by Glenn Meade
“I’m glad to see you.”
“We had some good and bad times serving together, us three.” He nodded to Yakov’s flask. “Seeing as this is a reunion, I won’t say no to some sunshine.”
Yakov handed him the flask. “Any excuse.”
Zoba grinned, swallowed a mouthful. “There are places in the world a man can die of thirst. In Russia, you’re born with one.”
Yakov said, “I have another surprise, Uri. Come here, little brother.” He beckoned to the other guard, a fair-haired, shy-looking youth who barely looked in his teens, his uniform at least a size too big for him. The young man stepped over and removed his fur hood. “Hello, Uri.”
Andrev beamed, his pleasure obvious. “Stanislas …”
The youth said proudly, “I joined the Red Guards, Uri. I’m a soldier now.”
“You can’t be, you’re not old enough.”
“I’m almost seventeen, old enough to carry a rifle for Comrade Lenin.”
Andrev said with genuine affection, “What’s the world coming to when boys start taking up arms? Come here.” He grasped the youth’s hand warmly and hugged him. “The last time I saw you was at my father’s funeral. You looked as if you were still playing with toys. Now look at you.”
Stanislas brandished his rifle. “This has replaced my toys, Uri. All my friends have joined the revolution. Lenin’s our God now. Tell him why we’re here, Leonid.”
Yakov slapped a hand on his brother’s hair and ruffled it. “You talk too much, Stanislas. You and Zoba go find something to eat. It’ll give Uri and me a chance to catch up.”
“I hope you get well soon, Uri.”
Andrev fondly gripped both their hands and then Stanislas and Zoba left. When they closed the door, Andrev’s face was sober. “How could you let Stanislas join the army, Leonid? We’ve both seen the horrors of war.”
Yakov sat and took a swig from the flask. “I couldn’t change his mind. He’s like me, impetuous and headstrong.”
“Don’t let him serve, I beg you.”
“I know Stanislas has always been like a kid brother to you. Don’t worry, it’s why I had him transferred to my unit, to have him under my wing. I’ll keep him out of harm’s way. Here, drink some more.”
“Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“Vodka is all there is to numb your pain, I’m afraid. We ran out of chloroform. Drink, it’ll help you forget that we’re on different sides.”
Andrev swallowed a few gulps of the scorching liquid and coughed.
Yakov smiled. “It’s the best Siberian vodka, a hundred proof. Here, they use it to fuel storm lamps. The lamp stays alight even in the worst blizzard. The trouble is putting the lamp out afterward.”
“Are you trying to kill me?”
Yakov’s smile faded and he picked up a damp cloth, dabbed sweat from Andrev’s brow. “The sergeant, Mersk, said you were troublesome. He looks like a nasty piece of work.”
“Mersk despises everyone. He claims escape from here is impossible.”
Yakov shook his head with amusement. “So you decided to give him a run for his money? You always did like a challenge, Uri. Live dangerously, carefully, was always your motto. Remember when we broke out from the German prison camp?”
“I made you trudge for three nights without sleep through heavy snow.”
Yakov nodded. “As if that wasn’t bad enough, you made me sing those rowdy Cossack marching songs we knew in childhood, just to help me stay awake. You kept me alive, Uri.” Yakov added, “By the way, the drunken idiot who calls himself the camp medic tells me that the bullet went clean through flesh. I’ve dressed it as best I could and used vodka to clean it. But I think your shoulder’s dislocated.”
Andrev stared at Yakov’s black leather coat, a Communist Party badge on his lapel. “Since when did you start working for the secret police, Leonid?”
“I was appointed to the Cheka by Comrade Lenin with the rank of commissar.”
“I’m impressed. You never said what you’re doing here.”
Yakov avoided the question. “Let me take a look at your arm.” He examined the limb. “It’s definitely dislocated. I’d keep the orderly away, he’d probably make things worse.”
Andrev winced. His brow felt feverish, his shoulder scorching with pain. “Set the bone for me.”
“You trust me?”
“You saw my father set enough bones in his day.”
“True.” Yakov tightly twisted the cloth and thrust it at Andrev’s mouth. “Here, bite on this and roll onto your good side.”
Sweat beaded Andrev’s face as he clenched the cloth between his teeth and rolled onto his right side.
“Bite hard, dear friend.” Yakov gingerly felt the injured arm, probing for the bone’s joint. When he found it he shifted all of his weight onto Andrev’s shoulder, grunted and pushed hard.
The bone snapped into place with a sharp crack.
A surge of pain detonated through Andrev’s body, and then his eyes rose to the ceiling and he passed out.
Yakov crossed to a sink in the corner, grabbed a zinc bucket, and filled it with icy water. He took the cloth from Andrev’s limp mouth, drenched the towel in the chilled water, and slapped it onto his face. Andrev came awake, sputtering, his eyes filled with pain. “That hurt, darn you.”
“With luck, you’ll still be able to play the accordion.” Yakov winked and tore the filthy sheet from the rope, all that offered them a curtain of privacy. It exposed them to the patients in the other beds, a half-dozen skeletal-looking prisoners, ill and unshaven. They stared over at the black Cheka uniform. Yakov barked, “What do you think you’re looking at?”
The fearful patients looked away. Yakov ripped up the sheet to make a crude sling and draped it around Andrev’s neck and under his arm. “It’ll have to do for now.”
“The train I saw is yours?”
“It’s how I travel now, on Lenin’s orders. People say I’m his right-hand man. Would you believe it? Me, entrusted by Lenin himself.”
“To do what?”
“Hunt down and shoot enemy agents and spies, speculators, and counter-revolutionaries, and anyone who challenges Lenin’s authority.” Yakov picked up two worn gray blankets from an empty bed nearby and placed them around Andrev. “That should keep the heat in.”
“What are you doing in a prison camp miles from anywhere? This can’t be just a coincidence, Leonid.”
Near the door was a dented wheelchair with a square of rough-hewn wood for a seat and two wheels with rusted spokes. Yakov’s face was solemn as he crossed the room and pushed the wheelchair over to Andrev’s bed.
“Do you feel up to talking? It’s cold outside on the veranda, I know, but at least it’s private.”
“What’s bothering you, Leonid?”
Yakov removed an envelope from his pocket, snapped open a page from inside. The document was authorized at the bottom with an official-looking red-inked stamp and a scrawl. He lowered his voice. “I’ve been given an order by Lenin that concerns you, Uri.”
“What order?”
Yakov handed him the page. “It’s for your immediate execution.”
8
Yakov pushed the wheelchair onto the veranda. He sat on the edge of the wooden rail and took a dented metal cigarette case from his coat pocket. “Smoke?”
Andrev silently accepted a cigarette.
Yakov lit them both. He tossed the match in the snow with a faint hiss. They sat in the silence a long time, smoking, their breaths cloudy as they stared out at the camp’s ragged jumble of watchtowers, rusting barbed wire, and wooden huts. Wisps of wood smoke smoldered from chimneys; guards marched past with clusters of frail, exhausted prisoners, some in prison garb, others in tattered military uniforms of the tsar’s army.
Andrev scratched his stubble and said finally, “Am I permitted to know why I’m being executed? Or do you Reds need reasons these days?”
Yakov blew on the hot tip of his cigarette and stared out at t
he camp, all around them a wilderness of snow. “A White army battalion is only twenty-five miles away near Perm. They could liberate the prisoners to fight another day. Lenin sees army officers of your caliber as a threat if you’re liberated.”
“No trial, no military tribunal, just a firing squad. Is that it?”
“You Whites show no mercy to our men, either, Uri. This war is savage.”
“Will Lenin execute the tsar as well?”
“He and his family are under house arrest, but their day will come, too.”
“You’ll kill all of them? The entire family?”
Yakov said, “It’s inevitable. The party wants to be certain the Romanov bloodline can never hold power again.”
“So, you Bolsheviks are even killing children now?”
“Sometimes unpleasant things are necessary for the common good. But it’s no more brutal than the behavior of the tsar’s secret police in their day.”
“You know I despised that kind of thing. I was no blind lover of the tsar.”
“Yet you fought for him.”
“I was a serving officer. But take my word, your Bolsheviks will destroy this country.”
Yakov’s face twitched as he removed a photograph from his tunic pocket. “I found this among your clothes. You’ll want it back.”
Yakov handed over the photograph. Andrev tossed away his cigarette and eagerly clutched the picture of a woman and a young child.
Yakov said quietly, “Nina seems well. And little Sergey looks like you. Family is important to a man.”
Andrev looked up from the photograph, as if trying to fight his emotions. “You never remarried?”
Yakov flung away his unfinished cigarette, glanced out at the thick forest that rolled in all directions, and smiled. “An ugly sod like me? What woman would have me? Besides, the party is my mistress.”
“And your daughter?”
“Six next birthday, would you believe? The day we stormed the Winter Palace, her mother was one of the first to perish.”
“I heard. I’m sorry.”
“We all have our crosses. Since then, Zoba’s wife helps to look after her.”
Andrev studied the photograph of his wife and son and his eyes moistened.
Yakov said quietly, “Answer me a question, Uri?”
Andrev stared back, as if he had trouble holding himself together. “What?”
“If I asked you what would make you happy, what would it be?”
“I think you already know my answer.” Andrev looked past the camp, to where the thick woods faded like phantoms. “That I could be with my wife and son again. That I was a free man. That I could wake up every morning next to them, in a place full of hope and not despair.”
“What else?”
“Isn’t that enough? What was it Chekhov once said? ‘We live for love, and for hope and dreams, and for the small things that please us and for little else.’ It would be pleasant too if the snow was gone and it was spring again.”
Yakov’s lips creased. “You’re still a romantic, Uri. No doubt you still read poetry. You haven’t changed.”
Andrev met his stare. “But you have, Leonid. This revolution of yours is a misguided experiment that won’t last. It’s taken a brutal turn.”
“Tell me what revolution hasn’t shed blood.”
“Lenin promised freedom and liberty, and yet I and countless others are in chains. He swore he’d rid this country of the secret police, yet he creates his own. That isn’t a man I can trust. All he craves is power.”
“What’s your point?”
“People will soon realize that it’s all one huge, bloodthirsty mistake. You Reds will kill more innocent people than all the centuries of tsars put together.”
Yakov shook his head fiercely, and his face flushed. “On the contrary, I believe that this will be Russia’s finest hour.”
“Then we must differ, Leonid. A man believes what he wants to believe.”
Yakov’s smile faded.
Andrev clutched the photograph, his voice thick with emotion. “Sergey is three. Yet I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my son since the war began.”
Yakov softened, put a hand on Andrev’s arm. “This battle’s been hard on all of us. But what if I told you that you could have all those things you want? What if I told you that you could walk out of this camp a free man? Be with your wife and son and start your life afresh?”
“I’d say that you’ve been drinking too much.”
Yakov said, “I didn’t just come here to deliver your death sentence. You and I, we’ve long been like brothers. We served in the same trenches. My loyalty to you is as strong as ever even though we’ve chosen different sides in this war. It’s a war that has turned the best of friends into the bitterest of enemies, but I refuse to let it do that to us.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Leonid?”
“The moment I learned that you were to be executed I went to Lenin. I told him how proud I was to have served with you. I told him how your father was a man of the people, a good doctor who never took a penny from his patients who couldn’t afford it.”
“Leonid …”
“I know, I’m impetuous, but hear me out. Your father was one of the finest men I’ve ever known. He fed my family, made sure Stanislas and I had proper schooling. He fought hard to save my mother until the TB took her, and then he cared for us like his own after she died. I told Lenin I owed you my life and I begged for yours in return.”
“What are you saying?”
“That I came here to offer you your freedom. Lenin agreed to pardon you from execution. But on one condition.”
“What?”
“That I convince you to join the Bolshevik cause.”
“Join the Reds? Are you insane, Leonid?”
“You don’t have to do it with a passionate heart. Pretend if you must. You can be one of my staff. I simply want you to survive. Others have changed sides. Surely you can agree if it means saving your life and that you can be with your wife and son again.”
“What about my men?”
A flurry of icy wind blew snow across the compound. Yakov pulled up his coat collar and shook his head. “I was ordered to force-march the prisoners to another camp, two days’ walk away. There’s nothing I can do for them.”
“But for heaven’s sake, Leonid, they only have the rags on their backs. They’d never survive the march in this weather.”
“I believe that’s the idea. Bullets cost money, shoe leather is cheap. Comrade Lenin insists his orders are to be obeyed. He ordered that this camp be burned to the ground when we leave.”
Andrev considered. “How did you learn I was to be executed?”
“Nina heard that your lines were overrun near Perm and you and your men were captured. She could find out nothing from the authorities so she made contact with me. When I inquired, I learned about the execution order. Then I went to see Lenin.”
Andrev fought his emotions. “How is Nina? And Sergey?”
“Things are not easy for them, naturally, with this war. But your wife and son are surviving. I’ll try to help them, with food, or whatever I can.”
“I’m grateful.” Andrev fell silent for a time. When he spoke again, anguish braided his voice. “How can I turn my back on my men, Leonid? How? They’ve fought alongside me for years. It’s not just my uniform I’d betray, it’s my own honor.”
Yakov grimly tugged on his cap, leaned close into Andrev’s face, his hand on his shoulder. “I know you’re a principled man. I know you’re loyal. But please, this time you must think of yourself. Think of your family, I beg you, Uri.”
“How long have I got?”
“You’re to be executed at dawn.”
9
SIBERIA
Andrev sat on the bed, snow falling beyond the window. He stared at the photograph of his wife and son that lay on his sackcloth pillow.
Not a day passed when he didn’t recall when it was tak
en. He was home on leave one summer and he and Nina took Sergey on the train to Neva beach, outside St. Petersburg. Sergey was a year old and fascinated by the sound of the train’s whistle, and every time Andrev mimicked the noise his infant son broke into a fit of giggling.
It was the same day Sergey took his first faltering steps in the sand and collapsed on his bottom, a huge smile of triumph on his face. Nina was so overjoyed that the three of them danced together in the sand. Later on the promenade, they bought ice cream and some stuck on Sergey’s nose, which made him laugh, and they had a beach photographer take their snapshot.
It was a happy time.
He and Nina had married a year after he completed his cadetship in the St. Petersburg Military Academy. For him, marrying Nina seemed a natural progression after knowing her since childhood. She always seemed to him like a child in a woman’s body. He couldn’t help but feel protective of her.
Once he was promoted to first lieutenant he became entitled to a small but comfortable redbrick house in the officers’ quarters of his barracks. After two miscarriages, Nina gave birth to Sergey three years later.
A blond-haired boy who had his mother’s good looks, he came two months premature. For a time it didn’t seem as if he would live, his lungs underdeveloped, but by some miracle he managed to cling to life and thrive.
Fatherhood came easy to Andrev and often while Sergey slept he would stand over his cot and watch him breathing, awed by the powerful bond nature forged between him and his son. But within a month the war came. It was followed by revolution, and the world was turned upside down. The tsar abdicated, the Reds seized power, and Russia was thrown into a bloody turmoil.
The war against Germany had gone badly and hundreds of thousands of Russia’s best young men were slaughtered by better-equipped German forces.
The tsar’s army split almost down the middle, one half supporting the Whites loyal to the former tsar, the other half siding with the various socialist splinter groups that sprouted all over Russia. One of those minority parties, the Bolsheviks—or Reds—led by Lenin, cunningly chose their moment to seize power and Russia became locked in a civil war. Lenin held Moscow but the rest of the country dissolved into chaos as the White armies and the Reds embarked on a savage guerrilla war.