After the previous night’s festivities, it seemed no one was willing to talk politics and risk another fight breaking out. Indeed, it seemed no one was willing to get so close to anyone else they didn’t already know. This left Mokrenko alone with four empty chairs while the other chairs filled. Two of those chairs, after polite inquiries, found their way to other tables. When someone asked for a third Mokrenko answered, “Ah, no, sorry; I have a couple of friends coming to join me.”
Fortunately, no fight broke out over the matter.
Or at least no one is fighting yet, thought Mokrenko. But, needs must when the devil drives, and I’ve got to get them somewhat inebriated and outside.
The vodka and pelmeni arrived before the two guards did. So intent was Mokrenko on the food that he almost missed them when they came through the door. He found Natalya’s description spot on, except for one thing. She never said what an air of sadness and doom surrounds the bigger of the two.
Chekov and Dostovalov walked silently, side by side, down the street leading to their current favorite hole in the wall, after the Reds taught the old butcher a nasty lesson. Dostovalov, himself, was the very picture of misery. He wouldn’t even be here, but would have been with his beloved Olga, except that the newcomers had relieved the guards of their duties and forbidden them from coming into the main or second floor of the house. At the same time they’d locked down on the Romanovs, hard, even as they were stuffing several dozen more aristocrats and staff into the house.
“Don’t worry, don’t complain,” the chief of the new men had ordered, “you won’t be here for long!”
No, not long… not here… not anywhere, thought the short noncom.
Chekov had his own issues. Tatiana was his friend, one of only two in the midst of this terrible world. And despite his best efforts not to, he cared for her sisters and brother as well.
What will we do? What can we do? I don’t give a shit about Nicholas or his hypochondriac loon of a wife, but his children deserve to live. I’ve spent years trying to isolate and harden my soul, and now if Tatiana and her siblings die, a part of me will die with them. And Anton is likely to kill himself in a futile attempt to save them if I don’t sit on him. Tatiana will still die, Olga, Maria and Anastasia and the boy, Alexei, will all still die.
And then I will be alone with only the coldest, blackest pieces of myself for company.
Chekov stopped at the tavern door and listened. Ah, good, no riot tonight. Helps, I suppose, that the Tyumen mob have been run out of town.
How will I even earn my bread, after this? Fighting for the Reds? Murderous bastards, and when they’re not murdering innocent children, they’re starving the commoner in the name of progress. I could join the White Army—but they prey upon my mother’s people as readily as they do the communists. If the God of my forebears does order the universe, He must be little more than a sadistic puzzle-maker.
He turned the latch and pushed the door half open, just enough for him and Dostovalov to get through while letting as little heat out as possible. Now to find a seat in this mess.
The tavern had filled up quite a bit since the sergeant’s arrival. Both Chekov and Dostovalov searched left and right, near and far, for an open couple of seats. Since no one else invited them over, Mokrenko waved and made an expansive “come on down” gesture.
Seeing his friend hesitate, Dostovalov said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, cut it out. We’ve got no secrets to spill. We’re about to be unemployed. I cannot see my one true love before she leaves and you are about to lose your arguing partner, student… and friend. We’re about as important as the horse turds we passed getting here. Nobody is a threat to us, my friend, because we just do not matter.”
Ordinarily, thought Chekov, I’d sit outside rather than share a table with a gregarious stranger, but he’s right. What difference does it make now? No future, no job… no Tatiana. So what difference?
Gratefully, the two made their way over and took rough, uncushioned boxes for their seats.
Introductions proceeded apace, “Rostislav Alexandrovich Mokrenko… Sergei Arkadyevich Chekov… Anton Ivanovich Dostovalov.”
“Gentlemen,” said Mokrenko, pointing to the vodka, “please, help yourselves. I just got paid by my company and am pretty flush at the moment. Oh, my manners; Xenia? Couple more glasses.”
“What company is that?” asked Chekov, innately suspicious at any show of generosity from a stranger.
“Pan Siberian Import-Export Company. Originally started in Vladivostok, I understand, but branching out to the west now.”
“You haven’t been with them long…” At that point, Xenia arrived with a couple of apparently clean glasses, which she set down on the table.
“Oh, hi, Anton Ivanovich,” she said to Dostovalov. “Haven’t seen you in a week or two.”
“Old friend?” asked Mokrenko, after the girl had left to see to another table.
“Something like that,” Dostovalov replied.
Mokrenko nodded, then answered Chekov’s question. “No, not long. They were recruiting good shots who could ride and didn’t mind living rough when I was discharged from the army. I had nothing better to do and the pay promised to be a lot better than the army had ever given me.”
“I knew you were a soldier,” Chekov said. “Don’t ask me how.”
Mokrenko reached for the bottle of vodka and poured a couple of mid-depth drinks. “Probably the same way I recognized you two as soldiers. It wasn’t the uniforms without any insignia; half the men of the town are wearing old uniforms. It’s in the walk, in the voice, in the mannerisms, and in the way you look around suspiciously. It’s me sitting here with my back to the wall and you two taking turns looking to see who comes in the door. If you’re one of us and halfway observant you just know. Though I suppose you could have been sailors, too.”
“There are, in fact, a couple of sailors who work around us,” said Dostovalov. “Good men, devoted to the… ouch! What the fuck was that for?”
“I’m sure Comrade Mokrenko isn’t interested in our work or who we work for,” said Chekov. “I kicked you so you wouldn’t wear out our welcome.”
“Not especially interested, no,” Mokrenko agreed. “Though if you ever get discharged look me up; the company always has openings, as far as I’ve been able to see. And they pay in gold and silver, none of this paper crap.”
The sergeant noticed that Dostovalov had tossed off his vodka rather quickly after being kicked under the table. He refilled the glass without being asked.
“I hate eating alone,” said Mokrenko. “You guys hungry?”
“We can’t impose…” began Chekov, before Mokrenko cut him off with, “I told you; we get paid in gold, and good wages at that. I can afford it. Hey, Xenia!”
Three and a half hours later, the first bottle of vodka was gone and the second was more than half finished. Both Mokrenko and Chekov were pretty sober or, at worst, mildly tipsy. Dostovalov, on the other hand, despite the food he’d eaten, was utterly drunk, slovenly drunk, crying in his arms drunk.
“He acts—he drinks—like a man who knows his soul is damned,” said Mokrenko. “What could he have done…”
“It’s not what he did,” said Chekov, “it’s what he failed to do. Long story, and ugly. And I don’t have the right to pass it on.”
“I understand. Well… can you carry him on your own? He’s a big boy, after all.”