“I saw them on the way back from the front,” the cart-driver said. “Our generals issued them with rifles and rations so that they would fight on our side against the Germans.”
Osip had heard about these Czechs before. The Provisional Government had divided the Czech and Slovak prisoners of war into three divisions and had intended to send them to the Western Front via the Pacific to North America and then to Europe. But due to the usual Russian red tape, the matter had dragged on, and the Czechoslovak trains were stuck at various railroad stations all the way from the Volga River to the Sea of Japan. After the Bolshevik coup, no one knew what to do with this armed legion of forty thousand men. One thing was obvious—they posed a serious threat.
“So, what else did this son of yours happen to let slip?” Osip asked the cart-driver.
“The new government wanted to disarm the Czechs, but instead, they mutinied. They were afraid that under the peace treaty, the Bolsheviks would hand them over to the Germans. Then the Germans would shoot them on the spot as traitors.”
When Osip arrived in Nizhny Novgorod, he found that the cart-driver’s story was true, and the Military Commissariat needed to hastily muster troops to suppress the rebellion.
Osip’s homecoming caused quite a stir. The local newspaper published a long article about his heroic deeds, and he was awarded a cigarette case with an engraved inscription on the lid.
However, all he could think about was the woman he had shot, the old hag who had cursed him, and the previously docile peasants who now hated him and all the Bolsheviks with a passion.
Three days later, Lubochka found Osip in the cloakroom of the former seminary surrounded by stacks of broken desks. He was sitting on the floor with his head in his hands and a bottle of vodka beside him.
“Come on,” Lubochka said. “Let’s get you back on your feet.”
Osip looked at her with his bloodshot eyes. “I killed a woman.”
“Let’s go. You need to sleep. Don’t blame yourself—it’s war.”
“We weren’t up against soldiers,” Osip persisted. “We shot unarmed people.”
Lubochka fell silent and took a step back.
“Listen to me, Osip Drugov, and listen carefully. No more vodka, do you understand? I’m not going to waste my life on a drunkard. You have to stand up and be a man.”
Osip wiped his face with his sleeve. “Sorry… I’ll pull myself together. I promise.”
She took him downstairs, called for a cab driver, and told him to take them to her father’s house.
“The authorities have listed it as a cultural heritage site,” she said. “The revolutionary widows who were quartered there made such a mess of it that the Culture Commission threw them out and appointed me curator. From now on, it’s going to be our home.”
11. THE CHINESE MERCENARIES
Klim had no choice but to renounce his Argentine citizenship and apply for a Soviet passport.
By now, anyone wanting to leave Russia had to pay bribes running into thousands of rubles. Becoming a Soviet citizen, on the other hand, cost next to nothing and usually went smoothly except for the tiring delays and queues.
The door to the Bureau for the Registration of Foreign Citizens opened once every thirty minutes or so. Former prisoners of war sat on the floor in front of the door with their legs stretched out. Next to them stood dozens of Chinese men dressed in ragged oriental robes belted with hemp cords.
“Where are you from?” Klim asked the men in Shanghainese.
The Chinese gawped at him in disbelief. They had never seen a white person who spoke their language before.
A shock-headed, thick-lipped young man bowed to Klim. “My name is Ho,” he said. “My mother is from the province of Jiangsu, and I know some Shanghainese. My friends don’t speak it though. They are from the northern provinces.”
Somehow, the two of them managed to make themselves understood. Ho told Klim that two years earlier, he and his fellow countrymen had come as laborers to work on the construction of the Murmansk Railroad. To compensate for the shortage of labor during wartime, Russian merchants who had settled in China had recruited teams of Chinese workers from the villages and sent them to construction sites across Russia, mostly the railroads. After the Bolshevik coup, the government had stopped paying the Chinese, and they had made the long journey to Petrograd in the hope that the state would pay for their passage back to China.
The door of the Bureau for the Registration opened again, and a scrawny man stuck his head around it. He was narrow-shouldered and dark and looked like a young gypsy. Shifting from one foot to another, he scrutinized the silent queue for a moment and then spoke, “Oppressed workers of China, follow me please!”
Nobody moved, so the young man went up to one of the Chinese and tried to take his hand. The man recoiled in fear.
“He wants you to go with him,” Klim explained in Shanghainese.
“Do you understand their language?” exclaimed the scrawny young man, staring at Klim. “Listen, I could do with someone like you.”
“But I have my own business here in the Bureau for the Registration,” Klim protested.
The young man paid no attention. “Don’t worry. I can get you to the front of the queue once you’ve helped me. Do you need bread? I can arrange for you to get a loaf. And some tallow and tea.” He thrust out a skinny hand. “I’m Lyosha Pukhov. I’ve been charged with creating a detachment of proletarians from the yellow races.”
Pukhov ushered the awed cluster of Chinese men into a huge hall with crystal chandeliers.
“Ask them to take a seat,” he told Klim. “We’ll have a political meeting first, and then we’ll move onto practical arrangements.”
Pukhov took a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Dear Chinese comrades!” he began to read. “Those of you who support the liberation of the oppressed and the protection of the power of the workers and peasants come and join us in the ranks of the Red Armyd. Come and join its Chinese battalion.”
Klim had no idea how to say words like “comrade,” “oppressed,” and in particular “battalion” in Shanghainese, so he just provided a basic translation: Pukhov would give the Chinese food and money if they followed his orders. Ho listened to Klim and then interpreted Pukhov’s speech into the northern dialect.
“Our revolution is working miracles,” Pukhov called out. “We all are brothers. The same red blood runs under yours and our skin. The same stout hearts beat in all our chests, at one with those of the world’s proletariat. Please step up one at a time and fill in a form for us with your details.”
“I’d be surprised if they can write,” said Klim.
Pukhov scratched his head. “Well—they can dictate their details to you, and you can just write everything down in Russian. By the way, I have sunflower oil too. I’ll give you some of that as well.”
It was late evening by the time Klim had finished filling out the forms.
After the Chinese had left, Pukhov spent some time reading the biographies of his soldiers-to-be.
“What a life!” he exclaimed angrily. “What cynical exploitation! They were being paid a measly ruble and a half a day, half of what a Russian worker got. They had no recourse to the law and no chance of having any complaints heard. The slightest dissension and they would be sacked on the spot.”
Klim nodded, glancing uneasily through the window at the darkening sky. The twenty-four-hour period had expired, he still hadn’t been to the Bureau for the Registration of Foreign Citizens and could now be arrested on the spot.
“According to the statistics, we have about four million foreign nationals in Russia,” Pukhov continued nonchalantly. “Half of them are prisoners of war, and the rest are immigrants and seasonal workers from all around the world. They’re working-class people, and they’ve already organized themselves into their own little communities. I tell you, these people make the best proletarian fighters. Have you heard about the Finnish Detachment of the Red Guards? And the Latvian Riflemen are a great help to the Cheka too.”