Noble's Savior

by Jerry Sacher

  SERGEI OPENED his eyes, and in the dark, he saw Petr putting on a heavy overcoat and his worker’s cap. He could feel Petr leaning over him, warm breath on his neck. Was he checking to make sure Sergei was really asleep? Then Sergei heard the door close and footsteps out in the hall. Sergei got out of bed, went to the window, and looked down on the street. Two men stood in front of the hotel, and soon a third man joined them. A match blazed, and Sergei recognized Petr. Sergei saw him spit on the ground and talk with the two men. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but whenever an occasional strip of light from a streetlamp or window fell on their faces, Sergei felt that whatever they were talking and gesturing about was not a pleasant subject. They spoke for a few moments then walked along down the street and out of Sergei’s sight.

  When Petr returned thirty minutes later, the thump of his boots being removed and dropped on the floor made Sergei open his eyes.

  “Where were you, Petr, at this hour of the night?”

  “It’s a personal reason that I don’t wish to explain,” Petr replied curtly.

  THE NEXT morning, with the streets of Petrograd somewhat calm, Benjamin sought out an old friend of his father’s, the chief of police and a former general in the tsar’s Army. The man received Benjamin with cold courtesy, not once looking up from the stack of papers on his desk.

  “You say soldiers entered your parents’ house? Well, that’s not a job for the police, but it might be a job for the Army if you can find a loyal soldier remaining in this country.”

  “You’re certain you know nothing about it?”

  The police chief didn’t answer right away, and the sound of his fountain pen scratching his signature on paper was unusually loud.

  “Young man, may I remind you that this country is in chaos. There are soldiers from every province of Russia in Petrograd, a provisional government is in charge, and during a revolution, a country has every right to perpetrate every manner of intrusion within its boundaries.”

  “In effect, you’re telling me that you are powerless to do anything.”

  The police chief didn’t answer; he continued to sign documents and push them aside.

  Benjamin took the hint from the chief’s silence to rise from his chair. “I’m sorry to have troubled you. Good day, sir.” He left the office and closed the door rather heavily behind him.

  Benjamin remembered his mother telling him that she had borrowed a peasant’s clothing to cross into the factory district, so he decided to do the same. He bribed the worker who cleaned boots at the hotel to bring him the clothing that a factory worker might wear. The bundle was upstairs in his room by evening.

  SERGEI OPENED his eyes and growled angrily when Petr rushed into the room and shook him awake.

  “What is so important that you wake me up with the roosters?”

  “History is being made, Comrade, as we speak. Soldiers from the front are arriving in Petrograd. Hundreds of them have laid down their weapons and are coming to join in our cause. It’s a damned shame that Comrade Lenin won’t be here to take part.”

  Petr was out of breath with excitement. Sergei was less than impressed, so he remained silent.

  “You have to come with me to see history in the making. I won’t accept no for an answer.”

  “I would prefer not to go, Petr,” Sergei replied flatly, but Petr was persistent.

  Sergei finally gave in and agreed. He had followed Petr to endless meetings and demonstrations for more food and an end to the war, through all of which Sergei moved like a ghost. He dared not leave and go to the house to find Benjamin, if he was still in Petrograd on leave.

  Petr threw an arm around his shoulder, and led him outside and down the street toward a textile mill where another meeting would take place.

  “Nonsense, Comrade, I’m not going to let you out of my sight until you snap out of your misery and forget about your foreign upper-class boy. We’ll make a real Bolshevik out of you,” Petr proclaimed proudly.

  Sergei wanted to laugh, and he shrank away from Petr’s arm. “It’s not going to happen. I’ll find a way to be with him. I don’t know how, but I will.” Sergei was surprised at his own sudden burst of confidence, and he could tell by the look on Petr’s friend’s face that he was as well.

  “You will, eh? Talk like that and you just might, Comrade, but right now I have to make a Bolshevik out of you.”

  BENJAMIN’S TRANSFORMATION from an upper-class officer to peasant surprised him. The shirt and pants hung loose from his body, and the sleeves covered his fingers and hung down. He pulled the brim of the worker’s cap over his eyes, like a spy he’d once seen in a moving picture. He smiled and readjusted it so the cap sat normally. When done, he stood staring at his reflection in the mirror.

  “Is a disguise really necessary?” he asked his reflection in the mirror.

  He could put his uniform back on and go out in search of Sergei, but then memories of the other day came flooding back. The soldiers and police who didn’t join the people were attacked by the mobs, so it was better, at least for now, to go out and find Sergei without the obstacle of a uniform. Benjamin left the Hotel Europe by a rear kitchen entrance and went out into the falling darkness.

  He had only walked a few blocks when a crowd converged on a railroad terminal at the end of the Nevsky Prospekt. Benjamin tried to find a way around, but he found himself among them, being moved into the station. He tried to ask what was going on but nobody could hear him, then a train’s steam whistle screamed in the distance, and a pinpoint of light suddenly appeared at the end of the tracks. It came closer, and Benjamin saw a line of boxcars with men hanging from the open doors and from the roofs. On a nearby platform, he saw a band playing, but he couldn’t hear what they were trying to play.

  Finally Benjamin clamped his hand on the shoulder of a man in front of him, and cupping his hand over his mouth, shouted into the man’s ear.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “We’re welcoming back some of our soldiers from the front. They refused to obey their commanders and are returning to join the revolution.”

  When the train chugged to a stop, the men began swarming off the cars and into the arms of the people, some of whom lifted them up on their shoulders.

  SERGEI SAW Petr was one of those who lifted a soldier upon his shoulders, pushing through the crowd and outside to a waiting automobile. Sergei had been shoved to the background, and his only view of Petr was whenever the crowd moved aside and allowed him a glimpse.

  Sergei struggled to push forward. A spotlight played on the crowd a few feet in front of him, long enough for Sergei to catch a glimpse of a familiar face with blond hair peeking out of a worker’s cap, and blue eyes. Sergei blinked, but when he looked again, the young worker was lost in the crowd.

  Sergei lost sight of Petr as well and found himself pressed up against the walls of what had once been the Imperial waiting room, and from there he had an excellent view of the trains just ahead. He saw a man in worker’s clothes standing on top of a box and reaching out to a ladder attached to a railcar. Sergei stared hard; even at this distance he recognized Benjamin. He forced himself forward, and when he was close enough to be heard, he called out Benjamin’s name.

  BENJAMIN FOLLOWED the crowds as they flowed out of the station toward the street. In the crush of people moving forward, Benjamin somehow lost his factory cap, and when space finally opened up on the end of the platform, he climbed on top of a large packing case to look for another route out of the station. Benjamin discovered that the only way was to cross the bumpers of the neighboring line of boxcars. It was dangerous, but there didn’t appear to be another way. It was only a few feet between the crate and a ladder on the side of the railroad car, and Benjamin stretched out toward it.

  He had just gotten a toehold on the ladder and was swinging himself around to stand on the bumper when he thought he heard someone call his name. He looked around, but he couldn’t see anybody he knew. He heard his name again, but by t
his time, he was on the other side of the car and into a space that was empty of people.

  Benjamin and several others found a way to get around the mobs by climbing onto the train platforms and then down the other side. He got out of the station by walking the tracks back to the train yard. He sat on a stack of crates and reached into his pocket for a cigarette, and while he smoked, he wondered if Sergei had been in the crowds of people swirling around him. He swore someone had called his name, but it could have been his imagination or somebody calling out for another man with a similar name. He threw the cigarette onto the ground and walked along a line of railcars on the tracks.

  “Hey you, you can’t leave this way. Go back through the station. Now get out!” a man shouted to him.

  Benjamin only saw his shape in outline, but he was certain the man was armed, and he was turning back several other people who had chanced to come the same way, so Benjamin went back, following the station platform.

  SERGEI TRIED to move toward where he had spotted his angel, but when he looked again, Benjamin was gone. He waited until the people moved off to their various concerns. As he stood alone on the platform, his hands jammed into the pockets of his heavy overcoat, he looked about him and saw a lone figure walking toward him from the far end of the platform.

  Just then Petr returned and touched him on the shoulder.

  “Well, Comrade, you and I have seen history in the making tonight. What do you think?” Petr beamed with pride.

  Sergei didn’t say anything. He just walked away.

  BENJAMIN STEPPED back up on the lighted platform, which was by now almost empty, except that ahead of him in his path he saw two men side by side, talking, with their backs to him. He was too far away to see their faces, but he saw one man put his arm around the other, and they walked away. He followed them into the dim light of the station; the shorter of the two men was talking and gesturing loudly.

  Benjamin was about twenty feet behind him, and the taller of the two turned his head slightly toward his companion. Benjamin’s heart suddenly began to beat faster. It couldn’t be, but it was—Sergei! He opened his mouth to shout Sergei’s name, but it was lost in the loud scream of escaping steam from a train engine, and an engineer moving a pile of bags on a cart stepped in front of him. Benjamin was distracted for a second, but that was all it took for him to lose sight of Sergei and his companion. When he saw them again, they were walking across the lobby toward the doors to the street.

  Benjamin ran to catch up, almost out of breath when he reached the street. He stood on the snow-covered, almost-empty sidewalk, looking to his left and right, but Sergei was nowhere in sight. Benjamin could only stand there, alone and frustrated. He moved on in search of the hotel according to the directions his mother had given him, but a policeman in a motorcar pulled up in front of him.

  “Hey you, there’s a curfew tonight, so unless you want to find yourself in prison, return to your home!” A second man in the car pointed his rifle toward Benjamin.

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to get shot,” Benjamin told the policeman, who, satisfied, drove away and stopped in front of another group of people on the corner.

  Benjamin returned to the hotel, and alone in his room, he stripped off the peasant clothing and threw it in a pile on the floor. The rest of the night he spent staring silently out the window onto the street below. He occasionally turned to look at the pile of clothing on the floor; the only good purpose they had served was to get him a front seat to the arrival of more soldiers in Petrograd, which would have probably meant more to Sergei than it did to him.

  Such thoughts clouded Benjamin’s brain until he lifted his eyes and saw the pinkish light of dawn on the horizon.

  A THIN jagged strip of sunlight filtered through the torn curtain and fell across Sergei’s face, waking him. He lay there and stared up at the stained ceiling. Petr sat in the chair this time, a bottle of vodka still clutched in his fingers, his head tilted back as he snored. Sergei got out of bed and splashed ice-cold water from a cracked basin on his face. He dressed quietly—not that Petr would wake up anyway—and went down to the dining room.

  Sergei sat at the only table left; the rest of the furniture had been sacrificed for firewood. The same manager brought Sergei tea and black bread, then pulled out a chair and sat with Sergei, watching him closely.

  “You look miserable. What’s the trouble?” The manager smiled through his heavy gray beard.

  Sergei didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to share with a stranger, but he had to talk to someone beside Petr. “Well, I just don’t know how to talk about it, or even if I want to,” he said softly.

  The waiter exhaled slowly. “The events of the past few days have us all troubled.”

  Sergei understood his meaning, but historic events didn’t get him down. It was trying to find his angel, Benjamin. He knew Benjamin might still be in Petrograd, and he even thought he’d seen him last night. He had gone to the Carters’ house and found nobody at home. He’d tried one or two of the hotels where foreign visitors stayed, but one look at Sergei in a disheveled, dirty uniform, and he wasn’t even allowed to cross the threshold.

  “I don’t know how to put it into words…. I have known you since I’ve been in residence at this hotel, and I should feel quite comfortable talking to you about it, but it’s a personal matter.”

  “Ah, love—is that what has you troubled? It’s a beautiful thing that someone can find love in the midst of this chaos, so what has you troubled, Comrade?” The older man laid his hands flat on the table, smoothing down the soiled cloth.

  Sergei knew the man sought some kind of answer, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. He did think about the day Benjamin’s mother told him that she knew and understood the relationship between Benjamin and Sergei. It was still surprising to Sergei; he had always thought that British women were prudish, but Hazel Carter was very supportive and easy to talk to. He was thinking about paying another visit to the house, when the waiter suddenly cleared his throat.

  Sergei apologized. “I’m sorry, I was thinking about something else.”

  “I understand. I was saying that you young men nowadays are afraid of taking chances. I have known you since those early days when you fought for Mother Russia, and now you sit here, nervous about going to the one you love.”

  “You’re very perceptive, sir.” Sergei wondered exactly how perceptive this old man was, but he never got a chance to find out; a voice called out to him from the door.

  “Comrade, there you are.”

  Petr walked over to the table, and the manager gave up his chair to him. He bowed and then left the room.

  “Well, Petr, what do you want?”

  “I woke up and you weren’t there.”

  “You’ve never come looking for me before. Don’t tell me you were lonely?”

  “Not lonely. I thought we would go to hear a speech this afternoon.”

  Sergei agreed, and he followed Petr across the city.

  A large crowd had gathered in front of the Bolshevik headquarters, Kshesinskaya Mansion, former home of an Imperial ballerina. Sergei had followed Petr there that morning because one of the leaders of the revolution was going to speak from a balcony above the street. Sergei pushed his way forward to get a better spot, and he felt Petr clutching at his coat as he moved forward.

  Chapter 14

  BENJAMIN, DRESSED in his military uniform, left the hotel and strolled down the Nevsky Prospekt toward the bridge that crossed the Neva to the factories whose smokestacks puffed gray smoke into the blue sky. He would have a better chance to find Sergei’s hotel in the daylight. However, crowds had crossed the bridge and blocked the way, halting him there. Curious, he asked an older couple what was happening, and they told him to follow them and led him to a large house surrounded by an iron fence and decorated with red flags fluttering in the cold wind. He asked people around him what this meant.

  “It’s Kerensky, a member of the state Duma. He’s going t
o speak soon,” someone said, pointing at the second-floor windows of a house.

  Benjamin didn’t see anyone yet, but from the excitement of the people, mostly workers and peasants with a scattering of military and others, the time for Kerensky’s appearance was close at hand. In order to get a closer look, Benjamin slowly moved toward a wrought-iron fence just below the window.

  Soon the french doors opened, and Kerensky stepped out. The crowd cheered, and he began to speak. Benjamin moved his way through the people to get a better look at the man his father had once told him about. He looked like a soldier, and when he talked, it was about continuing the war with Germany and his role in starting a provisional government. He didn’t say anything about Nicholas II. Benjamin listened for a while longer, and then he lowered his head and walked away.

  He walked across the bridge over the Neva River, and into the factory districts. It took him an hour to find the hotel on one of the many back alleys of Petrograd, but finally he stood out in front. The building was once white, but soot from countless years had turned the wooden facade gray, and even the windows looked lifeless. The door swung open on rusted hinges when Benjamin finally went inside.

  A thin man with wisps of white hair poking out from under a cap looked up from the table in the dining room. It looked to be the only furniture left that Benjamin could see, aside from the wood stove in the center of the room.

  The man greeted Benjamin when he stepped into the dining room. “Good day, sir. Can I help you?”

  “Yes, I’m looking for….”

  “A room sir? I’m afraid I don’t have any available to me. They’re all occupied.”

  “No, I’m looking for someone who is staying here.” Benjamin noticed the man was visibly relieved.

  “Who are you looking for?”