Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

This jibe brought forth another gale of laughter from the audience. Amused by the simplicity of the plot – it was fairly obvious where the playwright was heading – Trotsky shook his head in mock despair. Looking around him, he realised that he could not remember the last time he had been surrounded by such benevolent humanity. Most of the meetings he attended over the years had been fractious and adversarial. There was something wonderfully comforting, he felt, almost uplifting, in being in the company of people so intent on enjoying themselves. It was as if every member of the audience, rich or poor, young and old, had sworn an oath to set aside their differences, all the prejudices, the pretensions and anxieties that separated them from their fellow man, for the period of that one evening and to enter into a conspiracy of enjoyment.

What simple and uncomplicated lives they must lead, he thought, to be able to engineer such an amnesty. One can’t imagine there being a theatrical performance so far from the cities.

Settling back in his seat, Trotsky shut his eyes and tried to remember the last time he had been to the theatre but all he could recall was the occasion when he and Natalya had first attended the opera in Paris and it was not a happy memory. It had been springtime, April, nearly four years before. Gustave Charpentier’s Louise had returned to the Opera Comique and Natalya had obtained some spare tickets in the “Gods” (from whom? he wondered now). It was only because of Charpentier’s popularity that he had been persuaded to accompany them at all. The composer, for all his flourishes, had his heart in the right place to the extent of ploughing most of the profits from his successful opera into a Conservatoire Populaire so that working class girls like his opera’s heroine could get a decent training in music and art, singing and dancing.

By chance, Nicolai had also been in Paris, invited by a group of emigre professors at the Higher School to give a series of lectures on the Agrarian Question and as a matter of course he had been included in their party. Just before they had left, the question of dress had arisen. It was the general view that Trotsky was in dire need of a new pair of shoes; his present ones were a disgrace. Obligingly, Nicolai had lent him a pair he had just bought, remarking as he handed them over that he himself had found them a little tight. And so they had set off to walk to the Opera: Natalya and himself, Jules Martov, one or two others; and Nicolai still obstinately clutching the briefcase that contained his lecture notes.

To begin with, everything had seemed fine. The shoes felt strange; perhaps a little uncomfortable, but nothing more. By the time they had reached the Opera and had climbed the seemingly endless flights of stairs to reach their seats it was clear that the shoes were at least one, if not two, sizes too small for his feet. The upper circle had been surprisingly warm and by the time they had sat through the first act he was in agony and had been barely able to limp as far as the bar during the interval. From then on, the evening became one long torment. He had never imagined such pain was possible. At one point on their way back to their rooms, with Natalya ecstatic about the opera (“But can’t you see, Lev? I am ‘Louise’ and you are ‘Julien’! Isn’t it wonderful? And the music!”) and with Nicolai teasing him unmercifully about his suffering, he had seriously considered risking arrest for vagrancy and walking barefoot back to their rooms.

It was only later that he had come to regard the episode with suspicion. Nicolai, he realized, had known that the shoes would pain him and had enjoyed the cruel joke. The whole point of lending them had been to show Trotsky that he literally could not walk in his shoes, or ever hope to steal them. Well, he had proved Nicolai wrong on one account. On his own chosen ground – journalism – he had beaten Nicolai hands down. The success of his 1905 newssheet Nachelo had put the Bolshevick’s Novaya Zhizn to shame.

It was Natalya who had seen the problem most clearly.

“You’re looking for a hero and he’s the wrong man,” she had said. “He’s too unkind. You are much better than him. Anyway, Nicolai’s an old goat.”

Sweet Natalya! he thought. She is so beautiful, so finely featured – both physically and intellectually. How she had enjoyed that opera!