A Allen: Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Pushing thoughts of Natalya and his baby son to the back of his mind, he bowed his head as he thought of the task before him. The Party was trapped between Nicolai’s ruthlessness and Julie Martov’s squeamishness. Of the three of them, only he had had the breadth of vision and the animus to nearly topple the throne. But, as Nicolai was so fond of saying, ‘nearly’ didn’t count. And with what could they have replaced the autocracy? The first order of business of a bourgeois reformist provisional government would be to find common cause with the military general staff and smash the Soviet that had brought it to power. The priority now was to acquire fresh data. He needed data even more than he needed money. It was essential that he should secure a constant flow of information from the outside world.

He began to write furiously.

Obdorsk. A minuscule point on the globe… perhaps we shall have to adapt our lives for years to Obdorsk conditions. Even my fatalistic mood does not guarantee complete peace of mind. I clench my teeth and yearn for electric street lamps, the noise of trams and the best thing in the world – the smell of fresh newsprint!

He signed the letter and carefully blotted the wet ink with his handkerchief. Folding the sheet of paper, he slid it carefully into the torn lining of his overcoat. At least Nicolai still allowed the Deputies to use the Iskra couriers for their personal correspondence; that was something to be grateful for.

As quietly as he could, Trotsky rose from the chair and stood for a moment massaging away the stiffness in his legs. Then, steadying himself against the edge of the table, he wearily slipped off first one boot and then the other. All around him rose the heavy sounds of sleep. Turning, he extinguished the lamp. Darkness enveloped him as, clutching his boots in one hand, he began to step carefully over the huddled bodies of his comrades and made his way towards his allotted portion of the floor.

By the flickering light of the four candle stumps that sat like squat toads on the wooden ledge above his washbasin, Colonel Konstantin Illyich Izorov, Chief of Police of the town of Berezovo, peered at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

He saw the head and shoulders of a middle aged man stripped to his underclothes, the lower half of his face masked beneath a thick lather of soap. Above the mask a pair of grey eyes betrayed the anxiety of the last thirty-six hours. Dipping the blade of his razor into the basin, he shook off a few drops of water and raised it to his throat. He had worked at his office in the uchastok , compiling list after list of the arrangements that had to be made. It was now someone else’s turn to have sleepless nights. There would be no shortage of those before this business was through.

He began to shave with slow, deft strokes. Through the floorboards he could hear his wife entering the breakfast room beneath and begin cursing their sullen maid. The sound cheered him and he pulled a grotesque face at his reflection. Other than his wife’s pride, there was no reason why they should have a maidservant at all. Their only child, a son, had long since left them to serve in the force at Perm. Neither of them were particularly untidy nor irregular in their habits. His wife could cope perfectly well without a servant.

The blade flashed down into the basin again and swirled around in the soapy water as he washed away the tiny lengths of shorn hair. Smiling, he drew the blade carefully upwards across his jawline as he half listened to the morning ritual downstairs. As usual, nothing the girl did was satisfactory. Whether it was chopping the wood, laying the fire or carrying the dishes to the table, Madame Izorova found grounds for criticism. It would end as it always ended, with the girl sent back to the kitchen in tears and his wife laying the table and lighting the samovar herself. And for this privilege he paid almost one rouble a week!

Laying the razor on the ledge beside the candles, he stooped over the basin and began rinsing the remains of the soap from his face. He never felt washed in the morning unless he had shaved, although he himself had once had a fine beard when he had been on the beat in Tobolsk. He could not remember feeling dirty then. Almost certainly, when one was young and in the company of other men, such things did not matter so much. There had often been no hot water in the barracks so, he believed, he had probably been no cleaner or dirtier than the next man.

Straightening up, he regarded himself once more in the mirror, brushing away the droplets of water that remained in his moustache. There was much more to shaving than mere cleanliness and tidiness, he reflected. It was a daily accounting with life. So many people just splashed water on their faces, dragged their fingers through their hair and rushed off without having a good look at themselves and at what they had become. A few moments every morning regarding oneself in the mirror, he was certain, would vastly improve the behaviour of his fellow man. It would teach the magnificent humility; the coward resolution, and the potential malefactor caution. He thought sadly of his clerk Nikita Molodzovatov who had taken his own life the previous year, blowing his brains out in the fire tower and recalled that Nikita too had hardly ever shaved. What a pitiful waste that had been, as well as a crime against God and the Tsar. It had meant a lot of paperwork too.

Picking up the razor again, he began to carefully dry the blade. He had few illusions about the population of Berezovo, beardless or not. Once the fearful news leaked out, they would be like startled chickens in a coop hearing the wolf scrabble at the door. He had done as much as he could in the brief time since the rider had handed him the leather pouch bearing the Imperial seal, but nothing could stop them from panicking.

Through the floorboards he heard his wife calling up to him that his breakfast was ready. He carefully laid the razor back into its polished wooden box and smiled grimly at his reflection in the mirror. The whole town was on trial now, including himself.

Two hours later, Anatoli Mikhailovich Pobednyev sat in his mayoral parlour gnawing anxiously upon a misshapen thumbnail. Before him on his desk lay a single piece of headed notepaper, bearing the legend ‘From the Office of the Chief of Police, Berezovo’.

The note read:

From : Col. K.I. Izorov

To : His Excellency, the Mayor

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

Your Honour,

Please present yourself at my office at 9.30 a.m. this morning. I wish to discuss a matter of the utmost urgency. On no account discuss this letter with anyone. I will explain everything when we meet.

P.S. Burn this letter now!

Picking up a small handbell – a clumsily fashioned replica in brass of the great bell at Petersburg – he summoned his secretary. As he waited for the man to arrive, the Mayor’s eyes darted to and fro over the carefully rounded letters of the policeman’s handwriting, seeking vainly to divine the purpose behind the peremptory summons. But when, at last, the secretary appeared he was none the wiser.

“Boris,” he demanded, “what is all this about?”

The secretary, a pale-faced sandy-haired fellow with a tall stooping body that in profile resembled a question mark, approached his desk warily.

“All what, your Excellency?”

The Mayor prodded Izorov’s letter disdainfully with a stubby forefinger.

“This note. What does it mean?”

The secretary shuffled a few steps closer.

“If I could just take a look,” he suggested, “I might be able to shed some light on the matter.”