The revolutionist, p.26
The Revolutionist, page 26
Zander suddenly felt exhausted. "Can I sit down?"
Beloborodov nodded toward a chair.
"Trotsky was formal about the women," Zander said. "Alexandra is a princess of the German House of Hesse. She is a cousin to the kaiser, a sister to Grand Duke Ludwig. The Germans have repeatedly expressed concern for her safety. There is a chance they will treat the execution of the tsar as an internal Russian affair. But there is no telling how they will react to the execution of a German princess. Or her daughters. If they want an excuse to scuttle the peace treaty and attack us, we will be handing it to them. Think carefully before you plunge us back into war with the Germans."
Beloborodov and Yurovsky studied the bowl of fruit on the table. Zander looked out the window at the Ipatiev house. Specks of sunlight sparkled off the tiles on the roof. Finally Beloborodov spoke up. "Even if the worst happens and she falls into White hands," he said carefully, "she could not serve their cause. She is a German princess. No Russian, White, or Red will rally to her."
THE REVOLUTIONIST
Yurovsky's face screwed up in thought. His lower jaw worked as he chewed on the inside of a cheek. "There is a train leaving tomorrow morning loaded with gold bullion from the banks here," Yurovsky told Beloborodov. "I suppose we could send the women to Perm on it and take another look at the situation in a week or two."
Beloborodov turned to Zander. "We will give Trotsky half a loaf. We will evacuate the women—but not the men."
The lights in the first-floor dining room of the Hotel America had been turned up, and the tables had been arranged in a rough semicircle. Beloborodov, Yurovsky, and several other Bolshevik commissars were seated behind the tables facing the ornate double-door through which the accused would enter. About twenty people, including Zander, Lili, and Vasia, looked on from chairs set along the wall. At precisely eight in the evening—the chimes of an English grandfather's clock in the lobby could be heard ringing the hour—the double-doors were thrown open and Nicholas Romanov, surrounded by four guards, made his way slowly into the room.
Nicholas had turned fifty at Ekaterinburg, but he appeared to be at least fifteen years older than that. His skin had the color and the texture of wax. His neatly trimmed beard was streaked with gray, his clear blue eyes were muddied by the dark pouches under them. He wore a soldier's khaki shirt with the Cross of St. George over the breast pocket and sweat stains under the armpits, khaki trousers and worn felt boots. Walking with an uncertain step, he approached his judges until he stood in the center of the semi-circle. Behind him, the guards closed the double-door and posted themselves with their backs to it.
Beloborodov cleared his throat. "Nicholas Romanov," he declared, "you have been summoned before the special military tribunal of the Ural Soviet to answer the charges against you, to wit: that you have been in secret contact with White officers plotting your escape from Soviet custody; that you are planning to renounce your abdication and attempt a restoration; that you—"
A soft, rattling sound came from the back of Nicholas's throat. "Your guards have been pilfering the last of our linen. Your sentries taunt my girls when they go to the lavatory. There are obscenities scrawled on the walls of the corridors through which they pass. These and other abnormalities must be corrected . . . immediately."
The commissars behind the tables exchanged looks. Beloborodov intoned, "Nicholas Romanov, how do you plead.''"
At the word "plead," the former tsar straightened his shoulders and elevated his chin. Then he sucked in air so rapidly the wind whistled through his front teeth. "So it has come to this," he whis-
ROBERT LITTELL
pered. "We are to be tried by judges who have already fixed the sentence."
From his place along the wall, Zander noticed the former tsar's legs trembling. Beloborodov must have noticed it, too, because he called, "A chair for the accused." Zander stood up and brought his own chair over to Nicholas Romanov. The former tsar of all the Russias looked down at the chair, but instead of sitting in it, he rested one hand on its wicker back for support and turned to the judges. "Pass your sentence and let us get on with this nasty business of settling scores. I will show you how tsars die."
The judges conferred in an undertone for several minutes. Beloborodov would have preferred to stretch out the charade but Yurovsky, his jaw working impatiently, wanted to cut corners. With a shrug, Beloborodov gave in. "Nicholas Romanov," he said, "the special military tribunal of the Ural Soviet finds you guilty of the charges brought against you and sentences you to the highest measure of punishment, said sentence to be carried out at dawn tomorrow, July 16, 1918. This court is adjourned."
Nicholas Romanov's mouth contorted. Watching from the sideline, it took Zander a moment to realize that the former tsar had greeted the sentence of death with a lopsided smile.
The sun was burning its way through a faint haze that shrouded the horizon. Dust stirred in the drifts of heat piling up against the side of the Ipatiev house. In the stillness, a distant sound—dry, menacing— reverberated through the courtyard; it might have been thunder, except the sky was cloudless. "The Czechs are getting nearer," Lili commented in an undertone.
Beloborodov emerged from the front door and strode up to Yurovsky, who was distributing Browning and Nagant pistols to the firing squad. "He is holding up better than the women," Beloborodov said. He nodded toward a barred window at ground level. "They are taking him down to the basement now. Let's get on with it—God knows how he will react when they bring the boy on down after him."
At that instant a muffled shout came from the basement room that had been chosen for the execution. Then a second, louder shout, and then a panic-pitched man's voice screamed, ''Nyet!'"
Yurovsky clicked the chamber of his pistol into place and led Beloborodov and the guards through the door into the house.
Inside the main entrance to the stockade that screened the Ipatiev house from Voznesensky Avenue, Zander kicked at a pebble, raising a small cloud of dust. Lili tucked her arm through his. "The decision about the boy is objectively correct. And Trotsky will be pleased when he hears we are getting the women out."
THE REVOLUTIONIST
From the basement room a muffled, ragged volley of pistol shots rang out. A dozen birds nesting on the roof of the Ipatiev house beat their way into the sky. Zander's mouth tightened. Somewhere upstairs a woman shrieked. The shriek trailed off into sobs. A single shot sounded. And another. The sentries around the stockade who had been staring at the grilled basement window resumed their duties.
"We are builders," Lili whispered fiercely. "But before you can build, you must tear down."
"Woe to the revolution," Zander said, repeating Marat's dictum often quoted in Bolshevik circles, "that hasn't enough courage to behead the ancien regime.'' He turned away with a particularly absorbed expression on his face.
Lili, watching him carefully, wasn't sure if he had managed to convince himself.
At midmorning, when the wind shifted, the rumble of the Czech artillery became explicit, and it seemed that all of Ekaterinburg headed for the railroad station in the hope of talking or bribing their way onto the last train out. In the avenues the dust kicked up by townspeople dragging enormous valises made it difficult to breathe. Where the peasant market had been two days before, there was now a swirl of men and women and children. The station itself was ringed by Red Guards who used the bayonets fixed to their rifles to keep the crowds back. The people in the front rank frantically waved passes that were long since out of date, offered gold coins or silver candlesticks or brass samovars to the soldiers. Behind, new waves piled up, pressed forward, shouted over the heads of those in front to demand what the holdup was.
"We will never get through this crowd," Lili called to Zander as they saw the mob ahead.
"We should have gotten Beloborodov to take us in his car," Vasia wailed. His eyes bulged in fear at the prospect of falling again into the hands of the Whites. "We should have started out last night instead of hanging around for the execution."
Zander said, "Let's not panic. They must be permitting those with passes through. Come on."
From Voznesensky Avenue came the wail of a hand-cranked siren. Three cars turned up the avenue toward the station, and Zander had to pull Lili out of their way. The first and third cars were open sedans, and the seats and running boards were crammed with Red Guards brandishing pistols. The middle car, a closed Renault sedan, had its windows painted over so that it was impossible to see who was inside.
"That must be the Romanov women heading for the train to
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Perm," Zander said. Grabbing Lili's hand, he darted forward in the wake of the convoy, and they were able to cover almost a hundred meters before the crowd closed in again. Shouldering their way through the mob, they finally managed to reach the ring of soldiers around the station.
"We have places on the train," Zander yelled at a young officer, and he held up the three passes they had used on their eighteen-and-a-half-day trip from Moscow.
"As of midnight," the officer called back, "blue passes are no longer valid. Only red passes can enter the station."
"We are known to Beloborodov," Zander pleaded. "He didn't say anything about changing passes." But the officer, preoccupied with a woman trying to thrust a baby into his arms, was no longer paying attention.
Zander turned to Lili and Vasia. "Let's circle around and come at the station from the other side. With any luck we may find Beloborodov."
Pushing back through the crowd, they skirted the dirt clearing which the peasants used for their market, crossed the tracks, and came around on the freight side of the station—only to run into another line of Red Guards. Beyond them Zander could see the train sitting in the station. Smoke spiraled up from the long straight stack of the engine. Steam hissed from a nozzle near a wheel. Behind the engine was a flat car stacked with wood, and two freight cars with Red Guards manning machine guns at the sliding doors. The eight passenger cars were already mobbed with people who had somehow managed to get past the cordon of soldiers. Several passengers were tossing valises up onto the roof and climbing up after them. Near the middle of the train was a passenger car with its windows painted over. Beloborodov, wearing a khaki uniform and knee-length leather boots, stood next to the steps at one end of the wagon. "There he is," Zander cried, and he opened his mouth to yell to the head of the Ural Soviet, but his voice was drowned out by the shrill scream of the engineer's whistle. At the signal Beloborodov swung himself up the steps and disappeared inside the car. The train began to jerk forward. The people on the other side of the station howled in despair as they realized the last train out of Ekaterinburg was leaving without them. Even the Red Guards turned to watch it go; they were being left behind to fight a rear-guard action against the advancing Whites.
As the train picked up speed and disappeared around a bend, a terrible silence settled over the station. Somewhere in the distance cannon thundered. People scanned the sky, hoping to spot storm clouds to which they could attribute the sound. But the only thing the sky was heavy with was heat.
THE REVOLUTIONIST
Zander, Lili, and Vasia spent the next three days huddled in the Hotel America listening to the Czech cannon drawing closer and trying to work out a scheme to leave Ekaterinburg. The problem was transportation. All vehicles, whether horse-drawn or motorized, had been commandeered by the Red Guards left behind to defend the city. At one point Zander suggested they walk the two hundred miles to Perm, but they learned that checkpoints had been set up around the outskirts of Ekaterinburg; any able-bodied man without a red pass stamped by the local Cheka was liable to be taken for a deserter and shot on the spot. As for getting a red pass, they were only available in Room Three, the Cheka office—which had been padlocked since the last train with most of the Ekaterinburg Chekists aboard left for Perm.
When word reached the hotel that the first Czech scouts had set up a skirmish line in the eastern suburbs. Zander decided the moment had come to go into hiding. Carrying their belongings, along with a carton full of tins of food they had scavenged from the hotel pantry, they made their way down an alley behind the Hotel America. Hundreds of apartments and houses had been abandoned by Ekaterinburg residents fearful of being caught in a house-to-house street-to-street battle for the city. Not far from the hotel, where Voznesensky crossed Asiatika Avenue, Lili spotted a top-floor apartment with its windows shuttered over. They forced the lock on a back door and climbed what must have been the servants' staircase. Standing on Vasia's shoulders. Zander jimmied open the transom above the kitchen door of the apartment, dropped to the floor, and let the others in.
"This will do nicely," Zander said, surveying in the light filtering through a skylight the heavy furniture covered with sheets. Vasia returned from exploring the pantry and announced he had discovered a sack of oats, a shelf full of preserves, and several bottles of Bulgarian wine.
Peeking through the slats of a shutter, Lili studied the intersection below as the first Czech cavalry, armed with sabers slung across their backs, passed at a trot. When Lili turned back, all the blood seemed to have drained from her face. Zander read her thoughts. "They don't have the time, or the manpower, to search every apartment in Ekaterinburg," he reassured her. And himself
That day passed, and the next, with scattered bursts of rifle fire, and the occasional rattle of a machine gun, echoing through the streets below. Once Lili, peering out between the slats, saw fifty or so Red Guard prisoners with ropes around their necks being herded along the avenue. Another time Vasia saw several open automobiles pass carrying Czech soldiers holding aloft pikes with human heads spiked on them. The sight depressed him so much he began spending most of his time curled up in the fetal position on a cot in a small room off the kitchen.
ROBERT LITTELL
To make time pass, Zander told Lili stories about his childhood in America. He recalled the sizzling excitement of descending the Ellis Island ferry and setting foot for the first time on the soil of Manhattan; he had scraped up a palm full of dirt and brought it to his nose and filled his lungs with the odor of America. He described the buildings that disappeared into the sky; during his first few days in New York, his neck had ached from looking up all the time. He remembered staring with such intensity at the first Negro he had ever set eyes on that his father had been obliged to pluck at his sleeve and lecture him in Yiddish about the necessity for immigrants to be discreet. The more stories Zander told, the more that came to him: translating for his father into Yiddish the instructions printed on his portable Singer sewing machine; helping Abner ladle out soup in the People's Kitchen on Division Street; listening to Leon read aloud from a textbook on crop rotation in a singsong voice so his mother would think he was studying from a King James bible.
Late at night the stories would peter out. Then Zander and Lili would share half a bottle of wine and make love in one of the twin beds in the master bedroom. And the occasional hoofbeats that echoed up from the streets of Ekaterinburg only seemed to heighten the intensity with which they joined themselves to each other; passion had become an antidote for panic.
A week after their arrival they ran out of coal and began breaking up chairs to feed the cooking fire in the kitchen stove. They rationed themselves to one meal a day, a mash made by steaming oats in a pot, grinding the bloated grains, and then straining them through a sieve and adding water and wine. Zander calculated that at the rate they were going they had enough food to last a month and a half, by which time, hopefully, a Red counterattack would have retaken the city. There was absolutely no reason, he told Vasia one night when he complained bitterly of being cooped up, for any of them to risk going into the street for quite some time.
Which made Vasia's disappearance, when they discovered it the following morning, all the more difficult to understand.
I
ii_
t is an old trick I picked up in Siberia," Sergeant Kirpichnikov explained. Kneeling down next to the teenage messenger who had removed his boot and stocking, he spit on the large needle threaded with coarse hemp. Pasha pointed the stump of his left hand at the enormous blister on the sole of the boy's foot. A handful of sharpshooters attached to the train gathered around. Tuohy and several other Chekists, their legs dangling from the edge of the freight car that held Trotsky's two automobiles, started singing a bawdy limerick to drown out—so Tuohy had mockingly announced—the patient's cries of pain.
"Is it going to hurt, then.''" the young messenger asked Sergeant Kirpichnikov.
One of the new officers, fresh from Moscow judging by his bright red breeches, recited some lines from Gogol to tease the messenger. "If someone is going to die, he'll die anyway. If he's going to survive, he'll survive anyway."
"Get on with the operation. Pasha," Tuohy called down from the freight car. "A blister never killed anyone."
"You pass the needle and the coarse thread through the blister, so," Sergeant Kirpichnikov said. The young messenger grimaced and turned his head away. "Then you cut the thread, so." The sergeant pulled open the blade of his pocket knife with his front teeth and cut away the needle with his good right hand. "You got to be sure to leave some thread sticking out both sides of the blister. What happens is the thread absorbs all the pus." He patted the messenger on the back. "You can go back to your unit now. Tomorrow, if you are still alive, you can pull out the thread. It will be as if the blister never existed."
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Trotsky's armored train had arrived at Sviyazhsk during a lull in the battle the night before. Ekaterinburg had fallen to the Czechs and the White Guards, and Kazan, the last important town on the eastern bank of the upper Volga, had been occupied soon after. By early August 1918, the military situation was critical. The front was crumbling; Red units were deserting or retreating at the first sign of a White probe. If the Czechs, regrouping around Kazan, succeeded in crossing the Volga, there would be nothing to stop them from sweeping across the open plain to Moscow. And that would mean the end of Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution.
