Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

A few minutes later, the six ten-rouble gold coins that had been stacked and wrapped together in sticky black tar paper in the cavity inside the heel were safe in the pocket of his overcoat and Trotsky was busy repairing as best he could the damage he had inflicted on his boot. In the heel of his other boot was another sixty roubles: in its sole, a false passport. Having more than sufficient money for what he needed to do that day, he let them remain hidden where they were. Giving the heel a final tap with the handle of the knife, he slipped the boot on and stood up. The heel still felt precarious, but he thought that it might last him until he had reached the general store. Buttoning up his overcoat, he looked carefully around the room. Everything was as it should be: the bed made; the knife hidden from view within a slit in the mattress.

He took a step and felt the heel give a little more. Behind the door stood a walking stick that the Hospital Administrator had insisted he should use. The day before, he had viewed it with suspicion, not wishing to overplay the extent of his condition, but now he was grateful for its support. Pushing the chair out of the way he opened the door and shuffled out of his room, placing as little weight as he could upon his left foot as he made his way along the corridor to the top of the staircase.

It was probable that he would lose the heel before he reached the main road but it was a necessary risk. He cheered himself up with the thought that nobody would suspect a man with such a shambling gait to be laying plans for escape. Aware that his appearance had already been noted by the waiting guard below, he carefully began to negotiate the first step on the stair way that led down to the ground floor and the street.

This was not his first outing since his transfer to the hospital. The afternoon before, he had taken a short walk, no further than to the library and back. It had been sufficient to corroborate Sverchkov’s report. There was indeed a door that would give him access to the Quarter but, like the window outside his room, it struck him as being of little use. He knew neither the ghetto nor which, if any, of its inhabitants to trust. Dismissing the door from his mind, he had passed the time talking to the librarian while he “rested” from the exertion of his exercise. Maslov had been preparing his antiquated press, prior to printing the programmes for the forthcoming amateur dramatic production, of which – if the playbill was to be believed – he appeared to be the leading light. As he watched him work, squaring the paper for the guillotine and brushing the type block with rich black ink, Trotsky felt all the old excitement well up inside him. What he could not achieve in a place like Berezovo if he was free and had a printing press! It was all he could do to prevent himself tearing off his jacket and lending a hand.

At the back of his mind, something about the librarian picked at his memory. It was nothing that Maslov had said or done, but more the way he worked, with fancy little gestures; a minor alteration here, a redundant flourish there. At the time, he could not put his finger on what it was that bothered him about the man, but now, as he hobbled down Hospital Street, it suddenly came to him, out of nowhere. The Librarian Maslov bore a striking resemblance to the speculator Kalinosky. Despite his predicament – the heel seemed to be growing looser with every step – he permitted himself a small smile as he thought of the last time he had seen “The Crazy Man”.

* * *

In the dying months of 1905 he and Natalya had been living undercover in Petersburg as a married couple using the name of “Vikentiev”. She had gone to him on the day of her release under the October amnesty and it was as “Madame Vikentieva” that she had taken comfortable rooms with him in Kalinosky’s townhouse. Comrades had tried to persuade them to separate but they had refused. He could see now that, from a security perspective, a separation would have made sense: they had become mutually dangerous, but it had already seemed too late for such considerations. As the drama of the last fifty days of the St Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies had unfolded life had become more intense and quite different from their former existence in Paris or Geneva. Knowing that they were at the centre of events and aware that each day could be their last they had felt alive and possessed with power.