Everywhere else the city was holding its breath. The trumpeter had no competition. Even the dogs were silent.
We too halted, for perhaps the same reason that old soldiers automatically halt when they hear a bugle call. The sound of that trumpet was magnificent, made larger and I shall also say poignant by the fog.
Down he went, the lugubrious fellow, down down down with his pure sweet steady notes. At the bottom he lingered, indulging himself in some delicate finger work on the pistons. The sound faded. Had he turned to look in another direction, at some Red soldiers approaching? To raise his tantalising eyebrows to a beautiful woman? Then suddenly, again at full volume, like a sailor running up a ladder, he took off and up the octaves he flew, note upon note, ever so quickly, until I was certain there was nothing further that could be obtained from the instrument—and then, after repeating three times an incredible crying howling note, which must have been heard all over the city, he ceased.
Fanfare to the past, that’s what it was, a sort of burial. Nothing to do with what was to come—with the flame of optimism or the sacred lives of children yet unborn or going to the moon. Tonight was the end, and that man knew it.
I started down the steps, my pistol stabbing into the silent fog.
Never have I experienced such nothingness. Not a cough, not a footfall, not the rasp of a match struck. Not a tendril of tobacco smoke or the whiff of a tart’s pussy or the smell of a dog long dead in the canal. Why no barking dogs? There were two million people living in the immediate vicinity. Had the two million people living in the area suddenly been struck dumb or pulled the blankets over their heads? What had happened to the city’s four thousand Frenchmen who, fog or no fog, babbled like houseflies twenty-four hours a day?
That was how it was in St Petersburg on that October night. And the reason had to be this: the city was waiting. The stuccoed façades of the princely houses knew, the cobbles knew, the water, the bridges, the absent whores, the absent thieves, the cats, the dogs, the canaries, they all knew, and probably the rats as well, which at night were usually quite free with the city but now were showing not even an inch of tail. Everyone and everything knew that after tonight it would be different.
I said to Joseph, “You should have had my pistol at the Finland Station and shot the cunt. You’d have got a monument—thousands of them. Every main square would have had its Joseph—Joseph what?”
“Culp. My mother fell in love with the short stiff moustache of the German watch repairer who lived next door to her parents.”
“Joseph Culp, then. Think what immortality you’ve missed.”
“I’m a coward, Excellency. They’d have ripped me to pieces. They were mad with love for him.”
“Besides, you don’t know how a pistol works.”
“That is also true.”
“Keep walking, Joseph.”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“Don’t call me that. We’re mushroom sellers.”
For all my urging he remained a reluctant companion and I had to walk behind him. “Left... left . . . left... Military precision makes a man courageous,” I whispered into his ear.
Suddenly the night was split by the scream of flayed rubber as a black Wolseley came lurching round the corner towards us on two wheels, the noise like that of a pig when it first sees the knife. Its headlights sliced the fog apart. Bullets from the three shadowy men on the running boards spattered the building behind us. Joseph flung himself down on the pavement—flat on his stomach. The driver whacked on the brakes, slewing the car round sideways. More rifles were pointed at us out of the window, behind them a jumble of beards and teeth. There could have been another ten men crammed inside it. The sharpshooters were off the boards while the car was still moving and came running at me, running and shouting, criss-crossing through the car’s headlights, impossible to see clearly. I went down on one knee—it was in Joseph’s back—and abased myself.
When you have to bow, bow low, even unto the ground. It really was my mother’s best bit of advice.
I proffered my tray. “Mushrooms! For the cause—for the proletariat—free! I beg you!”
The muzzle of a rifle barrel stirred the leathery chunks. The driver manoeuvred the car so that its headlights were full on us.
Being on one knee disguised my height. “Take! Take! They belong to you!”
They started to stuff their pockets, all the time Joseph lying doggo beneath me.
One of them said to me, “You’re in luck tonight, comrade. The last men we stopped we shot.”
“All Russia is in luck,” I murmured.
They shook their rifles at the night and shouted, “Onward the proletariat! Long live Lenin!” The engine was gunned—a small white face, scarcely bearded, was behind the wheel—and they hopped back onto the running board. The car went the wrong way round the statue of V. I. Smirnov, righted itself and took on an opposite list as the little cheeser flung it round the left-hander into Sergievskaya and headed west in the direction of the Stroganov Palace with a bubbling roar from its exhaust.
I took my knee off Joseph. He lay very still, all crimped and at a funny angle. I told him to quit shamming.
“Five years ago I thought I might make it to the end without ever being shot at,” he said.
“You thought that, in Russia?”
“Yes. Why would anyone want to shoot a man who’d soon be forty years of age, that was the way I reasoned.”
“Is the bullet your greatest fear?” I asked.
“Not the bullet, Doig, the bayonet. I shall try not to run away when we get close to the soldiers, but if I do, I beg your forgiveness.” He bowed his head. “I am a coward. May you never meet a more cowardly person than your servant, Joseph Culp.”
Eight
THE NOISE of the Wolseley faded and silence again descended. I’d expected something different. Was Russia’s torrent of grievances going to turn out to be a trickle? Shouldn’t there be a chatter of machine guns—bombs—mobs on the rampage— the incessant drone of military lorries?
“What sort of a coup is this?” I cried to Joseph.
But a few minutes later I saw a glow in the sky ahead. From the direction of Smolny, just as Joseph had said. We stopped and got ourselves sorted out as mushroom sellers. Joseph again asked my forgiveness if he behaved like a coward. Again I forgave him. Then I led the way forward—slowly, crying my wares.
Low-slung black saloons were racing towards the old convent. Ever more frequently we were passed by dispatch riders on motorbikes and even by bicyclists. Of the latter one might know nothing in those darkened streets until at the last moment one heard the strained breathing of the messenger or the creak of a wheel.
Tentatively we approached the Bolshevik HQ.
What they’d done: got some student from the Electrical College to tap into the grid, then strung factory arc lights all along the bright blue pediment of that aristocratic façade so that Smolny was ablaze as far as the railings separating it from the square and its grove of trees.
It was as if a battleship paying the country a state visit was moored in front of us. I halted, Joseph’s tray hitting me in the back.
The coughing motorbikes, the scarlet of the swaying banners, the runnings and bustlings, the engine fumes, the smell of fuel oil and of smoke from a bonfire, the shouts, the heftily saluting girls—the sheer virility and energy of the scene: one would have said that enough electrical force was coming out of Smolny to power the entire city.
“That’s more like it. Glebov can’t be far away. Poshli—let’s go,” I said to Joseph, and I strode in front of him into the light, jiggling my tray of mushrooms. “Here, boys! For the sake of the Revolution! For the betterment of man!”
As I expected, they hadn’t eaten for God knows how long. Their Bolshevik stomachs were hanging from them like empty gourds. I was besieged, and Joseph also. He got his nerve back and was quickly parleying with the Bolshies in a fine proletarian whine.
But the outskirts of re
volution weren’t where I was aiming. I had my eye first on the barrier of machine guns placed outside the two white porters’ lodges and then on the group of men chatting at the top of the steps. That was where I had to get to, up there with the nobs, if I was to get close to Glebov.
I pressed forward: “Hey, what about the comrades on duty, are they to go hungry at this great moment? Are we to forget their aching bellies?”
“Never!” This from a terrific hulk of a fellow, bursting out of the seams of a uniform made for a much smaller man. “They’re as much humans as you or I. Go to them, Estonian man. Point me out as the fellow who sent you so that afterwards we can celebrate together.”
I got to the first line of guards. They were crouched over their machine guns. The ammunition belts hung down tidily and had been folded on the ground like piles of ironed towels.
My new friend shouted over to them. Not hearing for sure where the voice was coming from, the guards spanned the crowd with their guns. He caught their eye and jabbed a finger at me.
Feeling more confident with every step, I said to Joseph, “Give me what you’ve got left and go home.”
With a laugh I chucked a handful of mushrooms between the gunners and walked through their line as they fell on them like pigs, spitting out the rough bits all over the place.
These fellows, they were pretty well all in. I suppose they’d been on the go for at least a couple of days. Enthusiasm is important, but food and sleep are vital. Five hundred well-armed men of Kobi’s stamp would have swept them into the river in half an hour flat and declared it a picnic. The Bolshevik Revolution would have been over before it began. Then who’d have got his backside on the throne?
I was young, fit, bold—and I was there. It’s not easy to get lucky, but when you do, the sky’s the limit. If Lenin, why not me?
But that’s one of those pleasant sofa thoughts that occur later. At the time I had nothing else in my mind except how to get past the guard post at the top of the steps and insinuate myself into the presence of Glebov.
Handing out more mushrooms, I said casually, “Boys, what’s the latest password?”
“Radost’—joy. That’s what it was an hour ago. However, they change it whenever something goes wrong. Joy! I’d rather have sleep. Pass, comrade.”
Up the steps I went.
It was exposed in the glare of those arc lights. I quietened my nerves and climbed with slow, humble steps, not raising my eyes.
There was a table at which anyone wanting to get into the building had to present himself. Two men were being questioned in front of me. I didn’t catch what their business was. Seeing me approach, the guard officer waved them through instantly, as if clearing the decks for action. He crooked his finger at me and smiled ominously.
“Vot, vot vot . . . Well, well, well, who have we here . . . So tall! So princely! It’s obvious you’re not one of us. You look far too good—too comfortable with yourself. Put your tray on the table. Slowly. Here, you—search it and then search him.”
I said, “Comrade, in the name of science I appeal to you. No weapon could ever be disguised as a mushroom.”
“You know about science? You’re not who you’re dressed up to be. You’re educated. Start the search.”
I cursed myself. How could I have thought that the new Tsar would be any less suspicious than the old one? The Luger felt like a ton weight in my pocket.
I said briskly, “No need for that, comrades, when you have duties to the whole of mankind. Matters of real importance, I can see that. Look, I’ll search myself in front of you. Down to the bare skin, if that’s what you want. If I miss anything you’ve only to say. Shoot me whenever you want. But keep your hands off the mushrooms. That’s proper food I’m giving away. Who wants the likes of that fellow’s arse-wiping fingers all over his meal?”
It was the dirtiest and most squalid of the guards I’d picked on, which raised a laugh. I bounced the mushrooms up and down on the tray, saying, “Bombs, little bouncing bombs, look at them playing!”
My interrogator said, “OK, kroshka—little one—what’s the password?”
“Radost’.”
“That’s the old one.”
“I wasn’t to know that, comrade. I’ve been feeding the troops—”
He cut me short. “A good password system is the key to victory. That’s the way one catches traitors and latifundists.”
“May we be preserved from them, Excellency.”
His eyes roamed over me. “You’re from Estonia or one of those little relics, you’re not a proper Russian. Here, show me your papers.”
“But he’s offering us food,” murmured one of the guards.
“Yes, let the fellow go. Free food!”
“I’ll eat his bombs,” said a third, snatching at my tray. “I know a good risk when I see it.” His eyes glowed. His teeth, strong and white against the black pelt of his face, bit decisively into the crinkled dome of the mushroom. “Bang!” he shouted comically. “Bang, bang, bang!”—and took a handful.
“Very well, Estonian,” said the officer. “But stay where I can see you.”
Nine
THERE WAS a knot of us at the top of the Smolny steps. Below was an anthill of activity. Adventure was in the air. People were taking deep breaths, as if to draw the future into their lungs and never let it go. Excitement! It was flashing like the neon sign of a lady’s slipper that hung outside the Makayev champagne bar. Only my interrogator was out of it. Something was needed to sideline him—and here it was—
A brilliant beam of light came boring out of the night, picking out the trees in the square. Behind it, thunderously, was a motorbike and sidecar. The driver spun the outfit round with a sudden twist of the handlebars, spattering mud over some bicycle messengers who’d paused, toes pointed to push off, to see what was up. The man in the sidecar leapt out and stared up at Smolny. He lifted his goggles—stuck them on his head. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, removed it from his mouth with a dramatic swoop. Nodding at the guards, he stalked between the outer machine guns and mounted the steps.
Between his second and third fingers appeared a buff slip of paper. He held it like a dandy, as if it were something infinitely precious and exquisite.
Everyone watched this lean, confident fellow. He seemed to have walked straight out of a film. One had to look twice to get rid of the idea of a rapier in his hand.
Oblivious, my persecutor glanced at me and began to crank the handle of the field telephone. He licked his lips like a woman on heat—glanced at me again—was clearly about to tell someone he’d caught a Tsarist spy.
I pushed against him—not with the Luger side of my coat—and said, “Comrade, why are you so determined to turn a mushroom into a bomb? Look at the messenger there. He walked straight through.”
As I finished speaking there came from behind me this shrill, harsh voice: “At last, news of the struggle—let me see that message, quickly now.”
It was Lenin. I knew him immediately, even though he appeared quite different from the police photographs. His shoulder brushed mine as he passed. Scanning the bit of paper (putting it close to his eyes): “Then we’ve taken the Post Office? Good. Very good.” He read it again. “Almost without a shot fired. Even their own people are giving up on them.” This last he said in an undertone, almost to himself.
He was wearing a dark suit of some thick material. The trousers were too long—trailed along the ground at his heels. His beard, which he’d shaved off during the months he’d been hiding from Kerensky, was patchy, as if he had ringworm. And his head, which the newspapers had always shown to be three-quarters hairless, was thatched with a wig that gave him the looks of a dark-haired gigolo of about eighteen. It was how he’d walked into the city from the suburbs, so that the guards on the bridges wouldn’t recognise him.
Turning, he noticed me and my tray. Close up his eyes were grey green, hundreds of kilowatts in them. They perforated the skin of my face like a couple of nails. He entered my
skull. Not speaking, just looking around inside as my tormentor denounced me as a Kerensky infiltrator.
Lenin stepped up to me. With Kobi’s knife I could have reached out and popped his fat little belly. He took one of my mushrooms, snapped it in half and then into quarters and began to eat.
He swallowed—gulped, choked a little, and said to me and all those around me in that shrill, scraping voice: “This is the first night that the people of Russia have ever been able to call their own. If this man is a spy, let him first be useful to us. Let him feed us for nothing. Then we’ll shoot him. If he’s not—”
He got no further. The soldiers fell on my mushrooms, almost knocking me over.
“I’m no spy,” I shouted at Lenin, throwing open half my coat to show him I had nothing there except strings of mushrooms. On the other side I had a loaded Luger. My boots were stuffed with diamonds. They’d have killed me for either. But Lenin was hot with luck that night and I reckoned that being so close to him I’d get a share in it.
His mouth twisted sarcastically. “The tall man’s no spy... That’s what he says, so make out a pass for him... You, Baltic being, what’s your name?”
“Sepp, Arno Sepp. Born and bred in Tallinn.” I knew it was a reasonably common name in Estonia but it was the mushrooms that triggered it off.
The man wrote it out, letter by letter. Lenin, Zinoviev and the rest of them looked on with indifference as I became Sepp of Tallinn.
“Welcome to the new Russia,” said Lenin. I bowed. An aide whispered in his ear. He went back into the building.
I stretched out my hand to my tormentor for the pass and said, “Well then, where does this get me?”
“Nowhere,” he said, tearing it across and across, into tiny pieces. “Arno Sepp of Tallinn, my shithole.”
“It’s the truth,” I said, placing my hands flat on the table at which he sat and leaning over him. What was extraordinary was that in that short space of time I’d actually come to feel that I was Sepp. It felt a truly seaworthy lie. “My mother’s family name was Saar, and that also is a common name in Tallinn. What else should a man called Sepp do but marry a girl called Saar?”
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