Suddenly Varvara grabbed my arm and stepped into a passing line of strikers.
My brother and Mina stood frozen like two rabbits on the curb. “Come on, Seryozha!” I called. But he pointed in the direction of the river and Solomon Moiseivich, and soon I lost sight of him as the marchers swept us along in the opposite direction, east, away from the river and toward Gostinny Dvor. Varvara was practically jumping with excitement. “Where are you from, brothers?” she asked the men marching with us. A blond man with a big moustache and a thick patched coat black with grease replied, “Ericsson.” The big manufacturer of telephones and other electronic devices. These men were taking a tremendous risk striking—it was one of the militarized industries. They weren’t just putting their jobs on the line. Their strike was tantamount to treason. Their bravery made me feel very young and frivolous, like a colt who’d decided to follow its mother in harness. People at the Hotel Europa stared at us from the window as we marched by. I wondered if the two Mariyas were still in Petrograd, if they could see me.
A young worker with elfin ears wedged himself between me and Varvara, draping his arms heavily over our necks. “What are you girlies here for? Bit of fun?” He smelled sharp and bitter—he’d been drinking. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be a bourgeois missy. He was “the people,” after all. But Varvara had no compunctions. She shoved him off, sent him staggering into the men behind us, shouting at him, “Where’s your discipline? This is a strike, not a social hour!”
The Ericsson men laughed. “That’s the way, little sister,” said the blond man with the moustache, while our would-be Romeo shrugged, wiped his nose on his coat sleeve, and spit—not quite at us, but close enough.
A wave of song reached us from up ahead. We followed with our own wave, hearing the same melody from various sections of the boulevard like a rolling echo. Soldiers leaned out the window of a military hospital, waving handkerchiefs—my soldiers! Businesses were mostly closed, the streetcars abandoned. Some of the strikers were trying to turn one of the trams over. People stared at us from the cafés. No one had told them that the revolution had arrived. Arise, arise, working people…
As we approached the intersection at Sadovaya Street, cracking sounds echoed off the buildings. I stopped, confused, but people around us began to turn, break off. They were shooting at us! Or someone was shooting, it was hard to tell who. We followed the Ericssons, dodging behind Gostinny Dvor, the great department store, zigzagging past the Assignation Bank and around to the Chernyshevsky Bridge, then back onto Nevsky. The excitement! Our blood was up and I could understand how soldiers were able to run into the gunfire of enemy troops. When we rejoined the demonstration, there were more strikers than ever. Workers in an upper-story tailor shop waved red flags.
At last we poured into Znamenskaya Square, the plaza before the Nikolaevsky train station. And I saw that we were just one of many streams flooding in from all four directions to meet in the grand circle surrounding the statue of Alexander III, the emperor’s father, on his flat-footed horse, the tsar’s expression equal parts indigestion and disgust.
So many people, and they kept coming, pressing us farther into the square. No one could scare us away now—we were too many. How glad I was that Seryozha and Mina hadn’t come after all. They would have been apoplectic at the gunfire and panicky at the size of the crowd, whereas Varvara was thrilled and singing at the top of her lungs. And I was at one with these brave people, ready to change the fate of a nation.
Speakers climbed onto boxes to address the demonstration. “The old order has led the country to ruin!” shouted a gray-haired woman, hatless in a simple coat and dark skirt, pointing up at the statue. Her voice would have been the envy of a regimental sergeant major. “This is not the war to end all wars. It guarantees there will be more! It strengthens the autocracies! Forced annexations cause hatred among the peoples! Only socialism can guarantee a lasting peace.”
“Russia out of the war!” responded a handsome bearded student who had appeared at my side. He flashed a brilliant smile at me.
“Up with the people’s socialism!” Varvara shouted.
The gray-haired woman ceded the soapbox to a younger man. “We call for the return of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies! We call for the arrest of the tsar’s ministers.” He pointed back up Nevsky, the way we’d come. “They’re huddling right now in the Mariinsky Palace. They’re rolling down the shades, they’re putting out ‘for rent’ signs!”
“Down with the autocracy!” “Arrest the ministers!” We cheered him on. “We demand abdication!”
I could taste it. It was so close, the new world. It was right at my lips like a red, red apple. We would make a new life for Russia with our own hands. What a day! Just to express such thoughts in broad daylight! Surely the revolution had arrived.
Then something happened in the crowd. I stood on tiptoe trying to understand. The blond Ericsson man pointed. Mounted Cossacks had arrived on their excited horses. We all stood as still and silent as Alexander III above us, waiting for what would come. I was afraid to breathe. “Steady,” said the Ericsson next to Varvara. “We’ve been here before.” My skin prickled under my coat. I clung to my friend as the horsemen rode by in double file, stitching their way through the crowd like thread through black cloth. I could smell the horses, hear the jingling of their spurs so close, the horses’ metal shoes scraping the pavement.
As at the Women’s Day march, they did not strike us. They had not given in. Shouts rose up from the crowd—“Comrade Cossacks!” “Urah!” And the sky seemed flung over us like a bright bolt of silk on a seamstress’s table, like a banner of heaven.
The speakers resumed their exhortations, the crowd more excited and confident than before. The student and I and Varvara exchanged quick bursts of conversation between speakers, praising this orator or that for a turn of phrase or a bit of information. What a day! I thought about this handsome student, just the kind of boy I really should be going with, instead of the opportunistic Kolya. He was at the university, studying law. I didn’t ask if he knew my father.
Now the crowd lurched forward again, sending me crashing into a striker. I clutched his belt to avoid falling. “Volynskys!” someone shouted. One of the elite Life Guard regiments, the tsar’s most loyal troops. Oh God. A bespectacled Volynsky officer on a nervous chestnut horse pointed his saber and sent a detachment of mounted guards into the crowd. “If they come close, put your coat over your head,” said the striker ahead of us. He took off his cap and showed us the metal sheet he’d put inside. “We’ve learned a few things. You’ll be fine.”
Then they came, riding at a slow trot. People shrieked and tried to move away. “Brother soldiers!” the striker called toward the horsemen. “We’re on the same side!” They unsheathed their swords, but after a moment it was clear they didn’t want to use them.
“Disperse!” a mounted Volynsky called out. “All you people! Please! We don’t want to use force! Please leave.”
“Hold your ground!” demonstrators cried out all around us. Varvara took my arm. She linked her other arm to that of the Ericsson man next to her, and the bearded student took mine. “Brother soldiers!” The strikers were calling to the mounted Volynskys. “Join us!” The tinny taste of panic settled in my throat. The crowd lurched again and I stumbled, cried out, falling, skinning my knees, then was grabbed back to my feet by Varvara and the student. The officer on his wheeling horse called again for the demonstrators to disperse. “You have two minutes to clear this square!”
An orator still on his soapbox called out, “We’re not clearing out! You clear out!” He turned to the line of soldiers, reaching his arms out to them, and shouted, “Brothers, we’re your comrades! We’re your brothers, your wives and fathers. Soldiers, don’t fire on your family! We’re hungry—we’re not your enemies!”
“One minute!”
There was no chance of clearing this enormous demonstration. I couldn’t have taken a half step to the left or right. It would be now. Either they would let us go as the Cossacks had, or we would die today in Znamenskaya Square. I held my ground among the Ericssons, gripping Varvara and the bearded student until my arms were numb. I could see a few of the Volynskys’ faces, hard, thin-lipped, pale.
The officer let his horse turn and raised his saber. “Fire!” he shouted.
I closed my eyes as the first shots were fired. They sounded like crackling wood in a hearth. Screams. But everyone held fast. Then a cheer rang out. “Urah!”
“They’re firing into the air,” shouted the bearded student.
We loosened our grip on one another and shouted out, “Brother soldiers!”
People were throwing things at the officer. “Go back to your tsar!” “Here’s a warning!” “Your day is over!”
A bugle sounded. I felt like a warhorse, my nostrils flared with excitement. Was this it? Had the revolution really come? The man on the box shouted, “Up with the Republic!” and another wave of shots rang out. This time he crumpled, fell to one side, disappeared. “Hold your ground!” “Run!” “Don’t panic!” shouted voices all around me, barely audible over the screaming. People were pushing and pulling. I held on to the student, but where was Varvara?
“Sons of whores!” “Here they come.” “Hold your ground!” The crowd lurched again and I stumbled, falling, grabbing at people who were also falling. The student’s shoulder caught my jaw. Then we saw the horsemen, charging. I couldn’t hear my own screaming in the roar around me. How enormous were those steel-shod tons as they knocked people to the ground. A demon bay with a nasty wide stripe down its nose and blue eyes charged us. A woman in its path tried to run, but somebody pushed her down in his own terror, and she fell under the horse’s hooves. She curled into a ball trying to protect herself, her hands up around her head. The soldier did nothing to turn the horse away but let it rear and trample her. I screamed. People tore at the rider’s stirrups, but he wheeled around for another charge. With outstretched sword, he rode at us—those blue eyes, that blaze, the thunder. The saber entered the chest of the bearded student at my side, piercing him through like an olive. The soldier lowered his sword so that the student fell off by his own weight, then spurred his mount forward to the next victim.
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