A sample from 'Russia', a novel completed in the spring of this year.
CHAPTER TWO.
01 January, 05.
The city of St Petersburg
A young man walked aimlessly through the streets, so hopelessly lost in his own thoughts that he constantly narrowly avoided walking into other pedestrians or slipping on the mixture of slush and ice that covered the pavements.
He had seen his father died a week earlier.
He had seen his father die in a failed cavalry charge, in the middle of a failing war against The Japanese.
He had been sent home on compassionate leave three days ago, and had seen his father buried one day ago.
For the first time in almost a year he was wearing civilian clothes instead of his uniform and they felt cumbersome and foolish. The cold was intolerable after months in the heat and humidity of the Far East . Without his father, separated from his regiment and in a city where he had no friends, he was utterly alone.
He was lost in his own misery and loneliness, and his only hope for the future was to return to fight in a war which he did not believe it was possible to win.
He walked on.
Suddenly a loud horn sounded repeatedly, and he was aware of people shouting and pointing at him and of the smell of smoke.
Waking as though from a dream he looked around him and found that he was standing in the middle of a road, and that he had narrowly avoided being run over by one of the new Automobiles that he had heard of.
He shrugged his shoulders and watched the strange, noisy and unimpressive vehicle drive away, then continued to walk blindly forward.
A harsh wind begin to blow, causing his scarf and greatcoat to billow around him, but he did not notice.
On the outskirts of the city, a crowd was gathering.
At it head was the priest, Father Georgi Gapon. Its ranks were filling with hundreds of peasants from the frozen fields around the city and hundreds of workers from the crumbling districts in which they were imprisoned.
When there was no longer room for them all to congregate they began to march into the city… toward The Winter Palace.
The young man walked on, lost in misery and cold. He had been walking all morning, not knowing where he was going and so not knowing where he would stop. It was past midday, and he had no eaten since the Wake the day before, but he did not notice the pain of his hunger.
Again he walked blindly into a road and again his progress was stopped. Not by an automobile this time, but by a vast press of bodies.
Imagining that he had stumbled into a marching army or a battle field, the young man reached for his sword. The shock of finding that it was not at his belt brought him to his senses.
Looking around him, he saw that a huge crowd of civilians was marching down the road. Curiosity drove him to follow them.
“Little-mother,” he addressed the nearest marcher, a small peasant girl, “what is the meaning of this march?”
“We are going to see the Father of All Russians,” she said excitedly, “and He is going to feed me, and stop the soldiers from beating my brother, and give my mother more wood for our fire.”
Finding this answer unintelligible, he quickened his pace and advanced up the crowd until he found a man who looked half way literate.
”Excuse me, sir” he shouted at the man, “what is the meaning of this march?”
“We march to The Winter Palace, sir, where the good priest will address our father The Tsar, and tell Him of our troubles and ask Him for aid, for we are His children and He will surely help us in our hour of need.”
“Understood,” said the man, who thought that he must have fallen in with a crowd of madmen or a very polite mob, yet was compelled by curiosity to join them.
They marched on quietly for almost an hour before they reached the vast courtyard in front of the gates of the majestic Winter Palace
The Tsar’s Winter Palace
The priest came forward and stood alone between the gates and the crowd. He took a large scroll from under his cloak and began to read from it.
It was hard for the young man to understand the words from behind hundreds of people, but as far as he could tell the priest was politely requesting the Tsar to improve standards of living for the poor.
The priest spoke for a few minutes, then it happened.
Without warning the freezing air was filled with the sound of hundreds of hammers hitting anvils and the screaming of hundreds of men, women and children.
Such was his shock that the young man took a few moments to understand the situation.
The sound was machine gun fire, and it was coming from the palace gatehouse.
The Tsar’s men were massacring the people.
Panic erupted in the crowd. A hundred people were already dead or dying. Some of those at the front had turned to run, whilst some had dropped down to hide and a few had fallen to their knees and where begging for mercy that would not come. Most of those at the back of the crowd did not understand, or refused to understand, the situation and they were being trampled by the growing stampede from the front.
The young man’s soldier’s instincts told him to stand his ground and asses the situation.
A peaceful and unarmed crowd were being attacked by machine guns.
There only option was to retreat and only a rapid and orderly retreat could save them from being completely annihilated.
The retreat was not orderly or rapid, and he was in the middle of it.
Still the machine guns fired- like the Devil’s own drummer boys.
For a moment he considered organising the crowd into a disciplined retreat.
The looks of utter horror and shock and terror on the faces of the people who ran past him told him that this would be impossible.
Still the machine guns fired, and still people died.
He realised that he too was probably going to die.
Then he realised that if he was going to die, if he Captain Fyodor Chevok of The 23rd Dragoons was going to die, then he would died with bravery and dignity.
He pushed his way forward through the crowd, towards the guns.
People rushed past him, pushing him and screaming in his face.
He ploughed forwards, looking for a wounded person.
He saw the body of a man, tried to lift him and then realised that the man’s chest was burst open and that he had no chance to live.
Dropping the man he ran forward again, barely aware of the bullets that swarmed over his head and bounced off the ground at his feet. He found the body of a young women, knelt beside her and saw that half of her once beautiful face had been blown away and that she was dead.
Moving on through the crowd, searching amongst the dead, he found a girl. Her stomach and legs were hit, but when he lifted her he could feel her breathing. He put her over his shoulder and ran away.
He charged through the crowd, which had been thinned by gun fire and the panicked retreat. He ran on, stumbling over pools of blood and piles of bodies, out of the courtyard into the street.
The pavements were blocked with those who fled the carnage and with spectators who had been drawn by the machine gun fire, so he had to run down the road, dodging between carriages and automobiles.
The rattle of machine guns finally faded, and now he could hear the girl on his shoulder screaming in between gasps for breath.
He ran on, relieved to be out of the firing line and being to think ahead. He thought that he could take the girl to his family home where a servant could clean and bind her wounds until a doctor was summoned. Then he thought of how long it could take to reach his home and tried to remember if there was a hospital on the way. He did not know.
The girl stopped screaming and began to moan faintly in his ear. He ran on, aware of her hot blood running down his back.
He could not understand why he was still alive.
He did not understand what had happened.
So he kept running toward his home, frantically scanning the streets for any sign of a doctor’s surgery or hospital.
The girl stopped moaning. Her body began to feel cold against his back.
He ran on.
Eventually, having ran far, but yet still far from home, exhaustion took him and he had to stop to catch his breath. He slowed his run to a walk and then stopped, gasping for air. He took the girl from his shoulder and held her in his arms before him.
Her face was white. Her wounds did not bleed. She did not gasp for breath.
He touched her slender neck and felt no pulse.
She was dead.
He did not know who her family was or if they still lived.
But he knew that in this mad, cruel city, in this mad cruel nation, he would never find out.
So he walked to the nearest bridge and dropped her in the nearest river, and fell to his knees and prayed for her soul.
He walked steadily home, unable to think or to feel, unable to notice those who stopped and stared at his blood soaked clothes and ghastly pale face.
He entered his family home, ignored the many questions of his servants, washed the blood from his hands and face, changed out of his blood soaked clothes and went out again to the nearest tavern.
To drink.
He drank all of that night, but was unable to forget the rattle of machine guns, or the fleeing crowd, or the dead girl in his arms.
He could not forget that The Tsar had murdered his people.
The next morning the pain of his hangover was overwhelmed by the pain of his memory of the day before.
He managed to drag himself out of his bed and make himself presentable, because he had to attend the reading of his father’s Will.
The reading of the Will seemed overly long and pompous to him. The material details seemed insignificant. He could not bear to talk to his family.
When it was finally over he remembered little other than that his older brother had received his father’s vast mansion and estate in the country, that his sister had received a lot of money and that he had received the relatively small town house where he was currently staying and a tiny hunting lodge somewhere far to the south of here.
He did not care.
He went straight to the nearest tavern and drank.
He drank continuously for days and then for weeks, stopping only for brief moments every few days to eat and wash. He could not stand drinking amongst the nobility, not after having seen the peasants die. Nor could he stand to drink amongst the gentry, whom he found weak and vulgar. So he went to the workers districts and drank with the factory workings and travelling peasants, and by then, with his dirty clothes and hallow face, he fitted in with them.
He sought comfort in the arms of prostitutes and found only guilt to add to his misery.
He sought friendship amongst the drunken workers and in their honest words he found only new fuel to his fire of suffering.
Eventually the thirst left him..
He sobered up in an ally, heated by a burning dustbin.
His head was in agony. His clothes ruined. He was hungry and frozen.
Then he knew that he had two chooses. He could live, or he could die where he lay.
He decided to live.
Returning to his home, he washed, ate and changed into his old uniform.
On his desk was a pile of letters from his regiment. The first of those was a letter of condolence regarding his father’s death. The second was enquired about his health and recent absence from society. The next was politely questioned why he was late in returning to his regiment. The next warned him that if he did not report for service in the next three days he may face a court martial. The next told him that he had been dismissed from the army and that there was a warrant out for his arrest.
He threw the letters on the fire, put on his old military uniform, gathered a few belongings and marched out of the house, and then north out of the city which held so many foul memories.
He marched out into the snow covered countryside. He knew not where to go, but he knew that his old life was over.
