‘Was it terrible, Pasha?’
‘Sometimes I think it was preferable to this. At least there one knew who the enemy was.’
‘Not Valentine anymore,’ she said, giving him a mischievous look.
‘No, he’s changed his tune. Now we’re clear of the Bolsheviks.’
Only he wasn’t clear of the Bolsheviks. What he was, he found a few hours later, was still on the sofa, stretched out and alone. He had fallen asleep. Sofya had gone to bed. He sat bolt upright, wide awake as the artillery bombardment began again.
It was still dark and an explosion in a nearby street was followed by a crash in the room next door. Valentine emerged half-dressed and nursing his shin.
‘They’re getting closer.’
‘We need to get going,’ Paul said.
He woke Sofya. They carried their few belongings in bags and bundles out into the greying dawn light. People were running aimlessly through the rubble trying to escape the shells. The trams that had run across the floodplain to the steamer pier had long since ceased. There were no droshkys to be had and the only way to reach the river was on foot. Others were already ahead of them, hurrying across the meadows towards the Volga. On the far bank to the west, the flash of artillery pieces revealed the Red Army’s positions on Uslan Hill. The river was still in darkness but small twinkling lights, rising and falling with the current, betrayed the presence of Raskolinokov’s flotilla. Nearing the bank the ground underfoot became boggy. A crush of people had converged on the remaining barges, shouting and struggling towards the bank. Valentine, ahead of Paul and Sofya, reached into his waistband and withdrew Oblenskaya’s pistol.
A detachment of Legion soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets held the crowd at bay, guarding the gangways onto the barges. The crowd milled in front of them, suitcases and bundles parrying the bayonets. Paul, in his Czech uniform with Sofya and Valentine in his wake, pushed to the front waving their authorisation papers above his head.
‘From Colonel Čeček,’ he bawled at the soldier at the foot of the gangway. ‘We have passes.’
A officer behind the man reached past and took Paul’s authorisation. He read it and nodded.
‘Three,’ he said and the soldiers moved aside to let them up the gangway.
The barge was crowded with legionnaires. Some stood on the deck where they could, others lined the gunnels with their rifles pointing across the river. Edging between those on the deck, Paul gave the bundle he had been carrying to Sofya.
‘You’d better find some cover. As soon as it’s fully light they’ll shell the boats.’ He held his hand out to Valentine.
Valentine frowned. ‘What’s this?’
‘I’m staying,’ Paul said.
‘Pasha!’ Sofya cried.
‘What? Don’t be stupid, old man. The city’s about to fall. You know what’ll happen if they catch you.’
‘I was sent to join the Legion,’ Paul said. ‘There are still units in the city. How can I leave them now?’
‘But they’ll be getting out, too!’ Valentine protested. ‘Besides, they’re stretched from here to Siberia. You can join some other unit, can’t you?’
‘That’s not quite the point, is it.’ Paul said.
‘The point? What is the point?’
Another party boarded the barge and they had to shuffle along the deck to make room.
‘Good God, man,’ Valentine said. ‘C didn’t send you here to die like a rat in a trap.’ He turned to Sofya. ‘Tell him, Sofya, make him see sense.’
Sofya dropped her bag and bundle. She grabbed his arms.
‘Valentine’s right, Pasha.’ She stared into his face, her own aghast. ‘There’s nothing you can do here! You can’t help anyone by dying. Come with us, please. We’ll find Mikhail. Isn’t that what you were supposed to do?’
What he was supposed to do hadn’t had much bearing on what he had been doing for some time. It seemed to Paul that all he had done so far was to run away. Here he had an opportunity to stop running, to turn and fight back. The ‘why’ no longer seemed important.
‘Make sure she finds Mikhail,’ he said to Valentine.
Sofya clung to him. ‘No, Pasha. Come with us, please. For me. I want you to come with me.’
Paul eased her back. ‘I’ll find you again, Sofya. I promise.’ He kissed her, pushed her gently towards Valentine and turned away.
From the bank he saw them looking at him, Valentine’s hands on Sofya’s shoulders. Her hands were clasped in front of her breasts as if in prayer. A shell whined overhead and a hundred yards along the bank an explosion threw up a mass of mud and grass. The crowd screamed and scattered. The gangway was hauled onto the deck and the barge’s engines coughed into life. The boat drifted away from the bank and turned with the current.
Paul watched it for a moment longer as the shelling crept closer. Then he turned towards the floodplain and Kazan again.
PART FIVE
On an Armoured Train
— November 8th 1918 —
37
Snow lay deep underfoot. Ice had formed thick against the riverbank and crept over the stream with an opaque frosting that concealed the torpid flow beneath. Along the bank, trees canted under the weight of snow like rows of stooped old men, dropping their load now and then with an accompanying whoosh that sounded like gasps of relief. Then stillness returned, ghostly white, a silence broken only by the crunch of snow under the men’s boots and the rasp of their frozen breath.
They kept to the bank of the river, following its bends and making east by the compass. Earlier the glow in the sky to the west, glimpsed through the trees, had been taken for the low sun. Now, with dusk approaching, it still glowed unnaturally bright. Not the sun, but some burning village.
Paul tucked the tails of his bashlyk hood into his coat against the cold. The snowstorm had caught them unprepared. They had been away from the train for two days, wandering disorientated through a forest that looked strangely different under snow. They had originally been attempting to outflank a detachment of Reds who were trying to outflank them and cut the line to their rear. Instead, they had found one of the units of partisans who now seemed to infest the forest like lice. One never knew which side they were on until they started shooting. Most held some sort of allegiance to the SRs but since the Social-Revolutionary split with the Bolsheviks in the summer many of the peasant groups had gone their own way. Some held no allegiance to anyone but themselves.
It had snowed again overnight, the temperature dropping even further. It was still dark with a rising wind when Lieutenant Capek, the officer in charge of the patrol, had got them on their feet before they’d been buried under the growing drifts. Tired and half-frozen, Paul had fallen in with the rest, chewing on a piece of dried meat from his dwindling rations while the lieutenant and his sergeant argued about which way the railway line lay. Finally settling on a north-west direction, they walked for an hour in silence, the sound of their progress muffled by the deep snow. When they blundered out of the trees into the small clearing, they had surprised themselves as much as the band of partisans they found camped there.
Capek hadn’t waited to ask questions. The firing started as soon as he saw the band. Paul pitched headlong into a drift, struggling to free his Mauser from the awkward wooden holster. The gun was a 7.63mm Czech issue semi-automatic, nicknamed the ‘broomhandle’ from the fact the wooden holster doubled as a detachable shoulder stock. He hadn’t had it long but had already grown to hate it, forever stubbing his fingers on the rigid holster. Now, amid a chaos of rearing horses and running men, he struggled to get a gloved finger through the trigger-guard. By the time he had sent a few erratic shots into the mêlée in front of him, two horses and half-a-dozen men were down in the reddening snow. The rest of the partisans had run for the trees. Paul emptied the Mauser after them for good measure and climbed to his feet. The Czech beside him didn’t get up. He was sprawled on his face, leaking a bloody stain from his head which was already freezing in the snow.