by A J Allen
If either Goat’s Foot or Roshkovsky had betrayed him, this would be the time that the police would spring their trap. He was well outside his permitted zone of movement. He had no excuse; no reason for being there.
Reaching the top step, he stood for a moment, straining his ears to catch the sound of voices. The house seemed to be in silence. Removing a glove, he tapped slowly four times on the back door and waited. Nothing happened for half a minute then, just as he was lifting his hand to knock again, he heard a key turn in the lock and the door was opened a few inches.
A woman’s voice whispered: “Who is it?”
“Trotsky.”
The door opened wide enough to show the woman’s face by the light of the candle; half in shadow, half in light.
“So,” she said gravely, “you’ve come at last.”
As she opened the door wider, he saw that the woman was leaning on the door handle for support.
“Come on in,” Nina Roshkovskaya told him. “Everything is prepared.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
Sunday 18th February 1907
Berezovo, Northern Siberia
Halfway home Yeliena announced that she had changed her mind, she would like to have a drink after all.
“Do you want to go back to the barracks?” asked Chevanin.
“No, all that noise has given me a headache. Why don’t we go somewhere quiet, where we can be alone?” she suggested, slipping her arm inside his. “I just want to sit and talk for a while.”
“We can talk in my rooms,” he offered. “They aren’t very far from here.”
“No, I think not, Anton,” she laughed lightly. “I had the hotel in mind. That’s where they go, isn’t it?”
“Who?”
“People like us. People who want to be alone.”
Chevanin stopped walking, and pulled her to him impatiently.
“There is no one else in the world like us, because there is no one else in the world like you,” he said. “Nothing would make me prouder than to be seen with you.”
She didn’t answer him. After a moment, they resumed their walk.
“Do you have any money with you?” she asked suddenly.
“A little. Why?”
“I would like to drink a lot of brandy tonight,” she said. “I didn’t bring my purse with me when I came out. I didn’t think it was safe backstage.”
“It will be my pleasure to treat you,” he replied with a bow. “You deserve it.”
“Do I?”
“Of course! You were magnificent tonight. It’s strange… When the play began, I was terrified. But watching you onstage from the wings, I suddenly knew everything was going to be alright and it was. Now, I feel as if I could jump over houses.”
“Then why don’t you?” she teased him. “I should like to see that.”
“Well I would, of course,” he admitted with a laugh, “if only to please you, but my medical training tells me that it could be dangerous to try.”
They were now opposite the hotel. He helped her down from the boardwalk and they began crossing the road.
“You’re wrong, you know,” she said breathlessly as they negotiated the ruts together. “It’s not the jump that is dangerous. It’s the fall afterwards.”
The hotel dining room was deserted. After sitting a few minutes waiting for a waiter to appear, Chevanin set off in search of the missing staff. When he returned he was clutching an open bottle of brandy and two glasses. He held them up for Yeliena’s inspection.
“Look!” he exclaimed with a broad grin. “Everybody is the same tonight! The whole town has gone crazy and the kitchen is deserted. Isn’t it wonderful?”
He poured out two generous measures and passed one to Yeliena.
“Is that how you feel?” she asked quietly. “Crazy?”
“I feel… I feel,” he began, but in his excitement the words failed him. He gave up and instead made a circling motion above his head. In spite of herself, the effect was so comic that Yeliena laughed. Raising her glass to him, she quickly drained it, smacking her lips as she put it back on the table. Chevanin, his glass still halfway to his lips, blinked in surprise.
“If I tried to do that,” he joked, “I would be drunk in no time.”
“No you wouldn’t,” Yeliena said, pushing the empty glass towards him across the table and indicating that she wanted another. “Drink is like a sleigh on a cold night, or a doctor when you are in trouble. It’s never there when you want it most. Have you brought your cigarettes?”
Refilling her glass, he nodded.
“Give me one, please.”
He did as he was bid. Reaching into his pocket for a box of matches he remarked, “I still can’t get used to seeing you smoking.”
“Don’t let it bother you,” she murmured.
He lit her cigarette for her. Leaning back in her seat, her eyes half closed behind the veil of smoke, she regarded him coolly.
“So, you enjoyed yourself this evening?” she asked.
“It’s been the best evening of my whole life,” he said, beaming. “I shall remember it until the day I die.”
“And what was so special about it?”
Still smiling, Chevanin looked down into his glass and shook his head.
“Now you are teasing me. You know very well.”
“No, I don’t. Tell me.”
Looking up, he gazed earnestly into her eyes.
“The most special moment, Yeliena, was when you kissed me,” he said simply. “That kiss onstage. It told me everything.”
“Everything?” declared Yeliena, arching one eyebrow.
“Yes! When a woman kisses a man like that, she is saying that she loves him.”
“Anton,” she corrected him gently, “when a woman kisses a man like that, she is saying goodbye.”
For a moment, her words did not seem to make any impression on Chevanin. Then as the realisation of what she had said dawned upon him, Yeliena saw the blood drain from his face.
“Oh no,” he said weakly.
“Have some more brandy.”
“No… oh no.”
Pouring out the brandy, she leant across the table and held the glass to his lips. He took it automatically, his hand trembling so that some of the liquor spilled onto the table cloth.
“Drink it,” she commanded.
Still dazed, he obeyed, coughing as the liquor burned the back of his throat.
“I’m sorry, Anton Ivanovich.”
“But why? Why?”
“Just… because,” she said with a sad smile. “It’s all my fault. Don’t blame yourself. I was wrong. I see that now. It would have been far better if Modest Tolkach had kept the part.”
“You can’t mean that!” he cried.
“I do,” she told him. “If he had played Smirnov instead of you, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you.”
“But you did! You did fall in love with me. So, why are you doing this?”
Stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray she reached across the table and took his hand.
“Listen, Anton,” she said warmly. “There’s a huge difference between falling in love and loving someone; all the difference in the world. Nothing could stop me falling in love with you. Heaven knows I tried not to. But never once, in all the time that we have spent together, never once did I stop loving Vasili. And it’s because of the love I share with him, because it would hurt him so much if he found out about us, that we cannot go on like this.”
“Is it just because you are married to him and not to me? Is that it?”
“Partly that,” she replied, picking her words with care. “You see, when you fall in love, anything is possible. You said so yourself, tonight. You feel that you can jump over houses, remember? That’s what happens when you fall in love: the whole world seems a little crazy. There is nothing that you can do about it. That is why it is so wonderful, why, perhaps I wanted to feel that way again. But when you love someone, r
eally love them, then it’s the opposite. Don’t you see? It’s not the things that you can do but the things that you can’t do, you don’t do to each other that matter; that keeps the love you share alive. When you fall in love, it’s all flowers, laughter and happiness. But for love to endure you need patience, self sacrifice and, above all, trust.”
Lifting his hand, she squeezed his fingers impatiently.
“That’s why I must ask you for your forgiveness. I was wrong to fall in love with you when I was already deeply in love with someone else. I had no right to.”
“But what am I to do?” he asked miserably. “Without you, life means nothing to me.”
With a smile she turned his palm uppermost and held it against her cheek.
“You will soon forget me and meet someone better,” she said. “Someone younger. Someone kinder. Save your love for them. I’m not worthy of it.”
Angrily, he pulled his hand away and glared at her.
“But I don’t want anybody else,” he protested stubbornly. “You know the age doesn’t make any difference. I could never love anybody the same way I love you.”
She shook her head.
“What choice do either of us have?” she asked sadly. “You know what will happen if we don’t part now. You will lose your position and you would never find another doctor to work with. Just us being here now…” she added, looking bleakly around the deserted dining room, “it’s impossible.”
“Please, Yeliena.”
Suddenly angry, she turned back to face him across the table.
“What do you want from me, Anton Ivanovich? You know perfectly well that I am not free to give you my love, or don’t you care? Do you want only my body? Is that it? Do you want me to be known as Chevanin’s blyad?”
As he recoiled from the viciousness of her accusation, Chevanin felt an ache open and bloom within him; an ache more painful than anything he had ever imagined. His face stiffened. Unable to look at her any longer, he averted his eyes.
“I am sorry,” Yeliena was saying. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Immobilised by the terrible hurt that was clawing at his innards, he sat slumped in his chair and looked on as, with a steady hand, Yeliena refilled first his glass and then her own. He was dimly aware of the faint chimes of the clock in the hotel’s vestibule striking the half hour.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Sunday 18th February 1907
Berezovo, Northern Siberia
In her sitting room, Nina Roshkovskaya watched as Trotsky helped himself to a second portion of the stew that had been prepared for him. He was wearing an old shirt and a pair of trousers of her husband’s. She saw that, because he was slightly smaller in build than Andrey, the sleeves of the shirt hung loose on his arms and one of the cuffs had already dipped in the gravy. Glancing up, he caught her looking at him and smiled.
“This is very good,” he said, gesturing with his spoon. “Thank you.”
She acknowledged the compliment with an imperceptible inclination of her head. There was nothing about him that she liked; neither his quick smile, his greedy officious eyes or his table manners. He was an intruder in her home and for the life of her she could not see what Andrey saw in him. Very rarely did her husband surprise her. Since her affliction, they had become as close as a brother and sister, or so she had believed. But sometimes, at times such as this, she wondered if she knew him at all.
When Trotsky had scraped his dish clean, he pushed his chair away from the table and stretched his legs out in front of him. At his feet, ready to be snatched up at a moment’s notice, lay a gussi and the malitsa stolen from the clothes pole of the Widow Golitsyn.
Looking at them, he asked:
“What will you do with my prison clothes after I leave? They will be incriminating evidence if they are found.”
“I shall cut them up and put them in the stove,” she told him. “They will be gone by the morning. If you like, you can help me. I find it difficult to handle the scissors efficiently. They are in my work basket.”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” he said.
In a few moments he had fetched the uniform and was busy reducing the stained and grubby clothes to ragged six inches squares.
“You are younger than I thought,” she told him as he worked. “The way Andrey was talking, I thought you must be at least his age.”
“How old is he?” asked Trotsky with a frown of concentration as he worked at a stubborn trouser seam.
“Thirty-six. And you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Too young,” Nina murmured disapprovingly. “You have so much life left in front of you.”
Looking up from his work, Trotsky shrugged.
“For my last nine birthdays, I’ve been either on the run, in exile, or in prison. I’ve been to the Opera in Paris, walked amongst the mountains in Switzerland and listened to the debates in the British Parliament. It’s a life.”
“Have you ever killed a man?”
For a fraction of a second, Trotsky hesitated, wondering if the woman knew how close her husband had come to being stabbed that morning.
“No,” he retorted. “Have you?”
“That, at least, is something,” she said with a sigh of relief. “I believe you, otherwise I would not be helping you. No doubt if you had killed anybody, your answer would have been exactly the same.”
He lay the scissors down amongst the tattered remnants in his lap and looked at her.
“Yes,” he replied firmly, “exactly the same.”
“And if I asked you whether somebody acting on your orders had ever committed murder, what would you say?”
“I’d say firstly that I am not a terrorist and do not support terrorism and secondly that I don’t give orders.”
Nina Roshkovskaya threw her head back and laughed.
“Don’t be so modest!” she mocked him. “You wouldn’t have been brought all this way here guarded by a company of soldiers if someone didn’t think you gave orders; that you held some sort of power.”
“It is a case of mistaken identity. A miscarriage of justice. Besides, there were others with me.”
“When it comes to apportioning blame, there are always others,” she observed drily. “We are talking about you.”
“In that case, yes. I gave orders, but not the sort that killed people.”
“But if it had been necessary, you would have done?” she persisted.
“Yes.”
“And would still do in the future?”
He sighed and shook his head.
“We are fighting a war,” he explained slowly. “People get killed in wars. Ask the Minister for the Interior. Ask your own Colonel Izorov.”
Suddenly agitated, he got up and began to pace to and fro. The woman was beginning to unsettle him. Pausing by the mantelpiece, he stared at the clock.
“What time did Goat’s Foot say he was going to arrive?”
“You still have a little time to wait,” she told him. “Sit down and rest yourself. You have a long journey ahead of you.”
Grudgingly, he returned to the table and, picking up the scissors again, continued the destruction of his prison clothes.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said. “About what you believe in.”
“Why are you asking me all these questions?” he demanded suspiciously.
“It’s quite simple. Firstly because I am curious and secondly because it concerns me.”
“How does it concern you?”
“I would have thought that was obvious,” she observed. “For better or for worse my husband and I find ourselves responsible for releasing you back into the population. I am merely trying to gauge the likely consequences. One day, it may even be tomorrow, we could find ourselves having to account for our actions.”
“If you mean your Colonel Izorov, don’t worry,” he said grimly. “I have taken every precaution against capture.”
“Actually, I didn’t mean Colonel Izoro
v, although he too will have questions that will have to be answered. No, I meant a much higher power.”
Understanding dawned on Trotsky’s face.
“Oh! You mean your God.”
“Yes,” she replied solemnly. “‘Our God’. I take it you don’t believe in any form of deity?”
“No.”
“No, of course not,” she agreed. “You could not possibly. It would be so limiting for you.”
“Instead,” said Trotsky, “I believe in history. And that events have consequences and that, only by following the dictates of my conscience, can I justify my actions. I am no saint but, since the age of eighteen when first I entered revolutionary politics, I have done nothing… pursued no policy… that I would not be prepared to defend as justified within the given circumstances in front of a tribunal of my comrades.”
“That must be a great comfort to you,” Nina observed, her voice heavy with irony. “And, of course, to your comrades. Now, you must start getting ready. Goat’s Foot should be here at any moment. I have enjoyed our little talk. Being handicapped, I receive so few new visitors.”
Laying aside the scissors, Trotsky slipped on the sleeveless gussi and found that it reached down to below his knees. The hairs on the reversed reindeer skin pricked him through the thin cloth of the shirt. Putting on the heavy malitsa he staggered under the weight. With his hat on and wearing his boots, his entire body would be covered with animal fur.
“Turn around and let’s have a look at you,” said Madame Roshkovskaya, adding doubtfully, “Well, that’s the best we can do in the time allowed us. Now, there are one or two more things you have to remember. Sit down while I talk to you if you please. Looking up is painful for me.”
He obeyed with difficulty. The width of the malitsa overcoat was so great, its thickness so impregnable, that he had trouble positioning himself securely in his seat.
“Firstly, do you have any papers?” she asked.
“Yes. They are in my boot.”
“Good. How about money?”
“Only about twenty roubles,” he lied.
“That’s enough. You certainly shouldn’t carry much more if you know what’s good for you,” she warned. “Don’t give the impression that you have any more about your person. There are three bottles of spirits in the kitchen which you can take as you leave. Andrey says that it’s by far the best currency to use on the taiga.”