Эльвира Барякина - Russian Treasures

Sofia Karlovna could almost see the dusty purple bunches of grapes and taste the juice of the first berry.

“Your grief will pass,” she told Nina. “Not immediately, of course, but eventually, everything will fall into place. I loved my husband very much too. He was killed by a terrorist—in those days, students kept assassinating government officials one after the other.”

“I’ll never forget Klim,” Nina replied and fell silent, realizing that not so long ago she had said the same thing about Vladimir.

Sofia Karlovna sighed.

“Only the first love stays with you forever, and the older you get, the more it means to you. When I was fourteen years old, my family lived in St. Petersburg right next to the residence of the Japanese consul. His son—we called him Jap—was always spying on us through the hole in the fence as we played in the backyard. One day, he sent me a letter: ‘My dear cherry blossom, Sofia-san—’ He finished with the line, ‘As my body does its work, my soul is always with you.’

“I was stupid and showed the letter to my friends. They teased him, ‘Hey, lover boy, do you want us to call for Sofia-san while your body is doing its work?’ Soon, his family went away, and I never saw him again. Fifty years have passed, but I still remember him. And you will remember my son in that way too.”

“Yes, I will,” Nina said faintly.

7

Sofia Karlovna kept asking Nina, “Why are you so silent?”

Because there was nothing to talk about anymore. Nina had turned to stone: a swift reaction had swept through her body so that everything—her skin, muscles, and even her thoughts—had curdled and solidified.

What can I do with myself now? Nina wondered. She spent her days mired in contemptuous hatred of those who were still alive while Klim was dead. These other people breathed his air and ate his bread, and they had stolen the time that Nina had intended to spend with him alone. It was a daily desecration and sacrilege.

At night, she lay on her bed curled into a ball and repeated to the rhythm of the wheels, “Come back, come back—” She tried, again and again, to realize that never again would she look into Klim’s laughing dark brown eyes.

The second-class car was dark, filled with a foul haze and the sound of snoring.

Do you want me to learn to live without you? But there’s so much I still want to say to you. I want to sleep in your arms, watch you drink your tea in the morning, smooth down your hair, help you find your keys that have fallen under the table in the hall, bend to reach for them at the same time as you, and forget everything to kiss you on the lips. I want to wait for you to come home in the evening, look forward to it, be angry with you for always being late—always late—

1

Fomin had paid the Cheka men off by giving them a huge bribe—all the money collected for the uprising. He felt terribly sorry for Zhora and Elena, but there was nothing he could do for them. He had had no choice but to drop everything and run away as fast as he could.

By November 1918, he had ended up in the headquarters of General Denikin. The White Army grew from nothing, thanks to the enthusiasm of volunteers willing to fight to save their country. But there weren’t enough of them to defeat Bolshevism, and they had nothing with which to inspire the masses.

Nobody was able to explain in popular terms what the Whites were fighting for. The words “monarchy,” “freedom,” “constituent assembly,” or “rule of law” meant nothing to the illiterate peasants. They understood only that the Whites would bring back landlords and make the peasants pay for the land they had gotten ahold of illegally. In such a situation, it was useless to expect them to offer help with food or to join up for the army.

The Bolsheviks had a much better position in terms of geography. They had gained control of almost all of the country’s industrial enterprises and railroads. The population in the territory occupied by the Red Army was far greater and more ethnically homogeneous while the Whites had to deal with the border regions, each of which was seeking separatism. As long as the White generals stood up stubbornly for “one indivisible Russia,” they alienated their potential allies from local elites.

But the main difficulty was the eternal problem of money—damn money!

Lack of funds led to a lack of supplies. White officers and officials were paid a pittance and so were prone to bribery and looting. One thing led to another, and by the summer of 1919, General Denikin and his army couldn’t even find support far behind the frontlines in White-occupied territory.

Fomin did everything he could to convince the White generals that they needed a well-thought-out and easily understood political program that would clearly benefit the common people. But for them, the simplicity of slogans meant appealing to the most primitive popular beliefs. While the Bolsheviks blamed everything on the bourgeois, the Whites decided to blame everything on the Jews. The only idea that united the broad anti-Bolshevik coalition from monarchists to anarchists was blind, ruthless anti-Semitism. They believed that since there were so many Jews among the Bolshevik high officials and Red Army commanders, the revolution and the civil war in Russia were a part of the conspiracy of Jews seeking world domination. These sentiments resulted in anti-Semitic attacks of an unprecedented scale and brutality.

Fomin invested all of his energy in trying to establish quality propaganda in the White Army. He argued that they should stress the idea of patriotism, not nationalism or revenge. The Whites had to seek compromises, promote democracy, and campaign for help from abroad since only the Allies would give loans to fund the White Army.

But the generals didn’t support Fomin’s program. “Let the Europeans do things their way,” they said. “In Russia, people aren’t ready for democracy.”

It was useless to appeal to common sense; they didn’t want to listen.

Fomin went to Novorossiysk where he found work as a local representative for the Interdepartmental Commission for the Recording of State Property taken from the Bolsheviks. His new position meant that he had money to run his newspapers. Fomin decided that he would independently campaign for what he thought was right.

2

Novorossiysk was a small southern town surrounded by bluish mountains and a dirty sea. All the town offered in the way of local sights were the silhouettes of Allied steamers standing dark against the horizon and the masts of sunken battleships—the remnants of Russia’s Black Sea Navy, which could be glimpsed among the waves not far from the pier.

Fomin rode into town along Serebryakovskaya Street in his battered motor. The street was full of nervous, bustling people. Ragged soldiers loitered beside government buildings. A cart passed slowly in a cloud of white cement dust with bluish arms and legs protruding from under its tarpaulin cover.

“Typhoid victims,” the chauffeur told Fomin. “Essentially, we’re in the middle of a funeral procession, but nobody has bothered to take off their hats.”

A large poster hung over the entrance to the cinema: “Horrors perpetrated by the Bolsheviks from 1917 to 1919 in Moscow—in four parts.” Fomin knew that all of these “horrors” had been filmed by the White propaganda bureau.

In the window of the grocery store was a map of military operations. The little paper flags that marked the frontline had not changed positions for three weeks.

A crippled man stood on the sidewalk with a tin in his hand. “Citizens, please make your donation for a monument to the heroes who have died from Bolshevik atrocities.”

Fomin looked at the continuous flow of people in faded bowlers, soldiers’ caps, and ladies’ hats apparently made of baize taken from card tables.

Refugees, damn it, he thought.

Until September, Fomin had still believed victory was possible, but when the head of the supply bureau had told him that there were no winter boots for foot soldiers, he had realized that the game was up.

The White Army couldn’t have managed without supplies from the Allies. Fomin talked many times with Lieutenant Colonel De Wolff, the representative of the British military mission. “Why don’t you send more troops?” Fomin asked him. “The Bolsheviks wouldn’t stand another month against the regular British army.”

“War is an expensive enterprise,” De Wolff said, shaking his head. “What will the British people get out of it besides tens of thousands of graves and a hole in the national budget? Russia has nothing to pay us with. Your industry is in ruins, and mining operations aren’t profitable without investments and long-term loans, which are huge risks. Bad climate and poor logistics will eat up any potential profits. You have to understand that the British are tired of war, and when all’s said and done, they couldn’t care less about the fate of the White Army. It’s a bitter pill to swallow perhaps, but it’s the truth.”

Fomin nodded. “I see.”

“Denikin’s government has already received large loans from us,” De Wolff continued. “The Whites promised us they’d be in Moscow by October, but it hasn’t happened. And Admiral Kolchak has been routed in Siberia. Our bankers are nervous. If you lose the war, they lose money. As for me, what I want to know is given that the United Kingdom and Russia are allies and we’re committed to a common good, should my country take part in killing Russian citizens? Do we really have the right to break into someone’s house if we think that something reprehensible is going on inside? I’m not so sure.”

Fomin understood him perfectly from the point of view of diplomacy, finance, and philosophy. If an enterprise is failing, the sooner you pull out the less money and authority you stand to lose. But close up, things looked very different. In Russia there and then, thousands of people were succumbing to typhoid due to a shortage of medicine. White officers had not been paid for six months and left the frontline in desperation so that they could feed their hungry children.

There and then, Fomin published lies in his newspaper, claiming, “The Allies will help us,” and that was all he could do for the White cause.

Fomin’s friends kept asking him these days where he was planning to go when he emigrated. Should he go to Switzerland to the wife he didn’t love and hadn’t seen for five years? But how would he get there?

No European country was keen to accept sick, penniless, and traumatized Russian refugees. So far, they were being taken to Crimea, the Greek island of Lemnos, Serbia, Constantinople, and the Princes Islands off the Turkish coast. The first evacuees were sick and wounded soldiers, then their families, and then the civilian personnel of military institutions. The remaining women and children were taken onboard for a fee.

At one time, Fomin had considered himself a big fish, a man to whom all doors were open, but he now realized that he was just another one of the countless “bourgeois” vainly besieging foreign missions and the Committee for Evacuation.

The White government officials were the last to be evacuated.

3

The best place in town to get the latest news was the Makhno Café, frequented by members of the so-called Black Horde, a formidable fellowship of profiteers. The café wasn’t so much an eating place as a gentlemen’s club and exchange market. You could buy all manner of things from soldiers’ undergarments to steel factory shares. So great was the influence of the Makhno that newspapers published currency rates under the heading “Café.”

It was an odd place, large and dirty with potted palms in every corner and a stove in the center. The waiters wore their hair neatly parted and kept their shirtfronts white and their nails clean. The waitresses wore fine jewelry. As the waitstaff flitted to and fro, customers would shout out for champagne and sunflower seeds.

Fomin went to his table, on which the word “Reserved” had been scrawled in chalk.

“Capri Salad with tomatoes and black olives,” Vadik the waiter informed Fomin. He was an old hand at the art of pleasing. “Fillet of plaice with grapes. Skewer-grilled shrimp with lemon.”

Fomin wasn’t listening. A young woman sitting at an empty table by the window had caught his eye. She looked strangely like Nina Odintzova.

Of course, it wasn’t her. This woman had her hair cut short and was wearing a dress that looked like a school uniform.