Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

“It’s not a question of being ‘bothered’,” Roshkovsky began quietly, then fell silent.

The two men looked at each other.

Roshkovsky took a deep breath and let out a resigned sigh. “Look, I shall speak to someone about it,” he muttered unwillingly. “I am not making any promises to you, but if anyone can do it, he can. He knows the taiga like his own hat. But first you must agree to one condition.”

“Which is?” asked Trotsky

Turning to face him Roshkovsky held up a warning finger.

“The condition is that you never, ever, come to this office again or openly engage me in conversation in a public place again. Do you understand? If I have anything to communicate to you, I will find a way of doing it myself.”

Trotsky hesitated. Roshkovsky was asking him to place more trust in him than he felt, but what choice did he have? Unwilling to put further pressure on the gossamer fine thread by which his hopes now hung, he grudgingly accepted.

“What is the man’s name?”

The question angered Roshkovsky.

“Oh no!” he cried, slamming the flat of his hand down on the top of his desk. “I have said enough. That is all you need to know until I have spoken to him. Now, you must go!”

Reluctantly Trotsky stood up and began fastening his overcoat. After making sure he had left nothing behind, he picked up his boots and the walking stick and went to the door. Opening it, he turned back to face Roshkovsky.

“You won’t forget, will you? I don’t have very long.”

“I won’t forget.”

“Speak to him today. Remember, you promised.”

Without waiting for a reply, he shuffled through the door and out into the street.

Roshkovsky sat down at his drawing desk and buried his head in his hands.

“What have I done?” he asked himself over and over again.

With another heavy sigh, he stood up and, taking his padded frock coat down from its hook, began to close up the office.

Stopping only to buy a loaf of bread at Gvordyen’s in order to give himself the excuse to return home, he set off for Ostermann Street, where Madame Roshkovskaya greeted him with cries of surprise and delight. But if his wife had thought that he had closed his office early just to be with her, she was quickly disabused of the notion. No sooner had Roshkovsky arrived than he exchanged his office overcoat for the thick fur coverings he usually wore when he was travelling and slipped off his town shoes in favour of a pair of heavy boots similar to the ones his unwelcome visitor had purchased earlier that morning.

At first puzzled, and then alarmed, Nina Roshkovskaya watched him as he completed the transformation and took the novel precaution of parting slightly the lace curtains that draped the front windows of the sitting room and peeping out into the street. Then, with only the most perfunctory of kisses on her cheek, her husband was gone; out through the kitchen and down the back steps, leaving whomsoever might be loitering outside in Ostermann Street to suppose he was still within.

Roshkovsky knew every step of the way between the end of Ostermann Street and Goat’s Foot’s shack. It took him a good twenty minutes to reach the peasant’s home and he spent each minute fighting the temptation to look over his shoulder. Already he could feel Colonel Izorov’s agents, if not the Colonel himself, creeping in his wake. Not for the first time did he curse himself for being such an accommodating fool.

Roshkovsky found Goat’s Foot standing outside his gornitsa. Despite the chill air the doorway to the outhouse was bathed in steam. As he approached, the old peasant raised a friendly hand in greeting. Winking, he drew Roshkovsky inside, and jerked a thumb at his wife who was perspiring freely as she struggled, unaided, to raise a horse blanket dripping from a large cauldron full of black dye. When at last she had succeeded, she began manipulating it with a pair of wooden tongs, twisting the blanket this way and that with great dexterity as she wrung off the excess liquid from the heavy woollen cloth before dropping it onto the earth floor at the foot of a dilapidated mangle.

Chuckling approvingly, Goat’s Foot slapped Roshkovsky affectionately on the back.

“Do you see what a witch I married, Andrey Vladimovich?” he boasted. “She is making gold out of wool.”

Still chuckling, he led the land-surveyor away, leaving his wife to mutter evil imprecations as she reached for another stolen horse blanket.

Roshkovsky kept his silence until he was seated at the peasant’s hearth and had allowed his host to press a beaker of vodka into his hand. Toasting Goat’s Foot, he drained the cup with one gulp and smacked his lips approvingly.

“Gold out of wool, eh?” he began. “It’s funny that you should say that, old friend. That’s twice today someone has mentioned gold to me.”

Chapter Eleven

Wednesday 14th February

Berezovo, Northern Siberia