“There’s underwear in here, lads. Real underpants!”

“And artillery parts.”

“Hey, quick, this one’s full of saddles!”

The army priest had beaten at the looters with his umbrella. “Take your hands off! That’s a sin! Don’t you dare!”

But the soldiers had shoved him down in the mud.

The Whites forced the peasants to carry their loot and refused to let them go, taking them farther and farther away from their native villages. The army neither paid civilians for their services nor gave them hay for their horses. Many times, a peasant willingly gave up a good horse for an injured one simply for a chance to get back home. And when he reached his village, he found a new man in charge there, a Red commissar who had been dispatched to take the place of a predecessor who had been hanged.

“Citizens,” the commissar exhorted the frightened villagers, “you have been freed from your chains. A new day is dawning.”

The White army kept losing soldiers and gaining refugees. Hordes of people trudged alongside, carried their belongings, and drove herds of animals along the roads.

“I just don’t get it,” Pride said with a shrug. “Why the hell have we stopped our offensive against Moscow?”

For Klim, it was quite clear what was happening. The White Army had simply gone bankrupt. It hadn’t enough resources—neither material nor human.

The White Army retreated because it was impossible for them to wage war without reinforcements. The soldiers had been fighting for months until they were numb and almost dead with exhaustion. All they had by way of rations was moldy hardtack; all other food had to be procured from the locals. The volunteers knew that there was nobody to come to relieve them, and gradually, they gave in to a despair close to indifference.

When your lungs are racked by chronic bronchitis, all your comrades have died, and your stomach is aching with hunger, the only thing you feel is a fierce hatred of all those who stayed away from the front and survived at your expense.

3

Most of the time, the British troop train stood idle on railroad sidings. The tanks were no longer being taken down from their trucks because there was no more fuel. There was an air of nervous merriment among the British soldiers very similar to the atmosphere Klim had observed in the gamblers’ den. Rather than fighting the Bolsheviks, the tank crews were more interested in waging their own brand of guerrilla warfare against the machine-gun and artillery instructors. The tank crews called the instructors “schoolmistresses” while they themselves proudly bore the name of “canned meat.”

“Look out! It’s the tinned stew!” the instructors yelled, catching sight of their adversaries.

The tank crew curtseyed facetiously. “Good afternoon, ladies! How are your lessons?”

The instructors were sitting around with nothing to do too. In the first months of the war, they had played an important role as advisors to the Russians, instructing them in the use of British weapons, but now, nobody had any need of them.

The tank crews and instructors competed against each other in every possible way from bottle-shooting competitions to friendly boxing matches. They agreed to a truce only when an express train brought them French magazines, L’Illustration and La Vie Parisienne. Then a frantic trade started up involving pictures of girls, especially glamorous pin-ups showing off cleavage or bare legs.

But deep down, everyone was tormented by the same question: “What are we doing here? What’s it all for?”

The British had plenty of food from condensed milk to canned beef, and soon, Klim felt far better and stronger than he had before. However, all this time, he felt not as if he were living but merely enduring life.

His duty was to translate the news releases, manage the newly hired orderlies, and assist the British in their short-lived love affairs. The instructors were extremely jealous of the tank boys for having Klim to help them, and now and then, Captain Pride would “rent out” their interpreter, overcharging the instructors shamelessly for Klim’s services.

“I suppose a crate of whiskey will just about do it, but you can bring me a new samovar as well.”

While on his Russian mission, Captain Pride had assembled a magnificent collection of samovars and kept it in the ammunition car under the strict surveillance by the guards.

The instructors laughed at him. “The Bolsheviks will blow up our train sooner or later, and your samovars will be scattered all over. Just imagine, the Russians will write in their chronicles, ‘In the year of 1919, extraordinary weather conditions were observed: it rained samovars.’”

At night, the tank boys gathered by their fireplace. Klim drank with them, laughed at their dirty jokes, and gazed at the map on the wall. The railroad line was like a black funeral ribbon stretching down to the south through Rostov and Ekaterinodar to Novorossiysk.

What if Nina has managed to escape from the Reds and reach Novorossiysk? Klim thought, and every time, he pulled himself up. Who are you kidding? You’ll never find her. Even if Osip by some miracle did spare her life, and even if she wasn’t killed or injured on the journey, she’ll have left Russia long ago. And God only knows where she is now. Maybe in France, maybe not. But in any case, she thinks I’m dead. She won’t be expecting to see me again.

His mind ran this way and that like a caged animal throwing itself against the bars of its enclosure, unable to see a way out.

“Got the blues again?” Pride asked, looking into Klim’s eyes. “I’ve seen a lot of that at the front. Give us your cup—I’ll give you a shot of rum.”

4

Klim went to see Eddie in the hospital car.

“How are you, old boy?” he asked.

Eddie put his newspaper aside. “That’s it,” he said. “We’re going home.” He began to whistle “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.”

“What d’you mean?” Klim asked, surprised.

Eddie handed him the newspaper. At a banquet in London’s City Hall, the British Prime Minister Lloyd George had given a speech in which he had announced that the United Kingdom couldn’t afford to continue its costly intervention in the endless Russian civil war. To maintain an effective fighting force, the Britain government needed to send four hundred thousand soldiers to Russia, and this was quite unthinkable. Lloyd George was sure that sooner or later the Bolshevik regime would fall, and he didn’t consider General Denikin capable of spearheading the anti-Bolshevik campaign. If the people of Russia had really supported him, the Bolsheviks would never have been able to defeat the White Army.

“What nonsense!” Eddie said with a sad smile. “As though victory in war is down to a popular vote or something. Anyway, from now on, we’re only here as observers.”

5

The news that Britain would no longer be supplying military aid terrified the Whites. There were calls for Denikin to be replaced by the brilliant cavalry general Wrangel. Political passions were running high in the Caucasus, and the Cossacks were refusing to lend their support to the volunteers unless the White command promised them an independent state. The Whites’ retreat began to look more like a stampede.

The locomotive pulling the British train had broken down, and the passengers were forced to celebrate Christmas of 1919 in the middle of the frozen steppe. Outside, the unbroken snow of the plains stretched away like white silk under a velvety-black starry sky as far the eye could see. The tank crew fed their fire with the butts of broken rifles and took turns to crank away at a handheld dynamo flashlight. Christmas dinner was special less for its food than for the elaborate reminiscences of food that it evoked.

“My mother used to cook veal chitterlings,” Captain Pride said as he opened a can of the hateful beef stew. “We would stuff ourselves until we hardly could move.”

Eddie poured cups of whiskey. “We used to have a Christmas goose dinner.”

They talked of stuffing, roast potatoes, bread sauce, and plum duff.

“Gentlemen, please, must you?” someone pleaded from time to time.

But the conversation went on: “Mince pies—ham omelets—”

Eddie raised his cup. “Do you remember how we drank to Christmas in Moscow?”

The door clanged, and a guard walked into the sleeping car to report in Russian.

“They’ve mended the engine, but they still haven’t got any steam,” Klim interpreted. “The train manager is asking everyone to help fill the tank with snow.”

“We’ll be there just as soon as we’ve had our drink,” Captain Pride said. “Merry Christmas, gentlemen, and here’s to a happy 1920!”

All night long, all of those who could still stand hauled snow to the engine in buckets, bags, and even capes. A bucket of snow when melted would yield a few cups of water.

6

Finally, they got the train going and managed to go as far as Rostov. The branch lines were flooded with hoards of refugees who tried to storm the railroad cars heading south.

Captain Pride posted men with machine guns on the roofs of the boxcars and ordered them to shoot if anyone tried to get onto the British train.

Then he went into town, taking Klim with him. The mood on the streets was frantic, close to hysteria. Nobody knew where the headquarters were or who was in charge. The telegraph was down because Red partisans had cut the wires.

“How far away are the Bolsheviks?” Klim asked a distraught-looking colonel overseeing the loading of horses into a freight car.