“Tell me. What about the trench gun? Will we be getting one? If so, when?”
“The first prototypes are at the front already. It’s an excellent gun, a magnificent gun. We are going into mass production now at Obukhov’s. I believe every regiment will have two of them by next spring. Incidentally, Andrei Ivanovich is also keeping a close eye on it.”
Andrei Ivanovich came over and sat where he could talk to them.
He hadn’t invited Obodovsky as a social gesture. What most of his guests had come for, the lecturer and the lady professor, was to return books or borrow others, which the ladies present wrapped up for them. That was Petersburg! Obodovsky he had invited to discuss business related to the Duma Defense Commission.
“Forgive me, Andrei Ivanovich, Dmitriev, the engineer, is in fact supposed to be ringing me tonight about the trench gun, and I took the liberty of giving him your number. Is that all right?”
“Of course, of course, Pyotr Aki …” The telephone rang at that moment. Vera blushed slightly. The call was for Andrei Ivanovich. As the receiver was passed to him, they heard the rather harsh tones of Pavel Nikolaevich no less. The room fell silent, straining to catch the drift.
Shingarev came back looking puzzled. Pavel Nikolaevich wanted him to go over at once, and bring Minervin, if he had not left yet.
Something had happened! Something had happened! Both leaders started getting ready, exchanging laconic remarks. The lecturer and the Kadet ladies were in a state of high excitement. The senior lady buttonholed Minervin to get what she could out of him.
“We’ll take a cab,” Minervin said.
Shingarev dismissed the idea. “A cab as far as Basseinaya costs three rubles now. We can get there on the tram.”
Andrei Ivanovich, always the polite host, asked the company not to leave, they might be back quite soon.
The activists of the People’s Freedom Party settled down to wait. This was interesting! Important! A rumor started by the older lady ran around the room: the traitor Protopopov had offered to meet the Duma leaders in private! They had to make a tactical decision. Should they meet him? Should they humiliate him by refusing? Should they put forward demands? Or just observe, just reconnoiter? Was he aiming to take over food supplies? Don’t let him! Or maybe he had been given a secret mission to recruit additional members to the government? Obviously a trick!
Vorotyntsev was aware that Protopopov was the latest new face at the Ministry of the Interior. But whom was he betraying, and why, and why was a meeting with him so important?
Shingarev was saying goodbye to Obodovsky. But Obodovsky would have to stay on and wait for the telephone call from his engineer.
Andozerskaya? Shingarev didn’t expect to see her when he got back. He shook hands and said goodbye.
Vorotyntsev reacted as if a piece had been torn out of his side. The party was breaking up. Andozerskaya would be leaving with the rest, and he hadn’t even …
He found himself holding Shingarev’s soft, warm hand. Looking at his honest untroubled brow, his friendly eyes. He hadn’t gotten anywhere with Shingarev either. There could have been discoveries to make with him. But they would not be seeing each other again.
Should he himself, and could he, stay any longer?
Andozerskaya meanwhile sat still, showed no sign of leaving—and her gaze was going nowhere either.
“Do you use illuminated shrapnel?”
“You mean Bengal lights on parachutes? I’ve seen them. They’re all right … But what we must try to do is reduce the use of shrapnel in favor of grenades.”
“We’re working on that. But don’t expect more howitzer power. You’ll have to make greater use of mountain artillery instead of howitzers.”
Andozerskaya still didn’t look the least bit bored. She sat beside them, a silent participant in their far from thrilling discussion, listening to both of them, looking attentively from one to the other, as though the specifications of the howitzer and official preferences for one weapon rather than another profoundly affected her. (Perhaps, though, academics were interested in everything?)
He was glad that she hadn’t moved away and showed no signs of leaving, that she was sitting beside him, watching him. It meant, though, that he ought to put an end to all this artillery talk. But how, without being impolite?
Some sort of influence crossed the bridge of that warm gaze. And part of himself flowed back in return.
He had not, of course, been set free. Nothing that had happened affected his regiment, his corps, his whole Army Group in the slightest.
In three weeks he would be back wallowing in the same old mud, and death, which had spared him so long, would soon perhaps catch up with him. He had not been set free, but with this woman beside him his burden seemed lighter from one moment to the next. The dark picture he had painted seemed more and more remote.
So the artillery talk, with the greenish eyes sparkling, took on a delightful tinge. He had no wish at all to rise and interrupt it.
Obodovsky’s wife, half hidden behind her husband, listening to their conversation, in which there was nothing to smile at, sat silently, dreamily content, almost smiling. Not wishing to be noticed, or even to speak.
Vera was there too, and the others were somewhere around. Whenever his dear, understanding little sister looked at him she was smiling—but was there a trace of anxiety there? Perhaps it was time to go? A bit awkward staying behind in his host’s absence? He couldn’t spare it much thought.
And anyway he hadn’t the strength to rise.
His conversation with Obodovsky had covered all the main points and was flagging.
If only out of respect for Andozerskaya (snugly accoutred in her English two-piece and caught in the middle of their discussion) he must make an effort to change the subject.
“And how does the Allis-Chalmers tractor perform on those roads?”
Quick to spot this first sign that their conversation was wilting, Professor Andozerskaya broke in with the gentle firmness of a keel cleaving the water.
“Pyotr Akimovich, please don’t think my questions impertinent but”—with an apologetic moue—"like you I have my own strictly defined special subject. We are, after all, more accustomed to seeing revolutionaries as destroyers, so a revolutionary who is also a creator is bound to attract attention. Please don’t refuse to tell me: how do your present activities relate to the beliefs of your previous party?”
“Party?” Obodovsky turned sharply, with a slight frown under his bristling grayish hair, and looked at Andozerskaya with his faded pale blue eyes as though she had only just sat down there. This switch, not just of his active chin but of his thoughts through sector after sector after sector, pinned him as if by centrifugal force to the sloping back of his chair, and it took him some time to answer.
“As I said before, I have never been a member of any party. All political parties muzzle the individual.”
Andozerskaya wanted it spelled out. “You mean because it implies coercion?”
“Exactly.” Obodovsky, exhausted yet energetic, blinked. It was as though he had snatched a rest for half a blink and had no need for any more. His eyes looked less tired. “I’m a socialist by conviction, but an independent socialist. In 1905, I—remember Nusya?—if we wanted to insult somebody, we called him a Social Democrat; for us in Irkutsk, it was a term of abuse.”
Room had been made for Nusya Obodovskaya and she slipped easily from her state of dreamy contentment into an explanation. “Some of them were such ruffians, they behaved so high-handedly … They brought their own tactics into disrepute. So although we ourselves were ready at the time to fight at the barricades and die under rifle fire …”
Nusya? On the barricades? This gentle, self-effacing person? It defied imagination.
But, yes, it had almost come to that in Irkutsk. Intellectuals and army officers paraded through the streets cheek by jowl, singing the “Marseillaise” and “Dubinushka.” The railwaymen were on strike, the general public co
uld not buy tickets, only soldiers could use the trains: they were stronger than the strikers, and could take a recalcitrant station apart in fifteen minutes. Obodovsky, stranded at a mine beyond Lake Baikal, escaped in a freight car, talking politics to the railwaymen and giving lectures on socialism throughout the journey. Irkutsk was storm-tossed by rallies and political meetings. And Obodovsky with his practical good sense, his intelligence, and his stamina, quickly and easily came to the fore. He, who had previously known no way of life other than that of a miner, found himself propelled in those mad weeks into one unfamiliar position after another—delegate, deputy, representative, elector, member of this, that, and the other bureau, president of the local Engineers’ Union, member of some secretariat or other, and finally of the Irkutsk Executive Committee no less.
What could be more enjoyable than this state of relaxation? Of being safe, with your duty done. Suddenly ceasing to feel like a shell in flight. Just sitting there, not even asking questions. May I smoke? Permission given. Light up. Pretending to listen to the Obodovskys. Really just studying and being studied by Andozerskaya. No need to catch her eye.
She, however, could manage that, and keep her eye on the target, refusing to be distracted by Irkutsk reminiscences.
“But hating violence as you do, you must hate all forms of military service.”
“Of course,” Obodovsky agreed. “Military service, and the army as such! I’ve done a bit of soldiering myself. When you put on a uniform your heart starts beating to a different rhythm. Stand at attention whenever you see a general, salute every officer, don’t absent yourself without permission, any thinking to be done they’ll do for you. You’re afraid of humiliation, of reprimand, you become so uptight that your nerve snaps. My one salvation was that I dug up a regulation nobody knew about—that on promotion to ensign you can resign the next day if you feel like it. So I did just that!”
He laughed, with relief, although it was so long ago, before his emigration, before the revolution. He had spared his too sensitive nerves the ordeal of army life. Besides, he hated military service on principle as a form of coercion. But, also in Irkutsk, you couldn’t if you were honest help admiring General Lastochkin.
… Two companies had remained loyal to him. The rest of the garrison had mutinied and moved in to attack these loyalists. A red-hot revolutionary mob of armed soldiers, officers and all! Lastochkin went out onto the porch without guards. “Shoot, then, I’m your man! Surrender? I can’t! My oath and my honor won’t let me!” And what did the garrison do? The garrison followed his example. The garrison cheered their commander and marched off in perfect order.
“Every inch a soldier!” Andozerskaya shook her head admiringly, visualizing Lastochkin, but sparing a glance for Vorotyntsev beside her.
He was feeling more at ease and happier all the time. Had he really been holding forth about the hopelessness of everything just half an hour ago?
Vera, apparently somewhat uneasy, kept coming close and moving away again. He refused to take the hint. She had, after all, talked him into coming …
He was glued to the spot.
Olda Orestovna wanted to press her point, but Obodovsky was ahead of her.
“You’re going to say that anyone who hates military service ought to be consistent and reject war?”
Professorial scholastic logic. Must be a boring lecturer. The contradiction she was trying to draw him into was transparent, childishly obvious, to Obodovsky.
“In principle I do reject war.”
“Then how can you run the Military-Technical Aid Subcommittee?”
He laughed. Then suddenly, impulsively, with long-pent-up passion, he said, “It’s true! The army—I hate it. But when everybody gets into a funk and runs away my sympathies are with garrison commander Lastochkin! I’m against violence, yes! Against all violence, all initial violence! I’m not a ‘nonresister of evil’—I’m against it! If violence is used, how can you reply, except with force?” A nervous light flickered in his eyes. “Not to defend yourself is just spineless.”
Good man! Vorotyntsev looked at him admiringly.
His wife took over, sailed in unhesitatingly: “No, sir and madam! He was never a defeatist! He was desperate to get into the Japanese war. When the Petropavlovsk was sunk he wore a black armband, said he wouldn’t take it off till we won. Didn’t you, Petya dear? The surrender of Port Arthur made him ill, he couldn’t eat or drink.” She touched her husband’s hand compassionately. “But after Tsushima, and when the timber concessions came to light … he still wanted peace, but not defeat … For this war he even bought a uniform, and was going to volunteer, but Guchkov dissuaded him.”
Obodovsky wrinkled his brow and looked hard at the company. Where did they see a contradiction?
“Just because I love my country am I supposed to love its army? Do I have to be an enthusiast for violence in order to defend my country? I can’t stand being beaten! That’s natural enough, isn’t it? And whoever beats Russia, beats me. And I’m not going to let myself be beaten, with or without her!”
But who was arguing?
Vorotyntsev? These protestations were not meant for him. Vorotyntsev sat quietly smoking, looking around, listening. Whatever needed to be said that nice clever woman would say it. Or Obodovsky would.
Andozerskaya? She had been arguing like an academic, but was now talking rather loosely. She was probably not used to giving way, probably always clung on, so she had to find some non sequitur. Half smiling, fluttering her eyelashes, she said, “So you must feel very strongly about the enemy?”
She looked at Vorotyntsev for support.
He was at a loss for words. Feel strongly?
Obodovsky nodded vigorously. “Yes. Hatred!”
Vorotyntsev had caught up. Hatred? He thought a moment. “Strange. All the time I’ve been fighting I’ve never felt any hatred for the Germans.”
It was the engineer’s turn to wrinkle his brow. How was this possible?
How indeed? Vorotyntsev himself didn’t know. But it was true. True of the common soldier too.
“None, none at all, I remember that it was the same with the Japanese. Fighting meant defending Russia. Fighting was just like following a skilled trade. But hate them? … I suspect that among German officers … it’s the same …”
Yes, but … Nusya Obodovskaya reminded him of the Russian wounded shot in the village occupied and burned by the Germans.
Yes, right. He was contradicting himself. Or was he? The heart in tatters. The heat of battle. Hatred? Yes! But for our own superiors, for those whose stupidity had caused us to surrender the village. The enemy … seen in the light of the flames … was like some elemental force—so many phantoms from hell … You can only hate live people, real people.
He realized that he must not waste this evening. He must say something special to Olda Orestovna. Leave some mark, like a cherished scar. But he hadn’t found the right moment. He mustn’t strike a false note. And how would she take it?
Vera joined them, and remained standing, behind the Obodovskys.
The discussion petered out. Children’s voices could be heard from the other room. The Kadet activists were also in the other room. There was a rattle of crockery in the kitchen. Peace, perfect peace. No shell bursts, no rifle fire, no booby traps, no mines.
His sister’s eyes seemed troubled, newly observant. He looked away.
[24]
Now that she was nearly forty, and indeed by the time she was thirty, Nina Obodovskaya had learned not to expect admiration. She no longer needed to attract attention or to look for even the slightest bit of personal success. She had accepted long ago that her marriage was her fate and, having accepted it, never felt the slightest regret. She was welded to her husband’s destiny, and that was good and as it should be. There was always work, the cause, and struggle. There was not the least little opening for anything else. When her husband had suggested today that they should take a little walk—not very far, wouldn’t take long
—from Syezhinskaya Street to Monetnaya, that part of the protracted visit that could be called socializing seemed to Nusya an extraordinary holiday.
Nina Aleksandrovna was born Bobrishcheva-Pushkina, and had been present as a girl at the young Tsar’s coronation. She had cheered the Tsar’s dazzling entry in procession into Moscow. She had stood, in a court dress with a train, bare shoulders, and a tall Russian headdress, at a levee in the great Kremlin Palace; and had first felt herself to be an adult at a ball given by the Moscow gentry in honor of the new Tsar. In those days she was an ardent student of the genealogy, antiquities, and traditions of her class (although, true to what we learn from Russian novels, she also distributed medicines, tea and sugar, and white bread to peasant homes, and was godmother to many peasant children). She was remarkably beautiful, worshipped a number of heartthrobs in rapid succession, and was, to begin with, not attracted to but rather annoyed by the implacable criticism of the seamstress’s son who somehow turned up in their house, an ugly, supercilious, jumpy young man, a provincial student of mining engineering who gave lessons to support himself and had once fainted from hunger on the Nikolaevsky Bridge, Even when he shut himself up with a young lady in a dark cupboard to carry out some electrical experiment his principles would not allow him to touch her hand unnecessarily.
At seventeen you are so susceptible and so fickle that it is hard to know when you are really in love! But our decisions mature without us knowing, and Nina, making the choice which a girl can make only once, chose to share Pyotr Obodovsky’s reckless and unrewarding lot; since then she had seen no more of society balls, or indeed of Petersburg, or for that matter of Russia, but, instead, dim cottage gatherings of mining engineers and managers, eager to outdo each other in the supply of meat pies and vodka, or frugal amateur concerts for émigrés, paid for from mutual aid funds.
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