Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

As every step took him further away from the hotel, Trotsky turned the problem that now confronted him over in his mind. The man walking beside him was genuine, but not one of the Party. A bourgeois certainly, a Liberal probably, at the very worst a Kadet; yet he rang true. Out of nowhere a phrase Nicolai was fond of using suddenly sprang to his mind: “the supreme importance of the correct analysis.”

There is no time for such imponderables now, he thought. Is Roshkovsky the right man to try or isn’t he? That is the question.

As he drew nearer to the intersection with Hospital Street – the point at which he had already decided he either would or would not ask Roshkovsky for help – Trotsky knew that his decision would have to be made almost entirely on instinct. He had made mistakes, misjudgements, about people in the past but years of experience in the underground had sharpened his instincts, and his inner voice was telling him that he could trust Roshkovsky. There was nothing that the land surveyor had said that could have been construed as active encouragement, yet in everything he did, in the very way he was walking beside him now, spoke of willing complicity.

There is something else also, something almost electrical between us. It as if Roshkovsky is only waiting for me to make the first move.

He looked down at his neatly shod feet as they trod the wooden boardwalk.

It is a gamble. If I am right about him, If I go all the way and put myself in Roshkovsky’s hands, there is a chance I could regain my freedom within days. But if I am wrong, if I have read him wrongly and he betrays me, it won’t only be the additional punishment that I will have to bear. My misjudgement, following on so quickly from Nicolai’s refusal to help, will inflict serious damage to my spirit and impair my capacity to plan and think clearly.

He was much more afraid, he realised, of this depression in his morale than of enduring physical hardship or threats of violence. Suffering a second defeat, he would become inert and fall deeper into the frozen pit that he had dug for himself; possibly never to see Natalya and Baby Lev again. He knew that he could expect no help from his fellow exiles. Once the convoy had reached its destination it would be every man for himself. Even Dr Feit would eventually give up on him. Obdorskoye would become his oubliette; he would die there, deliberately forgotten by comrade and Tsar alike and unmissed by his son.

They had reached the intersection. Pairs of soldiers stood at each corner, watching them keenly.

“We had better turn back,” warned Roshkovsky.

Trotsky turned and began to retrace his steps, deliberately slowing the pace as he did so.

I’ve held the dice for long enough, he thought. Now is the time to throw them or forever regret it.

“Andrey Vladimovich…”

“Hmmm?”

“Any chance of getting out of here?”

In his mind’s eye he imagined two dice tumbling onto a green baize table.

“In springtime it’s easy.”

“What about now?”

“Not so easy. But it should be possible.”

Two sixes.

“Mind you,” Roshkovsky added, “no one has ever tried it.”

Instinctively falling into step, the two men walked on. As they passed another soldier standing in the lengthening shadows of Well Lane, Trotsky frowned. He had missed spotting the guard the first time. But there was no immediate risk: their voices had not carried that far.

All the same, he thought, I will have to be more careful.

“I see,” he said casually. “Well, there’s always a first time, eh?”

Roshkovsky shrugged noncommittally. When he next spoke, it was in the same matter-of-fact manner. Every step was now taking them nearer to the uchastok and the group of waiting policeman standing outside it. But the land surveyor did not hurry.

“First, you would have to have an excuse to stop here for some time. If you go with the others as far as Obdorsk, you will have added another four hundred and eighty versts to your journey.”

Keeping his eyes on the ground, Trotsky nodded to show that he understood.

“We have been talking about the Ob, in case anyone asks,” he said in reply.

“Naturally,” responded Roshkovsky drily.