The People's Train (35 page)

After drinking a rushed tea with the flushed and excited Alliluyeva women, Suvarov and I took to the street. I was used now to the weight of my rifle and even felt it was comforting on this strange militant morning. On the main avenues there were the usual breadlines and prostitutes but also knots of people standing on the pavements as if they were waiting on some procession.

We hiked all the way to the Smolny. We had this idea that while we’d been gone something crucial that we didn’t want to miss was happening there.

But when we got there – into the normal crowd in the lobby – we were uncertain what to do. People there were brimming with even more news than yesterday and every rumour had the power to delay us. The opening bridges over the Neva had been cranked upwards into the air by Junkers working the controls in the gatehouse. No, someone said, the gatehouses had now been captured by the Kronstadt sailors and the bridges opened up again for traffic to and from Vyborg. Workers were milling south over them.

Reed fought his way across the lobby. He called out to me that Kerensky had fled town in a car he’d stolen from the American embassy and was out in the country looking for soldiers who’d fight for him. I wish him well, Reed called and then vanished.

For a while Artem appeared like an apparition on the steps – looking a bit more sallow this morning. We fought our way up to join him. I did not like the particular kind of insomnia in his eyes now. For the first time he looked like a man who could lose.

The railway workers have jumped, he told Suvarov and me. In spite of all the letters and proclamations and so on they’re staying with the Mensheviks and Kerensky. Some will come with us. Enough to slow Kerensky’s troops I hope. By the way, did you know the mongrels cut off our telephones? We’ve taken the exchange back again. So now it’s no telephones for them.

He was yawning and I saw now he was reeling with tiredness. And the railway men –
his
railway men – had let him down.

Paddy, he said, Grisha. You ought to take a spell. You look buggered. Everyone’s tired.

He shook his head. He went on down the stairs to see someone in an office on the ground floor – very likely the delegates of the railway soviet.

Suvarov headed to his office on the off-chance there was something to occupy him. I returned to the typing room where I sat and wrote some notes.

I found a woman typist making transcripts of what had been said and decreed in No. 36. I asked her in broken Russian could she take a note in to Artem?
Artem,
it said,
do you need me this afternoon? I am ready to do whatever you need. Paddy.

An edgy forty minutes passed and I looked up and saw someone familiar to me from Brisbane. In the corridor – sitting on a suitcase and catching his breath – was Rybakov the engineer. I bounded out to the corridor and there he was – corporeal as buggery, as they say in Broken Hill. His face lit up. He struggled up and we shook hands.

You look in better health than you did in Brisbane, I told him.

The British fed me well, he agreed. But I escaped. On a counterfeit passport too. So I am a criminal again.

We’re all criminals, I assured him – proud I’d been party to the stealing of weapons in Kharkov and the incitement of sailors to violence in Piter.

They had me designing tanks, he told me, but I couldn’t escape till things were chaos here. Otherwise they would have got the tsar’s government to hunt me down and send me back again. I had to wait till anarchy struck. And it has.

It was easy to see he was pleased with himself for managing to get here.

It’s just that I can’t get to see Artem.

He’s been in No. 36 for days, I explained. With just a few breaks. I don’t see much of him. I reckon he slept for about twenty minutes last night.

It doesn’t matter, Rybakov told me. I’m going to wait. Do you know what he always said? Come the revolution he’d make sure Vladimir Ilich allowed me to build the People’s Train. The same one I was going to build for my dear friend Mr Bender. It doesn’t matter if I have to wait all afternoon and all night – I’ll see him. And then we’ll amaze the world.

I think we might be doing that already, I told him. We’re on a sort of train right now. We’re certainly moving anyhow.

He wouldn’t leave his place even to go and eat a meal, so I brought him a pannikin of soup and a lump of black bread from the canteen. He seemed to drink and eat it more out of politeness than because he needed it. The same hollow eyes I had known in Brisbane kept veering towards that door – the one the Central Committee sat behind.

While we were talking a young secretary in a white blouse and a long skirt brought me out a note. It said,
Plenty to do later, Paddy. For the moment the Winter Palace is going to be the place. But make sure you keep out of harm’s way.

I grew restless and after a while I asked Rybakov to excuse me and went downstairs carrying my notebook and my rifle. In the crowded hall I saw Suvarov talking to some soldiers. The first miracle was finding him in that berserk building at all. The second was what he next suggested.

Paddy, I was looking for you. I’m just waiting for a car or something to take me down to the Winter Palace. Want to come?

It was said like a man inviting a friend to the beach.

I’m on for it, I said. Suddenly I was as bright as a schoolboy guaranteed some mischief. Suvarov took a rifle from a stack near the door then we went out into the yard and stood beside a machine-gun crew. Suvarov smoked and they smoked. The fumes of their tobacco reached up to a low steely sky. One of them told Suvarov that the cloud was to hide what we did from the eye of God. It had to be done but God might not be onside yet. So the soldiers weren’t atheists, not by any stretch.

We piled into an armoured car bound for Palace Square and were jammed in among the brotherly stench of about a dozen men. Fortunately it was a short journey of barely two or three miles.

We pulled in behind some unlimbered cannon in the corner of the square by St Isaac’s Cathedral. They were our guns and were aimed at the massive pile of the Winter Palace. The cannon of the Junkers were arrayed in front of it. A fairly impressive line of Cossacks – maybe brought in to stiffen the Junkers and the Death Battalion – was drawn up at the bottom of the palace steps. If the two sets of cannon started firing at each other ... it’d be bloody murder here.

Our gunners wore red on their sleeves and caps and all had rifles in their hands. It turned out they’d been shot at from a place high up near the cathedral’s dome. It seemed the rifleman had given it up as a bad job, though, for Suvarov and I stood there a time but nothing happened. Still, I couldn’t help clenching my brow as if to keep a bullet out. Of course the jovial Suvarov got talking to some of our artillerymen. I noticed on an occasional collar the red insignia of an officer – and on others patches of paler fabric where their tabs had been. These were former tsarist officers who’d been reliable enough to be elected by their regimental soviets and who’d been considered humane enough not to be shot by their soldiers.

They’re very confident, Suvarov told me after interviewing one of the gun crews.

Behind us more of our troops were still arriving – a truckload or armoured carload at a time. But not enough sailors yet – as one of the gunners had told Suvarov. From where we stood I could see some of the streets beyond St Isaac’s were blocked off with barricades made of timber, barrels, baskets, a wagon with its wheels off, even a disused bathtub. I asked Suvarov if he knew which side put it all there. He confessed he didn’t know and grinned at his own ignorance. It’s a pretty confused picture all right, he said.

As if to add to the confusion we now saw a black figure come down the stairs from the Winter Palace and cross the open ground between the opposing sets of cannon. We imagined it might be a minister of Kerensky’s coming to try to make a deal with us. But when he got close I could see it was Slatkin – all properly shaven. He was wearing a clean shirt and pressed coat and trousers and was as neat as a pin. His face was split as always with that know-all grin.

He and Suvarov greeted each other and Suvarov turned to me. They let him in because he looks like one of Kerensky’s ministers.

Again Slatkin smiled his smug smile. I said I was from the Ministry of War, he told us. But anyone can get in there. I mean, in ones or twos. As long as you’re not armed.

What did you learn? asked Suvarov.

Well, said Slatkin, they aren’t armed so badly. But their hearts and their minds can’t be predicted.

Slatkin went to speak to our gunners. I could see his car waiting behind the guns.

Now Suvarov could hardly contain himself. He shook his right hand up and down with excitement. Do you want to try it, Paddy? We could leave our rifles with these boys.

The idea excited me as an individual and a would-be journalist as well – to walk into the palace where the tsar had lived and where the cabinet of the provisional government was hiding. And where the Junkers and the women of the Death Battalions – supposed A mazons – had sworn to die to protect Kerensky and the rest.

We dumped our rifles with the artillerymen and set off across the square. Our boots were noisy on the paving stones but it was a matter of pride that they should be. I wondered if the sniper at St Isaac’s was really gone – though that did not worry me half as much as it would have normally. Ahead of us stood that wonderful building – the palace whose architecture on its own made you think that it would bring ordinary people like us to a halt just by its own authority. But not today. I felt very much alive today – a gent entering his inheritance.

Just let me talk to them, said Suvarov who strode in a commanding manner. I certainly wasn’t going to try to do the talking in my bits and pieces of Russian. Soon we walked through the line of guns and up to the moustached Cossacks standing behind barrels set at the bottom of the steps. It made me a little awed to face them – their reputation did that to a person. But Suvarov began to talk his way past them, telling an officer that we had an intelligence report from Smolny for the ministers of state. It took a few minutes. Of course he had no formal paperwork on him, he said. If the Bolsheviks at Smolny had found anything like that on him they would have shot him! I could see the officer respected Suvarov’s haughty manner enough not to pester me. We were suddenly through the fringe of guards and mounting the vast steps built to make men feel like insects.

You see, hissed Suvarov, they let us in so easily. That wouldn’t happen at the Smolny. They’re indifferent – that’s why. Indifferent.

In the giant’s doorway at the head of the steps stood an old official in a blue uniform with gold braid all over it. He held up a hand to stop us going in. Suvarov repeated his story with plenty of gesturing. At last the old man – probably influenced by the fact we’d been let past by the guards below – sighed and gestured that we were free to enter. His visage told me he thought the whole place was going to the dogs.

The entry hall was all veined marble and ran away for acres – or so it seemed. It was designed to make the smallest sound bounce off the walls and belt you about the ears. Above our heads hung chandeliers as big as the house I’d grown up in. Either side of a central door in the furthest wall, two staircases rose to the upper floor. Our boots thundered on the marble as we crossed a space large enough to fit a village in and climbed one of the staircases. At the top we ran into a young officer in the sort of uniform I had only seen either on stage or on the dead boy in Kharkov. The man kneaded the right side of his face and knotted his brows, fiddling with his moustache. On top of that he carried his face to one side as if he had a toothache. Suvarov saluted him and went on with his urgent rigmarole about news from the Smolny – telling him breathlessly that a battalion from the Smolny had been dispatched with orders to capture the Interior Ministry and that the minister must be told.

In return the officer said curtly that the cabinet already knew this. Suvarov had some experience as an actor and really hammed up the urgency. He must be permitted to tell Kerensky. You see, the young officer told us suddenly in French, Monsieur Kerensky wasn’t here so we should simply go. Monsieur Kerensky had gone to fetch
une armée de sept divisions
from the northern front
.

Thank God! said Suvarov with an air of piety.

The officer waved us away now and told us to leave the building. Suvarov saluted him and he turned away and disappeared up a further staircase without seeing to our departure at all.

Suvarov and I wandered down a corridor and stopped at a panelled doorway.

Listen to the sound in there, he said.

I could hear a gramophone record scratching along and men shouting to each other and – now and then – laughter. An old Winter Palace flunky in his blue uniform came limping along the corridor. Shaking the handle Suvarov asked him why the door was locked. The old man told him that it was locked by order of the officers. Suvarov rose up to his fullest height – so much higher than myself or the old servant of the tsar – and asked him did he mean that unless the men were locked in they wouldn’t fight for the home of God’s Great Servant the Emperor or for the cabinet?

The old man told Suvarov he knew nothing about that. But Suvarov had impressed him and he began calling him
barin
as if he was a member of the nobility. It made Suvarov adopt a pose even more grand. Open it at once, he told the man.

The old official found a key from his pocket and opened it. Tell me when you leave,
barin,
he pleaded with Suvarov.

How are the Junkers going to get out to fight, Suvarov asked him, if they are locked away?

The old man shrugged reverentially. This question touched on only one of all the stupid orders he had received in a lifetime of bowing to people who barely deserved a nod.

We entered what I would have considered a massive room if I had not seen the hallway downstairs. The lower walls were wainscotted with beautiful wood and further up there was gold paintwork on the mouldings and French chandeliers hanging above us. I had never seen such splendid items as I’d seen in Piter – even though they were built on the misery of ordinary men and women. High up on the walls beyond the wainscotting were paintings of the battles of 1812 when Napoleon invaded Russia. Brave Russians were dead and dying in neat lines up there on the wall for their tsar. But at floor level the whole place was a shambles. Junkers were lying down on palliasses and blankets and further up the room was a group drinking with women in soldiers’ uniforms – no doubt part of one of the famous Shock Battalions of Death. Cigarette butts littered the floor and so did copies of nearly every stripe of paper, Bolshevik, Menshevik, Cadet. Those defenders of the Winter Palace who were wearing their jackets carried the patches at their collars that meant they were officers-in-training. But here they were no better than privates. Unwilling ones too. Their rifles weren’t stacked – some of them leaned against the wall and some of them just lay around on the polished wood as if they didn’t belong to anyone. At one end of the room machine-guns were sited in the tall windows overlooking Palace Square. No one manned them at the moment but they were capable of executing plenty of besiegers.