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.”
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.”
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.
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.
“Wake up!” the colonel barked. “They’ll be here any moment now.”
“We need to get another locomotive,” Captain Pride said, turning pale as he learned the news. “Our own wreck won’t last ten miles.”
They found a graveyard of abandoned locomotives next to the railroad depot, but there were no working engines to be had either for money or the promise of canned beef. Captain Pride brought in his soldiers and lined all of the railroad employees up against the wall.
“Tell them to find us a damn engine, or we’ll shoot the lot of them,” the captain told Klim.
“How am I supposed to do that?” howled the depot manager.
The soldiers already had their rifles at the ready.
“Captain Pride! Captain Pride!” called a voice.
They turned to see one of the instructors running toward them.
“We’ve found an engine. We met the men from the British mission in Rostov. They’re evacuating, and they agreed to take us on board. But there are only two cars in their train. Their engine can’t pull any more than that.”
Captain Pride gave the order to leave everything behind, including all of the tanks, arsenal, and his beloved samovars.
“People are our priority,” he said firmly, but nevertheless, he decided to abandon the Russian staff.
“Our officers from Rostov have an interpreter of their own,” he told Klim. “If I take you, I’ll have to take the rest of the Russians.”
Klim told him that he understood perfectly.
Eddie leaned out of the car door and thrust a wad of crumpled banknotes into Klim’s hand.
“Here, take this. The lads did a whip-round.” His lips were trembling. “I feel like such a pig! I’m sorry it turned out this way.”
A black and dreadful-looking crowd of White soldiers and refugees was crossing the ice of the frozen Don River.
“Look at the bourgeois army scampering!” commented a homeless boy perched on a boat frozen into the ground.
The “bourgeois” hadn’t a penny to their names. Those who had once waltzed in splendid dance halls were no better off than those who had loaded bales in the docks. Nobody knew where they were going, where they could stay the night, or how they would find their next meal.
A huge Kalmyk encampment stretched along the railroad for miles—emaciated horses, huge mud-spattered camels with matted fur, shivering children with blue lips, and stiff old men and women with blank faces.
Nobody knew why the Whites were unable to defend themselves. Why in general did nobody show any faith in their ability to act together? The refugees were all like desperate beggars prepared to kill just for the chance of a frozen carrot, a place in a sleigh, or a night in a warm hut.