The Great War

by Aleksandar Gatalica

  The fortune-teller found Comrade Anvelt at the core of the Bolshevik committee, in a requisitioned wooden building near Tallinn’s castle. She said she wanted to convey him an important message. While she was waiting for him men wearing braided northern caps bustled in and out and pushed her aside time after time, and the fortune-teller’s thoughts hovered precariously over the world of the dead, which Gypsies may have insight into but are never allowed to mention or meddle in. Once again, ‘yesterday’ seemed to her the same as ‘tomorrow’, and almost ritu­ally she spoke to herself the word ‘taysa’, which means both ‘yester­day’ and ‘tomorrow’ — a blended ‘yesterday-tomorrow’. Then she laughed as if to cast off those concerns, as if she was not in Tallinn to enter the dangerous nether world by barque on a river of leering skeletons, but just to deceive someone. At that moment, Comrade Anvelt came up to her. He looked at her, and she saw death in his eyes. Dead Gypsies called out to her: ‘Anvelt, Anvelt . . . he will be Secretary of the International Control Commission of the Comintern: In 1937 he will be arrested . . . arrested and shot like a dog.’ Thus the chorus of forlorn Gypsies cried out to her, but she just smiled. She had come to lie to Jaan Anvelt, not to tell him the truth. She offered him her hand, and when he accepted it she shook hands with him politely, then bent at the waist into a bow and kissed his hand. ‘I know you don’t believe in prophesies, but I foresee a great future for you. I’ve come to greet Comrade Jaan Anvelt, the first president of Soviet Russia.’

  Then she quickly turned and dashed straight back to Tallinn’s yellow, railway station. There she boarded a compartment once again. She pretended to be asleep, and with her eyes open just a slit she contemplated the coming and going of travellers, mothers quietening their children and handsome officers casting sullen looks all around them. She returned to the capital on Tuesday, 6 November by the new calendar. Just an hour or two before the storming of the Winter Palace, the gypsy woman managed to find Comrade Vladimir Alexandrovich Antonov-Ovseyenko. A few hours earlier he had taken command of the Red Guards, who were to seize that vile nest of tsarism. Comrade Antonov-Ovseyenko was ruffled when he came up to the fortune-teller. He brushed his rebellious hair from his forehead and looked more like a scrawny bourgeois than a revolutionary. His mouth, however, spoke a different language as he pedantically issued the final commands. He didn’t know why he had even took notice of the gypsy woman when the Winter Palace was about to be stormed. She stood there in silence, and he screamed: ‘What damn Junkers? Kill them! What, women soldiers in the palace? They need a good raping!’ Then she offered him her hand, and he accepted it with reluctance. She saw that Antonov-Ovseyenko was a dead man too. Death had already begun to take control of his bones and his limbs; only his eyes didn’t know it yet. The gypsy woman knew that this revolutionary would also become just unsavoury food for the revolution. She saw that he would be arrested in 1938 and that his position as people’s commissar for justice wouldn’t save him, but she had come to delude him too. She quickly bowed and kissed his hand, as if he was a king, but he snatched it back in revulsion. ‘Don’t believe a fortune-teller,’ she said to him, ‘but I’ve come here, near the Winter Palace, to presage the great future which awaits you. I greet Comrade Antonov-Ovseyenko, the first president of Soviet Russia.’

  Before the Bolshevik commander could say a single word, the gypsy woman turned and, plump though she was, vanished into the crowd of nervous Red Guards. That night, in the express train for Kronstadt which had been decorated with little red flags out on the track, she heard that the Winter Palace had fallen. The air in the compartment was full of coal dust. A grumpy conductor wanted to check people’s tickets, but none of the passengers had one. The whole night passed in quarrels and bitter political debates. The gypsy woman reached Kronstadt in the early morning of Wednesday, 7 November. The oily November sun shed its feeble rays, too faint to warm the revolutionary earth, but the fortune-teller was not cold. She made straight for the Kronstadt Sailors Soviet and promptly found the sailors’ leader, Stepan Maximovich Petrichenko. She went up to him just as he had unfurled a black banner which had a crossed rifle and scythe and was embroidered with the words: ‘Death to the bourgeoisie’. His large mouth, which always looked like it was smiling, opened wide as he shouted orders to the sailors. His voice was hoarse and rough, but it seemed he could shout forever. The gypsy woman saw that this leader of sailors would be in exile as of 1921, but she repeated her choreography with a kiss on the hand and told the same future again for the revolutionary: ‘I see you as the first president of Soviet Russia.’ And with that she was gone.

  Who knows how many ebullient souls she visited in those five revolutionary days and why she prophesied to those who would be devoured by the revolution that they would become the first president of Soviet Russia. Did she want to strengthen the volition of those cogs in the machinery of insurrection? Was she sent by comrades Kamenev and Zinoviev? Could she have been a messenger from the world of dead Gypsies? The answer is known only to the trains of the revolution.

  The actor Yuri Yuriev also decided to take a train-trip, but not until the week of 11 November by the Gregorian calendar. During the first five days of the revolution, while the gypsy fortune-teller was travelling by train, he simply couldn’t make up his mind. Besides, there were performances on Monday 5 November and all that week: the Krivoye Zerkalo (Distorting Mirror) Theatre was staging a lavish production of Arthur Schnitzler’s play La Ronde, his Alexandrinsky Theatre was putting on repeat performances of the Death of Ivan the Terrible, directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold, and one in his honour was to be given on Friday, 9 November 1917 on the main stage of the theatre. He was also performing in Lermontov’s Masquerade and couldn’t go anywhere before that important event. Besides, he didn’t think there was really a revolution going on — he felt that the difficulties would pass, and that the unrest was abating day by day. But he was wrong. The revolution marched on with hobnail boots, and by the next week the actor Yuri Yuriev was no longer able to think all difficulties would pass.

  He felt miserable. He was hungry, first and foremost: And thirsty: And dirty: And desperate. He found an old pistol, pointed it at his chest and anticipated a theatrical death. He got what he wanted: the bullet corroded in the barrel, the operating rod jammed, and no theatrical blood was shed. Then he arrived at a salutary idea: a great performance was being acted out in Petrograd, in the streets and palaces. He simply needed to ‘drop out of the play’, just as he changed roles freely and went from one script to another. In the week of 11 November, he too made up his mind and set off for the railway station to leave Petrograd. Most people were heading to other cities, but Yuriev was travelling to another play — one in peaceful settings with white snow, a wooden dacha with a Russian bathhouse attached, and a beautiful woman making a homely fire in the hearth. Yes, he decided to find himself just such a play when he arrived at southbound Nikolaevsky station with its impressive, tall, glass dome; but when he arrived he saw its panes were dirty and a litter of fallen branches prevented much light from getting through.

  Yuri Yuriev’s intentions were not much different to those of the other travellers at the railway station that day, although he was an actor and a bard. The waiting rooms were hopelessly overcrowded. People had to jump over other exhausted travellers who had lain down on the floor; they coughed desperately and loudly, only opening their eyes occasionally as if they had been pushed into the nether world, where sooner or later they would start to decay and make human humus. Those who were still on their feet had to jump over them carefully because there were some among those Hadean people who still had enough strength to shout at anyone who bumped them or woke them from their comatose sleep.

  The actor hopped over two or three bodies in the second-class waiting room and sat down at the only vacant spot on a wooden bench, between a corpulent woman and a completely emaciated one. The fat woman spoke to the other, who was young and had a pock-marked face: ‘I’m telling you, pet, the most important thing to
day is to pack properly. It’s best to take as much as you can in terms of textiles: different kinds, multiple changes of clothes, for Novosibirsk and for Sochi! And travel in a worn-out old jacket, certainly not a fur coat. Divide up your things so there are little bundles for the children and larger ones for the adults. And forget about baskets and big suitcases — who’s going to haul them? Roll things up in bales instead. You should always hide something embroidered with silver or colourful thread in the middle of the bundle in case you need to barter for food on the trip. Don‘t forget salt and tobacco, but that’s always at your own risk.’

  How had Yuri Yuriev set off on his journey in search of the new play? With two bulging suitcases and wearing his best Prince Albert coat! Now he slapped himself on the forehead and went back to his flat in Liteyny Avenue. With the help of his neighbour Mrs Zavrotkina, a good soul and future head of the tenants’ collective who always had her fellow residents’ welfare in mind, he took his things out of the suitcases and wrapped them into bales. He hid his best piece of clothing in the middle, as he had learnt. Zavrotkina told him that he shouldn’t go on his journey unarmed; he had to have some kind of weapon, even if it be the rusty old theatre pistol he had been unable to kill himself with. So he put a revolver in his luggage, took off his Prince Albert coat and put on an old one he had bought back in 1882. Once a handsome black piece of clothing with showy silk lapels, which were now worn to such a shine that he could see his reflection in them. Before he left, Zavrotkina tore this museum piece a little at the back and said: ‘Now you can go on your trip! Farewell, Mr Yuriev, and may God be with you’.

  Yuri was now properly ready and started on his journey with a bundle on his shoulders like a cheerful actor going off into a comedy to flee from a tragedy. He arrived at Nikolaevsky railway station again, jumped over those human dregs which lay heaped on the marble slabs of the waiting rooms, and went out to the platforms. He was surprised to see that not a single train stood beneath the station clocks, which were still keeping time. A passer-by told him that the trains were not being boarded from the platforms but a good half a verst down the line, near the departure signal. Since there was no one to clean the stations and approaches, the engines came up to the edge of the rubbish and stopped there, as ordered by Vikzhel, the swaggering railway workers’ committee. The actor therefore had to hurry, and he felt the advantage of the new clothing and his re-formed luggage for the first time as he slung the bale up onto on his shoulders and headed off with rapid steps. But he was still out of breath, his embarrassment causing beads of sweat to form on his forehead when he arrived at the trains.

  Several trains were waiting for their passengers. The engines lazily churned out puffs of grey smoke, which rose phlegmatically, and it seemed as if the fugitives would have to beg them to set off. Only two or three carriages were attached to every engine, like to a stubborn old nag, and there were at least three times as many passengers as the carriages could hold. Yuriev had decided on this journey into the very heart of Russia, to the southern Urals. There he hoped to find his play with the wooden dacha, the bathhouse, some virgin snow, a beautiful woman and a traditional Russian stove. He managed to get into an overcrowded carriage and almost sat on a gypsy woman’s lap. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he apologized, and made space for himself by squeezing in between the passengers as if they were a pliable human mass. They had to wait at least three quarters of an hour more before the train departed, and in the meantime Yuri listened to the talk of the travellers. ‘Kerensky is within reach of the city, here in Gatchina. The smell of his soldiers was on the south-west wind.’ ‘Cruel General Kornilov already tried to attack Petrograd once this year. He escaped from jail after killing his guards with his own hands, they say, and his savage Turkmen cavalry division is now threatening everyone.’ ‘The junkers’ counter-revolution will begin at midnight. They signed their proclamation: Gotz and Polkovnikov’. ‘Is it true that the Bolsheviks have fled to the Aurora and are ready to leave port at any minute?’

  The play being staged in Petrograd would undoubtedly be a tragedy, so the fearful actor was glad to be on the train. If only it would leave. Finally it set in motion and started off down the soot-blackened track, past water towers and walls on which the morning’s slogans were daubed over with the evening ones. Yuri directed a last glance at Petrograd without curiosity and sentiment. Frozen fields began to alternate with the low scrub of the Russian steppe, and small black birds with yellow breaks flew alongside merrily just a few metres away. This train, too, often stopped. Once it was almost requisitioned for the use of the People’s Committee of Ufa and Zlatoust. The passengers were part arrested, part molested and part conscripted out on the track in the middle of nowhere, but later the train was allowed to continue its journey nonetheless. When they had passed Zlatoust, Yuri decided he would find his play in Churilov. That was real provincial Russia. He recalled once having passed through Churilov on the way to the neighbouring city of Chelyabinsk where he acted in Turgenev’s a Month in the Country.

  Yuri could hardly wait to get there and find his peace. After what seemed like an eternity, the train arrived at the small wooden station building in Churilov, and the actor almost leapt onto the platform with his bale. He looked for a cab but couldn’t find one. He asked about a bus but was told they all had been requisitioned for use by the soviet of Chelyabinsk oblast. Then he shuddered and told himself he had ended up in the wrong play, again. He had to wait three days in that disaster of a play for the next train. He went to the local market and sold pieces of his expensive clothing ‘from the middle of the bale’ for a mouldy-smelling chunk of bacon. Finally, dirty and hungry, he just sat and waited for the train to take him away. The next lovely Russian town was Medvedka, but the picture was much the same again, only worse. What looked like a dead man lay beside the platform, and no one thought of removing him; the actor Yuri Yuriev felt he was in one of Shakespeare’s tragedies. It seemed nothing but tragedies were played on the Russian stage, but this star of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, in whose honour Lermontov’s Masquerade had been performed a week earlier, did not think of giving up. He was a celebrated, old thespian and had the right to choose his repertoire.

  Back on the train again, leaving Chelyabinsk. Three days and three nights were needed for the next leg of the journey — three terrible, nebulous days and three even more terrible, opaque nights — before he made it to Yaroslavl oblast. There he wanted to search for one more ideal little provincial town, Lesnaya Polyana, but when he saw that the revolution had also reached this part of Russia and his longed-for snow, enamelled like a mirror, was no longer to be found anywhere, he took out his theatrical pistol again. The bullet failed this time too. No one knows where the actor stopped on his round trip of Russia, but his neighbour, Mrs Zavrotkina, swore that he never returned to his comfortable flat in Liteyny Avenue.

  At Dr Chestukhin’s house on Runovsky Embankment everyone was in a hurry again. Bales of clothing were being readied: one for the doctor to carry, one for aunt Margarita, one for Nastia and a small one for Marusya. The Chestukhins had also heard how best to prepare for a journey, except that instead of a gun the doctor put the most essential medical supplies and instruments in his bale. The others rebuked him for taking them, but he was adamant: a doctor does not go travelling without his instruments. So they let him have his way. After rushing about for a while and almost running into each other in comedic fashion as they tried to add valuable oddments to their luggage, they held a family meeting. Each of them put on the table what they thought needed to be taken, and it was quite a display of wealth: a silver-plated samovar, two small icons, an imitation Fabergé egg, two large goblins with bucolic motifs, Liza’s two rings of twelve-carat gold with little rubies, the beautiful piece of amber with a bee in the centre, which Sergei had given her for the New Year 1915, the Cross of St George she was awarded on the Eastern Front, and finally Marusya’s two favourite dolls. Now the family meeting had to decide what to take. The doctor’s instruments remain
ed in their bale, despite the ‘auction’. They decided to take the goblins, Liza’s rings, the amber, the medal and Marusya’s two dolls. They had already gone out the door and, like all fugitives, were asking themselves whether to lock it or not, when Dr Chestukhin suddenly slapped himself on the forehead as if he had forgotten something. He stood there and unexpectedly announced that he had changed his mind: this time they were not going to run away. None of the others protested. They all seemed relieved. By evening, they had unpacked all their things again and hidden the valuables as best they could in holes in the stove pipe and under loose floorboards.

  The Chestukhins may have been able to give up the idea of leaving Petrograd, but the Romanovs could not. Their first set of guards was replaced by another; more brutal and less cultured. Someone mentioned to them in passing that the new, Bolshevik revolution had come. Then the tsar’s family left on their journey — the complete family, together with the royal physician, Dr Botkin, one maid, and the tsarevich’s faithful personal attendant, a former sailor. To begin with, they set off in a special armoured bus adapted ‘for purposes of the revolution’. That first stage of the journey didn’t last long, ending on the outskirts of the city. They had been allowed to take all the essentials with them: icons, a little of the family jewellery, a silver urn, a small turquoise bird from the Fabergé workshop, one arctic-fox collar each for the tsaritsa and the princesses, a few books from the tsaritsa’s library, in which Nilov’s Antichrist had pride of place, and a change of clothes. No one forced them to make bales of their clothing. At first, the revolutionaries even tried to be, if not friendly, then at least practical and obliging. They told the family they were taking them to safety.

  At the second stop, in Tobolsk in Siberia, they claimed the family would be staying for at least several months, but the tsar, going by the dreams in which he had seen others dreaming of him, realized this wasn’t the spacious house he had seen. Therefore he told the others: ‘Don’t unpack, we’re leaving again’. Several days later, they were put on board a train. The special carriage, similar to the one in which Nicholas had signed the fateful act of abdication, was sealed and joined to an ordinary train. All the blinds were lowered, and anyone who yelled or tried to come up to the window risked being shot. Their escorts were now not nearly as friendly as in the armoured bus. After three days on the rails with virtually no food, tiding over their hunger with crusts of black bread and weak tea from the samovar, the family reached a small town near the Urals.