The People's Train (28 page)

When Federev saw us at breakfast the next morning he announced that
our
Bolshevik group would take over a fine house that had belonged to the family of the late General Gubin. The family were gone and the house stood unoccupied. Gubin himself – Federev told us – had died a mysterious death. Last spring his corps had got out of control on the Polish front. These probably included the men we’d seen in the park the day the thief had been thrown into the river. Federev said it was not certain how General Gubin had died. He might have killed himself in despair when his soldiers set up bars and theatres and brothels in their dug-outs and invited German scouts across the lines to enjoy themselves there in a brotherly spirit. Or he might have been shot by his own men. In any case, the rest of the Gubin family had fled and were living in Italy.

When we occupied the house, said Federev, we would have a great number of soldiers and Red Guards to call on to protect the place. Because the Bolshevik faction was the only party promising an absolute end to the war.

So the Gubin house was to be our fortress – even Federev would have a bed there in case he was too busy to come home. We packed our kits and were driven the short distance to the Gubin mansion. And there we walked through a double door with columns on either side and from the large entrance hall went up a broad staircase to the upper floor, to the room where it had been decided – I don’t know by who – we would be working and living from now on. I could see the places on the walls where the Gubins’ paintings had been and wondered where they’d disappeared to.

The day before we moved in there were mainly meetings. Then suddenly there were jobs. All at once Federev and Artem and Tasha had roles they seemed to know how to play. In a big room on the ground floor, Federev was to be the chief of security – he would guard the premises and the party’s principles. He was supposed to gather intelligence about our enemies and about the armaments other groups had. Almost straight away his clothing changed. He wore a military cap and a well-tailored military jacket. A number of soldiers put maps up on the wall for him to study. He began his work. Immediately his office was full of housewives and good-looking boys bringing information from the suburbs and the bars and teahouses and Turkish baths of the city.

Tasha and Olya were given an office at the head of the stairs. They headed some sort of secretarial and propaganda departments. They kept in touch with the members of the party. They wrote speeches and articles for our newspaper – it was named
Izvestia
just like Artem’s Brisbane newspaper. It was published from a cellar across the city. Olya typed letters for the rest of us. Equality between man and woman hadn’t reached the typewriter yet. Anyhow – as dear old Amelia would have said – it doesn’t matter as long as the shorthand typist is valued.

Artem was to be military liaison, chief of supplies and propaganda – he shared that task with Tasha – and I was taken on as his informal aide. I felt shy about this. The most I could do was work up a bit of an English-language story out of the English speech notes Artem gave me and to write in longhand and with my direct rough style for the
Australian Worker
and anyone else who’d give me the time of day. But my Russian was still like that of a child. Did I belong? Of course I didn’t. But I didn’t want to go home either. I couldn’t believe everything that had happened. The people who’d met us at Kharkov station a few weeks ago had just moved into a house without taking any lease. They’d said at the little meetings they had the army and the Red Guards on their side and now – going by the numbers of armed men around the house and in the guardroom downstairs – it turned out to be true.

And if you’re here in the first place, I told myself, no sense creeping around as if you aren’t a welcome guest. Artem must have known I’d go home if he told me to. So until he said it ... here we were.

In our office across from that of the sisters, army cots were put in place for us to sleep on. Though everyone seemed to be making up their work as they went along, there wasn’t a doubt that we were on what the English call a war footing.

The mansion was well guarded, as I said – the guardhouse was in the big reception room across from Federev’s office. It seemed the city knew we were here and protected by soldiers. Now and then there’d be catcalls between our guards and the young men and women from the finer academies who marched past in white cadet uniforms or summer skirts shouting insults at Vladimir Ilich and everyone inside the building. Sometimes more mature men and women marched past holding banners that said the soviets should be abandoned and the Rada obeyed in the Ukraine and the Duma in Russia. We’d look up from our work and hear the yelling in the street. We’d hear our sentries calling their own insults back.

One of Artem’s first problems was feeding everyone in the Gubin mansion. Our kitchen and communal dining room were downstairs at the back of the house and what the army cooks prepared there came from the municipal warehouses. To reach them Artem and I would travel by truck with the documents he signed as a member of the Donbass Central Committee of the Bolsheviks. Whatever party the men in the warehouse came from, they didn’t want to refuse us or our truckload of soldiers and Red Guards. Artem had flour distributed to the barracks around the city where soldiers dossed. Other officials of the city soviet were doing that – some people resented that they were not willing to cooperate in the noble business of being slaughtered by the Germans and Austrians. But if they weren’t given bread they would just seize it from civilians. Artem didn’t want that. At heart he was a law and order man.

We arrived at some municipal food storeroom one mid-morning in a convoy of trucks. Things were getting serious for people. On streets nearby there were queues of men and women outside the bakeries from midnight waiting to buy a loaf. You could just about imagine the bakers getting to be the kings of life and death.

We passed the bags of flour from the heaps that rose into the lofty interior of the warehouse and then I got rid of my coat – the old checked one – and sweated like a happy labourer ought to. Artem and I then helped the soldiers to load consignments to the bakeries in the outer suburbs. We had no choice but to sell it to them at a fair price and warn them against running up the price and keeping any aside to sell on or give to their girlfriends. It was a less than perfect way to do things but at least the bakers were scared of the soldiers who occasionally turned up at the premises of some baker they suspected and led him onto the footpath outside and shot him. So Artem was the boss, but he hauled sacks beside me and it wasn’t a condescension – it wasn’t like Tolstoy doing the harvest with the peasants – because Artem was a peasant too.

When it was over we washed our upper bodies in some pump water one of the Red sentries at the warehouse had fetched us in a pail.

Blowing water out of his mouth, Artem told me, We’ve sent people out to scout places we can put public bakeries. Undercut the damned hoarders.

Like T.J. Ryan’s butcheries, I said as a half-tease.

Maybe, he admitted. I’m going to get Trofimova up here. She can find places like that and get army cooks. Pay them with bread. And she’s got quite an ear for information too. What do you think, Paddy?

Keeping my head down and splashing water on my own face, I said I thought it was a good idea. Even so it might mean a lot of frustration for me – that’s what I thought privately. Trofimova had repented of me by now.

Back in the truck we set off again towards the Gubin mansion. The other trucks of the convoy had peeled off to their various destinations around the city. Artem and I sat in the front of the truck with the driver and we were approaching the National Hotel – one of the best old hotels in Kharkov. It stood above a vast white staircase – maybe designed for an emperor and all his staff to walk up. Standing on it in the sunshine was a family group. They were being photographed by a man placed slightly down the staircase with a camera on a tripod. The family was well dressed – the women in their big hats and spotless dresses and a father and another middle-aged man both wearing morning suits. The young officer at the centre of the group made an amazing picture – the reverse of the bedraggled soldiers we saw around the city in his braided cavalry jacket and white pants and shining boots. On his head was a crimson headpiece the Russians called a
bashlyk –
a sort of leather hood cum hat. To go with all that a big Caucasian sword hung at the boy’s waist. Was he really a soldier or did he come out of some play? And I wondered whether the women carried bread with them in their handbags when they went out – and little silver boxes full of sugar cubes for their tea and coffee. It was rumoured the best of people did it in these hard-up days.

The family stood proudly around their golden boy who had clearly just graduated from a military academy. It was a strange sight. Who would he command, this young sprat? Where could he fight in such fancy gear? When we were getting close, our driver put on the brakes for three soldiers who were running across the avenue. We saw them kneel on the edge of the pavement beneath the white stairs and raise their rifles. Even over the engine we heard the combined blast. The young military officer fell and his
bashlyk
rolled down the stairs. The two older men stooped and tried to lift him upright. A woman with blood and brains on her white dress fell into the arms of two others of the family. The soldiers who’d shot the boy simply turned their backs and crossed the avenue again.

I was shocked and somehow offended that these
burzhooi
had been so badly punished for pretending it was 1914. Artem must have been suffering the same sort of shock and got down from the truck cabin. The soldiers crossing the avenue turned back and confronted Artem as he bawled at them. I too found myself yelling at them in a language they’d never heard.

Artem pulled me back.

Not worth the effort, Paddy, he told me. He could understand what was in the men’s mind. By his uniform, this kid was a future officer, so they had nipped him in the bud. They’d cut him out of the family photograph. And they felt justified and very gamely argued back at Artem – one of them had his fist clenched as if he was going to hit him. Then they turned away. I wondered what Artem had told them. Maybe it was that after the
real
revolution the kind of people who were on the stairs would be dealt with in a more orderly way.

Above us two women were stopping the blood-stained third from hurling herself full-length on the body of the boy. Artem climbed towards the family and I followed him. He offered to take the body of the boy inside. Though the men harangued us as if we’d shot the boy ourselves they let us help. I took the booted ankles and Artem carried him under the armpits. In the lobby we sat him in a chair where he lolled. The lamenting women followed us inside. I’ll never forget how delicate this young officer’s lips looked, as if he were about to say something as the bullet ripped into his head.

The hotel manager rushed away to ring a doctor. There was nothing more for us to do. We backed towards the door. Suddenly the father of the boy and various of the menfolk blocked our way out and began raining blows on us. I quickly had enough of this and knocked one to the ground and then was drained of all anger and felt sorry for the man. Artem was not at a loss to defend himself but the father and uncle or godfather – blinded by anger and loss – were smashing into him. We forced our way out through the hotel door.

That night I dreamed of a conversation the young officer had with me. In the dream I knew exactly what he was saying but when I woke I remembered it only as stumps of words. The sense was all gouged out of it.

It was a day or two later that my education in guns resumed. A man in a bowler hat and frock coat came to the gate and spoke to the Red Guards and was let in. We were upstairs in our office but we heard the fellow enter Federev’s office yelling. Artem raised his head and said to me, I know that voice. But surely it can’t be...

He stood up, his face lively with anticipation. Come on, he said, and we went clattering down the stairs. Through Federev’s open door I saw a true gentleman with a fancy walking stick and a crooked grin – for all the world like a hayseed who’d struck it rich. Someone who’d come into money instead of being used to it.

Not
you!
Artem yelled at the man.

It is me, said the man. How is my old Artem?

How is my old Slatkin for that matter? roared Artem, and they walked up to each other and swapped energetic kisses and hugs.

The man was shorter than Artem but he was well fed and had a little pot belly. When I was introduced to him he spoke English to me as well as some of Artem’s people in Brisbane. It turned out he’d worked more than two years on the London docks.

Timofei Maximovich Slatkin, said Artem. There he stands in all his bourgeois glory. Wouldn’t you just like to shoot him?

I deserve it, said Slatkin. Without a doubt. Do you like my suit, Artem? I had a little trip to France last year – yes, to France despite the war – and I had it run up there. I wanted to impress you today so I had my servant get it out of the cupboard and send it with me.

You clearly have a hard life, said Artem, beginning to laugh. How is the divine Mrs Slatkin?

Delighted with her husband still, he said. Because – after all – he never complains.

Even Federev – a very serious man – was smiling at all this.

She is also discontented with the so-called revolution, said Slatkin of his wife.

But she’ll lose her fortune and her house in the end, said Federev.

She can’t wait for that liberation, said Slatkin. She believes in brotherhood, not in Mammon.

That’s handy, said Artem.

Artem, I had to see you.

See all you want, Artem invited him.

Is there somewhere we can talk?

Upstairs, said Artem.

Artem and Slatkin said goodbye to Federev and we went up the stairs with Slatkin flourishing his cane like someone in a play. I left them to talk alone in the office and went into the sisters’ room where Tasha was dictating an article to Olya. They
were
like Martha and Mary in the gospel. One of them knew what theory was and the other did a lot of the work. I was not really welcome there so in the end I took a chair outside to the head of the stairs and began writing more notes about things I had seen here – half hoping something new would come from them that I could use for one of my articles. Certainly not an article on the killing of the young officer.

The light started to fade. A mixed smell of sulphur and candle grease came from Artem’s office where the old friends were advising each other in Russian with slightly raised voices. Then they came out onto the landing. I stood up. Artem told Slatkin in English that I was totally reliable. I felt vainly proud of that.

Slatkin looked at me directly. Did Artem tell you about the banks we used to rob? And he began to laugh.

Artem laughed too. Comrade Slatkin’s talking about himself, he told me.

No, said Slatkin. You were our quartermaster, Artem. You were a sneaky little supplier. He put a finger to his nose in a gesture of secrecy. See you tomorrow then, Artem. Good afternoon to you too, Mr Dykes.

As Artem saw Slatkin off the premises I went into the office and began working up the notes of a speech Artem had given me earlier. But I couldn’t help sitting back in my chair and wondering,
Robbed a bank?
I understood but did not forgive the fact that he hadn’t told me earlier.

Artem returned and got straight back to work. But the question was aching in the air. He looked up.

He exaggerates, Paddy, said Artem. It was on my way back from France all those years ago. I bought pistols in Germany, the ones Slatkin and his crowd needed. I passed them on. Using them they robbed a bullion shipment on its way from the docks to a bank in Kaliningrad. That’s all, Paddy. I wasn’t there – maybe I wasn’t considered tough enough for that. But I’ve got to be frank: I would have if ordered. The party needed the funds, and Slatkin was a man for funds.

I had read somewhere that the Social Democratic Party had voted to end bank robberies. But after all – even I understood this that afternoon – the revolution was the revolution and had to be paid for. I still stupidly felt offended, and I didn’t know why. Why was the idea of bank robbery itself a genuine shock to me when the usury of the banks – their licensed thieving – wasn’t? If it was a shock to me, what did it say about me and my timid approach to things?

Artem explained further: Vladimir Ilich didn’t ask me to be a bandit but he asked Slatkin – because Slatkin was a true man of action, a bank robber right out of the Wild West. And then Vladimir Ilich asked him to marry the heiress, Miss Stürmer, as I told you in Brisbane.

No, I said. You never told me that.

It must have been Hope Mockridge, he said. Or perhaps I was talking to Amelia.

He explained that Slatkin had been ordered by Lenin to marry the sister of a deceased industrialist who had been a party sympathiser and one of its financiers. And sure enough he’d charmed the girl and done it, just as ordered, and it was the former Miss Stürmer whom Artem had asked after when we were downstairs in Federev’s office.

Internally I gave myself a good talking to. How did I think the party had been kept going? Was it by nice sentiments? Was it by timid little prayers? Of course it was by big, tough plans. Yet it was as if Artem himself didn’t want me to think too much about that.

Anyhow, he said, changing the subject, Slatkin said they want me to go to Piter. You’ll come, of course?

At once I wanted to, but I asked, Why?

Artem shook his head, confused by my resistance.

Because you’re my partner, Paddy. Do you think you’re ever going home again?

Well I might, I said. But I managed a smile.

He looked down at his desk and grinned almost shyly. No, you won’t go back. Trofimova – she has her hooks in you.

What he knew, and what he didn’t – that was the question. And how did he know it? I didn’t want to ask him.

When are we leaving? I rushed in to ask him.

As soon as we can. But there’s something we need to do here first. With Slatkin.