Berezovo

by A J Allen

  Why do I always do this? Trotsky asked himself as he climbed the ladder into the attic. It is always the same pattern. Driven by luck and my own opportunism, I find myself in an advantageous situation with people wanting to like me and depending on me for leadership. Then, inevitably, I make a mess of things and end up with nothing except a crowd of disappointed friends who have been hurt by my actions. Why is it, since I know the lesson so well, that I don’t learn from it?

  Sitting disconsolately on the musty matted straw on the floor he admitted to himself that it seemed, at that precise moment, that his life had been a catalogue of successive failures. First there was his own family: Momma, Poppa, Alexander and all the rest of them on the farm, where it had all started. Even as a child he had gone one step too far; carried a joke on for too long; had become overexcited and tiresome. How many people had that hurt? A half dozen perhaps, no more. Then there had been the Spentzers, where he had boarded during his stay at the Realschule… Yes, he could count them; after all, they were still “family”. There had been no need to steal the father’s books and sell them, yet he had done so. Then he had gone to another family, then onto Shvigorsky’s garden. The pattern repeated itself until finally he had become leader of the Union, only to be responsible for its collapse and the arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of their supporters.

  What came next? Ah yes, he thought sourly: my marriage. What a mess I made of that! A complete catastrophe. Poppa was against it from the start, and no wonder. A wife condemned to ten years’ exile with two children, one still a babe in arms and no financial support – was this a son’s achievement he could be proud of? And now I’ve left Natalya with Baby Lev. First tragedy and then farce.

  Again and again, he reflected, the cycle had repeated itself; the only difference was that as he had grown older, the damage he had inflicted had grown more grievous. The long climb to Iskra and international recognition. What had that led to but his part in the ruinous Second Congress, the whole Movement being riven from top to bottom into the “majority” and the “minority”? He felt sure that he could have stopped the split if he only had spoken up more effectively. Then Geneva, and after Geneva, the outbreak of the revolution in Petersburg, his taking over of the leadership of the Petersburg Soviet, leading inevitably to hundreds, possibly even thousands of arrests, and no one knew how many deaths and sentences of permanent exile? His final grandiloquent speech in court had nearly done for all of them. It was no wonder that some of the Deputies hated him.

  He looked around the gloomy loft. From below he heard the sound of the soldiers’ voices rising in debate.

  Are they talking about me? If the Faction took control of the escort guard, how many of the deputies would come to my assistance if I was attacked?

  He thought of his baby son. Was it possible that Lev would inherit his own character flaws? What a dreadful patrimony to pass on!

  At least the boy has been given his mother’s family name. What sort of rootless childhood could I offer young Lev Sedov? He is better off being cared for by Natalya’s father. What example could I possibly set? I, who have never listened to my own father but have wilfully pursued my own desires, regardless of my parents’ distress and the consequence to others? If Baby Lev followed my example he would neither prosper nor find contentment. My daughters, Zina and Nina – they have been lucky to have Alexandra for a mother. And they are girls; sooner or later they will become someone else’s responsibility. But a son – that is different. With a boy one has to take more care. The strain of unreliability and my propensity for over-reaching and for calamitous folly – that should not be passed down the generations. If… when… I return to the world I will have to take up the more settled occupation of journalism; a trade that I can teach the boy…

  When he returned. If he returned… Another thought came to him. Now that the Reaction had begun, the Revolution had become both too dangerous and too ephemeral…

  The sudden sound of rising voices below made him start. Downstairs, people were shouting in alarm. Without thinking, he began walking towards the top of the ladder but a child’s startled scream amid the shouting made him stop.

  The Faction! he thought. The attack has begun.

  A fight had broken out in the room below. He stood for a moment, listening as the noises grew uglier and more frightening; uncertain as to what his next action should be. Then, cautiously, he edged towards the opening in the floor and looked down.

  All was confusion. In one corner of the room, the corporal and a few of his cronies were punching and kicking somebody. A few of the Deputies were trying to pull them off; amongst these he spotted the Doctor, whose spectacles had been knocked off and hung comically from one ear. The Deputies’ efforts were being hampered by the sergeant and the other members of the guard, some of whom seemed undecided which side to take; first pushing the Deputies off then plucking ineffectively at the flailing arms of the troops, trying to stop their violence. The drivers of the sleighs were standing apart along the far wall, keeping their distance from the struggle. As he watched, he saw the sergeant step back from the melee and reach for his rifle. Instinctively, Trotsky ducked back and rolled away from the edge of the hole. A single shot rang out. Less than two feet away from where he lay a floorboard bucked and a fine shower of dust rained down from the roof above him. The sergeant had fired into the air. There were a few cries of alarm then a moment’s silence.

  Not daring to breathe, Trotsky heard the sergeant order Dr. Feit back into the Deputies’ room and then tell the corporal to release his victim. The corporal started to argue, and stopped. There was a tense silence and the unmistakeable sound of another round being fed into the breech of what he fervently hoped was the sergeant’s rifle. The command was repeated. There was the sound of a scuffle, a body falling to the ground and then silence again. Very slowly, Trotsky raised his head and looked over the lip of the opening.

  The sergeant and the corporal were standing in the middle of the room, facing each other. Between them on the floor was the Faction’s chosen victim. The sergeant’s rifle was pointing squarely at the corporal’s chest. With the slightest twitch of the muzzle, the sergeant motioned the other soldier to back away. White faced, the corporal obeyed. Still keeping his rifle trained on his opponent, the sergeant slowly knelt down on one knee and reached out to the old man lying at his feet. Grasping a handful of grey hair, he rose again, pulling his prisoner with him. As the man’s battered and bleeding face was slowly turned painfully upwards, Trotsky realised with surprise that he had never seen the old man before. Whoever he was, he wasn’t a member of the convoy.

  Still holding the man by the hair, the sergeant told the other soldiers to sit down on the floor. They all obeyed, the corporal defiantly waiting until last. Swinging the muzzle of the rifle round, the sergeant dug it in the side of the man’s throat, at the same time letting go of his hair. In this fashion the stranger was propelled towards the wall furthest from the company.

  “Passport!” snapped the sergeant.

  Badly shaken by the mauling he had received, the old man was clumsy in his movements. It seemed an age before he could produce his tattered papers. Snatching them from him, the sergeant pressed him back against the wall and, holding the passport out at arms’ length, began to read aloud.

  “Ziborov, Ivan Vasileyivich. Aged forty-six. Born: Pokrovokaya. Place of residence: Belogoryia. Occupation: farm machinist. Status:…”

  He paused and bared his teeth in a savage grin.

  “Status,” he repeated louder, “administrative exile!”

  On the other side of the room, the corporal gave a short bark of laughter and nodded knowingly to his companions.

  “Well well, Ivan Vasileyivich,” the sergeant told the intruder, “you’re in luck! We’ve got choice company for you.”

  He prodded the man roughly with the rifle.

  “What were you doing hiding in the stables?”

  “I… I… was sheltering from the storm, your Excell
ency,” gasped the man. “I’ve been setting my traps in the woods. A little rabbit, you know? Then the weather closed in and I knew I would never make it home again, so…”

  “And where is home?” interrupted the sergeant.

  “Belogoryia,” replied the man hastily, pointing towards his passport. “It’s less than five versts from here. I thought that if I could just shelter here until the storm blows over, I…”

  The man’s voice trailed away weakly.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “About four hours. I had just got settled in the straw when you arrived, your Excellency.”

  “Why didn’t you declare yourself at once? Or were you spying on us? Because we hang spies, you know?”

  “Oh no, your Excellency!” cried the man. “I swear I wasn’t spying! I was just too…”

  “Scared?”

  The man nodded dumbly, his eyes fearful under his bloodied brow.

  Sighing, the sergeant lowered his rifle, and tossed Ziborov back his passport. Trotsky saw the other soldiers on the opposite side of the room relax and start talking amongst themselves. The excitement was over. There would be no hanging.

  Unsure what he should do next, the stranger remained where he was.

  “Hey, Ivan Vasileyivich!” one of the soldiers called out to him. “What did you get? What was your sentence?”

  The man shrugged and tucked his passport back inside his coat.

  “Two and a half years for agrarian riot,” he said.

  “Throw him back!” joked one of the drivers, jerking his thumb towards the door. “He’s not big enough for us!”

  They all laughed, their new prisoner included.

  “You’ll have to pay to talk to the ones in there,” warned a second driver, nodding towards the room where the Soviet Deputies sat.

  The crisis past, Trotsky decided that it was time to go down. Cautiously, he grasped the top of the ladder and put his foot on the third rung.

  “Stop!”

  Looking down, he saw that the sergeant had spun round and had raised his loaded rifle again. Only this time it was pointing straight at him.

  “Come down slowly,” the sergeant ordered.

  Carefully he obeyed.

  As he emerged from the darkness, he heard one of the soldiers mutter:

  “Christ, they’re coming out of the fucking woodwork now!”

  “I had forgotten all about you,” the sergeant admitted when he had reached the ground. “You nearly got a bullet up the arse.”

  Trotsky looked up at the spot where the sergeant’s warning shot had gone clean through the ceiling.

  “I know,” he replied calmly.

  “Take your father here through to your friends,” the sergeant ordered. “See if the Doctor can’t patch him up.”

  Trotsky led the unfortunate Ziborov through to the next room. The other exiles greeted his own reappearance with silence. Then, seeing the injured man was with him, they quickly got to their feet and made a space for him. Leaving Ziborov with Dr. Feit, Trotsky went over to where Sverchkov lay sprawled near the fire. Kneeling down, beside him, he felt his comrade’s brow. It was warmer than before.

  “Sverchkov has a fever,” he said aloud, to no one in particular.

  Removing his own coat, he placed it under Sverchkov’s head.

  “Here, Trotsky.”

  Standing up, Trotsky turned slowly to find himself facing the Soviet Deputy who had challenged him.

  “Get some water, will you? This comrade’s been cut.”

  Nodding, Trotsky went back to the other room. It hadn’t been an apology – he hadn’t expected one – but at least the man was offering some sort of a truce. Returning with a mug of warmed water, he held it while the Deputy carefully bathed the man’s wrinkled face. Then the Doctor took over, examining his patient’s injuries with little grunts of satisfaction every now and again. It wasn’t too bad. No bones had been broken. A few cuts to the brow, cheeks and mouth: that had been the worst. Still shaken, Ziborov was given a cigarette and the remains of a cup of lukewarm vodka tea. A place was found for him by the fire.

  When the newcomer had gathered his senses, the Doctor began to question him gently. Both men spoke in whispers, partly because it was difficult for Ziborov to speak at all and partly to prevent the guards from overhearing. The other exiles crowded round them, their ears straining to catch every word.

  His name was Ziborov and he was based at Belogoryia: that much he had told the guards was true. A member of the local Menshivik exiles, like an idiot he had volunteered to walk out and meet the convoy. But then the blizzard had overtaken him and he had taken shelter in the barn where one of the guards had spotted him.

  “We are sorry for your reception,” apologised one of the Deputies.

  Ziborov waved his hand dismissively.

  “Forget it! It was worth a little roughing up to get into the warm,” he replied. “I was freezing to death out there. Every moment I thought, ‘Shall I go in and show myself or shan’t I?’ You know how it is.”

  “How far is Belogoryia?” asked Dr. Feit.

  “Five versts from here. Maybe less. It’ll take you twenty minutes at the most, once this blow has stopped.”

  The deputies looked at each other anxiously, each thinking the same thought. They were twenty minutes from safety. It seemed an eternity.

  “Where are you being sent to?” asked Ziborov.

  They told him.

  “Obdorsk!” he said in surprise and would have whistled if his cut lips had let him. “That’s bad. None of us administrative ever get sent there. It’s only for you SPs.”

  “SPs?” queried Trotsky.

  “Ssylno poselentsys,” the newcomer explained. “Enforced exiles. Lifers.”

  He looked curiously at the ring of faces surrounding him.

  “Have any of you been this far north before?” he asked.

  None of them had.

  “That’s very bad,” he said gravely.

  “What are the conditions like?” asked Dr. Feit. “Rates of allowances, work prospects, vegetation. We know nothing.”

  Ziborov rubbed his bruised jaw gingerly.

  “It all depends on where and who you are,” he replied. “In Tobolsk, for instance, ordinary admins like me get four roubles fifty copecks a month. Whereas up in Berezovo it’s four roubles eighty. But fellows like you only get four roubles twenty. Unless, of course, any of you are noblemen, or have a university education. Then it’s eleven roubles twenty-five a month.”

  “What about a clothes allowance?” asked one of the wives. “And things for the children.”

  “Twenty-five roubles for the winter,” Ziborov told her. “Paid every August. In May we get an extra month’s allowance for summer clothes. But…”

  He hesitated apologetically.

  “But what?” prompted the Doctor.

  “You’re SPs. So there’s no allowance for you at all.”

  On hearing this, a few of the Deputies began arguing amongst themselves. Signalling them to be silent, Dr. Feit urged Ziborov to continue.

  “The land is different too, where you are going,” he went on. “This is taiga. Up there it’s tundra, all the way to the top of the world.”

  “What’s the difference?” asked one of the Deputies’ wives.

  “Every difference,” he told her. “On the taiga you get forests of pine, spruce, fir, larch and silver birch. Inside the forests there are swamps and places where animals can live. So there’s timber for the taking and plenty of hunting. Deer, ducks on the river, wild geese and so on. That’s not to mention the fishing from the Ob. What’s more, come April, all this snow disappears; right through to October most years. So you can grow short crops like potatoes and other foodstuffs. But once you get north of Berezovo, you enter the tundra. No forests, no hunting, nothing. Just bogs and snow, and more snow. And underneath the snow, the ground is permanently frozen. It’s harder than iron.”

  “I’m sure something must grow the
re, Ivan Vasileyivich,” protested Dr. Feit.

  “Oh sure!” the exile agreed cheerfully. “You won’t starve unless you have a mind to. Where there aren’t bogs you can grow a few crops, but only for about two months of the year. And there’s moss under the snow; that keeps the reindeer happy. Reindeer means that you have transport. And Obdorskoye is right on the Ob estuary, so there’s plenty of fishing through the ice. The others will show you how.”

  “Others?” asked Trotsky. “What others?”

  “The other SPs like you. There’s quite a colony up there. The government says that there are only about twelve thousand exiles in the whole country, but it’s really nearer sixty thousand. There are about two thousand in the Tobolsk region alone, and about a quarter of those are SPs.”

  “Where, in particular?” asked Trotsky.

  “All over the place,” said Ziborov vaguely, accepting another cigarette. “Scattered here and there. Besides in Tobolsk and Tiumen, there are groups at Tura, Sergut and Berezovo, and other places.”

  “Once we get to Obdorskoye,” asked one of the married exiles, “what are the chances of any work that pays?”

  Ziborov thought for a moment and shook his head.

  “There’s plenty of work in the summer, when the fisheries are open. But until then, the estuary is frozen up. Normally in winter, you have to go to the nearest town. There are usually plenty of jobs for skilled workmen. But since you’re SPs, nobody will be too eager to employ you. Sorry, but that’s how it is.”

  “And where’s the nearest town?” asked Dr. Feit slowly.

  “Berezovo. But that’s nearly five hundred versts from where you will be.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Berezovo? It’s all right. My brother lives there. He’s an ‘admin’ like me. It’s only four, five days’ travel from here, depending on the weather.”

  “Is it easy for exiles to get about?” Trotsky asked him. “We know about the river boats, but what about on land?”

  “Oh yes,” Ziborov assured him confidently, “as long as you have your passport and have got a good reason or written permission from someone. For instance, every autumn, around the end of September, each colony sends a representative to Tobolsk to purchase supplies for the winter. Matches, candles, pens; that sort of thing. Last year, some of the boys from Berezovo prepared a telegram for the Duma listing a whole load of demands. They sent it, too. Didn’t get them anywhere, though.”