Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

The man bellowed again, a full-throated cry that ended with a savage laugh as he lashed the startled ponies to greater speeds. The sleigh began to buck alarmingly. Glancing furtively at the guard, Trotsky hoped that he might take it upon himself to control the wild beast that sat in front of them. But the guard merely grinned back at him and gave a knowing wink. Gradually, the speed slackened off. The driver took another swig of vodka and passed the flask around again. This time Trotsky did not refuse, but drank with a gesture of desperate resignation, taking furtive care first to wipe the top of the flask.

“Course,” observed the driver, “you people you believe in free love, don’t you, poet?”

Trotsky winced but said nothing.

Reaching over and retrieving the bottle, the driver repeated his question.

“If you mean me,” Trotsky replied, “I am not a poet. I am a journalist.”

“Well, you look like a poet to me,” replied the man gruffly. “But what about it, eh? I bet you get plenty of spare, what with all those students and red whores. You don’t believe in marriage for a start, do you?”

“It’s a well-documented fact,” replied Trotsky. “All upsurges in revolutionary struggles correspond with the breakdown of conventional sexual mores. One need not take the evidence of recent events here in Russia but also all over Europe in 1848, and before that in France in 1789. As the masses grow more and more aware of the false and exploitative nature of orthodox morality, they shrug off the chains of sexual repression and reach out for liberation.”

“Just as I said: free love,” interrupted the driver and belched loudly. “Mind you, you’re right about the Frenchies. Always hot for it, they are. Still, from what I’ve heard, some of your boys are a bit handy that way too.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Trotsky.

The man seems deaf to any thoughts other than of smut, he thought sourly. He was surely a member of the degenerate peasantry.

“Well, you know,” persisted the driver, “all those meetings in the woods and so on. You can’t tell me you spend your whole time making speeches and passing the hat around. I heard as how a troop of Cossack came across about a hundred and fifty of them one Sunday, all at it like dogs. Outside Moscow it was, up in the Sparrow Hills.”

“Even though I wasn’t there,” said Trotsky stiffly, “I can tell you quite categorically that that is a lie. My comrades are too busy and too disciplined and respectful of each other to… to be doing what you are implying. “

Rocking backwards on his seat, the driver crowed with laughter.

“At it like knives, they were!” he insisted. “Men and women, women and women; men and men. Disgusting, it was. The way I heard it, the Cossack didn’t dare go near them lest they upset the horses!”

“Oh, what rubbish!” snorted Trotsky.

The man was irritating beyond belief; his inconsequential chattering was boring into his head. Trapped here, in a sledge under armed guard crossing this barren wasteland and he had to put up with the filthy outpourings of an illiterate drunk as he headed towards exile. It was one circle of Hell, he reflected, that Dante had never dreamt of.

Seeing his disgruntled expression, the driver ceased his mockery.

“Still,” he said, “whatever you say, I hope you got your ration when you were free, because there will be fuck all where you are going.”

Taking another swig from the bottle, he nodded at the train of sleighs that followed in their wake.

“See, some of the others, the older ones, they’ve been a bit smarter. They’ve brought their own with them, so to speak. A young lad like you… well…”

He sucked in his teeth and shook his head with regret. Tucking the bottle between his feet, he turned back to face the team and shook out the reins. From over his hunched shoulder, his voice carried his dour forecasts.

“Won’t be long before you’re pulling your rag and looking twice at reindeer. Or getting a dose from the Ostyaks.”

“What are Ostyaks?” Trotsky asked.

But the garrulous mood had finally left his tormentor; evaporated with the vodka fumes.

Removing his pipe from his mouth and clearing his throat, the guard, who until now been an amused spectator, provided the answer to his question. “The Ostyaks are the local natives. They live mainly to the south of Obdorskoye. They survive by fishing the Ob. Good trappers too, I hear. Then there are the Zyrians. They tend to keep clear of the settlements but sometimes you might see them working as drivers or porters and such like. They do a bit of trapping too, when they are sober; which is hardly ever. And then there are the Yakuts. Travelling folk, they are, but you probably won’t see any of them. They tend to stay well out to the east. Brilliant blacksmiths, though. They can shoe a horse faster than you can shit. All the same, I wouldn’t go near any of them if I were you; Ostyaks, Zyrians or Yakuts. Poxed to the gills, they are, and dangerous with it.”

“Dangerous? How?”