Zhenotdel’s eventual establishment. And he asked intelligent questions. Wasn’t there a danger of prioritizing gender over class? Were there enough men in the party who really supported the Zhenotdel’s aims, and were most of them offering little more than lip service when a conflict of interests arose?
It was impossible to generalize, she told him, knowing she’d done so herself on more than one occasion. Some conflicts of interest were more acute than others; some made comrades more open to compromise.
Krasilnikov thought that the Zhenotdel would have its work cut out in Turkestan.
Yes, she told him, but the rewards had already been spectacular. As she recounted the story of Rahima’s impromptu journey to Moscow, Caitlin suddenly realized how animated she had become—days of self-doubt were making her overcompensate.
Sitting a few feet away, McColl was having trouble keeping his mind on the game. He had actually started this one quite well, forcing Komarov onto the defensive for once, but since Caitlin’s arrival McColl’s hard-won advantage had slowly slipped away. He suspected that Komarov had noticed but hoped that the Cheka boss had put his failing concentration down to nothing more suspicious than an attractive woman’s presence.
The Caitlin he’d talked to on the platform—he might have been able to shut that voice out. But this Caitlin, this woman with so much passion, was the one he’d fallen in love with, and a game of chess just couldn’t compete.
“Checkmate, I think,” Komarov murmured just as she got up to leave the car. Her face was flushed, McColl noticed, as she nodded farewell to him and Komarov. Flushed and full of life.
As she disappeared through one gangway door, the exile-bound Menshevik came in through the other, carrying an unopened bottle of vodka. Seeing that their game had ended, he invited them and the young officer to share its contents. Receiving their agreement, he asked the attendant for glasses and sat back to examine them all with an expression half-owl and half-bear.
The vodka was rough but strong, and McColl took care not to drink too fast or too much. The conversation, which from the outset was mostly between Arbatov and Komarov, soon became a dialogue pure and simple, with McColl and Krasilnikov no more than spectators.
“From whom do you get your mandate?” Arbatov challenged Komarov.
“From history,” he retorted drily.
Arbatov grinned. “Once perhaps, but what if history changes its mind? Would you give up your power then? But then how would you know that history had forsaken you when you no longer listen to what it’s telling you?”
Komarov smiled at the table. “No party, no individual, can keep itself in power against the will of history.”
“Not forever, no. But for an hour, a year, a decade? What if you can hold power for that long? The peasants are against you now; the bourgeoisie always has been. And after Kronstadt it seems that most workers have lost their faith in you. My presence here on this train proves that at least half of Russia’s socialists have turned against you. A handful of incorruptibles in charge of a million careerists—it doesn’t sound like a recipe for socialism, does it? It sounds like a way of holding on to power.”
A succinct analysis, McColl thought. He wondered how Komarov would counter it.
“We do not hold this power for our own gratification,” the Cheka boss said, sounding defensive.
“Not yet. Oh, I know that you are sincere, Yuri Vladimirovich, but sincerity is an overvalued attribute. I’m sure the Spanish Inquisition was staffed by sincere men. And gratification comes in many forms. Power for its own sake, for one.”
“Which corrupts those who hold it? Of course it does. But impotence corrupts just as surely as power, Ivan Ivanovich.” Komarov smiled again. “And absolute impotence—perhaps that corrupts absolutely. Those who had nothing—no wealth, no power, no education, no hope—they must learn how to use the power we now hold in their name. You don’t learn kindness and cooperation from capitalism, and if we want a kinder, more cooperative world, these things must be taught. By the party. Who else is there?”
Arbatov looked incredulous. “Do you really believe that a handful of incorruptibles can hold such power in trust? You can’t even stem the tide you have already unleashed.”
“We can only try,” Komarov said, and McColl could feel the quiet desperation behind those four simple words.
“And where will our Russia be when you fail?”
“Where it is now?” Komarov rejoined. “Where we are is where we are. We can’t turn the clock back four years and start again from scratch.”
Returning to her compartment after the conversation with the young officer, Caitlin sat staring out at the moonlit hills. He had reminded her of someone, and it took her several moments to realize it was Sergei. The old Sergei, the one she had met and shared so much with in their fleeting times together.
It was good for her to remember that Sergei, she thought. Especially now, as part of the pack chasing the one he’d become.
For all the holding back she’d done, her affection for him had been real. If there hadn’t been the passion she’d felt for Jack, there had been liking, and there had been desire. The sex had always been good with the old Sergei. There had been an innocence about him that was truly touching; he had taken such joy in giving pleasure to her that she could hardly feel otherwise.
What had become of that man? He was in there somewhere, trapped in his desperate successor, occasionally breaking out to leave Pushkin verses on pillows. She missed that man. That friend.
The train left Ruzayevka Junction late the following afternoon and, for the rest of the day and night, meandered at not much better than walking pace through wooded hill country. Troops were frequently in evidence, milling at the small stations, camped in farmyards and fields, but only one burning building, glimpsed at t
he distant end of a valley, suggested that the Antonov rebellion was still alive.
In midmorning their train reached Batraki, where an armored cousin simmered on the adjacent track. With the latter leading, they left in tandem, emerging from the uplands to drum their way across the iron bridge which spanned the mile-wide Volga. With the hills receding on the western horizon, a straight run across flat farming country brought them back alongside the river in the outskirts of Samara. The sky was rapidly darkening, and as the train pulled into the city station, rain began falling in sheets.
Komarov and Maslov went in search of the Transport Cheka office, fighting their way through would-be passengers huddled in the shelter of the platform canopy. A report on Brady was waiting for them.
Komarov half-sat on the edge of the table to read it through. “Information gathered from Vecheka files and American comrade Michael Kelly, now teaching at Petrograd State University,” the cable began. “Aidan Brady, age around forty. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Union activist (American Industrial Workers of the World union) in years before war, served short prison terms in Oregon, Illinois, and New Jersey for related activities. Also active in Irish republican politics, in both USA and Ireland. Broke with IWW in early 1918 over leadership’s refusal to sanction armed resistance. Arrived in Russia soon after. Served with Red Army on Volga front that summer and later transferred to Samara Cheka. In Ukraine 1919–20, position and duties unknown due to loss of records. Left Russia toward the end of 1920, with the stated intent of fighting for the republicans in Ireland’s War of Independence. Return to Russia unrecorded but probably in May of this year. Entered politics as a socialist and has subsequently shifted his position further to the left, with links to anarchist and utopian communist groups. During civil war proved intelligent, courageous, and popular with fellow soldiers. Carries an American revolver, which he usually wears tucked into the back of his belt. Family circumstances unknown. No record of marriage in Russia.”
Komarov sighed and passed the cable to Maslov. Lots of facts, but nothing that really helped. The Brady described sounded decidedly forthright, but Komarov’s own abiding impression, gathered at their only previous meeting three years before, had been of a man held well inside himself, forever calculating, with more than a hint of slyness. He might have misread Brady, but Komarov doubted it. The biography in the cable sounded more like agitprop than real life.
When you boiled it down, a solitary truth remained—the man was a classic renegade.
Komarov turned to the local Chekist who was hovering anxiously by his side. “When did the last train leave for Tashkent, and when will it arrive?” Komarov asked.
The man scurried off to find out, returning five minutes later. “It left six days ago and should arrive sometime in the next three.”
Komarov thought for a moment. “Chances are they know someone there,” he muttered.
“Other anarchists?” Maslov suggested.
“You may be right, Pavel Tarasovich,” Komarov said as thunder rolled in the distance. He turned to the local man. “I want to send a message to the Tashkent Cheka.”
Returning to the train some twenty minutes later, Komarov noticed that the man he still thought of as Davydov was farther up the platform, chatting with the locomotive crew. During the first few days of their journey, Komarov had not seen anything in the man’s or Piatakova’s behavior to suggest a previous relationship, but if they had known each other for years, they would both be doing their best to disguise that fact. They certainly seemed to be enjoying each other’s company, but that was hardly suspicious in itself. He himself had thrown them together, and traveling in the Cheka section of the train didn’t invite interaction with other passengers.
It was barely morning when McColl climbed from his bed, the dim dawn light filtering through the shutters on the window. He rolled them aside and leaned his head out. They were still ascending the Samara valley, the line twisting to follow the river, the locomotives straining at the incline. The hills that rose to the south were wrapped in amber light.
He went out into the corridor to watch the eastern sky lighten, the crest of the hills slowly sharpening as the sun rose up behind them. And as the light grew, he became aware of movement and color by the side of the tracks. People. Some walking, some lying prone. And the latter were clearly not sleeping—they’d succumbed to exhaustion, hunger, or both.
The fact that some parts of Russia were suffering serious food shortages had been mentioned in the Moscow press, but the extent of the shortages had been left rather vague. Well, here they were, McColl thought, and it looked very much like a famine.
The sun climbed over the hilltops, flooding the valley with yellow light, laying bare the horror. Corpses were strewn on both sides of the line, young and old, male and female, each with its cloud of hungry flies. Those people still moving, stumbling northward, showed little interest in the train that was rumbling past them or the bodies that littered their passage. Each emaciated face seemed set in the same mold of utter resignation.
In the sky above, black shapes hovered, flapping their wings in anticipation.
McColl stood at the window, arms outstretched, unable to turn his eyes away. He asked himself why they weren’t stopping to help, but already knew the answer: the food they had on board would feed only a few for less than a day, and hold up the train without making any real difference.
How had famine blighted a land rich as this one? Was this a consequence of the revolution, of turning everything upside down, of the bitter war between party and peasants? But then what did that matter to these figures below, trudging northward in sheer desperation?
He suddenly became aware that the young officer Krasilnikov was standing at another window only a few feet away, absorbed by the same sights as he was. And that the officer was silently weeping, tears coursing down either cheek.
On the other side of the train, Komarov watched as the mural of pain unrolled. He had known there was a famine in the Volga region, and here it was. An emotional response would be self-indulgent and of no help to anyone but himself. The NEP would right the situation in the months to come; these poor people were simply paying one retrospective price of the civil war. The leadership in Moscow was already doing all that could be done.
The prospect of eating made him feel sick, which was all the more reason to set an example. He finished dressing and headed for the dining car, two trembling hands concealed in his pockets.
All day the train chugged up the valley; all day the hungry and starving trailed past, the number of those in motion steadily dropping in favor of those who were not. Small stations were gatherings of despair, their villages eerily empty save for the carrion birds expectantly strutting the streets.
Late that afternoon the train rattled into a station high in the hills—Sorochinsk was the name on the board. With her cabin door open, Caitlin could see that hundreds of people were camped on both sides of the tracks. Most were sitting or lying and probably lacked the energy needed to stand. In the eyes now surveying the train, she saw a range of emotions that stretched from pure indifference to manic hope.
Even before the train juddered to a final halt, soldiers from the troop car were jumping down to line up beside it, their rifles pointing outward, their faces locked in nervous immobility. As if in response, some members of the crowd rose slowly to their feet, some swaying with the effort of staying upright. A few began shuffling toward the train, and then stopped as they realized that most of their fellows were not.
“Where have they all come from?” Caitlin heard herself ask out loud. Neither Jack nor Krasilnikov, standing at the windows on either side of hers, offered a reply. And why should they? she thought. What was there to say?
They’d spent a whole day traveling through these people’s graveyard, and she couldn’t remember ever feeling more helpless. At first it had brought back the weeks of waiting for her brot
her’s execution in the Tower of London, but as the hours had passed, the sheer scale of what they were witnessing had defied comparison.
The train had not stopped to offer help, only to take on the water needed to carry it free of this nightmare. Caitlin’s coach was standing halfway between the station house and the water tower, where bodies had been stacked inside the girder supports. She could smell the putrefaction from her window and was not surprised to see the fireman holding his nose with one hand as he unclipped the hose with the other.
A small child, perhaps six or seven years old, was sitting, staring dully into space, not twenty feet away against a low wall. As Caitlin stared at her, the girl looked up, caught her eye, and smiled shyly, as if she had just been asked for a dance.
The incongruity tied a knot in Caitlin’s stomach.
The crowd had begun inching forward, as if barely perceptible advances would deny the soldiers an excuse to open fire. But the gap was obviously closing, and the fireman was still disconnecting his hose when someone fired the first shot.
The crowd let out its anger in one enormous roar and launched a hail of stones at the troops and the train they were guarding. Yells of pain mingled with the sound of shattering glass, but the clod of earth that struck Caitlin’s window merely bounced off, leaving only a starburst of yellow fragments.
The locomotive whistle screeched, as if to sound a retreat. The crowd was advancing in earnest now, the soldiers leaping back aboard, expecting the train to move. It didn’t. Caitlin could hear someone on the roof shouting at the crowd, promising a relief train. The crowd believed it no more than she did, and the man was cut off in midsentence, presumably by a well-directed stone. As people began hammering on the side of the train, a machine gun opened up farther down the platform.
The whistle screeched again, but still the train refused to move. Looking to the right, Caitlin could see people swarming around the engines, and guessed that others were blocking the tracks. If that was the case, then the driver had had enough. For several seconds the train gave a good impression of straining at the bit, before suddenly bursting into motion, viciously spurting steam, and leaving agonized screams in its wake. Their carriage seemed almost to stumble as the wheels encountered something solid, which Caitlin could only hope was a brick or a stone.
The Dark Clouds Shining Page 18