At that point, Turgenev gave the order to ship oars. The entire party then, less Natalya, took hold of the boat, pushing it still farther onto the shoreline.
“All right,” said Mokrenko, “Koslov? Goat, get this son of a bitch unloaded. Sir, I’m going to need a few men and some money—maybe a lot of money—to go get us fifteen horses and a cart or wagon.”
“Take what you think you need, Sergeant,” Turgenev replied. “Don’t forget rations, either.” The lieutenant shook his head in disgust. “It would have been simpler for us if that swine, Vraciu, had kept his word and brought us all the way to Rostov-on-Don. What this will cost us in delay I can’t even guess.”
“A few days, anyway, sir,” Mokrenko said. “Which is a few days more than we have to spare. Visaitov, Lavin, and… yes, you, Sarnof; you’re coming with me.”
Taganrog, Russia
They found a stable a few blocks from the old Assumption Cathedral. Mokrenko’d had an urge to look inside. It was an urge that, given the sheer number of armed red guards around the church, he didn’t find especially hard to overcome.
“I’ve no horses to spare, soldier,” the stable master insisted. Long in the face, with a drooping mustache, he looked a bit like the horses he cared for… smelled a bit like them, too. Mokrenko instinctively trusted him, something that didn’t come easy to the Cossack.
“No,” the stable master insisted, “not at any price. What the Germans, Austrians, and Cossacks didn’t take, the Reds did. Indeed, the Reds took everything but a bare minimum to move utter necessaries around.”
“Of course they did,” Mokrenko agreed. “And who says I’m a soldier?”
“Soldier,” insisted the stable master. “I was once one, too. Takes one to know one.” The stable master made a quick headcount, “Or to know four of them.”
“We need horses and a wagon,” Mokrenko insisted. “My party is encamped down the coast. We were, yes, soldiers, demobilized and put on a boat to come home. Boat sank, but we managed to save ourselves, our gear, and a couple of others. We’ve got, as mentioned, baggage. A couple of sick, too.”
“Indeed?” the stable master asked in a voice replete with suspicion. “You boat was sinking and yet you managed to save your baggage as well as yourselves? Well, no matter. I’ve got a wagon, a good one, with four old nags to pull it. You interested in hiring me for the job?”
Mokrenko considered that. “How far will you take us?” he asked.
“How far do you want to go?” the stable master replied.
“Rostov-on-Don.”
Shaking his head, the local said, “Now that far I can’t take you. Not only would it take me away from here too long, but the odds are good some different group of Germans or Reds—or bandits, there’s little to choose among them—than the ones hereabouts would just confiscate my wagon and mares.
“I can’t take you,” he repeated, “but, I have a friend or sorts—my first cousin, actually—down by the docks. I think he could. How big did you say your party was?”
“There are eleven of us,” Mokrenko said, “including a refugee girl we’ve acquired—no, stop right there and curb your thoughts; she’s just a young girl who needs help getting to her home—and an officer from a different regiment from ours who wants to get home, too.”
“How much baggage?”
Mokrenko considered this. There were probably about eighty pounds per man, all told, some of which was disposable. He answered, “Maybe a thousand pounds.”
“Tell you what; help me get my mares in harness and I’ll take you to the docks. You can bargain with my cousin for passage up the Don. I won’t take part, mind, because while he’s my cousin, you are soldiers. This leaves me in a terrible ethical dilemma if I get between you. After you’ve worked out passage—pay him no more than half up front, I warn you; he’s a thief—we’ll go pick up the rest of your crew. Fortunately, with the cold, the roads are hard, so we’ll make good time.
“My name is Sabanayev, by the way, Igor Sabanayev; and yours?”
Sabanayev’s brown eyes twinkled as he said, “And so, Comrade Rostislav Alexandrovich—and, once you’re past Germans lines, I advise you and your friends to say ‘comrade’ as often as possible and as publicly as possible; the Reds have eyes and ears everywhere—I see your sick have almost all recovered nicely.”
“Quick healers, the lot, yes,” agreed Mokrenko, dryly.
“A suspicious man, which of course, I am not, would wonder if sickness were claimed in a play for sympathy.”
“One does not need to play for sympathy,” answered Mokrenko, primly, “when dealing with a fellow soldier. One need merely ask.”
In fact, thought the Cossack, I trust you mostly because you spoke of the Reds as if they were “the other.”
“Indeed,” Sabanayev agreed, “it is so.”
The stable master looked over the contents of the wagon, made a quick judgment, and added, “Your young girl, Natalya; she should ride on the wagon. Also that Lieutenant Babin; mark my words, he looks to be coming down with pneumonia. At the very least, he’s had a hard time of it recently.”
“He has,” Mokrenko replied. “Nearly drowned, actually.”
“Put him in the wagon, too, then. As for the rest of you, you should walk. My horses—poor old ladies—are tired and worn, and haven’t been as well fed of late as they’d like. We’ll make better time with the rest of you on foot.”
Interlude
Tatiana: Anger and Weakness
I was so happy to see Olga up and around doing normal things like helping with Mama and the younger children that I was expecting things to turn around. I blame it on my naïveté, on my need for something good to finally happen.
Why there was a part of me that thought that she’d simply get over being raped, I don’t know. I’d never dealt with rape. I’d never been around women who’d been raped. It wasn’t something one discussed in polite company, or at all.
Who would want the shame? Who would want the pity? Who would want the guilt? Who would want to know that she could not protect herself? Who would want to know that they could not protect their daughter, sister, or wife?
Papa was reading to us—I don’t remember which book—and Mama sat under blankets with Ortipo in her lap, listening and rubbing at her temples only occasionally.
Mama leaned to whisper in my ear. “Tatiana, check on the tea please.”
I got up and crossed the yard to the kitchen. As I approached, I heard the whistling of a tea kettle through the door.
I stepped inside and found Olga standing by the stove, looking off into space. She might have been looking through the window, but I don’t think she was seeing anything.
The kettle’s whistle came to a stop. Still she stared, as if she wasn’t even there.
“Olga,” I said, coming up behind her slowly.
She must’ve not heard me.
The scent of heated metal rose from the kettle.
“Olga,” I said again, louder.
Startled, she turned her head. We both reached for the kettle at the same time, bumping fingers. I wrapped my hand around the towel knotted over the kettle’s handle and moved it off the heat.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Her voice was hollow. So were her eyes.
I sat her down at the small kitchen table used to chop vegetables. Someone had left a stack of clean bowls set in the middle. Mismatched napkins had been neatly folded atop them.