The People's Train

by Thomas Keneally

  His English is good, I told Artem.

  A lot of the burzhooi speak English. Most of them speak French too. You see they had tutors when they were kids, and then they travelled a lot when they were young. French is the one they really like but they can take their English for a spin as well.

  In my room I lay on my soft bed and felt too lucky to sleep and too tired to write anything for the Australian Worker. For the moment I felt I was a breathing part of a great attempt to reach out for the light. Houses might get burned down and velvet ripped. There might be fury. That had to be expected. In the meantime I felt this stretching of the skin.

  I was turning into a different human being.

  4

  That night the apartment was more crowded than it had been earlier in the day. The young women were back, the railway men, workers in suits no better than mine – worse in terms of stitching because in the new republic thread was scarce too. Two well-dressed aesthetes were there as well, their complexions nearly as soft as those of the girls. No passwords seemed to be exchanged but I noticed that a worker had been put on watch by the front door. Federev spoke in Russian then English and introduced Artem as a leading figure of the committee who had organised the strikers in 1905 and who had been punished and driven to the limits of the earth by the tsar’s malice. Then the lawyer pointed to me as a brother from the end of the world.

  Artem rose. He was very fluent and spoke with a half-smile on his face as the room filled with the smell of the soldiers’ cheap tobacco. It stung the eyes but neither Federev nor the two young women we’d travelled with that morning complained about it. I noticed one of the two soldiers in the room had been reduced to using newsprint for cigarette papers.

  I heard Artem utter the names Fisher and Cook. Hughes and T.J. Ryan were referred to occasionally, and I could guess what he was saying – that the Labor Party in Australia had failed in its great chance, that it’d been tamed and become party to the war just the way the German social democrats had. Just as surely, the Cadet liberals and Mensheviks in the Russian Duma were insisting on carrying on the war against the Germans and Austrians, even though there was a ceasefire for the moment.

  When he had finished speaking he answered questions, and when it was over he came straight to me with his usual half-smile on his broad face and said, Paddy, I have a favour to ask. Will you find out from our host who is the girl in the blue coat?

  Then he whispered, How she smouldered, Paddy! She’s out for vengeance – Nikolka had better watch out.

  People drank tea and shook hands earnestly with Artem and sometimes with me and then left by ones and twos. The two artistic-looking young men shook our hands vigorously before speaking quietly to Federev then departing. The blonde girl in the blue coat smiled and called him Tovarishch Artem – a name the Russians pronounced Artyom. Artem spoke to her briefly – his eyes were ablaze and his face full of good humour. Then she and her sister were gone too and we sat down in the state room with Federev, who drank some brandy and inspected his moulded ceiling for a bit. After a while he leaned forward to continue discussions. He was proud of his English and determined to speak it.

  An excellent group, he said. Stout souls. You noticed the young men? One is a lecturer in philosophy at the university, the other a great connoisseur of the arts, a friend of Stravinsky and Cocteau. And then the men from the Starilov works and the veteran soldiers. Not to forget the women. What an alliance!

  Who are the sisters? I asked, remembering Artem’s request. The girl in blue? The one in yellow?

  The blue coat is Tasha, Federev said. Tasha is her party name. She spent time with Lenin’s family in Geneva – this was after she had been in exile in Voronezh. She was in prison too.

  Jesus! said Artem. He stroked his brow.

  Now their name is Abrasova, said our host. The one you ask about is Natasha Varvara Abrasova – Tasha. The sister is Olya. He grinned knowingly at me. Men always ask about Tasha first. Poor Olya is an afterthought yet she is a sturdy little creature. Their father is a surgeon. They’re Jewish – as am I.

  Jewish? asked Artem. With that hair?

  Perhaps some Cossack violated her great-grandmother, our host said matter-of-factly. These things happen. Anyhow, she is not as shy as she looks. You’re lucky she did not jump up and take the speaker’s rostrum from you, Comrade Artem.

  The conversation then drifted away from the good-looking Abrasova sisters. Artem told Federev about the peasant who cut the velvet from the train seats. Federev laughed, shaking his head – as if cutting the velvet was a sign of progress. Which maybe it was.

  Everything has to be brought down and rebuilt! he said. I know. I know. Even this apartment. Even if I am given a room and a half to live in, brotherhood is more important than splendid isolation.

  You take a very enlightened view, said Artem. My literary idol, Gorki, is more shocked by the mess he sees in Petersburg.

  It is peculiar, said our host, that a great writer such as he cannot see that all this is necessary. What did we have before, when the streets were clean enough to satisfy Gorki? We had people crushed under the wheels of authority. My father for one!

  He rose and reached for a decanter of French brandy on a sideboard – he offered us some and when we declined asked if we minded him having some. Sitting again, he continued, You see, my father was a captain in the engineers. An educated farmer’s son. The cavalry was closed to him on both counts: that he was self-educated and a Jew. But he was appointed to an engineering unit. Twelve years ago there was a great Japanese slaughter of Russians at Mukden in Manchuria. Have you seen that painting of the Russian officer standing among his dead, screaming, with his hair turned white?

  We hadn’t seen the painting.

  Well, there is such a painting. Now my father was a wit and he had a sharp tongue – certainly he did. He was famous for parodies of his colonel. My late mother and I got the bitter details of what happened from a junior officer who survived. Before the battle, the Japanese had advanced as far as a place named Fuhsien when my father and his men were ordered by his colonel to stay by the river, building a pontoon bridge under the barrels of the Japanese artillery. My father made the point that his company of engineers would be overrun – the Japanese would use the pontoon bridge itself to get to them. That shouldn’t be a problem, said his colonel. After all, you can make the Japanese fall over laughing. You make the other officers laugh soon enough at me.

  Our host shook his head.

  My father wrote a letter in the half-hour left before he returned to the site with his sappers. He wrote to my mother, You said, my darling, many times, that you would kill me. Our colonel is saving you the trouble.

  Federev let the awful story hang in the air.

  You see, according to some it is barbarous to shoot a thief or let the garbage build up in your courtyard. But what about the barbarism that out of pure vanity throws an entire company of engineers away? And for nothing. The colonel himself was killed two days later in the Japanese onslaught. Let us hope there is a hell for his sake!

  Our host was trembling and reached for his brandy again.

  Anyhow ... if you keep people in a barbarous condition, he said, you can’t expect them not to break a few windows when you let them loose. Their barbarism is not their fault. It’s the fault of their former masters. Who would have them back under subjection in a second, given the chance.

  Tom murmured, All power to the soviets, would you say?

  Precisely, said our host. Not to the Duma, not to the Rada or any other body. But to the soviets. A regimental soviet would not have killed my father.

  5

  I slept very soundly that night. I was excited by the surroundings and the pulse running under things. And it would continue to do that. I’d been promised by Artem that he would speak at a public meeting at the technical university the next night.

  In the meantime our host was off very early the next day and left us to wander about the city. We crossed the avenue
and walked maybe three hundred yards and were in the great square. As yesterday every street corner running off it was full of ragged men listening to speakers of all kinds. Between the groups I saw women in what had once been good dresses and with boas around their necks hoping a man would pay them for the obvious. There were a lot of war widows, said Artem, and people who had lost their jobs through factories being burned down.

  We pushed on past a scrum of newspaper sellers and maimed soldiers and pencil vendors until we were in the parkland beyond. Here we started down a pathway by a river that was – I think – some tributary of the Don. I remember it was running well – it looked as if the snow of the last winter was still in it. I enjoyed walking in a bright day in a city where no one knew me.

  This park though wasn’t quite like the Botanic Gardens in Brisbane. I could see among the trees humpies where soldiers lived and Artem and I could smell the smoke of their cooking fires. These weren’t soldiers under command; these were men who were striking out for themselves – refusing to follow the orders of officers unless their regimental soviet voted to do it. Artem told me they were survivors of General Brusilov’s Polish offensive that had killed millions. But though they were mutineers, they seemed very well-mannered and unlikely to trouble anyone who passed by.

  The conversation between Artem and myself was slow and easy as we strolled. We were discussing our host’s claim the night before that he was prepared to lose his apartment – which would mean putting up with garbage in the courtyard and queuing to use his own lavatory. Tom believed Federev was sincere but that he was in for a few shocks.

  Because he’s our friend, said Artem, we’re all very respectful when we go into his apartment. The soldiers are respectful. A respect for property is implanted in us. But he might get a surprise when people really believe that his bedroom is theirs. There’s something in Gorki and our lawyer friend and me that we want all peasants to be novelists. But they aren’t. Oppression’s made them rabid. There aren’t so many noble souls. My sister is one.

  I didn’t know if he knew anything about Trofimova’s adventure with me. Something of the leftover Catholic in me wanted to confess to him, but I couldn’t imagine the words. I didn’t have the gift for describing that sort of thing – or even the other thing: that his big sister came to my mind when I was half asleep. And when I was full awake too.

  From among the remnants of park benches that hadn’t been totally used up for firewood there appeared a determined bunch of threadbare soldiers. Three of them were pushing along a wiry young man they had hold of and two others behind had their rifles aimed at his back. Their captive was bleeding from his nose and mouth. Tom called something to the soldiers, his whole approach a mixture of humour and authority. What has gone wrong here? he seemed to ask. One of the soldiers explained to Artem that the fellow they held prisoner was a thief.

  A debate began between Artem and the others. The soldiers were young and a little edgy at being challenged. They told Artem that bullets had to be kept for the ultimate enemies of the people, not just for common thieves. So they weren’t going to waste a bullet on this man – who had stolen one of their coats. They were going to throw him in the river and let it look after him.

  Some kids turned up and started dancing and yelling and skipping because it was just a theatre piece to them. But the soldiers weren’t acting. One of those with a rifle advanced on Artem and began yelling. Artem got angry and told him to go to hell. Touch me, he told them, and you’ll answer to the city soviet. I am Artem Samsurov who led the uprising in Kharkov in 1905, when you were still shitting your baby pants.

  It’s a study to see how even men with rifles will back away from someone so certain of his authority. Even though these fellows had lost faith in their officers they still seemed to believe Artem. Still, they were determined to have their way, and the man was taken onto a little boat pier and hurled off it. He went under then rose to the surface and thrashed around a bit, clearly a man who couldn’t swim a stroke.

  As he was swept away the kids went running along the bank, chanting and cat-calling.

  Please! he screamed. Budte dobry! Please. I’d been numb till now but I all at once felt his terror. I couldn’t swim, but I had a mad impulse to dive in after him. Mercifully, one of the two soldiers who held a rifle stepped onto the pier and took aim and – regardless of the desire to save bullets – shot him between the shoulder blades. The man in the water gave a shriek and then surrendered to the current and sailed away.

  In a daze, we walked back to the square and Tom bought a paper. He stood scanning it while I waited, as if he was looking for something to take the weight of what we’d seen away. He whistled.

  It’s all happening in Piter, Paddy.

  Piter was Petrograd.

  The cat’s among the pigeons.

  He frowned. While we were settling into Kharkov something m assive had been happening in the capital. A vast crowd of people – sailors, workers from a huge Vyborg factory (the Putilov works where Suvarov had once been employed) – had marched on the Tauride Palace and begged the Supreme Council of Soviets – who shared the building with the parliament, the Duma – to give them leave to do away with the Duma, the government and the war itself. This was the moment, they cried.

  We were attending worthy meetings in Kharkov. But the main action was in Petrograd. Would Artem rather be there? That’s what I wondered.

  6

  If Artem was disappointed not to be part of the events in Piter, he didn’t show it. He seemed excited as we travelled with Federev in his large car. This time it was protected by a number of Red Guards either sitting inside with us or riding on the running boards. In a narrow street somewhere between the centre of town and its older wooden outer reaches, we picked up the two sisters from what looked like a half-finished block of flats into which the windows had not been fitted. The sisters lived in the basement.

  Artem greeted them with a smile large enough for the two of them to share. They were all obviously rattling on about the events in the capital – what it all meant – and whether this was it, the promised day.

  Again, said Federev, there’s every sort of beast in the menagerie tonight. There are anarchists and Ukrainian Nationalists and Great Ukrainian Nationalist Mensheviks. There are Great Russian Mensheviks. And then us. The absolute lot!

  The hall was grander than anything I had ever seen. Big Greek columns and a great arch held up a group of plump angels. This was going to be a bigger version of all the meetings I’d been to and seen on railway stations and in halls while we chugged our way across from Vladivostok. The welter of ideas contained in here seemed to make its own heatwave. But the Abrasova sisters didn’t seem timid about it at all as we fought our way in.

  Some soldiers had wrestled others off to keep seats for us near the front. I noticed Tasha’s eyes as she sat down. She was a creature on a leash, sitting forward with her white fists on the knees of her dress. She was coiled. Her sister Olya meanwhile was looking around as if she were trying to count how many people lay between her and the side doors. Artem in turn sat beside Tasha and made some remarks that caused a laugh to stutter up over her bottom lip. She leaned across Artem and told me in thick English, I speak tonight.

  So we’re off to the races, Paddy, Artem told me, beaming.

  A Ukrainian Menshevik spoke first, a man in dark suit, collar and tie – not the kind that come from the best tailors. Every sentence was yelled out in a lusty way. But he had to roar and rage like that to be heard. The Ukrainians had their own language, as it turned out, but Russians used to say it had come late in history and was based on Russian anyway. It was like the difference between Portuguese and Spanish, Artem would tell me. But I got the idea that anyone who spoke in Russian believed in a great All Russia, and those who spoke in Ukrainian wanted a separate republic of the Ukraine. So this first speaker had started to talk sentimentally about the glories of ancient Kiev, and how they wouldn’t come back – that brotherhood of knights and
warriors – without Ukraine being separate from Russia.

  A fantasist, Artem told me, shaking his head.

  Some people in our group – soldiers and factory workers and others – began roaring questions at him, along the lines of who cleaned out the nobles’ shit in golden Kiev? His face grew red with the effort of pushing his dream on people and the noise was bigger than a cattle auction.

  Next there was a member of the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, a socialist who was listened to a bit more respectfully even by our crowd.

  After that we had a Cadet in a frock coat and collar not much different from Federev’s. It turned out he wanted the Ukraine to ally itself with Germany. In some other forum he might have got a better reception – here he got a lot of boos. He kept on asking whether the crowd wanted continuing tyranny from St Petersburg. All our crowd were on their feet asking where the tyranny was.

  Suddenly it was Tasha’s turn. By now her sister Olya had anxious bulging eyes and her forehead was waxed with sweat. Federev escorted Tasha to the stage and seemed determined to stay to protect her from the insults the other speakers had copped, but she shooed him back to his seat.

  When she started speaking she was like a woman transformed. Not that I could understand a single word she said. Well, that’s not true – I understood a few. But I could tell that she was a spellbinder and seemed to grow in height and in substance as she spoke. Her voice was contralto but it didn’t have an ounce of yield in it. And the audience was stunned for a time by this combination of the angelic and the political.

  She’s like a muse, Artem whispered to me.

  Among other things, she argued that if the Rada continued its plan for an independent republic there would be civil war. Some people yelled out that if Bolsheviks were so brave, why didn’t Vladimir Ilich surrender himself to the provisional government who’d now issued a warrant for his arrest?