Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

The post sleigh had already arrived, she had learned, bringing new magazines to the General Store. Katya had told her of a supply of freshly slaughtered meats at Svortsov’s, and Maslov had sent her a card advising her that the printed notelets she had ordered were ready for collection. Only one thing cast a shadow over her morning: the necessity for her to visit the surgery. Having promised to lend Nina Roshkovskaya a novel when he paid his next house call, Vasili had forgotten to take the book with him when he had left their home that morning. Taking it to her husband at his surgery in order that he would not have to make a second journey meant that she would also have to see Anton Chevanin. She had placed the volume resolutely in her shopping basket, determined not to be deterred by the awkwardness of her situation.

Making her way to the corner of Ostermann Street she turned south towards Alexei Street. As she neared Gvordyen’s, she spied a group of children gathered around the confectionary shop’s small side window. From their strange clothes and unfamiliar appearance she guessed that they belonged to the convoy of exiles that had arrived two days before. Seeing their wan pinched faces, she could not help exclaiming aloud but so intense was their vigil that not one of the children took notice of her. All their attention was focussed upon a tray of cakes displayed behind the glass pane. As she drew level with them a collective groan of disappointment rose from the group. From inside the shop a pair of well-scrubbed hands had reached into the window and removed the large cake covered in marzipan and sugar icing that had been its centrepiece. She heard one of the smaller girls giggle nervously and watched as the child pressed her face against the pane.

Moved by pity, Yeliena stopped and began fumbling in her basket for her purse, intending to give the children a few copecks to spend on sweets. But just as her fingers were closing around the coins, the children left the window with a sudden rush and ran past her, their little boots thundering on the wooden boards of the raised side walk. Following them around the corner to the front of the shop, she watched as they noisily surrounded a serious looking woman who had emerged from the store carrying a box which undoubtedly contained the cake they had been admiring. Yeliena heard the woman gently rebuke them and at once their clamour died away. She watched as the woman moved off in the direction of the police headquarters, the children linking arms obediently and falling in behind her in pairs. The last pair, a boy and a girl, she guessed were brother and sister. The boy, the younger of the two, began to skip; jostling the girl who pulled disapprovingly at his arm. Turning to face her, he saw Yeliena watching him and waved at her shyly. Yeliena waved back. The boy gave a mischievous grin and then walked on, still unable to resist the occasional hop.

Yeliena felt a sudden stab of sadness. They are all so young, mere babies, she thought.

Stepping down from the boardwalk she began making her way across Alexei Street. She tried hard not to think of the hell towards which the children were being carried, but the vision of the little boy haunted her. He could have been her own son, or even Anton Ivanovich as he had been as a child, she thought to herself. The same harum-scarum smile, the same irrepressible enjoyment of life was there.

The thought of Anton brought her up short. Angrily, she chided herself; hadn’t she resolved to put an end to this foolishness once and for all? The young man’s embrace was to be erased from her memory, not put away like a pressed flower in a prayer book. But she knew that it had not been the thought of his embrace that had so unsettled her as much as the same impetuosity and warmth that had been present in the boy’s wave. Since marrying Vasili, no man had come as close to her as Anton had. She had certainly not permitted a man to show her the same degree of affection. Why, then, had she changed?

Determined to put such thoughts from her mind, she forced herself to concentrate upon the multiple objectives of her morning excursion. But, leaving the library an hour later, she was once more reminded of the exiled children while she stood watching a train of reindeer sleighs being taken across the market square towards the gates of the barracks. Lashed together in batches of four, the empty sleighs made slow progress, and as they passed her, she noted the newly varnished wood and the way the freshly oiled runners hissed cleanly over the packed snow. With a shock, she realised that these were the same vehicles in which the new prisoners were to be transported under guard to their place of exile within the Polar Circle. When next she saw the sleighs return to Berezovo, some of the children she had watched outside the baker’s window would already have begun to die.