Эльвира Барякина - Russian Treasures

The ancient Stoics wouldn’t have approved of Klim’s passion for Nina. Those wise men of old had frowned on such strong attachments. But then again, they were probably not the best authorities in matters of the heart.

To find out what love is, you have to look at its opposite, and the opposite of love is not hatred but war. When you are loved, you are seen as something sacred, and even when people hate you, you are at least important enough to deserve their hatred. However, war devalues people utterly until they die like ants accidentally crushed underfoot. They become nothing and nobody, and that is something impossible to bear.

During the war, Klim had seen hundreds, maybe thousands of dead people. These priceless human lives had been cut short, and no one cared. That fact was more terrifying for him than death itself. How could you hang onto your moral right to life? How could you prove—at least to yourself—that someone needed you on this old blue sphere? There were only two ways of preserving your integrity in this life, and that was to prove to yourself either your heroism or your love. As military exploits consist mainly of killing others, there is often little choice.

Nina had told Klim that she had kept all his little gifts: the key, the little white feather, and the symbol of eternity he had made out of the safety pin of a hand grenade. Recently, she had added a yellow pebble to her collection: it reminded her of a petrified heart and a candle flame. Nina had decided that it was a symbol of commemoration.

During his time in the attic, Klim also made himself a new treasure—a simple metallic button with the Greek letter Λ that he had inscribed on it. It was his personal symbol of love: each side of the letter holding the other up to keep the whole from collapsing.

3

All morning, there was a continuous cannonade as the Whites detonated shells at the railroad station. The oil tanks were ablaze too, and the air smelled strongly of burning.

Shushunov had taken Sofia Karlovna to see Guyomard at nine o’clock to fetch the visas. But it was already afternoon, and still, they had not returned.

Beneath him, Klim could hear Fomin’s heavy tread as he paced his room.

“It looks as though your mother-in-law isn’t coming back,” Fomin said eventually to Nina. “She’s either died, or somebody’s killed her. What do you think?”

“How should I know?” Nina snapped.

“I knew I should have gone myself—”

Klim tried to figure out how many bodyguards were still in the house with the driver and Shushunov gone. Had Fomin sent any of the others with them?

He kept wondering what to do when the old countess returned with the papers.

If Klim could only have been sure that the visas would be ready today, he would have left the house the night before to wait for Nina and Sofia Karlovna at a prearranged place. But now what? Should he—in the best tradition of Robin Hood—suddenly rush in on Fomin and rob him?

Klim would have been capable of killing if necessary to defend himself or his loved ones. But this was different; something like grabbing someone else’s lifebelt to save himself—even though it was his own passport at stake.

He would find out soon enough, he supposed, when he was forced to make a choice. Besides which, there was a good chance that Klim would be shot himself. Fomin and his Cossacks wouldn’t think twice about finishing him off.

“It’s one o’clock,” announced Fomin presently. “What do you propose we do, Miss Nina? All hell has broken loose in the port. The military is seizing the ships by force and throwing civilians like us overboard.”

Nina didn’t answer. Klim heard a sudden commotion and running feet and then an order in a stranger’s voice, “Go downstairs, ma’am.”

Klim froze.

“Counterintelligence has honored us with another visit,” said Fomin with forced gaiety. “How can I help you?”

There was the sound of chairs being scraped back.

“Listen, Fomin. I know that you’ve given up your official duties, but I also know that this January, you got ahold of a stack of promissory notes confiscated from the Kharkov Bank—”

“What are you talking about?” broke in Fomin in a menacing voice.

“You know perfectly well. You never made any record of those notes on the balance sheet. It’s as though they’d never existed—isn’t that right? I imagine you’re hoping you can use them to live comfortably in exile, but they don’t belong to you.”

“Whose are they then? Yours?”

“I have a proposal for you. If you can relieve me of the necessity of searching your house for the notes, you get a place on the steamer. That way will be in all of our best interests. I don’t have a lot of time, and as for you, well—notes or no notes—you’ll die without my help.”

Klim was unable to catch Fomin’s answer. He listened intently for a few long minutes, but now, all was quiet downstairs. Suddenly, there was the roar of a car’s motor in the backyard.

“The British mission!” he heard Nina shout suddenly, but her cry was abruptly cut short.

Forgetting all caution, Klim rushed downstairs. The house was empty. He ran outside to see a large black car driving full-speed toward the port.

“Damn it!” Klim kicked at the gates in exasperation, sending an iron echo ringing around the yard.

The British mission is right on the other side of the bay, Klim thought. By the time I get there on foot, the steamer will have left.

Another car drove slowly up to the gate.

“What are you doing here?” exclaimed Sofia Karlovna. “Where’s Nina?”

“Fomin’s abducted her!” Klim cried in despair. “Just a minute ago! They left without waiting for you.”

The old countess gasped. Shushunov and the driver exchanged glances.

“We couldn’t get back any earlier,” Sofia Karlovna said, confused. “We had to wait, but now I have your papers.”

Klim pocketed his passport without looking and grasped the handle of the car door. “Please take me to the British mission!” he pleaded with Shushunov.

The Cossack pulled out his tobacco pouch and began to roll himself a cigarette. “How much will you pay?”

Klim hesitated. He had nothing. Those thugs in the pay of counterintelligence had robbed him of all his money.

“I must get to the British,” he said.

“Not good enough,” Shushunov said as he lit his cigarette.

Sofia Karlovna sighed, shook her head, and took a five-franc note from her purse. “Here, take it,” she said. “A gentleman should always have enough money to pay his own passage. If not, he risks finding himself in a very unpleasant situation. Now, get into the car.”

1

For several days, all of the employees of the British mission had given themselves up to vandalism on an unprecedented scale.

Five hundred gallons of rum had been poured into the sea. All of the artillery breechblocks had been thrown into the water. The tank crews had crushed forty new airplanes straight from the factory and then sent the tanks into the sea with their engines running.

Everyone was trying to stay calm but making a poor job of it. Mountains of rifles, backpacks, saddles, and harnesses had appeared down by the waterfront. The Royal Scots Fusiliers had doused them with kerosene and set them alight. The sea around the pier was full of floating debris with a dead body drifting facedown in the waves here and there.

The British had abandoned all of their warehouses in the city to looters but weren’t allowing Russians onto the territory of their mission under any circumstances.

Two days previously, Eddie Moss had received an order to deliver a package to General Kutepov’s headquarters. As soon as he had gotten out of the car, he had been surrounded by women carrying small children. They had held up their crying babies and screamed, “Pozhaluista! Please!” as though he could do something for them. One of the women had fallen on her knees and grasped Eddie’s hand, trying to kiss it. He had pushed her away, feeling like a murderer.

An interpreter at Kutepov’s headquarters had told Eddie that the general had issued a new order: now only those servicemen able to continue fighting the Bolsheviks had the right to leave for Crimea. Kutepov had requested that the British command help the Russians with the evacuation.

2

The British were hastily boarding the SMS Hannover, a former German battleship that had been transformed into a troop transport. With a great clatter of boots and squeaking of wheels, they made their way up the gangplank, their sweaty faces coated with cement dust. A terrible wailing could be heard over the port as the crowd surged and cried out behind the barbed wire that fenced off the pier. Every now and then, the soldiers on the machine-gun towers fired volleys into the air to hold back the crowd, but even that was useless. The British soldiers had to use their rifle butts to knock down those who climbed the fence.

Eddie tried not to look at the Russians. It’s not our fault that we can’t save them, he thought. They’ll trample us to death if we let them through the fence.

The Whites felt that the British behavior toward the Russians showed an icy indifference. What Eddie was feeling now wasn’t indifference but unspeakable shock and shame.

We’re leaving you behind. We promised to help you, and now, we have to leave you to die.

Eddie thought time and time again of Klim Rogov and particularly of the day when they had left him behind in Rostov. But how the hell could he have done anything differently? Should Eddie have stayed with Klim out of solidarity, sick as he was, only to become a burden to him and die somewhere on the frozen steppe?

The Russians are to blame for all this, Eddie kept saying to himself. It made it a little easier to take.

He heard a locomotive whistle from behind the fence.

“Moss, to the gate!” cried Captain Pride.

A small train that had come to fetch the workers from the British mission and take them to the pier came forcing its way through the crowd. There were clouds of steam, a deafening squeal of metal, and dreadful shrieks. Eddie wondered if somebody had fallen under the locomotive.

The Scots Fusiliers closed in on the refugees to stop them forcing their way through the opened gates.

“Get back!” yelled Eddie, waving his gun. “Get back, or I’ll shoot!”

The locomotive came slowly in, pulling four cars behind it. Eddie was about to give the order to close the gate when he noticed a man on a horse making his way through the crowd. Judging by his collar insignia and crimson band on his cap, the man was a British officer with the Royal Army Medical Corps.

“What’s up?” Eddie shouted.

“I have a hospital here!” the officer cried in a muffled voice. It sounded as though he had caught a cold. “I need help bringing in my patients!”

“Where the hell have you been all this time?” Eddie shouted, aghast. “Why aren’t you on the ship yet?”

The officer only waved his hand.

The Fusiliers lined up to make way for eight carts full of wounded soldiers, pale-faced and freshly bandaged.

“Do you belong to our military mission?” Eddie asked them, but no one answered.

The officer dismounted and ordered the medics and nurses to load the wounded onto new stretchers that they had brought with them.

“Faster! Faster! Take them onto the ship!” he shouted in a strange accent.

Russian staff officers were getting out of the railroad cars. According to an agreement with the British command, they had been assigned places on the Hannover. A tall man with a shaven head dragged a young woman out by her arm. She tried to pull away from him, shouting something in Russian. The man slapped her across the face, and the woman cried out and pressed her hand to her cheek.

All of the anger that had been boiling up in Eddie came to a head. Running up to the scoundrel, he put a gun to his chin. “Don’t you dare!” he shouted.

“You not understand! This my wife,” the man protested in broken English.

Eddie grasped the man by the shoulder and pushed him toward the Fusiliers. “Take him out of here!”

Then he approached the weeping woman. “Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked.

She said nothing—it seemed that she didn’t speak English. Eddie could see that she was shaking all over.