The revolutionist, p.33
The Revolutionist, page 33
Tuohy settled onto the bed next to Zander. "I brought two cartons for you—there's some bacon, some lard, a side of smoked ham, some tins of sardines, some cooking oil, a box or two of dried biscuits. There's even a couple of bottles of Georgian wine, and a tin of red ket caviar."
"I appreciate that, Atticus."
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"Anytime."
In the middle of the room Ludmilla was trying on a woolen bonnet that Appolinaria had knitted using wool stripped from one of her old sweaters. Ronzha glanced at the two portraits of Lili that Zander had hung on the wall over his bed, and then back at the child, and shook his head. "The resemblance is uncanny," he told Appolinaria.
Serafima caught Melor staring at Appolinaria. She kicked at his foot and raised a warning eyebrow. He shrugged and looked away, but when Serafima began to talk to Ludmilla, Melor continued watching Appolinaria out of the corner of his eye.
Alyosha Zhitkin asked, "Can I give her my present now.''" He went into the corridor and came back a few minutes later carrying a small cardboard box with holes punched in its sides. Everyone but Melor gathered around to watch Ludmilla open it. She gingerly pried up the cover, and her eyes widened. "Oh," she said. She dipped her hands into the carton and came out with a fluffy baby cat. She rubbed her nose in its fur. "Oooooh," she said.
"It is for you to give her a name," Alyosha told Ludmilla.
"I will call her . . . Lili," the girl decided.
Zander turned quickly away, and it was a moment before he felt sufficiently in control to turn back. He opened one of Tuohy's bottles of Georgian wine and passed around kitchen tumblers. Ronzha, who had become gaunt and partially bald, stood up and raised his glass. His eyes were red-rimmed; because of the lack of coal or firewood, the basement room in which he and Appolinaria lived was unheated, and neither had slept through the night in months. "I propose we drink to the residents of the old Steamboat who are missing from our little reunion," Ronzha said. "To Hippolyte Evgenevich, to Lili Mikhailovna, to Otto Eppler, to Vasia Timofeyevich. May they all rest in peace."
"I will drink to Lili and old Hippolyte," Tuohy called from across the room, "but I'll be damned if I will drink to the other two. They were traitors."
Zander said, "What makes you think Vasia was a traitor.''"
"I saw his name on a list once," Tuohy said quickly. "He was taken prisoner fighting for the Whites at Kazan."
"You never mentioned that before," Zander said, puzzled. "What happened to him.''"
Tuohy closed his eyes to indicate it was not the kind of thing you explained in front of an eleven-year-old girl.
"You're sure.'"' Zander asked in English.
"I didn't personally see it," Tuohy said. "But deserters who were recaptured were always shot."
Ronzha said, "Now that they are all safely dead, surely we can find it in our hearts to forgive and forget."
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"On the contrary," Tuohy retorted hotly, "we must neither forgive nor forget. Their fate must serve as a lesson to others who would betray the revolution."
Serafima whined, "Americanitz, you promised. Not in front of Ludmilla."
Melor said, "I agree with Tuohy." He eyed Ronzha with scorn. "Once a class enemy, always a class enemy."
Appolinaria leaned toward Ronzha and whispered something into his ear, but he shook her off. "They speak in cliches." He indicated Tuohy with a toss of his head. "Because he works for the Cheka is no reason for me not to say what I think."
Alyosha Zhitkin tried to change the subject. "Zander, you were in the Crimea when the last Whites were beaten back into the sea. Is it true that the Cossacks shot their horses at the water's edge before embarking for Constantinople.''"
"They shot them, and we ate them."
Melor said, "As for me, I love the taste of horsemeat."
Arishka was whispering to Tuohy. "If he doesn't start in, I won't," Tuohy said. He turned to Zander. "Speaking of horsemeat, did you read about the gang we caught manufacturing sausages for the black market.^ Pravda said they were making the sausages out of horsemeat, but it wasn't true. They were really making them out of freshly dug up corpses."
Sergeant Kirpichnikov's eyes blinked open and he looked at Serafima. "Where did you get those sausages we had last week.'"'
Serafima covered her mouth with her fingers. "On a street corner. From a man with a valise."
"I think I am going to vomit," Melor announced.
Arishka held a partly knitted sweater in front of Ludmilla to check the size. "Can't we talk about something pleasant for a change.''"
Alyosha Zhitkin turned to Tuohy. "What is the latest economic news.'"'
"That will not be pleasant either," Ronzha muttered under his breath.
"Now that the civil war is over and the interventionists have all left," Tuohy said, "the Party says that things are bound to look up."
"In fact," Ronzha said, "the economic situation is disastrous. Coal, iron, and steel production is a fraction of what it was before the Bolsheviks took power. Money has become worthless. In some factories workers are paid with what they produce—if they make shoes, they get shoes, and they must try and barter them for food. Only there is no food. The Bolshevik confiscation teams have taken almost everything from the peasants, including the seeds, and they are planting, when they bother to plant at all, just enough for themselves. Typhus
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and cholera are rampant. Factories are closing for lack of coal. Workers are fainting on the job from hunger. There aren't enough Chekists to slap them all back to consciousness. There are—what,'*—six hundred thousand or so Bolshevik Party members in Russia, but they are completely isolated from the general population. If free elections were held tomorrow—"
"A big //," sneered Appolinaria.
"—you Bolsheviks would be swept away. The only reason you are still in power is because you control the army, and the police." Ronzha's pent-up emotions flooded out like an angry river spilling over its banks. Zander looked away in embarrassment. "But you do not control the poets," Ronzha plunged on, his hands shaking, a hint of tears in his eyes, "even if you will not permit anyone to publish them."
"If you are not published," Tuohy said coldly, "it is because there is no place in the society we are constructing for negative thinking."
"What there is no place for in this society of yours is truth-telling," Ronzha said mockingly. "All truth-tellers are silenced."
"Mayakovsky's poetry is published in Pravda,'' Tuohy shot back. "Unlike some people who claim to be poets, he puts his poetry to work for the revolution."
"To make his poems simple enough for the masses," Ronzha declared, "Mayakovsky has stripped them of the images that gave them their power."
"He has stripped his poems of poetry," Appolinaria agreed. "There is nothing to hear in the silences between his words." And she added with a sly smile, "Any idiot knows that slogans are not the same thing as poetry."
"As for me," Melor announced brightly, "I like slogans more than I like poetry." And he quoted one. " 'I have seen the future and it works!' "
"Bread, land, peace—that's the ticket!" thundered Sergeant Kirpichnikov.
Ronzha waved a hand in disgust. "All your slogans cannot disguise the fact that you are terrorists."
Tuohy was on his feet now. "We didn't invent terror." He aimed his cigarette holder at Ronzha as if it were a loaded pistol. "We are only doing what Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great or the Mongol hordes did in their day. We are fighting terror with terror."
"You have become addicted to terror," Ronzha retorted. "You need a daily dose to function. You will never break the habit."
For a long moment everyone could hear Tuohy and Ronzha breathing heavily like two boxers in their corners. Sergeant Kirpichnikov, in an unaccustomed burst of humor, cried, "I declare Atticus Tuohy the
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winner by a technical knoclcout." Even Ronzha had to smile. "Hell," continued the sergeant, "anyone who can talk about Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great has to win."
Zander asked Tuohy, "What do you hear about Lenin's health these days.''"
"The less said about that, the better," Tuohy answered in English.
"What did he say.''" Melor asked.
"He said," Ronzha ventured, "that Comrade Lenin is suffering, as everyone in Moscow knows, from tertiary syphilis, which explains a great many things—the way he walks, for example, slapping his feet on the ground so he can be sure where they are from the sound they make, or the sudden mania he has for some person or program or some grandiose scheme, like electrification of all of Russia or world revolution."
Ronzha's outburst was greeted with stony silence; the adults in the room knew that it was dangerous to hear such things. Tuohy's walrus mustache bobbed nervously. "People have been arrested for saying less," he noted quietly.
Appolinaria covered her eyes with her hands. Ronzha seemed to be pleased with himself. "For once," he said, "I quite agree with our friend here. People have been arrested for saying much less."
Later, after Ronzha and Appolinaria had left. Zander steered Tuohy into the communal kitchen. "Is it true what Ronzha said about Lenin.''" he whispered.
"More or less."
"You won't file a report on Ronzha, Atticus, will you.'"'
"I don't have to. He already has a dossier as fat as your fist. He will talk himself into a grave one of these days."
"How long does Lenin have.''"
"Two years, three if the arsenic injections can slow down the deterioration."
"Obviously Trotsky will step into his shoes," Zander said thoughtfully. "No one else has his magnetism, or his revolutionary credentials."
"In my shop," Tuohy said, "the smart money is on Stalin. He's quietly installing his own people at every level of the Party. Let's face it, Trotsky's an innocent next to Stalin. The Party is Stalin. I heard that old Koba has even ordered some professors to catalogue every word Lenin ever set down on paper. That way he'll be able to cite the gospel according to Lenin to justify anything."
Zander stared out of the window, which still had its double glazing from the winter with wads of cotton between the panes to absorb the humidity. He had received a postcard from Leon the week before; his stepbrother had gone to live on a kibbutz near Haifa, and described in a tiny handwriting that wedged words into every corner of the card the
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joys of living the life of a Jewish peasant. Zander wondered what Leon, observing events from the outside, thought of the Russian Revolution now. Were things about to look up, as the Party claimed.'* Or would the Bolsheviks be swept away in a free election, as Ronzha said.'' Below, in the courtyard, two old men in overcoats and scarfs were setting up a folding table in the corner touched by sunlight to play dominoes. Ludmilla's baby cat—Zander decided he would never call it Lili—was scraping around in the box of dirt they had put out for it on the floor under the sink.
The silence between them made Tuohy uncomfortable. He cleared his throat, but Zander continued to stare out of the window, his eyes narrowed, his thoughts far away.
Tuohy said, "So how are you making out these days.^*"
Zander turned back to the room. "Not badly. One of the tenants we share the apartment with works for the central lumber collective. He is paid in packages of kindling, and we get to cook on the embers when we have something to cook."
"And the leg.-*"
Zander rapped his thigh with his knuckles. "Fm stuck with the limp for life, but I figure I got off lightly." He shook his head as if he were trying to dislodge some unpleasant thoughts. "They say seven million died in the civil war. All that killing, Atticus, and what do we have to show for it.''"
"The killing is history," Tuohy remarked.
"History," Zander murmured, "has a way of looking over your shoulder,"
"You're beginning to sound like Ronzha. Without the terror we couldn't have won."
"Each side was trying to terrorize the other side," Zander said. "The result is that terror has become institutionalized. When someone disagrees with us, we don't try to persuade him, we terrorize him."
"You're growing soft. Zander. You're too tender-hearted to do what has to be done to bring about the new order."
Zander uttered a dry laugh. "What I'm growing is old, Atticus. I'm starting to wonder how much of myself I am expected to give away for the final victory of socialism. I'm starting to realize that I'm going to have to make a stand somewhere."
"When you make this stand," Tuohy replied carefully, "you and I might find ourselves on different sides of the fence."
Zander accepted this with a slow nod.
Tuohy pulled the Bulgarian cigarette from his holder and held it under the faucet to extinguish it. Then he flipped it into an open garbage pail. "Well," he said dejectedly, "nobody can accuse you of being an optimist."
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Zander flashed an embarrassed smile that never quite made it as high as his eyes. "In Russia, an optimist is someone who doesn't know enough."
Tuohy snorted. "Here lies Atticus Tuohy," he intoned, "hacked to death by an intellectual armed with a sharp sentence."
He said it with a laugh. He didn't look very frightened.
°nOK4
The people are silent.
—Alexander Pushkin's last stage direction in Boris Godunov
TO PUT IT INTO TIME
I iv
ive funerals;
His lips quivering, his eyes shut, his head bent, his worker's cap jannmed down over his forehead, his knees pumping, the flats of his feet slapping clownlike against the damp cobblestones, Vladimir Lenin stumbled along like a blind man behind the funeral cortege. His wife, Krupskaya, kept a firm grip on his elbow, steadying him when he looked as if he might fall, steering him toward the niche in the Kremlin wall that had been prepared for the coffin.
Inessa Armand, Lenin's slim, graceful, golden-haired free spirit of a mistress— she had once written that even a fleeting passion was more poetic than the kisses of a vulgar married couple—had died of typhus in a mountain town in the northern Caucasus on September 24, 1920. Lenin had dispatched a special train to bnng back the body of the only person outside his immediate family he addressed with the intimate "ti." That Inessa had been Lenin's mistress was common knowledge in Party circles. Assembling for the funeral procession, several comrades had approached the Starik to offer condolences, but it was as if they were talking to a wall. The old man seemed shrunken. His hands trembled. When he finally opened his eyes and looked at someone he had worked with for twenty years, he didn't appear to recognize him.
Krupskaya's brow furrowed in preoccupation. She resented this public display of emotion, considered it tactless, even unbolshevik. It wasn't at all like Vladimir llich. Maybe he was getting old. fvlaybe the arteries of his brain were calcifying, as the doctors said. She glanced over her shoulder at the Politburo comrades trailing after them. All of them wore black armbands as a sign of mourning. Krupskaya
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noted Zinoviev and Kamenev exchanging comnnents in an undertone. Stalin joined the conversation, munnbled something. The other two nodded. She could innagine what they were talking about: that the Starik was not long for this world; that they had better start thinking seriously about the succession. If only she could nnake sure Lenin got his daily arsenical injections, some of which he missed because he couldn't fit them into his schedule, he might live longer than any of them expected. Or wanted.
At the Kremlin wall the cortege drew up in a semi-circle. Four young soldiers lifted the coffin and slid it into the niche. Behind them, a military band struck up a slow, funereal melody. Turning away from the niche, Lenin swayed visibly. Tears trickled down his cheeks. Krupskaya tightened her grip on his elbow and motioned for their car. Waiting for it to be brought around, Lenin began to mumble.
"What did you say?" Krupskaya asked.
The members of the Politburo stood around them, shifting their weights from foot to foot, studying the ground as if it held a secret.
"In Paris," Lenin said, "Inessa used to play Beethoven's Appassionata on that awful piano with the missing middle A. Do you remember?"
Krupskaya gestured again for the automobile. What the devil was keeping it?
"It is a marvelous piece of music," Lenin rambled on. "I cannot think of any greater human achievement. I would like to listen to it every day. But I cannot listen to music so often. It gets on my nerves. It makes me want to say stupid things and pat the heads of people who, living in this vile hell, can create such beauty. Nowadays you must not pat anybody's head. They might bite off your hand. You have to beat them on the head." Lenin raised his voice. "Beat them without mercy, although it goes without saying we Bolsheviks are ideally opposed to the use of force." The Starik shook his head mournfully. "Better fewer, but better." His voice trailed off. "Better fewer . . ."
Moscow was caught in the grip of the most savage winter in memory, but Stalin, with one handrail of the bier resting on his padded right shoulder, didn't feel the cold. His cheeks were flushed with excitement, his eyes vivid, almost feverish. Things were going better than he dared hope. Trotsky, his archrival, hadn't even turned up for the funeral. Stalin had lied to him about when it would be held, and Trotsky, thinking he could never make it back in time, had stayed in Tiflis. Just as well, Stalin thought. As the peasants say, "I would sooner give an enema to a corpse than dine with a Yid."
Lenin had been ill much of 1922; had suffered a series of strokes that left him partially paralyzed and struggling to speak coherently. Confined to a wheelchair, he had been packed off to a government rest home in the village of Gorky. The few comrades allowed to see him had come back shaken. One of them recounted how he told Lenin that trolley car service was being expanded to the outlying proletarian sections of Moscow. "Vot! Vot!" cue6 the Starik, using the only word he was able to pronounce correctly. "That's it! That's it!"
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On January 21, 1924, Lenin's tennperature rose sharply. Convulsions followed. He lapsed into a conna, and died at 6:30 in the evening. His body was brought back to Moscow to lie in state in the Hall of Columns. For fpur icy days, hundreds of thousands of people filed silently, tearfully, past the open coffin. Today, the twenty-ninth, he was being buried with appropriate pomp in the temporary wooden mausoleum that had been erected in Red Square near the Kremlin wall. Eventually the body would be embalmed and displayed in a permanent marble mausoleum.
