Эльвира Барякина - Russian Treasures

4

The most terrible events often become myths, and every myth needs a hero. The hero’s job is to perform miracles and suffer for the people. Rising from the dead is always a handy trick to have up your sleeve as well.

Lenin’s miraculous recovery from his recent attempted assassination has transformed him into a hero of epic proportions, and I’ve now become an expert at creating the myths that will fix him on this pedestal for time immemorial. I write that Lenin works tirelessly for the revolution day and night despite the hole in his lung. A man of his caliber and intellect is born only once every thousand years. Workers all over the world adore him, and delegates from villages flock around the Kremlin to pay homage to their great leader. His name will resound through the centuries, his achievements are immutable and immortal, and so on and so forth.

My Sunday school education and the time I spent serving in church as an altar boy has turned out to be of some use after all. I have developed a flair for writing panegyric material of an almost religious fervor. The thing that truly amazes me is that my over-the-top, ironic toadying is taken at face value and applauded as a resounding success. The more colorful and vulgar my turn of phrase, the more satisfied Skudra is with my work.

I never imagined that anything I ever wrote would be distributed to a hundred thousand readers, yet that’s precisely what is happening now. Yesterday, Skudra sent a courier off to Moscow with a manuscript of mine entitled The Great Leader of the Rural Poor. For my pains, I received the princely fee of two hundred rubles and a looted toiletry bag replete with a bar of soap, a box of tooth powder, a new toothbrush, and a Gillette razor.

The railroad station—or rather, what’s left of it—is overrun with children selling trading cards with pictures of Lenin on them. Some soldiers buy them for good luck in battle, others for good luck in their career, but most take them back home and pin them on the walls above their beds.

All of this makes Nina and me laugh. Not very wholesome laughter, it’s true, but there’s no other kind to be had at the moment.

Nina is still in the Cathedral of the Assumption. She’s getting better and has already been out to join me on walks to the bluff overlooking the river. In spite of everything, she wants to go back to Nizhny Novgorod and find Zhora. I’ve tried to talk her out of it but to no avail. She just gets upset and takes offense when I do.

“If you had a brother,” she said, “would you leave him behind?”

I realize that we have to find Zhora, but I’ve been reading newspapers from Nizhny Novgorod. The situation there does not sound promising.

The revenge of the proletariat for the attack on Lenin will make the entire bourgeoisie shudder in horror.

—Izvestia (The News)

From now on, the clarion call of the working class will be a call for hatred and revenge.

—Pravda (Truth)

We shall kill our enemies in their hundreds. Let thousands be killed; let them drown in their own blood. We shall avenge Lenin’s sufferings by shedding rivers of bourgeois blood.

—Krasnaya Gazeta (The Red Gazette)

What is this? Some sort of mass hysteria? A witch-hunt? Nina and I are bourgeois by definition. We’re exactly the type they’re out to kill. We need to stay away from the cities, particularly Nizhny Novgorod, where someone might recognize us, but nothing will stop my stubborn Nina.

All that remains for me to do is to take each day as it comes and try to be happy as I can for as long as I can. The Whites have stopped attacking Sviyazhsk, which is a blessing. Trotsky has brought back plenty of medicine and food, and my beloved is safe for the time being. What else could I hope for?

Yesterday, I was on my way back to the station when I saw dark clouds on the horizon and heard the sparrows making a frantic commotion in the bushes. A storm was coming. I hurried along hungry, penniless, and helpless, head over heels in love with my woman. I was already dreaming of the next time I would be able to sit with her on our windy bluff, admiring her beauty and secretly thanking God for all his blessings.

I got soaked to the skin on my way back to the station. Half-blinded by the rain and out of breath, I found shelter under a canopy and stood there wiping my face with my hands and shaking the raindrops out of my hair. And blow me down with a feather if I didn’t feel just fine! I felt on top of the world.

Two little girls were standing there with baskets full of mushrooms. They looked at me, and I imagine they were trying to guess what this bedraggled soldier was feeling so happy about.

Nothing special, little ones. I’m just reveling in the true meaning of life.

5

Sviyazhsk was swept by an epidemic of a particularly virulent form of influenza. Dr. Sablin was one of the first to fall ill and was sent back to Nizhny Novgorod. The disease spread so rapidly that soon the number of influenza patients far exceeded the number of wounded.

Klim almost died from the disease, but it did, however, save him from the fate that befell his colleagues during the storming of Kazan. On the way, the ship carrying the propaganda boys hit a mine and sank with no survivors.

The Bolsheviks had transported naval guns down from the Baltic Sea and shelled the Whites who were helpless to retaliate. All they had were light field guns with half the range of the Red’s artillery. The Czechs and Slovaks boarded their trains and left Kazan, and the city was immediately taken by the Baltic and Black Sea sailors who were greeted with rejoicing in the outskirts and silence in the deserted streets of the city center. Thousands of civilian refugees had left with the Whites as they retreated. The Red Volga Flotilla and the troops moved east up the Kama River, and the camp at Sviyazhsk gradually dispersed.

Klim wondered why the Red Army, which resembled nothing so much as a horde of bandits, was succeeding in overpowering the Whites. Did the Whites really have no resources at their disposal to defend the Volga region?

It seemed that this was indeed the case if only because he and others had chosen to work for the Bolsheviks or to remain neutral. Some had made an informed choice while others had simply followed the crowd. The fall of Kazan was a natural consequence of this.

6

Sister Photinia managed to get Nina and Klim on board the hospital ship Death to the Bourgeoisie, which was bound for Nizhny Novgorod.

“Oh, you poor things,” she sighed, looking at them sadly.

When the steamer was about to leave, she smuggled the village fool Maxim on board. He had agreed to carry a heavy bundle onto the ship in exchange for a piece of hard tack.

“Take your devil away with you,” Sister Photinia whispered into Klim’s ear. “I don’t know if it really is an exhibit from a museum as you say, but it’s brought nothing but misfortune to Sviyazhsk. It’s a good thing we didn’t throw it into the river—it would probably have killed all the fish as well.”

The hospital ship sailed out of the harbor to a chorus of sirens from the other steamers. Nina and Klim found a place to sit down at the side of the boat, which was lined with sandbags. To the right of them was a machine-gun nest, and to the left were boxes of ammunition. Hidden behind their backs was the satyr carefully wrapped in cloth.

Klim was still suffering from a terrible migraine after his bout of influenza. The only thing that soothed it was to lay his head on Nina’s lap and have her smooth his brow and stroke his head while he gazed up at the curls on her cheek, which reminded him of the curlicue flourishes of traditional Russian Khokhloma folk designs.

We are making a very bad decision going back to Nizhny Novgorod, thought Klim. But they didn’t have any other option. They couldn’t leave Zhora behind.

1

Zhora knew that whatever they did, he and Elena must not go home. Postromkin would have passed their names to the Cheka as “enemies of the people,” and now, it would only be a matter of minutes before they would run them to earth.

They hid behind the sheds at the power station until morning, and it was only then that Zhora realized that the Bolsheviks might arrest Nina and the old countess instead of them.

How could he have been so stupid? Like some intrepid freedom fighter, he had planned to set fire to the Lady, but all he had done was put his own family in danger.

Now, the Cheka will shut down the cooperative, Zhora thought, terrified. Mr. Fomin will arrive at Crest Hill and walk into an ambush.

Elena was thinking the same thing. “We have to warn Nina,” she said firmly.

They crept up to the house from the river side and almost ran straight into a patrol sweeping the thickets on the slope.

“Run!” Zhora whispered to Elena.

They wandered the city all day. They had nowhere to go. All of their friends were involved in the anti-Bolshevik conspiracy, and Zhora and Elena didn’t want to compromise them. One deft pull on the thread, and the Cheka could unravel the entire plot.

As they were walking past the Bubnov Hotel, Elena had an idea. “Why don’t we spend the night here?” she asked. “We can say we’re young proletarian poets from Moscow who have been attacked and had all their belongings stolen.”