by Jerry Sacher
“I see the empress’s friend is in charge of appointing generals in the Army now. I hope this man can read and can get supplies through the front lines. We had only three bullets apiece per day at the last battle,” Sergei said sarcastically.
The colonel nodded and stood to leave. The bench creaked in the silence. Sergei reached out and touched his colonel’s sleeve.
“Is there’s something else, sir?”
The man sat back down. “When do you head back to join your company?”
“Tomorrow morning, sir, after breakfast, but that’s not what you wanted to say, is it?”
The colonel seemed impressed by Sergei’s intuition, and he sat back to reach into his pocket.
“A man claiming to be an acquaintance of yours has been coming around here and leaving these for the men.”
Sergei recognized the little books with the red covers that Petr had been handing out at public meetings.
“Do you know anything about these?” the colonel asked. He clearly didn’t look angry, just curious.
“I have seen them all over Petrograd and have discussed them like all the men have,” Sergei told him, but the colonel merely nodded, and he turned to look at Sergei almost as if he was reading his mind.
“Captain Breselov, I don’t know what your personal opinion on politics may be, but I need to remind you that these are dangerous times. Well I’m sure you already know what’s going on without any reminders, but if this man is a friend of yours, you would do well to use wisely what time you have left before you leave for the front tomorrow. If I see him spreading these books around the barracks once more, I’ll have no choice but to bring you before a board of inquiry and eventual court martial. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Sergei rose to attention and saluted, and then the colonel left the barracks. The little red-covered booklet was still where the colonel had left it, so Sergei threw it into a fire that was burning at the center of the room.
After watching it burn for a moment, Sergei left the barracks and ventured back out into the city to find Petr.
Chapter 9
Casualty Clearing Station, Somme, France
October 1916
THE OIL lamp over Benjamin’s head cast dim shadows on Sergei’s latest letter.
“…It has rained here almost every day, but it doesn’t stop the enemy from shelling our positions. When we do have warm food, the remaining villagers, who kindly share with us the small portion remaining to them, usually supply it to us. God Bless them. At night I always lay awake under the canvas and think about you and our adventure through the countryside. I’m confident that we’ll see each other soon….”
His mother’s latest letter, however, supplied the harsh reality—shortages, strikes, and a nameless desperation that stretched from the streets of the factory districts all the way to the Carter mansion off the Nevsky.
“…and so, my dearest son, I don’t write these things to depress you, but since we both love studying history, I write to inform you that history is unfolding before me. Your father won’t leave until the last possible minute. I hope to have a long conversation with you about this, and also another private matter, on your extended leave here in Petrograd….”
A blast of cold and wet air slapped him in the face as one of the doctors came in from the outside. He greeted Benjamin, and he removed his khaki overcoat and shook water drops in Benjamin’s face. Benjamin poured him a tin cup of steaming tea and handed it over.
The doctor, a short pudgy man with a white mustache, looked at the cup gratefully and frowned at the same time. “Not with condensed milk,” he said sadly.
“There isn’t any fresh milk available, sir.”
The doctor pulled out a chair and sat alongside Benjamin, cradling the tin mug in his hand.
Benjamin continued to read his letters as the rain beat down in an unbroken rhythm on the wooden roof. When he’d finished, he folded them together, tucked them into the lining of his coat, and poured himself a cup of tea to join the doctor, who stared at Benjamin over the rim of his cup. Then he lifted his eyes in the direction of the roof. Benjamin followed his gaze upward.
“This rain will make the trenches like hell to fight in,” the doctor said and took another sip of tea.
“There isn’t likely to be much fighting today, sir.” Benjamin spoke hopefully.
“Those Huns are sneaky devils, Carter. I wouldn’t put it past them to stage a surprise trench raid in this weather.”
The doctor rose and poured more tea for himself and Benjamin, and then he sat down again, muttering about having to use condensed milk.
Thinking about his letters from Russia, Benjamin said, “There are people in Petrograd who would love to have that milk right now, condensed or otherwise.”
The doctor softened only slightly. “I’m sorry, Carter, I forgot that’s where your parents are right now.”
“No problem, sir. My mother writes that things are difficult, but they are managing.”
“I don’t suppose your father writes to you about the situation on the Russian Front?”
“Very little, just family stuff,” Benjamin lied, not wanting to share the letter from his father, which was now in the lining of his pocket along with Sergei’s letter. He recalled a little of what his father had written.
“…What a sorry state the country has come to, Benjamin. I spent several hours waiting to see the empress, only to be informed that she is unwell and receiving no one, except for her monk and that rather vulgar woman Anya. Tsar Nicholas doesn’t see that his dynasty and the country are headed for ruin. He believes that the Army will put down any revolution….” It closed with his father’s scrawling signature and that was it.
The doctor appeared disappointed that Benjamin didn’t share some diplomatic secret with him, but Benjamin remained silent and changed the subject. “Thank God, I start my forty-eight hours leave this afternoon.”
“Do you have any plans for your leave, Carter?”
“I thought I would go up to Paris, where at least there’ll be a chance of clean sheets and edible food.”
“God, how I miss those things, Carter. I wish I was going with you.”
He smiled, and Benjamin replied. “Perhaps next time, sir.”
Petrograd, Russia
November 1916
SERGEI LEFT the Carter home with Benjamin’s latest letter in the pocket of his worn military greatcoat. Mrs. Carter had hoped for a private conversation with him but was disappointed again by the presence of Simon Carter in the drawing room. As Mr. Carter had shown him to the door, Sergei saw the look of frustration on Mrs. Carter’s face as he bid her farewell.
He walked across the city back to his barracks, avoiding the main thoroughfares, already jammed with a demonstration from the Vyborg factory district across the Neva. He passed countless teashops and cafés with darkened windows and simple signs posted on the doors: Closed. No food or fuel.
Sergei sighed deeply and wondered how all of this would end. He longed for Benjamin’s touch, but at least he had letters, which made him feel close, even if Benjamin was in France working in a field hospital. He never spoke with Petr about Benjamin, since Petr would condemn Benjamin as an upper-class enemy, ready to steal the last bite of food out of a worker’s mouth. When Sergei did see Petr, usually after a workers’ meeting, their sex would be fueled by vodka, then Petr would fall asleep, and he would wake up next to Sergei in the morning, stumble into his clothes, and go out to his meetings.
That evening, before he went back to his barracks, Sergei attended one of Petr’s meetings in the back room of a dank workers’ dormitory in the factory district across the Neva River. He felt out of place among men and women chewing sunflower seeds and debating the writings of Marx and the revolutionary writings of Lenin and Trotsky. Through the fog of smoking oil lamps, Sergei saw other uniforms in the crowd—soldier deserters who had come to take part.
The meeting broke up around midnight,
and as Sergei and Petr walked back to the hotel, Petr saw two policemen on the corner, and he shouted, “It won’t be too much longer now before that despot on the throne is no more.”
The police looked the other way and walked off.
Petr pointed at them. “You see, Sergei, the police are with us in our struggle. You heard Pankratov tonight—an end to the war and an end to the rights and privileges of the upper classes.”
“You think the violence he preached is the answer?”
“Yes, that’s what Lenin says. He’s negotiating right now with Germany for an end to the war and a safe return to Russia so he can take control of the government.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard that—if only he could bring an end to this misery. You know that several soldiers at the front asked me recently, ‘Why are we fighting?’ I couldn’t think of one good reason for this war, if you want me to be honest.” Sergei then fell silent, listening to Petr talk.
In ordinary times, this conversation would have been deemed treason and punished accordingly, but it didn’t take a scientist to see that change was coming to Russia. Sergei shivered involuntarily and pulled his coat tighter about him.
At the hotel, they drank a bottle of vodka, after which Petr again passed out, leaving Sergei to lounge fitfully in the chair. Sergei thought about the sex he and Petr had shared in the past. Did it make either one of them feel good? He couldn’t answer for Petr, but for himself what could he say? He searched his heart but found no answer.
In the dim oil lamp, he read his latest letter from Benjamin and then went downstairs to write to him. This time Sergei found the dining room shut down and the hotel manager seated dismally at a table. He smiled weakly at Sergei when he entered.
“Sorry, sir, but we have no food left to serve you. I can bring you some tea if you wish. It’s about all that’s left.” The manager stood up.
“Tea would be fine, thank you,” Sergei said as he sat down at his usual corner table and began writing his response to Benjamin.
“Benjamin, my angel. I hope this letter reaches you and finds you well. I think of you often.” He read the opening line and tore up the paper, then started again. He tore that one up as well, until a small pile of shredded paper lay on the table by his elbow. He laid the pen aside and sat back, only to find the waiter sitting nearby, staring at him.
“The person you’re writing to must be very important, or you wouldn’t be tearing up so much paper after writing only one line.” He pointed to the pile next to Sergei.
“Yes, yes, it is someone very important, and I find myself not knowing what to say. If only they were here in Petrograd, I would have the words.”
“You’ve been here so often, I feel like I can offer you some advice from one man to another.”
“Sure you can. I’m listening.”
“You young men don’t understand love. You all want to be Alexander Pushkin to impress the one you love, but why not say what’s in your heart?”
Sergei listened thoughtfully as the waiter continued to speak. He wondered how he knew it was a letter to someone Sergei had feelings for; it could easily have been a letter to his parents or a revolutionary speech he was composing.
“You have remarkable insight.”
“You mean for an innkeeper in a third-rate hotel in the factory district? Yes, I suppose I do, but I have been in your position, back in the days when my whiskers were black.” He laughed and smiled, which made Sergei smile too.
“It’s good to talk about something besides this miserable war and the coming chaos.” The waiter didn’t even bother to lower his voice. In former times, the man would have been arrested for treason, speaking like that to an officer in the tsar’s Army, but nobody lowered their voice now.
Sergei didn’t respond. He wanted to finish his letter so he could post it before he left for the front in the morning. The manager seemed to sense Sergei wanted to be alone, so he excused himself and walked back to the empty kitchen. Sergei took a few minutes to gather his thoughts, then picked up his pen and began writing.
Casualty Clearing Station, Somme, France
November 1916
THE FIGHTING began again once the dismal rains stopped. The boom of shells shook the hospital windows, but Benjamin tried to ignore it. He had assisted the doctors in surgery since well before dawn; he didn’t even know that the sun had risen or that he was hungry.
Benjamin leaned over one of the soldiers next in line for the operating room. The blood-covered man, who whimpered faintly, suffered from an abdominal injury. Benjamin took a wet cloth and wiped the blood from the man’s face. The face seemed familiar, but he couldn’t recall where he had seen the man before. He stepped back and two young men rushed in to take the stretcher to the operating theater in the next room.
The doors closed in Benjamin’s face, but he saw what happened through the panes of glass. One of the orderlies cut away the uniform with a heavy pair of surgical scissors and threw the remains in a pile at his feet. A nurse with a tray of instruments appeared from a room at the side, and Benjamin saw the needle with which she administered a shot in the man’s left arm.
“You can be a lot more help in there than you are standing here, Captain!” an irritated doctor grumbled at his back.
“Yes, sir, right away!” Benjamin turned and followed the doctor into the room.
“Thank God we got to him in time, but we better get him to surgery before infection sets in. Prepare him Carter,” the doctor said as he washed his hands in a small sink in the corner.
The next hour passed in a blur of voices, orders, and red-stained bandages, mingled with the moans of the man on the table. Near the end of the surgery, as the doctor stitched the wound, the young man opened his eyes and looked into Benjamin’s. The soldier, weak from loss of blood, raised his head slightly off the table. With surprising strength, he resisted the doctor pressing him back down. Even with the babble of voices in the room, Benjamin heard the soldier whisper his name, and then the man fell back, unconscious.
Benjamin assisted with the preparations to move the soldier to a gurney set aside for after the surgery. With everything ready, Benjamin gripped the handles at the head of the stretcher so he could look down and study the soldier who’d spoken his name. For a brief second, he thought he looked into Sergei’s face.
Nurses took over, and then Benjamin hurried to the next patient.
At the end of that long night, relieved to finally fall back into bed, Benjamin left the small packet that had arrived from his mother untouched by his side.
LATE AFTERNOON the next day, Benjamin opened his eyes at last. The sun cast slanting shadows in the room, and in the distance he heard the muffled boom of the guns in the trenches. One of his friends in the ambulance pool, a ginger-haired young man named Roger, sat on the bed opposite Benjamin’s. Roger put down the book he had been reading.
“I feel like I’ve been sleeping forever—what time is it?” Benjamin inquired.
“It’s almost three o’clock.” Roger got up from his bed and stood over Benjamin, who had swung his legs over the edge of his bed, ready to stand.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be there right away.” Benjamin reached for his jacket at the foot of his bed.
“Don’t fret over that. The chief surgeon knows you’re here. He gave instructions not to wake you, even when that soldier asked for you.”
“The soldier asked for me?” Benjamin made a move toward the door, but Roger blocked his way.
“They gave him some morphine a few hours ago to help him sleep, so I suggest you get some food for yourself, and then you can go see if he’s awake.” Roger opened his mouth to say something else, but the sound of a distant explosion from the battlefield shook the building and stopped him.
“I must have been exhausted to sleep through that.” Benjamin jerked his thumb toward the outside. He saw the unread letters from his parents on a small table next to him. He picked them up and put them in his pocket.
Be
njamin felt better after eating dinner, and he relaxed enough to finally pull the letters from his pocket and read them. Sergei’s note was cheerful, as always.
His mother’s letters always assured him not to worry, that they would be fine. The plea to not worry cheered Benjamin only slightly, and at night he prayed for the safety of his parents, as well as Sergei. He ended his prayer by adding, “I hope I can get to Petrograd to help them. Somehow.”
Benjamin stood when a nurse knocked and entered. She smiled at him, and he looked up from a document he was reading. She was a pretty girl, about twenty years old, with green eyes, and curly red hair poking out from under her nurse’s cap. She was the daughter of a lawyer from Scotland, one of the many volunteers who came to France to care for the wounded. Benjamin remembered when he was in London on his last leave, seeing women working on buses and trains, and even on the police force directing traffic. Even Benjamin’s mother had written to him saying that if they should return to London, she would take a job at the post office just as her friend Lady Caroline was doing.
“Good morning, what is it?” Benjamin asked her.
“Captain Carter, that young soldier is awake, and he’s asking for you.”
Benjamin nodded and followed her to another building, a barn converted into a transfer station for casualties on their way back to England. They walked through a small outer room until they reached a large space at the end. Benjamin and the nurse threaded their way past beds of wounded soldiers and came to a bed also at the end of the room, under a large window. The young man, perhaps sensing someone was near, opened his eyes and raised his head. The nurse smiled and left Benjamin alone with the patient. Benjamin moved closer to the bed.