I thought of the soldiers in Znamenskaya Square. Could they have changed that quickly? Shooting workers at noon, then supporting them at midnight?
“They’ve voted to join the revolution,” she said. “They don’t want to fight the people. Shoot women, children. You saw them today. They hated what they were doing.”
“You mean they’re out there running around? A quarter million soldiers?” I wanted them to support the workers, but I thought of the soldiers on the trams—and imagined the havoc they could wreak. “What if they break into the wine shops?”
“No, no, no. You still don’t understand.” She threw her head back impatiently. “They’re forming soldiers’ councils—soldiers’ soviets. They’re voting for deputies. They’re shooting their officers.” She flicked the end of her cigarette out the window, kicked off her boots, and got into bed with me. She smelled of tobacco and pencil shavings. “There’s no turning back. If it doesn’t succeed, they’ve signed their own death warrants. Better get some sleep, Marina. It’s going to be quite a day tomorrow.”
14 In the Land of Red
THE NEXT THING I knew, Varvara was shaking me. The clock read 7:00 a.m. Still dark. She’d already dressed—her coat buttoned, her hat on. “Come on,” she whispered. “Get dressed.” There would be no school today, and I’d imagined I would spend my hours quietly reading, writing, trying to recover my soul.
“I can’t. Not after what happened.”
“Listen.” She gestured, finger in the air. Nothing. An absolute silence had replaced the percussion of the night. She sat down on the bed next to me. “This is it. It’s mutiny if they fail. But if they succeed, it’s revolution. For that student—let’s be there. His death was for a reason, Marina. He believed in it. How about you?”
I didn’t want to see anybody else die. Yet what kind of coward wants to see justice but isn’t willing to stand up for it? The Lermontov lines from last night’s reading returned to me:
A year will come—of Russia’s blackest dread;
Then will the crown fall from the royal head…
Perhaps this was the moment.
I found an old dress and some boots and followed her down the hall. Seryozha poked his head from his room. “Where are you going? You’re not really going out today?”
“You don’t have to come.”
“I’m not a complete coward,” he said.
“It’s not a test,” I replied.
Outside, the streetlamps glowed, eerie halos of yellow, and my eyes stung from smoke. The three of us crept through the shadows to the end of our block, where soldiers fortified a barricade with sandbags and metal braces. The mannequins in the milliner’s window goggled at the strange sight of soldiers loitering, rifles slung over their shoulders, their officers snapping orders. Seryozha dug out his notebook and sketched the unlikely juxtaposition of the heads and the dark silhouettes of the servicemen.
“I thought you said they’d got rid of their officers,” I whispered to Varvara.
“You’ll see. Follow me.”
We doubled back, cutting through dim courtyards, startling a group of drunks sharing a bottle around a small garbage fire. One of them threw an empty bottle after us, laughing as it shattered.
Below Basseinaya Street, a luxury motorcar roared around the corner in the snow, twenty soldiers impossibly balanced on running boards and clinging to the bumpers, standing on the seats. They held their bayoneted rifles out like porcupine quills. Flags flew from the car’s hood, and some men fired into the air for no reason other than to hear the revolutionary music. Seryozha and I dived back into the passageway, where other people had taken shelter. Varvara, however, remained unprotected at the curb, enthralled by the danger and the chaos. In the crowded passageway, I rested my head on Seryozha’s shoulder. I could feel him trembling. “Let’s go back,” he whispered.
Honestly, I had been thinking the same thing, but I would not dishonor that student’s death by spending the day with Mother looking through photo albums and writing odes. “We could go to Mina’s,” Seryozha said. “It’s closer, and we don’t have to cross the barricades.”
I understood—he didn’t want to be left alone on the street. He wanted me to see him to some safe harbor. I owed him that much.
The black door opened. Still in shawl and nightdress, gray braid over her shoulder, Sofia Yakovlevna appeared in the lamp’s glow. “What on earth?” She pulled us inside the familiar apartment, smelling of kasha and the coats hanging in the anteroom. “What are you doing here? Don’t you know what’s going on?”
“The soldiers have broken out of barracks,” Varvara said. “It’s revolution.”
Gunshots echoed off the tall buildings on the Liteiny side, illustrating her point. “So I hear,” said the older woman.
Seryozha craned to look past her. “Is Solomon Moiseivich…”
“He got a call from a friend at the Echo. He left like there was a fire.” Worry rose from her round figure like heat from an oven. “He’ll either be shot or have photographs to live on the rest of his life.”
She led us into the parlor, where a sewing project covered the table under the milk-glass bowl of the chandelier. Seryozha picked up a scrap of the fabric, a pretty rust-colored wool with a small paisley print, and fingered it appraisingly, like a tailor. “It’s a dress for Dunya,” said Mina’s mother. The middle daughter, Dunya, the family beauty, with her shining dark hair and eyes. “She’s growing so fast. Like a sunflower.”
I wondered how my mother would describe me. Certainly not as a sunflower. I thought of Sofia Yakovlevna, sewing here in her robe in the early hours. How she welcomed us in. Mother wouldn’t have answered the door in her nightdress if the end of the world were at hand.
The older woman lit the spirit flame under the samovar just as Dunya came out from her room, tucking up her braids. “Give them tea, Dunechka. I’ll finish dressing and get breakfast started.”
“We’re not staying,” Varvara said bluntly.
“Surely we have time to eat,” I said. I was in no hurry to leave the warmth of the flat for soldiers driving around shooting in the air.
Seryozha found a loose scrap of the fabric and a threaded needle and began to sew—a sight that would have given Father a seizure. As Dunya prepared the tea, I examined the photographs that decorated the walls. Writers, actresses, singers, the most famous artists in Russia—all of them had sat for Solomon Moiseivich. Maxim Gorky as a serious young man, surprisingly handsome in a dark Russian blouse. Chaliapin, big and pale-haired, with luminous eyes above a dark fur collar. Mendeleev as an old man, his long ragged beard and wise eyes. And what would today bring?
The telephone rang. It sounded like an explosion. Dunya ran to the hall to grab it before it woke everyone. “Oh yes, Dmitry Ivanovich.” We could hear her high voice. Seryozha gazed down at his handiwork as if he’d never seen it before. “They’re right here. Marina?” It was up to me. Dunya rounded her eyes in alarm as she handed me the receiver.
“Yes, Papa?”
He didn’t bother to greet me. “I thought as much. It’s an insurrection, a military insurrection, and you’re out wandering the city? I can’t pick you up, I’m going to the Tauride Palace. The emperor has suspended the Duma. You are to remain at the Katzevs’.”
I traced a stripe of their rose-and-green wallpaper with my finger. “Yes, Papa.”
“You are not to move until I can send someone. Do I have your solemn promise, whatever it’s worth these days?”
“Yes.” In a way, I was relieved by his abruptness. He wasn’t asking for an explanation. There was no need to lie or beg forgiveness.
“I don’t know what you’re using for brains, but I suggest you try something else. It’s inexcusable to impose on the Katzevs, but there’s nothing for it. Let me talk to Sofia Yakovlevna, and for God’s sake, stay put.”
Mina’s mother stood in the hallway, dressed now but with her gray hair still undone. She took the receiver reluctantly. My father at the b
est of times intimidated her. “Yes. Of course…it’s no trouble, really. As long as necessary. Don’t give it another thought, Dmitry Ivanovich.” She paused. “And good luck—all our hopes are with you.”
It struck me again—this was real. Even my father was part of it.
Varvara knelt on the window seat to look down into the intersection. “Now that’s a beautiful sight,” she said. “Now that’s poetry.” I peered over her shoulder. In the warming light, the streets had been transformed. Red rags hung from windows and from streetlights. Red flags decorated commandeered motorcars and festooned the fronts of abandoned trams. Red had been tied onto horses’ bridles and around the coat sleeves of workers. Krasniy, krasiviy. Red, beautiful. Twins.
Mina emerged from her room in a thick sweater and skirt, her ash-blond plait still untidy from sleep. She knelt on the cushions of the window seat and pressed her face to the cold glass. “Why aren’t you out there, Robespierre?” Her new name for Varvara.
“We’re just getting something to eat,” she said. “You coming?”
“Sure,” she said. “Who wouldn’t want to be shot by some drunken soldier?”
Soon the phone started ringing and did not stop. A friend reported that a police station on the Vyborg side was on fire, another that there was fighting on the Liteiny Bridge. Mina’s youngest sister, Shusha, improbably dressed in a revolutionary ensemble of red flannel nightshirt and a red ribbon tied around her forehead like a fillet, found a set of old brass opera glasses through which to better examine the insurrection below.
Sofia Yakovlevna, carrying in a bowl of steaming kasha, stopped to admire Seryozha’s embroidery. They were sunflowers, for Dunya. “Is there anything you can’t do?”
He smiled wryly, painfully. Their perception of him was so different from the prevailing one in our household.
We ate breakfast with the whole family, Mina’s aunt and uncle—awake and dressed now—jumping up periodically to take the glasses from Shusha and monitor the situation below. As we finished our tea, our young sentry reported, “Something’s happening at the police station.”
Varvara leaped up and grabbed the glasses, focused, pressed them back into Shusha’s hands. “They’re breaking in. Let’s go!” She dashed to get her coat. I only hesitated a moment before I followed her.
Mina stared after us. “Are you crazy?”
Sofia Yakovlevna stepped in front of me. “Marina, your father! Don’t make me a liar.”
I loved her, this kind, worried woman, but I couldn’t spend the day embroidering as the revolution was being born. I wanted to breathe its air, see its beautiful wings unfold. “I’ll come right back, I promise.” I didn’t want to shove her out of my way, but I feinted left and darted right and ran past her, putting on my coat as I went.
Down at the station, a group of soldiers rhythmically hurled themselves against its locked doors as others urged them on. “Come on, boys!” “Heave-ho!” “Eyy ukhnem…”—the song of the Volga boatmen. Strikers and ordinary citizens pressed in to watch.
My heart was flying in my chest, thinking of yesterday’s massacre. What if the police came rushing out? But I hadn’t seen a policeman since we’d arrived on this side of the barricades. At last the doors gave way, tearing at the locks. The black maw of the station gaped like a mouth in an O. But now the soldiers hesitated, clustered on the steps, speaking among themselves.
“What are they waiting for?” Varvara shouted. “Why don’t they go in?”
“It might be a trap,” replied a soldier with a pale face and bloodshot eyes. “They could be waiting for us. Leave this to us, little comrade.”
Finally, a small group of soldiers decided there was nothing for it but to go in, rifles leveled, bayonets fixed. In a moment, a second group followed them. Then workers entered, pouring through the gap like water through a sluice. Varvara flashed a grin, tipped her head toward the opening. She wanted us to follow them. I backed up to join the crowd of the less determined as she vanished through the broken doors. After yesterday, I preferred my blood inside my skin. I knew Sofia Yakovlevna was watching from the windows, so I turned and waved. She could honestly say she’d never let me out of her sight.
After a few minutes, people reappeared in the doorway. They were handing out boxes of papers, dumping them onto the sidewalk. I joined the human chain. The piles grew. As we waited, I picked out a piece of paper from the mass. Boris Vissarionovich Agazhanian. A report from a police agent. His address, his place of business. They were dumping police files, the hated surveillance that all Russians suffered. The country was riddled with agents—every dvornik was paid to report on the comings and goings of the house. And if you were involved in public life, nothing you did would go unnoticed. For a prominent critic like Father, an outspoken Kadet, frequent contributor to liberal journals, it took day-to-day courage to go about his business. He knew every word and action would be recorded, reported, anything could be used against him. Varvara probably had a dossier by now. Maybe I did, too. We threw hundreds of these files onto the pavement. A young, nimble striker lit the corners of the pile with a seriousness of one lighting a candle in church. Black smoke feathered up. I set Boris Vissarionovich Agazhanian onto the flames, set him free from his petty sins, the gossip of his neighbors, the political innuendo. He and the others. A spark fell onto a woman’s skirt and she quickly batted it out. When the bonfire grew too hot, we threw the files in from a distance.
Then a man appeared in the broken doorway. He stopped on the step and gazed bewildered at the crowd. Others emerged, like ghosts from the underworld. Two, three, then a dozen, wearing gray pajamas. They were letting the prisoners go.
“It’s your lucky day, Comrades!” an old man shouted out to them. “You’re free!” One after another, they began to realize that their situation had changed for the better, and they melted into the crowd. Znamenskaya Square was not the end, after all, but only the beginning.
After dark Solomon Moiseivich returned to the Katzev flat, ash from the fires dusting his greatcoat, smearing his face. Seryozha jumped up to take the camera and tripod from him. Sofia Yakovlevna ran to him, smiling with relief as she helped him out of his coat and brushed at soot with vigorous blows.
“They broke into the police station,” Shusha clamored. “Varvara went in.”
“Telephone’s out,” Mina said.
Shusha twirled on the parquet, her red ribbon flying. “Look, I’m a mutineer.”
“Greetings, Comrade,” her father said with a laugh. He sat heavily in his chair at the table.
His wife went to get him his dinner while Dunya pulled off his boots. “Korolenko down the hall says the emperor’s sending troops from the front. Is it true?”
“There’s a lot of territory between here and the front,” the big man said, sighing with pleasure as the boots left his feet and his slippers replaced them. “Many things can happen before then, child. Every hour it’s something new.” He pulled Shusha toward him, kissed the side of her head.
“They broke into the police station. Marina was there! They let the prisoners out.”
Sofia Yakovlevna gave me an exasperated look as she set her husband’s soup before him. She was still angry at me for not coming back after the police station. Instead I’d followed Varvara up to the Arsenal. We’d heard that soldiers had broken in and were handing out rifles and pistols to the strikers like prizes at a fair. If the people were armed, surely the revolution would not be put down so easily. They would defend themselves. They would not be mowed down again. I saw it for myself: soldiers passing crate after crate to the crowd, the people breaking the wooden boxes open. Even though I knew it had to be, it was a chilling sight—the wartime arsenal of Russia delivered into the hands of the revolution. I hadn’t seen Varvara since then, she’d been lost in the crowd.
Now the bearish photographer squeezed Seryozha’s skinny arm. “I hope you’re rested. We’re going to have a long night. Ready?”
It was one in the morning when Seryo
zha woke us. No one had gone to bed, we slept in the parlor. Too much was at stake. We crowded, bleary-eyed, in the darkroom, our faces painted red from the safety light. Solomon Moiseivich’s deep round voice rang out in the dark. “I got a call early this morning. Vasily Rodionovich from the Echo said the Pavlovsky regiment was breaking out of barracks, headed for the Winter Palace. Marching behind their regimental band. I dressed so fast I almost forgot my shirt.” Into the bath went the first print. The photograph bloomed: a ragged parade crossing Palace Square.
He indicated with a flick of his fingers for Seryozha to transfer the paper to the next tray while he took down another square of processed film, exposed the next shot. I could hear Uncle Aaron’s wheezing. The chemicals were hard on the old man’s lungs, they stung the eyes. Mina shoved her glasses back up on her nose. Seryozha poked at the paper with tongs.
A line appeared…a roofline bisecting the paper, studded with the familiar statues decorating the Winter Palace. We stared into that sink as if into a scrying basin. And against the glowing white of the sky, clear as ink on rice paper, a tattered banner flew, dark against light. I knew it was red. History was emerging from its shell like a chick from an egg.
“And the emperor?” Sofia Yakovlevna whispered.
“Still at Stavka,” her husband replied. Stavka, staff headquarters at the front. “But they took the Winter Palace. The sentries surrendered without a fight. They all but handed over the keys to the tsar’s washroom.”
Without a fight. I thought of those guns handed out today. I no longer believed in miracles.