Эльвира Барякина - Russian Treasures

The train slowed down and stopped to let an oncoming train pass. Nina was silent.

“A shrewd housewife never puts all her eggs in one basket,” Sofia Karlovna added.

The old countess was eager for Nina to appreciate her prudence and foresight, but her daughter-in-law was staring out the window. Sofia Karlovna followed her gaze and saw the body of a hanged man dangling from a signal post.

It was Osip Drugov.

6

Sofia Karlovna couldn’t remember at what point she had stopped seeing Nina simply as that woman and begun to look on her as a daughter. At first, the old countess had been unable to forgive Nina for marrying Vladimir. Later, Sofia Karlovna had been furious with Nina for having an affair with Fomin, and then she had smarted at her marrying Klim Rogov. The very idea that Nina had found comfort in the arms of a stranger was insulting, but Sofia Karlovna had been forced to hide her feelings because her daughter-in-law and Klim were the only people she had left in the world.

After Klim’s death, she had become reconciled to Nina. As for etiquette, thought the old countess, let he who is without sin throw the first stone.

Now, Sofia Karlovna kept an eye on her daughter-in-law’s state of mind and tried to make sure that Nina ate.

After the death of her first husband, Nina had been hysterical, which had been understandable. Now, she was calm and didn’t even cry, although Sofia Karlovna could tell that something was very wrong. In an attempt to reassure Nina, the old countess babbled away about the life they would have together in France.

“We’ll spend winters in Paris,” she said, “and go to Burgundy in summer. I have some money in Crédit Lyonnais, and I’m thinking about buying a vineyard not far from Dijon. When I was your age, what I really wanted to do was to make wine. So, why not?”

Sofia Karlovna could almost see the dusty purple bunches of grapes and taste the juice of the first berry.

“Your grief will pass,” she told Nina. “Not immediately, of course, but eventually, everything will fall into place. I loved my husband very much too. He was killed by a terrorist—in those days, students kept assassinating government officials one after the other.”

“I’ll never forget Klim,” Nina replied and fell silent, realizing that not so long ago she had said the same thing about Vladimir.

Sofia Karlovna sighed.

“Only the first love stays with you forever, and the older you get, the more it means to you. When I was fourteen years old, my family lived in St. Petersburg right next to the residence of the Japanese consul. His son—we called him Jap—was always spying on us through the hole in the fence as we played in the backyard. One day, he sent me a letter: ‘My dear cherry blossom, Sofia-san—’ He finished with the line, ‘As my body does its work, my soul is always with you.’

“I was stupid and showed the letter to my friends. They teased him, ‘Hey, lover boy, do you want us to call for Sofia-san while your body is doing its work?’ Soon, his family went away, and I never saw him again. Fifty years have passed, but I still remember him. And you will remember my son in that way too.”

“Yes, I will,” Nina said faintly.

7

Sofia Karlovna kept asking Nina, “Why are you so silent?”

Because there was nothing to talk about anymore. Nina had turned to stone: a swift reaction had swept through her body so that everything—her skin, muscles, and even her thoughts—had curdled and solidified.

What can I do with myself now? Nina wondered. She spent her days mired in contemptuous hatred of those who were still alive while Klim was dead. These other people breathed his air and ate his bread, and they had stolen the time that Nina had intended to spend with him alone. It was a daily desecration and sacrilege.

At night, she lay on her bed curled into a ball and repeated to the rhythm of the wheels, “Come back, come back—” She tried, again and again, to realize that never again would she look into Klim’s laughing dark brown eyes.

The second-class car was dark, filled with a foul haze and the sound of snoring.

Do you want me to learn to live without you? But there’s so much I still want to say to you. I want to sleep in your arms, watch you drink your tea in the morning, smooth down your hair, help you find your keys that have fallen under the table in the hall, bend to reach for them at the same time as you, and forget everything to kiss you on the lips. I want to wait for you to come home in the evening, look forward to it, be angry with you for always being late—always late—

1

Fomin had paid the Cheka men off by giving them a huge bribe—all the money collected for the uprising. He felt terribly sorry for Zhora and Elena, but there was nothing he could do for them. He had had no choice but to drop everything and run away as fast as he could.

By November 1918, he had ended up in the headquarters of General Denikin. The White Army grew from nothing, thanks to the enthusiasm of volunteers willing to fight to save their country. But there weren’t enough of them to defeat Bolshevism, and they had nothing with which to inspire the masses.

Nobody was able to explain in popular terms what the Whites were fighting for. The words “monarchy,” “freedom,” “constituent assembly,” or “rule of law” meant nothing to the illiterate peasants. They understood only that the Whites would bring back landlords and make the peasants pay for the land they had gotten ahold of illegally. In such a situation, it was useless to expect them to offer help with food or to join up for the army.

The Bolsheviks had a much better position in terms of geography. They had gained control of almost all of the country’s industrial enterprises and railroads. The population in the territory occupied by the Red Army was far greater and more ethnically homogeneous while the Whites had to deal with the border regions, each of which was seeking separatism. As long as the White generals stood up stubbornly for “one indivisible Russia,” they alienated their potential allies from local elites.

But the main difficulty was the eternal problem of money—damn money!

Lack of funds led to a lack of supplies. White officers and officials were paid a pittance and so were prone to bribery and looting. One thing led to another, and by the summer of 1919, General Denikin and his army couldn’t even find support far behind the frontlines in White-occupied territory.

Fomin did everything he could to convince the White generals that they needed a well-thought-out and easily understood political program that would clearly benefit the common people. But for them, the simplicity of slogans meant appealing to the most primitive popular beliefs. While the Bolsheviks blamed everything on the bourgeois, the Whites decided to blame everything on the Jews. The only idea that united the broad anti-Bolshevik coalition from monarchists to anarchists was blind, ruthless anti-Semitism. They believed that since there were so many Jews among the Bolshevik high officials and Red Army commanders, the revolution and the civil war in Russia were a part of the conspiracy of Jews seeking world domination. These sentiments resulted in anti-Semitic attacks of an unprecedented scale and brutality.

Fomin invested all of his energy in trying to establish quality propaganda in the White Army. He argued that they should stress the idea of patriotism, not nationalism or revenge. The Whites had to seek compromises, promote democracy, and campaign for help from abroad since only the Allies would give loans to fund the White Army.

But the generals didn’t support Fomin’s program. “Let the Europeans do things their way,” they said. “In Russia, people aren’t ready for democracy.”

It was useless to appeal to common sense; they didn’t want to listen.

Fomin went to Novorossiysk where he found work as a local representative for the Interdepartmental Commission for the Recording of State Property taken from the Bolsheviks. His new position meant that he had money to run his newspapers. Fomin decided that he would independently campaign for what he thought was right.

2

Novorossiysk was a small southern town surrounded by bluish mountains and a dirty sea. All the town offered in the way of local sights were the silhouettes of Allied steamers standing dark against the horizon and the masts of sunken battleships—the remnants of Russia’s Black Sea Navy, which could be glimpsed among the waves not far from the pier.

Fomin rode into town along Serebryakovskaya Street in his battered motor. The street was full of nervous, bustling people. Ragged soldiers loitered beside government buildings. A cart passed slowly in a cloud of white cement dust with bluish arms and legs protruding from under its tarpaulin cover.

“Typhoid victims,” the chauffeur told Fomin. “Essentially, we’re in the middle of a funeral procession, but nobody has bothered to take off their hats.”

A large poster hung over the entrance to the cinema: “Horrors perpetrated by the Bolsheviks from 1917 to 1919 in Moscow—in four parts.” Fomin knew that all of these “horrors” had been filmed by the White propaganda bureau.

In the window of the grocery store was a map of military operations. The little paper flags that marked the frontline had not changed positions for three weeks.

A crippled man stood on the sidewalk with a tin in his hand. “Citizens, please make your donation for a monument to the heroes who have died from Bolshevik atrocities.”