Читаем Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic полностью

It had been from her lips, he had challenged her, that he had learned to respect the names of Plekhanov, Axelrod and Zasulich. Especially Vera Zasulich, for she was fighting two struggles: as a revolutionary and as a woman. What was the function of such heroes if not to be emulated and even to be surpassed in courageous actions? Perhaps there was even now some senior pupil at the Nikolayev Realschule who was sitting in the classroom, ostensibly paying attention to her lessons while all the time her breast burned with the fire kindled by the union’s struggle? Alexandra who had so often accused him of arrogance, was, he argued, more arrogant than he was, for her attitude was despondence in the face of defeat. Just because they had been arrested and exiled did not mean that the cause was lost, nor that the struggle was over. They had created something in the Union that should never be forgotten.

But Alexandra would not be persuaded of that view and in the end, he had left her, hiding beneath the straw with a fellow escapee, a lady translator of Marx, for several hours as the peasant’s cart took them further and further away from their place of exile. It had been a fairly safe risk, a probability he had calculated of eight to one in favour of success.

After Alexandra there had been no one else until he had reached Paris and, that first time, on entering the small bar off the Rue Cavertin he had only caught a few glimpses of the beautiful stranger, laughing amongst a group of students. A small band of her friends had clubbed together and made up a party to celebrate her birthday. He had arrived just as they were seeing her off and she had passed by quite near him, surrounded by the chattering crowd. One or two of the older men sitting at the small tables that lined the wall of the bar raised their glasses to her, toasting her youth and beauty, and she was gaily returning their salutes; emptying her glass of wine and handing it to one of her waiters.

Just as she reached the door, a large bear of a man had appeared beside her and was greeted with good natured cheers by the students. Blinking, the newcomer smiled sheepishly, his bearded face blushing at the applause of the crowd. From behind his back he clumsily produced an elegantly wrapped bunch of flowers which he offered her. Delighted, she accepted them and rewarded him with a kiss, standing on tiptoe so that she might reach his cheek. This brought more cheers and laughter as the group swung out into the street, surrounding the slight figure of the girl in whose wake ambled the smitten giant.

The passage of the young woman, from the rear part of the bar where a table stood littered with bottles to the bar’s entrance, took less than two minutes. As she was swept past, she seemed not to have noticed him, standing tired and bedraggled at the bar. And why should she have done? Wearing the same clothes in which he had travelled all the way from Zurich, clutching the battered travelling case in the bottom of which, on onion-skin paper, was typed the latest intelligence from the Swiss comrades, he looked nondescript. But his eyes had followed her, taking in the neat black dress beneath her black coat with its lapis lazuli brooch; her young aristocratic features, and her bright eyes flashing out beneath the short veil that draped from the hat adorning her simply coiffured hair. Just as she disappeared through the door, she had glanced backwards in the manner of a woman checking to see that she had left nothing behind, and catching Trotsky’s admiring gaze had smiled straight at him. He had half raised his hand in salute, but by then she had gone, leaving him foolishly waving to no one.

To cover his embarrassment, he had haltingly ordered a biere and, following his memorised instructions and in an accent that made the barman wince, had asked for the whereabouts of a man called Jaques. The barman gave a brief shrug and shake of his head and had moved off to tend to other customers. As the people at the tables around him returned to their conversations he was left to sip his drink and ponder his next move.

He was alone in a capital city, one of the imperial cornerstones of Europe with no more than a few sous in his pocket. His accent, if not his clothes, proclaimed him to be a foreigner. The evening was drawing on and it was more than possible that he had come to the wrong bar. He had no knowledge of the city, no comrades to call upon for assistance and a cache of confidential papers in his luggage.

He was beginning to feel uneasy when a second glass appeared alongside his on the bar counter. Looking up, he saw a pale faced young man had joined him at the bar. Introducing himself as Paul – although Trotsky though that he might have misheard as the man spoke Russian tinged with a thick Polish accent – he motioned to Trotsky to drink up his biere and said quietly that he would take him to the mysterious Jaques.

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