Эльвира Барякина: The Prince of the Soviets

“When did you leave Russia for China?” Magda asked Nina now.

“In October 1922,” Nina said. “There was a terrible shortage of food back then.”

It’s safe to assume, thought Magda, that things wouldn’t have changed too much in five years.

Magda felt anger rising up in her like a wave. The Bolsheviks could not get their own house in order, but here they were trying to teach the world how to create a “bright future.”

She turned to Nina, who was sitting on the floor of the truck and holding on to the armrest of Magda’s seat as the truck kept lurching and bouncing as it went over stones and ruts.

“Do you have a place to stay in Moscow?” Magda asked.

Nina shook her head. “No.”

“Would you like to be my interpreter? I don’t know a word of Russian.”

Nina was silent for a moment. “How long are you planning to stay in Moscow?” she asked. “Until Friedrich changes the anger to mercy?”

Magda had not realized that it was so easy to guess her state of mind.

“I don’t know yet,” she replied, embarrassed.

She had been studying Nina for some time and had noticed that anything and everything merely enhanced this woman’s beauty—she looked lovely even in a shabby skirt and blouse, even with that ever-present look of sadness in her eyes.

Nina attracted attention without any effort on her part. It was just the way she was with her large gray-green eyes, wavy dark hair, and the graceful lines of her neck and shoulders. She was like a fascinating porcelain figurine found at an antique market; to see her was to want her.

Magda, on the other hand, had always had to strive her utmost to prove to others that she was deserving of love and attention.

“I wonder what it would be like to be like you?” she asked, staring quizzically at Nina. “Men are attracted to you immediately. Don’t tell me it isn’t true.”

Nina frowned. “I can’t choose who is attracted to me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Magda smiled. She had the same problem exactly.

A month later, the fugitives crossed the border with the USSR and reached a nameless outpost where an international sleeping car sent from Moscow awaited them.

The Bolshevik agents began to breathe more easily. If they were being welcomed in this manner, surely they were not about to be reprimanded? Perhaps this was a sign that the party leadership knew they had done everything they could in China to further the world revolution and had failed only through force of circumstance.

They were gripped by a childlike excitement. Here they were, back home at last, among their own people. They had survived the journey across the desert and had met neither soldiers nor the Honghuz bandits who preyed on trade caravans. Now, they felt sure, everything would be all right.

Covered head to foot in dust, their faces burned dark by the desert sun, the fugitives began to stow their baggage onto the overhead racks of the sleeping car.

“The train will leave in five minutes!” shouted the attendant, a handsome old man with impressive gray whiskers.

Nina and Magda got into the compartment allotted to them.

There were bundles of stiffly starched bed linens on the seats. A vase holding a single flower and a menu for the restaurant car were on the window table.

On the other side of the compartment came the sound of laughter and water splashing. One of their fellow passengers was clearly marveling at the fact that there was running water on the train.

Nina walked up to the mirror on the back of the door and lifted a strand of curly hair above her head where it stayed stiffly standing on end.

“When we finally take a proper bath, we’ll wash away a ton of dirt,” said Magda. “I hope they still have bathtubs in Moscow.”

Somebody knocked at the window, and Magda opened it. It was Borisov.

“Get Nina for me,” he ordered.

Nina walked reluctantly to the window. “What do you want?”

Borisov took a newspaper from his pocket and tossed it to her. “Look at this. I just bought it in the station.”

On the first column was a large headline: “Trotsky expelled from the list of candidates for the Comintern Executive Committee.” The same article told of the arrest of several traitors who had “undermined the very basis of the party’s social construction project” and “introduced division among the Bolshevik cadres.”

“It would be suicide to go to Moscow,” Borisov whispered. “If they’ve got rid of Trotsky, they’ll eat us alive. And you into the bargain.” Borisov looked about him to make sure nobody was listening.

“Come with me to Khabarovsk,” he said under his breath. “I have money—we’ll be all right. Don’t tell me you want to go with that great English heifer to the slaughter.”

Nina closed the window with a rattle.

“What did he say?” asked Magda as the train began to move.

Nina sat down on the seat and hugged herself as if she were cold.

“Miss Thomson,” she said, “it’s dangerous to go to Moscow. Why don’t we get out at the very first station and go to Vladivostok? We could get a steamer to Shanghai from there.”

Magda refused point-blank. “I understand you’re anxious to get back to your husband, but I don’t want to lose Friedrich either. I can take care of you. My father has lots of friends in parliament. We can send Klim a telegram, and he can wire you the money for the return trip.”

“The Bolsheviks couldn’t care less about your parliament,” Nina said. “You won’t find any diplomats here or any legal system to speak of. They can just accuse you of spying and shoot you on the spot.”

Low hills covered in reddish grass stretched away outside the window. From time to time, a chain of railcars would pass, and they would glimpse horses’ faces and the broadcloth helmets of Red Army soldiers. Troops were being sent off somewhere.

Magda slurped at the tea that the attendant had brought in for them. “I don’t know whom Frederick thinks he’s trying to fool,” she said. “Nobody can live without love. He’s just worried about getting me into trouble. But I told him straight away that I’m not afraid of anything… well, perhaps except my father when he’s angry. We just need time to get to know one another better.”

Nina sat in silence. All she could think of was that every second was taking her farther and farther away from Klim.

The train flew across half the length of Russia and eventually arrived in Moscow.

Nina was preparing herself for the worst. Any minute, officers from the OGPU might come to the door of their compartment and begin to question her: How had she ended up in China? What had she been up to there?

Magda was also looking as if she had seen a ghost. She was staring through the window at a porter stamping about on the station platform, an enormous man with a brutish face, a matted beard, and a lighted cigarette dangling from his thick lips. He was the spitting image of the Bolsheviks on political posters shown making their way toward a horrified Europe.

“If they try to arrest us,” Nina said in a trembling voice, “jump out onto the rails and hide under the train. Then we’ll run in different directions: you go toward the station, and I’ll go over there to that freight train. We can meet in twenty-four hours on the square in front of the station—in the place where the cab drivers wait for fares.”

There was a knock at the door. Nina pressed her hand to her lips. That was it. They were done for.

But it was only Friedrich.

“What are you doing sitting around in here?” he said. “Go to the Second House of Soviets. They’re expecting you there.”