The prosecution counsel was already on his feet. “Just a few questions, Mr. McColl. First, we have only your word for it that PC Standfast used such an ugly term to describe Mr. Simon. That is true, is it not?”
“The only other person there was Mr. Simon. And as far as I know, he never spoke again.”
“And yet one might assume that a person so insulted might make some sort of protest?”
“Perhaps Mr. Simon had a better idea than you do of how effective such a protest might prove.”
“Perhaps. But this uncorroborated insult provides you with a most convenient line of defense, does it not? Without it, you’re just someone with a hatred of authority, a very short temper, and a disposition to violence.”
McColl smiled at that. “That would be true if I were making it up. But I’m not.”
The prosecution counsel shrugged his disbelief. “As a matter of fact, we have only your uncorroborated word that Mr. Simon took off his mask when you said he did. Neither of the witnesses saw him do so.”
“They were still fifty yards away, and he had his back to them.”
“Indeed, but still… And I suppose in the end it doesn’t matter, because even if PC Standfast is being reticent with the truth, and everything happened exactly the way you say it happened, the fact remains that you struck a policeman in the course of performing his duties, and came remarkably close to killing him. And that no matter how offensive the alleged remark, there can be no excuse for what you did.”
The judge didn’t say he agreed, but the jury was left in no doubt of his expectations. McColl was barely back in the basement before being recalled; the eleven men and lone woman had taken less time than it took to smoke a cigarette. The guilty verdict was unanimous, and none of them looked in the slightest bit doubtful about its rightness.
“Jack McColl,” the judge began, “you have, as the learned member for the prosecution pointed out, an obvious affinity for violence. PC Owen Standfast was the victim in this instance, but two other police officers—as I am only now allowed to reveal—have suffered at your hands in the last eighteen months. Both in political demonstrations which, accidentally or not, descended into violence. Neither man suffered serious injuries, but perhaps they were simply more fortunate than PC Standfast.
“The disabled and disfigured veterans of the war have been a feature of this trial. They, and the treatment they receive from a mostly grateful society, are obviously of enormous importance, but this trial has not been about them. A simple act of violence—that is what this trial has been about, and you, Jack McColl, have been found guilty of committing it. In some ways you are a very lucky man, because if Owen Standfast had died, you would now be facing a probable life sentence, or even an appointment with His Majesty’s hangman. I was minded to give you ten years in prison, but have decided on reflection to reduce that by three, on account of your driving the victim to hospital. Take him down.”
With one last glare at McColl, the judge rose to his feet and headed for his chambers. McColl felt hands encasing both his arms, and allowed himself to be led from the dock and onto the stairs. He was vaguely surprised and somewhat aggrieved by the length of the sentence, but realized, with something of a shock, that his strongest feeling was one of relief.
Waifs and Strays
Sergei Piatakov had hoped that the Red Army train wouldn’t stop in the town where he’d grown up, because these days the past was something he mostly tried to forget. But here he was staring across at the old familiar platform and the snow-draped buildings that lay beyond. A short walk away, hidden by the curve of the main street, was the school where he’d taught. A verst beyond that, the house by the river where his family had lived.
The urge to see the place again was surprisingly strong, but the train would probably soon be on its way. And anyway, what would be the point? Everyone was gone, and all would be different. He certainly was.
Five years had passed since he’d left from that platform on another late winter afternoon. He, his mother, and Olesya had waited to say their teary good-byes under the canopy, watching the snow floating down to the tracks. The wall poster proclaiming that the kingdom of the proletariat shall never end certainly hadn’t been there that day, and the soldiers hadn’t been wearing caps with gleaming red stars. On the contrary, if memory served him right, a couple of priests had been telling a group of doomed young conscripts how lucky they were to be serving the beloved czar. Before, no doubt, scuttling home to the warmth and safety of their church.
He remembered Olesya making sure the top button of his navy greatcoat was securely fastened before she kissed him good-bye. He remembered his mother’s pale face and feverish eyes, and the brave smile she had just about managed to keep in place.
It was the last time he’d seen either of them. Now one was dead, the other in exile, God only knew where.
The train jerked into motion, stanching the flow of memories, blurring the picture inside his head. They were gone, he reminded himself, as the station slipped from sight. That world was gone.
And what had been put in its place? To say that the last five years had seen their ups and downs felt like the mother of understatements. The horror and despair of the czar’s war against the Central Powers had dissolved in the joyful hopes of the October Revolution, but they in turn had been all but swallowed up by the horrors of civil war. When that had been finally won the previous winter, the winners had found themselves deeply at odds with one another over how to proceed. And now, this very week, the sailors at the Kronstadt naval base—whom many had thought the heart, soul, and fist of the revolution—had come out against Lenin’s government.
Piatakov was no longer a sailor—these days the regime’s enemies were almost all on land—but he, his father, and his brother had all been stationed at Kronstadt at some time or other. He had traveled to and fro between the base and nearby Petrograd in the autumn of 1917, and been lucky enough to take part in the storming of the Winter Palace. He knew these men, and if they said the revolution had lost its way, he was inclined to believe them.
He certainly had no desire to fight them, and when the regiment had received its marching orders the previous evening, that distinct possibility had filled him with dread. But on reaching Velikiye Luki their train from the Polish border had continued eastward on the line to Moscow rather than north toward Petrograd, and soon thereafter new orders had been divulged. The rebellion in Tambov province, which they’d fought to subdue in the months before Christmas, was apparently still alive, and the regiment was headed back for a second tour of duty.
Which had to be better than fighting old comrades, but still seemed a less than inviting prospect. Piatakov had no sympathy for the mostly peasant rebels, who had no hope of victory, and whose barbaric depredations he had seen at first hand. His own side had often behaved just as badly, but who could afford bourgeois scruples when the towns were starving for lack of grain?
The things he had seen and done in his twenty-five years. Things he would have found unimaginable when he left for war that day. Things you did because the bastards clung to power and privilege like limpets, and had to be loosed, finger by finger, until they fell away.
He suddenly realized how hard he was gripping the corridor handrail.
Outside, the countryside was growing dark. They should be arriving in Moscow sometime tomorrow and, if the past was any guide, would probably not be setting off again for at least another twenty-four hours. He found himself hoping that the train would just keep going, because Moscow meant his wife, and these days he found his comrades-in-arms a much more comfortable fit. He still loved her, but he was far from sure that she still loved him or, indeed, ever had, at least in the way he’d once hoped for. These days they barely ever talked politics because both of them knew it would end in a row. And the problems they had in bed—the problems he had—certainly hadn’t helped.