David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

Paul and Sofya sat on the bank under the trees. The steamer was moored a few yards away. Malinovsky had begun the repairs and was bent double in the engine compartment by the boiler, refitting the odd pieces of machinery that had been lying around. Valentine was standing over him, displaying, as far as Paul could see, either an unsuspected talent for mechanics or a lingering suspicion of Malinovsky’s motives.

In his saloon, looking over his charts of the Volga, the captain had told them what he knew about Kappel and the People’s Army of Komuch . Vladimir Kappel had apparently turned up in Samara after it had been taken by the Legion and the fledgling People’s Army of Komuch in June. He was a White cavalry officer and, along with other members of the old General Staff, had begun assisting Komuch in organising the People’s Army. At first, there was no more than a detachment of infantry, some mounted artillery, and a cavalry squadron of which Kappel was made commander. Although he was a monarchist and didn’t care much for the Social-Revolutionary ideas about military discipline, Kappel had nevertheless accepted Komuch’s conditions of service as long as he was able to fight the Bolsheviks. By July he had been made commander of all Komuch forces. Under him, and with the support of the local Legion detachments, the People’s Army had taken Kazan on 7th August. With the Red Army in disarray it had seemed as if there was little to stop the People’s Army’s march west on Sviyázhsk, but Trotsky’s reorganisation of the Red forces had held Kappel at the Romanov bridge then pushed him back into Kazan.

Sofya, leaning on one elbow on the grass watching them work on the boat asked:

‘Do you think we’ll get through?’

‘Of course,’ Paul said automatically. ‘With luck we can be past the flotilla before they realise what we’re doing. It’ll be dark and the current will help.’

There was no reason, of course, why the current shouldn’t help the army’s steamers, too, but he saw no reason to alarm her. Malinovsky, showing them his charts of the river and had outlined the Red Army’s positions. That had been enough to alarm anyone.

A mist crept along the river. It’s sluggish fingers reached over the swirling current and drifted with the eddies. Dusk had fallen but Paul knew six hours of true darkness was all they could count on. They had spent the evening in the saloon pouring over the charts again. They were rudimentary; according to Malinovsky, the detailed knowledge of the Volga, its shoals and underwater obstructions, were in his head. No one knew it like him, he boasted, and Paul had marvelled at the change that had come over the demoralised wreck of a man they had found on the boat that afternoon. He suspected Malinovsky had been at the vodka again. They had all taken a nip earlier, even Sofya, to stave off hunger pangs more than anything. There was nothing to eat on the boat and they had brought nothing with them. Malinovsky offered to go into Sviyázhsk and buy food — it could still be had, he said, despite the ruinous prices. With Paul’s imperial roubles in his pocket the captain now seemed game for anything, but Valentine vetoed the suggestion. Given what Malinovsky now knew, he wasn’t prepared to let the captain out of his sight.

He had already taken Paul to task for saying too much to Malinovsky. Paul had replied facetiously:

‘You could always slit his throat and steal the boat.’

Valentine had hesitated, as if taking the proposal seriously. ‘Do you know how to operate it?’

Paul dropped the subject.

Malinovsky told them the Red Army on the Volga was divided into two groups — the left group with the flotilla stretched along the lower reaches of the Sulitsa, south of the village of Savino to where the Sulitsa joined the Sviyaga and flowed into the Volga; the left group, on the north bank of the Volga, was sat across the railway line and along the banks of another tributary. Rumour in Sviyázhsk had it, Malinovsky maintained, the army would move east and attack Kazan any day. They had artillery, armoured trains and cavalry to augment the infantry. The steamers that made up the flotilla, apart from the three destroyers from the Caspian, were a variety of craft. Some were bigger than Malinovsky’s Lyena and a few were even smaller, although none, to his knowledge, were large enough to mount artillery. That would have to be brought up by rail or overland along the dirt roads that connected the villages strung along the Volga. Or alternatively on the road a few versts further north that followed the railway line. Malinovsky had heard, although the captain couldn’t vouch for the truth of it, that there was another army straddling the railway line to the east of Kazan. He had heard them refereed to as the Arsk Group, under a man named Azin. These weren’t Bolsheviks but a revolutionary peasant army, Tartars and the like.

It struck Paul that all of Russia’s armies were peasant armies. It fell to that human mass to do the fighting whatever the case and whoever the commander. It was their fate to be picked up and wielded like a club; a brute force given as fodder to the artillery and machinegun and to be regarded in the final accounting as no more than casualty figures. No tsar, Bolshevik or White leader, as far as Paul was able to determine, thought of them as anything other than a resource, something to be exploited and expended as occasion demanded. It astounded him just how complaisant they always were, biting back only when pushed beyond endurance, and even then rarely. Now they had been recruited to fight each other, Bolshevik throwing them against White. He couldn’t help hoping that they would just refuse.

They were waiting for full darkness. Malinovsky said that if they could steam past the flotilla to where the Sviyaga and the Sulitsa joined the Volga, they would make good time once they caught the stronger current on the main river. The trick would be to get past the flotilla unchallenged. He still had the red flag they had made him fly when they had evacuated Kazan and, if they hoisted it, it might be enough to fool anyone watching and give them the head start they needed to Kazan. With the new engine parts he had fitted, Malinovsky bragged he could outrun anything else in the flotilla. Paul decided it was hardly the time to remind the captain that only that afternoon he had referred to the Lyena as an old lady who needed coaxing and frequent rest. There was little enough optimism around for Paul to crush any that did rear its head.

The Lyena had a shallow draught allowing Malinovsky to hug the bank as they passed under the town of Sviyázhsk. Approaching the confluence of the Sviyaga and the Sulitsa, the lights of the Red Army camp showed through the trees. The engine chugged softly, voices from the camp carrying above it on the still air. The campfires stringing the bank through the trees shimmered like glowing links of a chain.

Paul squatted in the stern on a stack of timber by the boiler. He was wishing he had a gun of some description. A rifle would have been his first choice but he’d have taken his old army Webley in a pinch. They had taken that off him in Finland although he discovered Valentine had somehow managed to hang on to the pistol he had taken off Oblenskaya on the steamer. He was presently crouched in the bow with it, under the wheelhouse. Sofya was in the small saloon, having been told to keep her head down.

Paul had looked around the boat for a weapon but had found nothing more lethal than one Malinovsky’s large spanners. He grabbed it nevertheless. It might not be a lot of use but at least he could brain anyone who attempted to board the steamer. That was assuming they weren’t blown out of the water first.