Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy)

by Ken Follett

  "Are you serious?" she said. "I can't eat. Don't you understand what you've done?"

  He thought he did, but he said: "Tell me."

  "You've just sent America to war."

  Gus nodded. "I know," he said. "Go write the story."

  "Hey," she said. "Thanks for picking me."

  A moment later she was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  March 1917

  That winter in Petrograd was cold and hungry. The thermometer outside the barracks of the First Machine Gun Regiment stayed at minus fifteen degrees centigrade for a full month. Bakers stopped making pies, cakes, pastries, and anything else other than bread, but still there was not enough flour. Armed guards were posted at the barracks kitchen door because so many soldiers tried to beg or steal extra food.

  One bitterly cold day early in March Grigori got an afternoon pass and decided to go and see Vladimir, who would be with the landlady while Katerina was at work. He put on his army greatcoat and set off through icy streets. On Nevsky Prospekt he caught the eye of a child beggar, a girl of about nine, standing on a corner in an arctic wind. Something about her bothered him, and he frowned as he walked past. A minute later he realized what had struck him. She had given him a look of sexual invitation. He was so shocked that he stopped in his tracks. How could she be a whore at that age? He turned around, intending to question her, but she was gone.

  He walked on with a troubled mind. He knew, of course, that there were men who wanted sex with children: he had learned that when he and little Lev sought help from a priest, all those years ago. But somehow the picture of that nine-year-old pathetically imitating a come-hither smile wrenched at his heart. It made him want to weep for his country. We are turning our children into prostitutes, he thought: can it possibly get any worse?

  He was in a grim mood when he reached his old lodgings. As soon as he entered the house he heard Vladimir bawling. He went up to Katerina's room and found the child alone, his face red and contorted with crying. He picked him up and rocked him.

  The room was clean and tidy, and smelled of Katerina. Grigori came here most Sundays. They had a routine: they went out in the morning, then came home and made lunch, with food Grigori brought from the barracks when he could get any. Afterward, while Vladimir had his nap, they made love. On Sundays when there was enough to eat, Grigori was blissfully happy in this room.

  Vladimir's yelling became a droning discontented grizzle. With the child in his arms, Grigori went to look for the landlady, who was supposed to be watching Vladimir. He found her in the laundry, a low-built extension at the back of the house, running wet bedsheets through a mangle. She was a woman of about fifty with gray hair tied up in a scarf. She had been plump back in 1914 when Grigori left to go in the army, but now her throat was scraggy and her jowls hung loose. Even landladies were hungry these days.

  She looked startled and guilty when she saw him. Grigori said: "Didn't you hear the child crying?"

  "I can't rock him all day," she said defensively, and went on turning the handle of the wringer.

  "Perhaps he's hungry."

  "He's had his milk," she said quickly. Her response was suspiciously rapid, and Grigori guessed she had drunk the milk herself. He wanted to strangle her.

  In the cold air of the unheated laundry he felt Vladimir's soft baby skin radiating heat. "I think he's got a fever," he said. "Didn't you notice his temperature?"

  "Am I a doctor, now, too?"

  Vladimir stopped crying and fell into a state of lassitude that Grigori found more worrying. He was normally an alert, busy child, curious and mildly destructive, but now he lay still in Grigori's arms, his face flushed, his eyes staring.

  Grigori put him back on his bed in the corner of Katerina's room. He took a jug from Katerina's shelf, left the house, and hurried to the next street, where there was a general store. He bought some milk, a little sugar in a twist of paper, and an apple.

  When he got back Vladimir was the same.

  He warmed the milk, dissolved the sugar in it, and broke a crust of stale bread into the mixture, then fed morsels of soaked bread to Vladimir. He recalled his mother giving this to baby Lev when he was sick. Vladimir ate as if he was hungry and thirsty.

  When all the bread and milk were gone, Grigori took out the apple. With his pocketknife he cut it into segments and peeled a slice. He ate the peel himself and offered the rest to Vladimir, saying: "Some for me, some for you." In the past the boy had been amused by this procedure, but now he was indifferent, and let the apple fall from his mouth.

  There was no doctor nearby, and anyway Grigori could not afford the fee, but there was a midwife a few streets away. She was Magda, the pretty wife of Grigori's old friend Konstantin, the secretary of the Putilov Bolshevik Committee. Grigori and Konstantin played chess whenever they got the chance--Grigori usually won.

  Grigori put a clean diaper on Vladimir, then wrapped him in the blanket from Katerina's bed, leaving only his eyes and nose visible. They went out into the cold.

  Konstantin and Magda lived in a two-room apartment with Magda's aunt, who watched their three small children. Grigori was afraid Magda would be out delivering a baby, but he was in luck and she was at home.

  Magda was knowledgeable and kindhearted, though a bit brisk. She felt Vladimir's forehead and said: "He has an infection."

  "How bad?"

  "Does he cough?"

  "No."

  "What are his stools like?"

  "Runny."

  She took off Vladimir's clothes and said: "I suppose Katerina's breasts have no milk."

  "How did you know that?" Grigori said in surprise.

  "It's common. A woman cannot feed a baby unless she herself is fed. Nothing comes from nothing. That's why the child is so thin."

  Grigori did not know Vladimir was thin.

  Magda poked Vladimir's belly and made him cry. "Inflammation of the bowels," she said.

  "Will he be all right?"

  "Probably. Children get infections all the time. They usually survive."

  "What can we do?"

  "Bathe his forehead with tepid water to bring down his temperature. Give him plenty to drink, all he wants. Don't worry about whether he eats. Feed Katerina, so that she can nurse him. Mother's milk is what he needs."

  Grigori took Vladimir home. He bought more milk on the way, and warmed it up on the fire. He gave it to Vladimir on a teaspoon, and the boy drank it all. Then he warmed a pan of water and bathed Vladimir's face with a rag. It seemed to work: the child lost the flushed, staring look and began to breathe normally.

  Grigori was feeling less anxious when Katerina came home at half past seven. She looked tired and cold. She had bought a cabbage and a few grams of pork fat, and Grigori put them in a saucepan to make stew while she rested. He told her about Vladimir's fever, the negligent landlady, and Magda's prescription. "What can I do?" Katerina said with weary despair. "I have to go to the factory. There is no one else to watch Volodya."

  Grigori fed the child with the broth from the stew, then put him down to sleep. When Grigori and Katerina had eaten they lay on the bed together. "Don't let me sleep too long," Katerina said. "I have to join the bread queue."

  "I'll go for you," Grigori said. "You rest." He would be late back to the barracks, but he could probably get away with that: the officers were too fearful of mutiny, these days, to make a fuss about minor transgressions.

  Katerina took him at his word, and fell into a deep sleep.

  When he heard the church clock strike two, he put on his boots and greatcoat. Vladimir seemed to be sleeping normally. Grigori left the house and walked to the bakery. To his surprise there was already a long queue, and he realized he had left it a bit late. There were about a hundred people in line, muffled up, stamping their feet in the snow. Some had brought chairs or stools. An enterprising young man with a brazier was selling porridge, washing the bowls in the snow when they were done with. A dozen more people joined the queue behind Gr
igori.

  They gossiped and grumbled while they waited. Two women ahead of Grigori argued about who was to blame for the bread shortage: one said Germans at court, the other Jews hoarding flour. "Who rules?" Grigori said to them. "If a streetcar overturns, you blame the driver, because he was in charge. The Jews don't rule us. The Germans don't rule us. It's the tsar and the nobility." This was the Bolshevik message.

  "Who would rule, if there was no tsar?" said the younger woman skeptically. She was wearing a yellow felt hat.

  "I think we should rule ourselves," said Grigori. "As they do in France and America."

  "I don't know," said the older woman. "It can't go on like this."

  The shop opened at five. A minute later the news came down the line that customers were rationed to one loaf per person. "All night, just for one loaf!" said the woman in the yellow hat.

  It took another hour to shuffle to the head of the queue. The baker's wife was admitting customers one at a time. The older of the two women ahead of Grigori went in, then the baker's wife said: "That's all. No more bread."

  The woman in the yellow hat said: "No, please! Just one more!"

  The baker's wife wore a stony expression. Perhaps this had happened before. "If he had more flour, he'd bake more bread," she said. "It's all gone, do you hear me? I can't sell you bread if I haven't got any."

  The last customer came out of the shop with her loaf under her coat and hurried away.

  The woman in the yellow hat began to cry.

  The baker's wife slammed the door.

  Grigori turned and walked away.

  { II }

  Spring came to Petrograd on Thursday, March 8, but the Russian empire clung obstinately to the calendar of Julius Caesar, so they called it February 23. The rest of Europe had been using the modern calendar for three hundred years.

  The rise in temperature coincided with International Women's Day, and the female workers from the textile mills came out on strike and marched from the industrial suburbs into the city center to protest against the bread queues, the war, and the tsar. Bread rationing had been announced, but it seemed to have made the shortage worse.

  The First Machine Gun Regiment, like all army units in the city, was detailed to help the police and the mounted Cossacks keep order. What would happen, Grigori wondered, if the soldiers were ordered to fire on the marchers? Would they obey? Or would they turn their rifles on their officers? In 1905 they had obeyed orders and shot workers. But since then the Russian people had suffered a decade of tyranny, repression, war, and hunger.

  However, there was no trouble, and Grigori and his section returned to barracks that evening without having fired a shot.

  On Friday more workers came out on strike.

  The tsar was at army headquarters, four hundred miles away at Mogilev. In charge of the city was the commander of the Petrograd Military District, General Khabalov. He decided to keep marchers out of the center by stationing soldiers at the bridges. Grigori's section was posted close to the barracks, guarding the Liteiny Bridge that led across the Neva River to Liteiny Prospekt. But the water was still frozen solid, and the marchers foiled the army by simply walking across the ice--to the delight of the watching soldiers, most of whom, like Grigori, sympathized with the marchers.

  None of the political parties had organized the strike. The Bolsheviks, like the other leftist revolutionary parties, found themselves following rather than leading the working class.

  Once again Grigori's section saw no action, but it was not the same everywhere. When he got back to barracks on Saturday night, he learned that police had attacked demonstrators outside the railway station at the far end of Nevsky Prospekt. Surprisingly, the Cossacks had defended the marchers against the police. Men were talking about the Comrade Cossacks. Grigori was skeptical. The Cossacks had never really been loyal to anyone but themselves, he thought; they just loved a fight.

  On Sunday morning Grigori was awakened at five, long before first light. At breakfast there was a rumor that the tsar had instructed General Khabalov to put a stop to strikes and marches using whatever force was necessary. That was an ominous phrase, Grigori thought: whatever force was necessary.

  After breakfast the sergeants were given their orders. Each platoon was to guard a different point in the city: not just bridges but intersections, railway stations, and post offices. The pickets would be connected by field telephones. The nation's capital was to be secured like a captured enemy city. Worst of all, the regiment was to set up machine guns at likely trouble spots.

  When Grigori relayed the instructions to his men, they were horrified. Isaak said: "Is the tsar really going to order the army to machine-gun his own people?"

  Grigori said: "If he does, will soldiers obey him?"

  Grigori's mounting excitement was paralleled by fear. He was heartened by the strikes, for he knew the Russian people had to defy their rulers. Otherwise the war would drag on, the people would starve, and there was no prospect that Vladimir might live a better life than Grigori and Katerina. It was this conviction that had caused Grigori to join the party. On the other hand, he cherished a secret hope that if soldiers simply refused to obey orders the revolution might go off without too much bloodshed. But when his own regiment was ordered to set up machine-gun emplacements on Petrograd street corners he began to feel that his hope had been foolish.

  Was it even possible that the Russian people could ever escape from the tyranny of the tsars? Sometimes it seemed like a pipe dream. Yet other nations had had revolutions, and overthrown their oppressors. Even the English had killed their king once.

  Petrograd was like a pan of water on the fire, Grigori thought: there were wisps of steam and a few bubbles of violence, and the surface shimmered with intense heat, but the water seemed to hesitate, and the proverbial watched pot did not boil.

  His platoon was sent to the Tauride Palace, the vast summer town house of Catherine II, now home to Russia's toothless parliament, the Duma. The morning was quiet: even starving people liked to sleep late on Sunday. But the weather continued sunny, and at midday they started to come in from the suburbs, on foot and in streetcars. Some gathered in the large garden of the Tauride Palace. They were not all factory workers, Grigori noticed. There were middle-class men and women, students, and a few prosperous-looking businessmen. Some had brought their children. Were they on a political demonstration, or just going for a walk in the park? Grigori guessed they themselves were not sure.

  At the entrance to the palace he saw a well-dressed young man whose handsome face was familiar from photographs in the newspapers, and he recognized the Trudovik deputy Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky. The Trudoviks were a moderate breakaway faction from the Socialist Revolutionaries. Grigori asked him what was going on inside. "The tsar formally dissolved the Duma today," Kerensky told him.

  Grigori shook his head in disgust. "A characteristic reaction," he said. "Repress those who complain, rather than address their discontents."

  Kerensky looked at him sharply. Perhaps he had not been expecting such an analysis from a soldier. "Quite," he said. "Anyway, we deputies are ignoring the tsar's edict."

  "What will happen?"

  "Most people think the demonstrations will peter out as soon as the authorities manage to restore the supply of bread," Kerensky said, and he went inside.

  Grigori wondered what made the moderates think that was going to happen. If the authorities were able to restore the supply of bread, would they not have done so, instead of rationing it? But moderates always seemed to deal in hopes rather than facts.

  Early in the afternoon Grigori was surprised to see the smiling faces of Katerina and Vladimir. He normally spent Sunday with them, but had assumed he would not see them today. Vladimir looked well and happy, much to Grigori's relief. Evidently the boy had got over the infection. It was warm enough for Katerina to wear her coat open, showing her voluptuous figure. He wished he could caress her. She smiled at him, making him think of how she would kis
s his face as they lay on the bed, and Grigori felt a stab of yearning that was almost unbearable. He hated to miss that Sunday afternoon embrace.

  "How did you know I would be here?" he asked her.

  "It was a lucky guess."

  "I'm glad to see you, but it's dangerous for you to be in the city center."

  Katerina looked at the crowds strolling through the park. "It seems safe enough to me."

  Grigori could not dispute that. There was no sign of trouble.

  Mother and child went off to walk around the frozen lake. Grigori's breath caught in his throat as he watched Vladimir toddle away and almost immediately fall over. Katerina picked him up, soothed him, and walked on. They looked so vulnerable. What was going to happen to them?

  When they returned, Katerina said she was taking Vladimir home for his nap.

  "Go by the back streets," Grigori said. "Keep away from crowds. I don't know what might happen."

  "All right," she said.

  "Promise."

  "I promise."

  Grigori saw no bloodshed that day, but at the barracks in the evening he heard a different story from other groups. In Znamenskaya Square soldiers had been ordered to shoot demonstrators, and forty people had died. Grigori felt a cold hand on his heart. Katerina might have been killed just walking along the street!

  Others were equally outraged, and in the mess hall feelings were running high. Sensing the mood of the men, Grigori stood on a table and took charge, calling for order and inviting soldiers to speak in turn. Supper turned rapidly into a mass meeting. He called first on Isaak, who was well known as the star of the regimental soccer team.

  "I joined the army to kill Germans, not Russians," Isaak said, and there was a roar of approval. "The marchers are our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers--and their only crime is to ask for bread!"

  Grigori knew all the Bolsheviks in the regiment, and he called on several of them to speak, but he was careful to point to others too, not to seem overly biased. Normally the men were cautious about expressing their opinions, for fear their remarks would be reported and they would be punished; but today they did not seem to care.