“Which of you is prepared to slave away in a factory from dawn to dusk? Which of you wants a coddled few to live in mansions while others huddle ten to a room?”
The faces of the crowd became stern, their jaws rigid.
A village idiot by the name of Maxim tried to elbow his way toward the stage. “That’s my goat—give it back, for the love of God!”
The Latvian guards grasped Maxim by the arm and his goat by the horns and dragged them both away.
Trotsky took off his cap and wiped his perspiring forehead. “Does anyone have any questions?”
“When will you allow God to exist?” came the distant voice of Maxim.
Trotsky grinned, descended from the stage, and walked up to the covered statue.
“Here is your god!” he proclaimed, ripping away the canvas.
The crowd winced. The statue he had revealed was the bust of a satyr on a marble column.
“For centuries, priests have told people stories about Lucifer,” cried Trotsky, pointing at the French industrialists’ gift to Alexander III. “Religious bigots have always said that he is the source of all evil. But why was he the figure that they were all so terrified of? The reason is simple—he was the first revolutionary. Lucifer refused to obey a decrepit God and rebelled against his despotism. So now, let this monument to his proud spirit stand in the very place where priests and misguided fools have groveled on their knees for centuries. This legendary figure never bowed down to a tyrant despite the threat of expulsion from paradise and damnation forever and ever.”
The orchestra struck up “The Internationale,” the Bolshevik anthem.
Klim cast a sidelong look at Pukhov staring dumbstruck at the satyr.
“How did that end up here?” Pukov asked. “That’s one of the sculptures from the bank, don’t you remember? It fell out of its box, and Tarasov gave it to you.”
Suddenly, there was a roar of engines, and two planes emerged from the clouds.
“The Whites!” shrieked a voice from the crowd.
The ranks of parading soldiers fell into complete disorder, and Klim and Pukhov dived down from the roof of the automobile and crawled underneath it.
“They’re going to bomb us!” wailed Pukhov, covering his head with his hands.
But instead of bombs, the planes showered Sviyazhsk with leaflets and disappeared with rifle shots ringing out after them.
Klim reached to take one of the leaflets, but Pukhov snatched it away. “Don’t you dare to touch it!”
He began hastily to gather up the leaflets, crumpling and shoving them into his jacket.
“Don’t panic! Fall in!” yelled the commissars, no less terrified than everybody else.
Klim crawled out from under the automobile and ran off behind the churchyard toward the road leading to the railroad station.
Pukhov is bound to ask Trotsky where he got the satyr, thought Klim. And then they’ll figure out between them that I am a deserter, a looter, and an imposter.
The conclusion that they would come to would be inevitable: the swift dispatch of two executioner’s bullets—one for Klim and one for Nina.
It was growing dark over the station. A choir of Red Army soldiers sang a song, and a small locomotive was being shunted along the sidetrack. Nina and the sailors were playing a game of Battleship, and she was giving them a thorough thrashing.
“Stop!” the nurse shrieked suddenly. “You can’t come in here now! Where do you think you are?”
There was the sound of footsteps and the crash of the wheeled table. The room divider was flung aside. Klim rushed up to Nina and bent over her.
“I have to take you away from here,” he whispered. “Put your arm around my neck.”
“What’s happened?”
Klim didn’t answer but picked Nina up along with her blanket.
The nursed tried to stop him. “I’ll tell the doctor!”
“You can tell the pope for all I care.”
The sailors stared at the two of them, their eyes wild with incomprehension.
Klim carried Nina out of the car and onto the cart waiting for them next to the platform.
“We’re going to go to Sablin,” he said, panting as he laid Nina in the hay and covered her with her blanket. “You can’t stay here. If anything should happen, you must tell everyone you don’t know me. You’re just a refugee from Kazan.”
Nina grasped his hand. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“I’ll tell you everything later. This is a bad road, I’m afraid. I hope you won’t be jolted too much along the way.”
Klim kissed her forehead and sat down on the box next to the driver.
“Here, take these,” he said, handing the driver a handful of cartridges. “But mind,” he added in a menacing voice, “keep your mouth shut about who you’ve taken and where, or I’ll wring your neck.”
Nina had never heard him talk like this before.
When the cart reached the hospital that had been set up in the ancient Cathedral of the Assumption, it was already dark. The room was full of wounded people lying side by side on the straw. Here and there, haggard faces loomed in pools of candlelight.
Sablin, disheveled and unshaven, showed Klim where to put Nina.
“Don’t worry. I’ll look after her,” the doctor said.
After the sterile hospital car, Nina was now laid on a bed of rotten straw along with a hundred lice-ridden men in stinking bandages.
Sablin squatted down beside her and brought a candle up to her face. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Nina said in a weak voice. But she was more dead than alive after her journey along the bumpy road.
Klim adjusted her blanket. His head was in a whirl. What was he going to do now? Maybe he could waylay and kill Pukhov to stop him from spilling the beans? Had he done the right thing by moving Nina here? Yes, you’ve found the ideal solution, Klim thought. She’ll come down with typhus in no time now.
The nurse called Sablin away to see another patient, and he went off, leaving Klim sitting beside Nina and holding her hand.
“Who is that?” she whispered pointing at a fresco depicting a holy knight with the head of a dog.
Stunned, Klim stared at it for a while. He thought the knight looked like Anubis, an Egyptian god from the realm of the dead. How had it ended up here in an Orthodox church?
Suddenly, a shell howled, and the cathedral walls shuddered from an explosion close by. All of the candles went out, and the room was plunged into darkness.
“What was that?” voices wailed in the gloom. “They’re firing at us!”
“Quiet!” Sablin shouted. “Don’t panic!”
Klim bent down to Nina. “I’ll be back soon. I have to find out what’s going on.”
He picked his way between the bodies on the floor and went outside.
Everyone had run for shelter, and the street was empty. From somewhere over by the railroad line, the roar of artillery fire could be heard, which jarred shockingly with the serenity of the clear starry sky and the golden domes that gleamed in the moonlight.
“Klim, is that you?” someone called.
He flinched. “Sister Photinia?”
“I’m glad I’ve found you.” She grasped Klim by the wrist and began to pull him after her. “You have to get rid of that devil of yours. You’re the one that brought his statue here, so it’s your responsibility. I’d try to remove it myself, but it’s too heavy.”
Klim looked around. “The Reds will notice it’s gone.”
“I don’t care. Take it away from here!”
They hurried off to Kafedralnaya Square.
Hiding the satyr is not such a bad idea actually, Klim thought. That way Pukhov won’t be able to prove that it’s the same sculpture that I took from the bank.