by A J Allen
Berezovo
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Characters
Book One
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Book Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Book Three
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Acknowledgements
Copyright
The Berezovo Trilogy
A.J. Allen
Characters
The Men
Captain Vladimir Pavelovich STEKLOV – C.O. Garrison, Berezovo
Colonel Konstantin Illyich IZOROV – Chief of Police
Father Arkady MALENYOV – Priest
Anatoli Mikhailovich POBEDNYEV – Mayor of Berezovo
Modest Andreyevich TOLKACH – Hospital Administrator
Dr. Vasili Semionovich TORTSOV – Medical Practitioner
Dimitri Borisovich SKYRALENKO – Prison Director
Vissarion Augustovich LEPISHINSKY – Vet & owner of the Livery Stables
Alexander Vissarionovich MASLOV – Librarian & Printer
Nikolai Alexeyevich DRESNYAKOV – Schoolteacher
Andrey Vladimirovich ROSHKOVSKY – Land Surveyor
Yuli Nikitavich BELINSKY – Builder
Gleb Yakovlevich PIROGOV – Carpenter
Fyodor Gregorivich SOBOLSKY – Proprietor, ‘Hotel New Century’
Sergei Levinovich KUPRIN – Revenue officer
Fyodor Fyodorovich IZMINSKY – Banker
Illya Moiseyevich KUIBYSHEV – Fur merchant
Pavel Stepanovich NADNIKOV – Grain merchant
Leonid Sergeivich KAVELIN – Timber merchant
Nikita Osipovich SHIMINSKI – General merchant
Ivan Tarpelovich KIBALSCHOV – General merchant
Serapion Alexeyevich PUSNYEN – General merchant
Pyotr Razinovich DELYANOV – Haberdasher
Kuzma Antonivich GVORDYEN – Baker
Yevgeni Yevgenivich SVORTSOV – Butcher
Irkaly Georgeyivich OVSEENKO – Carpenter
Isaac Davidovich AVERBUCH – Jewish carpenter
Lev Dubreivich POLEZHAYEV – Jewish tailor
Noi Nikolayevich PYATKONOV – ‘Goat’s Foot’, a Peasant
Semyon Konstantinovich LAVROV – Landlord of ‘The Black Eagle Inn’
Mikhail SHELGUNOV – Potboy
Innokenty Arseneyevich CHIRIKOV – Blacksmith
Anton Ivanovich CHEVANIN – Dr. Tortsov’s assistant
Abram Malachayivich USOV – Leader of the Jewish Bund
Yfem Borisovich BLONSKI – Corporal, Military Stores
Sergeant GREDNYEN – Commissariat Sergeant
JANINSKI – Prison warden
Pyotr Ivanovich ARKOV – Local prisoner
David Davidovich LANDEMANN – Jewish Bundist
Oleg KARSENEV – Leader, Berezovo Menshevik R.S.D.L.P.
FATIEV – Leader, Berezovo Bolshevik R.S.D.L.P.
The Women
Katya – Housemaid to Dr. TORTSOV
Anastasia Christianovna WRENSKAYA – Widow
Mariya – Housemaid to Madame WRENSKAYA
Yeliena TORTSOVA – Wife of Dr. TORTSOV
Tatyana KAVELINA – Wife of Leonid KAVELIN
Irena KUIBYSHEVA – Wife of Illya KUIBYSHEV
Olga NADNIKOVA – Wife of Pavel NADNIKOV
Raisa IZMINSKAYA – Wife of Fyodor IZMINSKY
Matriona POBEDNYEVA – Mayoress
Lidiya PUSNYENA – Wife of Serapion PUSNYEN
Nina ROSHKOVSKAYA – Wife of Andrey ROSHKOVSKY
Alexandra DRESNYAKOVA – Sister of Nikolai DRESNYAKOV
Tamara KARSENEVA – Wife of Oleg KARSENEV
Book One
A Small Town in Siberia
Prologue
Even at noon the sun was little more than a lemon coloured disc, peering bleakly through the grey leaden clouds. It gave no promise of warmth to the passengers in the prison convoy of troikas heading swiftly northwards through the forest that lined this section of the Great Tobolsk Highway.
In the second troika, the young man was struggling to stay awake. The hiss of the runners on the frozen ground, the glare of the snow, the gentle rocking motion of the sleigh and the incessant tintinnabulation of the harness that bound the ponies to the vehicle all conspired to mesmerise him, with the effect that he was finding it harder to hold logically consistent thoughts. Beside him, a guard sat with his chin resting on his chest; his grizzled head occasionally nodded in time to the motion of the carriage. He was fast asleep and the young man was able to study the features of his companion at length. There was not much to see. The soldier wore his dark brown fox fur hat pulled low over his forehead and the broad collar of his thick greatcoat stood up like wings, so that his profile was fragmented: a collage of fur, coarse cloth and pockmarked skin.
It was not, the young man decided, the face of an intelligent man. True, the lines around the eyes and mouth spoke eloquently of experience and deprivation. The Sibirsky regiment had been badly mauled in the war against the Japanese and had had to be almost entirely reformed. Any veteran of the old Sibirsky would know the meaning of suffering and endurance. Yet this man had learnt nothing from the experience. He still wore the uniform of the hated and discredited regime; he still upheld in word and deed the terrible despotism that ruled this vast wasteland with an iron grip. Ergo: he was not an intelligent man.
The young man smiled privately to himself, his dark, handsome Jewish features assuming a rare expression of self-mockery.
If I’m so smart, he thought, how come I’m the prisoner and he’s the guard?
The soldier stirred in his sleep.
His young prisoner turned his attention once more to the silver birch trees that lay on either side of the road. The fore
st seemed endless. Soon, he told himself, the driver of the leading carriage would have to signal for a halt in order to rest and feed the teams, and this would allow his mind to clear. But even then, the penetrating cold and the unnatural stillness of the landscape, unbroken even by a bird’s cry, would sustain the feeling of isolation. Yes, the convoy would stop, but not yet; not until it was well clear of the forest. Instead they would halt somewhere out in the open, as they had done every day since they had boarded the troikas at Tiumen.
Magnanimously, the authorities had dispensed with the use of handcuffs or shackles during the journey. A meaningless gesture; a prisoner would still be confined by the very openness of the vast tracts of land through which he was passing, where a running figure could be easily spotted from a distance of half a verst. The young man knew that even if he made a bid as soon as they slowed, flinging aside the two heavy rugs that covered him from chest to feet, leaning forward in his seat, twisting his body to the right so that he would fall clear of the runners when he jumped… what would happen? His escort could alert the rest of his platoon with a single rifle shot and then they would shuffle into the semblance of a line under the sergeant’s instruction. He wondered how far he would be able to run in that time. Fifty metres? A hundred? Would they shout to him to stop? He doubted it. A single ragged fusillade, a crackle of shots spinning his body round like an ungainly puppet; like a drunk pirouetting in the snow. That would be his epitaph.
The young man shut his eyes tight, his features locked in a grimace as he tried to blot the image out of his mind. The authorities wanted him dead; they wanted all the condemned Soviet Deputies dead. Like a giant slavering beast, the autocracy hungered after their deaths. Fear rose within him, and it wore the face of Ter-Mkrchtiants, a fellow Petersburg Soviet deputy who had been tricked into accepting bail before the trial had started. Released from prison he had been seized, bound and led to summary execution on the ramparts of the Kronstadt fortress. They, the so-called forces of ‘law and order’, cared little for either when they had found their power threatened by the threat of armed insurrection in the capital.
Was this why, he wondered, the escort had been changed at Tobolsk? The friendly major and the company of sympathetic soldiers that had accompanied them had been replaced by this brutish sergeant and his troop of hard unsmiling men. Was the autocracy guaranteeing that the kid gloves of the officer corps would remain spotless? The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that their stated destination of Obdorskoye was a ruse. Who would know if they were all butchered en route in the snow? Who would ever find the bodies out here in this desolation? Who would even dare look for them?
The young man gritted his teeth, balling his hands into tight fists beneath the heavy rugs. Taking a series of deep breaths, he began to intone his daily catechism, unconsciously rocking his body backwards and forwards in time to the rhythm of his thoughts.
This is the tenth day of sleigh travel. The twelfth since we left Tiumen and the train.
The seventeenth since we were taken to Nicolai Station. The twenty-fourth since I was moved from the transfer prison. It is eighty-five days since we were sentenced. One hundred and fourteen days since my speech in court. One hundred and thirty-three days since our trial began. Two hundred and ninety days since the arrest of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on the third of December nineteen hundred and five.
The numbers acted like blunt hooks, giving him something to hold onto as well as a record of his journey, and slowly he felt the panic begin to ebb away and his breath coming more easily. As the familiar faintness that threatened to overcome him in moments of high anxiety began to pass he opened his eyes and sighed, embarrassed at his weakness.
It is imperative that I keep alert, he told himself. At least if I was in a cell, I could carve a notch on the wall to mark the passage of time. Here, there is nothing.
He began looking around the vehicle in which he lay cocooned for something that offered the potential of a calendar, idly wondering whether such markings, made within the subjective confines of an objectively moving environment, had a deeper significance. The thought intrigued him: there was something there, if only he could concentrate and formulate the idea…
With a slight sense of surprise, he realised that he was staring at the long barrel of the guard’s rifle which lay secure within the soldier’s folded arms. His eyes followed the length of the weapon down to the floor of the troika and he saw that the soldier had stuck one booted foot through the loop of the rifle sling, lest his prisoner should try to disarm him as he slept. The broad, unpolished butt lay invitingly close to his own foot. Could he perhaps carve his calendar on that? Suppressing a chuckle, the young man wrapped his arms tighter around himself, taking pleasure from imagining the guard’s reaction upon waking.
In front of him, the driver cracked his whip across the broad backs of his team, urging them on to their destination. His orders had been clear. It was expected that this special convoy of prisoners would maintain a steady progress of fifty versts a day. The three plunging ponies, their nostrils pluming with vapour in the cold air, panted with the exertion of the long run.
Chapter One
Sunday 28th January 1907
Berezovo, Northern Siberia
Katya closed the kitchen door behind her and stood on the top step, sniffing the chill night air. Her snout-like nose wrinkled as it caught the familiar smell of the distant riverbank to the east of the town that told her more snow was on its way.
Moving cautiously, she descended the short flight of steps that led down to the Tortsovs’ back yard, taking care to keep the earthenware jar of goat’s meat soup upright. As she reached the bottom step, the bell of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary began to toll for the evening service. The knowledge that Father Arkady would notice her absence still troubled her. Pulling her shawl snugly round her shoulders, she crossed herself and passed through the gate into the narrow lane that ran behind the houses. Cradled beneath the coarse shawl, the jar’s warmth and weight comforted her. It reminded her of her sister’s baby, and of the young soul lately made flesh that might even now be drawing its first shuddering breath in the room above Pirogov’s distant workshop.
Her annoyance with her mistress returned as she began feeling her way in the darkness along the rough fence that led to Menshikov Street. Madame Tortsova’s insistence that the priest would forgive her on this occasion – that she was on an ‘errand of mercy’ – had sounded hollow and unconvincing. The doctor’s wife knew what great store she placed in the priest’s blessing. Katya was, after all, the priest’s charge; Dr. Tortsov was only her employer. It had been Father Arkady who had picked her out of the snow bank after the fire. It was Father Arkady that had cared for her after her parents had been buried in the pauper’s yard; still clinging to each other like two charcoaled tree trunks struck simultaneously by lightning. The priest had taken her in and, even though she was neither as pretty nor as quick as the other girls of her age, he had fed and clothed her. And now she had grown, he had sent her to help Dr. Tortsov’s wife keep house. Katya had never once questioned the priest’s commandment, though her own sleeping quarters were cold and cheerless and the years had made the doctor short tempered and his childless wife shrewish. The housemaid knew that for as long as she lived in the attic room of the doctor’s house, she would neither starve nor want for shelter. But to her mind, Madame Tortsova had been wrong to order her to go straight to the Pirogovs’ and not to attend the evening service on her way. Her mistress would be punished, thought Katya as she reached the corner, along with the other sinners. They would all feel the Hand of God.
The fence had ended, falling away with the houses before the expanse of Menshikov Street. Still brooding on Madame Tortsova’s intransigence, she slowly advanced, stepping high over the frozen sleigh ruts that criss-crossed the iron-hard ground. Fear of tripping in the darkness and spilling the soup made her clumsy and hesitant but she reached the o
ther side of the street without mishap. She felt her way along the edge of the icy boardwalk until she came to the steps in front of Leonid Kavelin’s house. The timber merchant was a wealthy man; his house was one of the few free-standing buildings in the town centre. Surrounded on all sides by roads, he had erected a high wooden fence to keep out the gaze of the vulgar and the curious.
Ahead Katya could make out the distant glow of the oil lamps that burned outside the hospital; tiny pin-pricks of light that would be shielded from the approaching blizzard by thick glass bulbs that had been brought all the way from Tobolsk. The sight cheered her and she walked with more confidence across the furrowed surface of Ostermann Street, ignoring the biting cold that snapped at her calves as she lifted the hem of her skirt to mount the steps on the opposite side.
The nearer she drew to the main intersection with Alexander III Boulevard, the more insistent the tolling of the church’s bell grew in her ears. She strove to ignore it and began chanting to herself the words ‘errand of mercy’ as she passed by the closed shutters of Kuzma Gvordyen’s bakery and confectionery shop. A picture was slowly forming in her imagination: an image of the wife of Gleb Pirogov, the carpenter, lying exhausted in her stall; weakened by what Father Arkady called the miracle of birth. Clutching the jar tighter to her bosom, she hurried on, the wooden soles of her crudely fashioned boots clattering over the uneven boards. From the kitchen she had overheard the doctor say that this would be the Pirogovs’ fifth birth in four years, their third child if it lived, and that Pirogov’s family would welcome the scraps of freshly cooked meat that Madame Tortsova had told her to stir into the broth. Katya wondered what the baby would look like. Would it seem as red, old and angry as her own brothers’ and sisters’ babies had been when they were born? Perhaps it would be different, more like the calm ivory baby in the books that Father Arkady had shown her. The thought thrilled her. Had not Joseph also been a carpenter? How wonderful that would be! she thought. The Holy Father born again; here, in Berezovo! And she, Katya, would be the first to bring him gifts.
Stopping by the light from a half shaded window she carefully lifted the lid of the jar, and peered down at the steaming viscous broth of yellow goat meat. Grey globules of fat began immediately to congeal and float to the surface. She debated whether to hook them out with her fingers and throw them into the road, but decided against doing so. Anton Ivanovich had told her that the fat was good for the chests of weak children; he would be upset if she wasted it. Unwilling to displease the doctor’s young assistant, she replaced the lid and moved quickly towards the step that led down to the junction with Alexei Street. From the eastern end of the broad thoroughfare the last clear notes of the church’s bell reproached her as she began to half run, half lope across the frozen sleigh tracks. The lid, clumsily set on the lip of the jar, shifted and some of the broth splashed onto her rough blouse scalding her. Pausing only to wipe off what she could, she continued her journey across the boulevard’s broad expanse. The Pirogovs lived close to Jew Alley, deep in the Quarter and only the thought of seeing Anton Ivanovich’s broad handsome face prevented her from feeling afraid. He would protect her from harm.