It was an amazing, upsidedown society — there were days when one could suppose one heard the guns, now firing within 50 miles — and Joseph almost wished Alexei could be here to share the experience of being in at what might well turn out to be the end of the Soviet World. Of course the regime appeared determined to fight on and seemed prepared to back their words with deeds. In an amazing feat of physical and mental endurance much of the heavy industrial base on which the army depended for its sustenance had been moved, brick by brick and machine tool by machine tool, across the Urals and into Siberia. But Joseph knew there was a limit to how much people could take, as opposed to governments, which were able to have a larger and longer overall view.
Moscow was Russia’s Holy City, even if such words as holy were officially not part of the Communist vocabulary, and if it fell, as seemed extremely likely, and the Germans as a consequence overran all of European Russia to those Urals — they had already taken Kiev in the south and overrun the Donbas, and the old family home of Bolugayen, in their drive to the Caucasus oilfields, and seemed on the verge of taking Leningrad in the north — again as seemed extremely likely, he did not think the Soviet system as it was understood in the West would survive. It might be able to do so in Asia, but that would be a kind of reincarnation of the old Tatar empires, ruled from places like Karakorum.
“We are now coming into Sverdlovsk,” announced the smooth young man who was acting as guide and interpreter for the medical party. “Here we will disembark.”
“But we haven’t got to the Urals, yet,” Elaine Mitchell complained.
“This is as far as you go,” Sviatoslav — which was all they knew him by — explained. “Most of you.”
“We’re in their hands,” Dr Haggard said. “But say, look at this.” They crowded round him to peer through the window. The snow was clouding down quite thickly, but through the white haze they could make out a huge factory complex. “I didn’t know you guys had factories out here,” Haggard remarked.
Sviatoslav appeared to preen himself. “Three months ago, there was no factory here. That factory was moved, brick by brick, from nearby Moscow to protect it from the Germans.”
“You saying you moved that factory in three months?” George Allcott demanded. “Bullshit!”
“The factory was moved in two months,” Sviatoslav stated, without taking offence. Perhaps he did not understand the swearword, Alex thought, holding on to Elaine as the train came to a halt with much thumping and jolting. If there had been scattered moments on the voyage from San Francisco to Vladivostock, there had been none at all on the train journey from Vladivostock across Siberia, when every compartment had held at least four people too many, even for sleeping. They had had to be content with secret smiles.
“Sverdlovsk,” Sviatoslav told the doctors as they disembarked into the most bitter cold any of them had ever known, a paralysing chill which immediately ate through their heavy coats and even their boots and thermal underwear, “was once known as Ekaterinburg. That means, Catherine’s City. It was named after the Empress Catherine.”
“Do you think we could have a hot bath?” Elaine asked. None of them had bathed throughout the journey from Vladivostock.
“Of course.” He led them out of the station and on to the snow-packed street; their heavy gear was being unloaded for them. People hurried to and fro, but cast them scarcely a glance. Partly, Elaine was sure, this was because of the cold. But it was also partly because, she guessed, there had been so many comings and goings and general upheavals over the past few months that a few more strange faces were not relevant. “It was here in the then Ekaterinberg,” Sviatoslav went on, “that Nicholas Romanov and his family were executed by orders of the Ural Soviet, in July 1918.” He pointed. “That is the house in which they were imprisoned. They were shot in the cellar beneath the house. Would you like to look at it? You can still see the blood.”
“After we’ve had a hot bath,” Elaine told him.
A government minister made them a speech filled with bombastic references to the might and greatness of the Soviet Union, with praise of the immense talents of Josef Stalin, and with dismissive contempt of the Germans and their claims. As the German claims, both as regards losses inflicted on the Russians and territory conquered from the Russians, were in the main accepted as true by the West, the doctors found themselves wondering how much else of what they were being told had to be lies.
Elaine was inclined to put it in the same class as the Romanovs’ blood. Serology was one of the subjects she had specialised in, and she hadn’t needed any samples to deduce that the blood on the bullet-marked wall of the cellar where the murders had been committed was not 23 years old, or even 23 weeks. She might just have accepted 23 days, that is if it was human blood at all!
Now she had some difficulty in keeping awake; they had been given baths, and then fed an enormous meal of mainly vegetables, but they had been so hungry it didn’t matter, while they had all been required to drink at least a jug of vodka. Following which had come the tour of the infamous house, and now this unending lecture. She was in any event in a dreamlike state. Rather like that first night she had visited the Bolugayevski home in Boston. The only time she had visited their home. That had been like stepping through Lewis Carroll’s mirror, not into a backwards world, but one which had long ago ceased to exist.
Now she had taken another step into living history. This was the here and now, but everything she had encountered; the seemingly endless forest that had stretched most of the way across Siberia to the enormous lake they had crossed by ferry; to the very ancient steamtrain in which they had travelled to their arrival in this city in which a tsar and his family had been murdered, actually during her lifetime; the free-standing porcelain bathtub and the maid who simply would not go away; the great four-poster bed; the intense warmth of the hotel — and then to compare it with the intense cold outside — made her feel she had somehow drifted back through the ages, without quite understanding how.
But Alex was here with her, and Alex was reality. She caught his eye and smiled at him, and he waggled his eyebrows. They were apparently coming to the important part of the speech. Elaine sat up and listened. The interpreter was reading off a list of cities, and she gathered they were about to be split up and sent, in twos and threes, to these destinations. Desperately she looked at Alex. Alex was on his feet. “Will none of us be sent to Moscow?”
“Moscow is a combat area,” the interpreter explained. “You are not required to work in combat areas. This has been agreed.”
“Can we not volunteer for such service?”
“Well...” the interpreter held a muttered conversation with the minister. “It would be very gratifying were you to do so,” the interpreter said.
“Then I volunteer,” Alex said.
“It must be understood that you are doing this of your own free will,” the interpreter said. “You will sign a paper, eh? An indemnity.”
“Surely,” Alex agreed.
Elaine stood up. “I volunteer, too.”
The interpreter stared at her in consternation, while the minister said, “It is not possible for us to accept a woman volunteer.”
“Why not?” Elaine asked. “You have regiments of women soldiers, do you not? You have Russian women working in the hospitals in Moscow. I volunteer. I insist on volunteering.”
*
It took Alex and Elaine another three days to reach Moscow, which made them the more grateful for the break they had had in Sverdlovsk, as once again there was no opportunity for bathing or even changing their clothes. The train was even more crowded than the trans-Siberian, and this time mainly with Siberian troops, hardy Mongols who until recently had been manning the line of the Amur to defend Russia from attack by the Japanese. Although, a couple of years ago, there had been pitched battles between the two sides, a recurrence of open hostility had now apparently been ruled out by the Kremlin, and these little, blunt-featured fellows were looking forward to ha
ving a crack at the Germans. They were also extremely macho, and found travelling in an overcrowded compartment in the company of a pretty girl a distinct pleasure. Alex reckoned Elaine was actually in more danger of being raped on the train than from any itinerant German. But she merely smiled and rejected all advances in the politest but firmest possible way.
In any event, even the Mongolian soldiers had more on their minds than sex. As they crossed the Urals the evidence of the enormous struggle going on in front of them, and soon all around them, became more and more unmistakeable. They looked at huge columns of refugees attempting to make their way east through the snow, presumably along roads, although these were invisible beneath the blanket of white which overlay the country several feet deep. Elaine thought them the most pitiful objects she had ever seen, because they were all either very old, of both sexes, or very young — anyone able to bear a gun or operate a lathe was fully employed. They drove carts or dragged and pushed cars where the animals were missing, each cart piled high with household goods, or they trudged along, with little bundles draped over their shoulders. “What do they live on?” Elaine asked.
“Whatever they can find,” the guard told her.
“In this weather? Where do they sleep?”
“On the road.”
Again she said, “In this weather? Don’t they freeze?”
“Regularly. “
“And nobody cares?”
“We are fighting a war, Comrade Doctor. Those people are the least valuable of our assets.”
Elaine felt physically sick. But she could not stop staring at the refugees. Also moving along these roads, in the other direction, there were masses of troops, tanks and trucks, and the unfortunate people were constantly being pushed out of the way. The nearness of war was also evident in the bombers which came over every day, seeking the columns, seeking the trains, soiling the snow with freshly turned black earth and newly spilled red blood. Once bombs actually struck the line in front of the train, and the two Americans watched in awe as everyone on board worked all night to replace the broken track. “Can you imagine anything like this ever happening in the States?” Elaine asked.
“It did happen,” Alex pointed out. “Only eighty years ago.”
By the time they reached Moscow they were hearing the sound of the guns as well; the Germans were very close to the city. Alex had never been to Moscow. Born during the Great War, far to the south on Bolugayen, he had never had the opportunity before his mother had fled with himself and his half-sister Anna, by ship from Sevastopol to England. Actually, Mom had never been to Moscow either, but Joseph had, even if his memories were not happy ones. But Alex had read everything he could obtain on both the city and its history; he was disappointed to find how different it was to what he had expected. Partly this was a result of the snow, which has a tendency to make all cities look alike. But the snow at least hid the bomb damage, even if it made movement more than usually difficult, as it was impossible to tell where the craters were. The Kremlin, however, seemed undamaged, and St Basil’s Cathedral was as awe-inspiring as expected, and could be gawped at even if Alex did not suppose he and Elaine would be allowed inside.
It was when they reached their assigned hospital that they realised what it was like to be in the middle of a real shooting war. They were welcomed by the Russian registrar, assigned quarters, widely separated, and told to report for duty in 15 minutes. Within half-an-hour Alex found himself supervising a nurse who was stripping away the torn and filthy clothing of a man who not an hour before had been shot in the chest. This was fortunate, as he had already lost a lot of blood. But the entire ward was filled with recently wounded men, so over-crowded that they were lying on the floors or two to a bed. The nurse was watching him; she was in early middle-age, had strong features, and contemptuous eyes.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s get to work. Where do I wash up?” She raised her eyebrows. “My hands,” he explained, wringing them. “I cannot deal with this man until I have washed my hands.”
The eyes grew more contemptuous yet. “There is no water available at this moment, Comrade Doctor. The supply in this area has been cut by a bomb. If you do not attend to this man, he will die. If your hands have germs on them, he may still die, but at least he will have had a chance.” It occurred to Alex that he might have to rethink his ideas on medicine.
It was three days before he managed to see Elaine; all the medical staff were working 15-hour shifts with only the shortest breaks for food, and it was the merest chance that on this occasion they happened to find themselves in the Russian equivalent of a cafeteria together. “What do you reckon?” he asked.
“No one had ever again better complain to me about conditions at Boston General,” she said.
“Amen!”
“I lost one this morning,” she said, sipping her borsch; there wasn’t much nourishment in the beetroot soup but it was certainly hot. “I was virtually holding his lung in my hand when it just stopped working. Shit! I’ve never lost one before. I mean, me, personally. There’s always been somebody senior. God!”
“He doesn’t exist around here. That’s official.”
Elaine gave a twisted smile. “I don’t think He’d want to be involved in this, anyway.”
It was another fortnight before Alex got to see his stepfather. He had managed to send a message that he was there to Joseph soon after arriving, but it took time for them both to be able to spare the time to meet. Joseph took him to lunch at Aragvi. “Some place,” Alex commented. “You know, Joe, there’s two different worlds here, operating side by side.”
“Only two, you reckon?” Joseph asked.
“Point taken. Can you tell me exactly what is happening?”
“We could be at the turning point of this war. The fact is, the Germans really ought to have taken Moscow before winter set in. That they didn’t is largely their own fault. It would appear that they reckoned this battle was won, and diverted a large number of their forces to a drive through the south for the Caucasus; they’d like to get their hands on the oil down there. But they should’ve cleaned up here first. They’re now bogged down in the snow and the ice.”
“But they’re still there,” Alex pointed out.
“Sure. But things are changing — the Russian way — all the time. They have some new mortars, called katyushas, which are very effective, and perhaps more important, very noisy. German prisoners speak of the devastating effect on morale these screamers are having. Then they are moving large numbers of Siberian troops to the western front.”
Alex nodded. “I saw some of them on the train. But fresh foot soldiers aren’t going to be the answer, surely. Maybe the panzers are bogged down, but so are the Russian tanks. And the Germans still have total superiority in the air.”
“All true. But the Russians now have a third and most important ally of all, the very weather that is holding things up. Again, reverting to those prisoners they have taken, the poor bastards are wearing what is by Russian standards summer clothing. Some of them don’t even have overcoats; none of them has thermal underwear. A lot of them are suffering from severe frostbite. Another month, and the Russians reckon they’ll be too cold to move, much less fight.”
“You honestly think Russia can make it?”
“Yes, I do.”
“What about Leningrad? Isn’t that about to fall?”
“I wouldn’t bet on that, either. They appear to be prepared to fight to the last man, woman, or child. And you can’t blame them, if half the stories of what the Germans have been doing behind their lines are true.”
“And you reckon they are?”
“I don’t know, Alex. I do know that the Russians believe the stories. Did you know you have a cousin fighting with the Partisans? Commanding a unit, no less.”
“I didn’t know I had a cousin in the Russian army.”
“She’s not in the Army. She’s a partisan.”
“Did you say she?”
“Yes. A girl of
eighteen, believe it or not. This is really a nation at war,” Joseph pointed out. “She’s Jennie’s daughter. Would you like to meet Jennie?”
“Very much.” Alex hesitated, “There’s someone else who would like to meet her, too. Elaine Mitchell.”
Joseph frowned. “The name is familiar. Do I know her?”
“I brought her to dinner, last November.”
“Good God! And she’s here with you? In Russia?”
“She’s a doctor, like me. And as you have just pointed out, this is a war in which women have quite as much place as men.”
“Russian women,” Joseph argued. “You...ah...planning anything?”
“We’re going steady,” Alex said. “But I know she’d love to meet Jennie.”
Climbing the stairs to the apartment Elaine felt quite as nervous as she had when entering the Cromb House in Boston. Even more than on that occasion she felt that she was not dressed for the part, or fully psychologically prepared. It was almost the first afternoon she had had off since arriving in Moscow, and she was desperately tired. She had managed to keep a clean dress for an occasion like this, but it was fearfully crushed. She had also managed to wash her hair, and indeed have a bath, but she still thought she smelt of disinfectant and death. Alex as always was encouraging, and squeezed her hand as the door swung in and they were greeted by Jennie. Elaine was impressed. Jennie was so very obviously a Bolugayevska, and yet she was also so obviously a devoted Communist. But she seemed delighted to see her cousin, and his girlfriend. “It is so strange,” she said. “That so many of the family should be here, at this time.”
“We are here, because of this time,” Joseph pointed out.
Elaine could not help staring at the photograph of the girl in the semi-military uniform. “That is my daughter Tatiana,” Jennie said, proudly.
“Alex has told me of her,” Elaine said. “You must be very worried for her.”
“Well, I am very proud of her. She is killing Germans.”
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