The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  “No! Paul . . . is this true?”

  “It is true,” Paul replied, almost evasively. It was clear to Anna that he wasn’t saying all he knew. But she also realized the futility of trying to get information from him that he was unwilling to give. “You must also know,” he went on, “the danger this implies to your employers.”

  “But surely, after all this time . . .”

  “Oh, Anna! Your naivete is both your greatest virtue and your greatest fault. Time does not heal all wounds, especially where a man like Anickin is concerned. His wounds have only festered and become all the more virulent and dangerous in the time that has passed. He is, I believe, consumed with a passion for revenge.”

  “How do you know all this, Paul?”

  “Do you not believe me?”

  “No, Pavushka, it’s not that.” Anna shook her head. She was naive. It was simply unimaginable for her to conceive of such destructive animosity.

  “Anna, I tell you the truth—this man means to harm, even to kill your mistress and her husband—”

  Anna could not keep from sucking in a breath of air at the shocking words, but Paul continued.

  “I am telling you this because . . .”

  He faltered momentarily. When he spoke again, his lips trembled slightly. “I tell you because you are my sister.”

  “Is . . . is there nothing to do?” said Anna, still in disbelief.

  “I suggest you warn Remizov.”

  “I will tell the princess,” Anna replied.

  “I . . . I may be able to keep somewhat apprised of his movements, and can possibly let you know should the danger become imminent. But I can promise nothing. They must take great care.”

  “If we knew where he was, perhaps the count could have him arrested now before there is worse danger.”

  “I don’t know how to find him. He too is a fugitive.”

  “He . . . too? What does that mean, Paul?” said Anna with fearful tone.

  Only then did Paul realize his error. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No questions, remember?”

  “Paul,” implored Anna, “you warn me of others’ danger, but what of your own? Do you not trust me, that you are so secretive?”

  “Trust, Anna? Trust has nothing to do with it.”

  “Then what does, Pavushka?”

  “Oh, Anna, you are so sheltered from the real world. My dear sister, don’t you even realize what you are saying? You call me Pavushka, but I am not that boy any longer. You don’t even realize that merely talking to me as you are now could land you, and perhaps our whole family, in a Siberian prison. I isolate myself because I must.”

  “But—”

  “There can be no argument. I am an exile without even leaving Russia—”

  At the word exile, Anna’s eyes involuntarily closed and a shudder coursed through her frame. One beloved exile was intolerable. Two, and she would break in half from sorrow!

  “This is how it must be,” Paul was saying, “how I have chosen it to be.”

  Anna drew in a deep breath and tried to compose herself. “These things you believe must be very important to you,” she said, “if you would forsake everything for them.”

  “They are,” he answered emphatically.

  “Then I appreciate all the more the risk you have taken to warn Princess Katrina and her husband.”

  “Please understand me, Anna. One aristocrat more or less means nothing to me. But because you are involved, I feel duty bound to speak to you.”

  Again Anna closed her eyes at the cruelty of his words. But only for an instant. She opened them again and did her best to say nothing that would offend him. “I understand, Paul . . . thank you.”

  But did she understand? No, how could she ever understand such a change in one she cared for! Oh, dear Paul . . . how hardened you have become! Yet I see the pain and sorrow in your eyes. There is still a deep vulnerability in you; all my heart can do is weep for you. You want to be loved just as I do, but you have closed your heart off to everyone! Why do you need to protect yourself with such a hard shell, when we—

  “I must go now,” said Paul abruptly, breaking into Anna’s thoughts. “We have already been together too long.”

  “When . . . When will . . . ?” Anna tried to form the question.

  “With the police stalking Anickin, he has plenty on his mind. I think your count and princess have time to prepare themselves.”

  “What should they do, Paul?”

  “The count is a Guard. Let him figure out best how to protect himself. Now listen to me, Anna. If I think you must act quickly, I will get a coded message to you. It will say, The harvest is ripe. If you hear that, you must be especially vigilant. Anickin will probably be on the loose and prowling around getting ready to make his move.”

  “I will look for it, but hope it never comes.”

  Paul turned to leave. But Anna caught his arm. “Wait, Paul . . . I almost forgot. This is for you.” She handed him the package she had been holding.

  He frowned. “What is it?”

  “Some spare things from the pantry—”

  “I need no aristocratic handouts!”

  Finally Anna’s sadness for Paul reached its limit. “Don’t be so stubborn!” she snapped. “You hardly look in the position to turn away a little food.”

  Their eyes met for a moment or two in a brief battle of wills. Anna’s frustration with Paul’s intractability, now that it had spilled over, put her immediately in the stronger position of older sister she had always occupied with him when he was younger. Neither would ever know to what extent she was prepared to stand up to him now, for it only took another second or two for the gnawing hunger in Paul’s stomach to make him give in.

  He reached out and took the parcel.

  “Thank you, Anna,” he said, not exactly with a smile, but at least with a serious look of gratitude.

  She smiled. Their hands touched as he laid hold of the parcel, and her fingers lingered on his for a brief moment.

  He turned to go once more, then paused again. He opened his mouth to speak, but it seemed to take a moment before he could master his rising emotions enough to utter the words that were trying to get out of his heart.

  “Anna,” he said, “how is . . . Papa?”

  “He is better, Paul,” she answered. “He needs to rest much more, but he has a helper who comes during the sowing and harvest.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Prince Fedorcenko has made it possible. After I was home a year and a half ago and the prince learned of Papa’s troubles, he said he wanted to do something for my father. So Papa had help last harvest.” Anna hoped her answer did not sound smug and would show Paul that not all the nobility were evil and selfish.

  Paul nodded. He seemed to have understood. “Thank you for telling me,” he said quietly, somehow implying without words that he knew he did not deserve her patience. “Goodbye, Anna.”

  “Godspeed, Paul!”

  No more was said. Anna desperately wanted to hug him. But Paul turned and hurried away. With tears in her eyes, Anna watched him go, wondering when, or if, she would ever see him again.

  43

  Paul dashed the back of his hand across his eyes as he hastily made his retreat from St. Andrew’s Church.

  The same thoughts that at the moment were in his sister’s mind were crossing his also. But he knew they’d both be better off if this were their last meeting.

  What he’d said about the police arresting her and the family because of his revolutionary activities was a real enough danger. He had spoken a true fear, and that was sufficient reason in itself for avoiding all future contact. He had known that very thing to happen to the innocent families of others.

  There was more than that, of course.

  It tore him apart every time he thought of, much less laid eyes on his sister. It stirred too many longings in him that were best forgotten. The warm security of being surrounded by a loving family was not to be hi
s lot in life. It was absurd to put himself through such torture.

  Thus he put as much distance as he could between him and Anna, and did so quickly, walking away from the church as if the devil himself were on his tail.

  He was panting freely by the time he reached Maly Prospect. His exhaustion came as much from lack of nourishment as from the swiftness of his pace. He continued on for a few more blocks, then stopped for a rest. He found a small courtyard between two dilapidated tenements, slipped inside, and sat down next to a pile of garbage. A rat scurried past, but he hardly noticed. He had long ago become accustomed to their inevitable presence.

  Paul tore open Anna’s bundle and silently applauded his concession in taking it. Inside, neatly wrapped, were a large loaf of stout brown bread, a rich hunk of cheese, and several plump red apples. He finished off half the contents in less than ten minutes. The rest he put in his pockets for later. He rose and started again on his way.

  He walked another hour or two, until well past dark. Roaming the city streets seemed to be his chief occupation of late. There was little else for a homeless fugitive to do. He could stop for a while here or there. But remaining too long in one place could get him arrested just as easily for vagrancy as sedition.

  Mostly he frequented back streets and poor neighborhoods where his presence would go unnoticed. He seldom went to the same place twice if he could help it, at least not on successive days, and never showed his face anywhere he had lived prior to the assassination.

  When he had first come to the city he lived just this sort of aimless, homeless existence. He had known so little then! Had it not been for Kazan, it was doubtless he would have survived at all that first winter. But now he knew the ropes, and it was a good thing. For his life depended on his experience in a far more profound way than it did back then. Then, cold and starvation were his only enemies. Now, there were a thousand enemy eyes that might be peering out of the dark, waiting to snatch him! He had to scrounge food, keep away frostbite, and watch out for all those unknown lurking eyes at the same time.

  Sometimes all the wariness in the world was not enough. And on that particular evening, Paul’s mind was cluttered with things other than his own safety. He had not been able to rid his heart and mind of his encounter with Anna.

  When he walked into the little tavern on the Eighteenth Line of Vassily Island, his thoughts were too preoccupied to remember that he had been there the day before with Basil, or to think that he had come this way and stopped in at this very place on too many occasions in the previous months. All he wanted was a strong glass of kvass, and this place had the best for the money.

  He ordered the glass, laid down his last few coins, and took not the slightest note of the peculiar glare in the proprietor’s eyes as he served him. Nor did he grasp the veiled and furtive attempts by the barmaid, who seemed to have taken a liking to him, to convey signals of warning.

  “That’s him!” cried the tavern owner.

  Glancing up almost distractedly, Paul suddenly realized that it was he himself the man was pointing to. It was too late! The gendarmes had already pushed their way into the tavern and were making their way toward him.

  They grabbed hold of Paul’s arms roughly, knocking over the kvass, and dragging him from his seat.

  “I knew he’d be back,” gloated the owner, “the way my bar girl was flirting with him the other day.”

  “What’s this all about?” said Paul.

  “You’ve been involved in secret meetings and passing out seditious literature—that’s what!” said one of the policemen.

  “That’s ridiculous!” protested Paul. Oddly, the lie sounded discordant in his mouth, no doubt because Anna was still so fresh in his mind.

  “Don’t believe him,” put in the owner. “I’ve seen him. He was here just yesterday with another of them, talking all hidden and quietlike.”

  “Come along peaceful if you know what’s good for you, you rotten scum. You’ll see what happens to murderers and traitors.”

  Suddenly, in the passage of just a minute or two of time, what Paul had feared for so long was upon him. The likelihood of capture had been a constant part of his existence for months, yet the reality came as a shocking, terrifying surprise.

  Later, as he sat in a cold, dark cell in some city gaol, he realized he would never be able to deliver another message to Anna.

  Basil Anickin was running loose, and there was no one to stop him.

  44

  They called it the journey of the dead.

  On the road outside Tiumen the snow had belatedly begun to give way to the pressures of spring, a season in these regions sometimes so short that it seemed to last but a few brief weeks. But winter’s ice and snow might have been preferable to trudging through the knee-deep sludge and mud.

  Or thus Paul had concluded as he lifted his kati one more time from the endless mire. The government-issued shoes were expected to last him for months of travel by foot; but it had been only a week since they were issued, and they were already beginning to pull apart at the seams. And the journey had only just begun.

  After his arrest he had spent some days in jail before his sentence—without benefit of a trial—was passed: two years of penal servitude, followed by life exile in Siberia. The sentence was less severe than for some political criminals, but no less than he expected.

  He was transported from the capital eastward, across the frigid, snowy Urals, and still farther eastward, ever eastward, to Tiumen. The prison had been such a hell that even under these conditions, Paul actually found himself glad to be starting out on the journey which would last weeks, if not months, before reaching his destination.

  A convict party of some four hundred prisoners had been organized to embark that week. Such parties set out almost at a weekly rate in any and all seasons of the year. They were given an allotment of several kopecks a day for provisions, and were expected to buy food from local peasants along the way. Noblemen sometimes received an extra kopeck or two. But no other distinction existed between prisoners, either by severity of crime or by sex or age. Women, children, political antagonists, and hardened murderers all traveled together. All wore drab convict gray uniforms, visorless caps, and long overcoats. Those destined for hard labor—as distinguished from the politicals—also wore two-kilo leg fetters and had half their heads shaven, both measures intended to discourage escape.

  Paul marveled that already the detail had organized itself into a kind of self-governing unit, quite hidden from the scrutiny of the captain in charge of the guard. The convict body, known as an artel, was headed by the strongest member of the party, in their case a huge murderer that none of the others would dare cross. He collected contributions that went by the droll name of dues. Everyone was expected to pay his share, and with the proceeds, he and his fellow leaders of the artel bribed guards, bought illicit tobacco, helped the sick, hired wagons on which they sold the right to ride, sometimes facilitated escapes, and occasionally—when they thought they could get away with it—lined their own pockets as well.

  The pathetic gathering looked like the poorest and most destitute assemblage of peasants that could have been gathered from throughout all Russia. Yet Paul knew that many of his fellow sojourners were men of culture and intellect who had lived lives of comfort and ease in Russia. Their only crime was political dissent—a crime that in Russia ranked among the worst.

  One man in particular caught Paul’s attention as they had readied to leave Tiumen. His leg fetters and partly shaven head immediately marked him as a hard-labor convict. Yet he had a look about him completely incongruent with such a designation. He was emotionally beaten, with a look of utter desolation in the vacant staring of his eyes. But in spite of it, he wore a quality of gentility that rags and filth could not hide. Paul wondered what heinous crime such a man could have committed to warrant irons bound to his legs. Probably the writing of a poem that sang the praises of freedom.

  Paul’s pensive observations of his fellow pr
isoners were cut short.

  “Gatova! . . . Ready!” cried one of the guards, and the convicts all began to form ranks.

  Following the prisoners came a procession of telega, small one-horse wagons on which the sick were to ride along with the privileged nobles. A cordon of Cossack guards on horseback hemmed in the entire procession along both sides, and the captain brought up the rear.

  When the diverse assembly was ready, the captain turned in the direction of the prison church, bowed, crossed himself, then gave the order to march. They would be expected to cover about thirty versts (approximately thirty kilometers, or twenty miles) a day, a difficult enough distance over primitive roads for a healthy man, but near torture for a malnourished prisoner in leg irons. Paul had not eaten a decent meal in weeks, but he was not chained and was able to manage well enough. Nevertheless, he was exhausted when the party took their first rest at noon after a grueling fifteen versts.

  At the rest stop the convict party was met by a dozen or so peasant women and girls selling food and refreshments. Paul bought a small jug of milk and loaf of black bread from a girl who looked like his little sister Vera. The resemblance was no doubt just a trick of his distraught mind, but it put him in a melancholy mood.

  He noticed the prisoner with the genteel bearing some thirty meters away. The young man, who appeared only a few years older than Paul, was sitting with his back up against a tree, too exhausted to care about the muddy earth under him. He had purchased no food, but had rather collapsed almost where he had halted.

  Paul walked toward him. “The girls will be leaving soon,” he said. “If you are too tired, I can buy you something.”

  The gentleman turned his head slowly, as if with effort, toward the intrusive voice. As he focused momentarily on Paul, something like interest, even the briefest hint of astonishment, seemed to flicker across his otherwise passive countenance. He rubbed his eyes, shook his head with disbelief, then glanced away again.