Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

He gave a sigh of despair. Vera Zasulich had said that it would take a generation to repair the damage that had been done to the Party in the fortnight of the Second Congress. At the time he had dismissed her words as characteristically melodramatic, but now her estimate seemed correct. He wondered how much he had personally helped Nicolai in his machinations. He should have stood up to him sooner; that much was obvious. Whatever role he had played, he would not take the blame for what had happened to the Party. The Soviet’s arrest, maybe – he had been privy to Parvus’s article repudiating the foreign debts – but not the wrecking of the Russian Social Democratic Party. That had been all Nicolai’s doing, not his. Until his eyes had been opened at the Second Congress he had been loyal to Nicolai and Nicolai had repaid him by abusing his trust.

Now, he realised with surprise, I have a new loyalty – to Natalya and our son Lev.

The sudden recognition as to how profoundly his feelings had altered shocked him and made his scalp crawl with anxiety. Shaking his head violently, he tried to clear his thoughts.

What is happening to me? he asked himself. Here in this pig house, leaning on this balustrade, my loyalties are like a weathercock swinging with the change of wind. Is this the start of my political collapse?

The failing sunlight had left the upper storey now in half darkness. He began feeling his way along the balustrade until he had reached the top step of the stairs. In the pen below him, one of the pigs defecated with a loud splattering noise. The stench was almost unbearable. Pinching his nose between his thumb and forefinger, Trotsky began carefully to descend the ramshackle flight of steps.

This is even worse than London, he thought.

Chapter Fifteen

Saturday 10th February 1907

Berezovo

Leonid Kavelin watched Irena Kuibysheva over the rim of his cup as she daintily licked the cream from her spoon. Coming to the dining room of the Hotel New Century had been her idea, as were the drinks they were now enjoying. In the latest in a series of moves and countermoves she had cleverly insisted that he order coffee for himself.

“But why?” he had asked. “I would far prefer tea.”

“Because,” she had said, leaning back in her seat, “I think I should like the taste of coffee on your tongue.”

Inevitably, when the waiter had come to take their order he had ordered a coffee and she had ordered chocolate, forcing them both to wait while her cup was being prepared to Fyodor Gregorivich’s special recipe. Her ruse had momentarily annoyed him. He told himself that she could not expect him to sit nursing his small cup of Turkish bitterness while she lapped up the crème from the top of her drink but, as always, her gentle teasing had brought him round. His current trial did not worry him. He was confident that she shared his appreciation of their situation. Outwardly they were enjoying a brief encounter; inwardly they were competing for dominance: she for control of his heart, he for possession of her body. Neither of them, he was certain, entertained any illusions that the situation was otherwise, or pretended they had any permanent claim upon the other. Once their invisible match had been concluded they would move on.

Looking up, Irena caught his eye and grinned.

“Oh, Lyonya! Why are you looking so unhappy? You have got exactly what you asked for, and so have I.”

“I look unhappy,” he explained patiently, “because I now have to wait for you to finish a drink that is possibly three times as long as mine.”

“Well, I think that our drinks suit us both,” she said cheerfully. “Yours is hot, powerful and intense, like you, while mine is milky and leisurely and comforting.”

He smiled at her, amused by the mental image she was trying to imprint on his mind.

It is so true, he thought. A man will chase a woman until she has caught him.

Irena had been leading him a dance for the past four weeks. To some extent he had enjoyed the experience. Her tearful confessions of unhappiness and yearning for sympathetic company, her breathless sighs and flustered resistance to his advances had more recently given way to capricious embraces in ill lit passageways that had almost bewitched him. For all his worldly experience – and, by common consent, he was the shrewdest business man in Berezovo; even cannier than Irena’s rich husband – he had been delighted by her sly stratagems. The novel experience of being consistently outwitted had been entertaining but it was now time to bring matters to a head. Illya Kuibyshev was expected to return any day. If their affair was to be consummated, further delay should be avoided.