Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“A good comrade, would you say?” Shahumian asked, with what seemed like deliberate casualness.

“He’s certainly one of a kind,” Piatakov responded. He had always found it hard to think of Brady as a friend, but the man had saved his skin on more than one occasion during their months together on the Volga front. “He has a way of getting people on his side,” Piatakov added. “And of getting things done. I wouldn’t want him for an enemy.”

Shahumian grunted. “Not much chance of that. He’s as sick of the way things are going as you are. Maybe even more so.”

“That would be difficult,” Piatakov said sardonically.

“Ah, you were always too optimistic, my friend.”

Piatakov managed a smile.

“What does Caitlin think? I take it the two of you are still together.”

Piatakov offered up a wry smile. “She says I’m in a permanent sulk. But it’s different for her—she has work that she believes in.” He shook his head and changed the subject. “Who else have you and Brady gotten together?”

“Grazhin. You remember him?”

“Ivan Vasilyevich? Of course. He’s a good man.” Grazhin had been in the same unit as Piatakov and Brady on the Volga. He’d always had his nose in one of Dostoyevsky’s novels, all of which he carried in his knapsack.

“He’s with us,” Shahumian said, “though maybe not for long.”

“His lungs?” Grazhin had never really recovered from the German gas.

“Yes. The last few years—well, he should be in a sanatorium, but he swears he’ll give his last breath to the revolution rather than waste it in bed.”

“That sounds like Ivan. Who else?”

“Three Indians. They’ll be there tonight. They’re all quite young—barely into their twenties, I would guess—and very keen. No experience to speak of, but everyone has to start somewhere. They were part of the group that was being trained at the school in Tashkent—remember that? They were all brought back to Moscow when Lenin decided we had to be nice to the British. All their comrades accepted it—they think the sun shines out of Vladimir Ilych’s ass—but these three are really angry. They want a crack at their own revolution.”

“Sounds good. So tell me what the plan is.”

“I think I’ll leave that to Brady.”

“Once he’s decided whether or not he can trust me?” Piatakov asked, not bothering to hide his resentment.

Shahumian put a restraining hand on Piatakov’s arm. “Sergei, you are still a member of the party. Your wife is a deputy chair of the Zhenotdel. I know where your heart lies, and so does Ivan. But the Indians don’t, and Brady has to be sure.”

Piatakov sighed. “Yes, of course you’re right,” he said. “My sense of trust has worn pretty thin, and I shouldn’t expect any better from others.” He managed another smile. “But it is good to see you again, Aram. I’m really glad you looked me up.”

They reached the building that housed the Universalist Club. There was no sign outside, only a single door that led into a narrow corridor, and that led into a broad, high-ceilinged room. Chairs and tables occupied all the available floor space, with a refreshment counter at one end and a small stage at the other. The wall between them was covered by a futurist mural of an imaginary Russian paradise. The room was ill lit, smoky, smelly, and noisy; a ragtime tune was blaring from a gramophone.

Piatakov had been to this particular club on several occasions in the months since Kronstadt, an errant Bolshevik among the various species of left oppositionists—LSRs, futurists, anarchists, imagists. They were all anachronisms, all as doomed as any prince, duke, or count of the old regime. And if, in his soberer moments, he sometimes wondered why he came, his heart was always there with the answer—that he always felt more at home in the company of rebels.

He followed Shahumian’s winding path through the tables to the far corner of the room. The habitually thin Grazhin, his face lighting up in recognition, leaped up to embrace him. “Sergei, Sergei,” he almost sang, “come, sit beside me.”

Aidan Brady also rose to greet Piatakov with a hug. The American looked thinner than he had the previous year, and the beard was gone, but the greenish-brown eyes were arresting as ever, at one moment full of interest and concern, at another surveying the world and its people from some remote Olympian height.

The new Cheka ban on private firearms obviously didn’t worry the American; the butt of a large revolver was clearly visible inside his leather jacket.

The two Indians present each offered a hand, and introduced themselves as Durga Chatterji and Habib Shankar Nasim. Chatterji was darker skinned, thin as Grazhin, with eyes that seemed to glow in his face. The more European-looking Nasim had a pleasant smile and relaxed manner. Both wore Russian clothes.

No sooner had they all sat down again than the third Indian arrived. Muhammad Rafiq was a shorter, more compact version of Nasim, with a flop of hair that he kept pushing back from his eyes. He talked fast and nervously, flashing apologetic smiles at frequent intervals.

They ordered chestnut coffee. Nasim had news from India, the importance of which only Brady and the other Indians understood. They took turns explaining matters to the others, and Piatakov was soon lost in a welter of unfamiliar names. He didn’t suppose it mattered. The rebellion that seemed to be gathering pace against the British was the important thing, and a single name seemed to dominate that, one that Piatakov had heard from his wife—Mohandas Gandhi.

The Indian comrades hated this man with a passion.

Gandhi, they said, was a Menshevik, a Kerensky, a reactionary. Oh, he might have the British on the run, but the Indian working class would never see the benefit. That would go to the English-educated Brahmins who ran the Congress Party, who would simply replace the British as a new ruling class. The flag and the faces at the top would change, but precious little else.

And the new rulers would wear eighty-ruble shirts, Piatakov thought to himself. Were all revolutions fated to follow the same downward spiral?

At that moment the lights dimmed, and a cacophony of catcalls and clapping resounded around the room. He turned to see someone clambering, with some difficulty, onto the small stage.

It was, Grazhin told him, the notorious Sergei Esenin. The poet was wearing a black velvet smock, which threw his powdered face and wavy golden hair into even greater relief. He was more than a little drunk. Piatakov, who had read and admired some of Esenin’s work but never seen him in the flesh, at first felt something akin to dislike, but soon found himself, like everyone else, in thrall to the poet’s presence and voice.

Verse followed verse, an avalanche of images. Esenin took them on a tour of a world turned upside down, introduced them to men turned inside out.

As he turned to pick up his drink, Piatakov’s eyes met Brady’s, and this time he found, unguarded, a blend of outrage and hurt at the state of the world that seemed to mirror his own almost too completely. There would be no happy endings, he thought. Not with Caitlin, not for Russia or himself. Which should have upset him, but for some reason didn’t.

As some trench philosopher had told him once, revolutions were like candles—you lit one and it burnt itself down. And with the stub you lit another. And another.

The idea was both sad and seductive.

India, he thought.