Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

Her state of mind frightened her. Away from Moscow, away from the office, she felt alarmingly adrift, all her usual points of reference either gone or revealed in a completely different light. What had happened? Well, Sergei had deserted her, Komarov had virtually kidnapped her, and Jack had dropped himself back in her life like an unexploded emotional bomb.

She reminded herself that nothing really had changed. Okay, she was on a train, heading out to God knew where for God knew how long. But her desk would still be there when she returned. The Sergei she’d married had been gone for months, Komarov couldn’t hold her hostage indefinitely, and unexploded bombs could damn well stay that way. She would get her life back.

But was it the life she wanted? Things looked different stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere with only your own thoughts for company. The job, the office, the missionary zeal—they started to feel like a life to be chosen rather than taken for granted. Take that thought further, and other jobs, other offices, became possible. Russia had stolen her heart, but it wasn’t where her family was, and it wasn’t the only place she could make herself useful. She didn’t think she could ever abandon Kollontai and the Zhenotdel, but the way things were going she might not get the choice. Politics and loneliness were already fraying the edges of the life she had lived these last few years; sometimes she felt like a pond pierced by a stone, rippling away from her center.

Eventually she slept, and darkness had fallen when she woke up feeling cold and very alone. She needed to talk to someone—anyone. It had been almost three days since she had shared a normal conversation.

She washed her face and brushed her hair, practiced a smile in the mirror. There, she could still do it.

There were three men in the saloon—Jack and Komarov playing chess and a young Red Army officer whom she hadn’t met. When the latter stood and offered the seat beside him, she thankfully accepted—sitting with her back to the other two felt like an ideal arrangement.

The officer introduced himself as Semyon Krasilnikov and told her he was on his way to take up a post in Orenburg. Rather than attempt to explain her own presence on the train, Caitlin simply said that she was a Zhenotdel official with business in Turkestan—mentioning she worked for the women’s department deterred most men from probing further.

Krasilnikov proved an exception. Once they’d exchanged the usual traveler pleasantries—the excessive heat and all-too-frequent delays, the dreadful food and unyielding beds—he actually asked her to tell him more about her work. “How did the Zhenotdel come into being?” he wanted to know.

“That’s a long story,” she protested.

“We don’t seem short of time,” he said reasonably.

He even looked interested as she skimmed through the history of Russian feminism and the Zhenotdel’s eventual establishment. And he asked intelligent questions. Wasn’t there a danger of prioritizing gender over class? Were there enough men in the party who really supported the Zhenotdel’s aims, and were most of them offering little more than lip service when a conflict of interests arose?

It was impossible to generalize, she told him, knowing she’d done so herself on more than one occasion. Some conflicts of interest were more acute than others; some made comrades more open to compromise.

Krasilnikov thought that the Zhenotdel would have its work cut out in Turkestan.

Yes, she told him, but the rewards had already been spectacular. As she recounted the story of Rahima’s impromptu journey to Moscow, Caitlin suddenly realized how animated she had become—days of self-doubt were making her overcompensate.

Sitting a few feet away,McColl was having trouble keeping his mind on the game. He had actually started this one quite well, forcing Komarov onto the defensive for once, but since Caitlin’s arrival McColl’s hard-won advantage had slowly slipped away. He suspected that Komarov had noticed but hoped that the Cheka boss had put his failing concentration down to nothing more suspicious than an attractive woman’s presence.

The Caitlin he’d talked to on the platform—he might have been able to shut that voice out. But this Caitlin, this woman with so much passion, was the one he’d fallen in love with, and a game of chess just couldn’t compete.

“Checkmate, I think,” Komarov murmured just as she got up to leave the car. Her face was flushed, McColl noticed, as she nodded farewell to him and Komarov. Flushed and full of life.

As she disappeared through one gangway door, the exile-bound Menshevik came in through the other, carrying an unopened bottle of vodka. Seeing that their game had ended, he invited them and the young officer to share its contents. Receiving their agreement, he asked the attendant for glasses and sat back to examine them all with an expression half-owl and half-bear.

The vodka was rough but strong, and McColl took care not to drink too fast or too much. The conversation, which from the outset was mostly between Arbatov and Komarov, soon became a dialogue pure and simple, with McColl and Krasilnikov no more than spectators.

“From whom do you get your mandate?” Arbatov challenged Komarov.

“From history,” he retorted drily.

Arbatov grinned. “Once perhaps, but what if history changes its mind? Would you give up your power then? But then how would you know that history had forsaken you when you no longer listen to what it’s telling you?”

Komarov smiled at the table. “No party, no individual, can keep itself in power against the will of history.”

“Not forever, no. But for an hour, a year, a decade? What if you can hold power for that long? The peasants are against you now; the bourgeoisie always has been. And after Kronstadt it seems that most workers have lost their faith in you. My presence here on this train proves that at least half of Russia’s socialists have turned against you. A handful of incorruptibles in charge of a million careerists—it doesn’t sound like a recipe for socialism, does it? It sounds like a way of holding on to power.”

A succinct analysis, McColl thought. He wondered how Komarov would counter it.

“We do not hold this power for our own gratification,” the Cheka boss said, sounding defensive.

“Not yet. Oh, I know that you are sincere, Yuri Vladimirovich, but sincerity is an overvalued attribute. I’m sure the Spanish Inquisition was staffed by sincere men. And gratification comes in many forms. Power for its own sake, for one.”

“Which corrupts those who hold it? Of course it does. But impotence corrupts just as surely as power, Ivan Ivanovich.” Komarov smiled again. “And absolute impotence—perhaps that corrupts absolutely. Those who had nothing—no wealth, no power, no education, no hope—they must learn how to use the power we now hold in their name. You don’t learn kindness and cooperation from capitalism, and if we want a kinder, more cooperative world, these things must be taught. By the party. Who else is there?”

Arbatov looked incredulous. “Do you really believe that a handful of incorruptibles can hold such power in trust? You can’t even stem the tide you have already unleashed.”

“We can only try,” Komarov said, and McColl could feel the quiet desperation behind those four simple words.

“And where will our Russia be when you fail?”

“Where it is now?” Komarov rejoined. “Where we are is where we are. We can’t turn the clock back four years and start again from scratch.”

Returning to her compartment afterthe conversation with the young officer, Caitlin sat staring out at the moonlit hills. He had reminded her of someone, and it took her several moments to realize it was Sergei. The old Sergei, the one she had met and shared so much with in their fleeting times together.