Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

They had nicknamed their landlord “The Crazy Man” because that was what he was becoming. Every night as they sat at his table, eating his food, Kalinosky would rage impotently at the terrible things those fiends, those “anarchists” and “Socialists” in the Soviet were doing. Every inch the respectable bourgeois married couple, he and Natalya had tutted sympathetically as their landlord described in painful detail how the value of his stocks and shares were being reduced to a fraction of their former value because of the crisis; how every strike slashed his interests to the bone. For the first week it had been amusing but soon they had become bored with the nightly recitation of his troubles. At length, they began to take a malign pleasure in his losses. When, one evening, he brought his tirade to a close with an uncharacteristic note of optimism (“Ah well, at least I still have my 7% holding in the Tver carriage works!”) they had known what to do. Within twenty-four hours the carriage makers had been brought out on strike, and another disaster was added to their landlord’s litany of woes.

As the crisis grew, the Crazy Man began to leave his food untouched. He just sat slumped in his chair, gnawing at his fingernails as he read the reports in the evening newspapers with mounting anxiety. One night, so appalled had he been at the news of the day’s events that he had thrust the evening newspaper into the grate, setting it alight and waving it around above his head like a flaming brand as he screamed abuse at his invisible tormentors. Dumbfounded by the sight Natalya and Trotsky had sat staring at each other as the charred embers filled the dining room and floated gently down onto their plates; the speculator’s wife, Madame Kalinoskaya, all the while flicking the ashes away with her napkin as if they were wasps at a picnic. It had been all too much. Pleading hiccoughs, they had escaped to their room and had had to bury their faces deep in the pillows to muffle their laughter. After that they had made love and, he was sure of it, had conceived Baby Lev, out of laughter and class struggle.

Following the incident of the ashes, newspapers were banned from the dining table: first the local evening editions and then even the morning national daily. But it was no use; if anything, their landlord became more disturbed. Trotsky had gone so far as to bring home a few copies of “Nachelo” (the editorials and leading articles of which he was writing under the Crazy Man’s roof, if only he had known it) with the excuse that they had been forced on him by some hooligans in the street. After the first few copies had reduced her husband to a gibbering wreck, Madame Kalinoskaya had pleaded with him not to bring any more into the house.

In the end, the speculator’s condition became serious. Returning from an executive meeting of the Soviet one evening, he and Natalya had found Madame Kalinoskaya beside herself with worry. Her husband had locked himself in his study and was threatening to shoot himself. He had been drinking heavily all afternoon and there was every possibility that he might carry out his threat. It had been a tricky moment: such a serious incident could not fail to bring their address to the attention of the police. Hurrying to their room, they had burnt what papers they could and packed the rest in their travelling bags, before separating and going in search of safer accommodation. But, by midnight, they had had no luck. Returning to their lodgings, they spent a sleepless night, expecting at any moment to hear the crack of a pistol shot. He had never seen the man again. A few days later Parvus had published the statement that no foreign debts would be honoured by the Soviet, and the whole Executive Committee had been arrested. This time Natalya was the one who had got away.

* * *

He had not thought of the Crazy Man for over a year. Now, as Trotsky limped wearily across the threshold of the general store, he wondered what had become of him. Seeing him enter, Nikita Osipovich Shiminski came forward to welcome him. How could he be of service? A pair of reindeer skin boots? Certainly, sir. Ignoring the winks and nudges of his other customers, the store’s proprietor fetched the kisys and helped Trotsky put them on in return for a golden ten-rouble coin. Handing back his change, Shiminski agreed that his kisys were expensive. He appealed to their audience to vouch that they were of the finest quality. As one of the women observed, by the look of him, they would last longer in Obdorsk than their purchaser, and who could say fairer than that?