But apparently the anarchists didn’t see the match, or they had much bigger things to worry about now. They were shooting back. I could hear steps running down the hall and something heavy rolling right behind – no doubt a machine-gun. Someone was swearing and shouting to the others: ‘Four of you, up to the first floor! Stay away from the windows!’
Something crashed to the ground and shattered. People charged past my room, a window frame cracked, and that familiar woman’s voice sounded: ‘Over here, comrades! Through the hole in the wall!’ There was another rush of noise and then all was silent. Now and then the Red Guards fired a shot at one of the windows, as though testing to see whether anyone was still hiding inside. Finally, the silence became complete. It seemed that the anarchists had fled. This didn’t last long. Heavy footsteps pounded up and down the halls again, I heard the sound of clanking rifles, and then voices: ‘Search the whole house! Turn on the lights!’ ‘Just look how fine they were livin’ in here, the bastards!’ ‘Watch that corner – they could hit us with a grenade from there.’ There was the sound of footsteps outside my door. Someone was tugging hard on the handle, but the door wouldn’t open.
‘Locked himself in, the dog,’ came a scratchy voice.
The door began to shake. I kept quiet. What could I do? There was no point in trying to explain through the door that I had been captured and locked in here by the anarchists. Who would believe me?
‘Open up, you bastard!’ I could now hear several different voices yelling at me from the other side of the door. Next, one of them fired at the door and it cracked. They began smashing it with their rifle butts. It began to give way.
‘Built to last,’ said the scratchy voice admiringly.
The door finally snapped in two, and the light of an electric torch hit me square in the eyes.
‘Just one left!’ shouted a young Red Guardsman, a smile on his face. He pointed his rifle at me. ‘All right, get up, you anarchist. Off to headquarters! You’ve had your fun, but it’s all over now!’
I went willingly to headquarters. It was located in a small house on Povarskaya Street. There, at a desk in the front hall, sat an unbelievably thin fair-haired man in a field jacket. He had a pointy little beard and amused eyes and looked me over slowly. He smiled. I smiled back.
‘Well, let’s hear it,’ he said, lighting his pipe. ‘But keep it short. I don’t have much time to waste on you.’
I told him everything just as it had happened and showed him my press card and identity papers. He barely glanced at them.
‘We ought to lock you up for a week or two for excessive curiosity. But as of now that’s still not illegal. So clear off! And I advise you to leave that newspaper of yours. It’s useless. What’s wrong with you, anyway? You got a problem with the Soviet government?’
I answered that just the opposite, all my hopes for a little bit of happiness for the Russian people depended on the new government.
‘Well, then,’ he said, squinting from the pipe smoke in his eyes, ‘we’ll do our best to justify your trust in us, young man. We’re so flattered, truly we are, just terribly flattered. Now get lost!’
I went out into the street. I could still hear scattered gunfire. My face burned from shame. The man had been mocking me. Deep down I knew that he had been right, however, and that no matter what clever, cutting replies I might think up now, in the end they would not disprove his scornful words.
By midday all the anarchists had been driven from their houses. Some of them fled Moscow, others hid and gave up the struggle. The Muscovites who had slept through the events of the night stared with amazement the next day at the bullet-riddled houses, the porters sweeping up the piles of broken glass, and the gaping hole in the wall of the Merchants’ Club on Malaya Dmitrovka Street made by the only shell fired during the battle. Back then, events happened so suddenly that it was quite possible to sleep right through them.
77
A Few Explanations
The People’s Power was closed in the middle of the summer of 1918, just like every other newspaper that called itself ‘independent’. Soon after I received a letter from my sister, Galya, from Kopan. A railway guard from Bryansk had dropped it off at my lodgings while I happened to be out, and he left no information behind for me to look him up. The letter was tattered and creased and stained with engine oil. It had travelled for over a month to reach me in Moscow. Galya wrote:
You promised Mama you’d come and visit in the spring, yet you still haven’t come and we’re losing hope of seeing you. Mama has aged a great deal in recent days. You wouldn’t recognise her. She goes days without saying a word, and then at night, when she thinks I’m asleep, she cries so loudly that even I can hear it, and I, dear Kostik, have lost almost all my hearing in the past year.
Is it really impossible for you to give her this last bit of joy? We talk of nothing but you and know nothing of how you are getting along, what you are doing or even if you’re well. We’re terrified at the thought of what might happen to you. Your life is so rich and full, and Mama has no one but you. Please try to understand this, Kostik.
Yesterday Mama said that if you don’t come by the middle of August, then she and I will leave here together on foot for Moscow. Mama is convinced we’ll make it, somehow. We’ll leave everything here – it’s no use to us anymore! – and take nothing but our knapsacks. We have little money, but Mama always says the world is full of good people and so she fears nothing. We have to leave while it’s still warm, well before winter. Maybe we’ll even manage to travel by train part of the way, although we hear that they aren’t running anymore.
My dear Kostik, let us hear from you, somehow, tell us how you are and whether we should wait for you. We’ve been living all by ourselves in these woods. It’s like being trapped in a lair, and we can’t understand why it is we haven’t been murdered yet.
I felt like someone had taken a razor to my heart. I had to go. But how? How could I make my way to Ukraine? At the time, Ukraine, the Donbass and Crimea were occupied by the German army. Kiev was under the control of a German puppet – Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi,fn1 a polished, long-legged and stupid officer. Ukrainian newspapers praised him for his disapproval of décolletage, but other than this they could find nothing positive to say. Even the Germans made rude jokes about their fake hetman.
It would take more than a month to acquire an exit visa from the Commissariat of Internal Affairs to leave Soviet Russia. It was already late July, and I figured I wouldn’t receive the visa until the end of August. I knew Mama – no matter what, she and Galya were certain to set out on foot in mid-August for Moscow, regardless of the risk to their lives. I didn’t have a day to waste. I had to leave immediately.
It turned out that to enter Ukraine I had to acquire a visa from the Ukrainian consul as well. I walked over to the consulate, located off the courtyard in the back of a large building on Tverskaya Street. A faded yellow and blue flag hung limply from a pole tied to the railing of a balcony. Washing had been hung up to dry on the balcony, and the consul’s baby lay asleep in a pram. An old nanny sat rocking the pram gently with her foot and singing softly:
The doves have come to pay a call,
And they’re carrying figs for one and all,